Chapter Text
The upper floors of the council building exploded in a flash.
"No!"
Caitlyn's head snapped back as the light struck her retinas. The pulse was like fire in her skull, but she couldn't look away.
Plumes of dust and debris smeared across the moon. Chunks of white stone hurtled down to blast against the buildings below, setting them ablaze. It was chaos, and for a brief moment, all sound seemed to be sucked out of the world. Everything was red.
Then, Vi's voice.
"Get down!"
The trencher crashed into her. Together they toppled into the ravaged foundations of the warehouse. Caitlyn was pulled behind a low-slung something. Poor cover, certainly. But again, there was Vi. The trencher threw herself on top of her and pressed her into the ground. Pistons hissed and gears whirred as she tried to power up the hextech on her hand. To what end, Caitlyn didn't know. But it was too late.
The shockwave hit. She could see it coming. It rolled rapidly over the city, bursting windows and cracking walls. By the time her brain caught up with what it was, the blast was already upon them.
It felt like getting kicked in the ribs. The ground buckled, falling away and slamming upwards into her. Vi was nearly thrown clear but scrambled back, refusing to let go.
The sound was deafening. It came, struck its blow, and left silence in its wake. Only the faint whine of disorientation remained to ring in her ears.
Time after that was measured in heartbeats and the resonance of Vi's body. As the blast rolled away, Caitlyn could feel her vibrating against her like a plucked wire. She brought a hand to Vi's shoulder and tried to sit up, but the trencher forced her back down and continued to brace. She shook her head against Caitlyn's neck. Her mouth moved.
As if from a far distance, Caitlyn heard her say, "It's not ov—!"
The council building erupted a second time.
This blast was stronger than the first. It punched upwards through the atmosphere and sent light searing across the city, eerie and blue. The skyline was shown in stark relief.
She and Vi were blown out from behind their meager cover and back against a tangle of steel barrels. The hextech gauntlet went flying off Vi's arm and crashed into the water.
Someone screamed.
The world snapped to black and then faded to vivid white.
Everything hurt.
Caitlyn's vision knitted slowly back together as the dust settled and the steam cleared. Spots danced in front of her eyes. Across the water, the city was in flames.
Immediately, she felt around for Vi. Relief flooded her as she realized the trencher was right there with her, their bodies draped over one another.
She rolled forward, groaning. Vi was partly underneath her, splayed against the barrels. Caitlyn turned to find her listing badly. Each breath left her in a wheeze and her eyes were badly unfocused. With a curse, Caitlyn realized that Vi had absorbed most of their impact. She touched her knee.
"Hey. Vi."
The trencher's eyes flickered. She swallowed.
"Hi."
"Hi. You alright?"
You certainly don't look it.
"Awes—" Vi winced, "Awesome. You?"
"We can worry about me in a minute." Gritting her teeth, Caitlyn dragged herself up until she was seated beside her. "You clearly took the worst of that."
Vi gave her an off-center smirk.
"Mn…bad habit."
"Your words. Anyhow, let's see the damage…"
Starting from the bottom and working her way up, Caitlyn tried to take rough stock of Vi's injuries. Not so easy in the dark. She traced, squeezed, and manipulated, working fast over the major bones and joints. Vi watched her in a daze. She didn't move.
Not a great start. Legs seem okay, though.
And ribs?
She slipped a hand into Vi's jacket and began to press.
"I'm okay," the trencher rasped. Lifting a leaden hand, she patted Caitlyn's arm. "M'okay. Just need…need a min—ah! Fuck."
Hissing in sympathy, Caitlyn nodded. "That one's broken. Cracked, maybe. Sorry. Try not to move."
"Ow, ow, ow…"
"I know. Hold still."
She moved up to check the collarbones and then ran down the arms. Decent shape. Then again, those weren't her main concern. Something dark was draining from Vi's right ear. Her eyes were drifting shut.
"Hey!" Caitlyn barked. She snapped her fingers in front of Vi's face. "Don't close your eyes. Awake, please."
Vi stirred.
"Right, yep. Sorry. Okay."
Before Caitlyn could stop her, Vi gave herself a weak smack across the face. She chased it with a look of regret.
"Ow."
"Yes, well. Maybe don't do that."
"Kay."
Vi lolled back against the barrels.
Caitlyn shook her head. Letting out a breath, she began rolling her fingers carefully up the back of Vi's neck, checking the vertebrae.
"Did you hit your head?"
"Mm."
"Vi?"
"Wha'?"
"I need to know if you hit your—ah. Never mind." Caitlyn's hand came away from Vi's head wet with blood. It looked black under the red moon. Sighing, she took her teeth to her skirt and tore off a section of cloth, holding it to the gash in Vi's scalp.
"Lean into that while I finish," she said. Vi obliged, and Caitlyn went on running careful fingers through her hair, searching out cuts and swellings.
Vi muttered something. Caitlyn glanced down. The trencher was watching her with one bleary eye.
"What?"
"Mm." Vi blinked. "…feels nice."
Caitlyn bit the inside of her mouth.
"Hush. I'm almost through."
"'Kay."
So far as she could tell, the worst of it was the head wound, but that was bad enough. Vi wasn't bouncing back nearly as well as she usually did. Not great news, considering there was no chance of Caitlyn getting far under her own power, let alone with Vi in tow.
How the hell are we going to get out of here?
Vi shifted in the dark.
"Hey, Cup—Cait. Cait. Caitlyn. Hey, um…might need m-more than a minute. Got, um, got two of you here." She gestured vaguely in Caitlyn's direction. "Or, three? No, jus' two. Two… "
She was slurring and her eyes were swimming in her head, struggling to focus. Alarm rose in Caitlyn's throat.
"Stay with me, please.” Need time to think. "Keep talking. About anything."
"Okay." Vi twisted. "Um…hey, there's this one…one thing. I don'...don' wanna freak you out. But…it's kinda freaking me out, so…"
It was true. Her voice was pitched with fear. Caitlyn looked up sharply.
"What's wrong?"
"Um…hmn. I can't, um…" Vi was frowning. Restless. Her gaze darted over to Caitlyn and then down to the left. "Um..."
Caitlyn turned her face gently toward her. "It's alright. Slowly. Tell me what's wrong."
Vi was swallowing fast. Or trying to.
"C-can't move," she gasped. Caitlyn went cold. "Left side. Arm an' leg…can't move."
Shit.
Caitlyn sat back and took a steadying breath, trying not to let Vi see her distress.
Blurred vision, disorientation, slurred speech, paralysis...particularly on one side of the body.
Brain bleed.
Another inhale. Hold. Exhale.
"You're alright," Caitlyn forced out, trying to sound reassuring. She mopped at the back of Vi's head. It was a horror. The scrap of skirt was useless. "Seems like you finally cracked your skull hard enough to do a spot of damage, that's all."
"Oh. Okay."
They lapsed into silence, save for the sound of Vi's shallow breath.
Then:
"Cait?"
"What's wrong?"
Vi panted, struggling. Her head weighed more heavily in Caitlyn's hand. Each time she tried to turn her gaze on the enforcer, it slid away just as quickly. Her expression grew frustrated. Pleading.
Frightened.
Caitlyn bit down on the inside of her mouth again and tasted blood. She grabbed Vi's right hand in hers. "If you can, squeeze once for yes, twice for no."
The compress she was holding to Vi's head was already soaked through. Blood ran down her sleeve. "You're having trouble speaking, is that right?"
Vi's hand gripped hers. Hard. Her gaze locked onto Caitlyn's with a clarity so sudden it was terrifying.
"Am I dying?" she gasped.
Yes.
"No. And I wouldn't let you, anyway. You'll be fine. Just need to think…"
Breathe in. Hold.
Longer.
Keep the carbon dioxide in your lungs; it will slow down your heart rate.
Breathe out.
"Fuck Silco," Vi blurted.
It was abrupt enough—and on-brand enough—to make Caitlyn laugh despite herself. Her smile was thin. "Right. Fuck Sil—"
Her head snapped up.
That's it.
Heart racing, the enforcer turned to stare into the dark bowels of the warehouse, straining to see. Somewhere down there were the remains of Jinx's maniac tea party. Scattered glass and fucked-up puppets. Fucking mess.
But in that mess was Silco's corpse.
I wonder.
It was just a chance. Probably their only one.
Caitlyn drew a shaky breath. "I have an idea, but it means I'll need to leave you for a few minutes. I won't go far, or be long."
Vi frowned.
"I know. I'm sorry." Carefully, she set the trencher's head back against the barrels. "I'll be right back. Promise."
Vi's reply was trusting and small. She squeezed the enforcer's hand.
"Okay."
Dammit.
Caitlyn traced her fingers lightly through Vi's hair and drew back. Immediately, her own wounds lit up in red all over her body.
Fuck.
She tried to stand but couldn't. Her knee was wrecked. Her head throbbed. She was also fairly confident she had a few cracked ribs of her own. Her leg, though. That was the real problem. She reached for a nearby railing and dragged herself upright. Grunting, she began the long, white-knuckled shuffle into the dark.
Each movement was agony. Her ruined knee could hold no weight, forcing her to hop. Small mercies, at least—she and Vi hadn't gotten very far before Jinx launched her rocket. Silco's body would be close.
The thought of Jinx made Caitlyn's skin prickle. She stopped and glanced around, searching for eyes, but saw no one. She could only pray the blue-haired freak was long gone.
Tottering forward, her boots finally crunched on broken glass. She squinted. The moon was rising, and its dull light now fell on the rubble, illuminating a scattered wreck of furniture, refuse, and spray cans. Silco's chair was there, too, upright, and he was still in it, drooping forward against his bindings.
Seething, Caitlyn closed the final distance in a scramble and grabbed hold of the corpse, shaking him loose and rifling through his pockets.
"Come on, come on, you piece of shit…" She patted down his waistcoat and trousers. Nothing. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." She came to his boots and squeezed.
Nothing.
"Dammit!" Tears threatened. Caitlyn leaned against the edge of the table, a hand dropping to the floor. It pressed into something soft. Frowning, she took hold of it, tugged—and heard a clink. She pulled again, harder. This time, a coat spilled into her arms. She caught a breath.
Silco's coat.
She heard the clinking sound again.
Swallowing, Caitlyn turned the coat over slowly in her lap. From one pocket, two small vials rolled out onto the floor.
Their contents glowed sickly purple.
Caitlyn collapsed at Vi's side blanching with pain and drenched in sweat. She nudged the trencher and held up the shimmer.
"Vi. Vi. Look."
Vi dragged her eyes open. When she saw the vials, she gave Caitlyn a twisted look, shuddering.
"Where?" she croaked.
"Off Silco's body. Lucky guess."
"Cait…"
"It's not ideal," Caitlyn admitted, uncorking her vial, "but we're not going to get far without it."
"Nn—"
Caitlyn knocked back her vial to cut off further protest.
The drug slammed down her throat.
She gasped.
A stinging vitality lanced through her, unlike anything she'd ever felt before. She spasmed. Her heart raced. Power, rage, and fear shot down every limb and skittered up her brainstem. Her synapses crackled like ice. A blitz of memories lit up inside her skull, the ugliest selection of her worst moments, instances when she'd been most angry or afraid. They stormed through her mind.
At the same time, there was something…else. A sweetness to the rage. A hint of a fast-approaching edge, beyond which was…
Bliss?
Caitlyn buckled in on herself under the onslaught. Gripping her ribs, she heaved, opened her mouth to scream—
But it was over.
The high dissipated as quickly as it hit, leaving her breathless, relieved, and hollowed out. Thankfully, the shimmer took the worst of her injuries with it.
Wiping her mouth and panting, Caitlyn looked up at Vi. The trencher's eyes were round with dread. Wordlessly, Caitlyn held out the second dose of shimmer.
Vi stared at it.
"Nn..."
Her hand twitched. Twice.
No.
"You have to."
The trencher's gaze jumped between Caitlyn and the vial. Her breathing, already labored, began to hitch.
Panic.
Caitlyn's throat tightened. She understood. Even for her, a privileged and protected Kiramman, shimmer struck like a nightmare.
How much worse must it be for someone like Vi?
Torture, probably.
Didn't matter, though. There was nothing for it. They had to move.
Coming in close, Caitlyn tried to look reassuring. "Please. It's quick. You know that."
But Vi's eyes betrayed real fear. The struggle in them was obvious and it was clear which emotion was winning. Caitlyn let out a breath. Time to try something else. She put her hand in Vi's.
"Do you trust me?"
Vi frowned. She squeezed.
Once, for yes.
"Okay. Good." Caitlyn nodded. "Right, so…sorry in advance."
"Wha—?"
Gritting her teeth, Caitlyn moved before Vi could put together what was happening. Popping the cork with her thumb, she palmed the trencher's face and forced her head back, covering her nose. It took all her self-control to shut out Vi's desperation.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. As the trencher gasped for air, Caitlyn flooded her mouth with shimmer.
Vi gagged. Fuchsia ooze spattered between her teeth as she fought to breathe without swallowing. Caitlyn made that impossible. Dropping the vial, she clenched her jaw and held Vi down until her throat began to work.
"I'm sorry," she repeated, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
The trencher scrabbled and whimpered, but Caitlyn only released her when she saw the faint glow of shimmer finally trailing down her neck.
Vi burst out of her grip like a wounded animal. Hacking and spitting, she scrambled forward and immediately collapsed onto her forearm, unable to go further.
Caitlyn dropped down alongside her. An arm lashed out and she flinched, anticipating a blow. It would have been less than she expected, and perhaps what she deserved. However, instead of getting cracked with a fist, Caitlyn looked down to find her lapel twisted in Vi's grip. With a locked elbow, the trencher was holding her at length. Come no closer.
Go no farther.
The shimmer hit harder than expected. It seized Vi's body like a rictus. She thrashed, her cries echoing back at them across the river, hoarse with pain. The fit lasted only seconds, barely longer than the first time she'd been dosed, but to Caitlyn, it was an eternity. Vi's hand clung desperately to her uniform.
Then it was over. The glow faded. Vi sagged. Her elbow unlocked and Caitlyn registered the faintest tug.
Okay.
Closer.
She pulled Vi into a sidelong embrace. Her chest ached at the ease with which the trencher accepted it, collapsing against her, exhausted. She realized then that they both were shaking and drew in a shuddering breath.
"I'm sorry about that. Had to do it."
Vi's reply was muffled.
"...hate it."
"It's horrible. I know." Caitlyn held her closer. "How do you feel?"
There was silence for a moment.
Vi snorted. "I feel like garbage."
Caitlyn laughed, but it came out sounding grim. "A step off death's door, then, eh?" she asked.
Vi sat up, Caitlyn helping her. Together, they turned and sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the battered wharf, taking in the devastation.
It was horrifying. Alarm horns were blaring. The city was burning. Tongues of flame worked their way through the upper crust, guttering out of windows and rupturing pipes. Black smoke belched upwards into the sky. Stars vanished, shrouded in an oily haze.
Caitlyn stared numbly at the place where the council chambers had once stood. The lower levels of the building looked buckled and cracked, but the top third was obliterated.
Anyone who'd been inside when the bomb went off would now be a pulp misted among the rubble.
Based on the date, time, and what Caitlyn knew of her schedule, that meant her own mother—along with every other sitting councilor—was now dead.
She looked at Vi. Vi looked back, solemn and pale. No wit or smiles now. Just weariness. Abstract dread.
Did she realize?
Likely not.
Even Caitlyn was having a hard time digesting that it was Vi's sister who had just atomized her mother.
And where was the emotion? The panic, the pain, the grief? She passed a hand over her eyes and realized she'd stopped shaking. Shock, probably. Must be. Her thoughts were all sealed away like volatiles, buried until they could be safely defused.
Might as well take advantage.
She stood and hauled Vi with her.
"Alright. Up. We can't stay here."
Vi cast a glance between her and the city. Over the water, enforcers were raising the drawbridges.
"They're cutting off Topside."
Caitlyn took her shoulder and steered her away.
"Worse," she said, "There will be a curfew. Searches."
Occupation. Inquisitions. War.
Vi tried to duck out from under her grip and scan the rooftops.
Caitlyn stopped. "What? What's wrong?"
The trencher hesitated. She turned away, her head tipped back.
"Powder…"
Caitlyn felt an unexpected flash of fury. She thumbed the bridge of her nose in search of patience.
"It's Jinx," she corrected, more harshly than she meant to.
She couldn't see Vi's face for a reaction, but it hardly mattered. The trencher was nothing if not earnest. She always emoted with every line of her body.
"No…"
We don't have time for this. Caitlyn grabbed Vi fiercely and jerked her around. The trencher's gaze was still roaming. Faster, now. More desperate.
"Look at me," Caitlyn said, "It's done. There's no going back. Your sister bombed the council chambers."
She paused to let the fight play out behind Vi's eyes. In them were all the emotions Caitlyn knew she should be feeling, but wasn't.
"Look at me!" she commanded, and at last Vi did. "Jinx bombed the council chambers…while the council was in session. Full attendance. Mandatory."
My mother is dead.
Vi wobbled, overwhelmed.
"No..."
It was barely more than a whisper.
Caitlyn's knuckles went white. "Yes. Vi, you can't help her."
"I…maybe—"
Caitlyn wanted to strike her.
"Shut up. You're not listening."
Vi was struggling in her grip now.
"It's not because it's hard," Caitlyn snapped, "It's not because she's crazy. Vi, you can't help your sister because she's a fucking terrorist!"
"Stop!"
Vi tried to wrench away and Caitlyn let her, sending her back with a shove. The trencher hit the ground, fingers dragging troughs in the debris. Caitlyn glared down at her.
"If you try this," she seethed, "first of all, you'll fail. Second? It's…it's aiding and abetting. Conspiracy. Sedition. You will be caught, and you will be executed."
She felt the ugly irony as she loomed over Vi, casting her in shadow. Enforcer over trencher. Topside over bottom. Power over helplessness. She saw in Vi's expression the dynamic wasn't lost on her, either. Rage stirred in her tattooed face, her mouth fracturing into a snarl.
For one sick, brittle instant, she was unrecognizable.
They were strangers to each other.
The thought brought hot tears springing to Caitlyn’s eyes. As they spilled, she forced herself to unspin the fists she hadn’t realized she’d made.
Her voice broke.
"Please." She held her composure, but barely. "Don't make me make you choose."
The righteous anger dissipated. Vi crumpled, looking ill with understanding.
If you go after Jinx, I can't follow.
Fresh sirens, higher pitched, started wailing across Topside. More ambulances.
Caitlyn watched as Vi's gaze jumped once more to the high places around them. Her stomach dropped. She was sure, at that moment, that she'd lost.
Of course. Oil and water, aren't we?
And Jinx is blood.
But no.
Vi sighed. Or tried to. The sound caught in her throat and came out like a whimper.
Wordlessly, she raised a hand.
Caitlyn caught it with a flood of relief and yanked her up into her arms. The hug that followed was fierce, almost painful. Vi's chin pressed into her shoulder, facing the city.
"This is bad," she murmured. She was crying.
"Yeah."
"Bad, bad."
"Yes."
A beat. Then, in a small voice, so soft it would have been lost in the chaos if not spoken directly into Caitlyn's ear:
"We're going to be okay, right?"
Something tightened in the enforcer's chest.
"I have no idea." She pulled back and pressed her forehead to Vi's. "But, yes, probably. If I have anything to say about it."
She squeezed the trencher's shoulders.
"Now. We need off these streets, and I don't know them."
Vi nodded. Stepping back, she scrubbed her eyes with her bandages. She turned and pointed with her chin.
"This way," she said. "We can try Babette's."
Pulling up her hood, she led Caitlyn into the dark.
Notes:
CONTEST CLOSED: SOMEONE HAS WON!!
You are still welcome to guess for fun! Feel free to DM your theories on twt. If you guess it, though, don't ruin it for others! Thank you so much to everyone who participated!!
Psst.
I've planted a Chekhov's Gun foreshadowing element in this fic.
It's specific to Vi's character. Not even my betas know what it is.
I've never used this device before and am curious if I made the "gun" too obvious.
So. ✨CONTEST✨ anyone?
As you read the fic, pay close attention to Vi. If you think you've found "Chekhov's Gun", DM me on twt. If you're the first person to find the gun before the reveal, I'll get you any $20 or under item from Carrie Art's etsy shop: http://etsy.com/shop/carriearts
Rules:
1) you must be 18+ (fic is rated M)
2) you get one (1) guess only
3) in addition to your guess, you must point to what detail(s) in the text tipped you offHints:
1) there is already evidence in the posted chapters
2) Caitlyn hasn't noticed yet- You'll be able to guess even if you choose to skip the darkest chapter (Chap 10).
- I have a 3rd party holding a voice note of the answer.
...happy hunting!
Hopefully this is entertaining for ya'll, but for real; it will be a huge help for me as a developing writer to gauge whether I made good use of this device. Foreshadowing isn't easy. I didn't want it to be too obvious OR too subtle. I so appreciate anyone who participates. ✨❤️
Chapter 2
Notes:
In the mood for some angst? Some fluff? How about banter, awkwardness, and flirting? Maybe some light sexual tension is your fancy? Well, let's hope so, because that's all this chapter is. Just a whooole lot of shippy stuff. I hope you enjoy it.
---
Two gentle requests of commenters:
Kindly do not mention/reference other fics in the comments beneath my works.
Also, please DO NOT reference situations in which CaitVi harm each other in the comments beneath my work.
Please respect these boundaries. They are related to maintaining reader (and author) safety and comfort.
Chapter Text
Descending into the Undercity, Caitlyn was struck by the place's perilous shift in atmosphere. A seething delight swelled in the air as details of the attack moved from mouth to ear to mouth. Clusters of people began to froth in stalls and doorways. Individuals merged into crowds, and those crowds were volatile.
Vi felt it, too. She slowed her stride to fall in line with her, speaking without looking in her direction.
"Keep walking," she said, "I'm going to drop back just behind you. Head straight. I'll tell you when to turn."
Caitlyn did as she was told. She hung lefts, dipped through stalls, and pushed through rusted fences. They kept their pace casual but brisk, Vi doing her best to make sure they weren't followed.
Around them, the fervor in Zaun continued to mount. Caitlyn heard whoops and curses. Teenagers hung from the windows of patchwork tenements, waving flares. Up the street, light and noise churned as a particularly large group of trenchers began to boil down the road in their direction. They were chanting, moving fast.
Caitlyn was suddenly very aware of her enforcer's uniform.
"Detour. Left here," Vi murmured. Her voice was tight. Caitlyn felt her move in close. Together they ducked into a shadowed alleyway.
In the gloom, a half dozen pairs of purple eyes swung around to stare at them. Caitlyn's heart tripped when she realized the walls of the alley were lined with slouching, strung-out Zaunites. She felt extremely naked without her gun.
"Don't hesitate," Vi told her. "Don't make eye contact. Look pissed off. We're almost there."
She wasn't wrong, but it still felt to Caitlyn like the longest leg of their journey. She nearly groaned with relief when the road opened up and brought them to Babette's door.
"If you'd told me a week ago that one day I'd be grateful to show up at a brothel," she said, "I never would have believed you."
Vi bumped shoulders with her. "You didn't even know me a week ago."
Caitlyn turned to her and blinked, aghast.
"Good lord," she hissed, "You're right. God, it sure feels like longer." She felt the sudden urge to rest her head in her hands.
Vi looked up at her from under her hood and shrugged. Her grin was rueful. "Time flies when shit’s caving in around you."
Caitlyn grimaced. "That's a bit dark."
"Yeah, well."
Vi knocked on the brothel door.
Above their heads, the door's peephole popped open to reveal a familiar, steely eye.
"Hey, Miguel." Vi waved. "Did you miss us?"
Caitlyn slid closed the door of their room and set the lock.
"You know," she said slowly, "you do seem to have a talent for calling on people's generosity."
Vi stopped in the middle of the floor with her hands in her pockets. She lifted a shoulder.
"I can't really take credit for it. The guy who raised me was a bit of a local legend. Or hero. Or…whatever. I think folks who knew him—like Babette, or Jericho—they help me out because they feel like they still owe him something." She paused and glanced back. "That doesn't explain why you're so nice to me, though."
"You're right. Nothing does." Caitlyn dropped onto a velvet settee, pointedly ignoring Vi's sidelong look. "Will we be safe here?"
"Safer than most places." The trencher put her back to one of the bedposts and slid down to the floor, groaning. Her hood slipped off her hair as she stared up at the ceiling. She looked exhausted.
Together, they lapsed into a long, heavy silence.
"So, what'll happen, now? Up there?"
Caitlyn lifted her chin. "'Up there?' You mean in Piltover?"
"Yeah."
Caitlyn shook her head. Her stomach twisted. Thoughts of her mother percolated in her mind and she sniped them down one-by-one.
"I have no idea. Even Topside doesn't have the infrastructure to handle something like this."
"Best guess?"
"Paralysis, probably. All resources will be diverted into responding to the attack and securing the city." She hesitated, thinking of the crowds they'd seen outside. "What about Zaun? What's going to happen down here?"
Vi sat with her elbows on splayed knees. The pose was casual, but her leg rattled with nerves. The look on her face was haunted.
Disturbing.
"Nothing good," she said. "Riots."
"Riots?"
"Yeah. It'll get ugly."
Caitlyn was silent.
Vi closed her eyes. "Last time the Undercity whipped itself up like this, I ended up an orphan. Not sure how it'll be this time with all that shimmer in circulation."
That's an unnerving observation.
"How concerned should we be?"
"We should be fine so long as we stay off the streets." She opened one eye. "You, especially."
"Gee, thanks."
Vi shook her head. "I don't mean it like that. I'm saying even I'm not dumb enough to go out there right now. The Lanes are bad on a 'good' day. But in situations like this…people take it as an excuse to start doing some really twisted shit. You're an enforcer. You should know what I'm talking about."
Caitlyn looked down at her hands. Of course, she knew.
"So, I suppose there's no chance of us getting Topside anytime soon, then?"
Vi lifted her head off the bedpost and studied her. She was slow to respond.
"Depends on how things play out," she said, "But…no. Probably not. Not easily."
"Right."
Caitlyn's stomach flipped. A slow wave of dread swept over her.
Ah.
Shit.
It was something in Vi's tone that triggered it. Caitlyn had been waiting for this deluge since the explosion, wondering where it could be. She'd felt so numb. Cold. With Vi's cracked skull in her hand, she'd had to be.
Now, the bulwark of her shock was splintering.
The dread struck her again. Caitlyn doubled over and tried to breathe through it. She shook as images of a city in flames shivered to life behind her eyes. Again, she saw her mother's face—her dead mother's face—but now she saw her father's, too. Her poor father, all alone in their over-large house. He'd receive news of the attack and run up to her room—and Caitlyn wouldn't be there.
She locked her hands together and tried not to hyperventilate.
Across from her, Vi stiffened. "Cait?"
When she didn't answer, the trencher shuffled forward, seating herself at her knee. Their legs nested together. One bandaged finger brushed against the back of her hand.
"Hey."
Caitlyn looked down at Vi through swimming eyes. The trencher's face was scattered into a raw mix of worry, guilt, and mirrored pain. All of it was right there, pressing up from beneath the exterior she tried and failed to keep so guarded.
She must have been bracing for this, too.
Vi didn't ask what was wrong. She knew. Of course, she did, how could Caitlyn have ever suspected otherwise?
"Dammit, Cait." She looked about ready to cry herself. "Listen. If I could…if I could get you back up there, I would. I'd do it. I promise. It's just…it's not safe. Especially for you, it's not. If we went out there right now—with those crowds—and someone clocked you as a Piltie..."
She cut herself off and gulped at whatever fresh horror she'd just imagined.
Caitlyn shut her eyes long enough to push tears out onto the floor. One hit Vi's wrist. The trencher hooked her fingers over Caitlyn's clenched hands and lowered her forehead against them.
"Fuck, Caitlyn. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry…"
It wasn't a condolence. It was an apology. Caitlyn registered the faintest tremor in Vi's body. Fear. Fear of what?
"God, I never should've…I never should've…"
Ah. Right.
Jinx killed my mother.
And Vi feels responsible for Jinx.
So, by her logic…
"Vi, don't."
"I'm so sorry, I—"
"Vi. Stop. This is not your fault and I don't blame you."
Vi fell silent, but her trembling grew more pronounced. She gripped Caitlyn's wrist.
"There's only one person I blame for all this, and he's already dead." Caitlyn opened her hands and took Vi's face in them. The trencher leaned into her touch but didn’t look up.
"Listen," Caitlyn went on, voice unsteady, "I'm barely under control, here. At some point, I'm going to lose it. But before that happens, I just want you to know. I don't blame you. None of this is your fault."
Vi exhaled slowly. Predictably, she didn't have the means of processing absolution, so she deflected to action.
"What can I do?" she asked.
"Give me a minute."
"Okay."
Caitlyn scrubbed a hand over her face and tried to collect herself while Vi waited anxiously at her knee.
"A gun," she blurted at last. "I need to get my hands on a gun. Or guns, preferably."
Vi embraced the change of subject.
"What, these aren't good enough for you?" She flexed her fist and patted her bicep. Her smile was weak and it didn't reach her eyes.
Caitlyn looked at her.
"I can think of one very specific instance when they weren't," she said.
Vi's smirk faltered. She dropped a hand to her flank. "Fair point," she admitted. "But, uh...guns aren't that easy to come by down here. Topside keeps that shit pretty buttoned-up. The best we could probably do is find some old cast-offs, but I wouldn't really know where to start looking. Never been one for firearms myself."
"I don't like being down here without a weapon," Caitlyn pressed. "I'm too much of a liability."
Vi opened her mouth to disagree but then closed it again. She nodded. "I'll see what I can do."
"One more thing."
"Anything."
"I need to get a message to my father. I need him to know I'm alright."
Caitlyn could tell from the look on Vi's face that this request was even more daunting than the one for a gun. Still, she agreed without hesitation. "I'll make it happen first thing in the morning, when things are safer." Her eyes darted. "You'll have to stay here, though."
Caitlyn wrinkled her nose. "I don't love that."
"I know. It sucks. But we'll both be safer that way."
"Sure."
Again, silence fell. As her emotions settled, Caitlyn suddenly became aware of how close the two of them were. Vi was picking absently at a fraying seam on her uniform. It made her leg tingle.
"So what now?" the trencher asked.
"Now, we…wait, I guess. Nothing else to do. Try to get some rest, maybe?"
Given the events of the last few days, the concept of rest felt almost foreign.
"That's not a bad idea."
Vi braced herself against Caitlyn's knee and stood. Stretching wearily, she raised an arm and sniffed inside her jacket. She grimaced. "Fuck, I reek. Should've asked Babette if there was a place to wash up."
"There is. Corner of the room, behind the screen. There's a tub."
"Oh." Vi's gaze jumped from Caitlyn to the corner, then back again. She cocked an eyebrow. "How did you know that?"
The enforcer shrugged, peeling out of her boots. "I'm an investigator. The last time we were here, you split off and vanished. I was left with some time to explore. Good thing I did, too, or I never would have found out you'd gone after Sevika."
"Babette told you?"
"Eventually. After her bouncer caught me snooping and dragged me into her office. You should thank her. She put us up in one of the nicest rooms."
Vi went to push back the screen. She sucked in a breath. "Oh, shit. That's a tub tub. Like, fully plumbed. I thought you just meant there was a basin."
She immediately shucked off her jacket.
"There's a furnace back there, too," Caitlyn explained, "For heating the water. Just need to open the valve and light the—um. Vi? What are you doing?"
Vi stopped and looked back over her shoulder. She was halfway out of her shirt, stripped down to a cropped black compression vest. She blinked. "I'm taking a bath."
Caitlyn looked away and up toward the ceiling. "Not what I meant."
Heat was rising up her throat.
Vi paused, confusion on her face. Then, she laughed.
"Gee, how could I forget? You've obviously never had a prison shower. They take some getting used to, let me tell you. Zero privacy. But after a while…"
She shook her shirt off her arms. As she moved, shadows collected in the muscles of her back and shoulders. Each shifting line pulled Caitlyn's eye.
A wild feeling shot through the enforcer. She swallowed as Vi began to unfasten her belts.
"Well," she snapped, "One would think you'd take advantage once you had the luxury of dignity again."
The words fired out of her like a Gatling gun. She heard the ugliness in them the moment they left her mouth, but it was already too late.
Vi went rigid, belt buckle still in hand. She stayed that way for a long time, uncharacteristically slow to riposte.
"Wow, um…right. I suppose 'one' would."
Shit.
Wincing, Caitlyn glanced up from beneath her hand.
Vi's eyes were on her, reflecting pale points of lamplight. She stood there half-dressed in the half-dark, her body overwritten with a tense scrawl of tattoos and silver scars. Her hands worked themselves in and out of fists.
"Vi—"
"Save it."
The trencher kicked her jacket aside and pulled the screen between them, jerking it back into its place in front of the tub.
Fuck. Pinching the bridge of her nose, Caitlyn slouched in her seat, grimacing in self-reproach. What is wrong with me?
Easy, you idiot. You panicked.
She remained deflated on the settee for a long while, listening as Vi busied herself with lighting the pilot light on the water heater. The soft sound of the gas flame was chased quickly by the rush of water as Vi opened the tap. Steam rolled out from behind the screen.
Caitlyn debated an apology. She sat watching the faint gray outline of Vi's silhouette as she moved around the bath, backlit by a dim lamp. Caitlyn could see her leaning back against the tub's edge, her shoulders slumped as she waited for it to fill. She looked beaten down. Worn out. Hurt, maybe.
When Vi went to finish undressing, Caitlyn looked away even though all she could see were shadows. She only looked back again when she heard Vi submerge herself in the water.
She stood.
"I'm going to head downstairs for a bit."
Vi's profile disappeared as her shadow turned towards her. "Why?" she asked, caught off-guard.
"To find a friend from last time. We need a laundry and some clothes to change into." Both of them stank of blood and fear sweat. Plus, Caitlyn knew she desperately needed to ditch her enforcer's blues.
Vi didn't say anything.
"Toss me your things if you want them washed," Caitlyn went on, "I'll take them."
Again, Vi remained silent, but the tub water sloshed. A bundle of clothes flew over the screen to land at Caitlyn's feet.
"Right. Thanks." She gathered up the clothes and retrieved Vi's red jacket from the corner. Turning to go, she put her hand on the door latch. "I'll be back. Enjoy the bath."
"Don't leave the building."
Caitlyn glanced back at the screen. Vi's silhouette looked stooped, as if she were huddled in the tub instead of relaxing in it. "I won't," Caitlyn assured her. "I'm not you."
Finally, a faint chuckle.
"Smartass," Vi scoffed.
Smiling to herself, Caitlyn slipped out of the door in search of Pearl.
Pearl was almost certainly not the escort's real name, but it still suited her.
On the main floor of the brothel, Caitlyn stopped by a curtained alcove and knocked on the wall. After some grumbling, a contented-looking—and very tipsy—young John staggered out of the room and into the hall. He spotted Caitlyn and stumbled to a woozy halt, looking her up and down.
"She's allll yours, officer!" he slurred, offering a high-five that Caitlyn did not return. He didn't seem offended. Shrugging, he turned and bumbled off into the dark, humming to himself.
Caitlyn shook her head. Clearing her throat, she knocked again. "Pearl?"
"Yes? Come in."
Caitlyn ducked inside and drew the curtain.
"Oh! It is you!" Pearl looked up from cleaning her hands in her washbasin to give Caitlyn an enormous—and seemingly genuine—smile. Beaming, she reached for a towel. "I thought I saw you go by! How are you, Tilly? You're back here awfully soon…"
Tilly?
Oh, right. Matilda.
"You…you remember me?" Caitlyn found herself oddly charmed by that.
Pearl's eyes twinkled behind her mask. "Of course. You're not easy to forget—you or your red-haired friend. Please, come here. Sit and get comfortable. I'm just cleaning up. I hope you don't mind me saying, but you look a little worse for wear."
"You're right. I am." Caitlyn sat gratefully down on the couch beside her. She looked at Pearl and hesitated. "I guess I should set the right expectations. I'm not looking for…you know…"
Pearl laughed a lovely silver laugh and waved her hand. "No, no, my love, I didn't figure. And I have no angle, either. I'm truly just happy to see you. I didn't think I would again, and I so enjoyed our conversation last time. Tell me, what are you doing back here, and dressed in enforcer blues?"
Caitlyn looked down at herself.
"Well," she began, "That's sort of why I came to find you, actually. I was wondering if you could help me. My friend and I, we're, um, we're going to be staying here for a while. A short while, hopefully. Things have gotten a bit…complicated out there. We don't even have a change of clothes with us or a way to launder what we have."
"Ah!" Pearl clasped her hands and nodded knowingly, looking starry-eyed. "You're on the run, and all you have is each other. How romantic!"
Caitlyn gaped.
"Um," she sputtered, "I mean, not quite. I just—that's not it."
"Which part?"
"Uh..." Her face flushed.
"You're not on the run?"
"Well, I—no, we are."
"So, you're not with the spicy red one?"
"The…the 'spicy red one'?!"
"Yes! The Hound's daughter. The handsome one with the jacket and tattoos. I thought you two were… oh." Pearl stopped, reading something in Caitlyn's face. "Ooh, oh oh. I see. Oh, dear. Whoops." She sat back, her eyes sparkling. When Caitlyn tried to speak, she lifted a finger to each of their lips in a gesture of quiet. "Shh, sh-sh," she whispered, her smile soft, "Not a word. Forget I said anything. I didn't realize."
"Pearl…"
"No, no. Nup. Shh. I shouldn't have assumed. My mistake. Here, let's change the subject. I'd be happy to help you with the clothes, my love. And anything else you need. Anything else." She tapped the side of her nose and winked. Caitlyn flushed once more, but this time it came with a smile.
"You're trouble."
"Please. Compared to the fox you're tailing? I don't think so."
Caitlyn groaned. "Pearl."
"No, no, you're right. I'll stop, I'll stop. Maybe. But about what I said—about you needing anything else? I'm not just teasing you. If you're with Vander's daughter, that means everyone here is a friend. If we can help you, we will."
She took Caitlyn's hands in hers and squeezed them. When she spoke next, her voice was a murmur.
"It gives us a lot of hope, having her back. We thought she was dead. It's been nearly ten years now…or is it more?"
Caitlyn felt her own smile fading. "Just about ten, yeah."
"Mm." Pearl nodded. Her expression grew solemn. "And she was in Stillwater that whole time?"
"...yes."
"Mm. Mm-mm." The escort turned Caitlyn's hand over and traced lines on her palm with a finger. "Stillwater is a nasty place. People never come out of there the same as when they go in, you know. I've heard stories."
Caitlyn watched her finger move. Her eyes flickered up to the escort's face.
"What…kind of stories?"
"You know. The bad ones. Not for me to repeat." Pearl’s eyes grew distant. Then, she shrugged, shaking herself out of her thoughts. "Whew, anyway. Enough of that. Just…you know. Take care of our girl for us, won't you? You're just the type. Properly kind."
"How do you know?"
Pearl laughed again—that lovely laugh.
"Darling, I'm a whore. It's my business to know." She took the clothes out of Caitlyn's arms. "Now, leave those with me. I'll take care of them. And here, look in that trunk behind the bed. It's a bit of a lost-and-found. I'm sure you'll find something in there for you two to wear."
"Thank you."
The escort's smile was sweet. "Of course, my love."
As Pearl busied herself with putting out the laundry, Caitlyn lifted the lid on the trunk and rifled through its contents. There was a generous selection inside, better than Caitlyn expected. There was an excess of pants, which she found amusing, but there was also a wide assortment of shirts. She picked some things out for herself and then dug around for Vi. One shirt, in particular, caught her notice. She pulled it out, mulling over it.
"I assume that's for her?"
Caitlyn caught her chest, nearly leaping out of her skin. Pearl was right behind her, leaning over her shoulder.
"Dammit, Pearl, don't do that," Caitlyn gasped, "You scared me."
"Sorry! I forget the carpets are thick. I just wanted to say, if that's for her? It's perfect. Go with that one."
Caitlyn looked back at the shirt. "Yeah?"
"Yes."
"Thank—wait." She registered mischief in Pearl's eyes. "Is it actually good or do you just want to see her in this?"
"Darling, I have excellent taste. If I want to see her in that, you should, too."
Caitlyn rolled her eyes. "Fine. But do you think she'd like it?"
Pearl stood looking at her. A soft smile crept onto her face. "See?" she said, "That's how I know you're kind. Kind people have thoughts like that. Yes, my love. I think it will look good on her and I think she'll like it. I think she'll like it very much."
"Well, then…thank you."
"You're welcome."
Caitlyn folded the stack of clothes loosely and looked towards the door.
"Oh. Tilly." Pearl caught her hand. "Before you go, let me say this one thing."
Caitlyn turned. This time, the look the escort gave her was deeply serious. She tilted back her mask, letting Caitlyn see her face. It was beautiful.
"I know I've been giving you a hard time," she said, "And you've been a very good sport. But this, I really mean: if she is someone you want, don't waste time. She catches eyes easily, you know. I'd hate to see you lose out to someone else."
Caitlyn felt an unexpected twist in her stomach.
"And," Pearl went on, moving in close, "I'd give her the same advice. Especially since you're more to my taste." She leaned in conspiratorially and traced Caitlyn's jaw with her finger.
"Pearl, you're going to give me a heart attack."
The escort laughed again.
"Doubtful. That's only happened once and he was at least, oh… three times your age. Now. Out you go. I have another client due in ten minutes and I need to set up." With that, she kissed Caitlyn on the cheek and stepped back, shooing her out the door. Caitlyn found herself nearly tripping into the hall. The curtain whooshed shut behind her.
Then, Pearl's head poked out.
"Hey. Make up an excuse to walk her by here so I can see her in that outfit."
Caitlyn turned and fled.
"Goodbye, Pearl!"
The escort's laugh chased her up the stairs.
Chapter 3
Notes:
I appreciate all the subs, kudos, and comments, folks. It warms me up to know people are enjoying this. It made me especially happy that a couple of you called out your love for Pearl. Her character has already wormed its way into my own heart, so the fact that she's charmed others is awesome. You'll be seeing more of her. XD
This next chapter was a tough write. I was going for angst/tenderness/bonding/laughter/intimacy. Turns out that is not easy to do. I hope ya'll enjoy it anyhow.
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**THERE IS AN ART ALERT ON THIS CHAPTER!**
Click the hyperlinked text to be redirected to incredible art (in order of appearance) by @Vinzul, @bloodycorsin [Please note this acc is NSFW; the linked art is SFW] and @nappycat797!
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Two gentle requests of commenters:
Kindly do not mention/reference other fics in the comments beneath my works.
Also, please DO NOT reference situations in which CaitVi harm each other in the comments beneath my work.
Please respect these boundaries. They are related to maintaining reader (and author) safety and comfort.
Chapter Text
Caitlyn climbed the brothel's back staircase with the bundle of clothes tucked under her arm. She moved slowly, her free hand sliding up the rail, trying to give her nerves the time they needed to settle. Her face was still burning from Pearl's good-natured harassment. The escort, she decided, was too perceptive for her own good.
"'Spicy red one,'" she muttered. She shook her head and made a face. Honestly, who came up with something like that? Who said things like "how romantic!" or "the handsome one with the jacket and tattoos?"
Caitlyn paused on the steps, a zing running up her spine.
Lines like that last one hit a bit too close to the mark. They called up images in her head that were both persistent and distract—
Your mother is dead.
Gasping, Caitlyn gripped the banister. Her gut twisted and dropped.
Panic.
Only the adrenaline saved her. Its stab was so powerful that her impending wave of grief folded back in on itself, dissipating. Her vertigo cleared. Calm returned. It was eerie. Feeling unsteady, she continued up the steps.
This must be shock, she thought as she reached the fourth-floor landing. It must be. Otherwise, I suppose I'm a degenerate.
None of what she was feeling was appropriate. Her mother was dead, Piltover was presumably leaderless, and the Undercity was boiling itself into an ecstatic revolt just outside the brothel door. Yet no emotion inside her fit with that reality. It was as if being inside a whorehouse deep in the heart of Zaun just…unmade everything. Nothing felt real.
Nothing, that is, except for whatever was immediately in front of her.
When Caitlyn looked up, she was outside the door of her and Vi's shared room. She placed her hand on the knob and stopped.
I wonder if she's still pissed.
No, she corrected herself, Not pissed. Hurt. You were shitty to her.
She cracked the door an inch, tapping on the frame. Vi’s voice found her from across the room.
"Caitlyn?"
"It's me."
The enforcer slipped inside and shut the door, leaning back against the jamb.
“Hey,” Vi said.
“Hi,” Caitlyn replied.
"Did you find your friend?"
Caitlyn stared at the floor.
"Uh—yes.” She cinched her lip under her tooth. “I did."
"And how is she?"
"Good. She's good."
Caitlyn drummed a thumb against her elbow, too caught up in what she wanted to say to continue. The resulting silence was awkward. And her fault.
She winced as Vi cleared her throat.
"Okay…well, that's good—"
"Vi, I need to apologize to you."
“What? Wait, why?” Water shifted and shadows moved as Vi sat up in surprise. "Is that why you're being so weird?"
Her confusion sounded genuine.
Caitlyn sighed and pushed away from the doorframe. With the clothes still in her arms, she moved to stand in the center of the room. She fidgeted with a loose shirt button.
"What I said to you earlier," she shook her head, "there's no excuse."
"What you—? Oh! That." Vi settled back into the bath, chuckling. "You don't need to say sorry for that."
"But I am, though. As soon as I—"
"Cait. Stop. Seriously, don't worry about it. In case you haven't noticed, I kinda have a tendency to, uh…let's go with, 'overreact.'"
Caitlyn smiled. "Hm. Sometimes, maybe. But, for what it's worth, I don't think you did in this case. What I said was careless. Truly." She sat on the edge of the bed, choosing her next words with caution. "That place they put you…it was horrible. And I made light of it."
"I was making light of it," Vi reminded her.
"Sure. But that's your prerogative, not mine. I should have been more considerate. I'm sorry."
Caitlyn realized she'd nearly twisted the button off the shirt.
Vi took a deep breath, held it, and blew out a long, boggled sigh.
"Geez." She drew out the word. "You're almost freakishly well-adjusted, aren't you?"
Caitlyn let out an ironic grunt. "I suppose. Probably not for much longer, though. Not with the way things are going." Her tone was more dour than she intended.
"Right. Sorry."
"Not your fault."
They lapsed into another silence. This one was heavier than the first but not quite so awkward.
"Wanna talk about it?" Vi asked suddenly. Her voice was taut as if she were weighing the question in her mouth.
Caitlyn looked up, startled. "What?"
"That's what people say, right? When shitty things happen? 'Wanna talk about it?'"
She stared at Vi’s shadow on the screen.
"Do you?"
Do you really want to talk about how your lunatic sister's body count is in the dozens and now includes my mother? Really? Right now?
"...no."
Caitlyn’s gaze dropped. She picked at the seam of her skirt, muttering, "Well. Me neither.”
"Mm. Healthy." The quip was dry, and a bit graveled. Caitlyn was hit with a twist of regret as Vi tried to change the subject. "You know, maybe you should—"
"Wait," she cut in, "Sorry, I—sorry. Thank you. For asking. I just…I'm not ready to think about any of that, let alone talk about it."
Vi was understanding.
"No, totally. I get it. Whenever you want."
"I appreciate it. But, I'm sorry, I interrupted you. What were you going to say?"
"Oh. Yeah. I was gonna say, it's too weird talking to you from behind this thing." Vi tapped the screen. "You should come back here."
Just like that, a nervous heat flashed up Caitlyn's neck. She gripped the edge of the bed.
"Um...that—it's fine, I'll just—"
Vi snorted.
"Relax, princess. You can't see anything. And I mean it. You really can't. I actually, uh…I went a little crazy with the bubble stuff, I think."
Caitlyn raised an eyebrow. "The what?"
Vi groaned. "Just come look."
Curiosity got the better of the enforcer. Setting the bundle of clothes on the bed, she walked around to peek gingerly behind the screen. Her eyes went huge.
"Oh, my god."
"Told you."
Caitlyn had to press her mouth into her palm to keep from laughing. Vi was still seated in the center of the tub, except now it looked as though she were being consumed by an enormous mass of wobbling, opalescent foam. She was up to her ears in it. Pillows of the stuff were nosing over the lip of the tub and sloughing onto the floor.
Vi blinked up at her with a plaintive expression.
"It all happened so fast."
Caitlyn's eyes watered with mirth. Shaking, she fought to contain it. She had to draw up a stool and sit down. "What did you do? " she whispered. Any louder and she would have cracked.
"I don't know!" Vi's voice jumped an octave. "I was running the bath and saw the bottle. I figured—"
"How much did you use?!"
"I—a normal amount? Maybe? I don't know, I don't exactly have a great frame of reference!" She slapped a plume of foam away from herself in frustration.
Caitlyn picked up the blue soap decanter and held it up to the light. "Oh my god, was this full? You used half the bottle!"
She was openly laughing now.
Vi glowered and sank down until only her eyes were visible. "Well, it's a big tub."
Caitlyn set the decanter aside and pinched tears out of her eyes. "There is no good defense for this, you know. But I'm so glad it happened."
Grinning, she ladled a cornice of suds out of the bath and placed it lightly on Vi's head. The trencher stared at her, deadpanned.
"Having fun?”
"Oh, like you wouldn't believe, all things considered." Caitlyn piled more and more froth onto Vi until she was nearly buried. The trencher endured it with patience, saying nothing.
"I got us some clothes," Caitlyn told her, "And yours are getting washed." She rounded off the soap pile into a dome.
"Thanks."
The enforcer looked down. Vi was watching her with pensive eyes. Caitlyn cleared her throat and reached for more bubbles.
"Why are you sitting like that, by the way?"
Vi blinked. "What do you mean?"
"You're...I dunno. You're huddled in there. Like a frog."
"Oh. Well, now it's because I don't want bubbles in my mouth." She raised her hand out of the water and made a fist, squeezing froth between her fingers.
"And before? I could see your shadow on the screen. I've never seen anyone take a bath like that."
Vi quirked an eyebrow. "You watch a lot of people take baths, do you?"
Caitlyn flicked suds at her. "That's none of your business. And my question first."
A memory flickered on Vi's face. She shrugged.
"I don't know. Felt awkward."
"Well, you do look awkward. And uncomfortable. Why don't you lie back instead of crouching there like you're ready to jump up and fight someone?"
"...have we not met?"
"Oh, stop. I'm being serious. Who knows when we'll have a chance to try and relax like this again? We should make the most of it."
You, especially.
Vi scowled.
Caitlyn smirked. "What?"
The scowl deepened.
"What? "
"I don't want bubbles in my mouth."
"Oh, for the love—here. Lean back."
"What?"
"Just for a second. Lean back, duck down, and shut up."
Vi looked confused but did as she was told, sinking into the water. Caitlyn reached over and passed an arm over her head and down the length of the tub, shearing off a two-foot-tall foam layer onto the floor. "There!"
A cloud of suds—a very large cloud of suds—broke apart and went everywhere. Vi sat up in surprise and peered over the edge of the bath. She surveyed the damage and whistled. "Wow."
Caitlyn pressed her lips together. "It's fine."
"You made a mess."
"It's fine. They're mostly air, anyway." A pat of bubbles drifted past her ear and over to the other side of the room. She pointedly ignored it. "Regardless, I fixed your bath. You're welcome."
Vi turned to her, smirking and squinting. "Is this your version of acting out? Am I a bad influence on you?"
Caitlyn rolled her eyes. She brushed suds off her arm. "Oh, probably. But not nearly as much as you'd like to give yourself credit for."
"I dunno…"
"Vi, I literally forged a councilman's signature to break you out of prison. Where did you get this idea that I just…mindlessly bend to every rule and—?"
"Accent."
Caitlyn stopped. "What?"
"It's the accent."
"I…wait." She pulled a face. "Really?"
"Oh, definitely. Hundred percent. It's the accent. To a trencher, you sound like you've spent your whole life living in a bright, sunny room eating fancy sandwiches."
Caitlyn had no idea whether to be offended or not. She opened her mouth and closed it again.
"Hold on." She raised her hand. "Just so we're clear, that's your definition of opulence? Sunny rooms and…fancy sandwiches?"
Vi cocked her head.
"Huh." She looked up at the ceiling and draped an arm over the rim of the tub. "I mean, yeah, I guess. If I think—"
"Shit! What is that?!"
The trencher jumped. "What?!"
Blanching, Caitlyn pointed to the thick, searing scar raked across Vi's right shoulder. It was beveled brutally deep into her skin and glistened like a burn.
"That's new!"
"Oh." Vi relaxed. "Right. Geez, you scared me. Yeah, that's ugly." She poked at it. "Credit goes to Sevika for that one. She's got some sort of, I dunno…energy sword on her arm, now? She grazed me with it." Vi rolled her shoulder and glowered at the memory. "Really fucking hurt, actually."
Caitlyn was horrified. As she leaned in, she glanced between Vi's face and the scar.
"This is more than a graze, Vi. It went into the muscle." She shook her head. "And when exactly did you see Sevika again? This wasn't from the last time you fought. I'd have noticed." She took Vi's shoulder in her hands and maneuvered it gently into the light.
"This is from today."
"Today?! "
Vi gave her a half-smile. She rested her chin on the edge of the bath. Her expression was sheepish.
"Sorry," she said, "With everything that happened, I was, uh…looking to blow off some steam. I put her on her ass, though, if that helps."
Caitlyn shot her a glare but said nothing. Instead, she busied herself with inspecting the scar. She frowned.
"That's odd," she muttered, prodding at the ropey tissue, "It looks almost purple."
Vi nodded, her smile fading. "Yeah. It's from the shimmer, I think. Check your leg. I bet yours looks the same."
Caitlyn pulled up her uniform and saw that Vi was right. The shrapnel wound she'd sustained on the bridge was fully healed, now, but the scar itself spidered faintly with bruise-colored track marks. She made a face. "That's attractive."
Vi shrugged. "It is what it is. I noticed them on my side earlier. Freaked me out at first. Kinda looks like an infection, but it doesn't seem to really do anything. Only, I feel like they're more sensitive than normal scars." She passed a hand over the back of her head and winced.
Caitlyn eyed her. "Does your head hurt?"
Vi lifted a shoulder. "A little. It's like the cut's closed but it's still healing underneath. Feels weird." She probed it again and grimaced.
"Let me see."
Shrugging, the trencher sat forward, brushing some of the foam out of her hair. She watched out of the corner of her eye as Caitlyn began to manipulate her head into the light for a better look.
"You're really comfortable around injuries.”
"Mm. Good thing for you," Caitlyn teased. "But yes. My father is a doctor. I used to help him with his house calls. Honestly, he'd never say it, but I think he always hoped I'd take after him and go into medicine."
"Why didn't you?"
"Too restless, I think. The apprenticeships are really long. Here, hand me that bowl."
"The one with the sponges?"
"Yes. Just dump them out."
Vi emptied the bowl and passed it to her. Reaching down, Caitlyn dipped it into the bath.
"What are you doing?" Vi asked.
"I want a better look at this cut, but the back of your head is a disaster. I can't see anything. Your hair is actually crispy with blood." Caitlyn crunched a tuft of hair for effect.
"Hm. Gross."
"Exactly. Now, look down for me."
"...yes, doctor."
"Hush."
Guiding Vi's head forward, Caitlyn gently wet her scalp, flushing the black clots of blood from around her wound. The trencher sat very still. Rust-colored water ran down her back and arms, darkening the bath.
"Yikes," Vi muttered.
"Mm-hm. Head wounds will do that." Caitlyn dipped the bowl and flooded the wound again. This time, the trencher's new scar jumped out at her in stark relief. She sucked in a breath. "Good grief."
"What?"
"Nothing. Sorry. It's just...this was a bad one. It has to be at least four or five inches long. It was so dark earlier I hadn't realized." Wincing, she carefully parted Vi's hair, noting the dark purple tendrils that needled into the surrounding skin. Unlike the other scars, this one still looked red and angry. It was as if the shimmer had other priorities in deciding what in Vi's body to heal.
"That's going to smart for a bit," Caitlyn decided. "Best to try and leave it alone."
Vi immediately reached up to poke at it. Caitlyn flicked her hand.
"What did I just say?"
"Right. Sorry. But, I mean—it is my head."
"And you clearly take such good care of it. Look, I've found another one." Caitlyn thumbed apart a section of Vi's undercut, revealing a thin silver line. It was crescent-shaped, like a sickle.
"Oh. Yeah." Vi made a bitter sound. She flashed Caitlyn a smile that was all canine. "That one's old."
"Do I even want to ask?"
The trencher shrugged, dismissive. Caitlyn couldn't tell if she was only playing at nonchalance or if she genuinely wasn't bothered by the question.
"I pissed off a guard," she explained. "He was wearing a ring."
A breath hissed through Caitlyn's teeth before she could stop it. Vi registered her discomfort and tried to force a smile.
"It's fine," she said.
"It's not."
Caitlyn passed her thumb gently over the scar, making Vi jump.
"Sorry."
The trencher shook her head and looked sidelong at her. A strange expression settled on her face. It was softer than suspicion but more cautious than curiosity. Wariness, maybe?
"You know," she began lightly, "you're very, uh…you're very…"
Caitlyn felt her heart change shape in her chest. She swallowed. "What?"
Vi struggled for the right word. Her gaze dropped and she fidgeted in the water, drawing troughs through the foam.
"I don't know." She hesitated. "Physical?"
It sounded like a neutral observation, but Caitlyn felt a pang of nerves bolt through her. She stopped moving, keenly aware that her hand was still nested in Vi's hair. She chose her tone carefully.
"Does that bother you?"
Vi stared into the bath, crushing handfuls of suds. She shook her head.
"No."
Caitlyn searched her face. "...are you sure?"
The trencher lifted a shoulder. Each word came out slowly.
"Yeah," she said, "It's...nice." Her eyes remained downcast, but they slid in Caitlyn's direction. When she spoke again, her voice was low, almost hoarse.
"I'm definitely not used to it, though."
Caitlyn's throat tightened.
"That's alright." She risked a light pass through Vi's hair, her fingers skirting the scars. She hoped it felt like reassurance.
Whatever it conveyed, Vi's gaze immediately drifted out of focus. She closed her eyes. A knot loosened between her shoulder blades and she shivered, letting out a slow, unsteady sigh.
Caitlyn felt an ache inside her ribcage when she realized what she'd just seen. Something unwound in Vi, as if some deep, grinding pressure suddenly found its safety valve and released. Holding a breath, Caitlyn carded through her hair for a second and third time, encouraged as she saw the trencher continue to ebb tension.
"Is this okay?" she asked. Her heartbeat was thready.
Vi's face twitched, her brow furrowing. Without opening her eyes, she nodded.
Caitlyn exhaled. She was too heady with that acceptance to say anything else. Settling in closer, she finally gave her hand permission to roam in gentle patterns over Vi's scalp.
It worked on the trencher like an anesthetic. As Caitlyn traced in and out of her hairline, she felt Vi slacken, her head sinking to hang between her shoulders. After a few minutes, her breathing slowed. Caitlyn saw her begin to list sideways and realized she was struggling to stay awake.
"Hey. Lean here." She tapped the side of the bath by her arm. Drowsily, Vi sagged against it, leaning her temple on the edge. She was asleep almost instantly.
Looking down at her, Caitlyn was subsumed by a fragile sense of comfort. It felt precious and rare. The immediate press of danger was gone. The leviathan of her grief was penned in the back of her mind. The belly of the tub was warm against her body and the steam off the water smelled like lavender.
Vi was alive, breathing evenly beside her.
Listening to the faint crackle of dissipating bubbles, Caitlyn dropped her chin onto her hand, leaning against the bath. The light of the lamp swam like orange flame on the wall. She drew circles down the back of Vi's neck.
Her eyelids grew heavy.
"Cait."
"Hm?" Caitlyn jerked, resurfacing from a doze to find two pale eyes watching her. She sat up, groggy, her wrist limp in the hollow of Vi's shoulder.
"Sorry," she squinted, "Fell asleep."
"'S'okay. Me too. Water got cold and woke me up." After Caitlyn moved her hand, Vi sat up groaning in the tub, looking stiff. She rubbed her forearm over her face. "What time is it?"
"Um." Caitlyn blinked hard and looked around, searching for a clock. She spotted a timepiece by the door. "Huh—um…it's barely past ten. Shit. Sure feels later."
Vi agreed.
"We need to go to bed," she grumbled. "I can't even remember the last time I slept."
"You passed out for a while before the council meeting."
"Oh. Yeah, well…that barely counts." Yawning, she shook herself and looked down. She made a face.
"Before I get out, I think I'm gonna drain this water and wash my hair and stuff. I still feel gross." She let brackish water run between her fingers. "I've been sitting in a literal bloodbath."
Caitlyn wrinkled her nose and nodded, catching Vi's yawn. She hid it behind her hand.
"Right. Good point. You do that. I'll get myself cleaned up when you're finished." She set her elbow on the bath and rested her brow in her palm, massaging her temples. When she looked up, Vi was staring at her, expectant and amused.
"What?"
"Well…" Vi's lip twitched. She cocked an eyebrow, a wolfish smile stalking across her face. "Are you just gonna sit here and watch, cupcake? Or are you still concerned about my 'dignity'?"
"Oh!" Caitlyn bolted to her feet so quickly that she nearly tipped her stool. She could only assume from the heat in her face that she’d turned beet red.
"Sorry," she said, "You—you have fun. I'll just be…I'll be over here. You can leave the water heater running when you're done…"
Sighing, Caitlyn collapsed on top of the bedcovers next to Vi. Both of them were well-scrubbed, damp, and safely dressed in some of the mismatched clothes Caitlyn had deemed soft enough to serve as nightwear. It had taken some work to convince Vi not to sleep fully clothed, boots and all.
Rolling onto her side, Caitlyn looked at the trencher. Vi was sprawled heavily on the mattress, her face pressed into a pillow, her unruly hair feathered in a dozen different directions. She looked deeply comfortable.
Which was a shame, because she'd only left Caitlyn with about a quarter of the bed's usable surface area.
"Hey." Caitlyn prodded her. "Move over."
Vi's reply was muffled. "...mrr-mmrph mff-mm."
"What was that?"
Vi lifted her chin enough to be heard. "I said, 'make me, string bean.'"
Caitlyn sat up and glared at the back of the trencher's head. She reached over and flicked her ear.
"Ow! Hey!"
"I said move. You're monopolizing the real estate."
Vi's head came up. She fixed Caitlyn with a sneer of good-natured disgust.
"'Monopolizing the'...do you hear yourself? God, you're such a Topsider." Groaning, Vi dragged herself over to the left side of the bed, tugging back the covers and burrowing underneath them. Caitlyn caught her smirking as she nosed beneath the blankets. "Next you'll threaten me with a strongly-worded letter."
"If only I hadn't traded my gun to save your life, I could have threatened you with that."
The repartee suited Caitlyn. It provided a welcome distraction from the fact that she was now sliding into bed next to someone who'd come to occupy some of her most inopportune thoughts. She could only imagine what Pearl would say if she knew.
Well, Pearl already thought that we were…whatever.
Pinching the inside of her cheek between her teeth, Caitlyn reached up and turned off the wall lamp. The darkness that followed was inky and complete, save for a faint strip of light that eked beneath the door. As the enforcer settled into the mattress, she tried not to think about the heat rolling off of the trencher beside her. She closed her eyes.
"I wonder how many people have fucked in this bed," Vi blurted.
Good fucking lord.
Caitlyn moaned and folded her pillow over her ears.
"Why?" she pleaded, "Why would you say something like that out loud?"
"Aw, come on. Admit it. You were thinking the same thing."
"I was not, thank you! But I am now."
"Oops." Vi's tone held no remorse. Caitlyn could hear her grinning.
"Please, Vi. For my sanity. Go to sleep."
"Alright, alright. Sheesh."
There was a brief flurry of shuffling, tossing, and tugging as the trencher rearranged herself beside her, apparently rooting around in the mattress for the most comfortable position. When at last she flopped down, heaving a contented sigh, Caitlyn couldn't help but notice that they were now closer together than they'd been. Smiling, she closed her eyes.
"Goodnight," she said.
"Night."
Half an hour later, Vi was still stirring restlessly beside her. Though she wasn't making noise or being overly kinetic, something about her energy made it impossible for Caitlyn to sleep.
"Vi."
Vi jerked, startled. "Yeah?"
"You're very awake."
"...yeah."
"Are you alright?"
"Uh-huh. Just…thinking."
Well, that's probably a bad idea.
"What about?" Caitlyn asked, feeling circumspect.
Vi hesitated. "Um…that, uh, thing you were doing."
"What thing?"
More shifting, then stillness.
"The thing with my hair. I liked that."
"Oh." Caitlyn's eyes snapped open and her heart tripped into a sprint. She wasn't sure what she'd expected Vi to say, but that certainly wasn't it. She froze, at a loss.
Vi stirred next to her.
"Is that weird?"
"Oh! God, no." Caitlyn rolled over to face her in the dark. "No, of course not. Sorry, you caught me off-guard."
She realized her hand was halfway to seeking Vi's face and stopped. She let it fall to rest between them. Her fingers found and worried at the corner of her pillowcase, and she could feel the faint heat of the trencher's breath on the back of her hand. If she strained, she could barely discern her outline, gray against the black.
She chewed her lip.
"Vi. What you said before, about my being… demonstrative—"
"'Demonstrative?'"
"Physical," Caitlyn clarified. "I want you to know, I do know that about myself. Growing up, I was always getting lectures about 'propriety' and 'the important differences between formality and familiarity.' My parents thought I was…too affectionate with people. They still do."
"Oh."
"...'oh?'"
Vi didn't move.
"So you're like this with everyone, then," she said.
Caitlyn paused, lifting her head off the pillow. Something in Vi's voice put her on alert. There was a question buried in there somewhere, one Caitlyn felt obliged to answer even though she wasn't quite sure what it was. She chose her words with care.
"Some more than others," she said evenly. She wished she could see the trencher's face.
Her words were met with silence. A deep silence, as she realized she couldn't even hear Vi breathing. To ensure her point was not missed, Caitlyn reached over and found Vi's hand in the dark. She caught one of the trencher's fingers between her own, soothing it gently.
"You're not 'others', Vi."
The trencher twitched.
Caitlyn shook her head, nerves rising. "But I also…I'd never want to make you uncomfortable."
She went to withdraw her hand but Vi stopped her.
"You don't."
The words were so quiet Caitlyn could barely hear them.
"What?"
"You don't."
Caitlyn felt warmth flood up her arm as Vi twined their fingers together.
"Well," she swallowed, "If I ever do—if it gets to be a bit much, you'll tell me won't you?"
Vi didn't answer right away and said nothing for a long time thereafter. Curled on her side, she fell uncomfortably still, her hand nested against Caitlyn's beneath her chin. The rise and fall of her breath seemed overly measured. Controlled.
Still, Caitlyn didn't press her for a reply. In the course of their conversations, she'd come to recognize the need to carve out quiet spaces for Vi between words. The trencher possessed an almost unsettling depth of emotion, deeper than Caitlyn ever would have guessed. She never wanted Vi to feel like she had to rush through feelings to get to answers.
As she waited, the enforcer disentangled one finger to brush against Vi's jaw. She stopped when she realized she could feel her pulse.
It was racing.
Caitlyn opened her mouth to ask if Vi was alright, but the trencher's voice chose that same moment to lurch into the silence.
"Have you ever," she gulped, "have you ever gone a day where you just forgot to eat?"
Caitlyn frowned, confused. It wasn't unlike Vi to redirect a conversation or to deflect her questions by asking even more questions, but something in the trencher's tone indicated she was doing neither. This was different.
Caitlyn was cautious. She nodded and tried to sound reassuring.
"Sure," she said, "I have. I suppose most people have."
Vi's hand spasmed, gripping Caitlyn's more tightly. There was something frenetic about it.
"Right," she went on, "You get busy, or distracted, or…whatever, and you don't even notice. It's not even a big deal. But then—at some point, you know—you see, or…or smell food and suddenly it hits you that you're just… god, you're just so fucking hungry."
Caitlyn's frown of confusion deepened to one of concern. Vi wasn't nervous, she was agitated. Anxious.
She kept going.
"So then your whole body goes to shit, right? Your head hurts, you feel sick, and it's annoying because you were fine. You were fine all day until you saw that stupid food. But it's there, now, and that's it. It's over. You can't think about anything else because everything inside you suddenly remembers, 'oh, right, I'm fucking starving.'"
She stopped there, but Caitlyn could tell she wasn't done. She was building to something difficult and shaking with the effort. Caitlyn felt her own body begin to mirror that tension. Her stomach twisted and her mouth went dry. She squeezed Vi's hand and desperately tried to make sense of what the trencher was saying to her.
What are you trying to tell me?
Vi answered as if Caitlyn had spoken the thought directly into her ear.
"I was in that shitty place for so long," she gasped, "for so long."
Horror prickled icily over Caitlyn's body.
…fuck.
Vi continued in a shattered whisper.
"Anyone," she said, "anyone who comes near you in Stillwater either wants something from you or just wants to fucking hurt you. And you get used to it. You do. You make yourself get used to it because you have to. That's the best you get. That's what you survive on. You think 'this is how it's gonna be until I die.'"
She bent her forehead to the place where their fingers were knitted together. Drawing a few narrow, unsteady breaths, she staggered into her main point.
"You gotta understand," she shivered, "me being here? With you? And you being the way I guess you just are with me? It…it's a mindfuck. And it's like the food. You do something to me and it's like, 'Oh, right, I'm fucking starving.'"
Her last few words raced into the air and hung there, echoing in the dark.
Caitlyn couldn't breathe. She stared wide-eyed into the blackness, heartsick and chilled. Her stomach ached with empathy.
For a few blurred seconds, her mind tried to come up with a response. It processed and processed but couldn't logic up anything that seemed right. There was nothing to say. Words wouldn't work.
That, though, was an answer in itself.
The trencher accepted the contact with only a moment's rigidity. As soon as her mind caught up with reflex, she dissolved against Caitlyn, threading her arms around her and twisting her hands into the back of her shirt. She buried her face into the place where the hollow of the enforcer's neck met the pillow.
"Vi," Caitlyn whispered, "I will never hurt you, and I don't want anything from you."
"I know."
The trencher's voice was muffled and choked with tears. Caitlyn guided some of the wilder hair off her face.
"I like being affectionate with you," she told her, "If there's something you want from me, or need, it's safe for you to ask. Alright?"
"Yeah."
"And the same thing is true in the reverse. If you need a break from it—"
"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Vi groaned, "I don't know if that's possible. You don't get how this feels. I mean, I'm glad you don't, but—"
"Shh. Hey. It's alright, I understand."
The trencher burrowed against her and gasped back a fresh press of tears.
"I'm so tired," she breathed.
"I know, I know. Try to sleep. I'm right here."
"Yeah. Okay." She sniffed and scrubbed at her face. "Could you…could you do the thing again?"
Caitlyn understood the question.
"Of course."
Like she'd done for her in the bath, Caitlyn eased her fingers up Vi's neck and into her hair. Just as before, the effect was narcotic, gently soothing out her anxiety. The trencher sighed, settling, her breath losing its hitch and her body going slack. Caitlyn could feel her blinking slowly against her collar. After a long time, she spoke.
"Thanks for coming to get me," she mumbled. She was bleary.
"Hm." Caitlyn smiled softly into her hair. "Which time?"
"...all of 'em."
The enforcer smoothed a hand down her back and hugged her.
"You're welcome."
Chapter 4
Summary:
CONTENT WARNING: non-explicit reference to sexual violence against a child
Note: Items related to SA are non-explicit and are not ongoing themes. However, out of an abundance of care, mentions of SA will be called out at chapter-level with in-line markers ([#] to stop reading, [##] to resume) so readers can choose to avoid this content if they so desire. For the avoidance of doubt, canon-characters are fully plot-armored against SA despite my treating SA as extant in the universe.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
A dull, wooden creak hoisted Caitlyn abruptly into consciousness.
Curled on her side in a strange bed in a strange room lit by red light and shadows, the enforcer awoke with her eyes already open. They strained violently against the dark. She was stiff, sweating, and terrified, her pulse no longer a beat but a vibration, her stomach a pit that reached up into her throat.
She trembled in that two-minded gap between sleep and awareness, her thinking self demanding to know, what, what, what?
What did you hear?
What is it?
What's wrong?
She heard it again.
The noise was barely audible. It should never have woken her, but something in the slink and sneak of it stuck a poker in a primal part of her brain. She recognized it at once: human weight shifting over floorboards.
Someone's in here.
At that moment, she wasn't even sure where "here" was. She knew only there was a threat and she was alone with it—
But I shouldn't be.
In a flash of realization, Caitlyn noted that the bed beside her was empty. She gripped the sheets and found them cold.
Dammit.
Shit.
Fuck.
Curses were the only coherent thoughts she could form. Nothing else would resolve. Concern, abandonment, guilt—it was all too complicated, and she was too afraid.
She hated being afraid.
Wood creaked again, and a shadow moved somewhere beyond the foot of the bed.
How fucking dare…?!
The paralysis of terror shattered. Fight won instantly over flight. Without a sound, Caitlyn blinked out of the bed and across the room, writing no memory in between. She led with a sweeping kick and connected with force, earning a startled gasp from the dark mass in front of her. Whirling, she followed with her heel, driving back the intruder until they were silhouetted against the open door. They staggered, catching themselves on the jamb.
An exhale—amused, disbelieving, contrite—floated out of the stranger as they doubled over, cradling their solar plexus.
"Whoa."
The voice was familiar and tied to the color red, but Caitlyn's leg was already moving again and she was too groggy to stop it. She realized her mistake only after she made contact.
She winced.
Oops.
Hissing, Vi took the blow in the ribs and used it to catch Caitlyn's shin under her arm. The enforcer jerked back, but there was no getting out of that hold. Vi tugged her off balance. Panting and sagging back, she patted Caitlyn's knee.
"Cait."
Caitlyn hobbled on her back leg before dropping her guard.
"Vi."
"Yeah. Just me."
They stood like that a moment, Vi wincing and planted, Caitlyn unsteady and pissed off.
"Where were you going?" Caitlyn demanded.
"Not going." Vi hooked her elbow under Caitlyn's knee and forced her back at a hop, dumping her unceremoniously onto the bed. "Just got back."
Caitlyn could hear both the pain and amusement in Vi's voice. Glaring up into her shadowed face, all nerves and temper, she tried not to think about how casually the trencher had subdued her. It was embarrassing, annoying, and…
Well. Something else.
To distract herself, she reached up and turned on the lamp. She squinted at the sudden brightness. So did Vi, but otherwise, the look on the trencher's face was unexpected. Caitlyn had anticipated an insufferable smirk, a hooked look of triumph, something revealing a deep satisfaction at having upended a topsider so easily.
But, no. Instead, Vi was gazing down at her with a bemused expression, her head canted slightly to one side. The look in her eyes was both impenetrable and…familiar? Caitlyn had seen it once before, over Ekko's shoulder. For some reason, she found her face beginning to tingle beneath its weight.
Oblivious, Vi dropped her shoulder against the bedpost, her arm creeping up to hold her side. She exhaled again and made a face. The pain pinching her around the eyes made some of Caitlyn's anger evaporate.
"Sorry." She reached up to squeeze the trencher's wrist.
Vi shook her head, breathing through the ache. Lifting her hand, she looked down at her ribs, checking reflexively for some evidence of the sting she felt there. She tsked, and when her eyes came back up, her smile lifted with them, lopsided and earnest.
"You really got me."
She said it with such naked warmth that Caitlyn's breath caught in her throat.
Everything in the trencher's eyes, face, tone, and posture was brindled with an open mix of emotion. Here Caitlyn had just laid into her with three solid kicks and Vi only seemed to be…impressed? Happy? Relieved?
Caitlyn studied her carefully.
Definitely relieved, she decided. The insight made her heart hurt, but she wasn't clear as to why. Pulling her legs up onto the mattress and arranging them crosswise, she patted the blankets beside her. When Vi hesitated, Caitlyn rolled her eyes and reached over. Putting a finger through her belt loop, she pulled her away from the bedpost.
"Sit down."
Still grinning, Vi relented, lowering herself down next to her. Her smile grew tense as she leaned over her knees, her color fading slightly.
"Fuck, Cait." She shook her head, still chuckling.
Caitlyn placed a rueful hand on her back. Vi looked gray enough that she grew concerned.
"Are you alright? I mean, I'm not you, but I'm not totally useless in a fight. And, well…I wasn't exactly holding back."
"No, shit," Vi shot back, laughing, "I'm gonna have the bruises to prove it. But yeah, I'm okay. You're right, though, you're not bad. Not at all.” Wincing, she shifted and pressed harder into her side, massaging. “But, I mean, fuck. It's not like I expected you to throw yourself at me like that. You got the jump for sure. Caught me on that rib from yesterday."
Caitlyn blanched.
"Shit. The broken one?" She slipped off the bed to kneel in front of Vi, her hand drifting up to her side. "Sorry."
"It's fine. It's just sore, not busted. Pretty sure I saw sparks when you got me there, though."
Caitlyn nudged aside Vi's arm with her fingers so she could lay her palm over the injury. It wouldn't help with the pain—it was just an impulse. She shook her head.
"And here I told you last night that I'd never hurt you."
Caitlyn realized immediately it was the wrong thing to say. At the words "last night," Vi stiffened and caught a half-breath. Skin prickling, Caitlyn glanced up and watched the trencher's eyes slide off of her and dart to some neutral point in the middle distance. Under the orange lamplight, it was difficult to tell for certain, but she was convinced that Vi was reddening around the ears.
Embarrassed. She's embarrassed.
Before Caitlyn could say anything else, the trencher skated away from the moment, leaving it untouched, as if it never happened. She fetched Caitlyn's hand off her side and held it, turning it over in her lap and inspecting the knuckles.
"I'm glad you can fight. That's good."
"Mm."
"You're all legs, though, aren't you? Not much for throwing a punch?"
Caitlyn studied her, wishing she'd raise her eyes again, but Vi remained intent on the examination of her hand. Sighing, she gave in, following the trencher into territory she found more comfortable.
"It's my parents' preferred style," she admitted. "It's actually how they met. 'She took my breath away!' That's how my father tells it. What he means is that my mother knocked the wind out of him the first time they sparred together. They were engaged a month later."
It was a risky story to tell given the circumstances, but Caitlyn found there was more comfort than distress in that memory of her parents. It made her smile.
At some point, while she was speaking, Vi stopped holding her hand to inspect it and instead just held it. The change was almost imperceptible, but to Caitlyn it was obvious. Vi had a tentative way of lining up the spaces between their fingers without actually threading them together.
"The leggy stuff is flashy," Vi said quietly, "but it's not great in the streets. Those 'martial' styles are too…"
"Regulated?"
"Yeah. Too many rules. People down here fight dirty. You need to be ready for that."
"Maybe you can show me sometime."
That brought Vi's gaze back. Her eyes lifted and searched Caitlyn's face, looking for sincerity. Finding it, she grinned. "Yeah. Okay."
It was one of the most genuine smiles she'd seen from Vi since they met.
The conversation lapsed. They slipped into one of those quiet valleys between words. Vi drifted off into some internal, far-off place—still wearing a half-smile—and Caitlyn watched her go. Sitting beside her, she noticed for the first time the trencher was wearing the same shirt she'd slept in, except now it was damp and clinging with sweat. Her bandaged arms were freshly soiled, and her hair and skin smelled of naphtha, phosphorus, and dust.
Caitlyn eyed her.
"Where were you?"
Vi came back from wherever she’d gone to answer her.
"Out."
"Very specific, thank you." Caitlyn reached up and plucked a clod of something out of Vi's hair, flicking it away. "Looks to me like you were throwing yourself off of buildings again."
Vi raised a shoulder, her lip lifting with it.
"More like over and between them. But yeah. Just checking things out. Needed to stretch my legs. And think."
And think.
"You could have let me know."
"I didn't wanna bother you. You were sleeping pretty hard. Plus, I figured I'd be back before you got up."
"Well, technically you were, I suppose. But still," Caitlyn hesitated and looked sidelong at Vi, weighing her words, "When I woke up and you weren't here…I thought you'd up and left me, you know. Like last time."
A guilty twinge passed across Vi's face. She shook her head.
"I wouldn't leave you like that again." The words were flat and firm and true. "If I'm ever not here, it just means I haven't come back yet."
If I'm ever not here…
Caitlyn felt a pang of indignation and shook her head.
"Mm. That's not going to work."
Vi frowned. "What?"
"You need to tell me if you leave. And give me some expectation as to when you'll be back."
Her tone was brisk. Haughty. For the first time, an energy of true suspicion commandeered Vi's body. She leaned away, cagey.
"Why?"
No wonder. Could you be more overbearing?
Caitlyn put a reassuring hand on the trencher's thigh. She softened her voice.
"It's not a leash, Vi. I’m sorry, I didn't mean that to sound controlling. It's a safety issue, as much for you as for me. What am I supposed to do if you don't come back?"
Vi cocked her head.
"I just said—"
"—if you can't come back? How am I supposed to find you?"
"Find me?"
"Right. If something goes wrong, how am I supposed to figure out where you are if I don't even know where you're going?"
Vi stared at her like she was insane.
"Um, you don't." Her head jerked. "You stay here. You wait, and if I still don't come back, Babette and Miguel get in touch with the Firelights. They transport you home to Topside as soon as it's safe. It's already arranged. It was the first thing I worked out."
Now it was Caitlyn's turn to stare.
"Oh. Absolutely not."
Vi searched the ceiling for patience.
"Cait—"
"You think I'm going to just sit here if you disappear?"
"Yes."
"No!"
As soon as the word left her mouth, anger seized the angles of Vi's face. The emotion was red and real, and this time it was Caitlyn who sat back.
Vi came in close and filled the space. She gripped her wrist.
"Yes."
There was so much command and intensity in her voice that it rocked Caitlyn. She went cold. Vi's pale eyes were hard and haunted and full of reasons, and something about them tempted her to back down. Problem was, between the two of them, she was easily the more stubborn.
With a surly glare of her own, Caitlyn leaned back in, meeting Vi halfway.
"Explain."
Convince me. Convince me why I should agree to this shitty idea.
Something in Vi's expression shivered towards comprehension. The anger in her eyes cooled. It sheared off to reveal a protectiveness so raw it made Caitlyn ache.
The enforcer turned her arm over in Vi's grip, softening it. She held the trencher's elbow and gentled her tone.
"Explain," she said again.
Gray eyes roamed slowly over her face. Searching. Weighing. Hunting for answers in a storm. Caitlyn was quiet and still.
Vi looked down.
"There are bodies in the water."
Caitlyn's throat tightened.
"What?"
"Bodies," Vi repeated, "In the river. In the streets, too. I saw…I dunno. Not sure how many. More than I expected."
"More than you…?"
"Yeah."
A dizzying whine filled Caitlyn's ears. Vi continued.
"It's...bad. I mean, I figured it would be, but…fuck. People are out of their minds. Everything is busted up. Glass and fires everywhere. Junkies still glowing from shimmer. Bloody. Puking up god knows what. It's…it's not good. I saw—"
Her breath hitched. The sound startled Caitlyn with how sudden and sore it was.
"What?"
Vi bent her head, her body curling forward. She looked nauseous. "Never mind."
"No." Caitlyn squeezed her arm. "Don't do that. What happened, what's wrong?"
She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she was sure she didn't want Vi carrying the memory alone. Muscles and tendons flexed compulsively against her fingers as Vi worked her hands into fists.
"I saw…" She halted. Her leg began to shake. "A kid. A little boy. Maybe twelve?" [#]
"Dead?"
"No." Vi shook her head. "No. Alone. He had…blood."
She gestured—loosely and reluctantly—to indicate where, but Caitlyn would have understood even if she hadn't. A yawning pit opened in her gut. Nothing else could put that kind of distress on a feeling person's face. Vi's eyes were screwed shut at the thought.
[##]
"I tried to help him get home but he wouldn't let me." Her voice was hoarse, barely under control. "Had to leave him. Said he would scream if I didn't. He knew who I was."
She looked at Caitlyn, then, shrugging, helpless, eyes flooding with a broken look.
"Like I told you," she whispered, "Ugly and twisted."
Caitlyn felt sick. Her face and hands went clammy.
"Don't go back out there." She didn't mean to say it or to sound so desperate. The words fell out of her before she could catch them.
Vi pinched tears out of her eyes and shook her head.
"I have to. Your dad—"
"It can wait."
"The gun—"
"I take it back. I don't care. Don't go back out there."
Even if just to spare you from seeing more of that shit. Don't go.
"Cait, it's fine. It's light out. It's just the wreckage out there, now. I'll go and be back before dark. I promise. Besides, I don't go down where all that is. I'm mostly up on the roofs, running the pipeworks and stuff."
"If you fall—"
"I don't fall. And don't—" She raised a hand as Caitlyn opened her mouth. "I know what you're going to say, but that time doesn't count. You know it doesn't."
Okay, sure. But…
Caitlyn took a risk and caught Vi's chin lightly in her hand, forcing the trencher to look at her.
"You said you tried to take that boy home. I assume you dropped down into The Lanes to do that."
It was as gentle an accusation as one could make.
Vi was silent. She looked down at her hands.
"See?" Caitlyn breathed, "You can't help yourself. Stay here. Please. Until things calm down."
"They might not. They might get worse."
Vi guided her hand away from her face and held it.
"I didn't tell you all this stuff to make you worry about me," she said, her gaze scattering. "I was trying to make a point. I get that you're not…okay, look. I didn't take you seriously at first. I know that. I regret it. It was wrong. You…you kick ass, you're capable, and smart—way smarter than me—and you're…fuck. You're tough. But you're not tough enough for what's out there. So you have to stay here."
Then, more quietly:
"I need you to stay here."
The plea in her voice was not lost on Caitlyn, but she still shook her head.
"And what about what I need?"
Vi seemed prepared for the question. "You need a gun, and to get home to the people you care about."
"I care about you."
Vi scoffed and looked away. "You care about everyone."
A skittering feeling crawled into Caitlyn's chest. She watched Vi carefully, sensing rather than seeing the trencher's guard come up. It gave Caitlyn a kind of vertigo. Vi had a talent for retreating without moving an inch.
"As I've already explained," she said lightly, neatly skirting any mention of last night, "You are not everyone. You're different."
She meant those words to be comforting, maybe pacifying, but they only seemed to irritate Vi further. For the first time, the trencher pulled away from her.
"How?"
Caitlyn blinked. "What?"
"How am I different? Why?"
"What do you mean?"
The trencher shifted, agitated, and tried to get up. Caitlyn shoved her back down.
"No. What do you mean?"
Vi looked at her hands and around the room and then let out a sound that braided defeat with disgust.
"On the bridge," she spat, "You were going to take my sister's bullets for me!"
Oh.
Caitlyn let the venom roll off of her, not even feeling its sting. She was too busy rallying her thoughts, trying to keep her emotional ballast. She shook her head, apologetic.
"I don't—I don't even remember—"
"I had to push you out of the way! You were ready to just—" Vi swallowed, shoulders rising. Her fingers corkscrewed into the mattress. "Why? Why would you do that?"
Because I…
"Because I ca—"
"It'd been three days. You didn't know anything about me. You still don't know anything about me!"
"That certainly isn't true now, and it wasn't by that point, either."
Vi rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. Bull shit. If you knew, you wouldn't have done it."
She bit off the last word and let the silence hang. It was barbed and loud and stretched wall-to-wall, but ultimately it told Caitlyn everything she needed to know.
The enforcer sat back, realization clicking into place.
Vi didn't just leave this morning.
She chased herself out of the room.
The trencher sat poised in front of her, her body angled in a challenge. Her face was locked up in that familiar snarl, the one designed to warn people off, to let them know that to come closer spelled regret. It was scary and feral, especially on a stranger with ink and mass and bloodstained knuckles. But Vi wasn't a stranger, and Caitlyn knew better.
She leaned forward, quiet and grounded, and took the trencher's face in her hands.
"Vi. Enough. Stop looking for escape routes."
Her words were like water on a fire. Vi's eyes went wide.
"What?"
Caitlyn fixed her with a steady look. "I'm not going to let you needle me into giving you a reason to run. So stop. I care about you. You're different. That's it."
There was more to say, but she stumbled. Taking a breath, she gathered calm and courage and steeled herself.
Be direct. Be sure.
She has to know you're sure.
"I don't care that it's been days. These things rarely make rational sense, if ever. I don't feel frightened or self-conscious or feel that it's wrong, so if your instinct here is to try and argue me into a place where I do feel those things—just so you have some sort of excuse—it won't work."
She smoothed her thumbs over Vi's face, tracing the numerals on her left cheek.
"Okay?"
Vi stared. Swallowed.
"Tell me why."
"No."
The trencher flinched. Caitlyn's gut twisted because she knew that one word must have cut like a knife, but the blow was necessary. To soothe the wound, she sat forward on her knees and pressed their foreheads together. Her hand cradled the back of Vi's head. She could feel the scar there.
"I can't tell you because I don't trust you to believe me. Not here. Not in this place with the way things are. Not when it's only been days. Not with…everything that's happened. You won't believe it's real. I can tell by all these questions you're asking that you won't."
"But—"
"I can't tell you now, but I will. I promise. And until then, I'll keep showing you."
"...showing me?"
Caitlyn wanted to groan. Vi's obliviousness—or perhaps it was insecurity—left the enforcer feeling cornered. It wasn't the worst place to be, but it was stressful. It demanded a forthrightness that she simply wasn't used to.
Whatever. In for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose.
To make herself clear without pushing too far, Caitlyn moved closer. She pressed harder into Vi, running a hand up her side and tilting her head until their breath mingled.
"You're not blind to this, are you? Think about how we are together. Have you really convinced yourself that either of us is like this with anyone else?"
She exhaled and wished she had a hand free to pinch away her apprehension.
"I hope you don't need me to be much more obvious, because I'm nervous enough as it is."
"...I'm terrified."
Caitlyn opened her eyes. Vi was looking at her, trying to focus on her despite the closeness. The dark centers of her eyes stirred with ghosts and need and abject terror.
"I can feel it happening and it's getting away from me." She whispered, as though saying it louder would invoke something terrible. "If it's already like this now…what happens later?"
Oh. Well, shit.
Caitlyn's heart spiraled up into her throat and began to pound. No part of her had expected Vi to respond in kind to what she said. If anything, Caitlyn figured that she'd probably run.
Instead—
Her head spun.
"If it's already like this now…"
There was only one honest answer to that question and Caitlyn didn't dare speak it aloud: it gets so much worse and so, so much better.
Vi didn't wait for a response.
"I can't do it again." Her breaths shortened. Caitlyn grimaced with empathy. "If I let myself…and something happens to you? I—I can't. I wouldn't surv—I wouldn't be able to deal with that. Okay? And that's not fair. I know it's not. I can't put that on—"
"It's okay."
"It's not. It's not. You don't understand. I'm sorry, I know—I know what you just lost but you don't understand. You don't know what it's like to just… lose. And lose. For it to happen over, and over, and over …"
She sounded flayed. Caitlyn relented.
"No. No, you're right. I don't, and it would be wrong of me to insist that I do."
"You came out of nowhere. I was in prison for nearly a decade and then you just…showed up. And then I was out. You got me out. And then I used you, ditched you, and you still fucking followed me around, saving my life. A topsider. An enforcer. And you just kept coming back, in spite of everything. There you were again. And now I feel like this."
She took a shaky breath.
"I mean, what the hell? Is that normal?"
The abrupt laugh that leaped into Caitlyn's throat married bitterness with affection.
"Vi, no," she said gently, "I assure you, nothing about this week has been normal. I'd be more concerned if any part of you thought that it was."
"Okay. Then—then how can I be sure that I'm not just feeling what I'm feeling because my head is fucked, you know?"
"That's a fair concern."
It worries me, too.
"I mean, I think you're hot." Vi winced and pulled back. "I mean—fuck, that's not what I mean. I mean you are, but that's not…what I'm trying to say is, if that's all it was, that'd make sense. It'd make complete sense. I was locked up forever and…look at you."
Caitlyn raised her eyebrows, too surprised to blush.
"You think I'm hot."
It both was a question and wasn't.
Vi was unfazed, almost dismissive.
"Yeah, I told you that already." She sounded impatient. "It's not like it's some big secret. Your fancy house has mirrors, right?"
"It does."
"Okay, well, there you go."
It was such an odd way to receive that compliment, but something about Vi's delivery was so charmingly straightforward that Caitlyn found herself smiling. The trencher caught the expression and frowned.
"Cait, this is serious. I'm being serious. I—"
Caitlyn pulled her close. She waited the split second it always took for Vi to relax against her and then spoke into her temple.
"I know,” she whispered. “Everything is a nightmare and the world is burning. I know. So give me a moment to enjoy it whenever you quit your act and actually say something endearing."
"My act?"
Caitlyn ignored the question.
"Two days."
"Huh?"
"I promise to stay here for two days if you don't come back. After that, I'll be out looking for you."
"Caitlyn—"
"This isn't up for debate. It's not like you'll be here to stop me from leaving if you vanish. So, the way I see it, you have a couple of options. First, you can make sure you come back. Do that, and the whole point is moot. Second option: take me up there with you this morning. Point out where you're going. Make a plan with me. Leave me a map. Names. Instructions. I'm telling you now I won't just sit here if you disappear, so if you care about my safety, you'll give me what I need to get to you. Okay?"
Vi waited for her to finish and then stared at her for a long time, not answering. After a while, her eyes lost focus, and Caitlyn could tell she was weighing something in the back of her mind.
At last, she sighed.
"To Ekko."
"What?"
"I'll tell you what you need to know to get back to the Firelights. If something goes wrong, Ekko will help, assuming he's…" She shook her head, and Caitlyn knew she was thinking about the bridge. "But I'll only tell you how to get back there if you promise that you won't go doing stupid shit all by yourself."
Caitlyn chewed her lip. She didn't like the idea of delayed action.
Vi eyed her.
"Cait."
The enforcer looked up.
"You can say you care about me all you want but that'll be worth jack-shit if you die."
Caitlyn opened her mouth and then closed it again. It was a good argument. She let out a breath.
"You do have a way of cutting to the heart of things. Fine. I'll wait two days. If you don't come back, I'll find the Firelights. I promise I won't go 'doing stupid shit.' Now, tell me what I need to know."
Vi shook her head.
"It's more of a show than a tell," she said, "Get dressed."
Notes:
Author's Note: Ya'll are so, so good to me. I have so much appreciation for each one of you who has read/kudo'd/sub'd/bookmarked and especially commented on this silly fic. It makes me so happy that you get something out of reading it. It's been a long time since I've written much of anything, and this piece is helping boost by creativity. I'm taking on challenges I normally wouldn't (I've never written romance before, let alone an f/f one) and you've all given me so much encouragement. I'll make sure to reply to everyone's existing reviews today. I try to get to them all asap, but I'm a bit slow.
I hope you enjoy(ed) this chapter and will continue to indulge me; I have one more chapter of Cait and Vi just being together before the story actually picks up into some action. It's not all just angst, though some of ya'll seem to be really into that part. XD
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Two gentle requests of commenters:
Kindly do not mention/reference other fics in the comments beneath my works.
Also, please DO NOT reference situations in which CaitVi harm each other in the comments beneath my work.
Please respect these boundaries. They are related to maintaining reader (and author) safety and comfort.
Chapter 5
Notes:
Ya'll, I swear, eventually this story gets plotty. Like it will have actual events/twists/characters besides Cait and Vi. Not every chapter is going to be "Piltover's Finest Feelings Hour." But that's basically what this one is. Bear with me, I can't help writing their interactions. Thank you to everyone who has expressed their enjoyment. Every single review makes my day. I have a back log of them to reply to, but again, I figured it was better to get the chapter up.
I hope ya'll enjoy this. I agonized over it like ya'll wouldn't believe. As I've mentioned, romance is a new genre for me.
PS: To set expectations, you will now see the posts slow down to about once a week. The previous chapters were pre-written and just needed to be migrated/proof-read.
---
Two gentle requests of commenters:
Kindly do not mention/reference other fics in the comments beneath my works.
Also, please DO NOT reference situations in which CaitVi harm each other in the comments beneath my work.
Please respect these boundaries. They are related to maintaining reader (and author) safety and comfort.
Chapter Text
There was a brief moment right after Vi finished speaking where either she or Caitlyn could have—or maybe should have—pulled away.
Neither did.
Instead, they stalled. Entangled and breathless, they sat frozen. Caitlyn didn't move and Vi didn't make her. Vi didn't move and Caitlyn didn't want her to. That hesitation stretched, and compounded, and then—
Too late. The little window winked away, and there they still were, too close to each other to go anywhere. She and Vi were in too much contact, too nested together at the foot of the bed. A heavy quiet pressed in on them, echoing with all the important things they'd just whispered into the semi-dark.
Caitlyn's heart climbed her ribcage like a ladder.
In their urgency, they'd outrun some of the things they'd said to each other. Now, in the silence, those words caught up. There was nowhere to hide. Tension corded between them. She could feel it in her own body and she could feel it in Vi's.
It was the desperate push-pull of "oh shit."
Too close.
Caitlyn tried to lean back. Tried and failed. Her hand slipped out of Vi's hair and down the side of her throat, floating along a tendon and the pulse that ran beside it. She'd meant to pull away completely—she really had—but her fingers wouldn't go. Instead, they traced the crisp black line of a tattoo. Then another. As her wrist settled onto Vi's shoulder, Caitlyn felt the trencher's skin bead under her hand. Vi watched her the entire time.
Oh shit.
Her face. Fuck. Caitlyn swallowed. There was that look again, that expression of utter famine. Vi's eyes fogged over like mirrors as Caitlyn touched her, silver with relief. This time, though, their focus didn't ebb completely. Something else—something new—roused itself in their depths, molten and heavy. It glowed and ate and reined her gaze towards Caitlyn's in a way that made her burn.
The faint refrain of oh shit fizzed louder in her head. It took all her self-control not to give into its heady buzz and let it tilt the room. Her heartbeat forced itself into every fiber of her body, into her bones.
Now is not the time for whatever that is, she thought, dry-mouthed and transfixed by the heat rising in Vi's eyes.
A little voice—one that didn't quite feel like hers—twisted in her head.
Oh, you know exactly what 'that' is, it said.
Laughing at her.
She winced and drew a breath.
Okay, true. She did know. She'd lit that fire in people before. A number of times. Always judiciously, always with great care, but yes, with an immense amount of satisfaction, too. She was good at it, enjoyed it, and the result was always…
Well, good. Often more than good. Sometimes great or better.
This, though.
Sweat poked pins down her back.
No one had ever looked at her like this. The smolder in Vi's gaze…she looked ready to start wars. Burn cities. Raze nations.
It made Caitlyn feel like an arsonist.
You did this. You opened her up and let this out.
Deal with it.
Her eyes snapped down to the scar that hooked Vi's upper lip. For a moment, she was tempted. No. No, beyond tempted. Compelled. With their closeness and the heat and the words "If it's already like this now " curled up in her ear, she almost let it happen. Almost made it happen. Half her soul screamed at her to do it.
But she didn't. Because she knew that she shouldn't.
The words oh shit rolled into a frantic loop of not yet, not yet, not yet! in the back of her head, spoken in the wiser of the two voices warring inside her skull. Not yet. Not like this. Too soon, too much, too new, get a hold of yourself, for fuck's sake…
She's not ready.
Neither are you.
Still, every nerve ending in Caitlyn's body groaned in protest as she forced herself to pull away, degree by degree, from Vi's searing atmosphere. It was exhausting.
Not yet.
Not yet.
Fuck.
She lifted her eyes again and found Vi watching her with open fascination. Want and wonder and a hundred other red, wild things moved across her face like shadows. Caitlyn's skin danced with a self-conscious shiver.
She knows.
That little laughing voice lilted in her mind again.
So?!
Caitlyn’s stomach tightened.
So, I'm being a bit fucking obvious, aren't I?
You don't think she deserves 'obvious?'
That sweet ribbon of thought instantly softened away the embarrassment in Caitlyn's gut. A familiar ache moved in to replace the shame, blunting the sharpest edges of her need.
Right, she thought, Of course, she does. Why make one more thing in her life harder than it has to be?
The wisdom in that question was persuasive. Truly, why? They weren't children. With war a near-certainty, their tomorrows seemed even less promised than most tomorrows already were.
And there was Pearl's voice in her ear: Don't waste time.
Granted, Pearl had been warning her against losing Vi to another person. Caitlyn had no fears there. Her terror lay in the idea of losing Vi to time itself.
Ever since she and Vi collided, the sands in their hourglasses had been shifting ominously. So many close calls in so short a time. The stress welded them together and threatened to rip them apart. Did it still pay to be patient when you could snap out of existence in an instant? The idea of one or both of them just ending, of their missing out on each other…
It was nearly unbearable.
Of course, there were also a dozen other reasons—other very good reasons—to try and wait until things were less fraught.
Caitlyn just really didn't want to do that.
She looked at Vi. As Vi looked back, she willed herself to be open, to let all those thoughts play out on her face.
It's fine, she thought, It's fine for her to know. Better than fine. It's good. It's…if anything, it's justice. It's what she's owed.
Be direct. Be sure.
The laughing voice returned, except it wasn't laughing, now. It was gentle.
You could just say it. Nothing has to happen. You could just open your mouth and say, "I want you" and let that be that.
She could. She could indeed do that. She could give Vi the truth and let her do whatever she pleased with it. It seemed so ludicrously simple, and she was just off-balance enough for it to feel like a good idea.
She gathered the air to make the words.
Right at that moment, a warm hand settled on her waist, derailing her. When she tried to speak, all that came out of her was a less-than-salient "uhm." She looked down.
Vi was holding her. Leaning into her. Her heart tripped as the trencher closed up the distance. For one wild moment, she thought all her agony and discipline would come to nothing. Then, mercifully, she realized Vi was pushing against her, away from her, coaxing them apart despite the way her fingers curled into Caitlyn's side. Vi took the enforcer's hand off her shoulder and squeezed it.
"Get dressed," she repeated. Her voice was thin, stretched in too many directions by too many emotions. The only thing Caitlyn could identify with certainty was strain. Vi was holding back, too.
Good.
Bracing herself against the trencher's thigh, Caitlyn nodded and pushed herself to her feet. She felt unsteady.
"Right. Good idea."
Finally—finally—she withdrew. As she did, Vi pitched forward almost imperceptibly, her body following as though Caitlyn was pulling the air right out of her lungs by leaving. That mingled look of loss and need nearly brought the enforcer right back to her knees.
But it didn't. With distance, the tension between them weakened and broke. Caitlyn ended up safely on the other side of the room, smoothing back her hair. She took a long, slow breath.
Good grief.
For the first time since she'd woken up, her heartbeat began to fight its way down to a normal rhythm.
Vi didn't move.
As she turned and busied herself with sorting out her clothes, Caitlyn watched the trencher out of the corner of her eye. She did this partly out of concern, partly out of affection, and—a new one—partly out of amusement. Vi looked about twice as shell-shocked as Caitlyn felt, and she didn't seem able to get up from her place at the end of the bed. With her elbows on her knees, she stared vacantly at the floor. Her leg rattled under her arm.
Caitlyn dropped her outfit onto the settee and went to lift her shirt over her head.
"Vi?"
Vi looked at her. "Yeah?"
"Could you…?" Caitlyn spun a finger, indicating her need for privacy.
Vi blinked numbly at the clothes, then up at Caitlyn. She blinked again.
"Right." She stood. "Sure. Sorry."
She turned away.
Over her shoulder, Caitlyn watched Vi drag her hands roughly down her face and drop her head back. After that, the trencher wandered behind the screen to rustle around with her own pile of clothes, still wadded up beside the bath.
Caitlyn stripped swiftly and pulled on her scavenged street clothes. They fit better than expected, though the trousers were too short. The ensemble she'd chosen was nothing fancy, but then that was the whole idea. She'd picked pieces with motility and defense in mind, not style. Though in the end, the style wasn't bad, either.
She was doing up shirt buttons when she heard Vi behind her.
"You good?"
"Good enough. You can look."
She heard the sound of boots scuffing to a halt behind her.
"Hey."
Caitlyn turned to see Vi standing in the center of the room. The trencher was staring into the middle distance, wide-eyed. Her arms were slack at her sides, her new shirt hanging from one hand. Caitlyn appraised her. "What's wrong?"
Vi glanced up, then over at the bed. Slowly, she raised an arm and waved at the place the two of them had just been. Her face changed.
"Holy shit! " she blurted. Her voice cracked like a teenager's. Indignant. Incredulous. The outburst managed to be both a question, an accusation, and an explanation all at once. It made a smile ghost over Caitlyn's mouth.
"Yeah. I know." She continued dressing.
"That was..."
"I know." She slipped a belt around her waist.
"What's wrong with us?!"
"Nothing."
"You…I…that's gonna be a problem! "
"Which part?"
You could just say it.
"'Which part?!'" Vi wasn't spluttering, but she was close. She began to pace slowly back and forth, pressing her thumb into one wrist and then the other.
"Right. Is there something wrong with our plan?" Caitlyn pulled on her boots and adjusted the buckles.
"I...no," Vi admitted. She shook her head.
"Alright. And the things you told me. Do you regret saying them?" This, Caitlyn asked more gently.
Nothing has to happen.
Vi shook her head harder. "...no. No."
"So, what, then?" Caitlyn slipped into her jacket, holding Vi's gaze. "Is it the fact that I care about you?"
She flipped her hair out of her collar.
You could just open your mouth and say:
"Or is it the fact that I want you?"
And let that be that.
She tugged her zipper up to her neck.
Until that moment, Caitlyn had been starting to wonder if Vi ever blushed.
She did.
When Vi finally registered what Caitlyn had said—or perhaps more the sincerity with which she said it—she stiffened with shock. Immediately, a fierce scarlet flush shot up her throat. It went everywhere. It darkened her cheekbones until her freckles disappeared. It stained her ears and collarbones. Her shoulders reddened around her tattoos until the skin looked burned.
It was so obvious and so bright that Caitlyn almost found herself feeling sympathetic.
Almost.
Vi gulped and cleared her throat. Her eyes were huge. "You—what?"
Caitlyn had seen her less dazed after blows to the head. She didn't answer. She only stood quietly and watched Vi spin out. The trencher wheeled through a rolodex of possible emotions, all of them flying openly across her face. Caitlyn already had a good idea as to where she'd land.
The wheeling stopped abruptly as Vi's eyes flashed.
There it is.
Anger.
The confused kind.
The flustered kind.
The kind without any real bite in it at all.
"Since when do you say shit like that?" Vi spat, all blush and hackles.
Caitlyn rolled her eyes, biting back a smirk.
"Please," she said, "If that made you squirm, you deserve it. I can't tell you how badly I've wanted to get you back for that little stunt you pulled when you first brought me to this place."
"Stunt?!"
"You know exactly what I'm talking about."
Actually, for a moment, it was evident that Vi didn't. Then the dots connected and she swung around.
"Oh! That. Yeah, well…c'mon, I was just fucking around! You…that…you sounded serious."
Caitlyn looked at her.
"It was," she said, "I am."
Vi took a step back.
That's the whole point. No angling, no teasing, no games. Have the truth and do what you want with—
"Fuck off," Vi snapped.
Caitlyn choked back a flinch. That curse may not have had bite, but it certainly had teeth. She frowned.
Vi's demeanor darkened in front of her. She no longer looked flustered or confused. She had the bristle and curve of someone backed into a corner.
...shit.
Caitlyn stood very still. Vi prowled back and forth, staring her down with burning eyes. Eyes that took on whatever color was most dominant in the room. Orange, in this case. Fitting. The glow really highlighted her mistrust.
"What are you doing?" she bit out.
"Nothing."
"You're screwing with me."
"I'm not."
Vi let out a sharp sound through her teeth and looked away.
Caitlyn chewed the inside of her lip. Her eyes followed the trencher back and forth, back and forth. The pacing made her uneasy.
She remembered this Vi. She was hard to forget. The caged animal. Caitlyn watched her, taking a rough measure of her path. Six paces left, six paces right. She could have gone farther. She had the space.
…how wide had her cell been?
Caitlyn sat down to let Vi have the height.
"Vi."
Orange eyes flashed at her and then away.
"Vi, look at me."
That fierce gaze came back. This time it caught and Caitlyn held it calmly.
"I'm not messing with you." She turned up her palms. "I promise. I'm just being honest."
Vi's expression faltered, a touch of helplessness bleeding in beneath the anger. Her shoulder rolled back as she tried to process.
"I don't understand."
She squeezed her wrist harder and then moved the grip down to her hand.
Caitlyn began to wonder if her arms ached when she was stressed.
"Me either," she admitted, "I didn't think this was the complicated part. You all but said the same thing to me a few minutes ago. What's the problem?"
Vi dropped her head back in frustration and pressed the side of her hand to her brow.
"That was different. I was just…I was trying to explain. I'm not always great at it. You—" She swallowed and shot over a shaken look. "That was targeted."
Caitlyn winced. Maybe it did seem that way by comparison.
"I swear it wasn't. I've been trying to figure out how to say it—or whether I even should—for what feels like ages now."
Vi scoffed.
"Yeah, since when?"
Caitlyn didn't even hesitate.
"Since my room."
That stopped Vi, but only for a moment. She rolled her shoulder again and kept pacing. Still, Caitlyn could tell by the curve in her spine that some of her anger was draining. Other things were surfacing as it pulled back, things the anger had been there to hide.
"But why would you…? What am I supposed to do with that?"
"Whatever you want."
When Vi tensed and turned early in her pacing, Caitlyn quickly took a different tack.
"I will tell you," she added lightly, "that I figured it was only right for you to know I find you attractive, considering you seem so determined to strip and bathe in front of me. Things were getting a bit voyeuristic for my taste."
For whatever reason, that was the comment that froze Vi mid-stride. She stared at Caitlyn.
"Seriously?"
"Yes."
"You're kidding."
"No."
Vi grabbed her head and then threw her arms wide in exasperation.
"Oh, my god. Is that why you've been climbing the walls this whole fucking time!?"
Caitlyn's brow knitted together.
"What did you think it was?"
Vi’s voice pitched up.
"I dunno! I guess I just thought you were…"
"What?"
"I…well…" Vi searched her hands, the floor, and the ceiling for an answer. She gave that up quickly. "I thought you were a prude, I guess!"
A patient smile tugged at Caitlyn's lip.
"Vi, I'm private. Not prudish. There's a difference."
Vi crossed her arms and slouched back against the wall with a thud.
"Wouldn't know," she griped. She looked at her boots.
Caitlyn shook her head, her smile spreading across her face.
"There really is a part of you that thinks I sat untouched in a big, fancy room until you met me, isn't there?"
The trencher sputtered, caught out.
"I…no!"
Caitlyn crossed her arms and lifted an eyebrow.
"Okay, maybe." Vi pushed off the wall and kept pacing, still massaging the heel of her hand. "But, I mean, I know that's not true. I hope you don't think…"
Her eyes darted over and she frowned. She looked worried.
Caitlyn softened.
"No," she said, "No, I know, it's alright. Sorry, I actually was joking there. Just trying to buoy the mood."
Vi made a sound that would have been petulant if she weren't so clearly distressed. She found the wall again and slid down to the floor, her legs bent loosely in front of her. Her head dropped back. She looked spent.
Caitlyn's guilt mounted.
"Vi, really. I'm sorry. I didn't expect it to go this way. I swear."
The trencher rolled her head forward to look at her. There was guilt on her face, now, too. Her eyes closed under a furrowed brow.
"Not your fault," she said, in a tone that implied she felt the fault was entirely hers.
For someone so formidable, she suddenly looked very small. Caitlyn hated it.
"Can I come over there?"
Vi opened her eyes again. She tilted her head. Shrugged.
"Sure. Yeah." Then, more quietly. "Of course."
Caitlyn stood. As she moved across the room, Vi shifted a few inches to make room for her along the wall. She watched her unblinkingly as they slid in beside each other, pressing shoulder against shoulder.
In the quiet after they settled, she turned to Caitlyn questioningly.
"How do you know to ask me stuff like that?"
Caitlyn glanced sidelong at Vi and caught the fragile appreciation in her eyes.
"I honestly don't know." And it was the truth. She reached over towards the trencher with an open palm. "Hand, please."
"Huh?"
"Your hand."
"Oh."
After a moment's confusion, then hesitation, Vi unwrapped her arms from around her ribs and placed her hand in Caitlyn's. The enforcer brought it over into her lap and began to gently press her fingers into Vi's forearm, working her way down towards the wrist as she spoke. Vi's breath caught. Caitlyn pretended not to hear.
"You don't need to respond to what I'm about to tell you. Just listen. Sound good?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Vi nod. The trencher was otherwise very still, her eyes focused on what Caitlyn was doing with her arm.
Caitlyn nodded back. She bit her lip in concentration as she rolled muscle under her thumb. It took a long time for her to form her thoughts, but Vi didn't push her.
When at last she let out a sigh, she did nothing to hide her nerves.
"I just needed to say it."
The words were quiet and fell out of her quickly. She squeezed into the middle of the trencher's palm and then up its center line. Wrapped fingers arched as she pushed against tendons. Vi said nothing.
"Nothing has to happen," Caitlyn went on, "It was just important to me that you knew. With the way things are…if something were to go wrong and I hadn't told you, I'd regret it forever."
She flexed Vi's hand to stretch her wrist. Stopping there, she pressed her mouth into a line and added an afterthought.
"I think my delivery could have been better, though."
To her left, she heard a soft, sharp sound. Vi, tsking at her. Amused.
"You think?"
Caitlyn looked over. Vi was smiling. The expression was still strained and uncertain, but the wit was there. And the warmth. Caitlyn smiled, too.
"What's gotten into you?" Vi asked. It wasn't an idle question.
Caitlyn thought it over.
"I dunno," she shrugged, "Certain things had me feeling bold, I suppose." She wasn't much for winking, so she tried to work the expression into her voice.
Vi snorted, her eyebrow climbing towards her hairline.
"Oh, I see. Is that how this works? You get me to spill my guts and now you're just a walking entity of sass?"
"Essentially."
Even as she teased her, Caitlyn pressed affection into Vi's skin, working out the knots she felt along her arm bones. She refused to be misunderstood again.
"I couldn't tell if you were playing me," Vi said after a while. Her voice was quiet. More serious.
Caitlyn ran their fingers together briefly and then kept up the massage.
"I know. But I wasn't. I wouldn't. Not about that." Caitlyn paused. "Now, about other things? Yes. I plan to be merciless. And I hope that's alright. I like our back-and-forth."
Vi chuckled, relaxing.
"Yeah, that's fine. Me, too."
"Oh, good. So, just for an example…shall we perhaps discuss—" Caitlyn flashed the trencher a leer, "—that blush of yours?"
Vi went rigid. She turned towards her, expression going flat. As Caitlyn grinned, Vi slowly raised her free hand and pressed it firmly over Caitlyn's mouth. She leaned in.
"We shall not."
Laughing, Caitlyn reached up to peel the hand away but Vi only pressed a little harder. She raised a finger and touched it to Caitlyn's nose, looking serious.
"Hey. How about you cool it for maybe two seconds, eh, cupcake? Not sure where your head's at, but I'm still getting over the fact that someone just said she wants to fuck me."
Caitlyn's eyes widened.
Vi's eyes glittered.
Good lord. She pivots faster than a ball bearing.
The enforcer felt her face heat up more on principle than out of actual embarrassment. She tugged Vi's hand off her mouth.
"Alright. Let's be clear that those are your words, not mine."
Vi's smile was sharp.
"Same difference, though."
"Is not, and you know it. I really meant something by what I said. You're just being crass."
Before Vi could object or think through that accusation, Caitlyn shoved her aside and snatched up the shirt the trencher had discarded on the floor. She balled it up and slapped it playfully against her chest.
"Put this on," she said, straightening up, "And then let's please get the hell out of here. I swear Babette must be piping something through the vents. I feel like I'm losing brain matter by the minute."
Vi caught the shirt with a chuckle and without complaint, immediately sitting back to tug it over her undershirt. Doing up the couple of toggles that cut across the chest, she shook the muss out of her hair and stood.
"Whatever you want to tell yourself, hotstuff."
Caitlyn looked at her and started.
… oh, for fuck's sake.
Dammit, Pearl.
The stupid shirt.
It was almost cruel. The damn thing screamed rebellion. There were no designs, no adornments, only a hood and layered canvas that clung to Vi in tapers and angles. When she moved, the fabric gave in all the right places–and yet it still looked thick enough to slow a knife.
It looked…good.
Ridiculously, frustratingly good.
How could a shirt that simple look so fucking good?
"I like that shirt.” She gave up the words without meaning to.
"Well, you picked it." Vi rolled her shoulders and neck to test the fit. "It is a good cut, though. I like the no sleeves. A lot of times the arms are too tight." She sprang back and put up a guard, blurring the air with a few dizzying jabs to check the mobility.
"Sure," Caitlyn said slowly. She had never seen anyone put a shirt through its paces before. "Might be thick enough to offer a little protection, too. And it doesn't, ah…" she swallowed, "it doesn't look bad, either. On you, I mean."
Vi dropped out of her stance and tilted her head. She turned to look sidelong at herself in the mirror as if the thought hadn't occurred to her. Caitlyn had to wonder if she was playing coy. Vi obviously had an eye for aesthetics, whether she'd admit it or not.
The trencher pulled up her hood and then dropped it back again.
"Yeah, guess you're right. It's sharp. And the black won't show as much the next time I get the shit kicked out of me." She sought out Caitlyn's eye in the mirror and winked.
Ever the pragmatist.
Caitlyn was quiet.
"I'm kidding," Vi reassured her. "Sort of."
She turned back around.
"But hey, I think I'm good if you're good. If you want, we can—" She stuck her hands in her pockets and stopped. "Oh! Shit. Here, I almost forgot."
From her second-hand trousers, Vi pulled out a sheaf of crumpled papers and a pencil. She handed them to Caitlyn.
"You need to write up a note for me to send to your dad. Put something in there that only you'd know. That way he can be sure it's from you. Then we can head downstairs."
"Sure," Caitlyn nodded, "Easy enough."
She leaned over to scrawl out a missive, then paused, pencil-to-paper. She looked up at Vi with a frown.
"'Downstairs'?" she echoed.
"Yeah."
"I thought we were going up to the roof?"
"Oh." Vi's expression faltered. "Right. Uh…" She rubbed her neck, "So, Babette's has no roof access from the inside. I already checked. We'll have to go out the front and climb up."
Climb up…
"Ah." Caitlyn looked away and sucked a tooth, shifting her weight. "And…how many stories is that?"
Vi hesitated.
"Five."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Caitlyn nodded and went back to writing her note. Vi appraised her.
"It's okay if you don't want to do it."
She meant it.
Caitlyn shook her head.
"No, no. I do. It's fine. It's a good skill for me to learn, anyway."
Signing her name to her letter, she folded the paper twice and pushed it over to Vi. The trencher took it carefully and slid it into her pocket. Caitlyn kept the pencil and papers for herself.
"If it makes you feel better," Vi said slowly, "the route's pretty easy, both up and down. And you're good with heights. I wouldn't have you do it if I wasn't sure you could."
"Right." The enforcer chewed her lip, considering.
Vi ducked into her line of sight. "Caitlyn. If it's what you want to do, I won't let anything happen to you. I promise."
Warmth flooded Caitlyn's chest. That earnestness never failed to get to her. Still, she couldn't help giving the trencher a wry look.
"Oh, how four days can change things," she scoffed. "I seem to remember someone giving me no choice but to throw myself off a cliff just to keep up with her."
Vi opened her mouth and closed it again, looking chagrined.
"Hey, you could have taken the bathysphere." Her smile was lopsided.
"I know." As she moved past Vi towards the door, Caitlyn stopped to whisper in her ear, "But not if I wanted to pass your little test."
The trencher looked at her sharply. Her grin cut wider and Caitlyn saw something ignite behind it.
"You knew?"
Caitlyn rolled her eyes.
"Of course, I knew. Absolutely nothing about you is subtle."
For some reason, that made the trencher's smile wobble. Her freckles were suddenly a great deal harder to see. Electing not to mention it, Caitlyn caught the hem of Vi's hood and tugged.
"Come on."
Halfway down the back staircase, Caitlyn felt something begin to slap against her ankle. She stopped, looking down.
Vi heard the break in her footsteps and turned. "Something wrong?"
Caitlyn shook her head and waved her off.
"No, no. You go ahead. A buckle on my boot's come undone. Just need to fix it."
She sat down to fiddle with the strap. Vi blinked at her for a second and shrugged.
"'Kay. See you down there." With her hands stuffed in her pockets, she turned and bounded down the stairwell, disappearing around the corner.
Caitlyn watched her go, a mosaic of black tattoos trawling her eye, and then pulled her foot into her lap. Tongue between her teeth, she began to cinch the buckles. Then, she heard a voice.
"Well, well, well, don't you look like a regular menace to polite society?"
Caitlyn's head shot up.
Uh oh.
A silvery laugh floated up from below.
Oh, good grief. Not now!
As if their morning hadn't been intense enough already.
Caitlyn jerked taut the strap on her boot and hopped onto the banister, sliding to the landing. Barreling down the remaining stairs and around the corner, she stopped just short of bumping into her friend, the lovely, the masquerading, the mischievous Pearl. The escort was grinning, a finger hooked under one of Vi's shirt toggles.
The trencher looked both bemused and intrigued. Her eyes swung over to Caitlyn.
"Huh, wouldn't you know," she smirked, "Here comes Polite Society now. Let's ask her."
Oh, dear.
"Tilly!" Pearl exclaimed. She turned towards Caitlyn, her eyes sparkling. "There you are. I was just telling your friend here how roguish she looks in this shirt. You really do have excellent taste."
"Mm-hm, I do, do I?" Caitlyn glanced at Vi and then fixed Pearl with a warning look.
Pearl did not care.
Vi stood between them, completely confused and visibly thrilled about it. Glancing from enforcer to escort and back to enforcer, her face split slowly into a wily, searing grin. Caitlyn knew that look. It oozed cocksurity and spelled trouble. Vi hadn't quite sorted out the dynamic yet, but Caitlyn could see the gears turning—and they were turning way too fast.
"You, uh…you gonna introduce me to the nice lady, Tilly?"
Caitlyn leaned back on her heel, crossing her arms.
"You know, I'm debating as to whether I should."
Pearl opened her mouth in mock offense.
"Oh, Matilda, how rude. For shame!"
"Yes, for shame, Matilda." Vi beamed.
Laughing, Pearl turned to the trencher and pulled her in, leaning up into her ear. "My name is Pearl," she said. With her eyes still on Caitlyn, she ran a finger down Vi's side. "Tilly is my friend, too."
Vi's gray eyes were alive with amusement.
"Oh, is she?"
"Mm-hm."
They both stared at her. Pearl was tinseled with mirth and Vi was practically radioactive with satisfaction. She obviously delighted in Caitlyn's discomfort, and she didn't seem to mind Pearl's attention, either. Putting an arm around the escort's shoulders, she took her hand and kissed it in a mime of Piltover formality.
"Well. Nice to meet you, Pearl. I'm Vi."
"Oh, I know who you are."
"Alright." Caitlyn clapped her hands together. "That's enough. Vi? I believe you were off to repay a life debt you owe me, remember? And you," she pointed at Pearl—who batted her eyelashes, with some success, "You need to behave yourself."
Smirking, Vi toyed with one of the feathers on Pearl's mask. "Aw, cupcake. We're just playing around. Don't be jealous."
Caitlyn, for oh-so-very-many reasons, already knew that she didn't need to be. She shot Vi a flat look of annoyance. Pearl noted the expression and played along.
"Oh, it's true, Tilly!" she cried, every bit the thespian, "Please don't be cross. I just can't resist teasing you. You know, of course, that Vi has it all wrong."
That caught Vi's attention.
"Wait." She looked down. "Which part?"
Pearl looked up at her. Smiling, she traced Vi's frown with regret. "Oh, my love…"
Slipping like silk out from under Vi's arm, she drifted over to Caitlyn. Standing on her toes, the escort feathered a slow, practiced hand up the enforcer's cheek. Guiding Caitlyn's face downwards, Pearl kissed her.
Vi froze.
It was a chaste kiss, light and placed at the very corner of Caitlyn's mouth, but it lingered, and it made something foreign pulse across Vi's face.
Pearl turned to her, one arm threaded into Caitlyn's.
"If anyone here should feel jealous," she said gravely, "it's you."
The merciless confidence vanished from Vi's face. It was finally Caitlyn's turn to feel a bolt of satisfaction. She looked down at Pearl. The escort's eyes twinkled at her from behind her mask.
Wow.
Vi stood rigidly across from them wearing a short-circuited expression. Her eyes were wide, but she was otherwise blank of emotion.
"Vi," Caitlyn began.
"Mm?"
"You're staring."
The trencher's face didn't change, but something in her eyes did. For a moment, Caitlyn thought she had her.
Then:
"...I sure am."
A grin cracked back across Vi's face. She winked.
"And there it is!" Caitlyn threw up her hands. Pearl collapsed into her side, laughing.
"Someone recovers easily!"
Vi slouched a shoulder into the wall, crossing one leg in front of the other. She feigned modesty, her smirk still wicked.
"I'm quick on my feet," she told the escort.
"And how quick are you off of them?"
Vi flashed a canine.
"Oh, I like you."
Pearl crinkled her nose at her.
Caitlyn decided to break up the party before the escort decided to defect.
"Okay!" She got behind Vi and took her by the shoulders, steering her away down the hall. "Really. Time to go."
"Aw, but why?" The trencher whined. "We were getting along so well!"
"Yes, too well, thank you. Go on."
She turned back to give Pearl a scolding look. The escort only wiggled her eyebrows.
You're welcome! she mouthed, and pointed emphatically at Vi. She kissed her fingers in a gesture of relish.
Stop it! Caitlyn mouthed back.
No!
"Oh, my god."
"What?"
"Nothing. Eyes forward. Door's that way."
"I know where the door is..."
Chapter 6
Summary:
!!!! STOP! IMPORTANT! BEFORE YOU CONTINUE!!!!
HAVE YOU REVIEWED THE UPDATED TAGS AND RATING FOR THIS FIC?
"Saltwater" is now Rated M. Multiple CW/TWs apply!!! PLS CAREFULLY REVIEW THE TAG LIST and CHECK IN WITH YOURSELF before proceeding.
We are now entering Vi's POV and all that implies.
Difficult/adult themes in Chaps 6+ are handled with care, largely canon-typical, and are not gratuitous. However, I advise caution anyway. A good content comparison would be to the source material itself (Arcane), a movie like "The Dark Knight" (2008), or a TV-14 ep of "Law and Order." I've CW'd a large number of things that appear in "Arcane" itself out of an abundance of caution.
---
I SINCERELY hope you enjoy this chap of "Saltwater." Read with care, but please do enjoy!!! The following gives back some of Vi's lost perspective from Chaps 4 and 5, snippets of peak emotion/confusion. She's a fiery, passionate, poetic mess.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
There were times in Stillwater when spates of despair nearly washed into her lungs and drowned her.
The floods always came at night. Boiling out of the dark, they would crawl up her body like tar, sucking her down until cold, black lines laved across her throat. She’d wake up consumed by the terror of slipping under, the panicked hitch of her breath echoing off the walls.
After the first few inundations, she flailed. Desperate to find something, anything to keep her afloat, she crumbled and tried a hit of some junkie's latest brew. He swore that it would help.
It didn't.
It only made shit fucking worse.
The potion put a broken edge on things. It made shit too sharp, too fast, and too real. It made her gear-work gum up and her gaskets blow out until she ended up overheated in a corner somewhere with no idea who she was. She didn't get the high everyone else seemed to be chasing. She only retched and cursed and spun sideways out of the effects into the next morning, hating herself for being so stupid.
Why why why would you do this, she thought.
Why why why would anyone fucking do this?
Didn't make sense.
She never messed with it again. While the other inmates drooled and groaned about how the stuff put such a shine on things, Vi would peel herself off the concrete and go barter for more tattoos. The relief she felt under the buzz of the gun was the closest she came to understanding their addictions.
Nothing in the world, she decided, could ever make her feel so good that she'd keep coming back for hits despite the hurt. She didn’t believe anything could get its hooks in her like that.
Until now.
Oh, now it all made sense.
Brutal, crystalline, what-the-fuck-was-on-that-spoon sense.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Timepiece by the door, 4:58 a.m.]
She woke up the same way she did every morning. Violently, and two minutes before the klaxon call.
Gasping, she snapped upright. Consciousness cracked into her like a club, quick, biting, and blunt. The blow left her dazed and split open. Slowly, too slowly, awareness oozed in to fill the gash. She shook her head to clear the flashes that ran through her thoughts like fractures.
Familiar. She set her teeth. Concussion?
A swooping sensation spun up between her ears. She grimaced.
Probably.
What else was fucking new?
With a groan rising in her throat, Vi dragged her eyes open. Immediately, a skewer of panic caught her in the ribs. She blinked. Blinked again. Harder, pressing. Her heart stuttered.
She couldn't see.
Shit.
Her cell was pitch black.
Her cell was never pitch black.
Coagulants tipped into her bloodstream.
Shit, shit, shit.
Her gaze swung around as she tried to orient herself in the dark, the pale after-image of bars floating in front of her eyes. Gulping, she slid backward, leaning, searching out the cold reassurance of a wall that should have been there.
It wasn't.
She lost her balance and pitched over. Her heart slammed into her throat.
Fuck.
She threw out a hand to catch herself. Groping, she pressed into…something. Not iron. Not stone. Whatever it was gave beneath her fist, soft, sinking, sucking, pulling her down like—
If it was possible to puke up her pulse, she would have.
Something was tangled around her legs. Her mind said kick. Her body said no. Her muscles locked and her breath sat shallow in her chest. A single, frantic thought lurched through her head.
Where the fuck did they put me this time?
It took a few seconds for the horror of that question to loosen its grip on her lungs. Propped up on a trembling arm, she huffed short, panting breaths through her teeth. Finally, a circuit closed somewhere in her head and she realized—
The smell.
Of all things, the smell centered her.
She pulled air through her nose, expecting the stink of salt, sweat, and iron. Sour piss and desperation. Mold. Filth.
But—
No.
The air wasn't dank. It smelled of soot, sin, and…
And someone important.
Her shoulders hitched. Reality dropped into place like a lodestone, pulling memories with it. Realizations began to cascade.
The 5:00 am klaxons weren't blaring.
They weren't going to.
She wasn't bleeding body heat into concrete.
She was on a bed, and—
A gasp tore up her back as she remembered.
—and she wasn't there anymore.
Relief ripped over her, brilliant and bitter. It brought its own kind of anxiety. Slumping, Vi swallowed the sob that shuddered up her throat. She fumbled, reaching out again, this time not looking for a wall, but for a headboard. Her knuckles knocked against it. She shuffled back. Slouching heavily against the wood, she let her hand drag across the bedcovers, drawn by the gravitational warmth of the person curled up beside her.
Fuck.
She was—
She was with—
Vi shivered as she felt Caitlyn's breath unfurl against her fingers. Its rhythm was slow and soft and steadying.
Right, she thought, I'm not there anymore.
Her body struggled with the notion. It was at odds with muscle memory. She was bracing, couldn't stop, everything in her still tense from a decade of reinforcement.
I'm not there.
I'm not there.
I'm not—
But something in her—the imprint of a bloodied, dark-eyed prisoner—brooded in suspicion, demanding to know:
Well, if you're not there, where the hell are you, then?
She closed her eyes. Felt the warmth on her hand again.
With Caitlyn.
That was it.
Just 'with Caitlyn.'
Anything else, "in Zaun," "in the Lanes," "at Babette's," didn't seem to fully answer the question.
Ten-years-worth of instinct was unimpressed. Tension continued to draw her body in on itself, winding her tight enough to hurt. It didn't matter that she was sitting within inches of the person who bookended her freedom, she was going to have to sit through this shit until it was over. Like always.
Resigned, Vi lowered her forehead to her knees to wait, struggling quietly for air. When she tried to wrestle her breaths deeper, they bucked and clawed their way back up. She was suddenly grateful for the softness of the bedroom. It swallowed up her noise with its feathers and velvet and wood. That was nice. She fucking hated the sound of her own breathing.
She'd heard enough of it over the years, scraping back at her off of stone walls.
Vi grimaced at the thought. That was one of the endlessly crappy things about Stillwater. The place was a goddamn echo chamber. Anything you heard, you had to hear at least twice. Mundane or shitty, didn't matter.
And in her case, it was usually really, really fucking—
She bit off the thought.
Her shoulder ticked and her ears burned.
Don't.
She moved her tongue through her mouth to clear the bitter taste.
Think about something else.
Swallowing, she looked down.
A rough exhale pushed itself out of her lungs.
Yeah.
Okay.
That works.
Caitlyn.
Alive. Intact. Right beside her despite—
—despite Everything.
The enforcer was still asleep, thank god, crashed out in that first, deep, post-shitstorm coma. You only ever got one of those. They turned you to sand.
The mere sight of her broadsided Vi with a crushing rush of emotions. They sluiced over her, most of them nonsensical and unfamiliar. The only feeling she recognized was a gray, twisting relief.
Relief at having Cait there with her.
Relief at Cait being so close.
Relief at Cait being okay.
Breathing out again, Vi edged her hand closer to Caitlyn's cheek. Closer, but not daring to touch. Only near enough to make their atmospheres mingle. To feel.
She was allowed a few fleeting moments to enjoy it—the reassurance of Cait being safe—before a thread of something dark began to snake into her head.
All at once, it coiled and struck. Fangs out.
Fear.
The venom worked fast.
Vi's relief capsized.
Rolling over inside of her, it showed its tarred underbelly. A black horror washed up and submerged her, because the other side of Caitlyn being okay was the reality that she very nearly wasn't.
Eyes widening, Vi swallowed, dread gnawing through her haze of nerves. Her hand tightened where it was. The tension ran up her arm, twitching into her shoulder, up her neck, and down. She stiffened.
Right.
Caitlyn almost wasn't okay so…so many times, and…
Shit.
Shit.
So many people.
So many people aren't okay.
The air left Vi in a wheeze.
Her mom.
Dread peeled back to reveal raw, searing guilt.
Fuck.
My fault.
The thought was automatic. Ingrained. Unsurprising.
The next thought, though:
But Caitlyn says it's not.
Desperate.
She doesn't think so, and she's fucking smart, so…she'd know, right? She'd have to know—
Weak.
Wrong.
And something else.
Something that made Vi queasy. She knew the feeling. The Forgotten Crime. She couldn't always remember all the shit she'd done, and it was happening again. She could feel the memory lurking, its outline yawning in her head, waiting to be filled in.
Looking down at Caitlyn, she shook her head and tried frantically to remember, tried to put it all together.
No, she thought.
She doesn't know anything.
She doesn't know anything about me.
So how could she think—
Vi shrank in on herself. She was close, brushing up against it. This was the worst part, the last creeping moment before full realization. She could feel it coming, could feel neurons stretching their spidery fingers towards each other, passing flashes hand-to-hand.
She doesn't know what I did, and—
And there it was.
Nerve endings connected in a flash.
—and I lied.
The thought was electric.
A cold wash of terror hollowed out her throat. The dread opened up into something consuming and cold. It ate away at its own edges, crumbling in on itself like a sinkhole.
She thinks it's not my fault…
….because I lied.
She doesn't know—
—and she thinks—
—because I told her…
—"I just ran away."
It all snapped into place with devastating force. The dread, the guilt, the barreling sensation of another impending loss. She felt unsteady.
My fault.
It's my fault.
It's all my fault, of course, it is.
It was almost comforting. After so much change, this, at least, was familiar. With every step, she left trapdoors and tripwires in her wake. Anyone who followed her always wound up dead.
My fault.
And I lied.
That's why she thinks—
That's why she said—
—"This is not your fault and I don't blame you."
That's why—
Because Caitlyn doesn't know—
—"He didn't make Jinx—"
I did.
I did.
Her right hand writhed on her wrist, flexing to crush the stinging memory of what she'd done. Didn't work. Never had.
Fuck, it all made so much sense.
She doesn't know what I did.
That's why.
That's why, as the two of them huddled together on the floor of their room, shocked and raw and bleary with exhaustion, Caitlyn had been so willing to reassure her. Her words had been so steady. "This is not your fault." Vi had almost allowed herself to believe them. Almost. The best she could manage was a fragile trust that Caitlyn, at least, believed what she was saying, and that was almost as good.
Because at least then—
At least then everything that happened after—
Biting back a groan, Vi closed her eyes. Her head tilted and her body tightened on the threat of a shiver that never came. She could still feel it. Her touch. Its heat lingered on her skin, spiraling up her neck into her hair, unspooling among the roots. It glowed. Glittered. Made her want to pitch herself off a fucking building because it didn't matter that she'd never felt this way before.
She still knew what it meant.
Fuck.
Her throat moved. Tried to swallow. Stuck.
Shit.
She flushed with shame and tried, tried not to think about the way Caitlyn had reached out and pulled her in, brushed her fingers over breaks she couldn't possibly know were there, but it wasn't like she could stop. When she tried, some desperate, emaciated thing inside her began to twist and screech, scaring the shit out of her.
She backed off and let it be.
Scarcely able to breathe, Vi sat with her heart drumming backward into the headboard. Her body was alive with the tingle of remembered warmth. She fixated on it, sat in its glow. Her nerves gave her no other choice. They throbbed under her skin, chanting again again again in a mantra that touched off a craving for more.
More of what Caitlyn had offered her.
More of what she had been too willing to accept.
More of…what?
Just more.
The sensation was so overpowering that it nearly tipped her into resentment because—
Well, because—
Fuck.
Vi's eyes flooded.
Because how dare Caitlyn pour gold into her cracks like that?!
The tears were acidic and refused to fall.
How dare Caitlyn be that kind without having any idea who she really was? Or what she'd really done?
Too much.
I—I can't.
Can't have her, can't leave her, can't stay here, can't leave.
She unstuck a shaking hand from the bedcovers and raked it over her face. Fuck, she'd tried. She'd sensed the danger. Tried to outrun it. Tried so fucking hard to keep her head on straight. Once on the bridge. Again in the rain. Didn't matter. It kept creeping in, catching up somehow, and now?
Now, one world-shattering explosion later, she was caught.
The game had changed.
She looked down again to where her hand was, resting a spare inch from Caitlyn's cheek.
What in the everloving fuck am I doing?
A ragged feeling shot through her.
Rage?
God, she hoped it was.
But it had been a long time since anger made her want to cry.
Leaning back, she went to snatch her hand away—
—and nearly imploded as Caitlyn sensed the near touch in her sleep and chased it. Closing up distance, she shifted and sighed. Vi pulsed with horror. When Caitlyn's hand moved and reached, she felt the urge to crawl up the wall to avoid it. But she didn't. She couldn't. And so Caitlyn's arm drifted over her, going limp across her waist. Vi went rigid, wide-eyed.
Fuck.
As she twisted the sheets in her fists, her organs wrung themselves dry of adrenaline, convincing every last cell in her body she was about to fucking die. Run.
Caitlyn's hand curled into her side as if it knew. Stay.
God.
Vi had been threatened with vivisection before. It sounded pretty bad.
This had to be worse.
Just gut me already, fucking please.
But she did nothing to stop it. Caitlyn nosed into her hip and she let her. She couldn't help it. The contact sent something warm and bright and malleable flooding up her side. It felt like a dozen shattered things being knitted back together.
It felt also like taking. Like stealing. Like she was healing herself under false pretenses.
Vi stared at the clock. Seconds turned into minutes and she watched the time roll from 5:07 to 5:08 to 5:09.
She began to feel sick. She couldn't deal with this shit. Not here. Not like this.
Her heart rate refused to slow and her stomach began to turn. Her skin stung, pores boiling with a nervous sweat that refused to break. She was heat. All heat. Fire down to the marrow. It ached, and the air felt too thick. Dizziness churned her inner ear.
She gulped.
Out.
She needed out.
Or space.
Or air.
Just air.
She'd settle for one solid pull of air.
Please.
Just let me—
Again, like she somehow knew, Caitlyn hummed in her sleep, tossing over onto her other side. Her arm slid off Vi's lap as she rolled, leaving a heat trace that would haunt her skin for hours. Burrowing into the pillows, she stilled.
Oh, thank god.
Vi disentangled herself and rolled. She tried to bolt. Buckled instead. She ended up half-collapsed on the floor, one of her knees and then a hand thudding into the hardwood. It hurt. She winced. Everything was uneven. Off.
She was used to getting up, not down. Cold, not warmth. Hard, not soft. She could feel it in her back as she groped for the bedpost and dragged herself upright: her muscles, rejecting the comfort of the bed she'd slept on.
Finally, getting her feet under her, Vi grabbed her boots and trousers and lunged for the door.
Go.
Go go go.
Just go—
With her hand on the door handle, she froze. Turned. Fell back.
Fuck.
Wait.
Wait.
Is this…Leaving?
Or just…leaving?
Vi braced herself against the doorframe and stared across the room at the curve of Caitlyn's outline on the bed. She exhaled.
Just leaving, she decided. Then, she scoffed.
Yeah, right. 'Decided.'
As if Cait hadn't somehow become the fulcrum upon which her whole goddamn universe now rested.
The thought sent a cold pulse through Vi's guts but she willed herself to ignore it. Didn't matter. She could deal with her own bullshit later. Priorities.
Get her a gun.
Get her home.
Make sure she's—
Don't let anything—
Nothing can ever—
She gulped.
Some thoughts weren't worth finishing.
Letting out a breath, Vi straightened up and turned towards the door again, rubbing one forearm against the other to try and scrape away the tremors. She jumped when she felt bare skin.
Goddammit.
Wraps.
She nearly left without grabbing them but decided against it. She wanted to test herself out against gravity and she couldn't do that bare-handed. Not unless she wanted to lose three layers of skin. Slinking back across the room, she stepped where floorboards met to keep them from creaking. She managed to get to the tub without Caitlyn stirring. Her bandages were where she'd dropped them the night before, coiled in a pile. Gathering them up, she turned to go.
This time, though, as she skirted by the bed, Caitlyn made a pinched, unsettled noise. It seized Vi by the neck. She skidded to a halt mid-stride, her throat tightening.
Ah, fuck.
She looked over. Her chest ached. She closed her eyes. Dropped her head back.
She knew that sound. Knew it too well.
It was the searching sound.
The wait, where are you sound.
The please don't go sound.
For months, she heard it out of her sister as the two of them learned to sleep in separate beds. She'd never been able to cope with ignoring it, despite Vander's gentle reprimands.
She couldn't cope with it now.
Dammit.
Emptied of hesitation, she set her wraps, boots, and trousers on the floor and went over to kneel at Caitlyn's side. There was a dim little warning beating in the back of her head—dumb dumb dumb this is dumb just go—but that she could ignore. At least for a minute or two.
Squinting in the dark, Vi could make out the downturned lines on Caitlyn's face. She was frowning, a tight furrow pulling at the scar above her eyebrow. She twitched in her sleep.
Vi winced. Worrying the empty space between her teeth, she glanced between her hands and the door and the bed. Then, she did the only thing she knew how to do.
She tried to fix it.
Carefully, Vi reached up and lifted the blankets over Caitlyn's shoulders, tucking the hemline under the mattress to tighten them up and keep them from shifting. Good for nightmares.
Immediately, Caitlyn's face began to relax, but the tension above her eyes remained.
Vi sat down cross-legged on the floor and waited.
It took a few minutes, from 5:14 to 5:15 to count off sixty seconds to 5:17, but at last, the strain began to ebb from Caitlyn's face. A heaviness settled back into her body. The little spasms stopped tugging at her fingers.
She was okay.
Letting out a slow breath, Vi unfolded her legs and got to her feet. She stopped in a crouch at the bedside, grappling briefly with an urge that made no fucking sense—
—and also made her want to break her own finger.
Chewing her tongue, Vi held her breath and reached over, brushing a knuckle against the back of Cait's hand. The touch was there and gone, hardly anything, and she didn't let herself think about who it was for. She returned her hand to her side.
Standing, she glanced at the door and whispered, "Be back soon."
Because she would be.
Of course, she would.
It's not like she had a choice.
She was tidal now, and Caitlyn was the fucking moon.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Floor clock at the end of the hall, 5:21 a.m.]
Out in the hall, Vi knelt beside the baseboards and wrapped her arms with shaking hands. Pulling on her trousers and boots, she slipped quickly into the shadows, trading the terror inside the brothel for the horror of Zaun.
After all, riots were so much easier to manage.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Undercity clock tower, 5:33 a.m.]
Wow.
No.
What a stupid fucking sentiment.
Riots fucking sucked. What was she thinking?
The smell hit her first, dredging up a memory stacked with broken corpses. Only necessity and skill got her to the rooftops before her stomach turned over. Finding a wall, she cleared the image of her dead parents by vomiting a blot of bile into a trash heap. It hurt coming up, and as she wiped her mouth, she realized that she hadn’t eaten anything since noon the day before.
Oops.
Spitting, she pushed off the brick and scuffed to the edge of the building. She looked down.
There wasn't much to see. Babette’s place was one of the shorter structures around and the street behind it was a dead-end alley, dark and choked with smoke. Grimacing, she turned and looked around for a better vantage point.
She spotted a defunct electrical pylon. Walking over, she kicked it. When it didn’t crumple, she laddered up its thirty-foot lattice. It was enough. From that height, she could see down into a huge swathe of the Lanes, and what she saw was pretty fucking ugly.
Like—god.
The fires.
Her eyes widened.
They were everywhere, dozens and dozens of them, the flames barely contained to flares and burning barrels. There were so many scattered up and down the streets it seemed like a miracle the whole city hadn't combusted.
And everything was red. The Undercity’s usual mottle of neon green, pink, and yellow was gone, subsumed by a color she could only describe as rage.
Fuck.
She coughed into her arm as a gust of smog broke over her. It stung down into her lungs. Blinking, she squinted through the haze.
The next thing she noticed was the stillness. By this hour, she'd expected the worst of the fervor to have exhausted itself, but she hadn't expected to find the streets nearly empty. Swinging a leg around one of the pylon's metal struts, she turned to peer down in the opposite direction. Everywhere she looked, it was the same.
The Lanes were unsettlingly quiet, and it felt like a threat.
Vi’s tongue worried at the raw socket between her molars. Her whole point in coming out here was to run. Just run. She was desperate to burn off some excess cortisol, and an easy circuit over the roofs seemed like the best way to do that. After all, high-stakes exercise was the healthiest of her vices.
Now, though?
She winced.
Now, the small hairs on the back of her neck were bristling. Now, her spine felt cold. Something was wrong. The streets of Zaun were too quiet, and somehow silence had never sounded so unsafe.
She thought about Caitlyn—a Piltovan, an enforcer, passed out, unarmed—two stories below her.
She set her jaw.
Change of plans.
Dropping down off the pylon, Vi pointed herself in the direction of Piltover and walked to the edge of the roof. She looked down and then up towards the distant, boiling skyline.
She had suspicions, and they made her sick. But she couldn’t just guess at things; she had to know.
What use was she if she didn't?
She eyed the gap in front of her. Taking a few steps back, she exploded towards it.
Her boots kicked up dirt. Wind whistled in her ears as she made the jump, arcing onto the adjacent rooftop. She let momentum carry her forward as she landed, throwing her body into a run. She couldn't go full-tilt—visibility was shit—but her pace still bordered on reckless.
Zaun blurred into a haze of black and red. Streets flashed by underneath her, each as hollow as the next, only garbage and grime and the glitter of broken glass. She winced as her breath took on the taste of blood and phosphorus. Her stomach clenched with dread.
Where the hell was everyone?
In her gut, she already knew.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Temple bells, tolling 6:00 a.m.]
The river.
They were at the river.
A lot of them were dead.
The ones who weren’t roiled in a state that terrified her. About a third of them glowed purple. The streets ran with blood and vomit and shimmer.
Shaking, Vi turned around. She couldn’t bear to get any closer to the bridge.
Someone was pushing bodies into the water.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[approx. 6:30 a.m.]
Hunched in the mouth of a brass culvert, Vi plied her hands into her hair and tightened her fingers against the roots. With her eyes closed, she hauled in steadying breaths, her thumbs working pressure down along her jaw and back over her ears. Over and over she pressed and pressed, digging into the muscles until it hurt, as if somehow she could knead away the memory of the boy’s hateful eyes.
She couldn’t even remember their color, only that they were rimmed in red and running with tears.
They’d startled each other in a narrow alley.
It was supposed to be a shortcut. She was trying to trim her route back to Babette’s when she ducked up the passage. As she picked her way over trash and clutter, she spotted him on her left, his boney little shape contorted inside a crate. His shadowed eyes met hers and they both went rigid. [#]
She knew immediately. She wasn’t sure how. Even before seeing the marks and the stains, her insides were steel wool and static. Maybe it was his expression.
She’d seen it a few times in Stillwater.
Settling into a crouch, she sat back on her heels and opened her hands. When he pulled into himself, she tried giving him her name. Her full name. Fuck if she knew why. Maybe because it was the least threatening thing about her.
He’d only sniffled and snarled, retreating, retreating, retreating. She didn’t push forward, just spoke to him softly, offering to help.
That’s when he spat, and she jumped, and he lurched forward to curse her in his reedy voice.
“No! G-get away from me! Filthy fuckin’...P-piltie pet!”
Even before she realized how he knew her, that slur somehow felt deserved. It hit her somewhere deep and left her cold. Backing up, she’d showed her palms. She ignored her hammering pulse as she tried to coax him out from between the crates.
“Let me…where’s home? Let me help you get—”
"I said leave me alone!”
A hand flashed and a chunk of something whistled by her ear. It struck the ground and clattered away.
“Rat! Traitor!”
“I—”
Showing his teeth, he recoiled further. As he wrapped his arms around his knees, she saw the blood again. [##]
She swallowed.
“I just want—”
A smattering of howls, jeers, and footfalls sounded behind them. They both stiffened and turned.
Trenchers. Rowdy ones. Coming back from the bridge.
“I’ll scream.”
She looked back at him, wide-eyed. His gaze was hard in the darkness, his face aged by hurt. His voice shook.
“Leave or I’ll scream and they’ll come. I’ll tell them what you did.”
Sweat burned down her back. Her heart beat faster.
“What I—?”
She stopped and searched his face, wondering which crime he knew her for.
He crumpled. More tears. Huge. Cutting lines through dirt. Little hands going white-knuckled as he held his own shoulders.
“He was my friend!!”
The words were a whisper and a scream.
And a knife.
“He was my friend and you—you and that stupid topsider…you killed him!”
She looked at him again, up and down.
Mask and goggles slung around his neck.
Coveralls, a bit too small.
Purple stains on his chest and sleeves.
It plowed into her.
—the sickening crunch of young bones against concrete.
—her own fucking words: “He knew what he was signing up for.”
The boy saw recognition dawn on her face. The lines of his mouth changed. Contempt dried his reddened eyes.
Her tears began where his ended.
“I...I’m sorry—”
A sneer pushed itself into the light.
“I don’t care.”
Another wad of spit. His aim was better this time. He flipped up his middle finger as she wiped her cheek.
A deep breath, a low hiss.
“Topsucker.”
The word knocked her back.
She’d been called a lot of shit over the years. Prison guards were pretty fucking creative.
Nothing cut quite like that, though.
There wasn’t anything worse for a trencher to be.
…and yet.
And yet and yet and yet…
She couldn’t even tell him he was wrong.
The commotion up the lane grew louder. Again, the two of them glanced toward it. Again, their eyes came back and met. The boy began to pull in the air needed to make good on his threat.
Pushing off the ground, Vi staggered to her feet. Once there, she hesitated. She opened her mouth to say something, anything.
“I—” she swallowed, “I only wanted to—”
She stopped.
The words died.
Her blood froze, thawed, and froze again.
—"I only wanted to help!! I only wanted to—”
Her hand twisted into the front of her shirt.
As shadows cut across the mouth of the alley, she turned and ran away.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Timepiece by the door, 6:42 a.m.]
She got her ribs kicked in three times by an enforcer and fucking liked it.
Something about the irony really tied her morning together.
Then:
“I’m glad you can fight. That’s good.”
“Mm.”
“You’re all legs, though, aren’t you? Not much for throwing a punch?”
Caitlyn sighed.
“It’s my parents’ preferred style. It’s actually how they met. ‘She took my breath away!’ That’s how my father tells it.”
Vi stared.
“What he means is that my mother knocked the wind out of him the first time they sparred together.”
A pause.
“They were engaged a month later.”
Caitlyn tilted her head, smiling, and Vi started making some Very Uncomfortable Connections.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[7:07 a.m.]
She was hovering on the edge of panic. Air left her in thin, silent gasps as she gripped the edge of the bed, trying desperately not to buckle as Caitlyn coaxed fragile threads of truth out of her. The experience was terrifying, but at least it was familiar. Caitlyn had a talent for easing her into answers.
Then the words ran out. The two of them slipped into a humming space that didn’t quite feel like silence. That, too, was familiar to Vi.
Until it wasn't.
Something shifted, and Caitlyn darkened. It came on like a shadow. Her blue eyes got bluer, sinking deeper, going black. Her face changed. Her touch changed. Her closeness changed, even though she hadn’t moved. The gentleness stole out of her expression, leaving something harder, more focused behind.
Intent, Vi realized. The recognition was immediate.
It made her heart beat faster.
Oh, she knew intent. She'd seen it a thousand times in a thousand faces, only ever in people who wanted to hurt her. It twisted in their eyes, the desire to break, shatter, destroy.
That same look now sharpened Caitlyn’s gaze. Seeing it there tipped oily, irrational fear into Vi’s stomach. For a dissonant moment, she wanted to rip herself away and run. It made no sense. She knew, she knew that Caitlyn would never hurt her—Caitlyn was gentle and careful and kind—but Vi’s mind didn’t know intent in association with anything other than violence.
A tremor started in her left leg and began to work its way upward.
All she could read in Cait’s eyes was break, shatter, destroy.
Then a hand feathered up her side to soothe aches three inches deep. A breath bloomed along her jaw with enough push to feel like want. A warm and steady shift in weight pressed fresh body heat between her legs—
—and Vi remembered with the force of something breaking:
There’s more than one way to take a person apart.
Things were mostly cinders and sirens after that.
Smoke dimmed the edges of her vision as she started to smolder. Thought ceased, and she sat oscillating between rigidity and surrender.
Fingers curled out of her hair to trace a pale, fiery line down her jugular. Vi felt it like the long, slow strike of a match. Her back arched, her blood ran backward, and Caitlyn’s eyes flashed to hers with a single, searing command.
Burn.
Vi went up in red and gold.
The blaze was a mercy and a warning and a curse. For one brief, scorching moment, guilt and fear folded away into flame and she caught a glimpse of something solar. It oriented her in space and time as she crumbled willingly to ash.
She didn’t want it to stop. She wanted to look Caitlyn in the eyes and beg her, please, whatever you’re doing, whatever this is, please don’t stop because you don’t understand, for once for once for once for once—
—thoughts skipped and circled each other as Caitlyn’s touch stirred fresh fire under her skin—
She shuddered.
—for once, I feel okay.
But it did stop.
The words she doesn’t know what I did belched like a poison out of some crack in her head. They choked her and snuffed out the sun. Her flames were starved down to embers. The darkness was sudden and deathly and cold.
Vi spiraled off her axis again, pushing Caitlyn away.
“...get dressed.”
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[7:22 a.m.]
“...I want you.”
“What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Whatever you want.”
She wanted to split her knuckles against a wall and scream.
Not that it would have helped.
There weren’t enough vices in the world to give her the kind of catharsis she needed to deal with this shit. She could cuss, fuck, and fight her way up and down the fissures, it didn’t fucking matter.
Her tendons stung. Nerves crackled and frayed. A feeling that was half-itch and half-fever threatened to drag her across the floorboards and eat into her bones.
The idea—
No, the…the threat—
Fuck. No.
The—
The wild and wicked magic of Caitlyn wanting her—
—wanting her—
—it settled along the underside of her skin like a full-body brand. Vi wanted to turn inside out to escape it. She wanted to debride every red inch of herself until she forgot the lure of those three fucking words: I want you.
God, if only people had the power to unsay things—if only, if only—she would have done anything. She would have broken herself at Caitlyn’s feet and begged her, please, please, put that shit back in your mouth because you don’t understand, you don’t know what you’ve done.
First, you woke it up.
Now, you’ve called its name.
Opening agate eyes, it stirred inside her, uncoiling on its bed of embers. A sensation that was more creature than feeling. Cat, dragon, and flame. Silken, searing, and tensile.
The Other Animal.
She’d never felt anything like it. It had all the raw power and thrill of fury without any of the ugliness. Red and gold. Red and fucking gold. Teeth and claws and tenderness and god. This thing, it was...it was beautiful and—
—terrifying and—
She slid down the wall, catching her skin and hair on the woodgrain.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck you get what you deserve—
—and she was going to have to cage it, starve it, kill it.
Because.
—because she doesn’t know what I did.
“I’m sorry,” Caitlyn told her, “I didn’t expect it to go this way. I swear.”
No...
The brand under Vi’s skin began to bruise. She ached.
No. Cait, please—don’t… don’t say sorry. Please, don’t. It…it’s not—it’s—
“Not your fault.”
She closed her eyes.
—it’s mine.
It’s mine.
It's all my fault.
You just don’t know.
You don’t know ‘cause I’m—
—I’m a filthy fucking—
—I’m a liar a liar liar liar thief coward piece of shit and too weak too fucking weak to tell you because I know if I tell you that’ll be it this will end and you’ll you’ll you’ll—
Leave.
You’ll leave.
And I can’t—
She swallowed.
I can’t.
Not yet.
I can’t lose you. Not yet. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I'm such a—I just…for a little while, I just need—I need—
“Can I come over there?”
She didn’t remember opening her eyes. She only remembered her vision suddenly filling with blue. The color stopped a breath halfway down her throat.
…how?
Her heart thrashed behind her ribs, pacing its own cage, throwing itself against the bars.
How does she do that?
How can she tell—?
Vi finished pulling the air into her lungs.
“Sure. Yeah.”
Please.
“Of course.”
The answer will never be ‘no.’
Never.
Never.
As Caitlyn stood, Vi pressed into the wall and willed herself to be still. Her emotions howled, fighting-fucking-breeding themselves into unrecognizable chimeras. She tried to grapple them down but she couldn't even name them, let alone tame them.
Then, Caitlyn—Goddess of the fucking Hunt, apparently—walked right up and sat right down and bridled them with a touch and whispered word. She took Vi’s hand and all those feral, unnamed feelings stomped, snorted, and spun themselves into the ground to sleep. It was effortless.
"Nothing has to happen," Caitlyn said, utterly unaware of what she’d just done.
Vi could only stare.
Ah, Cait, she thought.
Things already have.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[7:27 a.m.]
"Absolutely nothing about you is subtle."
For someone so interested in everyone keeping their goddamn clothes on, Caitlyn sure knew how to strip her down to nothing.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
And so, apparently, did Pearl.
Vi's nerves fried away like lit fuses as she watched the escort pull back from Caitlyn's lips.
It wasn't so much the kiss that did her in as it was the look that followed afterward. Pearl's eyes pinned her to the wall, her gaze alight with a quirked, knowing smile that said oh, oh my love, from one pretender to another:
"If anyone here should feel jealous…it's you."
Vi knew it wasn't right to be jealous over someone you didn't deserve.
And yet…
And yet and yet and yet…
"I sure am."
She plastered on a grin.
Red and fucking gold.
Notes:
Author's Notes: It is so good to be back, ya'll! It's been months, and I've worked so hard! I am SO excited to share the fruits of this project with ya'll!!! I haven't written so much in years (I've composed in excess of 50K words in the last 5 months) and I have made SO many WONDERFUL friends through this work.
I never planned to write in Vi's POV. I don't feel I have the neccessary skill to truly do her justice. I originally planned a single, short chapter for her. WELL. 50K words later...
She really sucked me in. It's been a blessing, a curse, and above all, an amazing, INTIMIDATING challenge. I ONLY HOPE I HAVE DONE HER JUSTICE AND THAT YOU ENJOY MY PORTRAYAL OF HER.
I have done my best to honor, respect, and recreate her canon characterization as much as possible. I'm not a psychologist or an expert on any of the traumas that burden her, but I did my absolute best to treat her with the sensitivity she deserves. All I want is for Saltwater!Vi to hit readers as the complex, intelligent, fiery, poetic, deeply loving character I interpret Arcane Vi to be. You'll have to let me know how I did. You're about to get a half dozen+ chapters in her perspective.
IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MY DAY/SUPPORT MY GROWTH/THE FIC, please just leave a comment telling me some lines you liked/stood out to you. That's my absolute favorite thing. If you do that thing where you screenshot and post snippets on twt, please just use the tag #SaltwaterAO3.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR READING!
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Chapter playlists: if you want to know what I was listening to when psyching myself up to work on this fuckery, here's my "songs for reluctant folk heroes" playlist here - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq69yR8RXLd29__N7s-uG9QZA48DIOZ7K
Or you can boost your mood with "Pearl's Jukebox" playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq69yR8RXLd0-Jejz-ErKxQgjQSkt8KQA
(Songs on these lists are not necessarily curated for "Saltwater" [though many are].)
Also. I'm on Twitter now: https://twitter.com/OxenfreeAO3
RELATED: YOU MUST MUST MUST view/like/retweet/gush about the pic drawn by our very own Vinzul. They drew a concept piece of Vi in "The Shirt". Clicky here: https://twitter.com/Vinzul/status/1484343810217832452?s=20&t=op3bDphB_5-Av_Fx082TTQ
Praise them mightily. I have but one like to give. They also work on this amazing comic https://t.co/VdTUgamJNU
Last but certainly not least:
Ya'll. The SUPPORT you have given me on this. I can't think you enough for your kind words and your patience. I really wanted to do right by ya'll and give you something of quality. I hope these next many chapters met expectations and I hope my version of Vi is okay with ya'll.
I want to give an ESPECIALLY ENORMOUS thanks to my Beta Readers, @Just_Athena_G, @_cafekat_, and @dopestmoose. There was a LOT of content to read through and edit and not only did they do an amazing job with some amazing suggestions, they turned the docs around super quickly and gave me a LOT of emotional support. Thank you also to my sounding boards/lore hounds @kimkali and @vinzul!! And to everyone else who jumped in to answer my random questions on twt.
I could NOT have done this with out any of you. I wouldn't have wanted to.
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Based on the responses to a poll on twt, I have broken up a huge pile of content into chapters measuring 3k-6K-ish in length. I will be rolling these out over the next many weeks.
Upcoming Chapter Release Schedule:
Chap 7 - May 22
Chap 8 - May 29
Chap 9 - June 5
Google Drive link to the annotated draft of this chapter for people who enjoy process/behind-the-scenes stuff will be posted with next week's chapter.
A link to a (kinda long) voice notes recording on how I write Vi: https://twitter.com/OxenfreeAO3/status/1525610654589194240?s=20&t=OmPoBLwr7oX7Ak_VjtSxXA
I'll see ya'll in the comments. :)
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CWs/TWs specific to this chapter:Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Wrongful Imprisonment, Police Brutality, Solitary Confinement, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vomiting, Civil Unrest, Riots, Implied/Referenced Terrorism, Starvation (brief/incidental due to loss of appetite/stress), Blood and Violence, Nightmares, Sleep Deprivation, Exhaustion, Family Loss, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Identity Issues, Class Issues, Aquaphobia, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault (of a non-canon character, minor, non-explicit, oblique reference), Suicidal Thoughts, Canon-Typical Violence
Chapter 7
Summary:
Having had an introduction into Vi's internal state and gained some insight into the intensity of her morning, we now pick up right where Chapter 5 left us. We will continue to be in Vi's POV for at least another six chapters.
The following is a breather chapter. Overall, Vi's POV oscillates like a sine wave between intensity/darkness and comfort/care. I will always alert you when we are about to plummet down into a trough. Chapter 7 is rated T. The main TW is that Vi remains burdened by a constant hum of anxiety despite Caitlyn helping to calm her down towards the end of Chapter 6. She's stressed and conflicted and desperately in love.
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A huge thank you to my primary Beta @Just_Athena_G for reviewing, editing, and workshopping this section with me. This fic would not be what it is without her. Please take the time to stop by their Sevika backstory fic "Counterweight" here on AO3; it is EXCELLENT and a much needed addition to the compendium of Sevika content. Her AO3 handle is Athena_Glaukopis. You can also find her story in my bookmarks.
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Link to the annotated Google Doc of Chapter 6: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G9_TcjCSnb7xGdgJkCc3-BuGmfs6xVXA/edit
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Pendulum clock on the wall, 7:41 a.m.]
Vi made a nuisance of herself as Caitlyn maneuvered them toward the brothel door. Grinning like sin, she tripped them up. She dug in her heels. She tossed back smirks and snipes over her shoulder and forced Caitlyn to grapple with every scrap of street pirate she had left in her.
The show took a lot of effort, but it worked.
The act won her everything she wanted: the sloped smiles, the haughty blue eye rolls, the frustrated spluttering that was carved up just so by that…that accent—
—and a distraction.
It won her a distraction.
Which was, of course, the entire point of Vi being such a monumental pain-in-the-ass; to fluster Caitlyn so badly she would never see her rattling within an inch of full system collapse.
Painting over her warning lights with a thin enamel of trouble, Vi cut a leer and shot off something especially snarky. She wasn’t even sure what she said. She was only running her mouth to hear it go.
Whatever it was, it backfired.
In a fit of annoyance, Caitlyn seized the nape of her neck, grabbing a fistful of hood and hair.
Something, it turned out, Vi did not dislike.
Her pressure gauges spun into the red and sounded off a threat of rupture.
…shit.
Abort.
Caitlyn went on boiling with frustration behind her, oblivious.
“Has anyone ever told you,” she griped, “that you are the very definition of oppositional defiance? God, I could shake you!”
The threat came with a warning—a short, sharp tug—but that's all it took for Vi's body to pepper over with sweat. Her eyes snapped open.
—wait.
When had she closed them?!
She got her answer when Caitlyn pulled on her again, dragging her gaze up into her skull. A helix of electricity raced down her spine, twining want with dread. She clenched her teeth and tried not to hiss through them.
Oh, fuck, she thought.
Fuck, fuck fuck.
Please.
Don’t do this to me.
Panic thickened under her skin, trapping heat.
Let me go.
Let me go, let me go, let me go—
“—let me go.”
It came out strangled.
It wasn’t supposed to come out at all.
Caitlyn stopped immediately. Her hand softened.
“...what?”
Shit.
Her voice had softened, too.
Shit, shit shit.
Alarms kicked on.
Think. Fucking think. Excuse, come up with an excuse—
“Cut,” Vi choked, bending back into Caitlyn’s hand. “Cait, the—the cut on my…you’re—”
“Oh!” The enforcer let go at once, pivoting urgently out of annoyance. “God. Vi, I'm so sorry. I completely forgot…”
Vi wanted to nod.
Yep.
Yep.
Good.
That’s the whole point.
She managed to mumble something vaguely coherent as she scrubbed sparks out of her scalp. She put her smirk back where it was supposed to be, and just in time. Blue eyes went bright with concern in her periphery.
Right.
Sucking a tooth, Vi shoved her hands in her pockets and ducked around Caitlyn, circling her. “Feeling a little frisky, there, huh, cupcake? You wanna go back and let Pearl have another—”
Caitlyn only palmed her whole face and shoved her backward. Vi grinned into the heel of her hand, flagging out a leg to keep her balance.
“...actual child,” the enforcer muttered. She turned and stalked away.
Vi kept her smile where it was and followed slowly, hiding her need for space behind a swagger. She watched Caitlyn stroll up to Miguel and greet him where he sat, his mass perched precariously on an undersized stool. The big man cocked his head and looked over at Vi.
She tipped her chin at him. He nodded, and she meant to follow up with a quick “hey,” but her heart suddenly tripped over a sickening palpitation. It ducked and slammed into her ribs. She stopped—hard—and grimaced, pressing a thumb under her sternum. Not great. Coughing once, she knocked her pulse back into rhythm and tried to rearrange her face.
Too late.
Miguel leaned forward and raised an eyebrow. Caitlyn, curious, turned and followed his gaze. Whatever she saw made her mouth notch downwards. Vi set her jaw and stripped her screws to hold herself together.
God, I'm so fucked.
Sidling up the steps toward the door, she did her best to look nonchalant. Wasn’t easy. Caitlyn's gaze followed her every move, narrowing down into something metallic and diamond-tipped. It bored into her.
“Are you alright?”
Vi set her teeth so hard she was reminded of her lost molar. That was exactly the kind of question she’d been looking to avoid.
Oh well.
Pulling up alongside the enforcer, she bumped shoulder-against-arm.
“Never better.” She smirked. “Why?”
“Mn...no reason."
Caitlyn's tone implied there was, in fact, most definitely a reason.
Vi put up her hood and pretended not to hear. Swinging toward Miguel, she reached out a leg and tapped the toe of her boot to his. “Hey, pal. We’re headed out.”
Snorting, the big man marked the page of his book with a ribbon, snapping it shut. Slipping it into his shirt pocket, he stood up. His little stool groaned with relief, its cushion inhaling back into shape.
He looked down. “Again?”
Vi had to crane her neck back to keep his gaze. He loomed huge in the entryway, dwarfing even Caitlyn by half a head.
She split the left half of her face in a grin. “Yep.”
Miguel frowned. “Mm.”
“‘Mm?'” Vi jerked her head back a little. “What do you mean, ‘mm?'”
The bouncer’s eyebrows lowered skeptically. “You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Do I look unsure to you?”
Miguel leaned forward, his leather jacket creaking. He pressed his face toward hers until their noses nearly touched. Snuffling across his mustache, he grunted. “Mm.”
Vi only smiled wider and leaned back, making space.
God. Nobody’s buying what I’m selling today.
She could feel Caitlyn’s eyes drilling her full of holes.
“Seriously,” she said, “just gotta run an errand. We’re good.”
“'Good?'" Miguel echoed, “You? Maybe. Her?” He glanced at Caitlyn and sniffed so hard it rumbled his sinuses. “Mmm.”
Ha.
Uh-oh.
Vi didn’t even have to look. She could feel the energy in the foyer rewire itself around Caitlyn's annoyance.
“Excuse me,” came the clipped response, “but she owes me her life at least three times over. So.”
Still bent at the waist, Miguel looked up at Caitlyn, blinking.
Vi opened her mouth to argue but stopped as she took the count. Stillwater, Sevika, stab wound, split skull… She winced. Nah, that tracks. In fact, she was pretty sure Caitlyn was underselling herself.
One of Miguel’s bushy brows bumped toward his non-existent hairline. He rolled his head back towards Vi. His expression was accusing.
“Mm?!”
Vi felt her scars loosen as her smirk fell into something more sheepish. With her hands in her pockets, she shrugged, elbows swinging out.
“I mean…” She lifted her shoulders. “She’s not wrong.”
She could see a sliver of Caitlyn’s face in her periphery, right beyond the edge of her hood. A bolt of surprise tugged at the enforcer’s expression. Her eyes softened, but only for a moment.
Then they went right back to taking core samples.
Vi ducked deeper into black canvas to hide her face.
Miguel looked between them, unamused. Stirring Vi’s hair with one last gusty snuffle, he straightened up and turned to Caitlyn. Leveling his gaze with hers, he pointed a finger at Vi. He wagged it.
“Trouble,” he rumbled.
Blue eyes flashed again, over and down.
Oh, fuck you, Miguel.
With that one word, he’d made an instant ally.
“‘Trouble,’” Caitlyn repeated, “Oh yes. I know.”
Vi scratched her arm, taking a convenient interest in the damaged edge of one of her tattoos.
“Mm,” she heard Miguel say.
“Mm, indeed.”
There was a pause. Vi looked up. Miguel and Caitlyn were looking down at her, both smirking with their eyebrows cocked.
Vi tugged her other hand out of her pocket. “What?”
Caitlyn tilted her head to the side. “Miguel thinks you’re a nuisance.”
“—mm.”
“But,” she amended, “he likes you anyway. Doesn’t want to see anything happen to you.”
The big man put his hands on his hips and nodded, pleased with her interpretation.
“Nothing’s gonna—!” Vi stopped, feeling herself start to break. Thankfully, it was over exasperation, not the smoke and hiss of her anxiety. She whirled on Caitlyn. “How do you do this everywhere you go?!”
“Do what?”
“This!” Vi waved a hand between bouncer and enforcer. “What are you, the trencher-whisperer?!”
“No?" Caitlyn's brow furrowed. "I don’t think so. Maybe I’m just polite?” She looked at Miguel, who shrugged.
“That’s not supposed to work down here!”
“Have you ever tried it?”
Vi stared. “Okay. Miguel, open the damn door.”
“Mmm."
Caitlyn crossed her arms. “You’re exactly right, Miguel. That was rude of her. Here, let me. Could you please open the ‘damn’ door?”
Miguel’s bushy eyebrows flew upwards. Looking at Caitlyn, he blinked again, snorted, and then tossed his head back on a huge, braying laugh. Its brassy sound rattled off the walls before getting lost in the velvet down the hall. He slapped Caitlyn on the back. When the blow staggered her, he bit off his laugh and caught her, guiding her by the arm.
“Okay?” he asked, apologetic.
She smiled, straightening her jacket. “It’s fine.”
Grinning back at her, Miguel shooed them both a little deeper into the foyer. Vi was still trying to get her head around the interaction when she felt a hand on her elbow. Numbly, she allowed herself to be pulled aside.
Miguel cranked back the deadbolt with a grunt, jerking open the door to let them out. Hinges squealed. Thick air eddied inside the brothel and made the candles flicker.
“Thank you, Miguel,” Caitlyn said, “Sorry to bother you. And for the 'trouble.'”
The big man’s eyes twinkled. He glanced at Vi. His expression was smug. “Mm.”
The indignation revved again.
Vi’s shoulders climbed towards her ears as she glared at Miguel, working up a retort. A hand tightened on her arm. It tugged, warning her, don’t you dare, trying to jolt her out of her wind-up. It didn’t work. Of course, it didn’t. She didn’t let it work.
So Caitlyn tried something else.
Vi’s only warning was a beleaguered sigh. Then, abruptly, a firm grip caught her shoulders and yanked her backward, pulling her in close. She tried to yelp, but the sound was lost as Caitlyn reached around to plant a hand over her mouth.
Which…
Vi blinked.
Okay.
“Enough,” Caitlyn breathed.
The word hit Vi's ear as a whisper and turned her body to static.
"God, you are in a state…"
Vi blinked again, slower. Sagging. Half-stunned, half-stressed. The electricity was back, want and dread, arcing into places she really did-didn’t-did want it to go. Her heart tripped and she winced, coughing once against Caitlyn’s palm. She found herself being steered up the steps and over the threshold.
“Happy reading,” Caitlyn said as they passed Miguel. Vi heard it as if they were on opposite ends of the hall.
The bouncer smiled again and gave them a half-bow, miming a hat-tip off his bald head. He waved them on.
It took her boots hitting the cobbles for Vi to finally reset. The city shot up through her legs and she burst out of Caitlyn’s arms. Whirling, she redirected her unused voltage toward Miguel, seized by the impulse to have the last word. As she drew herself up and opened her mouth, though, the big man disarmed her. Glancing pointedly at Caitlyn, he looked back and gave Vi a quick thumbs-up.
Vi deflated, scowling, her words scrambling themselves into something unintelligible. "I…you…the fuck is that supposed to—?"
Miguel only grinned and dropped a meaty hand on her head with a pat-pat-ruffle-ruffle.
She swatted at it. “Okay! Let’s not—”
The door slammed shut in her face.
She was left staring at woodgrain.
Her hands were half in fists.
“What the hell was that?!” she demanded of the door knocker.
“Conspiracy," Caitlyn supplied. Vi looked up at her, livid, but the enforcer didn't elaborate. She tilted her head and smiled. "What was the thumbs-up for?”
Heat flashed under Vi's skin.
Fuck.
You.
Miguel.
"Oh, don't you start," she snapped. When Caitlyn failed to seem intimidated, Vi broke eye contact and looked down at herself. "God, am I just an easy mark or something?"
"Or something."
Great!
"Whatever. Let's just—"
She spun on her heel and went to cut up the stairs. A hand caught her and held her back.
She turned. "What now?!"
Caitlyn’s expression made her pause. It was carefully neutral, and when she spoke, her voice was carefully light.
“You know," she said, "maybe if the giant manning Babette’s door doesn’t think this is a good idea, we shouldn’t—”
Oh.
Vi felt panic slice up her center line.
No.
No, no.
I need—
She lurched backward, shrugging the hand off her shoulder.
“Relax," she barked, "It’s fine. Miguel is just protective. Apparently. He gave me the same song and dance earlier this morning.”
The words didn’t get the reaction she expected. Caitlyn’s face fell.
Or…
No, not fell. Faded. Turned inward.
Absent.
Vi gulped.
…yikes.
That expression made her skin crawl with urgency. She shifted her weight, her emotions swinging to worry about this new problem because goddamnit, Cait, that’s the look you wear when you want to get mugged in Zaun or stabbed or worse in the fucking shower. Shit.
Vi shot a glance over her shoulder. Habit. There was nobody, but—habit.
“Cait."
“Hm?”
“What’s with the face?”
"Oh. Nothing. It's just funny you say that. The bit about the ‘song and dance’..."
Absent, absent, absent.
"Caitlyn."
Focus.
Blue eyes came back to her, sharper, more alert.
Vi exhaled and relaxed. A little.
“Sorry,” Caitlyn said, “It’s just…Miguel. He was reading Sorenata’s ‘Ode to Silver Fields.’ It’s an operatic piece, very old. Meant to be performed.” She turned and looked at the door. Her expression drifted again. “It's one of my father’s favorites…”
Another shift.
Another swing.
Feelings crashed into one another, mixing, making chimeras. Vi seized up. Most of what Caitlyn had said was completely lost on her, but that last bit…
That last bit had her speaking before she could stop herself. The words were automatic. Part of her source code. A directive.
"I…Cait?”
“Hm?”
She pulled her hands into fists. “I’m gonna get you back there. Home. To him. I promise.”
Caitlyn turned quickly. Her eyes were wide. Alarmed, almost. They studied her closely, then softened with understanding.
“Oh…” She began to shake her head. “Vi, no. I—sorry, that’s not…thank you, but that’s not what I meant.”
She sounded contrite.
Vi’s face twitched.
Oh.
Well…
“Okay.” One more glance over her shoulder. “You wanna tell me what, then?”
Caitlyn wrinkled her nose. "Well, actually, not really. Not after what you just…now it will sound stupid, I’m afraid. In fact, it would have sounded stupid regardless."
Vi stomped on a cockroach as it skittered by her foot. Felt good.
"I don't think you're capable of 'stupid,'" she said.
There was silence for a moment.
Caitlyn smiled. “Don't be so sure. And really, it’s not important, but…that book, the 'Ode?' It’s dense. Something you study rather than read. I guess I never would’ve…I’d never have expected a bouncer in an Undercity brothel to…”
Ah.
Vi smirked, slouching into the wall. “What? Know how to read?”
“God!” Caitlyn flinched. “No! I’m not that judgmental, I hope. But…” She chewed her lip, words slowing. “I suppose I'm close, aren't I?”
Vi rolled a clod of loose mortar under her boot. She kicked it down the stairs. “Nah. You’re not.”
Caitlyn quirked an eyebrow. "Really? You think so? Of all people?”
Her tone was playful.
Vi lifted a shoulder. "I mean…yeah, you're prejudiced—" she drawled.
"...right. Fair."
"—but so is everybody.”
There was a beat of silence. Vi waited for Caitlyn to fill it. When she chose not to, Vi wrinkled her nose and shifted. She opened her mouth again.
“At least you…” She frowned. “You respect people. You respect people just for being people. They don't even have to scare you into it. We’re…I—” Her collar began to itch. She rolled her neck to make it stop. “Well, it's just not something you see a lot down here. Or maybe anywhere. I dunno. But, the way you—fuck, whatever, I’m trying to say it means something, the way you are. To me, anyway. And to…others. Obviously. Like, god, even Ekko…”
The itch spread down her arms. She scraped her shoulder against the brick. “Never mind. Just…you’re not judgy. Or if you are, who cares? You make up for it with the important stuff.”
Scuffing roach innards off the sole of her boot, she cleared her throat. When she finally brought her eyes up, Vi saw that Caitlyn was giving her a Look. She winced. It was one of those expressions, the kind she couldn’t tolerate. She let her gaze slide sideways.
"What?" she asked.
The reply was sincere. "Nothing. Just deciding whether or not to say something I know you'll probably hate."
Vi closed her eyes.
Oh my god. She dropped her temple against the wall. Who says shit like that?
“Well,” she sighed, “you might as well tell me. Because now it's gonna bug me if you don't."
There was a pause. A laugh.
"Alright."
Vi looked up.
Caitlyn stepped towards her, stopping at the base of the stairs. For a moment, she only stood there, pensive, her expression so present and serious that Vi felt the urge to shrink backward.
She nearly did.
Then fingers brushed against her arm—right above the bandages, she noticed, on purpose, tracing the edge, choosing skin-on-skin as opposed to anything else—and she stared, suddenly unable to move. Nerves sighed and unspooled. Brightening. Warming.
Felt like sunlight.
Caitlyn’s other hand floated up to her hood, tugging it forward, fixing it from how Miguel had mussed it.
That was good. It would cover the flush Vi felt rising in her face.
Blue eyes dipped to catch her gaze. They held it carefully, making sure she was listening.
"Vi.”
“Yeah?”
She forced herself to hold still as a gentle touch guided her hair aside.
“You are a wonder,” Caitlyn told her, “Heart, all the way through.”
A shrug. A smile.
“That's all."
Vi swallowed, swaying.
That’s all.
Steady and quiet. Simple as that. Like it was some sort of basic, universal truth. God, like it was part of the natural fucking order or something.
Vi pulled in on herself. Her chest hurt. Her stomach hurt. Her skin. She stared at the ground and cleared her throat again. "Okay."
She didn’t know what else to say.
Caitlyn soothed her arm one more time before letting her hand fall away.
"Did you hate that?" she asked.
Vi twitched.
Yes.
…no.
Maybe?
She grimaced.
It’d be better if I did, though.
Her guts felt like they were trying to digest a rusty chain. She stuffed her fists in her pockets.
"Can we just go?" she asked.
"...sure."
Notes:
Two gentle requests of commenters:
Kindly do not mention/reference other fics in the comments beneath my works.
Also, please DO NOT reference situations in which CaitVi harm each other in the comments beneath my work.
Please respect these boundaries. They are related to maintaining reader (and author) safety and comfort.
Chapter 8
Summary:
Hope ya'll weren't lying to me when you said you like it when these two stand around talking to each other, because...*gestures broadly*
This chapter is tame. Rated T. Please mind the tags, though. Vi is a mess and needs to learn the meaning of self-care. Caitlyn is trying, but it's hard to get your arms around a flight risk.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Sixty seconds. Sixty seconds, and Caitlyn was right back at it. Pressed together near the top of the rough-hewn staircase, the two of them leaned into the shadows. Vi crouched in front of Caitlyn, holding out a hand as she listened. Everything was quiet.
Then:
“Vi?”
“What?”
“Are you alright?”
Vi shut her eyes.
For fuck’s sake, Cait.
No, not really, but...
“Yes.”
Caitlyn hummed pensively behind her. “And would you tell me if you weren’t?”
Heaving a sigh, Vi rolled her neck. The question made her stomach flip, mostly because she already knew the answer. It hovered dangerously close to 'Yeah, probably, on any other day.'
Today, though?
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
No.
“Mn.”
“Take that as a win. Four days ago, the answer would have been ‘fuck no, fuck you, fuck off.'”
There was quiet for a moment before Caitlyn chuckled reluctantly. “I suppose it would have. I've really worn you down, haven't I?"
Vi wanted to groan.
No. Understatement. You're a fucking wire stripper and I'm already down to bare copper.
Instead of saying that, she turned and raked Caitlyn with a quick once-over. Her scars pulled.
"Don't flatter yourself," she snarked, but even she could hear the words had no bite.
Blue eyes danced in the darkness. "I don't."
Vi shook her head and slouched her shoulder into the masonry, inching forward to peek around the edge of the building. Caitlyn joined her, using her height to find her own line of sight into the street. As she leaned, she reached out for balance, settling a hand between Vi’s shoulder blades. Vi twitched, once, and then relaxed under its gentle pressure. She’d gone so long with nothing but concrete to watch her back. Having Caitlyn behind her was almost frustratingly reassuring.
Together, they scanned the lane. It was all the same as before, except most of the smoke had cleared. Empty shimmer cartridges clattered over the cobblestones, nudged along by a sourceless wind. Trash skittered and whirled, gathering in the gutters. Nearby, someone was moaning. Otherwise, the lane remained uncannily deserted.
Vi set her jaw.
“Eerie,” Caitlyn murmured. The word wafted out of her, disturbed. Vi squeezed her hand, passing a thumb over her fingers—
—and then realized with lancing alarm she had no fucking idea when she'd reached back to do that.
She thought about letting go but—
Caitlyn ran a finger up the side of her palm.
—sunk costs, or whatever.
She tipped her head. “Over here.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Trying not to think about it too much. Come on.”
With her hand still wrapped around Caitlyn's, Vi stepped into the street, ducking along the building’s outer wall. Without needing to be told, Caitlyn did the same. Together, they slunk into the gaunt green shadows of Zaun.
First alley on the right.
It wasn’t far, but it wasn’t much of an alley, either. The narrow passage was about a door's width wide and tucked in tightly between two buildings. It was only there to allow for drainage. A shallow gutter ran along its center, carrying sludge into a sewer grate.
Vi pulled Caitlyn into its dark mouth. Immediately, they were hit with the stinging after-stench of civil unrest. It felt like walking face-first into a wall. Vi winced as the odor coiled into her mouth, making her head spin. With a pang, she realized that she should have warned Caitlyn.
To her credit, the enforcer barely flinched. Wrinkling her nose, she blew out sharply through her nostrils, her throat working hard against her collar. She looked chalky.
Vi couldn’t blame her. The air in the alley was horrible, bitter and skin-warm. It churned with the rich stink of spent flares, naphtha, and rot. A whiff of piss and shit, too. Even by trencher standards, it was foul.
To a topsider...?
The two of them pressed back against opposite walls, bracing their hands against their knees. Caitlyn’s eyes began to water.
Vi reached over and tapped her leg. “Hey. Hurl if you need to. It’s fine.”
Caitlyn clenched her teeth and held up a hand, a slight bounce jogging her leg. She closed her eyes and swallowed a few times.
“It's alright. I’m not going to.”
Vi huffed and cocked an eyebrow.
Impressive.
“Okay," she nodded, "That’s—”
A sudden swell of unease made her throat clench. She jerked her head and gulped. “Huh. Um. That’s, uh—"
She gulped again. The street tilted. Then, all at once, her body went damp under a thin film of sweat. Her lips stung and her mouth flooded. A mangled after-image flashed against her retinas as she blinked. Red smoke and familiar corpses.
…shit.
Taking a breath, she patted Caitlyn’s knee.
“That’s good,” she managed. Her voice cracked. “But, uh…think I am, though. One sec.”
Caitlyn looked at her in surprise.
Vi sucked in a sharp inhale and turned away. She made it about three paces before nausea folded her over. Forcing herself to be quiet, she braced her shoulder against the brickwork as her insides dragged against themselves.
Nothing came up.
The alley dimmed as Caitlyn’s shadow fell across her.
“Are you—?”
“I’m fine,” she coughed. Sniffing, she spat onto the cobbles.
Caitlyn sounded unpersuaded. "Are you sure? You don’t look—”
“Oh yeah.” Vi waved a hand. “This is normal. Same thing happened earlier. Just gotta let it out. The air down here, it, uh…smells like, uh…”
"Like a what?"
Like a Bad Day.
"It's hard to explain."
“Okay…do you want—?”
Vi hissed as a second spasm slammed into her. Her stomach dredged itself and she grunted, her fingernails scraping against the brick.
What the…?
“Fuck.”
Caitlyn stepped into her line of sight, her head canted, arms crossed.
“Right,” she muttered, “Sure. This is completely normal.”
Vi gritted her teeth. “Okay. Don’t get fussy.”
"I'm not ‘fussy.’ I'm concerned."
Dammit.
“That’s worse—gah. Shit.” It hit her a third time. Her leg began to shake, sending a tremor up her left side. The sickness was pitch and roll, wave-on-wave, bad enough that she had to lean full-bodied into the wall. “Ugh, what is this?”
“Dry heaves.”
Vi shot her a glare. “What?”
"Dry heaves. Hiccups from hell, basically.” Caitlyn looked puzzled. “What, you've never had them before?”
Shaking her head, Vi bent over on another swell of queasiness. “No. God. This shit blows.” She spat again. “Why?!”
“Why, what?”
“Like, why? I’m usually a one-and-done. Unless I get knocked around too hard. Then…you know…you get what you get. But this…what gives?!” She glanced up at Caitlyn because Caitlyn usually had answers. But the enforcer wasn’t looking at her. She was looking at the ground. At the distinct lack of anything being pressed out of Vi’s seizing stomach.
“Vi,” she asked, eyes hard, “When was the last time you ate? Or drank anything?”
Oh.
Crap.
“Uh…”
Vi thought about the whiskey she’d tossed back while fighting Sevika.
She grimaced. “It’s fine.”
“Well, that’s not an answer.”
“I mean, it kinda is.”
Her guts rolled again. Groaning, Vi bent and coughed, muscles pulling hard. Her eyes burned. This time, as she scrubbed pointlessly at her mouth, she heard a scuff, a sigh, and a steady shift in weight. Caitlyn, moving in close. Vi felt a tug on her hood. It fell back off her hair.
Her stomach pitched again.
Different reasons.
For a moment, she curled in on herself. She already knew what Caitlyn was planning to do. Felt like maybe she should tell her no, but—
—she couldn’t.
She tried anyway.
“Hey,” she stammered, “w-wait—I know I said—but you don’t need to…not when I’m—” She stopped protesting when she felt how cool Caitlyn’s hand was on the back of her neck. Her eyes flickered. “Nn…Huh.”
“Breathe,” Caitlyn said quietly. “In through your nose, out through your mouth. Deep as you can.”
Vi looked up at her like she was crazy. "What? Here?! You want me to barf harder, is that it?"
An eyebrow arched upwards. "I'm already going nose-blind. Aren't you?"
Vi frowned.
“Uh, no,” she grumbled. “Show-off.”
Then she folded over again. Another spasm. A bad one. It dragged a Very Embarrassing Sound up into her throat.
Caitlyn winced and turned her hand over, placing it lightly along her pulse. “You're alright.”
Vi closed her eyes and panted. “I don’t…like this.”
“No one does. Breathe.”
She tried.
“Slower.”
“Bossy.”
Caitlyn flicked her ear.
“Ow. Hey!”
“Serves you right.”
Scoffing, Vi reached up to rub the sting off her ear, but Caitlyn got there first. Gently, she smoothed over the skin, then took hold and tugged.
“Hey. Look up here for a moment?”
Her tone made Vi stiffen but she did as she was asked. Opening her eyes, she looked up past her shoulder. Her body went from stiff to rigid as she caught sight of Caitlyn’s expression. She shrank back, bisected by panic.
“I’m only going to suggest this once,” Caitlyn began.
No.
No, no.
She would have pulled away, but—
“No.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“Because I already know what you’re gonna say. No.”
The fingers on her ear tightened. Caitlyn cooled, brow notching, going ramrod, staring. Her eyes were open but still slammed shut, somehow. Vi cringed, frightened. Not of Caitlyn, but of…something.
The words we should go back we should go back we should go back hung heavily between them.
“You have to let me go,” she whispered.
Something dangerous flashed through Caitlyn’s gaze.
“Oh. ‘Let’ you go?” Her voice was too quiet, too even. “So. I’d be able to stop you this time, would I?”
Fuck.
Body shot.
The air left Vi’s lungs. A fresh wave of hot, clinging nausea rolled into her inner ear. Her head churned. She clenched her teeth, pressing her eyes shut.
God, that…
A sound choked out of her before she could stop it.
That was deserved.
Shit.
She curled towards the wall, her forehead scraping against the brick. She dug her fingers into her sides and tried not to remember. Tried, tried, tried. The images came for her anyway. The sounds. The smells.
—Oil paint smiles, screams, and seawater.
—Cloud tattoos and fuchsia eyes.
—“I paid your—”
Stop.
Stop.
“Don’t,” she whispered, “not…not now. Please.”
The air in the alley coagulated. Too still. Silence fell, so heavy, pressing down, pinning, hurting. It left too much room for memory. Dark shapes began to boil out of the cracks in her head. She braced.
Mercifully, Caitlyn sighed and softened her hold. Her hand moved, drifting down to resettle along Vi's pulse point.
“I'm sorry,” she said slowly, “That was…unfair.”
No.
Vi shook her head. Her heart bucked in her chest.
“It wasn’t 'unfair',” she rasped, “I’m just…I'm asking you not to. Not right now. Beat me up about it later, when—”
Caitlyn's fingers jumped against her skin.
“Don’t phrase things that way.”
“Sorry. Sorry…I just—I know, okay? I—”
God, if I hadn’t?
Maybe—
“Stop.” A command. “You don’t need to apologize. We can talk about it…I don’t know when. When you come back, I suppose. If you want. But we really don’t need to.”
The words were sharp and hard and dropped off into silence. Confusion skittered up Vi’s neck. She rearranged her limbs and tried to sort through Caitlyn’s tone.
“Okay…” she hesitated. “Thanks?”
A sharp exhale. “It’s fine.”
No.
No, it's not.
Of course, it’s not, it's so far from—
“Cait?”
“What?”
Fuck.
That edge. It was still there, though not quite as sharp.
Didn’t matter. Vi would cut herself on it if she had to.
“I wish…” Her breath hitched. “I wish I hadn’t. I shouldn’t have.”
There was no answer, this time. Not a verbal one. Instead, Caitlyn sighed beside her, moving in close. Vi felt the soothing pressure lift from the side of her neck. It was replaced by the gentle push of fingers feathering through her hair. The touch poured that now-familiar something straight into her bloodstream. It blunted her senses. She had to force herself to focus.
Blinking slowly, she tried again. “I’m sorry...”
As though that would fix anything.
There was another long silence.
“I’m not upset,” Caitlyn said. Her voice was soft again. Sincere.
“You should be.”
“Oh. I was.”
Vi winced and pressed harder into her ribs. She cleared her throat. “Not anymore, though?”
“No. Not really.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Caitlyn heaved. “I think it might have something to do with you shielding me from an explosion with your own body and then nearly dying in my arms. Can’t really be sure.”
“Ah.”
“Mm-hm.”
Vi’s mouth twitched. “Hey.”
“What?”
“Was that…operatic of me?
The quip earned her a chuckle, which meant Caitlyn was smiling. That’s all Vi really wanted in that moment.
Then her breaths shortened, the rush of emotion catching up with her.
“…hey.”
“Hey, what?”
Vi swallowed. “Think I’m gonna puke again.”
A hand carded soothingly through her hair. “I think you’re going to try.”
Right again. Per usual.
This one hurt, wringing her out. Vi fought for breath as the spasm released, her body sore from throat to hip. “Why is this happening?”
“Your body doesn’t understand why your stomach hasn’t emptied itself. Shall I give you three guesses as to why that is?”
“Because you’re a smartass.”
“That’s one.”
Vi huffed. “I know why. I’m not an idiot.”
“Then prove it by taking better care of yourself from now on.”
The fingers in her hair trailed down the ridge of her undercut before circling back behind her ear.
She slumped against the wall. “‘Kay.”
“That easy?”
Vi groaned and tried to play it off.
“You’re doing the thing,” she snarked. “It’s not fair. Fucks with my head."
"Is that so?"
"Uh-huh. Can't be held responsible for anything I say."
“Is it helping, though?”
“...yes.”
“Then shut up and breathe.”
“‘Kay.”
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
As it turned out, that last, painful spasm signaled the end of it. Minutes rolled away, and when it became clear that the worst was over, Vi blearily tilted her head and reached across to poke Caitlyn’s leg.
“Think I’m good now,” she said.
“Mm,” came the soft reply, “Should we wait a bit to make sure?”
Vi was ready to say no, nah, it’s fine, let’s just go, but then Caitlyn started tracing her tattoos down into her collar. The world fuzzed a little and she slumped again, half into the brick, half into Caitlyn’s side.
“Yeah. Okay. Smart.”
She wasn’t slurring, but she was close.
A restrained chuckle floated up beside her. She both heard it and felt it as Caitlyn tried to keep it in.
Vi squinted up at her, suspicious. “What?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“Uh, why?”
“Because. This time, I’m absolutely certain you’d hate it if I did.”
"But—"
Caitlyn's eyes dropped to meet hers, bright with something playful. Vi shut up. Or rather, the unexpected run of a hand through her hair shut her up. It felt nice. More than nice, but…
Vi blinked as the buzz cleared. She wrinkled her nose accusingly as Caitlyn's smirk came into focus.
"Oh, you're just doing shit now!" she flushed.
"What do you mean?"
Caitlyn knew exactly what she meant and proved it by doing the same damn thing again. Her smile grew wider as Vi faded out-and-in a second time.
Vi sputtered. "You can't…are you…you can't just weaponize this!"
Caitlyn had the good grace to look sympathetic. "I already may have, I'm afraid. But don't worry, I promise to only abuse it a little."
Vi felt a twinge.
…hm.
Mm.
That…
She wasn't sure how she felt about that. Her flush deepened into something more unnerving. She tried to pull away.
"Okay." She stumbled. "Alright. That…this is—"
A hand caught her wrist.
"Wait," Caitlyn said, laughing, "I'm sorry. Stay here. I would never. I'm just teasing you."
Vi bristled. "Yeah! You and everyone else, today, apparently! God. Let's—can we just—?" She gestured up at the wall and pulled again. The hand on her wrist tightened, holding her more urgently. She turned back.
Caitlyn sobered. "Vi, wait. Listen. Please."
"What?!"
“Just…come here.” Caitlyn tugged at her, drawing her back towards the wall. Grumbling, Vi slouched her shoulder against the brick and stared at the ground, ears burning. Moving a hand to her shoulder, Caitlyn stepped closer. Her voice fell into a hush as she spoke, whispering as though there might be someone to overhear. She ran a quick touch along Vi’s jaw to get her to glance up.
"You've been all over the place this morning," she said, blue eyes serious.
Vi winced.
That obvious, huh?
Her gaze darted away and then back.
"Okay. So?"
"So?” Caitlyn’s brow knitted together. “So, this is the first time I've seen you anywhere near relaxed. Right here. After throwing up a half dozen times in this horrible alley."
Oh.
"Look," she went on, "Since I clearly can't talk you out of this, it would at least make me feel better to know you're going out there today with some semblance of a level head. Or as level as can be, given…you know…everything. And this," she batted lightly at a stray tuft of red hair, "It does. It seems to help. Am I wrong?"
Vi blew air out of her mouth and looked at her boots. Her shoulders dropped. "No."
"Okay. There, then. That's all.” Another quick touch, there and gone. “That's why. Alright?"
"Yeah. Okay." Vi kept her mouth open to say something else, drawing another breath, but it all left her in a groan when she looked up and saw the expression on Caitlyn’s face.
“Caitlyn," she heaved, "no.”
Instead of we should go back, the plaintive look pinching the enforcer around the eyes now said, I wish you wouldn’t go.
Which was, of course, way worse.
“I didn’t say anything," Caitlyn stressed.
Vi shook her head. “You didn't have to. Your face is fucking loud.” She rubbed the side of her hand against her chin and sighed. “Word of advice, cupcake. Never play cards."
Caitlyn stared at her, frowning. Then, reluctantly, she accepted the change in subject.
"That's three words,” she said slowly, “and I don't even like cards."
Vi glanced toward her, grateful. "Well…good, that—"
"I like darts."
Emphatic.
Vi rolled her head against the brick to stare at Caitlyn full-on. Quirking an eyebrow, she looked the enforcer up and down. She sucked a tooth.
"Of course you do," she drawled. "Well, maybe we can find a place sometime and I can show you a few moves."
Ideal worlds.
Caitlyn peeled back Vi's layers with a once-over of her own. "And why do you assume it will be you showing me moves?"
Vi lifted a shoulder. "I was raised in a bar."
"And I was raised with unlimited resources by a sharpshooter and a surgeon. What's the point you think you're making?"
"I'm good at darts."
"I'm better."
"Wanna bet?"
"Sure. But you don't. I'd take you for everything you're worth."
Not bragging. Just stating facts.
Vi's lip curled. "Like you even need the money."
"You're right, I don't. But I'd take yours anyway just to spite you. Maybe use it to tip the bartender or something."
Caitlyn fixed her with a whip-quick smile and it occurred to Vi suddenly that this might be what she missed the most when it all fell apart. Just the conversations. The company. She'd never sparred this way before. It felt nice to be challenged without having to worry about stray fists.
She wished she had the mind to commit it all to memory.
Probably better that I don’t, though.
Caitlyn began talking to her again. Reaching over, she smoothed Vi's ruffled hair, twining it and arranging it back into some sort of order. It was a very her thing to do. It was just gonna get fucked up again. Why fix it?
"Anyway," she was saying, "now that you've finished retching, are you going to tell me how to do this so I don't fall and break my neck?" She nodded toward the wall.
Thankful for the distraction, Vi straightened up.
"Right. Yep. Good point." She groaned and dragged a hand down her abdomen, kneading strained muscles. "Fuck, that was a workout."
"Mm-hm, I'll bet it was. Very healthy."
Vi let that one slide. Hooking her thumbs into her shirt, she reset the canvas around her shoulders.
"Thanks for keeping watch," she said.
"Of course."
"And…stay like that."
"Like what?"
Vi gestured at her face. "Like that. Focused. Down here, but…all the time, too. Okay? Not just—because, I mean, you’re gonna be coming back down here on your own."
"I understand.”
And she seemed to mean it, but…
Vi shifted her weight.
"Right. I know.” She frowned and her eyes darted. “You get it though, right? This place is…and I need you to be—” She pushed back against a stab of agitation. Her frown collapsed into a grimace. Glancing away, she dragged her nails down the front of her shirt as though that would stop the tripping in her chest. "Just—"
Caitlyn stopped her by sliding a hand along her cheek, turning her head.
She looked at her steadily. "Vi. I know. I know. I remember. I'll be careful. Promise."
Slowly, the agitation abated. Vi swallowed.
"And now that I’ve said that,” Caitlyn turned and looked up, her hand falling away, “here I go, climbing untethered up the side of this building."
"Yeah." Vi's shoulders relaxed. "Okay."
Blue eyes turned to stare at her.
Vi stared back. “What?”
Caitlyn shook her head and smiled. “It's amazing to me what does and doesn’t bother you."
Vi scrunched her face. “Why would this bother me? I’ll spot you. But after the first twenty feet, it’s sort of do-or-don’t. I’ll break your fall if I have to, but…won’t be pretty. Try and bail out before then, if you think you’re gonna need to.”
Caitlyn remained amused, but she was listening. "Alright. Anything else?"
"Tons of stuff. But mostly just use your legs, not your arms. Trust your feet. Don't overgrip."
"Overgrip?"
"Right. Don't squeeze too hard on what you're holding. You'll wear out your forearms. You're gonna do that anyway, but it won't happen as fast if you don't overgrip."
“Right.”
"Last thing?"
"Hm?"
"Don't look down."
"Okay."
"That's it for now. Just, whenever you're read—"
Caitlyn was already climbing.
Vi blinked. “Uh. Okay. Bye, I guess.”
“See you at the top.”
Vi stood back and watched her go. She already knew Caitlyn could climb. Their first run-in with Silco had proven as much. Back then, though, Vi hadn't had the presence of mind to notice that Caitlyn was good. No qualifiers. Not “good for a topsider,” not “good for a newbie.” She was genuinely strong and fearless and willing, and that was most of what it took to do anything well.
Midway up the wall, there was one awkward move where Vi expected Caitlyn to pause, puzzle, maybe ask for some help. But, no. Instead, she simply used the extra inches Vi didn't have to shift sideways and finish the latter half of the climb using her own route. Like it was nothing.
Good shit.
As Caitlyn topped out, disappearing over the edge of the wall, Vi shook her head. A smile pulled faintly at her mouth. Pride. Relief.
It was always nice to see Caitlyn excel at something that might one day save her life.
A dark-haired head poked back out over the edge to look down at her. Vi let her smile widen and flipped Caitlyn a thumbs-up. The enforcer waved back and then folded her arms along the top of the wall, waiting. Your turn.
Something sparked and fizzed. Vi rolled her shoulders, her wrists, and neck and lunged, jumping for a window ledge. Catching it, she hauled herself over the lip.
That’s all it took.
With a shock of energy, she flashed up the wall three times faster than Caitlyn had, choosing moves that made the climb twice as challenging as it needed to be. She didn't do it to show off. She wasn't trying to be an ass. She did it because she could. Because she needed to. With every firing of twitch muscle, she was reminded of how desperately she’d missed the simple act of moving, of moving freely. And…
And not doing it alone.
When she neared the top, Vi looked up. Caitlyn set her chin on her hands and smiled down at her. The expression was unfamiliar. It was clean and shining with happy surprise.
They hadn't had many happy surprises since they'd met.
"What?" Vi asked, stopping to perch on a ridge of stringcourse. She draped her arms over the top of the wall.
Blue eyes roamed over her. The smile in them brightened.
"You should see your face," Caitlyn said.
That's when Vi realized that she was the one who had split a grin first. Immediately, a flush of embarrassment burned the expression down to nothing. Caitlyn saw it go. Her face fell, too, though not quite so hard. It landed in a gentle place.
"Sorry," she said. She sounded a little guilty, though her lips were still turned up at their corners.
Vi shook her head. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't be sorry. That…you just caught me off guard, is all."
"I see," Caitlyn murmured, but her tone said, explain?
Vi ran her finger along a groove of mortar. "It’s not a big deal. I just, uh…I got used to keeping certain shit off my face. You know?"
Caitlyn did know. Vi could see by her expression that she understood immediately. But instead of pressing into hard truths about prison, she put her chin in her hand and nodded solemnly.
"Mmhm," she hummed, eyes glittering, "All that card playing, I expect?"
A ghost of a smile rose out of the ashes.
"Yeah," Vi said, "Something like that." She pulled an arm up and set her jaw against it, letting the other dangle on Caitlyn's side of the wall. "What did you think of the climb? How do you feel?"
Caitlyn snorted and looked down at her palms. "I feel like I'm going to be sore tomorrow."
Vi reached over and caught her hand, turning it, noting how the wall’s rough edges and grit had bitten into uncalloused skin. She nodded, wincing. "Yeah. Probably. It’ll feel like a burn." She let go. "But did you…?"
Caitlyn glanced at her.
"Oh! Right." She smiled. "Yes, of course. Don't worry. I felt safe." Her attention went back to her hands. She squeezed a fingertip, wrinkling her nose. "It was very manageable. Far easier than I expected, really."
Stating facts.
Vi's lip twitched. Caitlyn did this a lot, she realized. Bragged without bragging. Blurted things out. Kept things straightforward. She didn't dislike it.
"Okay, hotshot." She flicked a bit of gravel onto the roof. "Take a few minutes, anyway, before we go back down."
Caitlyn quit picking at her skin and looked at her, confused. "Back down?"
"Yeah. Climbing down is always tougher than climbing up. I need to make sure you're good on that, too, before I head out."
At the words 'head out,' Caitlyn's expression slipped into neutral again, but she nodded.
“You could have warned me that I’d need to do this twice,” she griped.
Vi grinned. “What? You gassed already?”
“Yes, a little,” Caitlyn shot back, unashamed. “It’s not like I do this all the time like you do.”
The smile on Vi’s face cut a little deeper, spreading lazily. She propped her head up in her hand. “Huh. And you think I’ve been doing this on the regular?”
Caitlyn scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Well, yes, obviously, you—”
She froze. With a short gasp, she tightened one hand around the other. The blood drained from her face as she turned.
Vi had never seen anyone in a non-life-threatening situation look so completely and utterly horrified.
“Oh,” Caitlyn breathed, “Oh, shit. Shit. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think—”
“Uh-huh.” Vi flashed a canine. “Rare for you.”
Caitlyn's eyes widened. “Vi, I—shit—”
Vi was about to laugh, which was rare for her, but then she saw those blue eyes fill with tears. She lifted her head off her hand in alarm.
Oh. Crap.
“Wait…”
“—god, I can’t believe I— ”
“Hey. Wait.”
“I—”
“Caitlyn.”
“What?!”
Vi reached out to lay the back of her hand on her arm. “Relax. It’s fine. I’m just messing with you.” She waved loosely at her own face, pointing out the smile there. She would have figured it was obvious, but…“I’m just messing with you."
Caitlyn frowned. Her brow pressed together over searching eyes as she processed. She swallowed down the crack in her voice. “Oh. Well. Then you’re doing a fine job of it, aren’t you? Because now I certainly feel like a mess.”
She sounded upset.
Too upset.
Vi turned her hand over, squeezing her arm. “What?” she said gently, “You can dish it out but you can’t take it? You’ve been screwing with me all morning.”
Still trying to keep things light.
“No.” A shake of the head. “No, that’s not it. You know I like our—this.” Caitlyn gestured between them. “Poke all the fun you want, but…let’s not joke about that, alright?”
Vi pulled her hand back, frowning. “‘That.' You mean Stillwater?”
“Right.”
A sourceless unease bled down into Vi’s gut.
“Okay…” she said slowly, “but—”
“Please, Vi. Just…humor me. Will you?”
Vi looked at her. The eyes that stared back out of that angular face lacked their normal focus. They were filled with something raw. It resembled affection, but Vi was pretty sure affection wasn’t supposed to look so…what? Sad?
“Yeah,” she swallowed, “Yeah, okay. Humor you. I’m trying, here.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
Scripted words. They were both speaking distantly over some brittle, icy thing that hung between them. It felt like exposure, but Vi had no idea what it was Caitlyn thought she knew. She didn’t think she wanted to. And she definitely didn’t need one more thing to worry about, so—
“I’m good at this because I grew up doing it,” she blurted.
It came out a little stiff. A little loud.
She didn’t care.
Caitlyn blinked, her expression clearing. She seemed equally as ready to talk about anything else.
“The climbing?” she asked.
“Yeah. And the running. Roof-hopping. All that. Actually, I was worried I might have lost some of it while I was, uh…you know.”
“There.”
“Right. 'There.'” Vi shook her head. “Anyway, that first time? After you brought me back? It wasn’t just you I was testing.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Yeah. And, hey.” Vi touched her leg. “You did fine, then, too, by the way. Just like today. Passed with flying colors.”
Caitlyn let out a stuttering chuckle, dashing half-dried tears out of her eyes.
“I nearly died, like, eight times,” she said.
“Yeah. But you didn’t, though. Didn’t even break anything. So,” Vi mimed a check, “Top marks.”
“I suppose,” Caitlyn sniffed. She seemed calmer. Back to herself. There was color in her face again. “Did you pass?”
“What?”
“Your own test. Did you…lose any of it, while you were…?”
“Oh.” Vi settled onto the brick again, her head on her arm. “Yeah, I passed. I’ve lost some speed. Traded it for power, though, so it’s really a wash.”
Caitlyn nodded thoughtfully. She glanced down. “Not that I have any basis for comparison, but…you’re particularly good at all this, aren’t you? Compared to other people.”
Vi thought about it. “Maybe...I don’t really know.”
It was true. She didn’t have much basis for comparison, either.
Caitlyn seemed unconcerned. It was ultimately beside her point.
“Well,” she said, “You’re amazing to watch, anyway. Best I’ve ever seen.”
Her tone was light again. Playful.
A smirk flickered onto Vi’s face. “I’m the only one you’ve ever seen."
“It’s the truth, then, isn’t it?”
The smirk settled into something more lasting.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
Notes:
I dunno, I just think they're cute.
One more soft chapter before shit hits the fan.
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Two gentle requests of commenters:
Kindly do not mention/reference other fics in the comments beneath my works.
Also, please DO NOT reference situations in which CaitVi harm each other in the comments beneath my work.
Please respect these boundaries. They are related to maintaining reader (and author) safety and comfort.
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[formatting/grammar review completed as of 11-28-2023]
Chapter 9
Summary:
More "Piltover's Finest Feelings Hour." Truly, they love each other.
If you need some comfort, there is now a companion piece as a part of this series called "Midnight Oil." All tenderness. Non-sexual intimacy. Rated G. Find it under my works and keep it on hand for when Chapter 10 is posted. I will be sharing a new chapter release date schedule here in the next week. You can follow me on Twitter @OxenfreeAO3 for updates.
I hope you enjoy this chapter of "Saltwater."
Chap 9 is rated T.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Comfortable.
It was a tired word for warm silences, but Vi couldn’t think of anything better to describe the mellow quiet that rolled in to submerge them. The lull muted things for a while, dulling the world’s chaos and giving them both a chance to catch their breath.
The feeling was rare enough that Vi forgot to track the flow of time.
It was Caitlyn who brought them back to the surface. Sighing into the stillness, she reached over and ran her fingers slowly through shorn hair. Vi’s vision dispersed into a hive of gold sparks before clearing again. She looked over, wary, but instead of a smirk or teasing eyes, she found only an apology on Caitlyn’s face.
“That one was for me,” the enforcer said quietly, “I just needed it.”
…oh.
“S’okay.”
Smiling, Caitlyn busied herself with fixing the hair she’d just ruffled.
“Also,” she added.
“What?”
“Don't be alarmed.”
Vi raised an eyebrow. “Already freaked out, but okay.”
“Well. Don’t be. It’s just…” A cool palm pushed her bangs aside. “You have a look again."
"Huh," Vi breathed, "Uh…good one or bad one?"
She meant it as a joke, but Caitlyn remained thoughtful, mapping her face.
"A good one." Pulling her hand away, she tilted her head. "What are you thinking about?"
Vi looked away. Bouncing an arm, she knocked her fist lightly against the wall. Drumming. Considering. Trying to decide whether it was too dangerous a question to answer.
She couldn’t be sure. Thing was, she wasn't thinking. Not really. She was just…there, draped over the wall, feeling shit. But that seemed like a stupid thing to say.
Still. This was Caitlyn, so…she figured she should probably say something.
Fumbling, she risked the only other thing that made any sense. She took a breath.
"I, uh...I like this.”
Blue eyes opened wide. “What?"
The reaction made Vi nervous. She dropped her gaze to gravel and ash. Words failed when she tried to explain, so she closed her mouth, nudging her tongue into the empty space between her teeth.
She felt a touch on her shoulder.
"Sorry.” The words were soft. “You don't have to."
A muscle twitched in Vi’s face. "No, it…it’s fine. It's just complicated."
Caitlyn said nothing, letting silence open up between them.
Vi winced and opened her mouth again. "I shouldn’t have said anything,” she went on, “It's not right, not with how things are, and I don't…I don’t want you to think…” She hesitated, her face sinking into a scowl. “Actually, it might be kinda fucked—"
A hand fell briefly onto her arm. "This is fun, right? You enjoy this."
Vi stopped, staring. Slowly, she nodded.
Caitlyn smiled.
"I can tell,” she said, “It's alright. I do, too. And it's nice to forget for a while, isn't it? Like it’s easy to think we could be doing this just to do it, not because the world is falling apart."
Vi nodded again, quiet. A pillbug trundled into the side of her hand and she cupped her palm around it. Crustaceans. Not bugs. Who had taught her that?
"There's more," Caitlyn guessed.
"Yeah."
"Go on."
"I'm not sure how to put it."
"However you understand it, I think."
However I understand it.
Huh.
"Right. Well.” Vi let her head fall to the side against her arm, facing away. “I guess it's just been a while since…” She squinted into the smog, trying to put the thought together. "I mean…it’s not like I had any friends in Stillwater."
Caitlyn was silent.
Then, all at once, she pitched forward.
" ...oh."
Immediately, Vi felt the cold sweep of regret. She glanced over and flinched.
"Don't. With that." She waved at Caitlyn's expression. "I'm not looking for—"
"It's not pity. Believe me. I wouldn't dare."
Vi unwound a little. "Okay."
She looked back towards her pillbug. It was rolled up into a tiny, armored ball. Startled, she realized. Her fault. With a pang, she backed her hand away until it uncurled.
Caitlyn watched her quietly. She didn’t move for a long time. A long time. When she finally did, it was to lean back, slowly, and seek eye contact.
“Hey.”
Vi glanced over.
Caitlyn looked solemn. "I'm honored, you know. To be your friend."
A rash of heat flared along Vi’s back. She pulled a face and looked away. "Okay, well… that's a bit much."
"No. It isn't."
Vi shut her eyes, exhaled, and opened them again.
For fuck's sake.
So goddamn sincere.
Her insides twisted.
But of course, she is.
She doesn't know what I did.
Vi's throat began to ache. She dropped her head to the side again, scraping the burn out of her eyes with her arm. Tension banded around her ribs.
"Fuck, I wish things were different," she breathed.
—and froze.
Her eyes went wide and she snapped her mouth shut.
She hadn't meant to say that out loud. Not in a million-fucking-years, she hadn’t. Her lungs seized and muscles tightened between her shoulders, bracing.
Caitlyn shifted, turning towards her. Her gaze felt tangible, like always. She dropped her hands towards her waist, holding her own fingers.
"Different how, Vi?"
Vi clenched a fist.
Shit.
Those words pressed, gently, but knowingly. Suspecting something. Something other than the obvious answers of war, dead loved ones, chembarons, and terrorism—because of course they both wished those things were different.
She shook her head.
You're talking too much.
Shut.
Up.
She couldn't afford to be this honest. Not yet. Not until—
—until when?
But then Caitlyn, ever the mind reader:
"You're going to have to tell me, you know. At some point."
Vi felt sick.
Yeah. Yeah, I know.
She lifted her hand and let the little pillbug go about its business.
“You ready to go again?” she asked.
“...sure.”
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Caitlyn climbed back down almost as confidently as she climbed up, but her second run to the top wore her out. Vi reached down and grabbed her hand, hauling her up the last few feet of the wall.
"God," Caitlyn groaned, looking down at her straining arms, "How can I be so tired and not be out of breath?"
Vi shrugged. "Different muscle sets."
"I suppose."
Blue eyes came up to give her a once-over that was a little too purposeful. They stopped to catch her gaze.
"Are you aware of how easy you make that look?"
Vi brushed grit out of her wraps. "Yes."
She could state facts, too.
Caitlyn smiled. "Oh. Well. Good."
"You too, though."
"What?"
Vi leaned over to survey the route they'd just climbed. "Just…if you practiced? You could be really good at this. If you wanted."
"Hm. Well, I'm going to have to be, aren't I? If I'm going to keep up with you."
Vi felt a stab and turned, but Caitlyn's focus was elsewhere. She flexed her hands, testing raw skin. Then, her eyes came up, wide and eager.
"Would you ever like to learn how to shoot?" she blurted.
Vi was startled by the question. "Oh. Uh."
She shifted her weight and thought about it. Didn't seem like a terrible idea—
—until she felt the remembered zip of a bullet whizzing by her ear. Bursting wood. Splinters flying. The stink of gunpowder. She wrinkled her nose.
"I dunno," she said, "Maybe we just stick to darts."
Caitlyn was understanding. "Whatever you like."
Vi jabbed her thumb back toward the cityscape and cleared her throat. "You, uh, you ready for me to give you the rundown?"
With one more flex of her fingers, Caitlyn brushed her hands against her trousers and nodded. "Sure."
Vi stuffed her own hands in her pockets and turned with a tip of her chin, leading Caitlyn across the roof to the far side, facing south. Once there, she hopped up onto the safety wall and sank into a crouch, her elbows on her knees. Caitlyn joined her, standing close, pressing her palms into the brick. Together, they looked out into the hazy green clutter of the fissures.
“Okay, so.” Vi tilted her head, pushing her thumb into the heel of her hand. “None of this is too hard to remember on its own, but there’s a lot of stuff to cover, so…stop me if you need to—”
She heard a flurry of unzipping and rustling beside her. Looking over, she saw Caitlyn slap down a sheaf of paper onto the brick and pull out a pencil from inside her jacket. Standing poised over the blank pages, she turned to stare at Vi expectantly.
Vi’s mouth twitched. “You just walk around with note paper in your pocket?”
“Almost always.”
“...of course you do.”
Caitlyn narrowed her eyes, but her lip turned upwards. “What part of ‘I’m an investigator’ do you not understand? A keystone of proper detective work is taking detailed and contemporaneous notes.”
“Yeah, yeah. I think you just like writing stuff down.”
“I do, actually. And I’ll thank you not to mock the habit since it’s the whole reason we even know each other in the first place. Do you think I just found you by accident?”
“No. You found me because I fed that goon his own lunch tray.”
“...good lord.”
Vi grinned.
Caitlyn shook her head, both aghast and amused. She jabbed her papers with her pencil point. “If you’re finished being gruesome, shall we get on with it?”
“Sure,” Vi chuckled.
Shuffling closer to Caitlyn, she sat back on her heels to explain. As she opened her mouth, though, she was struck by a stray thought. “Really quick, though, before I—um. There’s some stuff you can’t write down. Just in case, uh…”
“What?”
Vi faltered. She squeezed into her wrist.
“Well, you know… ‘just in case.’ Like if you were to, uh…y’know, lose the papers or something. Can’t risk the wrong people finding out about Ekko’s place.”
Understanding crept onto Caitlyn’s face. She nodded.
“Right,” she said slowly, “Makes complete sense. I’ll just hold those bits in my head, then.”
“You sure you’re good with that?”
“Of course. I’m a forgiver. Not a forgetter. And don’t worry,” she added gently, “I won’t ‘lose the papers.’”
Vi let up on her wrist a little.
“Okay.” She shifted her weight. “Cool. Well, then, uh…I guess the first thing we should do is go over Sump Sign.”
Caitlyn tilted her head. “Sump Sign?”
“Yeah. Here, it’s not hard. Let me…”
They huddled together over the papers and Vi began to explain, running through the essentials of underground survival. Caitlyn listened attentively, sometimes taking notes, sometimes passing the pencil to Vi so she could compile a key of sump symbols or list out the coded meaning behind different colored porch lights.
Then they spoke in low tones about the safest routes to the Firelight sanctuary with Caitlyn repeating back the directions several times, committing them to memory. When Vi was convinced she had it memorized, she wrote down the names of businesses that might be safe for Caitlyn to duck into in a pinch, provided they were still there. She pointed out several times that some of her information might be outdated.
“Still, from what I’ve seen, not much has changed down here. All that drug money paid for some flashy upgrades, but the bones are the same. Nothing put up, nothing knocked down. You tell me, though. Was there a lot of construction down here with the hextech boom? Or—uh.”
She winced at her choice of words, but Caitlyn only shook her head with a pained look of her own.
“No…” she admitted, “I don’t think hextech has done much good for the Undercity at all, if I’m honest. It was supposed to change things for the better, but…I don’t know. In the past few years, all I’ve seen are some, ah…questionable applications of the technology.”
Vi felt her scar hook on a half-grin.
“What?” she asked, “You mean like the gauntlets they said were for ‘mining the fissures’ but are probably, definitely, abso-fucking-lutely weapons of war?”
Caitlyn scoffed and rolled her eyes.
“Well, sure, when worn by the right person, maybe. But no.” She shook her head. “I was talking more about some things I saw brought by headquarters.”
"Headquarters?"
"Right."
“Oh.”
A skittering sensation crackled along Vi's nerves.
Caitlyn carried on, lost in explanation:
"It's not standard equipment, mind you. Just proposals and prototypes. These technicians, they'd come around with designs for things they said would help if shimmer was ever used to attack Topside. They wanted the sheriff's support. You know, to justify funding. Research and development. That sort of thing."
The skittering feeling grew sharper. It lanced outwards, splitting and needling, numbing Vi's insides with a flat, blank rage.
"Right,” she breathed, “‘Research.’ Gotta know if it works."
Her mouth tasted like ozone.
"Well, most of the ideas were shot down out of hand, actually, which—good—but there were a few that the top brass seemed to—" She stopped. "Hang on. What’s wrong?”
Vi looked up. “Huh?”
Caitlyn’s face was hard with alarm, her eyes soft with concern. “Why are you doing that?”
“What?”
“With your hand. Stop that.”
Vi looked down and saw that she'd bent her left hand halfway around itself, her right thumb grinding so hard into her palm that her wrists strained, shaking.
“Oh.”
She forced herself to release some of the pressure. Color rolled back into her fingers. She stared at them.
Caitlyn stared at her.
"...what—"
Vi’s gaze sliced upward. Their eyes met and she saw a flinch at the connection.
She spoke without affect. “Those prototypes," she said slowly, "Crowd control stuff, right?”
Caitlyn paled at her tone. The concern in her eyes sank into something more disturbed. It took her a moment to respond.
“I...yes.” She swallowed. “I think so, but—"
Vi closed her eyes and rolled her shoulder.
"—how did you know that?”
“Lucky guess," she said bitterly. She opened her eyes again. "Give me the pencil."
"I—what?"
Vi didn't ask twice. She reached over and took the pencil out of Caitlyn's hands, dragging over the stack of loose-leaf and flipping to a clean sheet.
"What are you—"
"You need a map. I don't feel like writing out directions."
"Oh...alright."
Vi turned away, pointing herself towards the city. Sitting cross-legged on the wall top, she hunched over to her paper and started sketching outlines. The pencil pushed hard into the page. Harder than she meant it to, and she displaced some of the pressure into her jaw.
Caitlyn stayed at her side, braced quietly against the brick, sparing her the usual drill-bit gaze. She didn’t ask what was wrong, but Vi could feel the question rolling off of her like body heat. Clenching and unclenching her teeth, she took a breath.
"I'm angry," she ground out.
Caitlyn shifted. "I can tell. With me?"
"No."
“But it was something I said.”
“Yes.”
"Mm.” A thoughtful sound. “Would you…would you like some space, or…?"
"You gonna go somewhere else if I say yes?"
Caitlyn hesitated. She hovered, tilting her head and squinting. Confused.
"Well…yes,” she said, “wouldn't that be the—?"
"Then, no."
"Oh, uh…” More confusion. “Okay."
Settling back, Caitlyn leaned her hip into the wall, angling her body half towards Vi, half towards the city. Looking out into the smog, she chewed a nail.
"Is it alright if I touch you?" she asked.
Vi dragged four heavy, dark lines along the edges of the paper to frame out the map. She paused, glaring at her work.
"Don't fuck with my hair," she said.
"I won't."
“Then, fine.”
She went back to drawing. Caitlyn leaned aside, one hand braced against the brick, and watched her work for a while. Then, she reached out. Vi paused again as she felt a light touch in the middle of her back.
Caitlyn, tracing her own lines.
"This okay?" she asked.
The pencil started scratching again. "Yes."
"Is it helping?"
"Don't know yet."
"Mm."
"...but probably."
Even as she said it, Vi could feel knots begin to unravel between her shoulder blades. The bland, insulating drone of her rage slowly disintegrated, making space for more temperate emotions.
Caitlyn kept close and quiet as the tension ebbed. Her attention grew increasingly rapt as she watched Vi use angles and whorls to render out a high-contrast map of the Lanes.
She inclined her head. "Can I ask you a personal question?"
Vi sighed, pushing her backbone into Caitlyn’s hand. "You're always asking personal questions.”
"Well…can I ask another?"
Oh my god.
You’re lucky I fucking like you.
"Sure. Why not?"
“Okay.” Caitlyn paused. “Who designed your tattoos?"
Vi froze. Her pencil point cut into the paper. She didn’t look up.
"Why?"
"Just curious."
"Mm."
She still didn’t move.
Caitlyn stroked a gentle line down her back. "You don't have to say.”
"I know,” Vi grumbled. Slowly, she scraped a few tight squares into the map, rendering out a half-dozen of them. Then, without knowing why, she huffed and said, “I did.”
"Mm.” A nod. “I wondered—"
"Obviously."
"—because of what you're doing," Caitlyn clarified.
Vi glanced over at her. "What, the map?"
"Yes."
"How did you go from map to tattoos?"
Caitlyn leaned in and nodded at the paper. "Your lines," she said, "I've never seen anyone draw so precisely. Not without a straight edge, anyway. And something about the style, too, it’s…"
She trailed off, head quirking. Her eyes jumped between inked skin, paper, and then back to skin. Vi might have flushed, but for once, Caitlyn’s gaze wasn’t heavy. It was…curious. Fascinated. Almost clinical. Like she was inspecting an interesting bug or unusual stone, not a swathe of bold, black prison tattoos.
Frowning, Vi rotated the map in front of her. As she began shading, she shook her head, sighing.
Wire stripper, meet copper.
"I just drew the templates,” she mumbled, “An artist did the ink. Or, most of it."
"Most of it?"
"Yeah. He let me use the gun a few times. I filled in some stuff." She tapped the gear on her neck. "Majority of the lines are his, though."
Her voice dragged with memory.
Caitlyn made a pensive sound and fell silent, her fingers rolling absently along the grooves in Vi’s spine.
"Is this a sensitive subject?" she asked after a while.
"Yes."
"Sorry."
Vi made a face and then scanned the horizon, orienting herself. With blunt strokes, she sketched a compass into the corner of the page.
"You shouldn't say sorry if you haven't done anything wrong,” she muttered.
Caitlyn poked a knob of vertebrae. "You apologize all of the time."
Vi said nothing. Leaning down, she worked more graphite into the paper.
Caitlyn shrugged off the lack of response.
"Well," she said, "I like your tattoos. I don't know if that's the right thing to say since I don't know what they mean, but really, they’re very striking."
"The artist deserves the credit."
"I know she does.”
Vi’s grip went white-knuckled around her pencil. She began to wonder if a person could blush so much they fucking blistered.
"Anything else?" she asked, terse, but not with irritation.
Caitlyn seemed unbothered. She ran a hand up Vi’s back and shook her head. "No. That's all. And thank you."
"For what?"
"For telling me about them."
Vi cleared her throat. "Right. Sure.” Hanging the pencil out of her mouth, she passed the map across to Caitlyn. “Look this over. Tell me if it doesn’t make sense."
Taking the paper, Caitlyn smoothed it taut along its bottom edge and ducked her head to study it. Her eyes darted from point to point on the page, her forehead and mouth notching downward in frustration. Vi reset her weight over her boots, rolling the pencil between her fingers.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
Caitlyn shook her head, her eyes never leaving the map. Her teeth dragged over her bottom lip.
"No,” she muttered, “I just wish I'd had this before.”
She sounded irritated.
Vi stopped spinning the pencil. "'Before?’ Before, when?"
Caitlyn brought the map closer to her face. "For my investigation."
Ah. Vi nodded. “For your…thing.”
“My ‘thing?'”
“Yeah. Your conspiracy board."
Caitlyn’s lip snapped out from under her teeth. Her gaze cut up and over, the map fluttering as she lowered it sharply from her face.
"It's not a conspiracy board.”
Vi paused and raised her eyebrows. She tapped the pencil eraser against her chin.
“Uh…it definitely is," she countered, “I had a long time to stare at it.”
There was more fluttering as Caitlyn gestured down toward the gravel, map in hand. “No, it can't be, by definition. There's no board, it was all just…laid out on the floor."
Vi’s lip twitched. "Okay, so…what? Your conspiracy pile, then?"
Caitlyn dipped a shoulder, turning to look at her more directly. Her eyes narrowed, staring, and then rolled back with a huff. Right before they sliced away, Vi caught mischief glinting in the blue.
"Okay, fine, Vi. Yes.” Caitlyn turned back to the paper in her hands. “I would very much have loved this beautifully drawn map for my ‘conspiracy pile.'"
…dammit.
Vi wrinkled her nose and scratched at the fresh heat piquing her shoulders.
Will this shit ever stop?
"It's not ‘beautiful,’” she grumbled, “it's just accurate."
"Mm. Well. As you might imagine, I'm quite fond of accuracy. It's beautiful in its own way.” Caitlyn tilted the page to catch more light. “And you did all of this from memory…?"
Vi scratched harder at her shoulder. "Yeah. I guess."
Caitlyn was getting lost in the drawing again. "Incredible."
"Nah, not really,” Vi shrugged, “Always had to know where I was and where to run in case I needed to get away from enforcers."
"Mm." Caitlyn nodded absently, squinting at lines. "Or back to one, in this case."
Vi tucked her chin at that, but before she could think of something to say in response, a faint, resinous sound began to peal in the distance. She tilted and ear and went rigid.
"Shit," she hissed, "do you hear that?"
Caitlyn looked in the direction of Piltover. "What? The bells?"
"Yeah. Is it…" Vi listened, holding out a hand, counting. Her alarm grew with each toll. "Fuck, is it ten o'clock?!"
"Seems that way."
Vi looked around as if the lost minutes might be scattered across the rooftop. "How long have we been up here?!"
"Here specifically? No idea. But, as long as I could keep you, to be honest."
Making a face, Vi turned and dropped down onto the gravel beside her, boots crunching on loose stones. She grabbed the notes off the wall and the map out of Caitlyn’s hands and rifled through them, her eyes scanning for omissions. Her pencil scratched into the paper as she tweaked a series of symbols to make them crisper on the page.
"I gotta go," she murmured. Her eyes snapped up to plot routes along the skyline.
Caitlyn tightened beside her, letting out a short, sharp sound.
Vi glanced over, distracted. Her gaze doubled back when she saw that Caitlyn wasn’t looking at her. Instead, she was staring hard into some non-space between them, arms crossed, her fingers biting into her upper arms. Her lip was caught under her teeth again, the skin going white with the pressure.
Shifting her weight, Vi turned back to the papers, clearing her throat around the tang of guilt that sat on the back of her tongue. She underlined one important place name and circled another.
“It’ll be fine,” she said, “It’s just an errand.”
A hand dropped abruptly onto hers, pinning it to the loose leaf.
“It absolutely isn’t.”
Vi looked up, startled. Her gaze was lost for a moment when it didn’t immediately encounter blue. Caitlyn was still glaring down at nothing.
“I saw your face when I asked you for this,” the enforcer continued. Her eyes snapped up. Their color was searing, demanding honesty. “It’s risky. Isn’t it?”
Vi winced. She pressed her nail into the side of the pencil. “It…yeah. A little.”
When Caitlyn’s expression darkened, Vi looked away, gesturing loosely towards the southwest. “Mail terminals are, uh…well, there aren’t that many of them down here, and they tend to be right in the middle of everything. Which makes sense, I guess. Lots of people around, but...that’s not…that’s not great when everyone is…”
“What? High on rebellion?”
Vi pulled a face. An electric flicker of memory dragged her back through a morning of bloody chaos and pulsing, shimmed-up monsters. Her mouth went dry as she ran her fingers along the half-healed cut on her scalp.
“High on something,” she muttered, “that's for damn sure.”
Caitlyn made a noise that couldn't be properly categorized. Turning, she released Vi’s hand and curved away, leaning against the wall. She pressed her thumb along the bridge of her nose, rubbing.
Vi fidgeted with the pencil. "What?"
A tendon pulled taut in Caitlyn's jaw. It only released after a long, measured breath. Not a sigh. Something else. Something controlled.
"Do you have any idea," she began, still massaging her brow, "how much I loathe myself for asking you to do this?"
Vi looked at her sidelong, watching as she smoothed her hair, crossed her arms, and looked at the ground.
"I wasn’t thinking clearly yesterday,” Caitlyn told her, “I...wasn't myself. Fuck." A rare curse for her. "I should have known better."
Ah.
"Caitlyn."
Blue eyes found hers. She tried to hold their gaze but couldn't. Her face twitched.
“I, uh.” She swallowed. “I would’ve found a reason."
There was silence for a moment before Caitlyn turned the word over slowly, as though testing it in mind and mouth.
"A ‘reason’…" she said, "A reason to what?"
Vi didn't answer. She tapped the pencil against the side of her hand, staring out into the city.
"...to Run?" Caitlyn asked.
The pencil flipped out of Vi's fingers. She barely caught it.
"No,” she insisted, then stuttered with hesitation, “Or…maybe. I dunno. Sort of. But not…not like that. Not like how you’re thinking."
She didn't know how to explain the difference between running and Running, leaving and Leaving. All she knew was that she hated the look that settled on Caitlyn's face, hated herself for being the one to put it there. It made her chest hurt.
"Look,” she said, “you…it's okay. You didn't—” She stopped, shook her head, and tried again. “Even if it wasn't this important, even if it wasn't about getting you home, I…I would have found something. Anything. I just…"
She was tapping again, shifting her weight, wishing she had better words. As she grappled for explanations, something lifted behind her ribs. Something heady. It felt a bit like excitement, but…
Nah.
No, this was more like an itch.
She let out a shaky breath and spun on Caitlyn, wide-eyed.
"I need this.”
Saying it out loud somehow made it three times as true.
Her pulse began to race.
Caitlyn stood very still. She studied her carefully, reading her face, looking her up and down.
Her eyes creased. “You do, don’t you?”
She picked at the seam of her sleeve.
Vi nodded. “Yeah. I do. I can’t…I can’t just sit trapped in a room and—”
They both flinched.
Vi dropped her gaze to the roof. With a grimace, she scraped her nail down the shaft of the pencil, peeling off paint. “I’ve gotta…I just need to—”
“To what?”
The itch needled outward, pressing up through her skin. She dragged her forearm against her shoulder, scratching.
God, I don’t know.
Do something?
Move?
Make this right?
Or—
—no.
She set her teeth.
No, get that shit out of your head. There is no ‘making this right.'
But—
More paint flakes curled away under her nail. A memory slunk in to nip at her. It was old, something from Before. A riddle, maybe, or a puzzle someone had asked her once about ‘halving distances.’ You could get closer and closer but never quite…
She frowned, trying to remember.
She couldn’t.
She shook her head, instead. “Never mind."
She looked up in time to see Caitlyn's expression turn downward, melding resignation with understanding. The enforcer chewed her lip, her eyes searching Vi’s face as though something besides her own name might be written there. After a long moment, her shoulders dropped.
“You’d go anyway," she murmured, half to herself. "You’d go like you did this morning. No matter what I said. Or what I did."
Questions and not-questions. Vi didn't say anything. She brushed paint chips off her shirt.
Caitlyn sighed. “Right. Well." She squeezed her upper arms and spared a quick glare at the sky. "I’m not putting myself in that position again, so," she looked over, "just don’t be stupid. Alright?”
Instant relief.
It whipped through Vi like a snapped cable. Her face spasmed, threatening a smile. “No promises."
Caitlyn was not amused. “Vi.”
“Fine. Okay.” Vi turned away. Heat bloomed under her skin, frenetic and eager. “How about some promises? ‘I solemnly swear not to be stupid on purpose.’ Is that what you want to hear?”
“It’ll have to do, I suppose.”
Vi ignored the grudging tone. Flipping through her notes one last time, she made a few last-minute additions and then shuffled the papers into a stack. Rolling them around the pencil, she turned and held the bundle out to Caitlyn.
The enforcer didn’t take it right away. Instead, she stared at it, her expression sour. The pause was too purposeful to be hesitation, and it took Vi rocking forward over her boots to make a hand drop through the air and snatch the notes from her fist.
Frowning, Caitlyn tightened the roll and zipped it into her jacket’s liner pocket.
“Guess that’s that then,” she said.
“Pretty much.”
The enforcer crossed her arms again.
Sniffing in discomfort, Vi set her lower back against the wall and busied herself with fixing the fit of her boots. She cinched and re-cinched the wrap job around her left calf, scowling. Felt too loose.
Caitlyn remained silent until Vi straightened up.
“So.”
“So, what?”
“So, you’ll be back before dark, then? Before it gets bad?”
Ah.
Nodding, Vi rolled her neck and put up her hood. "That’s the plan.”
“And nothing stupid," Caitlyn stressed.
“Like I said. Not on purpose.”
Vi could tell that those words offered about as much reassurance on the second go-around as they had on the first. She expected more objections, but Caitlyn only huffed and made a face.
"Okay," she said, dropping a shoulder.
"Okay," Vi replied, shrugging one of her own.
They tipped into awkwardness. For a long moment, Vi didn't quite look at Caitlyn, and Caitlyn didn't quite look at her. They only stared into negative space, skirting each other's outlines.
As the seconds wore on, Vi began to tense, winding in on herself until she felt off-center in her own body. She was waiting for something, she realized. The thought made her lurch. Waiting for what, she wasn't sure, but she had suspicions, and those were enough to make her cringe toward the edge of the roof.
Her ears burned.
She cast one last glance in Caitlyn's direction.
Nothing.
Since it seemed the enforcer wasn't planning to say—or do—anything else, Vi swallowed hard and stepped backward. Her eyes darted, pulled by the tangled lines of the cityscape. She twitched, leaning, needing offload energy—
—and escape from whatever the hell wasn't happening between her and Caitlyn on the roof.
She turned and swung a leg up onto the wall.
“Right…well, uh...” Her voice thickened. She reached for the brick. “Guess I’ll see you when I—”
“Ah—excuse you?!"
“Wha—?”
She never got the word out.
Scuffing over gravel, Caitlyn caught her arm and yanked her back, tsking in annoyance. With a gasp, Vi found herself being jerked around into an embrace that nearly staggered her with its closeness. She stiffened, blinking.
“—oh.”
“Psh…‘oh!' ” Caitlyn snorted, as though she thought it was the dumbest fucking thing Vi had ever said. Her eye roll was audible. "Like I'd let you leave without one."
Vi's heart bucked against her sternum. She didn’t know whether to scoff or squirm—or surrender.
She settled for a fidgety combination of all three. Dredging up a chuckle from somewhere, she struggled to rearrange herself in Caitlyn's grasp without trying to leave it.
“I’m just mailing a letter, Cait. It’s not like I’m going to war."
…and that, as it turned out, was the wrong damn thing to say.
Caitlyn’s arms seized around her, squeezing the breath out of her lungs.
Oops.
“Cait—” Vi wheezed, feeling three-kicks-worth of bruises flare along her ribs. She winced, bracing, convinced at that moment Caitlyn was about to ask again, perhaps demand, that she stay.
But—
No.
Instead, the enforcer made an unhappy sound and tucked her chin into Vi’s shoulder, muttering into her shirt, “You could hug me back, you know.”
Vi jolted.
Fuck.
Shit.
“Sorry.”
The rest was automatic.
Once again, Caitlyn had found all the right switches and dials. Vi reached up and wrapped around her, pulling her in, holding on—
Being steady for her in the only way she knew how.
She tried to ignore the sensation of re-knitting that wove through her body as Caitlyn slowly settled against her. This wasn’t for her, she reminded herself. This was for Caitlyn, because Caitlyn had asked—
She heard a muffled sigh.
"You're good at this, too. In case you ever wondered."
Vi's breath caught. Those words broke her and brought her back together three times in an instant. She closed her eyes, struggling for words.
"I have to go," she said quietly.
A hand ran down her back. "I know."
But Vi didn't move. She couldn't. Stitches pulled in her soul when she tried.
It was Caitlyn who let her arms fall away first. She slowly eased a few inches between them and Vi was left standing there with the warmth of their embrace fading off her shoulders. The separation felt like loss and relief.
Free, she realized. Caitlyn was setting her free. As she swung her leg up onto the wall again, however, Vi discovered there were still fingers tangled in the back of her shirt.
Caitlyn tugged on her. “Hey—"
She looked back.
"—be safe.”
Vi rustled up a smile and let it spill slowly across her face. Trying for pirate. Trying for rogue.
“Never.”
Caitlyn rolled her eyes. “Well, fine. Just…come back, at least, will you?”
Vi's grin faded into something more serious. “Yeah. Yeah, I will.”
Of course, I will.
As many times as you—
“Alright.”
And that was that.
With one last, pointed look, Caitlyn stepped back and let her go.
Notes:
Sometimes you have to split the party...even though you never should.
---
"Saltwater" will return on July 17th with Chapter 10.
Thank you so much for all your support/comments/kudos and for calling out the lines you love. I love hearing from each and every one of you. You all mean the world to me. If I haven't replied to your comment on a previous chapter, I promise I will get to it asap.
As a reminder, the "Chekhov's Gun" contest was already won, but you can still feel free to drop guesses in my twt DMs.
---
Two gentle requests of commenters:
Kindly do not mention/reference other fics in the comments beneath my works.
Also, please DO NOT reference situations in which CaitVi harm each other in the comments beneath my work.
Please respect these boundaries. They are related to maintaining reader (and author) safety and comfort.
Chapter 10
Summary:
!!! STOP !!! WARNING !!! BEFORE YOU CONTINUE !!!
THE FOLLOWING IS PART 1 OF THE DARKEST CHAPTER OF SALTWATER!!! IT IS INTENDED FOR ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY.
THE FOLLOWING CWs APPLY:Anxiety - Panic Attacks - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD - Wrongful Imprisonment - Police Brutality - Solitary Confinement - Implied/Referenced Torture - Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms - Vomiting - Emotional/Psychological Abuse - Starvation - Verbal Abuse - Blood and Violence - Serious Injuries - Hallucinations - Nightmares - Sleep Deprivation - Exhaustion - Family Loss - Claustrophobia - Flashbacks - Suicidal Thoughts - Implied/Referenced Sex - Assault - Derogatory Language - Canon-Typical Violence
IF YOU MAY BE TRIGGERED BY ANY OF THESE CWS: DO NOT READ.
IF YOU ARE NOT IN A GOOD PLACE WITH YOUR MENTAL HEALTH: DO. NOT. READ!!!
CHAP 10 IS COMPOSED ALMOST ENTIRELY OF STILLWATER FLASHBACKS. IT CONTAINS DEPICTIONS OF VARIOUS TRAUMAS AND THEIR MENTAL HEALTH IMPACTS (CLEARED THROUGH AN ADULT PSYCH PROFESSIONAL, THOUGH PLEASE UNDERSTAND I AM BY NO MEANS AN EXPERT IN THIS AREA).
PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
[There is now test audio for sections of this chapter, read by the author. Ctrl+F for "+" to navigate to narrated portions. Notes/feedback welcome.]
[To access the audio file now/listen only, click here.]
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Undercity clocktower, 10:17 a.m.]
Vi exploded into the Undercity.
Tearing away from the brothel, she didn’t look back. Didn’t dare. She could feel Caitlyn’s eyes on her, tracking her like crosshairs as she raced to put buildings between them. Blue and sharp, they buzzed lines between her shoulder blades.
Come back, they said.
The “You’d fucking better” was implied.
The thought tripped breakers in her chest. Air left her in a huff. Catching a pipe, she swung out onto a sloping chimney. Mortar crumbled out of the bricks and plinked onto roofing tiles. Her pulse stuttered. She ran faster.
Speed scoured the ghosts out of her bones.
Zaun opened its jagged maw and Vi shot through its teeth. Forcing metallurgy to bend around her, she lensed time into distance, turning minutes into miles.
Metal screamed under her boots as she whipped across a gap and ripped down the slide rail of a fire escape. Wafers of rust peeled off under her hands. Crash, rattle, soot, salt. Her lungs swallowed smog. She could taste the city in her mouth and hear its chaos in the rush and thunder of her blood.
Her body flashed with heat—
—familiarity—
—freedom.
Her insides lightened and lifted. A grin tugged at her mouth.
This shit was Everything. Better than she remembered. The weightlessness at the top of the arc, the soaring plunge of the fall. The kinetic crumple and go of the landing...
Constant momentum.
It felt—
God, it felt so good.
Just like Before.
She bounded off a cistern and it rang like a bell.
How?
How had she survived without this? There were times in Stillwater when she would have traded a week’s worth of food for this feeling.
Acid seared into her muscles, riling her. The burn made her restless for more. More flight, more fall, more fight. More adrenaline.
Rooftop ran out and she plummeted. Gravity dragged her down faster than memories could follow. A geometry of iron and neon rushed up at her. She cut through a green cloud of smog. It was a long way down, and she knew the landing would sting.
She didn’t care.
Something corrugated buckled and sprung underneath her as she struck it, thrusting her forward.
Shit.
T oo fast.
She tucked for the roll but still caught her shoulder in a slide. Gravel tore into her, opening up cuts. It would have been worse if her shirt hadn’t held. Righting herself at a lope, she reached back a hand to feel.
The black canvas hadn't even frayed.
Catching her breath, Vi scrubbed debris out of her skin. Blood smeared down her arm. She mopped at it with a wrapped hand. Just scratches.
Go, go, go.
She kicked into a sprint again, eating up concrete. One rooftop turned into another, turned into pipelines, turned into scaffolding. Bricks, beams, poles, wall. Her mind pushed itself into her limbs. Thought stopped. Memory stopped. Emotion distilled itself into pure sensation.
It was hard to be haunted when every synapse in your head was singularly dedicated to keeping you alive.
She vaulted down into the ribcage of a fire-gutted tenement. Dust and ash exploded around her. Bats screamed past her ears. Go.
She went, risk and its razor edge.
The inside of the tenement was dark, but darkness wasn’t a problem for her. Her pupils yawned as she sprang from joist to joist, plunging towards the thin green light at the end of a blackened hall. The building groaned around her. She launched herself through an empty window frame and out onto a playground of steelworks.
Her smile cut wider.
She landed on a girder. It was a soft landing, but the brace wasn’t as solid as it looked. The whole structure shifted underneath her, rumbling. As she waited for it to settle, she watched a reddened stack of rebar dislodge itself and roll off the edge of a slab.
One by one, the rods disappeared into the darkness below.
She winced.
Crap. I hope those don’t hit anybody—
—clang.
She jerked. The sound cracked against her spine. Wheezing, she stumbled, trying to shake it off.
She went to—
–clang.
—–clang.
Two more flinches. A little stab of panic with each one. Her hands twitched as a crawling sensation needled up her back. She swallowed, her shoulder ticking towards her ear.
Fuck, she thought.
It’s fine. Relax. Just a few pieces of—
–clang—clang.
—clang.
Her teeth slammed shut, sending a pang through her jaw.
—--------clang.
Dammit!
What the hell?
God. Rebar. Just a few pieces of—
It’s fine.
Don’t be so fucking jumpy.
But she wasn’t being jumpy. And it wasn’t just a few pieces. There was a ton of the stuff. Each collision winched a ratchet tighter in her chest. She stood up and tried to ignore it, tried to move forward without twitching.
Tried not to think about what it sounded like.
—clang.
Her body jolted like it wasn't even hers.
Shit.
The rebar kept falling.
One after another, things started to snap. Each crack of metal set off a flashbulb inside her skull.
She heard a clang, she saw bars.
Another clang and there were leering shapes outside those bars.
Another, and there were the black, ugly angles of their clubs or…or whatever less-than-lethal prototype they'd brought down to try out on her.
She shook her head to clear the images. Each one took longer to fade.
Then they didn't.
A tremor started in her legs and worked its way upwards. She realized abruptly she’d spiraled past a point of no return.
No, no, no…
She looked down at her hands. They were shaking, too.
Shit.
Shit.
She knew this feeling.
–clang.
—clang.
–clang.
Fuck. Not now.
Something clawed up behind her, seizing the base of her skull. She felt a surge and choked.
Adrenaline.
More adrenaline.
But this hurt. Dirty. Bad stuff. She’d had bootlegged alcohols that fucked her up less. Groping for breath, she reached out to steady herself but there was nothing. Just air. Her arm swiped through empty space and she staggered. Her stomach rolled over.
Shit, shit, shit.
Don’t.
Don’t think about it.
Think about—
Just lock it up.
Nope. Impossible. ‘It’ wasn’t a thought or a memory. ‘It’ was something else. Something worse. It was faster than her. Faster than everything. She couldn’t outrun it. It was always just there.
–clang—clang.
Fuck, that sound.
Stumbling to the end of the girder, Vi jumped down to the nearest roof. The impact was too much, this time. Her left leg buckled and she dropped, skidding to all fours. She tried to get up. Couldn’t. Kneeling where she fell, she folded over on herself, her arms pulling around her middle and her fingers twisting into her sides. She tried to breathe. Didn’t help. Her lungs shrank with each exhale. The world narrowed.
Stop.
Stop.
A taste like old coins filled her mouth. Her hands ached. Her shoulder rolled back on its own. Nervous shocks lanced along her nerves, tightening her limbs, hissing to every fiber of muscle: get up get up get up get up, get ready get ready get ready get ready—
—they’re coming.
She shivered and rocked forward, wheezing.
No.
Stop.
Her nails ground into her sides.
No one’s coming.
Fuck you, there’s no one.
C’mon. Don’t do this.
I can’t—
I’ve got shit to do.
Her breath hitched.
—and this is awful. It's awful. The worst. It sucks so hard, I don't want to do this. Please. Please don't make me do this. I can't. Not by my—
Not here.
She gulped.
Not here.
But ‘it’ was unrelenting. It chittered along her nerves, seared up her brainstem, filled her head with a hive of stinging words.
—that sound that sound you know what that is get up get up get ready you know what’s coming you know you know you know what comes with that sound it’s the same every time every time every single fucking time—
No.
A breath choked out of her.
No.
Not every time.
Not the last time.
She closed her eyes. Screwed them shut. Groping for something, anything to throw down like a spike strip in front of her racing thoughts, she settled for the only trick that ever helped when shit got this bad.
“Three…” she winced as her throat stuck, “...three-thousand, five-hundred and…and thirty-seven—”
The number staggered out of her. The one she knew best. She bent her head and tried to split it up, break it down, divide it by seven, make weeks out of days—
—rip up and rearrange her timeline as if shuffling through scraps would give her something back or make the gaps feel any less like gashes.
“Three—”
It didn’t work.
Too late.
Her head was already too fucked, too tangled. The number floated in a void of rushing static, untouchable. Irrational. Imaginary. She reeled through it again, unable to do anything else, repeating it as a comfort.
“—five-hundred and thirty-seven…”
Day.
Day 3,537.
Another clang.
She shivered.
The only day that sound had meant anything good for her.
God, the relief she’d felt when—
The memory made her choke.
—when the clanging stopped and the bars rolled back and the only thing waiting on the other side was her…
The memory was so vivid it stung. Its after-image was imprinted on her retinas. She’d never forget it, wasn’t sure she’d ever reach the floor of the full body come-down she’d experienced when she realized it was over. Over, done with, in-the-fucking-past where they couldn’t—
They couldn’t—
She gulped and tucked her body against the brick.
Don’t.
Don’t think about it.
Just—
She was out. She was out and she was free and not There anymore, so—
Another spasm of panic cut through her for no goddamn reason, and she couldn't—
There was nothing, so—
So why?
Why, why, why…?
Why did it feel like some-half-most of her was still walled up behind iron and stone?
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
She woke up curled in a cold, damp box of a room. Stone floors. Stone walls. A featureless, gray door and a blinding light that made her eyes burn. She couldn’t blink the sting away fast enough.
She had no idea where she was or how she got there. There were just impressions, blurred slivers of memory.
—Fire silhouetting Silco and her sister.
—A sweet, sterile stink in her sinuses.
—A swimming glimpse of stars, a swinging lantern—
Then the flash and punch of a needle and plunger.
Darkness after that. Fitful. Leaden. So uncanny she couldn’t be sure any of it was real.
She gulped.
Please—
Please don’t let it be—
Vi winced and dragged a hand up to prod the left side of her neck. It ached. A deep, full pain.
—real.
Her heart thumped out of rhythm and she coughed, resetting the beat. A bleak, frantic feeling swirled in her gut, twisting, trying to spread, but it couldn’t. Something was muting it.
She felt drunk. More than drunk.
Her head pounded. Groaning, she got her hands underneath herself, pushing. As she peeled herself off the floor, she looked down to see smears of drool and blood. She hurt in a dozen different ways in a dozen different places.
She was barely seated upright, tucked behind her knees, when she heard the footsteps. Keys clattered into locks, hinges squealed, and she looked up to see a scowling enforcer, his uniform stretched over his bloated body like a second skin. Pulling backward into the wall, she squinted up into his face, searching for eyes in the shadowed pits beneath his brow.
Her heart jumped again.
“Where’m…?” She slurred. Her voice was hoarse and her tongue felt thick. Her breath tasted like smoke. “Where’m I? What’d’ve—wha—?”
“Shut up.”
The words sounded like bones cracking. Vi blinked as a bundle of damp, musty cloth smacked her in the face. She was too muddled to react.
The enforcer pointed. Yellow fingernails. “Get changed.”
Her brow furrowed. Too slow. She lolled forward. “...wha’?”
Tilting his head, the enforcer’s hand dropped from the doorjamb. He took another step into the room, leaning down, wrinkling his nose at her. Raking her with unfeeling eyes.
His scowl deepened into disgust. “Are you fuckin’ high?!”
…high?
Vi scowled back, her lip cocking angrily as she tried to dredge words out of her haze. Didn’t work.
The enforcer sucked his teeth and shook his head. He pointed again. The gesture was sharper this time. More cutting. He raised his voice, his words drawn out and slow.
Like she was stupid.
“Take that shit off. And put that shit on. Got it?”
He didn’t wait for a response. Snorting and belching off to the side, he straightened up and scuffed out the door. As he pulled it closed behind him, he shouted into the hall.
“Ey! Sid! They brought us a-fuckin’-nother one! You gotta tell the boss he don’t pay us enough to deal with these skeezy lil’ sump junkies!”
The door slammed shut and locked.
With the enforcer’s voice still ringing in her ears, Vi winced, swallowed, and dropped her head to look down at the bundle in her lap. She flinched in confusion.
Weird.
Stripes. A number. Rivets and stains. With blunted hands, she uncrumpled the cloth. Folding back the trim, she found the stamp on the inside.
Item #17889
Property of—
She stopped. Scrubbed her eyes. Forced them to focus. Because she couldn’t be reading that right. She couldn’t—
Vi ran her gaze over the stamp again.
Property of Stillwater Prison.
She stared.
As her knuckles went white, her breath collapsed into hyperventilation.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
“C’mon! Just tell me!”
The guard sneered and mimicked the break in her voice as he mocked her.
“Aw, boo-hoo,” he sniveled, “‘Just tell me!’”
Another guard snickered. So did a few nearby prisoners. Vi flushed with shame but ignored the burn, ignored everything except the man currently shoving her backward into the Pen. She’d put up with anything—anything—if there was a chance it might help her get back to—
“I just—” She stumbled as her heels caught on a crack in the concrete. “I just wanna know how long—”
How long until I can see-find-save—
“And you think I give two fucks what you wanna know?!” The guard’s laugh was barking and cruel. “God, where do little piss-pucks like you get off? I swear.”
With a wiry arm, he reached out and caught hold of her stripes, hefting her bodily into the room. As she hit the floor, he slammed the bars closed between them. Vi lunged and grabbed the slats.
“Can you at least—?”
She snapped her hand away as the guard lashed out with his baton, nearly crushing her fingers. He didn’t even bother to say anything as she slid backward, arms tightening at her sides. He only laughed again, his eyes bright with a sickening gleam, acting like he knew something—something she didn’t.
He sidled away without another glance.
Ears burning, muscles twitching, Vi stood there by the bars until the guard disappeared from view.
Then, she deflated.
Shaking with humiliation, she turned and slumped to the floor. Tucking herself against a wall, she buried her body behind her knees. She twisted her fingers into her hair.
Every inmate in the Pen shrugged and went back to their own business, ignoring her.
Except one.
His gaze tugged at her attention. She swung her head around. He was sitting at a nearby table.
An old man. Withered. Frail. As their eyes met, he stood up slowly from his card game. Limping, he shuffled over to her, using the wall for support. Bad leg, Vi realized. Drop foot.
Still a threat.
She pulled in on herself as he approached.
His number plate read 184.
He stopped several feet from her, his joints crackling as he sat. Getting down to her level obviously wasn’t easy.
Vi dropped her hands to her elbows and stared at him, waiting for whatever he was gonna do or say. Except he didn’t say anything. He only stared back at her. His pupils were milky with cataracts, his eyes yellow around the irises.
But they weren’t unkind.
Vi’s leg began to rattle. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself.
184’s expression was calm. Expectant. It made Vi’s throat swallow reflexively, once, twice—
Then she was talking. Couldn’t stop.
It didn’t matter that she didn’t know this guy. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t trust anybody.
He—
His face—
Frustration forced the words through her teeth.
“They won’t tell me anything!” She gasped. “I keep asking, but no one—these assholes, they…I just wanna know how long. Okay? Like how long am I stuck here for? Is that so fuckin’ hard?! I mean, someone’s gotta know, right? I just—see, there’s someone I gotta—”
She barely managed to catch herself. She swallowed back her sister’s name.
“I just need to know how long.”
The old man was silent for a long moment. He looked at her strangely, head cocking, his gaunt face stooped in a frown.
“Kid…” he began, “where do you think you are?”
And something in his tone—
Vi’s muscles kicked against her bones. Liquid fear eked into her blood and sent it rushing. She looked at him, then around, eyes darting, raking a roomful of stripes and strangers for answers.
She found none.
Turning back to 184, she saw his gaze was clouded with pity. She gulped as his shoulders sagged.
“Ah, shit,” he heaved. The words dragged out of his graveled throat. “You really don’t know.”
Vi’s pulse scattered under her skin. She couldn’t get the words “Know what?” out of her mouth, but she didn’t need to. She only had to watch, limbs vanishing into numbness, as the old man lifted a hand. After rubbing it down the length of his chin hairs, he pointed. She followed his finger to a rail-thin woman with one eye and black hair.
“Prisoner 392,” he said, “...in for life.”
The air thickened.
184’s hand twitched. He pointed again.
“Prisoner 227. In for life.”
Vi’s spine crackled with sweat.
Another twitch.
“Prisoner 91. In for life.”
Twitch.
“Prisoner 444. In for life.”
Twitch.
“Prisoners 708, 633, and 32. Life, life, and…life.”
Vi’s fingernails bit into the skin of her arms. Her teeth punched through the edge of her tongue, filling her mouth with the taste of copper. She stared, wide-eyed, as the old man slowly turned his finger on himself.
“Prisoner 184,” he said, “In for life. Been here twenty-eight years already.”
His expression was pained.
The air around them was no longer just thick.
It was cemented.
Vi shook, her chest voiding itself around horror, as she saw the old man’s hand move again. His finger twitched, turned, creaking—
And pointed itself at her chest.
With his weathered brows drooping in regret, 184 sighed and laid down the sentence no court had bothered to give her.
“Prisoner 516,” he read, “...in for life.”
He dropped his hand into his lap.
Vi couldn’t move. As her lungs flattened themselves behind her ribs, 184 gave her a weak smile and a half-shrug.
“Sorry, kid.” He shook his head. “Kinda fucked up that no one told ya.”
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
The next day, Day 39, she began planning her first escape attempt.
It took three months to put into action.
When it failed, she immediately began planning Attempt #2.
It wasn't like she had anything to lose.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
After the third time she tried to escape, the warden issued orders requiring the guards to stick a hood on her head whenever they moved her. The idea was to prevent her from learning her way around—
—as if she hadn’t already memorized the cellblock’s entire layout.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
She broke her ankle on Attempt #5.
She was nearly over the razor wire when two bolas whipped into her, one after another. The first hit her left hip and glanced off, harmless.
The second caught her in the throat.
Vi lost her grip on the wall as her hand lurched up to pull at the cords garroting her neck. She hit the mud, felt a crunch, and writhed, unable to get free. Heat seared up her shin. She heard bootfalls and shouting, and then a guard dropped down beside her. Their switchblade nicked her skin as it sliced through the bola.
Vi hissed.
“Sorry,” the guard muttered, which was new. “Better than dyin’.”
They sounded amused, but—
—not shitty about it.
Vi turned and squinted at them.
They huffed, pocketing the knife and pulling out a pair of cuffs.
“Okay kid,” they said, “I gotta know. How the fuck did you get all the way up there?”
Vi gulped for air as she was rolled over, her hands pinned behind her back.
“F-fuck you,” she spat. “Fuck off.”
She heard a chuckle as the cuffs were cinched. “Whatever you want, spitfire. Seriously. Goddamn. That was some of the craziest shit I’ve ever seen.”
It was the first and only compliment she ever received in Stillwater. Her confusion deepened as she was hoisted up onto her good leg.
“Fuck you,” she repeated, because what the hell?
“Okay.” The guard laughed again. They patted her shoulder. “Let’s get you down to the infirmary.”
“No.”
“Yes.” The reply was even. No-nonsense. “You need that leg looked at. Be a shame if it healed wrong and you could never take another run at these walls, wouldn’t it?”
What!?
Vi’s head snapped around. She gaped, half-snarling, ears hot. “You’re screwing with me.”
They neither confirmed nor denied. They only steered her across the yard, waving off the other guards skulking in their orbit, and kept chuckling—mostly to themselves.
"Shit-sticks,” they said. “I sure am glad to be gettin’ outta here. You’re gonna be a terror when you’re grown, I just know it.”
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Her leg was still in the cast the first time she heard Silco’s name come out of someone’s mouth.
There was fresh meat on the floor. A new Lifer. Some scrawny fuck with ash-colored hair. Pinched face like a weasel. He was bragging, all twitchy and frantic, chittering about how “the boss is gonna get me out of here, of course, I mean, o-obviously! I was doin’ what he asked, every word of it, y’know? A-an’ Silco, see, h-he’s big on loyalty, so, so, so—”
It wasn’t her first fight.
It was her first attack.
Before her brain could make a memory of what happened, she had him on the ground, her knee in his back, his wrists in her hands. She threatened to rip his arms out of their sockets if he didn’t tell her where Powder was.
He screeched that he didn’t know anything. She didn’t believe him, so he ended up in a double sling.
She ended up cuffed to a chair in a dark room under a bright light as fuckbags in blue uniforms demanded to know if-how-what she was ‘using’ again.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Vi didn’t know her exact birthday. She only knew she’d been born in late autumn.
On her third Snowdown in Stillwater—marked by the warden letting the cooks crack open a vat of canned peaches to serve with meals—she spent the whole day wrestling with an agitation she couldn’t place.
It took her until dinner to figure it out.
As she sat hunched and alone at her corner table in the mess hall, rolling the tines of her fork through slop, she realized:
At some point in the last month, she’d come of age pacing a concrete cell.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
All of her escape attempts ended badly, but her last one ended the worst.
As she and the guards collided on the shadowed perimeter of the prison, something went wrong. Vi’s memory was too strafed-through with holes to remember exactly what happened, but the result was a Fight. A bad one. Dirty. Cruel.
She’d never fought the guards before. ‘Resisted,’ sure, but—
But this—
And it wasn’t just her. Everyone in the brawl devolved, shedding their skin and erupting into something feral.
Almost like they needed it.
Then Vi buckled. Someone pinned her to the ground. She craned her neck.
A woman. Craggy features. Demeaning eyes. Her mouth twisted and she said something—
Something that made Vi lurch and roll and sink her teeth into the flesh of the guard’s arm.
There was a screech. Vi tasted blood that wasn’t hers as the woman tore herself away.
The fighting stopped. For a moment, there was silence.
The guard held her bleeding arm, red oozing between her fingers. She looked at Vi with an expression that betrayed a startled, primal fear. Then it contorted horribly. Spittle flew off her lips as she scathed:
“Did you just fucking bite me?”
Vi lifted her lip and spat pink froth onto the ground as if to say, yeah, asshole, I sure as fuck did.
“So you don’t forget me,” she added aloud, and she could feel that her grin was vicious and felid and ugly. She winked to make it worse.
Probably not the smartest thing she’d ever done.
The wounded guard short-circuited on emotions too extreme to name. Her eyes were white and wild and bugging, her mouth a mess of crooked teeth. Her lips were livid and drained.
Nobody moved.
Then:
“Hold her."
The other guards jumped to obey.
Vi probably should have felt fear in that moment. Maybe she did and couldn’t remember. Either way, she probably shouldn’t have let her scythe-like sneer cut wider as her knees were kicked out from under her. She definitely shouldn’t have scoffed as her head was wrenched back by her hair.
The wounded guard advanced on her, unsheathing her cudgel from her belt.
Vi made sure her tongue was well away from her teeth and braced.
There was no posturing or monologuing.
No lording or looming.
None of that long, drawn-out, storybook shit.
There was just a guard who wanted to hurt and a prisoner who could do fuck-all about it.
Vi didn’t actually feel it when the club whipped across her face. She heard it—heard air moan as it was forced aside by the blow. She saw it—the black arc punctuated by a flash. But she only felt it after her vision cleared. The pain rushed in and wrecked her thoughts—the white-hot, vicious ache of something giving way to blunt force.
She slumped, stunned, blood running over her lips.
As she faded out to nothing, she realized she couldn’t close her mouth.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Only 184 dared suggest it.
“It’s broken. You need to see a doctor. Tell me to ask the guards.”
Vi told him to ‘fuck off’ with her face.
He sighed. “Are your teeth loose?”
She said nothing.
“Are they bleeding?”
Her lip twitched and she glanced away.
184 pointed to his chin.
“Listen to me,” he said, “If they’re loose? If they’re bleeding? That’s an open wound. And the human mouth is filthy. That shit will fester. You could die.”
He was using his Most Serious Voice.
Wordlessly, Vi tipped her head forward and drooled spit and blood into the rag in her fist. Then she sniffed and went back to glaring.
184 sighed again and rubbed a knobby hand across his forehead.
“I don’t know what I expected,” he grumbled. “Fine. If you won’t go, at least do this. Go find 39. I know you hate him—him, and everyone else, seems like—but he’s got moonshine. And he’s scared of you. Get yourself a bottle and rinse with it. If you can get your hands on some salt, mix it with water and do the same, as often as you can stand. It might help.”
Then he fixed her with a look and shrugged.
“Or you might end up septic and delirious by the end of the week. Seems more on brand for you, to be honest.”
A strange look flickered through his old eyes—one Vi refused to recognize. Bracing a hand against the tabletop, he swung his legs around the bench and stood, tottering away to assault someone else with his un-asked-for advice.
Later that day, Vi went and tracked down 39.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
She spent two miserable weeks nursing the sores in her mouth. She spiked fevers. Lost weight. Tasted the sour tang of rot along her gums that threatened to eke into something worse.
All she could do was rinse and sleep and try to gulp down chunks of food with water—
—and pray an infection didn’t burn down through her teeth and fry her heart.
At the end of Week 3, 184 said if her busted jaw hadn’t killed her yet, it probably wasn’t going to.
Then he said, “With luck like that, you really should play cards more often.”
He shuffled away before she could tell him to go fuck himself.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
She didn’t realize it at the time, but that one injury shifted something fundamental inside her. Her dynamic with the guards was never the same.
The rage was deep-seated.
They’d hurt her, made her weak, and she hated them for it.
Except ‘hate’ wasn’t the right word.
No, this new fury was constituent. Molecular. Something entirely different. It burned out of each and every one of her cells and ran through her veins like a toxin. It fucked with her head. Fizzed in her chest. Acidic, virulent, and merciless.
That shit changed her.
She started to fuck with them. Goad them. Circle and prowl and pounce until they toppled into their own contempt and gave her exactly what she wanted.
It was so easy to do. So, so fucking easy.
A game played only to entertain herself.
Strange consequences, though.
For a brief, brutal, bemusing period—about a year, if she had to guess—she suddenly found herself popular with the other Lifers. She knew none of it was real —all those mock salutes, bumped elbows, nods of the head—it was just hierarchy shit. But the inmates in her ‘block liked seeing her jump guards. They cheered her on when she did it.
They didn’t care that she wasn’t doing it for them.
And they didn’t care what it did to her when those attacks earned her week-long stints buried in a stone box, alone, dozens of floors beneath them.
They didn’t care that every time she disappeared, she was leaving behind pieces of herself in dark places they’d never seen.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
184 died in his sleep.
A stroke. Very peaceful.
Vi hated him for it.
The guards wrapped his body in a sheet and dumped it in the sea, weighed down by stones.
Vi kept his deck of cards out of spite. Tried to learn a few games.
Didn’t go well.
Turns out she wasn’t that lucky after all.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
She was nearly twenty years old when she realized fighting wasn’t enough.
She started looking for relief in other places.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Sometimes, in the showers, a girl would catch her eye, tip her chin and wait. Vi would finish scouring herself and go join her in The Corner. Everyone else knew to clear out when she cut across the floor.
Without a word, she'd stuff a washcloth in the girl's mouth and slide down her body and shatter her against the tile. Never took long. Once she'd drawn out the last spasms and muffled sounds, she'd tug the cloth out from between the girl's teeth and use it to wipe her hands and mouth. Giving back the rag, she'd turn and walk away.
She never learned their names. Never bothered to look them in the eye. She'd stopped trying almost immediately when she realized what she was to them.
Nothing.
Just a distraction. A false high. They baited her the way she baited the dumbest guards, hooking her, reeling her in, using her to feel something for a while. Taking, only and always.
Please, she’d think as she saw their hands shaking against the wall, just touch me. But she'd always stop them if they tried because she could tell it was never for her. They just wanted something more out of her, and—
—and where exactly did they expect her to find it?
Her soul was already skin and bones.
She was aware, on some level, that it was eroding her. Digging the hole deeper. But what did that matter if she already couldn't see the bottom?
Besides, she needed to fuck girls in the shower.
She needed to believe her hands could still do something other than hurt.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
In ten years, there was only one. Her face was a smudge in Vi's memory, but the eyes were hard to forget. Firelight green. They'd really looked at her, really tried to give as they shivered back into focus in the wake of what Vi had done to her. Finding her gaze, they'd opened, shining, asking…
Offering.
Instead of taking back the cloth, trembling hands had tangled into her hair, pulling, closing up the distance until Vi realized, dimly and absurdly, that this was the first time she'd ever been kissed. She had no idea what she was doing. Didn't matter. That wasn't the point. The girl with the green eyes had no expectations. She just moved gently against her mouth in a way that said I'm sorry I'm sorry this is all I have to give but thank you thank you thank you...
No one had ever said thank you before.
As arms threaded around her neck, Vi felt the curl of something charred desperately trying to catch fire again. There was nothing left to burn, but the girl tried. Fuck, she tried. Vi felt lips move to her throat, hands move to her sides, a leg move to coax hers apart. It pressed. Nails bit into her back as she gasped.
Then the guards caught them.
Vi made the mistake of trying to protect her. It was the worst fucking thing she could have done. She still hadn't learned her lesson.
She couldn't protect anyone.
When it was over, they threw the rag at her and told her to clean the blood off the floor.
She never went back to The Corner again.
The charred thing inside of her crumbled to ash.
Hell didn’t burn.
It was fucking cold.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
On Day 1,605, she put three guards in the hospital.
Their buddies nearly killed her for it.
She was straddling Guard #3 when they rushed her. Digging her knee into his chest, she worked his mouth like a railway tamp, loosening his teeth with her knuckles. She drove down again and again and again, determined to rearrange his face so badly they’d need to issue him a new ID badge.
The buzzer brought her eyes up. She heard shouting, a crash, caught the gleam of riot gear on the corroded edge of her periphery. She was half on her feet in an instant, springing away, but it was already too late. An armored fist came around and connected, sending her sprawling back into what felt like a wall.
It wasn’t.
Vi bucked as arms dropped down from behind to lock roughly across her throat. They pressed upwards, stopping the blood midway up her neck. She tore at their plated wrists, vision dimming, knowing she had only seconds before—
A hulking shape stormed into her sightline. Twisting one hand into her hair, they drew back and sent an uppercut screaming into her ribcage.
Bones splintered somewhere.
The pain was numbing. She crumpled and they let her drop. Her knees hit first, hard, but she only knew the impact from the jolt it sent up her spine. She couldn’t breathe. Nothing else mattered.
Pitching forward, she collapsed onto the floor and writhed, her lungs sucking air like a siphon full of holes. Useless. Fucking useless. She tried to wrap an arm around her midsection and spasmed at the pressure. Regret. Instant. It was agony. White-hot and suffocating. Someone cried out—a choked, watery scream. Disembodied. Familiar. Couldn’t be her, though. Couldn’t be.
Sounded too young.
Shadows closed in, cutting faceless holes out of fluorescent light. They loomed, laughing, jeering as they cursed her. Filthy fucking words. Vi folded under them, curling up, fading into a twitching, wheezing mess. Dying, probably. Had to be. Had to be, it hurt so fucking bad. Something in her side was screeching-sliding-sinking under her hand, locking up her chest. She heaved, waiting for her throat to fill with foam, for her lungs to—
Her vision exploded as someone palmed her skull and split her face open against the floor.
Bad move.
The blow knocked the breath back into her. Rage came with it—stark, searing, extraordinary rage that put pain and panic and every other pathetic fucking thing back in its rightful place.
She reared, inhaling fury into every limb.
The guards cursed. Lunging, they piled on top of her. She tried to haul them off but the floor was too slick. Blood. Blood everywhere. Her hands slipped out from under her and everything gave way. The sudden weight was crushing.
It ate away the edges of her sanity.
Memory arced behind her eyes.
Day Zero.
She snapped back to Day Zero, when weight was Wall and blood was Oil and the bodies strewn across the ground weren't guards, they were—
Her nerves coiled like barbed wire.
—they were Brothers.
Sounds ripped up her throat, hot with the taste of iron. She wanted it off. She wanted to get up. She was ready to chew through rebar if it would get her out from under—
Truncheons whistled through the air and banded her in welts. The sting was clarifying.
Vi spat wet, red curses as she was cuffed, kicking what she couldn't hit, biting down on what she couldn't scratch. Her teeth glanced off of armor. Felt like flint on metal. Her eyes flashed. She tried again, gnashing, looking to make sparks fly. Strike a flame. Light the oil. Burn the whole fucking place to the ground—
—kill the right people this time.
Didn't work.
She thrashed.
Nothing ever worked.
Another blow made her reel. She lost tension but not consciousness. As they peeled her off the floor, her head fell forward and she saw blood again.
Blood.
She blinked.
Not Oil.
Her stripes were heavy with it.
She sneered at the guards as they dragged her away.
Helped to know a lot of it was theirs.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Vi put together how screwed she was when they took a left turn down the corridor where they should have taken a right. Realization hit her like a ton of salt, razors, and ice.
Shit.
Her head snapped up. Her eyes darted, looking for—
—and there it was.
Her vision tunneled and she gulped, barely swallowing the sound that threatened to hollow out her throat.
That fucking door.
It loomed at the end of the hall. Rusted, dark, and narrow. A windowless slab.
Heavy. Peeling with lead paint. Claw marks on the inside.
She knew because she’d put a few there herself.
Fuck.
Her pulse soared. Blood kicked through her heart and a feral terror shoved her sideways out of her own body. Unable to catch up with herself, she stumbled.
Everything smudged and sharpened as the guards dragged her forward. One of them broke away and stalked ahead, pulling out a ring of keys.
They jangled.
Vi spasmed.
The sound slid hooks under her skin and yanked. Fight distilled itself out of fear—again—and she crashed back into herself, twisting-shouting-snarling. Someone barked out something filthy and jerked on her cuffs. Her shoulder screeched and popped out of place. She ignored it. She ignored all of it. Armored hands gripped her tighter, grinding into bloodied places, bending the long bones in her arms until they creaked.
Didn’t matter.
She set her jaw and lunged.
Her forehead connected with someone’s chin. They hollered, staggering, drooling blood. Fucking good. She swung around to find someone else to split open.
Anything, anything to buy time, to stop that fucker with the keys from—
She heard the growl of brass teeth being fitted into a lock. The sound harpooned her attention and drowned out the howling of the wounded guard.
Spiney horror shot her gut full of quills.
Shit.
Fuck.
Tumblers thunked and gears whined as deadbolts were cranked back out of the wall.
No.
No, no, no.
Her chest heaved.
Not again.
The guard hauled open the door. Its metallic squeal sent a shudder railing down her spine. The air wheezed out of her lungs and she couldn’t get it back. Old fractures in her mind pulled farther apart. She knotted her muscles to keep from shaking.
Not again.
Not again.
Please—
She had to chew her tongue to keep from begging.
The asshole with the keys put the ring back on his belt. He stepped back and she could see inside the—
“Box.”
“Cooler.”
“Coffin.”
“Hole.”
Four feet wide. Six feet deep. Cold stone. Old stench. A spigot on a timer and a slanted hole to piss in. An unwashed chute to spoon in slop and a crusty trough to catch it.
And a light bulb.
A single, dim, stuttering light bulb that never turned off.
The buzz of the filament sounded like whispers. Sit under it long enough and you started to hear things.
Vi bucked as someone came up behind and scruffed her. Her mouth sluiced with blood and curses. Nothing she said came out whole. It was all just damp, furious, terrified noise.
The guards grunted as they grappled her toward the cell.
“Goddamn, she is fucking nuts,” one said.
“Told ya,” huffed another.
“Both of you shut your fuckin’ holes and shove her in there before she gets herself loose.”
Not all the guards were stupid.
Vi lost her footing as rough hands pulled her clear off the ground. Her legs kicked but couldn't find a target. She was thrown into the box-cooler-coffin-hole with her wrists still cuffed behind her back. She cracked into a wall. Her shoulder crunched back into place.
Shadows fell across her.
"There. Finally. What the hell is wrong with—?
"Fucking close it, moron!"
Vi whirled but wasn’t fast enough.
The guards slammed the door and she slammed against it. Blood smeared onto the paint.
Shit.
She shook. Drew back. Threw herself at the door again.
Fuck.
Her veins hardened. Her sweat came out cold.
"No."
Please.
Please don't—
She stopped writing memory when the deadbolts locked into place.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
They kept her there for four days.
When she exploded out of the cell more rabid than when she went in, they buried her.
On the ride down through the subfloors, she came to just long enough to throw up in the elevator. It was clotted and black. Tasted like iron. The guards should have taken her to the infirmary.
They knocked her out again instead.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
She slurred back into consciousness to the sound of mottled voices. Each word echoed twice, once off cold, sweating stone, once again off the inside of her skull.
“Should we…should we take the wraps?” someone asked.
Vi twitched. Her split lip reopened as she sneered.
Newbie.
Only fresh meat asked shit like that.
Another guard—an old hand—let out a congested laugh and spat mucus onto the floor. “Nah,” she hawked, “just leave ‘em.”
“But—”
"But what?"
Sliding open a salted eye, Vi saw boots and shadows shifting uncomfortably beyond her cell.
“But…ligatures. The handbook says—”
“Oh, for fuck’s—forget the handbook.” A fist knocked against the bars. “Seriously. What is it with you rookies and your fucking handbooks? What, do you wanna go in there and wrangle those things off her?”
There was a pause as the rookie cleared their throat and shuffled. They didn’t answer.
The old hand snorted. “Right. Didn’t think so. Leave ‘em.”
She punctuated her sentence by dropping the deadbolts into place with a bang, locking the cell. Her silhouette stopped outside the bars. Lingering.
Vi looked up.
The thin, fluorescent light caught in the whites of the guard’s eyes. She was leering down through the bars, her pupils black and empty, her mouth a jagged, disgusted line.
“Who knows,” she added, “Maybe if we’re lucky…”
Her gaze flickered purposefully.
Vi felt it cut across her throat. She stiffened, her body heat vanishing into the floor.
“Get bent,” she seethed. A red taste spilled into her mouth as her torn lip split farther apart.
The guard sucked contempt through her teeth. Adjusting the handle of her cudgel, she gargled phlegm and turned away.
“Let’s go, skippy,” she said, cuffing the newbie as she passed.
The rookie scrambled to catch their hat as it tumbled off their head. Worrying their fingers around the brim, they hesitated, casting nervous looks into Vi’s cell as the old hand stomped away down the corridor.
Rolling onto her knees, Vi caught their eye. Her body screamed as she reached to cradle her ribs. She hooked her other hand into the bars. The rookie gulped as she stared at them.
Letting blood gather in her mouth, Vi spat it weakly to the side. Her eyes dropped to their boots. Her brow quirked as she slumped forward against her cage.
"Over the line," she muttered. Her voice was wet and hoarse.
The rookie's boots scuffed through the slime on the floor. A little closer.
On the wrong side of the red.
"...w-what?"
Vi's arm blurred through bars before the newbie could react. Seizing their collar, she smashed their face into iron. They gasped, flailing.
Vi snarled into their ear:
"Over the line."
They were too stunned to struggle. Wide-eyed, they gaped at her, terror livid in their face. No fight. No flight. Just dumb, doe-eyed—
Fucking useless.
They wouldn't last a week.
Vi raised her free hand.
"You still wanna take these from me, skippy? You worried about what I'll do with 'em?"
She rolled her wrist. Flexed her fingers. Grime crumbled out of the wraps.
Still nothing from the rookie. They only shook in her grip, throat bobbing. Didn't make a sound.
Lip curling, Vi leaned in close, half-dried blood crackling over her face. She pulled her hand into a fist.
"As if I'd give you shitbags the satisfaction."
Finally, a whimper. The wheedling little noise choked itself out in the rookie's throat. Pathetic.
Showing her teeth, Vi shoved them roughly away from her. They tripped on their own heels as they fell backward, nearly crashing into the wall.
This time, they didn't hesitate. Hat still in hand, they staggered up and away before finding their balance, slipping on the slick floors as they fled.
With her body still slung heavily against the bars, Vi watched them disappear.
God, she thought, They are so fucked.
Then her legs gave out and she crashed to the floor, collapsing sideways into the concrete. Wheezing, she wrapped her arms around her ribs and let her eyes lose focus.
Down the hall, the elevator doors clattered shut.
Vi fell forward into nothing.
[End Stillwater Part 1]
Notes:
What you just read (and will continue to read in Chapters 11 and into 12) tentatively approaches a realistic, if glancing, depiction of systemic prison abuse and its mental health impacts, albeit filtered though a fictional/fantasy setting. It was written with the use of references and, as mentioned, in coordination with a mental health professional.
I am self-aware that I, myself, am too privileged and undereducated on the subject of criminal justice reform to contribute meaningfully to any real-world discourse. But I can tell you that just doing basic, layperson's research for this chapter (and then synthesizing that information into a canon-appropriate depiction of Vi's character), was extremely distressing. In lieu of saying anything else, I'll just ask ya'll to help me put this piece of the fic to good real-world use.
If you are so moved, please consider donating to The Innocence Project.
From their website:
"The Innocence Project works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone. Founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the organization is now an independent nonprofit. Our work is guided by science and grounded in antiracism."
Thank you to whomever might be lead to donate.
----
Decompression Section:
I posted on Twitter asking folks to link to their most comforting CaitVi content so folks have something to use as a palette/heart cleanser after this. Click here.
Also, in advance of this chapter, I've posted several soft one-shots/drabbles featuring gentle CaitVi moments from further down their "Saltwater" timeline. You can find them on my Works page. As dark as this fic has gotten, I want folks reassured that these two make it out, end up together, and help each other heal. Those one-shots function as that reassurance.
---
This was (and remains) very hard. I had to split the Stillwater flashbacks in two parts bc there is still one section that I am having difficulty getting through. I will try and post the second half by next week. Once I write that section, it really should be reviewed by my psych consultant before I post. It's very sensitive.
A huge thank you to @_CafeKat_ for the rolling beta today. (the section re: Vi's jaw has not been beta'd. I'll review that for typos, etc tomorrow)
Thank you to @lil_joe_runs for helping me get the details correct for a broken jaw. In my fic, Vi suffers a stable fracture but leaves it untreated instead of risk having a doctor wire her jaw shut, which would be too dangerous for her. Stable fractures, if left untreated, can result in the distinct asymmetry we see in Vi's character model (right side).
Chapter 11
Summary:
!!! STOP !!! WARNING !!! BEFORE YOU CONTINUE !!!
THE FOLLOWING IS PART 2 OF THE DARKEST CHAPTER OF SALTWATER!!! IT IS INTENDED FOR ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY.
THE FOLLOWING CWs APPLY:
Anxiety - Panic Attacks - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD - Wrongful Imprisonment - Police Brutality - Solitary Confinement - Implied/Referenced Torture - Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms - Vomiting - Emotional/Psychological Abuse - Starvation - Verbal Abuse - Blood and Violence - Serious Injuries - Hallucinations - Nightmares - Sleep Deprivation - Exhaustion - Family Loss - Claustrophobia - Flashbacks - Suicidal Thoughts - Assault - Derogatory Language - Canon-Typical Violence
IF YOU MAY BE TRIGGERED BY ANY OF THESE CWS: DO NOT READ.
IF YOU ARE NOT IN A GOOD PLACE WITH YOUR MENTAL HEALTH: DO. NOT. READ!!!
CHAP 11 IS COMPOSED ENTIRELY OF STILLWATER FLASHBACKS. IT CONTAINS DEPICTIONS OF VARIOUS TRAUMAS AND THEIR MENTAL HEALTH IMPACTS (CLEARED THROUGH AN ADULT PSYCH PROFESSIONAL, THOUGH PLEASE UNDERSTAND I AM BY NO MEANS AN EXPERT IN THIS AREA).
PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
As mentioned in my Twitter update:
This banner represents a placeholder for this chapter's opening scene.
Before continuing, Click Here for a note sheet containing a detailed explanation and needed characterization/plot points.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
As the days tipped towards triple digits, something sheared off inside of her. It tumbled inwards. Vi stared at the wall and waited, bracing, expecting some sort of impact, a bottom, but…
No.
Whatever it was just kept falling.
And falling, and—
—and like a torch dropped down a mine shaft, it proved how deep the hole inside her really was.
Suddenly, everything stopped.
She stopped feeling.
Stopped fighting.
Stopped giving them reasons.
The next time they scuffed down the cellblock to “chat” with her, she only turned and stared and waited. She put her back against the wall and let them paint her over with bruises. Didn't even block. Didn’t bother to count the seconds.
The game wasn’t fun anymore.
When she finally dropped, she rolled onto her side and pushed a gush of blood out of her mouth. No spitting. No swearing. Not even a bland “Fuck you.”
It didn’t feel like giving up.
How could it?
She had nothing left to give.
The three pairs of boots in her sightline seemed confused. They shuffled, smearing blood and sweat under their tread.
“...that it?” someone asked.
She blinked slowly. “Yup.”
One of them kicked her, but it felt half-hearted, like a nudge gone wrong. When she didn’t react to that, either, they turned around and left. She closed her eyes as her cage clattered shut, content to lay there and let the concrete cool her wounds.
The encounters grew shorter and shorter after that. Less and less frequent. She bored them, now. Unnerved them, too.
Only the most sadistic fuckers still bothered to come down and take their sweet time. They made a hobby of looking for new ways to break her down as if they weren’t already ankle-deep in her dust. Eventually, though, even they gave up. They liked screamers and squirmers.
She only stared.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
On day 119 of her stint, she learned that no behavior was good behavior.
The warden himself came down to see her. Vi knew it was him by the sound of his club on the floor, clanging its way toward her cell. She stopped prowling three paces into her path, her eyes riveted to the wall as he spoke.
"Evening!” he crowed.
False cheer. His voice echoed among the pipeworks, mixing with the drip.
“Just thought I’d come down and check on ya. They tell me you haven't attacked a guard in nearly three weeks."
Vi's face twitched. She cracked her knuckles. Pain shot up her arm. She shook out her hand and said nothing.
The warden's boots groaned as he leaned back against the wall. Setting his club between his feet, he sighed. The sound was heavy. Exaggerated.
Patronizing.
The tone made Vi's body tick, gear teeth catching in cogs, mainsprings cinching down tight. Rage seeped up like oil, greasing rusted-out ratchets and pinions and plates. Her shoulders lifted.
The warden sucked his teeth and adjusted his gut. He eyed her appraisingly.
"What's going on with you, red? You finally have some ‘great awakening’ down here? Some kinda change of heart?"
His fist choked up on the club.
The sight filled Vi's entire periphery. Her eyes slid over first. Her head followed.
The word burned as it left her. Bitter. Vulcanized.
"Yes."
"Oh! She speaks."
Grinding around on her heel, Vi tipped forward into her pacing again. Her tongue passed between her lip and teeth, testing the fresh scar above her canine. Her gaze welded itself to the warden’s fingers as he slowly rotated the club on its end.
"Do you know how far off our rotation this place is?” he asked. Lifting a hand, he gestured loosely. Dirty nails. Ugly rings.
Smarmy fuck.
Vi said nothing, only rolled her neck as hate seared down her spine. Wires crossed and sparked under her skin. Her fingers stuttered half into fists and let go.
"Costs a fortune to keep you down here, too,” the warden continued, “Inconvenient and expensive.” He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Always been more trouble than you’re worth.”
Vi’s face tightened into a scowl. She dragged in a rough breath. Held it.
Six paces left.
Six paces right.
Curses built up in her throat. She swallowed them down.
The warden hummed and harrumphed as he watched her, making a show of letting the silence stretch. Waiting. Tempting her with the space she usually filled with violence.
She refused the bait. Teeth aching, jaw tight, she scuffed, turned—another six paces. Always six. She stared at the warden, her vision eaten up by that thing in his hands.
He cocked his boot heel against the wall.
"I'm thinking of letting you outta here," he said.
Something snapped and shot off its pulleys.
Vi seized.
Heart hammering, her eyes leapt up in time to see the warden's mouth peel apart in a dark, needling smile. The sick satisfaction on his face made her nauseous.
Still grinning, he pushed forward off the concrete.
"First," he said, "I gotta know if you're gonna behave."
The end of his club kicked forward. It knocked against the floor with a clang.
"How 'bout it, 516? You finally learn your lesson?"
Vi stared up at him. His mass filled her cell with shadow. She shifted her weight backward as he approached, the tendons in her arms twitching, begging her to guard.
Don't.
Her throat shrank in on itself. Her breath went hot and her blood went cold.
Don't give him a reason.
Her hands trembled with inertia.
They remained at her sides.
Sweat chewed its way out of her pores.
Vi's world darkened as the warden stopped just behind the safety line. His paunchy eyes frisked her up and down, looking for something, anything.
Then, without warning, he palmed his club and swung. The rod cracked against the bars with a flash. The impact was deafening.
Vi was showered in sparks.
She flinched, but she stopped it in her eyes. The rest of her body shook as the club's reverberations faded. Beyond that, she didn't move. She only stood there, rigid, pulse erratic.
The warden quirked a brow and tilted his head. He lowered his club to the floor.
"...you're really done, huh?"
His tone made Vi unlock.
Eyelids flickering, she exhaled. "With you."
That earned her a sigh. Mock indulgence. The warden rolled his eyes and leaned back.
"And what do you mean by that? " he lilted.
Vi's gaze vibrated into the middle distance as the words steamed out of her.
"I've been stupid."
"Huh!" The warden snorted. "Couldn't agree more. But I'd love to hear why you think so."
Huffing, Vi shifted her weight. A muscle ticked above her lip. She turned, took a step, turned a second time—trying to find her path again. Her search devolved into aimless movement. She was too rattled. Swaying, she rubbed one forearm with the other.
She cast an empty look at the floor.
"I've been wasting my time with you assholes," she muttered. "Pointless. So stupid." Her eyes came up. "You're nothing to me."
Her voice was polluted by misuse.
The warden's smile finally faded. Frowning, he set his elbow on his club. He studied her carefully.
Vi continued to fidget under his gaze.
"You start trouble upstairs, you're gonna end up right back down here," he told her. His slime dried up into something more serious.
A laugh backfired out of Vi’s chest.
He still didn’t get it.
Clamping her tongue between her teeth, she rearranged herself again, winching a hand around her right wrist to keep herself from lunging.
The warden regarded her for a moment longer before huffing in surprise.
“Hmph. Well,” he said, “Let’s see if this new attitude of yours holds up for another week or two, huh? Then, maybe…”
He reached down and jangled his keys.
The noise was too sharp. It made Vi shiver.
He saw.
Snorting, the warden shouldered his rod and smirked down at her. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. With a final, bloated grunt, he turned and sidled out of sight.
Vi collapsed into a slouch.
As the sound of his footsteps stomped away, her breath came faster and faster. A tremor scrabbled up her legs, spidering up her back and down her arms. Her hands shook.
A warning.
She knew the feeling.
Before it could get worse, unraveling into something that folded her up and stole her air and replaced it with black water and tar, Vi stiffened and cinched and snarled. As soon as the elevator slammed shut up the hall, she spun and slammed her fist into the wall. Skin split. Sweat gathered and fell.
Grit crumbled out of the concrete as she screamed.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
When they turned her loose among the Lifers again, she wondered who it was they were looking to punish.
A hush fell over the cellblock as they buzzed her onto the floor. The hood came off and she saw a sea of dull stripes go still around her. It was so quiet she could hear the keys turning in her cuffs. She rolled her wrists as they clattered away, letting her hands fall to her sides as they unchained her ankles.
As she waited, something crackled and flashed behind her, bright blue. It threw her shadow onto the floor. The sea of stripes jerked and went wide-eyed.
She didn’t.
She inhaled, pulling the stink of ozone into her nose.
Just a warning. Just a little reminder, in case she’d forgotten what their new toys felt like.
As if she didn’t dream about feeding them the live ends and setting the dials to fry.
“Alright, red. Remember what we talked about.”
The warden himself.
Blood thickened in her veins.
The big man shifted behind her, getting closer, but not too close. Just enough that his mass changed how sound moved around her. She could smell him. Feel him. His body heat caught in the hairs on her neck and arms and made her flesh bristle like something feral.
She heard the blunt end of his club scrape across the floor. Heavy and ferric, it lifted and fell with a clang. The sound echoed inside of her, getting lost in her chest. She forced her flinch out through her shoulder. Rolling. Readying. Redirecting fear into her fists.
"Ooh. Careful. Take a swing and you go right back in your crate.”
She sneered.
There weren't words profane enough.
She uncurled her fingers.
"That's right. You keep your hands to yourself, now. And play nice."
His voice was like gravel in a tin can and god, she wanted to make it fucking rattle.
He prodded her then, knocking iron against her spine. She pulsed with rage. The emotion was volcanic. She rumbled, seismic and steady, her shoulders lifted by the pressures underneath.
Sure. She wanted to whip around and seize the warden's rod.
She wanted to bring it up and down and break him beneath it.
She wanted to snap him inch by inch until white shards showed through his skin—
—but she didn't.
Wasn't worth it.
She was done wasting stints in solitary on the dumbfucks in blue.
Bones growling, she allowed herself to be tipped forward. As she descended the ramp into the cellblock, the other inmates pulled back, pressing into each other to give her space.
They remembered.
She prowled silently among them, wielding eye contact like a weapon to keep everyone the fuck away.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
That evening, in the mess hall, they all fell into line. Literally. She collected tax on her tray until it was twice as full as everyone else's. One newbie didn't know the score, so she gave him a little instruction. No one intervened. She finished her meal with him bleeding at her feet.
When she was done, she scrubbed her mouth, tossed her tray, and skulked off to turn slop into sinew. She spent the remaining daylight hours facing a wall, using concrete to dull the nerves in her hands.
They all grumbled that she was cracked.
They were wrong.
She was rubble.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
The klaxons kept coming. Lights on, lights out. Seconds to minutes, minutes to hours. She kept counting the days, no longer in hundreds, but thousands.
Night after night, she awoke with a serrated sound in her mouth: Silco's name, seething out of her as she slept.
By day, the halls became her hunting ground. It was a new game. Sit still and listen. Watch and wait. The Kingpin's people always slipped up. Eventually.
Wrecking them fueled her. Reconnaissance for the main meal. Retribution for dessert. It kept her going, the thought that the way back to Powder might be through the next goon's ribcage.
The guards kept sending her down to hell. She kept bringing it back up with her.
They started calling her a demon.
She got stronger. Quieter. Wilder. Her spates of violence punctured routine like an awl. As her focus narrowed, she became less and less predictable. Calculated chaos, just like she wanted.
Just like Vander taught her.
“Real fighters never telegraph their attacks, Vi.”
Well, she’d think as she splintered another skull, neither do predators.
—and she had prey.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
On Day 3,536, she spotted him across the mess hall as she slammed her tray down on the rails. The recognition made her pulse spike.
Bald.
Bulky.
Studded face and blocky tats—
Time collapsed.
Memory flashed to rage.
Vi swiped her tray off the line as the cook tipped his ladle. Gruel splattered everywhere. She was already halfway across the room, her body moving on its own, ticking, tapping, revving in rhythm like a hot engine. She fought back the crimson that gnawed at the edges of her vision.
He only looked up when she had him in her shadow.
She could have asked him questions. Could have brought him down and roughed him up and snarled demands into his face as she plumbed the air out of his lungs with her knee.
She didn’t bother.
She was so far beyond words.
It was over in seconds. A blur of violence and blood and spittle. He slumped at her feet, wheezing, bleeding, his jaw satisfyingly off-center, one of his eyes hanging loose on a twitching cord of optic nerve. She loomed over him, huffing shallow, even breaths, her skin too cold to sweat. She seethed as he fumbled for his wet face and wept.
Why?! He moaned between cries, Why!?
She wanted to break him all over again.
The fucker didn’t even remember her.
She threw down the bloody tray with a clatter and put her hands behind her head.
As the buzzer scoured the air and the guards poured in between the tables, she didn’t move. Didn’t fight as they yanked a bag over her head, didn’t buck as they slammed her against the wall and cuffed her. When she heard the spatter-hiss of their rods—saw the hex-blue flash through the weave of the hood—she didn’t give them any reason to get creative.
She only slouched, silent in their grip as they muscled her out of the mess hall and into their ride down to the subfloors.
[End Stillwater Part II]
Notes:
Thank you for your patience and understanding regarding this chapter. I hope it is understandable why this content has been difficult to produce. I am not putting any deadline on myself for writing the missing scene, but I also didn't want to delay the subsequent chapters.
I will notify folks when it's finally written and this chapter is updated to include it.
---
Carried forward from Chapter 10:
"What you just read tentatively approaches a realistic, if glancing, depiction of systemic prison abuse and its mental health impacts, albeit filtered through a fictional/fantasy setting. It was written with the use of references and, as mentioned, in coordination with a mental health professional.
I am self-aware that I, myself, am too privileged and undereducated on the subject of criminal justice reform to contribute meaningfully to any real-world discourse. But I can tell you that just doing basic, layperson's research for this chapter (and then synthesizing that information into a canon-appropriate depiction of Vi's character), was extremely distressing. In lieu of saying anything else, I'll just ask ya'll to help me put this piece of the fic to good real-world use.
If you are so moved, please consider donating to The Innocence Project.
From their website:
"The Innocence Project works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone. Founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the organization is now an independent nonprofit. Our work is guided by science and grounded in antiracism."
Thank you to whomever might be lead to donate."
---
Decompression Section:
I posted on Twitter asking folks to link to their most comforting CaitVi content so folks have something to use as a palette/heart cleanser after this. Click here.
Also, in advance of this chapter, I've posted several soft one-shots/drabbles featuring gentle CaitVi moments from further down their "Saltwater" timeline. You can find them on my Works page. As dark as this fic has gotten, I want folks reassured that these two make it out, end up together, and help each other heal. Those one-shots function as that reassurance.
---
This was very hard. I will not be revisiting content of this type again, except to eventually fill in the missing scene. There are other difficult elements of "Saltwater," but nothing remotely so severe as this. The next chapter has more flashbacks, but they are CaitVi together in lost scenes from Acts II and III.
A huge thank you to @Just_Athena_G and @_CafeKat_ for the betas on this section!! Almost everything you read has been through both of them.
And an ENORMOUS thank you to @FoulMouthPrude for supporting me with their invaluable insights as an Adult Psych professional. Pru, having your expertise as a post-check/cross-check/pre-check on this content has been absolutely essential. I cannot thank you enough for that support.
---
Two gentle requests of commenters:
Kindly do not mention/reference other fics in the comments beneath my works.
Also, please DO NOT reference situations in which CaitVi harm each other in the comments beneath my work.
Please respect these boundaries. They are related to maintaining reader (and author) safety and comfort.
Chapter 12
Summary:
We are now through the darkest of this fic's content. Please keep in mind that we will continue to encounter Adult Themes, but we will never again be engaging with content as severe as we saw in Chapters 10 and 11.
Chapters 12 and 13 will continue with flashbacks of Vi's history, only now, she is with Cait. I chose to divide the "Cait Flashback" chapter into two so that we had two "Before Cait" chapters and two "After Cait" chapters. I have divided them by "on Stillwater grounds" and "off Stillwater grounds".
Posting this chapter today aligns with my original posting schedule. The previous chapter ended up delayed. I decided to go ahead and post back-to-back due to guidance from a twt poll, to get us back on track, and--most importantly--because we all deserve to see Vi get out of that cell.
CWs still apply. See the following:
Anxiety - Panic Attacks - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD - Wrongful Imprisonment - Implied/Referenced Torture - Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms - Emotional/Psychological Abuse - Verbal Abuse - Claustrophobia - Flashbacks - Derogatory Language - Aquaphobia
Proceed with caution.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Location:
Stillwater Prison
Subfloor 40, Cellblock # [NULL]
She might have left her cell a little sooner if she hadn't been so convinced it was all just a sick joke.
Staring at the floor, Vi clenched her hands and teeth and counted. She went up to five, stopped, and up to five again, waiting for the guards to come pouring around the corner.
They didn't.
When she finally slunk out from behind the bars, she more-than-half expected to see something blunt cut an arc through the air and crack into her skull.
That didn’t happen, either.
Instead, all she saw were the shadowed outlines of one bully-bodied warden and one enforcer in formal blues. Both of them were walking away from her.
Only one of them stopped to look back.
As Vi caught up with her, the enforcer turned and fell into stride alongside her. Which, even on its own, was pretty fucking bizarre. Then she matched Vi’s pace, slowing when she slowed, allowing her to keep some distance between herself and the big man pounding up the floor ahead of them. That was even weirder. She only pulled out in front when Vi stopped several feet from the elevator, refusing to move closer. The warden was leaning against the wall beside the call button, waiting.
He stared at her. She stared at his club. He had it propped up in front of him like a cane, the end notched against his boot. He tipped it heavily from the left and to the right, from one hand to the other. Vi tracked the motion with her eyes.
They stood like that, the three of them—warden, enforcer, and whatever the fuck she was, now—until the elevator stopped on their level and scraped open.
The warden moved first.
Vi grounded her weight on her back foot as he pushed himself upright, the end of his club kicking towards her. It hit the concrete with a clang and she forced her flinch into the floor. He caught it anyway. Knew her too well. With a smarmy snort, he sucked back some phlegm and turned toward the enforcer.
He changed his face. Touching his hat, he rolled over his fat gut into a bow.
“After you,” he said, waving a hand into the lift.
The enforcer didn’t budge. She lifted her chin.
"No. Thank you.” She reset her clipboard with a snap. “We'll take the next one."
Vi's ears pricked. Her eyes shot sideways.
Interesting, she thought.
Somebody doesn’t like the warden.
The warden didn’t seem to notice.
"Suit yourself,” he said. He shouldered into the elevator. The car sank under his weight. Punching in his floor, he pointed the end of his club at Vi. “Better stay sharp, though, missy. This one bites."
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Didn’t sound like she planned to.
The doors rattled in their tracks, squealing shut with a bang. Vi stared at their rust-eaten surface, the image of the warden’s club still burning a dark line across her retinas. She didn’t unwind her fists until the lift jolted on its cables, carrying its pig-eared cargo up and away.
She and the enforcer were left alone. They stood side-by-side in the dim, rumbling hiss of the cellblock. Immediately, the sounds of solitary closed up around them. Water dripped down off the pipeworks. Steam sloughed up out of the floor. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the prison, a sump growled to life, guzzling seawater. Twitching, Vi sucked a canine to cut the silence. She turned.
"You stupid or something?"
The response was clipped.
"Excuse me?"
Vi shoved a shoulder towards her ear and gestured, half with her hand, half with her elbow. "You're really gonna get in that thing? With me? Alone?"
The enforcer looked at her sidelong, head tilting. She arched an eyebrow. "Perhaps you’d prefer to take the stairs?"
Vi felt a muscle tic beside her nose.
"Alright, don't get cute.” She hooked her thumbs into her stripes. Rearranging her face around a snarl, she pulled her posture into a challenge.
The enforcer only stared at her, inert.
Then, without a word, she leaned forward and hit the call button.
Vi deflated.
Dropping into a slouch, she resettled her weight and gave the enforcer a once-over. Then a twice-over. Then a third when it struck her that she was genuinely—if reluctantly—curious.
“You're not afraid I'm gonna hurt you?"
"No. Not really."
Vi huffed, facing forward again. "Got it," she said, “So you are stupid."
The enforcer didn’t say anything. She only drew in a breath, closed her eyes, and sighed. Her arms fell away from her body. Vi caught a glimpse of the papers on her clipboard. The photo of some pale, dead-eyed kid stared back at her from the front page.
Me, she realized.
The sudden recognition made her flinch. Tugging her hands out of her uniform, she sniffed and looked down, pressing a thumb into her wrist. Somewhere above them, the elevator offloaded its counterweights and began to scream back down through the subfloors.
"What good would it do you?”
Vi stiffened. "What?"
Blue eyes drifted over to study her.
"To hurt me,” the enforcer clarified, “What good would it do you?”
She asked the question as if it answered itself.
It kinda did.
Vi pressed harder into her wrist. The elevator rumbled to a stop in its shaft and the doors squealed open.
The enforcer stepped into the lift. “Let's go."
Vi didn’t move. She could see inside the elevator and decided she didn’t like how it looked.
Too familiar.
"You mentioned stairs?" she snarked.
"I was being sarcastic."
"Uh-huh. Which way?"
The elevator doors began to close. The enforcer put up her arms, forcing them back open.
"To where?"
"To the stairs,” Vi snapped. She rolled her neck. Cracked it. “C’mon, keep up.”
"Are you—” The doors tried to close again. “It's forty floors."
"I don't ca—"
Vi froze.
"Wait, what?" She tried to fix her face but it was too late. She'd already been caught. The enforcer was frowning at her. Strange look. Weird eyes.
"Did—”
The doors bucked a third time and an alarm began to sound.
Scoffing in annoyance, the enforcer leaned back and smacked something on the interior wall of the lift. The elevator shuddered, clunked, and settled. The doors ground to a halt, halfway open. She stood between them and turned to finish her thought.
“—did you not know that?"
No.
Vi felt a dark, yawning sensation spin up her legs into her stomach.
No, she hadn’t known that.
Fuck.
Subfloor 40.
She turned, numb, and stared at the row of cages.
They’d never put her this far down before. They never put anyone this far down. Weren’t supposed to, anyway. The cellblocks, they…they weren’t fully finished, didn’t even have numbers, because—
She swallowed.
—because the emergency sumps only kicked on once a flood hit Subfloor 39.
Something black and viscous washed into her chest and hit its high water mark. Odd, then, that her mouth was so dry. Her pulse soared.
…how many times had the prison flooded last month?
"Hey."
The word brought her back around again. To that face. That expression. All angles and arrogance. So haughty. So bossy, and—
—and, god. Something else. Something that made Vi feel fucking illiterate.
“Are you coming or not?”
Fuck you.
Vi looked at the lift, looked at the enforcer, then bit her tongue and thought of Powder.
"Whatever. Move over."
The enforcer stepped backward into the elevator to let her pass, but not fast enough to avoid being shoved aside.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
As the lift doors closed, Vi's lungs pressed themselves flat, wringing out the last of her air. She wheezed—once. The sound made her froth with fury. She stopped breathing.
Fuck.
Goddammit.
Fuck this shit up, down, and sideways.
Retreating into the corner, Vi reached back for the wall, her fingers biting down around the first thing they could catch. It was sharp. Blistered iron. Rough, flaking, and oxidized. She squeezed, hoping for a sting. Got one. Swallowed.
Across from her, the enforcer punched in their floor and pulled away from the panel, claiming the opposite corner. She leaned, her arms wrapped around her paperwork, seemingly ready to keep her eyes to herself.
Good.
The car thunked and jolted upwards. Vi’s stomach folded up under her ribs. She started counting, splitting numbers between curses.
Shit. Fuck.
—four—
— —Three-thousand five-hundred and thirty-seven——
God, a new fucking thing to hate.
—nine—
——divided by seven——
Gotta be kidding me, this is fucking garbage...
——five hundred and five weeks...with spare change——
—eleven—
She hadn’t known—
But how could she?
She was always knocked out or hooded for this part.
A tremor set it. Too full-bodied to blame on the elevator. She wanted to close her eyes, figured it might help, but it wasn’t like she could do that.
She wasn’t alone.
She settled for cinching her muscles, grinding them along her bones, tensing and releasing. An old trick. It hid the shaking and it read like aggression. A two-for.
Nineteen seconds in, between Subfloors 28 and 29, she managed a single breath. It dragged down her throat like a hand file. Too noisy.
Too noticeable.
Something uncanny began to needle at her nerve endings. Her gaze sliced sideways. And of-fucking-course, the enforcer was watching her. She had a strange, notched expression on her face.
Vi's lip pulled back.
"Quit looking at me.”
A blink.
"...alright."
And she did. She looked away and down at that dumb clipboard of hers and pretended to read whatever was printed on the front page. Vi could tell she was bullshitting because her eyes were huge and blue and weird and they weren’t tracking across the paper.
Scowling, Vi went back to holding her breath and counting. She pressed into the wall, gripping the crimp of metal so hard the wraps on her hands creaked. The floor counter cycled up into the teens.
The enforcer shifted beside her. She glanced over, just once.
"Almost there," she said.
"Shut up."
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Location:
Stillwater Prison
Main Building
Ground Floor
On the ground floor, the enforcer led them along a green-painted line and then stopped at a teller window. She leaned down, resting a hand on the counter.
“Good evening.”
The guard behind the glass barely glanced up from her book. She popped her gum. “If you say so.”
A frown tightened the enforcer’s face.
“So sorry to bother you while on duty,” she said evenly, “But I was hoping you could help us.”
Her tone made Vi’s face jump on a smirk. She quickly scrubbed it away with her forearm. Only thing better than fucking with the Law was seeing the Law fuck with itself.
Letting go of her page, the guard sat back with a glare. “What? ”
“Where do we go to collect her personal effects?”
“Who’s—?”
Vi stepped into view. The guard let a bubble deflate over her lip.
“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”
The enforcer huffed and ducked down to fill out more of the window, trying to put herself between them.
“If you could kindly just answer the question.”
The guard’s face twisted into a sneer. “Lifers don’t have personal effects.”
“Well, she’s not leaving in…this. She needs clothes.”
Vi half expected the guard to tell them both to fuck right off—it’s what she would have done. Instead, the woman only rolled her eyes and pushed back her chair. Snatching a key off the wall, she let it clatter into the exchange slot. She jabbed a thumb. “Third door on your left. But—hey. Better watch your back, there, Blue Eyes. This one—”
“Yes. Bites. So I hear.” The enforcer swiped the key out of the dish. “And yet, I still have all my fingers.” She turned and stalked off down the hall, leaving her back very much unwatched. Vi moved to follow, pausing only to flash the guard a sharp, parting wink.
She heard a snort.
“See you when you get back, 516.”
The comment jerked her to a halt her mid-stride. She made the mistake of looking back.
The teller closed her book and leaned forward, smug.
“Don’t suppose you know what ‘recidivism’ means?”
Vi twitched.
She didn’t. Not specifically. But she was good with context. Her throat suddenly felt too thick to swallow.
“I give it a week—two weeks, tops—before they’re dragging you back in here. In fact, I think I’ll start a pool.”
Fear mounted hate inside Vi’s chest. It bred out a fresh, hot rage. Her vision began to go red around the edges.
She turned back towards the window, skin bristling.
Oh, sure, she thought, It's been years since I dragged one of you assholes across the floor, but what? You think I’ve forgotten how? You think I’ve lost the taste? You think that stupid fucking glass will—?
Clipped footsteps interrupted the thought. The enforcer was back between them again, dropping the key into the teller slot.
“Found the room,” she said briskly. She looked through the window. “We’ll be on our way out as soon as we’re done. Twenty minutes, let’s say. You’ll need to lock up.”
The guard pulled her eyes grudgingly away from Vi. She reached for the key. “Fine. Just be quick about it.”
The enforcer moved again, and this time she managed to completely obstruct the view of the guard. Vi looked up, her snarl unwinding. The expression on the enforcer’s face was unreadable.
“Come on,” she said, and her tone was different. “This way. I’ll show you.”
As Vi turned and followed her down the hall, she felt her rage break around a cold, plummeting sensation. She went wide-eyed and scraped a wrist down her arm, forcing her nerves to lay back down against her bones.
Close call.
She gulped.
Forget two weeks.
She nearly hadn’t made it out the fucking door.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
In the dank quiet of the storeroom, Vi dug through a crate of old cast-off clothing and tugged down her stripes. She was half-dressed and biting through the seams of her shirt sleeves when she heard a knock at the door.
"What."
"Are you decent?"
Vi rolled her eyes at the wall. "Just get in here."
The door creaked open a few inches. "Wanted to check and see how—"
The words broke off. The door opened further.
"—are you ripping off your sleeves?"
"Don't fit," Vi grunted. She popped another stitch with her canine. "Too tight."
A pause.
"It's cold out."
More threads snapped as she yanked. Fabric purred apart. "There's no heat below subfloor fifteen."
The enforcer was silent. She hovered in the doorway for a count of seven.
Long time.
"I'll be right outside when you're done."
Vi bit down and ripped more fabric. "Great."
The door clicked shut behind her.
Notes:
I cannot emphasize enough the relief I feel at having her back at Caitlyn's side, even if it's just in flashbacks.
I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. I know it's still dark, but at least she's not alone anymore.
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Eerie writing process factoid:
"She bites."
^I had this element written into Vi's character/these scenes for months. Only in the last few weeks was I made aware that her character model features likely evidence of a broken jaw.
Some things just fall into place with harrowing convenience.
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A huge thank you to @Just_Athena_G and @_CafeKat_ for the betas on this section!! Almost everything you read has been through both of them.
And an ENORMOUS thank you to @FoulMouthPrude for supporting me with their invaluable insights as an Adult Psych professional. Pru, having your expertise as a post-check/cross-check/pre-check on this content has been absolutely essential. I cannot thank you enough for that support.
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Two gentle requests of commenters:
Kindly do not mention/reference other fics in the comments beneath my works.
Also, please DO NOT reference situations in which CaitVi harm each other in the comments beneath my work.
Please respect these boundaries. They are related to maintaining reader (and author) safety and comfort.
Chapter 13
Summary:
This chapter is rated T and qualifies as fluff in Vi's POV. CWs/TWs still apply, so be mindful, but everything is canon-typical.
In this section, we get more of Vi and Caitlyn's "missing time" together. The idea is for us to be able to hold her horrible experiences in Stillwater against her experiences in the days immediately following her release. I hope you enjoy the chapter. Sorry it's late!!
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Since we don't need a big warning banner on this chapter, I'll use this space to gently remind folks:
If you're reading a fic and you see a section you'd like to screenshot and post on social media, please make sure to provide the title, author, and link to the fic in the main post. Fanfic is fan work, too, and deserves the same level of sharing etiquette and consideration as fanart. <3
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Speaking of ART:
There is an ART ALERT for this section!!
Please make sure to jump to (in order of appearance) @Absolutely_Egg's and @vinzul's comics
by clicking the hyperlinked gears [⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙] in-text! Please like/follow/rt these artists to support them and their art!!
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Location:
In a Boat
On the Sea
She’d never seen the prison from the outside.
Blinking back salt spray, Vi draped herself against the side of the boat and glared across the sea. Her vision was consumed by the still-too-near silhouette that Stillwater hacked out of the skyline.
Razor wire. Black towers. Brutal red shadows. She ticked every time the searchlights blew past her, throwing searing white flares into her skull. But she couldn’t look away. When she tried, she burned with superstition, as though staring down that miserable fucking pit was the only thing keeping it from rushing across the waves and swallowing her again.
The thought plunged into her stomach like an auger. A buoy clanged nearby, making her jerk. The boat rolled.
She bent over the railing and wrung her guts out silently into the sea.
Fuck , she thought.
Fuck sailing, fuck shipwrights,
fuck any and every asshole who thought seafaring was a bright idea.
Sniffing and spitting, she scrubbed at her face with the side of her hand and dropped her temple against the gunwale. She dragged in air to try and settle the spinning between her ears.
Something magnetic buzzed along her periphery. Her gaze snapped sideways.
Enforcer .
She bristled.
Across the boat, under the orange light of the lantern, the enforcer was watching
her again. She had her head tilted and her hands in her lap, rolling a pen between her fingers. Her lip was caught under her teeth. And those weird, electric, unblinking eyes had the fucking gall to look—
Wait.
What was that look?
Scowling deeper into her seat, Vi turned and fixed the enforcer with a snarl, raking her with a glare, daring her to say any —
"Are you alright?"
Oh my god, what the fuck.
Her lip curled. "Fuck off."
The enforcer frowned. Rolled her pen again, shook her head and sighed.
"Would that I could," she said. Then she went back to reading whatever was on that stupid clipboard of hers.
Vi glowered and went back to draping herself over the gunwale. Her eyes swung around to make sure Stillwater was still crawling away over the horizon’s inky curve.
It was.
Didn’t make her feel any better, though.
The boat tipped under her, knocked by a stray wave. Her guts bucked for a second time and she felt her face and hands go clammy. Tightening around herself, she tried to hold down bile.
No dice.
Pitching forward again, Vi coughed up the last remnants of her dinner. Curses boiled in her throat. Panting, she hung slack over the edge of the boat and willed the water beneath it to calm its fucking shit.
A sudden movement at her back made her arch.
Footsteps. Boots. They sounded hollow against the boat’s wooden hull.
She shot a glare over her shoulder.
The enforcer was up out of her seat. Stepping carefully over some netting, she sat down on the bench across from Vi. She was holding something.
Vi curled into herself. "Go away."
The enforcer didn’t budge. She held out whatever was in her hand.
A canteen.
"Drink this."
Vi stared.
Uh—
"No."
The enforcer’s arm dropped briefly in frustration. Then it shoved upwards, insistent. "Drink this, please? "
Vi stared.
What the fuck is wrong with—?
"Would you get the hell away from me?!"
The enforcer’s arm dropped again. She set her elbows on her knees, confused. "Aren't you thirsty?"
Vi stiffened. Her eyes went wide.
What kind of question was that? Of course, she was thirsty, she'd been thirsty for ten fucking years.
"Screw you," she snapped.
For the first time, a look of genuine annoyance sliced through the enforcer’s expression. Her mouth tightened and her eyes went steely.
"I'm not impressed with any of this, in case you're wondering," she said. "Here." She stood and
dropped the canteen into Vi's lap. "Pretend you stole it from me if you want. I'll pretend not to see you drink from it. Just like I've been pretending not to notice how miserably seasick you are."
The boatman snickered. Vi shot him a glare but he only shuffled his mustache and smirked, leaning against the tiller.
The enforcer turned around and stalked back to her bench.
For a long moment, Vi sat rigidly, holding the canteen in a scraping, white-knuckle grip. She flicked its tin side with a finger.
Full.
She swallowed and her throat stuck.
Her heart began to pound.
Seething, Vi cast a suspicious look across the boat to make sure the enforcer wasn’t looking at
her. She wasn’t. She was head-down over her papers, pen moving smoothly, underlining things.
…fine.
Hunching into the shadows, Vi popped open the canteen. She nearly choked when the water hit her tongue.
Shit.
Fuck.
It was good. So fucking good. So clean and cold.
So sweet it tasted like sugar.
Fuck her.
Gulping down a mouthful, Vi jolted back with a grimace and re-corked the canteen. It hit the bench with a thud as she set it aside. Clenching her fists, she stared at the floorboards.
The enforcer rearranged her weight.
"One pull isn't going to do it. You need more."
For fuck’s—
"You really get off on telling people what to do, don't you?"
The enforcer’s brow notched downwards. " O- kay. Perhaps you'd prefer this?”
She pulled something from beneath her cloak and threw it. Vi caught it on reflex.
A flask.
Popping the cap, Vi sniffed, half expecting alcohol. Instead, she smelled mold and iron.
"What—?"
The enforcer cut her off. " That’s the swill you’ve been drinking." She stabbed at it with a hand as if its very existence offended her. It probably did.
Vi bared her teeth in a felid grin. "Aw, what? Don't tell me a little prison water is beneath you, fancy pants."
"I'm in a skirt. And that ,” the enforcer pointed, “is beneath everyone. Completely non-potable. It's so mineralized I'm surprised you're not all using kidney stones as currency."
The words were so sharp and sincere that they shook Vi’s grin. "Well…if you think it's such crap , then why did you—?"
"For testing! What you're holding is a sample. Drink it if you want, but the idea was to prove that what you were being given isn't fit for consumption."
Vi’s sneer collapsed.
The enforcer’s tone was so… indignant. So something. It put crimps in her nerves. Unable to muster a comeback, she set her teeth and edged away from the canteen.
The enforcer dropped her pen in frustration. It clattered onto her clipboard. "For goodness’ sake! You do understand that I understand you're…tough, powerful, resilient, whatever? You're not proving anything with this little charade. Just drink . I promise not to tell anyone you don't actually run on oil."
She waved dismissively at the mech tattoos scrawled down Vi’s arms.
Same shit, same tone, same weirdly sincere irritation. It hit Vi broadside and made her dizzy. She stuffed the flask under her hip and folded up on herself.
Opposite her, the enforcer waited for a response.
She didn't get one.
Vi turned toward the east. Stillwater had finally, finally vanished over the horizon. All she could see was a smudge of red and the flicker of panning lights.
Hooks slid out of her skin. She sagged.
But as she slumped against the gunwale, her thirst rushed back, hitting worse than before. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth and she pulled a face, trying to ignore the feeling.
The boat chose that moment to yaw and sway, knocking over the canteen beside her. It slid off the bench with a thump .
She picked it up. The water sloshed inside, and she could feel how chilled it was through the tin.
Her eyes darted.
The enforcer was engrossed in her paperwork again, rubbing together the fingers of one hand while she scribbled something down with the other.
The boatman was staring absently at the sky.
Vi’s insides screamed for water.
Sighing, she counted to five, then five again.
Another swig.
Another wince at how good it tasted.
She had to winch her fingers into her side to stop herself from guzzling it down in one go. It barely helped. The canteen was half-empty before she could take a breath.
"So…Violet, is it?"
The words came out of nowhere.
She nearly puked. The canteen tipped out of her hands and onto the floor as she grappled for something to hold onto.
Shit.
That—
The air scattered out of her lungs.
—that was the first time in ten years she'd heard her name come out of anybody's mouth.
And—
She gulped twice.
And the last time—
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Vi ground the gunwale under her fist and bent around on a snarl. " Don’t fucking call me that!!"
The boatman jumped, startled.
The enforcer stared across the boat at her, sitting very still. She didn't look threatened.
She looked puzzled. "Well, I'm not going to call you by your number."
The words snipped a wire somewhere in Vi's chest. She crumpled, defused.
Gold embroidery flashed in the lantern light as the enforcer shrugged. “I’ll call you whatever you like, you know. But if you continue to ignore me, I’ll have to come up with a nickname. And believe me, you don’t want me doing that.”
A wry smile whittled away the hard edge of her expression.
Begrudgingly, Vi found herself agreeing. No, she didn’t want this weird stranger with her weird eyes giving her some sort of stupid nickname. She was sick of that shit.
She’d spent so long—
— so fucking long being…
A number.
A nobody.
Nothing.
To anyone.
Nothing except a piece of meat for those blue-suited fuckbags to pin down and flog with insults just for fun.
Vi set her chin on the side of the boat and scratched uneasily at her waist, right over the place where the numerals 5 1 6 were rolled up and hidden away under her belt.
A muscle tensed along her jaw.
Nah, she wanted—
"Vi."
Blue eyes swung towards her, surprised. "What?"
"You wanted a name.” Vi picked a splinter out of her wraps. “It's Vi."
Slowly, the enforcer lowered her papers. " Vi . Hm." Her lip turned upwards. She tapped her
pen to her cheekbone. "In hindsight, I suppose that should’ve been obvious." She shrugged and turned back to her work. “Thank you."
" God , what—?” Vi lifted her head off the gunwale. “Don't thank me!"
"Why not?” The enforcer didn’t look up. “It's polite. And something tells me I'm going to need manners enough for the both of us."
Vi groaned and dropped her head down. "Do you ever shut up?"
Her question fell into a pointed silence. She glanced across the boat to find herself being ignored. "What? Did I hurt your feelings?"
The enforcer's brow furrowed and she squinted at her clipboard. "Funny."
"What?"
"Oh, nothing.” A gloved hand let go of a page, letting it fall. “It's just that your file here puts you in your mid-twenties, yet you sound a bit like a seven-year-old. Act like one, too."
The boatman snickered again. Vi was ready to drown him.
Instead of doing that, she scowled and felt around for the canteen. Her gaze fell as she scrounged.
There was a puddle on the floor. Her boot dragged through it, and with a curse, Vi remembered: she'd dropped the stupid thing. Leaning down, she dug the canteen out from underneath the bench.
It rattled.
Empty.
Staring at the canteen, she thumbed over a new dent. Then she shifted aside and eyed the flask full of prison water she’d stuffed beneath her leg.
Her hand twitched.
She went to reach—
"Don't.”
The enforcer was watching her. Unreadable.
“Here,” she said, waving a gloved hand, “pass me the…?"
Vi tracked the gesture to the empty container in her lap. Huffing, she tossed it across the boat. The enforcer caught the strap and refilled the canteen from a cask under her seat. Leaning against the mast, she handed it back. "Not as fresh as what I gave you before, but far better than that .” She nodded at the flask. “In fact…would you give that here, actually?"
Vi exchanged the flask for the canteen without a word. The trade was in her favor, anyway.
Forcing herself to wait for three breaths to hide her urgency, she took a drink. She had to bite back a groan. Her organs screamed and she gulped down three mouthfuls at once, unable to stop herself.
“Slowly.”
Her lip curled off the canteen.
“You telling me how to drink water, now?”
The enforcer stared at her, unblinking. Vi forced herself to glare back and tried not to squirm. Those eyes were weird . Made her feel weird.
Who the hell just stares like that? Stares and stares and never—
—there, fuck, okay. She blinked.
God.
Vi’s gaze fled back down to the floorboards. She took another swig of water and wiped her mouth. “Order me around again and you’re gonna end up swimming back.”
“That would have been more of a threat when we weren’t less than a mile from shore.”
Frowning, Vi bent around in her seat and looked towards the west. Her insides rearranged themselves. For once, though, the sensation made her feel better, not worse.
Lights .
She could see lights in the distance. Twinkling and warm, they were sprayed across the horizon like—
Her brow furrowed.
—how long had it been since she’d seen stars?
She took another sip of water to flush away the ache in her throat.
As they approached the shore, the boatman began to putter. His faint humming picked up into a whistle as he tugged ropes and lines and nosed the prow towards the harbor. All his bustling drew Vi’s gaze, towing it around.
Then it snagged on blue.
She stiffened.
The enforcer’s gaze was roaming over her. She fidgeted with the flask, rolling it in her hand, over and over and—
"What were you in for?" she asked.
Her words were soft.
A muscle pulsed in Vi’s face and her guts plummeted. She turned her back to hide a wince. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
"Yes."
Vi’s chest tightened.
Weird tone. Almost as if it mattered to her. As if she actually—
Vi scrubbed her face with one hand and dangled the other over the side of the boat, letting her fingertips trail through the sea. She kept her mouth shut.
It wasn’t like she had an answer.
For once, the enforcer didn’t press. Instead, she muttered, half to herself, rustling through papers in frustration as they pulled into the marina.
"There's no record. No trial date, no conviction, no sentencing paperwork. None of the appropriate forms were filed."
Vi rolled her neck in discomfort. "Can't believe everything you read on paper."
"That's just it. There's nothing to read ."
Vi leaned aside to avoid the boatman as he shuffled by to swing a loop of rope around a mooring pole. "Guess I'm just one of life's little mysteries, then. C'mon.”
Getting up, she grabbed the now-empty canteen by its strap and hucked it into the enforcer’s lap. Gloved hands fumbled to catch it. The flask nearly went flying.
Curling a lip, Vi jabbed her chin toward it.
“And dump that out,” she said, “Nobody cares."
" I do."
Yeah, right.
"Then you're the only one. Dump it."
"No."
Vi stopped, one foot on the gunwale. She glared.
The enforcer glared back. Her gaze was steady. Intense. So intense that—
Vi glanced away.
"Okay, fine! ” She turned. “Whatever! Have fun carrying around your dirty water, I guess. The fuck do I care?"
She bounded onto the pier. As she hit the planks, her body lightened and her blood thinned, moving more easily through her veins.
Something was—
She began to scuff along the decking, mismatched boots thumping against the wood. The world warped and tugged around her, and for a moment, she thought the motion of the sea had followed her onto dry land.
It hadn’t.
Her gait stuttered.
Like a blow from behind, it caught up with her.
Free .
She nearly tripped. A bright, fizzing sensation hissed up her legs, demanding that she sprint. Her body ticked, shoulders rolling, shins kicking out as her footsteps came faster and faster, carrying her more quickly to the end of the dock, towards the Undercity, towards—
She stopped.
Grinding around on her heel, she threw her arms to the side. “Hey!” she called, “Are you always this slow?!”
The enforcer looked up. She was on the dock, half-in, half-out of her cloak. Frowning, she finished shucking out of it and handed it to the boatman.
“As agreed,” Vi heard her say, “and thank you again.”
The boatman wiggled his mustache and tipped his cap. Turning, the enforcer straightened her uniform and adjusted the satchel on her back.
Her expression spun down over an eye-roll. “Are you always this caustic?”
She was already moving to catch up.
Vi didn’t wait. Lip curling, she stuffed her fists in her pockets and wheeled around.
With the sea and Stillwater behind her, she pointed herself towards home.
Location:
The Lanes
The Undercity
Ten years.
A whole fucking decade in prison, and she’d never been stabbed. Not for lack of people trying, either.
Twenty-four hours on The Outside?
Split open. Bleeding all over the place.
Like an idiot.
Hissing through clenched teeth, Vi pressed her wadded jacket into her side and lurched deeper into the Lanes, half her weight hanging off the enfor—off of Caitlyn's—shoulders.
Every step made the holes screech and ooze. That was bad. Felt awful. Made her nauseous. Worse, though, was that she could feel the oozing on the inside, too. Her right flank had gone stiff, tightening over the growing, acidic pressure of seepage. She knew what that meant: torn guts. Poisons, leaking out. Her body, cross-contaminating itself.
In other words, she was fucked.
Stupid.
So, so—
She saw a flash of blue in the corner of her eye and nearly choked. Knew it wasn't real, but only two seconds too late. She stumbled. Pain screamed a line up into her jaw. Deserved.
Sorry.
Sorry.
The blue vanished as soon as she swung her gaze toward it. Felt like a loss.
Fuck.
I never should've—
A shiver ripped up her back. An arm tightened around her.
"Do you feel cold?"
Vi sagged. She felt empty. Pain and adrenaline, grief and guilt; her body was throwing everything on the pyre just to keep her going.
But…yeah.
She felt cold, too.
She shook her head. "I'm fine."
Her body shuddered in disagreement.
"Hang on. Stop.” Caitlyn pulled them into the shadows of a bricked-over doorway. “Quickly, let's get this on you."
"What?"
"Your jacket. Here."
She was put up against a wall. Gently. By an enforcer. The same one murmuring apologies for what she was about to do. Vi bit her tongue and braced, hissing as wet leather was peeled away from her side. Something went with it, tugging and ripping. Fresh clots, being plucked out of her skin.
Fuck, she shook, that hurts.
A narrow sound battered up into her throat. She choked it back.
"Let me see your arm."
Her head tipped forward and she fumbled. "Don't. I can—"
"Just let me. We don't have time."
No room for arguments. Caitlyn was already too close, halfway behind her, holding up the jacket. She offered Vi the right side first, guiding her hand down into the sleeve so she wouldn’t have to lift her arm. Nice of her. Still hurt, though. Hurt so fucking bad. Vi sucked in a breath, tightening her jaw. Sweat rolled down out of her hair.
"Sorry. I know. One more."
As if she couldn’t count her own arms.
A neon sign buzzed and flashed overhead, distracting her. Making her feel sick. It got brighter every time she blinked. Blinding.
She felt hands on her.
"There. Done."
Her jacket was being adjusted around her shoulders.
Breathless, she groped around and tried to press again, the bandages on her hand doing double duty. Blood squelched into her palm. The world flared and dimmed. She had to lock her knees to stop the street from swinging up at her.
Neon flashed and she winced.
"Stop staring at it."
"Huh?"
"The sign. Isn't it bothering you?"
It was.
It was also keeping her awake.
"Hey. Look here, please."
A firm voice, but not unkind. She didn't obey on purpose. Just sort of happened.
Caitlyn's face was half obscured by the chaotic green afterimage of the sign. Vi blinked and blinked again. No change. Just a tangle of weird, floaty, fucky shapes. Her eyes, though. Those she could see. Blue.
Blue used to be her favorite color.
She didn't have a favorite color anymore.
Caitlyn's hands tucked themselves under her lapels. They pulled her hood out from under her collar, smoothing it out, fussing with it longer than they needed to. Vi watched, vision swimming.
Their eyes met. Caitlyn paused and searched her face.
“Did you want it put up?" she asked.
Half the words sounded like water. The other half sounded like tunnels. Muffled and distant. Faint echoes.
“What?”
“Your hood. Did you want…?” Fingers gathered under the fabric.
Vi went to swallow. Her throat clung to itself when she tried.
"No,” she said, “I'm good."
Eyes roamed her face.
“Alright, then. Let’s keep moving.”
She felt a hand move to her arm, lifting gingerly. Caitlyn was trying to get under and around her again. Groaning, Vi rolled herself backward, letting gravity tilt her away. The hand followed, caught on her sleeve. She shook her head.
"Wait." She found the wall and slumped. "Just…gimme a minute."
Fingers tightened around her upper arm. Odd grip. Not rough. Just urgent.
"We don't have time—"
"Need one anyway."
Caitlyn was standing close. Her gaze darted out into the street and doubled back, jumping down to where Vi had her arm pulled tight across her middle. She dragged her teeth over her lip.
"Okay,” she relented, “One minute. Then we need to—"
"Move. Yeah. I know."
Sighing, Caitlyn angled her head and shook it, once. With one hand still holding Vi’s sleeve, she rearranged herself in the dark, blading her body to cut a line of sight up the street. Her arm came up, bracketing them inside the doorway. Vi frowned. She knew that posture.
Possessive, in some contexts
—protective in others.
A different kind of hole opened in her gut. Shrinking sidelong into the wall, she swallowed, slowly working her arm to try and twist it out of Caitlyn’s grip. Didn’t work. The fingers in her jacket bit down harder on the leather. Huffing, Vi brought up the hand that wasn’t busy keeping the blood inside her body and tried to disentangle them.
The enforcer stiffened and shot a glance over and down. Her gaze worked fast, racing over Vi’s face. Her brow peaked.
“Am I hurting you?”
The question kicked off a spiraling sensation. Some kind of emotion was either coming or going. Vi couldn’t tell. Too unfamiliar. Dizzy, she blinked and let her hand fall away.
“No,” she said.
Caitlyn studied her a moment longer. She nodded. “Alright, then. Stop fidgeting.”
She turned away again, her head cocked sharply over her shoulder. Keeping watch. Her back pulled itself into an arch, rounding out like a shield.
Mm, yep.
Definitely protective.
The spiraling worsened.
Hunched in the corner, Vi dragged short, quiet breaths over cracked lips. None of it made sense. She didn’t make any fucking sense. Off-balance, Vi raked blurring eyes over Caitlyn, trying to take her measure, trying to understand.
To make her fit.
It was impossible. The enforcer was just vectors and lines, top to bottom; pinched and focused features; electric eyes that arced from point to point. Vi watched as her forefinger twitched against the masonry, looking for a trigger. Fancy enforcer. Fancy gun.
The hell was she even doing down here?
And why the hell was she standing like—
A scattering noise startled them both. Caitlyn ducked in closer, her hand snapping off the wall and stopping halfway to her gun. Two rats spilled out of a trashcan and scampered away, snouts full of refuse.
Caitlyn’s shoulders dropped. As her hand went back to the wall, she let go of a held breath. Vi felt its warmth gather along her neck. She fought the urge to twitch her head down towards her shoulder. Too close. Way too close.
She ran her tongue through her mouth. It stuck to her teeth, her tonsils, everything. So dry. "Y'should go."
Blue eyes cut down toward her again. "What?"
"You should go. I—"
A tsk. "Don't be stupid."
Too late.
Vi heaved. "Just listen—"
"No."
"But—"
"But nothing. Shut up." Caitlyn turned back toward the street. Sounding disgusted, she hissed out an afterthought:
"As if I'd just leave you."
The hole in Vi's stomach spun open wider. She gulped against a draining sensation—or… fuck, was it flooding? No idea. The spiraling seemed to flow in two directions at once. A maelstrom. An exchange. Sinking her.
Her side spasmed. She jerked, grimacing, but managed to keep quiet. Fresh blood warmed the spaces between her fingers. Priorities.
You're fucked. You're so fucking screwed and you're standing around worried about—?
Vi dropped her head back against the brick, feeling sore and stupid and so… so fucking thirsty. It kept getting worse. Another bad sign. She let her gaze collapse sideways onto the enforcer.
"Hey,” she rasped, “you got stillwater on you?"
Caitlyn looked at her, startled. Her eyes widened, the hard lines of her face yielding to…something.
"What?" she asked. Gently. Again.
Vi played it back in her head and realized what she'd said. Grimacing, she straightened out the words and tried again.
"Said 'you still got water on you?'"
"Oh. Uh.” Caitlyn patted herself along the belt and unsnapped something. She made a face. “Sorry. Just this."
She held it out.
The prison water.
Vi could have laughed.
Of course.
Of course, she was gonna die with that fucking taste in her mouth.
"That's fine,” Vi croaked, “anything."
Sounded a bit like a confession. She was too anemic to care.
As she reached for the flask, they both stared at her hand. It was shaking.
Caitlyn popped the cap for her without a word. She obviously knew better than to offer any help, but as Vi panted, struggling to hold the flask against her lips, a steadying hand pressed up under her elbow.
Sweet, Vi thought as her mouth flooded.
Not the water.
The water was shit.
Location:
Firelight Sanctuary
The Undercity
Fuck.
Two hours.
Two fucking hours of bickering, debating, back-and-forth, back-and-forth, all to decide on a plan to walk a rock across a goddamn bridge.
With her lip pulled tight, Vi shouldered her way out of the treehouse and thumped onto the decking, trying to shake the pins out of her skin.
Caitlyn followed close behind. Ducking outside, she paused long enough to swing out an arm and catch the door before it slammed shut. Shoulders dropping, she eased the plank wood against the jamb and set the latch.
She turned. “That was…uncomfortable.”
Vi tried to nod but the gesture redirected itself, rolling out through her shoulder. She had to flex her hands to keep from drawing them into fists. Scuffing her boots, she rounded on her back foot and headed for the stairs.
“We got it figured out,” she grumbled, “that’s what matters.”
She sounded steadier than she felt. Or she thought so, anyway, until Caitlyn let out an uncertain hum and fell into step inside her periphery. Vi could see the enforcer adjusting her arms, crossing and uncrossing them, trying to find a place to put her hands. Blue eyes flickered over and down, fixing on her. Staring.
Vi’s ears warmed until they stung. She fought the urge to put up her hood.
“What? ”
Caitlyn slowed her pace. Unblinking, she tilted her head.
“That was uncomfortable…for you,” she said. Her voice was soft with realization.
Vi wanted to groan. She pulled ahead. When Caitlyn’s footsteps stopped behind her, she slouched to a halt, knocking her heel against the floorboards. Splinters and paint chips peeled up out of the wood.
Those eyes were still on her. She could feel them. Too keen. Whittling away. Cycling a slow sigh through her lungs, Vi gave up the truth.
“Yeah."
A one-word admission. It hit the air and dropped, dense like lead. She heard Caitlyn rearrange herself, limbs and leather and buckles rustling. Fidgeting again. Always moving.
Couldn’t lose her in the dark.
“Ekko is a friend,” Vi went on. She shifted inside her jacket, gaze tracking along the wood grain before jumping up into the tree branches. Scowling, she shrugged. "I don’t…I don't like arguments.”
The explanation was weak, only half-true, and full of holes. She felt the impulse to stop up the gaps with more words, but everything she wanted to say dogpiled in her throat, messy and stupid.
What was she gonna tell her?
Yeah, hey, I know we just met, and I don’t know why, but for some reason, I really, really need you and this guy I haven't seen in ten years to just…get along?
She couldn't fucking say that.
A sparrow darted out of a cluster of leaves and spiraled upwards. It disappeared into the sunlight.
Caitlyn stayed quiet.
Vi couldn’t cope with the silence.
“Fuck, I mean…I dunno what I expected!" she exclaimed, "Take a couple of brainiacs from opposite sides of the river, stick ‘em together in a room, and…and ask them to agree on anything? Of course, you were gonna end up at each other, I just…”
Sighing to steady herself, Vi lifted her hands into her pockets and tipped her head until her neck cracked. The release helped. A little. Enough to make space for the thought that she might be overreacting.
After all, Caitlyn and Ekko had agreed on a plan. A pretty good one, too. And sure, things had gotten… prickly a few times, but the two of them were never actually nasty to each other. Not even close, so—
Vi grimaced.
So then why did she feel—?
Caitlyn scattered the thought by moving closer. When she spoke, her voice was low and even. Sincere.
And confused.
“I’m sorry. I hope I wasn’t being unreasonable. If I was, I can—”
“You weren’t,” Vi cut in, “It’s fine. Neither of you were. That’s my point, I guess. Or…you know what? I dunno. Never mind, just forget it.”
“But—"
"Forget it."
The words came out sharper than she’d meant them to.
Caitlyn took another step towards her, moving into her sightline. Her eyes were soft and she was twisting her fingers again. Her gloves creaked.
Vi winced and huffed.
“Anyway," she said, desperate to wrench the conversation in a different direction, "We’re good to do… whatever, now, I guess, so…think I’m gonna go and—”
She jerked her elbow and stopped. An unfamiliar urge caught her in the chest. Frowning, she shot a look toward the riotous artwork painted on the sanctuary walls.
—look at the murals, she thought.
That’s what she’d planned to say.
I’m gonna go look at the murals.
That made sense. She had the time, so...why not go sit with all that color for a while? God, how long had it been since she’d seen anything like that? Why not go enjoy it and maybe—
Maybe recommit some lost faces to memory.
But as she stood there, staring, she realized that wasn't all she wanted. She also wanted—
She—
Her ears warmed.
She turned back towards Caitlyn without looking up.
“Do you want to check out the murals?” she blurted.
The unsaid “with me” dangled loudly in the air.
As soon as the question fell out of her, Vi stiffened. The heat on her ears raced down to cook the back of her neck.
She heard Caitlyn stiffen, too, and in the silence that followed, Vi’s heart bucked with regret.
She slouched. “Never mi—”
“Actually—”
Their words tripped and fell across each other. Vi was quick to duck backward, shaking her head.
She rushed to finish. “Never mind. I get it. Wanna do your own thing, I shouldn’t’ve—we can just meet back up when—”
“Vi. Wait.”
A hand touched her arm as she tried to leave, asking her to stop, tugging lightly at her sleeve until she turned around and looked up. She went still as their eyes met. Caitlyn was wearing one of those open looks, the kind that made Vi want to glance away.
“Sorry,” Caitlyn said, “Of course, I want to go with you. It’s just, ah—” Her attention darted. “There’s someone I should—there's something I need to do first.”
The tension spun out of Vi's body. Slowly, she put it together.
“You wanna go by yourself,” she guessed.
“Ah–no,” Caitlyn clarified, “Not really. But—” She shook her head, lip caught under her teeth. "I figure it's probably best if I do this alone. Do you mind…?"
“You want me to wait?"
It was more of an offer than a question.
The angles of Caitlyn’s face relaxed in relief. “If that’s alright?”
"Sure.” Vi shrugged. “Yeah. Go ahead. I'll hang out here.”
The fingers on her sleeve lingered a moment longer, squeezing briefly before falling away.
“Thank you. I won’t be long.”
Vi gestured loosely towards the decking. "Okay. I’ll, um…I’ll be—"
“Thank you,” Caitlyn repeated, and somehow she sounded even more sincere the second time around.
Vi sniffed and squinted at the woodgrain beneath her boots. “You don’t have to do that, you know. You don’t have to—”
But Caitlyn was already walking away. Looking up, Vi watched her go, her hand gliding along the guardrail as she disappeared down the stairs.
Taking a breath, she sighed out the last of her nerves.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Left alone on the balcony, Vi wandered, aimless, until she found a place where the tree branches let through a broad patch of light. Staring at the dappled glow, she stopped.
With her hands at her sides, she tilted her head, squinting as she looked up. Dust, pollen, and tiny, silken-winged insects drifted in and out of shadow.
The sun turned it all to gold.
Eyes aching, Vi reached up and passed her hand through the motes, letting herself half-believe it would come out glittering. It didn’t, but it came out warm, and that was nearly as good. Better, even.
She stepped into the light. Its heat pushed the breath out of her, pressing as if it had weight. She lost focus as she warmed, the sun’s rays catching on her skin and hair. The motes eddied, sparkling.
It felt…
Good.
So good.
But…after Everything—?
Vi’s jaw set as she swallowed through a wince.
It was almost too much.
She closed her eyes. Brow creasing, she dropped her chin to her chest and sighed. A low, tangled restlessness began to squirm in her head, twisting beneath the surface. Dark. Distracting. Casting shadows despite all the light.
She tried to ignore it, but that was hard to do when everything around her was so—
A crash scattered her thoughts.
Head snapping up, Vi strafed her field of view, searching for the source of the sound. She only relaxed when she heard the noise a second time and realized what it was: joy.
Boundless, raucous, unruly joy.
Scuffing forward, Vi swallowed down her pulse and crossed to the edge of the balcony. Grabbing hold of the railing, she peered over the side.
Her stress loosened into a smile.
Just kids.
Vi folded forward against the handrail. Down below, a boy with wild hair and a gap-toothed grin bounded onto a hoverboard and carved upwards. His elated hoot skimmed around the walls of the sewer silo. His friends gathered together on the lawn, beaming, their arms entangled as they cheered.
After gaining several stories of height, the boy on the board bent his knees and keened like a hawk, pitching himself into a loop. The other children erupted as the maneuver drew a ring of neon green through the afternoon shade. Their laughter reshaped something in Vi's chest.
Felt nice.
As her eyes followed the whooping firelight through his trick, she caught the sound of sure and steady footfalls rolling up behind her. Without turning, she lifted a hand in greeting.
"What's up, Little Man?"
Ekko slowed but didn’t stop. He chuckled. "How'd you know it was me?"
"Your walk.”
Joining her along the banister, the Firelight bent into her sight-line. "I have a walk, huh?"
"Everyone does,” she said, though she wished she could forget how she knew. Closing her eyes, she tilted her face into the light again, feeling its angle and warmth.
Ekko made a noncommittal sound and settled in beside her. "Nice, right?"
Vi looked over at him. Ekko was propped up against the banister, head canted, eyes closed. Serene.
Sharing the sun with her.
Something inside her split and slipped sideways. A lost-and-found feeling. Not for the first time, Vi found herself struck by the sight of Ekko, by how much he’d grown.
"People change."
He proved that better than anyone. Leaning back on his elbow, one leg crossed loosely in front of the other, Ekko radiated the solemn maturity of someone who had lost and learned and turned living into an act of creation. Strong. Whole. A leader. A genius.
Someone who didn’t need protecting anymore.
Vi was so fucking proud of him.
He must have felt her staring. Opening his eyes, the Firelight smoothed back his locs with a hand and looked over at her.
He cocked an eyebrow. "Got something to say?"
“I—”
Did she?
Vi tried to smile. It didn't last.
“I almost didn’t get to see you again," she said. The words forced their way out in a rush. Her voice was shot through with fractures.
Ekko softened. "What do you mean?"
Cycling through a grimace, Vi turned and pushed aside her jacket, tugging her shirts out of her stripes. Dried blood crackled out of the fabric as she folded back the layers.
Ekko pitched forward over his boots, eyes widening. He whistled.
"Man, that…" He crouched to get a better look. "That's ugly. Does it hurt?"
Vi ran her fingers over her stab wound and winced. “Could be worse.”
Could be better. The punctures in her gut were staunched by hard knots of purple flesh, but the surrounding skin was still inflamed and mottled with bruises. It throbbed. A dull ache. Deep and unnerving. She didn’t like to think about it too much.
"It's healed," she said, "For the most part."
"Mm." Ekko eyed the clusters of dark track marks that blotted her side from rib to hip. He pressed his mouth into a line. "Shimmer?"
"Think so."
The Firelight sat back on his heels, rubbing a thumb along his chin. When his eyes came up, they were grim.
"How'd it make you feel?"
She began to roll her shirts back down. “What, the shimmer?”
He nodded.
Vi scoffed. "Like shit."
"Good." Ekko pressed into his knees and straightened up. He nodded toward her flank. "You sure it's not infected?"
"No."
"Doesn't look great, Vi."
"I know. Doesn't seem to be getting worse, though.” She tucked her hemline under her belt. “Guess we'll find out."
"Hm.” Ekko rolled his neck under his hand and nodded. Pursing his lips, he shot her a sidelong look. “That why you fell?"
They both knew what he meant.
Her lip twitched. "Yeah."
Settling against the handrail, the Firelight fought back a smirk. His eyes were playful. "Not your best work."
Vi huffed and let a smile be enough. Shoulder-to-shoulder, she and Ekko lapsed into silence again, their attention drawn to a fresh commotion down below. The kids on the lawn were taking turns on the hoverboard—or trying to. Someone wasn’t playing fair. One kid was on the verge of tears. Another was revving up for a fight.
Ekko put his fingers between his teeth and blew a sharp whistle. “‘Ey!”
A gaggle of guilty faces looked up in alarm.
Ekko didn’t even have to say anything. He fixed them all with a look and they slunk sheepishly away from the board. A little girl with mousy hair got her turn without further squabbling.
Vi nodded, impressed. “You really know how to wrangle ‘em.”
“Yeah, well…I learned from the best.”
His words were so soft they hit hard. The smile fell off Vi’s face. Her gaze slid away into the middle distance.
Lost-and-found.
“People change.”
She pulled her hands into fists. Her heart began to pound. She knew what was coming.
“Vi.” Ekko hesitated. “Where were you?"
Her gut clenched. Bile churned. She’d wondered when he was going to ask. Had kinda hoped he just wouldn’t.
But he deserved to know.
The word shuddered out of her.
"Stillwater."
"Stillwater?" Ekko flinched. Not the answer he expected, then. He shook his head. “Nah. Since when? Not the whole time."
"Yeah."
"Since…?"
Vi lowered her head between her shoulders. Tension pestered a muscle in her neck. When it spasmed, she rounded her back to make it let go.
Boards creaked beside her as Ekko shifted his weight.
"But…that…it doesn't make sense. We've had people in and out of there. No one saw—you're hard to miss. Someone would've told me.”
Vi let out another breath. Her leg began to rattle with nerves.
Ekko touched the back of his hand to her arm.
"I looked,” he said. “After—I looked for you. If I'd known—"
She cut him off. Had too. "You couldn't've known, Little Man. No one could've." She ground a thumb into her palm, twisting. Her mouth went sour. "They, um…they threw me in with the Lifers."
"...what?"
She couldn’t look at him. "Yeah, so...don't beat yourself up. 'Kay?"
Eyes burning, she pretended to scratch her chin on her shoulder.
Ekko stopped to take a few steadying breaths of his own. Vi could hear him moving. His hand was on his neck again, rubbing. She knew the sound by now.
He huffed and let his arm drop. "How'd you get out? "
There. Relief. Subject change. This, she could do. Clearing her throat, Vi pulled her gaze back from wherever it had gone and leaned forward to scan the grounds below. Spotting a lithe figure in the distance, she tipped her chin.
"Told you,” she said. “Her."
Ekko followed her gaze. His eyes caught on Caitlyn’s outline as she walked across the lawn. "Huh. Yeah, so what's up with that, exactly?"
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. You tell me.” He rearranged his limbs. “You're saying she brought you back."
"Yeah."
"Okay. Why?"
Vi shrugged. "Silco. She wanted help getting dirt on him. I wanted to find Powder. There was…overlap, I guess. Didn't realize how much, though."
"And? "
She glanced at him. "And…what?"
"And that still doesn't explain why a Piltie enforcer was willing to trade out her life for a trencher."
"Oh.” That. “Yeah, I don't get it, either.” Her eyes followed Caitlyn as she stopped to talk to a bird-masked firelight with lively hands. “I think she just cares."
"About?"
Vi glanced at her fists. "Everything. Everyone."
Ekko didn’t respond for a long while. When he finally spoke, his tone was grave.
"I'm risking a lot on your word, you know. Trusting her."
"I know,” Vi lifted a shoulder, “but I stand by it."
Ekko’s hum of acknowledgment was grudging, barely blunted by acceptance. But he didn’t argue, and he didn’t ask any more questions.
Grateful, Vi dropped down onto her forearms, letting the railing take her weight. Knitting her fingers, she let her eyes follow Caitlyn as the enforcer moved deeper into the sanctuary. For the first time, she noticed the sag in the satchel on Caitlyn’s back.
“Ekko."
“Yeah.”
“Her gun.”
“Huh?”
“You should give her back her gun.”
“What gun?” The Firelight leaned forward, squinting. With a frown, he shook his head. “She didn’t have one on her when we took you.”
“...you sure?”
Ekko lowered his chin and gave her an indulgent smirk. “Uh, yeah. I’m sure.”
Vi pushed off the railing with a scowl. Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she turned and stalked towards the stairs.
Ekko called after her. “Where are you going?”
“Be back in a bit.”
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
She found Caitlyn at the base of the tree, wrapping up an apology to the skinny black-and-orange firelight who’d tried to give her water. Stepping between them, Vi tousled the kid’s hair and gave him a push that said scoot. He scampered away.
“Hey," she said, burying her fists in her pockets again.
“Hi.”
She stared at the ground between them, poking at her teeth with her tongue. Caitlyn’s boots shifted in the grass.
“Is something—”
Vi’s eyes cut upward. “How’d you lose your gun?”
“Oh. Uh.” Caitlyn blinked. “I didn’t lose it.”
“Well, you don’t have it anymore.”
“No.” A pause. “I traded it.”
Vi’s head jerked. Her body rose inside her jacket, straining against the leather. It creaked.
“You traded your gun?! For what? ”
But as soon as the sentence ran out of her mouth, her brain cracked it together.
She already knew.
Her body froze at odd angles. They stared at each other.
A pair of firelight bugs flitted between them.
“You were hurt,” Caitlyn shrugged.
Vi’s heart hammered. “But…that—I mean, that thing had to be worth…”
“What?” A head tilt. “More than your life?”
Vi didn’t know what to say except, yeah, maybe, probably? But she couldn’t get the words out. She stood there, her tongue running through her mouth, her throat tightening in on itself. Warmth pressed up under her skin and threatened to burn her.
It didn’t, though.
Caitlyn’s eyes roamed over her for a moment. Then, they softened. Her voice softened, too. Everything about her—
“You were dying,” she said. Vi twitched and Caitlyn dropped her gaze. Fidgeting, she ran a finger along the inside of her sleeve, smoothing out the cuff. She shrugged again.
“It was more than a fair trade.”
—and god, the way she said it…
Vi slouched as something splintered and reordered itself behind her ribs. It hurt, but…it didn’t ‘hurt.’ Which of course made no fucking sense. Still, she knew enough to understand it was probably some sort of warning.
So why, she had to wonder, did only half of her want to run away?
And what the fuck did the other half want to do?
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Location:
The Kiramman Estate
Topside
Collapsed on a strange bed in a strange house in a room that was too big, too bright, too fucking peaceful, Vi spasmed awake for the half-dozenth time that morning. Sunlight and birdsong slammed into her.
Too much.
Too weird.
Scowling, she adjusted her limbs, trying to scrape the restless screech off her nerves. The feeling needled and chewed, turning silence and stillness into thumbscrews and vices. It made stitching together more than a few moments’ sleep fucking impossible.
She kept trying, though. Knew she needed to. She was so fucking tired. But every time she managed to brush against sleep, adrenaline stuck its pins in her. The hit jolted her, making her heart feint sideways in her chest like it had something to dodge. Everything kicked into a sprint, dialing up the pressure, making her gauges spin—
But there was nothing to do.
Nothing to fight.
There weren’t even nightmares. Not really. Just glimpses. Yawning outlines. Dark things stirring in the cracks in her head, warning her as she groped for rest: don't even bother trying.
Unless you want—
She flinched.
Unless she wanted to risk waking up snarling and seeing red, Silco's name shredding itself between her teeth. Or worse, bolting upright with burning eyes and her own salt on her lips, gasping for air as she called out for—
Wincing, she bit back the memory of bullets, their flash and spray bearing down on her in ricochets, throwing light onto her sister’s seething face. All that hot lead might have strobed through her if it hadn’t been for…
Vi’s shoulder ticked towards her ear. Tasting sourness on her tongue, she turned. Once again, she was hit with the warm, heady spin of dread-and-relief. It muddled her thoughts. She tried to focus on the sight of Caitlyn there beside her, curled up, slack, asleep. Safe.
Vi swallowed. It helped, being with her. Caitlyn’s steady presence smoothed the pitch and dip of disorientation each time Vi broke the surface of sleep.
But it wasn’t enough.
She needed—
Vi’s gaze swept sidelong over the duvet. It caught on the arm Caitlyn had draped across the bed between them, the back of her gloved hand barely an inch from Vi's shoulder. Staring at it, Vi felt a pull. It was hard not to after all the times that hand had reached out and drawn her in close over the past two days.
And then, of course, there was—
There was—
Her cheek hummed with memory. Sensation winked along her skin like sunlight off the sea. The afterglow of Caitlyn’s touch sat on the surface of everything and refused to sink in because her body didn’t know what to do with it.
But it knew it wanted more.
Vi was too drained to think it through. Taking a breath, she pinched her tongue between her teeth and shifted. Didn’t take much. They were already so close.
Her shoulder nudged against Caitlyn’s hand.
She went still, waiting. She half-expected Caitlyn to pull away. Instead, the enforcer rustled in her sleep, stretching, pressing. Her hand settled more firmly against Vi’s arm.
As Vi watched, Caitlyn’s finger twitched, glancing a reflexive caress over red leather. The absent touch was grounding. Vi focused on its warmth, trying to let Everything Else fall away. Exhaling, she uncinched her muscles and let her eyes drift closed again.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
The next time Vi jerked awake, jaw snapping shut, there were eyes on her. Blue and bleary, they blinked, filling with concern before bothering with consciousness.
"...you'lright?" Caitlyn mumbled.
Heat rushed to Vi’s ears at being caught, but the sting was soothed by a slower, deeper warmth that unfurled in her chest.
"Yeah," she said, and tried to mean it.
Caitlyn twitched her nose and sniffed. "Sure?"
"Yeah."
"Mm.” The enforcer sounded unconvinced. "'Kay."
There was a drowsy pause. A slow blink. A full-body resettling. In Vi’s periphery, Caitlyn's gaze went fleecy before snapping urgently back into focus. It was startling.
"You sure? "
Vi nodded, her lip tugging upwards. "Promise. Go back to sleep."
Another blink. Even slower. "Here f'you need anything."
More warmth. "I know."
"Mm."
Caitlyn closed her eyes again, nosing down into the crook of her arm—
—but not before reaching out to tuck a hand between Vi's back and the mattress.
And the way she did it…
It was like she'd done it a thousand times before.
Everything in Vi seized up, locking down—except her heart, which tried to duck out from under her ribs and fly out of her chest.
She stared, pulse wild.
Caitlyn nestled into the bedclothes. As she stilled, her thumb moved. Stuttering with sleep, it brushed a single, soft line along Vi's side.
The gentle touch nearly pressed a gasp out of her. Bright and warm, it glittered with sensation, going everywhere —
An inch on her skin and a mile on her soul.
It felt—
She sighed. Letting her eyes lose focus, she unspooled into the bed, eased by the comforting pressure of Caitlyn's palm sitting flush against her ribs.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Vi was lurched from her haze one final time by the squeak-rattle-roll of a cart and a set of footsteps she didn’t recognize. Sucking in a breath, she tossed onto her side, her body half-cocked and humming. She tensed as someone knocked on the door.
“M’s’alright.”
Fingers twitched against her side. Gathering a handful of leather, they tugged, pulling her gaze over and down.
“Jus’ lunch,” Caitlyn mumbled. Hair messy and flyaway, she pushed herself up on her elbow and sniffed, one eye barely open. She squinted across the room towards the entryway.
There was another tentative knock on the door.
Vi’s gaze darted, once over, once back. She cleared her throat. “Should we, uh…should—do you want me to get that, or—?”
Caitlyn made a face and jerked her head around. Her hand remained knitted in red leather.
“M’what?” She scrunched, then blinked back some awareness. “...oh. No. No, you stay. I’ll—”
Shuffling off the end of the bed, she tipped upright onto her feet with a gangly, leaden grace.
Vi sprang up on her hand, eyes widening. “Your leg—”
“Psh. Nup." Caitlyn waved a hand. "S'fine. Doesn’t hurt."
Yeah, right, Vi thought, bullshit.
She ran her tongue pensively along the inside of her teeth and rolled over. Prodding her molars, she set her chin on her arm and studied Caitlyn's gait. She expected a limp. When she didn’t find one her eyebrow quirked.
Caitlyn wasn’t even favoring her left side. Her balance was a little off, though.
As Vi watched, Caitlyn wobbled sleepily, stumbling sideways. She caught herself on a pillar and let out a spray of grumbled curses.
Vi tucked her mouth carefully behind her wrist, just in case Caitlyn turned around.
Still muttering, Caitlyn yanked at her clothes, adjusting them, straightening them, rearranging wrinkles and buckles in that now-familiar way Vi had assumed was all fidget, but…
But now wondered, as her eyes slid over marble and molding and gilded wood, sweet-scented flowers and silken sheets, shining trophies embossed with crossed keys and the name Caitlyn-fucking-Kiramman—
—maybe all that fussing was a habit taught half by force.
Her eyes resettled on Caitlyn as the enforcer-heiress- who-the-fuck-knew-what-else smoothed back her hair and opened the doors. There was a woman on the other side, older and prim, her face round and wry and wrinkled. Her hair was pulled back in a bun so tight it made Vi’s scalp ache.
Her smile was warm, though. So were her eyes. They looked up at Caitlyn fondly.
“There you are!”
Caitlyn rubbed the heel of her hand into her eye. “Hullo.”
The old woman’s expression softened. “So sorry, dear. Did I wake you? Your father mentioned you might be a bit drowsy after—” Gaze dropping, she leaned back to look Caitlyn up and down.
“Oh my.” Blinking, she cocked her chin and lifted a hand to pluck at Caitlyn’s sleeve. Her mouth twitched and caught halfway between a cringe and a grin. “Well,” she chuckled, “This is a choice. Though, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with trying something n— ”
Again, she stopped, her expression sharpening. Her gaze cut past Caitlyn’s shoulder and across the room. Vi tensed as it cracked into her. She expected the warmth in the woman’s eyes to sour instantly into disgust, for the smile on her face to fold back into a sneer, but—
Nope.
Instead, the old woman’s lips pressed into themselves, trying and failing to roll away the smirk that pushed sideways into her smile lines.
"Miss Caitlyn! No wonder your mother looks like such a suck-a-lemon!"
The words came out in a whisper, but it didn’t matter. They carried easily through the over-large room. The old woman’s tone was chiding, conspiratorial, and really fucking amused.
Interesting.
The corner of Vi’s mouth began to jump. She smoothed away the twitch with her thumb.
As she hunkered down behind her arm again, Vi saw Caitlyn go ramrod, her hands balling, her shoulders pinching upwards. The enforcer-among-other-things cast a quick, blue glance into the room and Vi could practically feel it whistle by her ear, missing her gaze entirely.
“Celeste!” she hissed. Her face was rosy. She turned back and drew herself up to full height, trying to fill the space between the doors.
Celeste gave her a firm you-don’t-scare-me-I-changed-your-diapers look. She peeked around Caitlyn’s shoulder. This time, Vi lifted her hand in greeting.
The old woman lifted an eyebrow. Lips rounding again, she fixed Vi with a Look. The expression was matronly, exasperated—
—but not demeaning. Not even close.
She pointed a finger. “Boots off the bed, young lady.”
Her eyes sparkled.
Vi swung her shins up at the knee.
Caitlyn’s hands un-spun themselves and she began to sputter, gesturing wildly. “Shh– wha’! ”
She couldn’t whisper for shit.
“Celeste! You can’t just—don’t order her around! She’s a guest!”
“Mm-hm. Yes. Your guest.”
Caitlyn blustered to a startled halt. Celeste filled the silence by grinning. Caitlyn broke it by grabbing the old woman's narrow shoulders and steering her out of the room.
“Okay. Thank you. For lunch.”
Celeste’s tone was merciless. “Oh, you’re so welcome. But, here. You should let me wheel it—”
“No. Thank you. I’ve got it.”
Caitlyn grabbed the handle of the cart with one hand and the door with the other.
“Are you sure—?”
“Positive.”
“Alright, then. I hope you enjoy your—”
“Good bye, Celeste.”
In one swift, clattering motion, Caitlyn tugged the cart inside the room and slammed the doors behind her, turning to shove her back against the seam. She stared at the floor.
Momentum kept the cart squeaking-rattling-rolling until it bumped into a pillar, jostling its cargo of cutlery, crystal, and a large, silver cloche. Water sloshed out of a burnished pitcher.
Caitlyn didn’t move. She eyed the lines in the marble tiling.
Vi waited.
“Sorry…about that,” Caitlyn said. She pushed away from the double doors and stalked into the room. Grabbing the cart again, she dragged it behind her as she crossed towards the bed, skirting her strewn paperwork.
“She seems nice,” Vi offered.
“She’s a menace,” Caitlyn corrected. Her cheekbones were still softened by pink.
Embarrassed.
Vi studied her.
That was interesting, too.
Caitlyn let out a flustered sigh. Grabbing the tray off the cart, she walked over and set it on the floor at the foot of the bed, easing down beside it. She propped her back against the mattress next to where Vi had her arm draped over the edge.
Lifting off the cloche without ceremony, Caitlyn set it aside.
Vi’s eyes went wide. She straightened.
On the platter below her was a heaping stack of the most delicious-looking sandwiches she’d ever seen in her life. Each one was cut in crisp quarters and layered with ingredients so fresh and fragrant they should have had her stomach whining and her mouth watering.
On any other day, maybe.
Caitlyn turned and looked at her.
"Hungry?" Her tone was light. Careful, too.
Vi picked at the bedspread. "I should be."
Blue eyes lingered on her. Slowly, they drifted away.
Caitlyn nodded, humming empathetically. "Right…"
Pulling her lip under her teeth, she picked up a slice of sandwich. It was piled with soft cheese and spiced meats, the layers stacked between bread that crackled and flaked, glossy and golden brown. She stared at it. Her expression notched downward.
"Hm."
Vi scratched her chin against her bandages. "Something wrong?" As if after last night the answer could be anything other than a screaming-searing-neon yes.
Caitlyn glanced at her and then went back to considering the food in her hand. She turned it this way and that, picking it apart with her eyes. She shook her head.
“I have seen… so many dead bodies in the past few days.”
The words opened up a trapdoor in Vi’s gut. Everything dropped.
Caitlyn bit into her sandwich, shrugging. “You’d think I’d have less of an appetite. Instead, I’m absolutely starving.”
She swallowed and took another bite. Speaking around a mouthful of meat and cheese, she turned. Despite her bright tone and enthusiastic chewing, her eyes were soft. Considering.
Grave.
“Here.” She tugged the tray within reach of Vi’s hand. “You really should try and have something. Even if you’re not feeling up to it." She waved a hand. "Do you have a preference? I think I know what most of these are.”
She poked at a square of something spilling with minced fish.
“Not picky." Vi reached out to take that slice for herself. "Probably shouldn’t eat on your bed, though, huh?”
Caitlyn looked at her sharply and snorted. “You do what you want. Don’t let Celeste bother you.” She took another bite of sandwich and brushed crumbs off her clothes. As she moved, her hand slowed, eventually pausing on her lapels. Her head tilted and she swallowed, thoughtful.
“If you like, though… you could come down here.”
She gestured loosely towards the empty place at her side.
Vi’s gaze swung aside to stare at her.
Caitlyn stared at the floor. She took another bite of her lunch and chewed. Her unsaid “ with me ” hung heavily on the air between them.
Without a word, Vi shifted around and slid off the end of the bed, her own sandwich still in hand. Dropping to the rug, she settled cross-legged into the spot Caitlyn had offered her. She ended up putting them closer together than she’d meant to, but Caitlyn didn’t move away. She relaxed back against the bed and continued eating.
Maybe it was the light, but her face looked rosy again.
Vi rubbed her own cheek reflexively. It felt hot. She scrubbed at the burn and took a bite of food to distract herself. She chewed once, twice, then froze. Her eyes went wide and she looked down at the sandwich in her hands.
Holy fucking shit…
It was—
Her appetite roared back. She ripped off a second bite, bigger than the first.
Caitlyn studied her sidelong. "Taste alright?"
Genuine curiosity.
And care.
Vi repaid it with the truth. “Uh. Yeah ." She tried not to spray bread-bits and fish as she spoke. "Best I’ve ever had. Easily.”
Caitlyn smiled. "Good."
They dipped into silence. A pair of sparrows spiraled outside the window and then vanished. Somewhere, a bell began to toll.
Noon.
The sun spilled deeper into the room, draping across their legs.
As Vi ate, Caitlyn clapped crumbs off her gloves and picked up a crystal tumbler off the lunch tray. She filled it with water from the pitcher and set it at Vi's hip. Then, reaching over, she plucked a second tumbler out from underneath the lunch cart and poured water for herself.
Sitting back against the bed, she took a long, thoughtful sip.
Vi eyed her. She had the expression and posture of someone about to—
“Can I ask you something?”
There it is.
Pushing down a twist of uncertainty, Vi shrugged. “Sure.”
"Hm." Blue eyes drifted over to study her. They were focused. Honest. Unblinking. “Why did you stay?”
Her tone was blunt.
Vi stiffened. “What?”
Caitlyn turned her attention back towards the huge swathe of papers at their feet. Brow furrowing, she chewed her lip.
“Well. When we…when this all started, I thought—I thought we were after the same thing. But that’s not really true. Is it?”
“What do you mean?”
Mouth notching, Caitlyn tilted her head and began rotating the tumbler in her hands, around and around and around.
“I thought you wanted to bring down Silco.”
Vi’s breath caught. Her mood cracked in a flash of heat. “I do .”
Caitlyn's face tightened at her own choice of words. “Right. Of course. I know, but…that’s not…that’s not really it, though. Not the main thing." She glanced over. "I mean, you wanted to find your sister. And...you didn’t need me for that.”
…oh.
Vi stared at her, at a loss. The floor beneath her suddenly felt uneven. An unfamiliar pressure surged under her skin.
Caitlyn dropped her hands into her lap, tumbler and all. She sighed.
“Vi, a large part of me was convinced you’d take off the moment we hit the docks. I'd even have understood, I think, if you had. When you didn’t, I…well, I figured it must be that you…I don’t know. But if what you wanted was to get back to your sister, why did you stay? With me?”
With me?
Vi's heart skittered.
Good fucking question.
Vi tried to think back, to come up with a decent answer—because now she wanted one, too.
Why had she stayed? Why hadn't she fucking run? Rifling through her memories, she realized "taking off" wasn't something she'd ever even considered, and that was—
—that was its own kind of terrifying.
She swallowed hard. She had no idea what to say.
Caitlyn's face softened with regret. “Sorry," she said, "You don’t have to answer. I’d just been wondering. But if it’s too…uh… complicated —”
“No," Vi cut in, "it’s—I just. I don’t…”
I don’t know.
“I don’t know why I stayed. I guess I just did." Wincing, she set aside what was left of her lunch and pressed her thumb into her palm. A muscle ticked beside her nose as she raked her gaze across the floor, looking for explanations. "I mean, I guess I thought you needed…you know? And what the hell? I couldn't just let you—”
She grimaced and looked down. "I just did."
Silence fell again. It was heavy, but it didn't hurt. Vi could feel Caitlyn's eyes on her.
“Okay," said the enforcer-and-so-much-more. "Well. I’m glad.”
Vi's gaze shot up. Caitlyn caught it easily. Held it gently. Then, tilting her head, she said with all the sincerity in the world:
“I feel lucky to have met you."
Vi had to blink to keep her eyes in her head. Her throat moved on its own. Her shoulders and neck and face felt—
Caitlyn winced. "Sorry." She twisted a finger, looking away. "I need to stop talking."
No, you—
"No, you don't."
Caitlyn's eyes flickered toward her. "Oh. Alright."
But she went silent anyway.
Nervous, trying to fix whatever the fuck just happened, Vi scoured her mouth with her hand.
"So…tell me about this stuff," she said. She tipped her chin at the pins, threads, and papers in front of them.
Caitlyn's brows pressed together. "What? The case?"
"Yeah.” Vi’s nod might have been too eager. “I mean, I tried to put together what I was looking at when you were… wherever you went, but…I dunno. I've never seen anything like this before."
Caitlyn studied her. Her lip tucked itself under her teeth again and she dropped her hands into her lap. Picking.
"It's a lot," she warned.
Vi deflated. A pang hit her in the chest and she shifted uncomfortably, her ears tingling. She glanced away.
"I can handle it."
Caitlyn turned, going stiff. After a long, considering moment, she sucked in a breath. "Oh! No, Vi, that's not what I…not at all ."
The naked horror in her voice made Vi unwind.
"Sorry," she went on, "it’s just, people don’t usually, uh…”
“What?”
“Nothing." Caitlyn shook her head. "Never mind. Just…you’re sure?”
She was the one who looked unsure. Self-conscious, even.
Vi didn’t answer. Instead, she picked up her sandwich and took a huge bite, filling her mouth, staring, making the point that she was already listening.
It seemed to be the right thing to do because Caitlyn's face suddenly brightened in a way that had nothing to do with sunlight. She smiled.
Vi wondered if she knew that tooth gap made her look trustworthy.
She watched as Caitlyn tucked a wayward hair behind her ear and pointed.
“Okay. I suppose we could start over here with the photos…"
Notes:
...I love them.
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This ends our CaitVi flashback section.
I'll warn you now: the next chapter is very heavy/dark/gritty and earns the M rating. Be on the lookout for the warning banner and skip-markers to help curate your experience when that chapter is posted. As always, I will be extremely detailed in my guidance to ensure reader safety.
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A huge thank you to @Just_Athena_G and @_CafeKat_ for the betas on this section!! Almost everything you read has been through both of them.
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If you enjoy missing scenes!! Please go over and read CafeKat's "Street Meet" here on AO3!
---MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: A medical expert DM'd me on Twitter to note that Vi should have kept using her jacket to staunch her wound instead of putting it on.
The decision to put Vi in her jacket was intentional on my part considering this is what we end up seeing in Arcane. However, based on the feedback I received, it's clear that the choices the characters make in the source material (and in my fic) are not best practice from a first-aid perspective. Below is a resource for stab wound first aid.
Regardless, DO NOT EVER EVER EVER use depictions in my fic or Arcane as a reference for treating injuries or illness.
---
Additional note re: canon deviations.
There are canon deviations in my fic, some more significant than others (examples: I put a door knocker on the brothel door, I give Cait's room a windowsill even though there isn't one, I have the warden call Vi "red" instead of "Pink" and intentionally don't capitalize the word bc it's not a proper name). Almost without fail, these deviations are established with intent and relevant to the narrative in some way. Occasionally, they are included simply because I want something there (I like Vi to take naps on windowsills).
One of these (possible) deviations is the inclusion of some very scant but important details in Vi's prison file. I have her file essentially blank of everything except her name (which I HC Marcus heard Powder screaming before he drugged Vi), her age (falsified up to 18), her intake date, and her sentence (Life). I also have it include the mugshots we see as part of the reference/concept materials circulated from official Arcane show channels.
I have reasons for making this choice. It is narratively relevant to "Saltwater" and has to do with Vi reclaiming aspects of her identity as she heals. It ties into the overall theme of toxification/detoxification I've written into this fic. I ask for grace on these deviations and hope they do not distract too much from the experience of reading the fic.
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Two gentle requests of commenters:
Kindly do not mention/reference other fics in the comments beneath my works.
Also, please DO NOT reference situations in which CaitVi harm each other in the comments beneath my work.
Please respect these boundaries. They are related to maintaining reader (and author) safety and comfort.
Chapter 14
Summary:
!!! STOP !!! WARNING !!! BEFORE YOU CONTINUE !!!
CHAP 14 IS ONE OF THE DARKEST CHAPTERS OF "SALTWATER"!!! IT IS INTENDED FOR ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL LIST OF TWs/CWs APPLICABLE TO THIS CHAPTERCHAP 14 is darker in a different way than the Stillwater chapters. From one of my betas: TONE CHECK LINK
TO BE BRIEFED ON WHAT YOU WILL ENCOUNTER, CLICK HERE FOR A SANTIZED SYNOPSIS. ALERT: THIS DOC WILL SPOIL CERTAIN DETAILS. TWs STILL APPLY.TO SKIP MENTIONS OF S.A., STOP READING AT [#] AND CTRL+F FOR [##]
TO SKIP MENTIONS OF BLOOD AND VIOLENCE, STOP AT [%] AND CTRL+F FOR [%%]
PLEASE USE THE RESOURCES ABOVE TO CURATE AND INFORM YOUR READING EXPERIENCE.
PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Time: unknown]
Vi slumped into the dust, a discarded pile of herself. The echo of falling rebar faded slowly off her bones.
Dammit.
She screwed her eyes shut. Tears sheared away into the gloom, tinged with sweat. In the stinging dark, Caitlyn’s smile flickered through her mind like a spent filament, growing dimmer. Its sunlit angles made Vi burn with shame.
Fuck.
Her hands tightened into the side seams of her shirt, twisting.
She can never—
She choked.
She can never know about this.
The thought made her stomach roll over. Fresh tears boiled out of her eyes and she scrubbed them away against her trousers, her body leaden in the aftermath of panic. Around her, the city warped and chugged, green and impassive, its heartbeat steadier than her own. Exhaustion came down like a net and she nearly succumbed to its iron weight. She didn’t want to get up. She wanted to get junked. Just another worthless trash heap.
Then, she heard them.
Bells.
Her heart kicked and her eyes flew open.
A clock tower, tolling in the distance.
How long have I been—?
Peeling her head off her knees, she counted.
Twelve. Noon.
So, more than an hour, then. For more than an hour, she'd just—
The swallowed time made her sick. Hot with adrenaline, she hooked an arm through a busted window and tried to haul herself to one knee. The effort nearly collapsed her. A worm-eaten feeling chewed through her bones.
Grimacing, she set her teeth.
“…the hell?”
Pulling again again, she forced tension into overstretched muscles. Scars tugged in her knuckles as her leg dragged underneath her, stubborn and limp.
Asleep?
Didn’t feel like it. Didn't matter. One more yank and she was up, staggering over her boots. She shook her head to snap her balance into place.
Didn't work.
Fuck’s sake.
She pushed away from the wall.
Just walk it off.
Scuffing through her unsteadiness, she headed up the roof’s low slope. Rafters squealed under her weight as she climbed.
Cresting the ridgeboard, she spotted a water tower bolted to the building’s far edge. A muscle twitched beside her nose. Rolling a shoulder, she slouched over to the tank and dropped her face against it with a thunk. It rang hollow.
Empty.
Old.
She punched it to prove that she could. The metal gave under her fist with a scream, leaving a dent. She hit it again, three more times. Each impact sent sparks up her arm, sharp and satisfying. Felt good.
She drew back.
Felt so fucking—
“Hey!”
Vi ripped backwards off the tower and arched, showing teeth. Her pulse felt like a hammer.
An old woman. Right there. Not even ten yards away. She'd stopped in the middle of pinning threadbare laundry to a line, baffled and pissed. Waving a hand, she cursed Vi around the clothespins in her mouth.
“What the hell are you doing?!”
Vi bristled. “Fuck you!!”
I don’t fucking know.
Stepping onto the safety wall, she flipped up her middle finger and tipped off the—
Her guts plummeted.
—oh shit.
Panic scythed through her as she twisted in the air, falling. She looked down.
The old crane was still there, which was good. But she hadn’t checked first, and that was really, really fucking stupid. Relief shot up her shins as she connected with the metalwork.
Fuck.
She exhaled and grabbed a rail, staring down into fifteen stories of darkness.
That…would have been a really dumbfuck way to die.
Gripping her shirt again, she pressed a knuckle into the bruise along her ribs.
—“If you fall—”
—“I don’t fall.”
She glanced up and towards a rooftop she couldn’t see.
—“What am I supposed to do if you don’t come back? How am I supposed to find you?”
Something winched inside her chest.
Don’t—
Don’t be stupid.
She turned to trudge up the crane’s long arm, her body pitched against the incline. At the far end, she stopped and braced herself between the struts. Bitter thermals rose up from below, carrying the stink of the city. They buffeted her, blowing back her hood. She bowed her head. Nausea swept up and over her like the fear of heights she didn't have.
Gotta move.
She gripped the rails tighter. Then, she let them go. She backed up along the jib.
Gotta—
—“...get a message to my father. I need him to know I’m—”
Alive.
Vi’s throat tightened. Dropping a hand to her side, she tucked her fingers into her pocket, thumbing the edge of Caitlyn’s letter. The paper cut her finger. Her skin lifted. Memory whipped through her mind like blood spatter.
Smoke and shimmer and bodies in the water—
Destruction.
And Cait hadn’t come home.
Vi raked a hand down her face and backed up a few more paces. She cracked her neck, cinched her wraps, and fixed her eyes on a distant rooftop.
If she didn’t send word—proof—that Caitlyn was okay…?
She crashed forward. Sprinting down the jib, she kicked into space, arcing through nothingness—
It’d be hard enough to get Pilties to lower the bridge for the living, and Vi knew better than most:
No one goes looking for the dead.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Estimated time, 12:43 pm]
[Time until sunset: approx. 5 hrs]
[Estimated route-time to Babette’s: 45min - 1 hr]
She hadn’t considered that Caitlyn might not be the only enforcer trapped on the wrong side of the river.
Pressing herself flat against tar shingles, Vi crept forward to peer over the edge of the mail terminal. She winced as her ears caught the full crack and shout of the violence below.
The first thing she saw was the dark arc of a nightstick. She blocked on reflex, fists flinching towards her ears, but the rod didn’t land on flesh. Hers, or anyone else’s. It only thwacked threateningly against a riot shield three stories beneath her.
Noise.
Vi pushed herself against the roof, watching. Her blood thickened and her heart worked harder.
Trenchers and blue-coated enforcers. They clashed but didn’t mix. Separated by a makeshift barricade, they postured and tossed glancing blows at each other. The Zaunites were seething, mocking, swearing, sweating. They flung glass bottles over the enforcers’ barrier.
The Piltovans were quieter. They moved eyelessly, all helmets and masks, barking muffled orders when a trencher sprang too close. Their defensive line held steady, buttressed by the four officers standing with long guns leveled against their shoulders.
Vi took a rough count. The topsiders were outnumbered at least four-to-one.
After what she’d seen at the bridge, she was surprised they were still alive.
A piece of rotten fruit whipped through the air and splattered against the wall. One of the enforcers lifted their shield to ward off a shower of pulp. Laughter erupted from the crowd.
Vi smirked, too.
That smirk faded when a different blue-coat broke ranks to lunge forward. Shouting, they took a swing overtop of the barrier and caught a woman in the skull with their baton. Skin split and her face ran red.
The crowd surged, howling.
Vi’s pulse quickened as she sensed the shift toward mob-mentality. She could see the berserk emptiness seeping into people’s faces. She could feel its vibration rise through the building beneath her, infecting her own body. She willed herself not to move.
As she watched, the fresh press of angry bodies pushed an old man up against a low-slung section of the barricade.
Vi hadn’t noticed him before. He was out of his depth, it was obvious. He tried to pull back, but a fellow trencher fell against him, drunk. The impact knocked him forward.
Crying out, he toppled over the barrier.
It wasn’t his fault. Anyone with working eyes in their head should have been able to tell, but to the nearest enforcer, it was just a reason.
The big blue-coat pounced. Club swinging, they began to bloody the old trencher as he curled into himself on the cobbles.
Fury.
It broke open like a fissure.
Vi shot onto all fours, bones burning. Her back arched. The tic of her muscles threatened to throw her over the roof's edge, pitch her down onto that asshole’s back and put him in the fucking ground—
—but—
She lurched.
—but—
Her fingers curled, scraping asphalt off the shingles.
—“Don’t be stupid.”
Caitlyn’s words punched through her back like grappling hooks. The tines caught between her ribs, anchoring her in place. She strained, trembling. Her breaths blew apart into rapid gasps.
Below her, the club rose and fell, a smear of black through thick air. Red blood and screeches followed its curve. The old man crumbled into a quivering mess.
Vi seethed, pulse thrashing. Guilt ran like a hot, dull knife over the lines holding her down, making them fray. Tendons cranked. Joints winched.
She stared at the enforcer and shook.
Fuck, she wanted—
She wanted—
—but—
—”Don’t be—”
A shingle peeled up under her fingers as her hands pulled into fists. Roofing nails keened out of the wood, bending.
The hooks dug deeper into her back.
Don’t be stupid don’t be stupid don’t be—
—"She still needs—"
Needs me to—
—“Come back.”
She set her teeth. The sharp-folded corner of Caitlyn’s letter needled into her leg.
It was almost enough.
Then the club came down again and the crack was so sharp Vi felt it scream along the toothy seams of old fractures. Her guilt sprouted fangs. It carved through her like a saw, severing her mooring lines.
She snapped forward, boots grinding.
Her hands viced around the roof’s edge and yanked, a decade’s worth of potential energy converting itself into action. She was half-combusted, a spark away from blowing forward, rupturing air, putting herself through that enforcer’s body like shrapnel—
—but—
She froze.
—but another trencher got there first.
Vi didn’t realize, at first, what she was seeing. Her eyes tracked the blur as a strapping, dark-haired someone vaulted over the barricade. Their brass leg threw sparks as they skidded across the cobbles. The glowing cascade broke around blue armor, a cloud of orange and gold. The enforcer whipped around.
Too late.
The newcomer was all momentum. Baring their teeth, they slammed their muscled shoulder into the enforcer’s side, knocking them off balance. The impact sounded like sheet metal and crunching bone. There was a cry, muffled by a respirator. Limbs tangled. The pair stumbled backward.
For the space of a single, startled breath, a stunned hush dampened the chaos. Trenchers stopped roiling behind their bulwarks. Enforcers let their long guns dip in shock. Everyone turned to stare.
Then tattooed hands closed around armored wrists. Keen eyes glinted.
“Go!”
The quaking old man jumped to obey, tottering to his knees. As he tried to scramble towards the barricade, his rescuer turned to watch him go.
Vi’s pulse spiked. She saw the distraction, the space it made—
—the blow whistling in to fill it.
She tried to cry out.
Too slow.
The big blue-coat lurched and smashed their helmet into the side of the trencher’s face. A tooth flew. Blood welled.
The lull splintered.
Violence broke through itself again. The crowd heaved, shrieking. Steely guns caught the neon light, flashing as they whipped up to aim. The enforcer and trencher exploded against each other, fists swinging.
Vi gasped out one breath so she could gulp down another. The metal edge of the roof began to crumple in her grip. Her gaze darted, an endless ricochet as it snapped frantically between gunbarrels and enforcers and the trencher they were trying to fix in their sights. She braced for a spray of cracks, for blinding muzzle-flash—
—for screams, smoke, splattered blood—
—but nothing happened.
The officers shifted nervously, weapons tracking, but kept their fingers off their triggers. A few looked back over their shoulders towards something Vi couldn’t see.
Too close, she realized. The trencher and enforcer were too twisted up in each other, moving too fast. Fire off a shot, and the blue-coats risked killing their buddy, too. They couldn’t shoot—wouldn’t—not unless—
The reassurance lasted only seconds. As Vi put her tongue between her teeth and bit down, the embattled trencher snarled, pulled back, and slammed their hands roughly into the enforcer’s chest. The impact sent the officer staggering. Their arms flailed. A kick followed them, then another, blurring, one, two, three.
The spark of brass against armor would have been satisfying if—
The blue-coat stumbled back, back, back until they tripped over uneven cobbles, crashing to the ground.
—if those blows hadn’t been so good at creating distance.
The enforcer fell, and the trencher was left exposed.
Clear line of sight.
Easy target.
Guns swung up. Stocks were shoved into armored shoulders. Trigger fingers twitched from safety to shoot.
Vi’s gut plummeted.
Realization rolled over the crowd, bringing with it another hush. Slowly, the bloodied trencher raised their hands. They swallowed. Paled. Stared.
Waited.
For what everyone knew was coming.
Then came the shout.
Vi’s attention shot downwards. From somewhere inside the mail terminal, another enforcer burst into view. Their barred shoulders shone with gold.
A sergeant.
Pounding over the cobbles, they gestured wildly, yelling things Vi couldn’t quite hear. But they weren’t yelling at the trencher.
Springing forward through the line of armed officers, they lashed out with and fisted the nearest barrel, shoving its end toward the ground. Still hollering, they held up a staying hand. The blue-coats under their command shifted, uncertain, looking back and forth.
The sergeant ripped off their respirator, spewing saliva.
“Hold your fire!”
Their voice rattled off the buildings.
Immediately, the guns dipped, startled off their aim. The line of enforcers rocked backward and shuffled, closing rank. The sergeant edged out ahead of them, one hand still raised. Then that hand stabbed towards the trencher. It cut the air.
“Get back on your fucking side!”
Vi tightened. The aluminum gutter in her hands finally gave way with a squeal, crumpling. Her gaze snapped towards the trencher.
Their lip lifted. Showing bloody teeth, they spat pink froth onto the pavement and began to lower their arms. They glanced towards the barricades and then back at the enforcers. They didn’t move.
The sergeant sliced the air again, spittle flying. “I said get back…on your…fucking…side!!”
A wave of tension rippled through the crowd.
The trencher’s eyes flickered, assessing.
Then, with a sniff and half-cocked shrug, they turned and walked away.
Stomping over the cobbles, they stopped to kneel beside a bruised and bloody bundle. The old man. He’d collapsed just short of the bulwark and curled in on himself, trembling. Carefully, the trencher lifted him by the elbow, helping him up, helping him forward—
—helping him back over the barrier.
A half dozen steadying hands reached out to receive them.
And the enforcers let them go.
Huffing, Vi unlocked, her body dumping itself onto the shingles. She swallowed and passed a hand over her face. She was shaking, weakened by a relief she didn’t deserve.
Fuck.
She watched as the blue-coats reformed their line. The trenchers pressed against their barricades again, spitting and hurling garbage. The old man and the person who’d saved him were absorbed into the crowd.
Back to square one. Like nothing had happened.
The tines in Vi's back finally let go, sliding out from between her ribs. With nothing left to hold her down and nothing left to pull, she went slack, spent—
—despite not doing a single fucking thing.
Wincing, she rolled over and scowled into the smog. Something crashed and burst below her. Another bottle, probably. A howl swelled up between the buildings. Laughter, too. Jeering.
Vi didn’t bother to look. She pressed her hands to her eyes and heaved a breath. The guilt was back, dragging through her in slow, serrated strokes.
Fuck, she thought, I should’ve—
Another crash. She jerked at the sound of a baton cracking into bone.
Someone screamed.
Her hands pressed harder.
I should’ve—
She shook.
Should’ve what? Cut her lines? Pitched herself down? Screamed and torn and driven her fists into flesh until she was swarmed and smashed apart against the paving stones?
…been “stupid?”
Her lip pulled back. Bile churned in her gut and her fingers caught in the front of her hair, twisting, making the roots sting. Making them hurt. Because all those shoulds didn’t matter. She’d nearly done it. All of it.
She’d nearly been exactly as stupid as she’d promised Caitlyn she wouldn’t be.
If it hadn’t been for—
—a blur of muscle—
—a cloud of sparks—
—keen eyes and a cool head that knew when it was time to walk away—
—where would she be, now?
—“What am I supposed to do if you don’t come back?”
A skittering sensation writhed up her shoulder. She rolled it out through her neck and tried not to think about how that bold and tatted trencher hadn’t just saved one person—
—they’d saved two.
Groaning, Vi sat up and rolled onto her feet. Her legs wobbled underneath her, sodden with adrenaline. Trying to shut out the sounds of escalation boiling behind her, she walked-jogged-sprinted along the sloping roof and jumped to catch a nearby ledge. Pulling herself over the lip, she turned and picked a route that would take her deeper into Zaun.
She couldn't mail a letter from a terminal being used as a blue-coat base of operations.
She’d have to try somewhere else.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Some drunkard’s watch, 3:06 pm]
[Time until sunset: approx. 3 hrs 15 mins]
[Estimated route-time to Babette’s: 1 hr 15 mins]
The second mail terminal was fire-gutted.
Grimacing, Vi crunched over broken glass and ducked inside a ruptured window. Heat washed over her and she squinted. Embers churned in the blackened walls and the air was thick with the stink of melted polymers. The smell caused her to duck her nose into the collar of her shirt.
Trencher or not, there were some things you didn’t want siphoning through your lungs.
She shuffled deeper into the room, trying not to breathe deeply. Her eyes roamed the wreckage.
Explosion, she decided.
Not just a fire.
Something had blown the place to splinters. Anything not nailed down had been blasted toward the windows. All the broken glass was in the street.
Who the fuck bombs a mail terminal?
Her skin tingled at the thought. She smoothed a hand down her arm to make it stop.
Moving to the back of the room, she walked around the buckled counter and glanced along the wall of mail chutes. Several of the outbound pipes were split and folded back like ribbons, their ragged mouths still steaming.
She toggled a few levers to try and kick on the suction, but she already knew it wouldn’t work. The place was a bust.
Oh-for-two, she cringed.
She turned around and left.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Neon billboard, 4:22 pm]
[Time until sunset: approx. 3 hrs]
[Estimated route-time to Babette’s: 1 hr 15 mins]
Deep in a part of Zaun she knew better than to visit, Vi swung down off a drain pipe to find the third mail terminal locked and shuttered. Its windows were dark, its storefront covered in roll-down caging.
She closed her eyes.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Frustration knotted in the hinge of her jaw. She scowled and kneaded it with a knuckle.
Didn’t help.
Shoulders rising, Vi scuffed forward, stopping to pitch her weight uselessly against the security grate. It rattled. Dust fell. She sucked in a breath and let it out. Her fingers trembled as she dragged them over the metal, hooking them through the slats.
She wanted to rip the whole thing off its fucking hinges and snap the goddamn tracks in half.
She settled for kicking craters in the corrugation, once, twice, three times. That’s all she could allow herself. The crash was obnoxious and pulled eyes towards her immediately. Not great.
She was too close to The Last Drop. She couldn’t afford to be recognized.
Flinging herself away from the terminal, she pulled into a slouch and stalked up the lane. The few trenchers straggling in the street shrank back from her as though she were radioactive.
Good.
She eyed alleyways as she walked, moving quickly, counting them off one-by-one. Fifth on the left. That would be the one with the barred windows and stable fire escape—her route back to the roofs. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she got up there, though. The only other terminal she knew about was miles away. She’d never get there and back to Babette’s before nightfall.
The threat of failure loomed large and darkened her mood further. She winced and pushed deeper into her pockets.
That’s when she heard a yelp.
In a dim gap between streetlamps, Vi froze, listening. No one else reacted, so for a moment, she wondered if she’d imagined the sound.
She hadn't.
[#]
After a few more seconds, the cry jumped up again, muffled and sharp in the shadows. Distress.
Her eyes narrowed and her senses coalesced. Putting her back to the wall, she let her gaze track slowly over the street. She searched, hunting, looking for anything that—
There.
In the adjacent alley, a few feet deep into the shadows: a woman.
The three goons surrounding her didn’t seem the least bit interested in hiding what they were about to do.
Vi’s skin prickled.
Mm.
Cracking her neck, she peeled off the wall and cut unhurriedly across the street. She kept her gait slow and rolling.
Intentional.
The woman noticed her first. Her eyes were wide and wild and circling resignation. She’d fought—there was blood beneath her fingernails—but she was outclassed by about four hundred pounds and she knew it. Still, when her gaze locked onto Vi’s, it flooded with fresh urgency. She sank her teeth into the hand covering her mouth.
With a yell, the guy she’d bitten yanked away his bloodied hand and said something filthy. He drew back his arm for a punch.
Nah.
Vi caught his wrist on the upswing.
“Whatcha got there?” she asked lightly.
The three fuckbags stiffened and whipped around. Two of them blinked down at her with slack expressions, but the third crumpled his face in a sneer that showed all five of his gold-plated teeth. Ringleader. It was his hand going white in Vi’s grip.
“What, you lookin’ for a turn?” he smarmed.
Vi stared. “Something like that.”
A clot of spit hit the street between her boots as the guy tried unsuccessfully to get his arm back.
Classy.
“Fuck off, then,” he grunted, “Go find your own pu—”
[##]
Vi’s fist came around with a crack and knocked two more teeth out of him. Screeching, he staggered sideways, cupping a hand under his chin. Gold caps plinked to the ground, filled with yellow and black.
“Fucking shit,” he spewed, spitting blood and phlegm. His lackeys looked back and forth between them, stunned.
Three-Teeth swung out an arm and screamed at them. “Idiots! Grab her!”
Vi brought up her guard.
She hardly even needed to.
As the goons flung themselves at her, lurching and swinging, she realized immediately that they were complete slouches. No form or control. No weapons to compensate. She threaded easily under their limbs, stinging with sharp, mocking blows.
Disappointing.
One of her left hooks caught the ringleader in the ear. It split his lobe around a piercing. He stumbled and seethed. Hatred twisted in his eyes.
“Stupid little—! ”
He frothed. Strings of saliva.
His curses were hideous.
—Filthy fucking words.
Vi jerked. Her shoulder ticked.
Concrete flashed up her back as she turned and snarled at Three-Teeth through bars of salted iron.
"Say that again," she hissed, "and see how it ends."
The guy had enough good sense to look startled—just not enough to turn and run. His face fell again, and he lunged.
Tsk’ing, Vi wove backwards into the alley, drawing him with her. His buddies followed like the morons they were.
The woman against the wall took quick advantage of the distraction. As soon as her attackers brawled themselves out of arm’s reach, she took off and sprinted to the mouth of the alley. Once there, though, she skidded to a halt. Turning, her eyes snapped between Vi and the circling cluster of shitstains. Her forehead creased. Vi could have laughed.
She was hesitating.
It was sweet.
Stupid, but sweet.
Vi nodded her off, trying to look less wild than she felt. She finished the gesture with a wink and a grin.
“Go,” she said, dodging a blow without looking, “I got it.”
The woman shifted her weight one more time, her desire to run tugging one foot while solidarity rooted the other. Vi rolled her eyes and crushed the consciousness out of Lackey #2 just to prove her point.
"Seriously.”
The woman jumped and disappeared.
Vi let the smile evaporate off her face.
And then there were two.
Lackey #1 swiped at her with a big, bumbling arm. She ducked beneath it, but their wristwatch caught her hood and tore it back off her head. For a brief moment, the fighting stopped. Both henchfucks stiffened with recognition, and not for the first time, Vi found herself wondering if she should just dye her fucking hair.
“Ha,” Three-Teeth leered, and took a step forward, “I know you.”
Vi watched him advance. Her lip tightened.
“Not well enough, apparently.”
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
It was over so quickly it was almost unsatisfying.
Leaving the two lackeys to mop up sewage in the gutter, Vi caught the ringleader by his shirt collar and dragged him into the alley’s blackest corner. He sniveled, yelping, as she threw him against the wall.
Closing the distance, Vi rolled her shoulder and flexed her wrist, her body still trembling with unspent rage.
Three-Teeth cowered in her shadow as she stood over him.
“Know what?” she asked, looking down, “I’ve spent all day just itching for a reason, so...thanks, I guess.”
He whimpered.
She lashed out and yanked him up by his hair, pressing him against the stone.
"Let's have a chat."
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
It took three minutes.
Three minutes, and the fucker was weeping, begging, pleading with her to stop, stop, please stop. His weakness made her furious. She held him by the throat and backhanded him.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” she scathed, “What’s that? Now you know what ‘stop’ means? How fucking convenient!”
She dropped him into the sludge and slammed a boot between his shoulder blades.
“Any other words I need to teach you?!”
No, he cried, No! I'm sorry, I'm sorry…
His words were a slurry of blood and snot and sobs. Vi heaved. He was so pathetic that she began to lose her grip on her fury. The pale emptiness of exhaustion ghosted through her limbs. It felt like a whisper—and a warning.
Enough, it said.
Enough.
Not quite.
Air left her mouth in a sharp, pneumatic hiss as she brought her heel down over the ringleader's kidney.
“Piss blood,” she spat.
He wailed.
With a final gasp, the fumes choked themselves out.
Panting, Vi staggered backward, catching herself against a dumpster. She slumped, her head falling back. Fatigue hummed in to overtake the rage fading off her nerves. Her eyes hovered on the writhing form in front of her. When her vision faded from red to gray, she knew it was over.
Sniffing, she pushed herself upright and spat on the guy’s face.
“Fuck you,” she shivered, “Fuck you.”
Sodden with sweat and blood that wasn’t hers, she turned and walked towards the street. She got about halfway before she stopped. Tilting her head on a thought, she turned around. Squinted. Went back.
Three-Teeth cringed as she crouched down next to him.
“While I have you…” she quipped, “you got any ideas on how to mail a damn letter around here?”
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
When she finally left the alley, she looked up to find a thorny pack of trenchers skulking towards her. At their head stalked a bruised, towering figure. Her face was stony. She dragged on a cigar until it glowed orange on her lips. Her empty shoulder socket hung draped in purple.
Great.
Just...great.
Vi held the ground she’d claimed and waited.
The group closed in. Fanning out, they slowed to a halt three arm-lengths away. The big trencher leading them settled her weight over one foot. Kneading her brow with her thumb, she sighed, tight-jawed. Their eyes met.
“Vi.”
“Sevika.”
The cigar flared. Smoke billowed.
“You look like shit.”
Vi’s lip curled. She opened her mouth to argue, drew up her shoulders to posture—
—and stopped.
The will to pretend shuddered out of her. That was dangerous in the Lanes. Extremely dangerous. But it didn’t matter. This crowd was the real deal. They already knew she was tapped. If they decided to jump her, it was over.
So she shrugged. Smiled. Swallowed.
“Yeah,” she admitted, “it’s been a shitty few—"
She stopped.
A shitty few what?
"—days? Years? I dunno."
Her voice was hoarse.
Something strange flickered across Sevika’s face before it became unreadable. She tapped ash onto the cobbles.
“Irena says," she began flatly, "that you helped her with some trouble."
She tipped her chin and took another drag on her cigar.
Vi’s eyes slid sideways. The woman from the alley drifted out from behind two hulking Zaunites. Her gaze claimed Vi’s with a look that was steady and intense.
Gratitude.
Why that expression made Vi wince, she didn’t know, but she looked away quickly. She found herself staring at Sevika’s boots. She saw more ash fall. Smelled smoke.
“Just did what anyone would’ve done,” she mumbled. She jumped when Sevika barked with laughter.
“Don’t be stupid,” the big trencher scoffed.
Vi had to smirk, then, too. They both knew it wasn’t true.
There weren't a lot of helpers in the trenches.
Clearing a few more chuckles out of a chest full of tar, Sevika sighed again, rolling and loud. With her cigar between two fingers, she pressed her palm to her forehead and searched the smog above for patience.
“Damnit, Vi,” she cussed, and looked back down with a groan, “You’re a pain in my ass, you know that? Must run in the fucking family.”
Vi tensed, but the comment wasn’t targeted. Sevika sounded genuinely fed-up. She drudged on.
“I swear. It’s gotta be some sort of record. You’re back on these streets for forty-eight hours and the whole world implodes. The cities? In shambles. The chembarons? Oh, they’re beyond pissed, and not just about the shimmer. One of ‘em’s lookin’ for you. Been screeching something about you killing her kid. I oughta let her spatchcock you, you know, just to shut her up.”
—“Topsucker.”
Vi swallowed bile and kept her face neutral.
“...but you’re not going to?” she asked.
Sevika huffed, sounding disgusted with herself.
“No,” she growled, “Not today.”
“Why?”
“Because, Vi. Seems like if you’re on your bullshit for long enough, you eventually do something useful.”
Vi furrowed her brow. “I don’t—wait.” She tilted her head towards the alley, her mouth turning down in distaste. “You mean those…those guys?”
There was a brief rustling as a restless shift filtered through Sevika’s ranks. Dour faces became darker. Glinting eyes cut left, right, and exchanged looks. Fingers toyed with knives.
“Mm. Yeah.” Sevika grimaced. Her voice was low, her tone grinding with reluctance.
“‘Those guys.' ” she said, “are known quantities. I’ve been after ‘em for the better part of a year. Bountied 'em and everything. Riots must have made ‘em bold.”
Oh.
“Oh.”
“‘Oh?' ” the big trencher sneered, “That’s all you’ve got?”
Vi scratched at the gravel still embedded in her arm. “I guess? I don’t—I don’t really understand what this is.”
…or why I haven’t been stabbed yet.
Sevika snorted.
“Of course you don’t,” she drawled, “your sister got all the brains.”
Vi flinched.
Sevika closed her lips around her cigar and took a long pull, allowing her words the time they needed to wound. Vi tucked a hand against her ribs and pressed. The bruise Caitlyn had given her flared comfortingly under her fingers. She opened her mouth to reply, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.
Sevika filled the silence with an eye roll and a huff.
“Ah, for fuck’s—you did me a favor, moron.”
Vi looked up, frowning.
The frown on Sevika’s face was twice as deep. The big trencher’s expression made it clear that she hated every word that was about to grate out of her.
“I—ugh—” She seethed. “I owe you, now.” The notion seemed to sit so foul in her mouth that she had to stop and suck her teeth before continuing. She pulled in a hard breath and then sighed, shoulder sagging.
“So, you,” she bit out at last, “of all fucking people—fuck. You get a goddamn chip.”
A jolt stiffened Vi’s back.
“Wait.” Her eyes went wide. “What? ”
Another uncomfortable rustle ran through the group. Sevika sneered and crushed out her spent cigar under her boot. She reached into her pocket for another. Clipped it. Lit it.
“Don’t act like you didn’t hear me, ‘cause I’m not gonna say it again.”
Vi was too tired to act like anything. She was stunned.
“You…” Her head jerked back slightly. “You still play by those rules?”
“'Still?' Always have. That’s your problem, Vi. Or one of ‘em. You think you know shit. You don’t.”
Sevika held Vi’s gaze as she raised her voice to address the trenchers behind her.
“You all got that?” she barked, “This…idiot…gets one.”
There was a brief, stiff chorus of assents. The voices were flat and formal, because this was about as formal a transaction that ever occurred in The Lanes. With a nod and a grudging sniff, Sevika dashed back her cloak to unsnap a lapel pocket. Something heavy and round dropped into her hand.
A token.
It flashed in the light as the big trencher rolled it through her fingers. Back and forth across her knuckles, it went, once, twice, and then on the third pass, Sevika threw it.
Vi caught it.
“Spend it wisely,” Sevika warned.
Blinking, Vi opened her hand to look at the chip resting in her palm. It was lacquered black and ornately branded with the emblem of Silco’s enterprise—the Eye. Queasy, she grimaced and turned it over. The flip side was more austere, marked only with the numeral for ‘two.’
Sevika’s rank.
Second-in-Command.
Ha.
Mm.
…not anymore.
It wasn’t funny.
Vi felt a sour taste wash into her mouth and she shifted her weight to keep from swaying.
The soaring nausea rushed back. It canted the world a few degrees to the left. Her mind flashed to flies and crows and decay—cloud tattoos and fuchsia eyes—Silco oozing out of a dozen holes—Caitlyn’s scream as blinding blue anarchy cut a fault line through her life—
—Powder’s bleeding face, crumpled in her hand, reminding her who was really to blame.
Silco was dead.
Why was everything worse now?
Vi closed her eyes. Opened them again. The edge of the chip was digging into her palm, pinching a nerve. Her knuckles would have been white if they weren’t brown with oxidizing blood.
“If it makes you feel that dirty, you can always give it back,” Sevika smirked, and it occurred to Vi that there were too many people on the planet who knew her too fucking well.
Whatever. As Sevika’s words slid between her ribs and twisted, Vi passed a thumb over the oily edge of the chip. It was true. Having the thing did make her feel dirty. Just holding it made her gut churn, made her hands feel bloodier than they already were.
But so what?
She ran her tongue through her mouth.
This token, it—
She inhaled sharply.
—it was evidence of a debt owed by the most powerful person in the Undercity.
Vi's stress-thickened mind finally got itself around the concept. Her pulse quickened. The nausea faded. She bounced the chip in her palm.
"'Give it back…'?" she echoed. She shook her head. "Nah. Think I'll keep it."
She closed her hand around the token and stuffed her fist into her pocket. Her eyes came up.
"And I'll collect."
Smoke curled out of Sevika’s mouth as she chuckled bitterly. Her head tipped back as she blew a pale ring into the smog. Her eyes returned to Vi’s face. They were easy with contempt, amusement, and cunning.
“Oh, I bet you will,” she said.
And just like that, the tension broke.
The matter was settled.
Until she next left Sevika’s sightline, Vi was untouchable.
The small circle of Zaunites relaxed towards their baseline Undercity tautness. Shoulders dropped and hands fell away from knife hilts. Necks were rolled and limbs were stretched. Conversation bubbled up, low but jaunty. The trenchers began to cluster haphazardly around their boss. No need to stay three arm lengths away now.
Vi let her gaze wander over the group. She recognized only a few of them. They were a mean-looking bunch, bristling and dirty and sour. True pirates. Mercenaries. Brigands.
All except for—
—for Irena.
Vi’s eyes settled on her, trying to make her make sense. Irena fell somewhere between Piltie pretty and Trencher tough, but compared to the rest of Sevika’s lot, she looked almost alarmingly delicate. Didn’t seem to matter. She moved comfortably among them, completely at ease.
In fact, she looked pleased. Her expression was warm and glittering.
And she was smiling…
…at Sevika.
And Sevika, in her own begrudging, half-closed way, spent a half-second smiling back.
Vi blinked. Gears turned. Something chugged into place.
Ah, she thought, glancing between the pair.
…huh.
Okay.
Then:
Whatever, I get it.
Caitlyn's letter was burning a hole in her leg.
She shifted her weight as Sevika turned towards her again. The big trencher’s body was more settled now, her face a smoother sort of stone. She sidled over Vi, her cigar glowing.
“So,” she rumbled, “Where are the shitsacks?”
Her granite eyes were roaming the lane. Vi turned to look in the same direction and together they slouched in the thoroughfare, shoulder-to-shoulder. Vi shoved her hands in her pockets. She tipped her head.
“They’re in the alley,” she muttered.
“Dead?”
“...no.”
A beat.
“Right,” Sevika snorted, “of course not.”
Vi let her gaze flicker to the side and upwards. Heat flared along her ears when she caught Sevika smirking down at her.
“What?” she snapped.
“Oh, nothing. You’re just predictable, is all.”
Before Vi could respond, Sevika whistled to her trenchers and pointed them towards the alley. A half dozen of them vanished into its dark mouth.
“Predictable how?” Vi grumbled, well aware she was taking the bait.
Sevika tugged the line and put the hook through her face.
“Just seems like you only ever go for the win,” she taunted, “not the kill.”
A tremor stuttered through Vi’s leg, racing up and around into her fists. Her shoulders stiffened. She understood the accusation: weakness. Her lip lifted.
"Gee,” she trembled, “sorry I'm not some...back-alley murderer."
Sevika glanced at her and grunted, and that grunt tumbled into a laugh. She scoffed out fresh blue smoke.
"Who said anything about back alleys?”
"...what?"
Sevika didn't answer. Taking a drag, she blew billows out of her nostrils and lifted her chin. Vi turned to follow her gaze.
The small posse of trenchers was emerging from the alley, hauling Lackey #1 and Lackey #2 in their wake. Body parts bumped and scuffed as the two shitbags were pitched roughly into the middle of the lane. They lay there groggy but stirring. Neither seemed to realize what was happening as their limbs were bound. Oily rags were stuffed into their mouths, gagging them.
Vi felt the blood draw out of her face and hands.
“What are you—?”
"Irena said there were three of them?"
Sevika’s voice was dangerous and soft. Vi's gaze darted to her and then away. She swallowed.
"Um. Yeah, he's—he's all the way back. Behind the dumpster."
The big trencher eyed her and then whistled sharply.
"Hey! Tinster."
A big, swarthy Zaunite with a maze of facial tattoos looked their way.
"Last one's behind the dumpster. Hurry up."
Tinster gave a loose salute and tapped another trencher on the shoulder. They disappeared into the alley.
The pair returned a moment later dragging a leaden Three-Teeth between them. Vi shrank into herself at the sight of him. The guy was wrecked. His body was purple, bloody, and swollen, and his trousers were dark with piss. His face was so badly rearranged he barely looked human. Vi dropped her gaze to the cobbles.
Beside her, Sevika whistled again. This time the sound was low and slow, impressed and cruel.
"Damn,” she laughed, “and you're out here moralizing about how I handle things?"
Vi’s throat caught. She said nothing. The bandages over her knuckles were so soaked with blood that the skin underneath began to itch.
An elbow settled on her shoulder as Sevika used her as an armrest. The big trencher’s voice dropped even lower.
“You were right on the edge there, huh?” There was an inkling of surprise in her tone. “Why not finish it?”
Something about the question made Vi’s heart race. She found herself trying to answer even though she didn’t want to.
“I—I don’t…” She hesitated. “It would be—”
“What?” Sevika cut in, “Wrong? Is that what you think?”
Vi shrugged, her shoulder stiff under the weight of the big trencher’s arm. When Sevika next spoke, she sounded disgusted, disbelieving, and—briefly—parental.
[#]
“You know they don’t stop, right? Animals like that, they keep on doing what they do, over and over and over. Do you wanna know how many people they’ve gotten to already?”
Vi didn’t.
“Seven. That we know about. So, no. Making an example of these fucks isn’t wrong, Vi. What’s wrong is you seeing them go after someone with your own eyes and then leaving them alive to do it again.”
The canter of Vi's pulse stumbled and skipped. She gasped, coughing. The elbow on her shoulder became a hand, gripping her, turning her just enough for their eyes to meet.
“Honestly,” Sevika sneered, “how dare you?”
“I—”
“Don’t bother. I just gotta wonder what it would have taken.” Her eyes narrowed. “What about that sweet piece of Piltie ass you were running around with? What if it was her they'd—”
"—don't— "
"—nah, I'm gonna. This is good for you. A little dose of reality. What about it, huh? What if it was her? A pretty young topsider like that—bet there'd be nothing left of her after they each had their—"
[##]
“Stop! Stop. Fuck you. That’s why she’s not fucking out here.”
Fingers tightened into her shoulder.
She realized her mistake immediately.
...shit.
She gulped as lips moved next to her ear.
“Interesting,” Sevika murmured, “Then where is she, Vi?”
Careful.
Careful…
“I dunno. Where’s your fucking boss?”
Shit...
She closed her eyes.
That was not careful.
The hand on her shoulder dropped and twisted, its weight settling into a vice. It held her in place as Sevika circled slowly around to loom over her. The big trencher's cigar flared. Hot ash sloughed into the air between them. Igneous eyes bored downwards.
"Mm…"
Vi stood hunched in a challenge. Sevika's expression was carved and angry, her jaw set in a carefully guarded snarl. But she was silent. Only her eyes could demand, what do you know, what do you know, what do you know?
Vi understood, and it was likely the only thing that saved her:
Sevika couldn't ask a question about Silco without also answering one.
So, she settled for a threat.
“Watch yourself,” she snapped, “You've got a chip. Caitlyn Kiramman doesn't.”
Vi was hit with the cold, blown-open feeling of fresh panic. It must have shown on her face because Sevika lifted an eyebrow.
"What, you thought we didn't know?"
Vi opened her mouth—
“Boss?”
As one, she and Sevika flashed their eyes around to the trencher skulking beside them. It was Tinster. He stood a few feet away, wiping his hands on his jeans and gnawing on his lip ring. He snorted and spat out a wedge of phlegm.
“They’re ready for ya, boss.” His thumb jerked towards the rest of the posse, already circled loosely around the three scumsacks lying trussed up in the lane.
Vi felt a hollow, black feeling rise in her chest. She knocked Sevika’s hand off her shoulder.
“Fuck you,” she hissed again. She took a step back. “Are we done here? I've got shit to do.”
The answer should have been yes. With her chip, she had the right to leave.
Instead, Sevika frowned. Considered. Shook her head.
"No,” she decided, “You’re gonna watch this.”
Before Vi could bolt, a hand lashed out and grabbed her by the back of the neck. She shouted, struggling, but Sevika shoved her forward.
“Relax,” the big trencher drawled, “it’ll be quick. Besides, you caught ‘em. Only makes sense for you to be here when they’re put down.”
Vi was shouldered between Tinster and some other guy with an arc of lime green hair. They didn’t even bother to look at her. Sevika’s voice slid past her ear.
“Iry? They’re all yours.”
Velveteen words unfurled to Vi’s right.
“You’re too good to me, Sev.”
The trenchers parted. A lithe figure emerged from the shadows, her smile dazzling in the neon. Vi watched her cross to the middle of the street, spinning something opalescent across her fingers.
“Pay attention,” Sevika muttered, “This is the closest thing to justice you’re ever gonna see in your life.”
[%]
Vi bit her tongue to keep from hyperventilating.
In the wavering light of naphtha lamps, Irena floated open a butterfly knife as pretty as she was. Blowing a kiss to Sevika, she bent down to carve the three goons apart.
A fluttering black nothingness passed behind Vi’s eyes, but it wasn’t merciful enough to take her with it. She locked up, unable to look away.
The gags did nothing to muffle the screams. Blood arched out of flesh and spattered into the road, collecting in runnels. Some fissure folk stopped in the street to watch. Others peered down out of windows. No one made a sound.
When Lackey #1 began to convulse, Vi jerked in Sevika’s grip, trying to wrench away. She couldn’t. She was exhausted, and the hold on her neck was unrelenting. It tightened. Bruised. A voice ground into her ear.
[%%]
"You listen to me, Vi. This nobility shtick of yours? It’s Piltie shit.”
Weakness.
Vi bucked again. Sevika shook her.
“Sure,” she went on, “that bullshit earned you a chip this time, but that's just 'cause you're luckier than you deserve. Keep it up and it's gonna get you killed—”
“Let me go.”
“—just like Vander.”
“Let me go! ”
She finally wrenched herself free.
Staggering, Vi stumbled back and stepped in blood. It splattered up her pant leg. For a moment, Three-Teeth’s screams dipped into whimpers as Irena paused in her butchering. Everything went still.
The trenchers were staring at her, their lips curling in contempt. Tinster looked up at Sevika. Sevika shrugged.
Vi drew in her shoulders and shoved past them.
Snickering, they let her go.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Clock on the wall, 5:37 pm]
[Time until sunset: approx. 55 mins]
[Estimated route-time to Babette’s: 50 mins]
She slipped in through the exhaust hatch while the old man wasn’t looking. Settling into the shadows, she waited.
He spent a long time shuffling around in the back, groaning and huffing and grumbling to himself. Things scraped and clanked, and something toppled over with a bang. The noise was followed by a string of wet curses.
Using the clock on the wall, she noted the time and counted seconds into minutes.
…thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty. Forty-one, forty-two—
After three minutes and forty-three seconds, the scrawny lech finally tottered out of his storeroom. His arms were clutched around a crate of spirits. The bottles clattered as he walked, knocked together by his limp. Muttering, he heaved the product onto the counter and shuffled around to restock.
"Hey, skeez."
Stumbling and scrabbling. The guy looked ready to shit himself as he whirled around, his knobby limbs flailing. With a scowl, Vi blew a whistle across two fingers. She tasted iron on her tongue.
"Up here."
Gooey, yellow eyes swung up to find her folded like a jackknife among the rafters. The old man jumped again, gasping and grabbing his chest. More curses gargled out of him, sloppy and damp.
Vi tipped her chin, deadpanned.
“Heard you’ve shunted the mail-line that runs under your store,” she said. She held up Caitlyn’s letter. "I need to mail this over to Topside. You're gonna send it for free."
She let the paper go. It rocked downwards through the air, skidding to a stop on the countertop. The lech’s gaze followed its path. As the letter snicked to a halt in front of him, he swallowed. He looked up, down, up, back down again.
“Huh—um. L-look, I—um. I dunno who you—” He stopped, gulped, started again. “I dunno who ya been talkin’ to, but...I don’ know nothin’ about no shunt.”
“Mm.”
Letting a slow breath steam between her teeth, Vi rested her forearm along a joist. Her head dropped forward against her wrist.
“Yeah…” she said softly, looking down, “that’s a lie.”
The lech paled. His sightline darted around like a horsefly, looking everywhere but up.
“N-no,” he stammered, “I—hey. Hey, I been keepin’ my head down, a’right? I don’ want any sorta troub—”
“Stop talking.”
He shut up.
As he folded in on himself, Vi chipped a crescent of dried blood out from her nail bed.
“I know all about your little racket, asshole. Some chembaron offers you protection, and you send shit topside through a hole in your floorboards. Your buddy with the gold teeth told me.”
The old man twiddled and picked at his fingers.
“M-micky?” he squeaked, “I don’...he wouldn’t—”
Vi was unblinking.
“Doesn’t matter. He’s dead now.”
Any blood remaining in the lech’s face vanished down his neck. He reeled, eyes going wide.
Vi sniffed. She knew how it sounded and knew how it looked. She could see a sliver of her reflection in the store’s mirrored shelving. Inked, bloody, and lawless. Hooded, pale, and pierced. She looked fresh off a murder—
—because she was.
If the old man wanted to believe she was the killer? Great. She wasn’t going to beg him off the idea.
Huddled against his cabinets, the lech began to tremble and flounder. His body rattled so hard bottles tinked together beside him.
“Okay,” he mumbled, “O-okay. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got a shunt, a’right?”
“Mm-hm.”
“—an’ it’s here, an’ y-yeah I do send up shipments sometimes, just lil’ ones—”
“Right.”
“—b-but—”
“Ooh. Careful.”
The old man hesitated, shaking, his fingers twisting into the front of his shirt. He screwed his eyes shut.
“—b-but I c-can’t send nothin’ now, a’right? I can’t.”
Vi opened her shoulders on an exasperated sigh.
“Aw, buddy,” she crooned, rubbing her forehead against her bandaged wrist, “You were doing so well.”
Panic set in below her. The old man stepped back and tripped, knocking a bottle of spirits onto its side. It rolled off the shelf and shattered against the floor.
“Wait!” he panted, “just l-lemme explain—”
“Nah. Let me explain.”
Vi sucked her canine and swung down out of the ceiling. The old man scrambled aside and she landed with a thud onto the boards where he'd been cowering. She advanced on him.
"I remember you, you know, you sticky old fuck.” Her mouth hooked upwards in disgust. “Vander tossed you out of The Drop for putting shit in a guy's drink. No wonder you need to suck off chembarons to survive. You’re lucky I don't emulsify you.”
He looked horrified.
She dropped her fist onto Caitlyn’s letter.
“You're gonna send this,” she sneered, “and you're gonna keep your mouth shut about it. Are we clear?"
The man's pus-colored eyes oozed and blinked behind his soda bottle glasses. He was sniveling.
"I would! I w-would! I can't."
The cold crust of Vi’s after-anger cracked from underneath. Red heat pressed upwards.
Grabbing the lech by his lapels, she yanked him away from the cabinets. It was like scraping a smear of snot off the wood. Knotted hands grappled for purchase and swiped more bottles onto the floor. They burst.
“I can’t!” he bleated again. He was clammy with terror.
Vi’s mouth drew back in a snarl. She shoved him and shook him. Shelves swayed.
"There's no excuse you could give me that'd be good enough," she seethed.
The old man’s hands went to her wrists as she drew his collar tight around his neck. Squirming, heaving, he flapped his lips, trying to come up with a word, a phrase, anything to explain—
"Letter bombs!!" he blurted at last. The words were pinched and screechy.
Vi stopped. Twitching, she let up an ounce. Her brow furrowed.
"...what?"
The lech looked ready to weep with relief. More words tripped out of his mouth, quick as he could manage.
"L-letter bombs,” he said again, “Last night. Topside. S-somebody down here, they…they sent letter bombs through the chutes. The Pilties shut off the compressors after that. No mail in or out."
—Broken glass and blackened walls—explosion, not just a fire—outbound pipes folded back like ribbons—
—Who the fuck bombs a mail terminal?
Again, her skin tingled at the thought. The feeling was sharper this time. More ominous.
Familiar.
The gray whine of dread began to keen in her ears.
No…
"Who?" she breathed.
"What?"
"Who sent the bombs?" She wet cracked lips. "Was it Chembarons? A bunch of shimmed-up trenchers? Who?"
Please.
Confusion remolded the old man’s face. Fresh fear tugged at his mouth as he searched her wildly, trying to pick an answer—or a lie—that wouldn’t get him killed. After a beat, he gulped.
“H-how should I know?” he stammered. His tone was pathetic enough to be convincing, but his wobbling jowls and skittering eyes betrayed him.
Vi’s fists tightened again, salt and dried blood crumbling out of the wraps. She shoved the lech backward again, bending him, filling his vision with her contempt.
“Cockroaches like you always know,” she hissed.
He whimpered and caved.
"It's only rumors!” he squealed, “Rumors! I dunno nothin' for certain, I swear it! Just hear-say! It was only last night an' I been here. I'm always just here…"
He turned his face away. His breath smelled like stale whiskey and rotten teeth.
The dread in Vi’s ears whined louder. Her skin no longer tingled. It needled and burned. The muscles between her shoulder blades began to drag on each other, winching, cramping, bracing bracing bracing—
—because on some level, she already knew.
One last time, she demanded the answer she didn’t want.
"Who?!"
The lech's throat bulged.
"Th-the people are sayin'—” he gasped “—they’re sayin’ it was Silco's girl!"
The room titled.
—decay
—fuchsia eyes
—blue anarchy and fault lines
Vi’s chest emptied around a feeling worse than horror.
The chimera had no name.
Her fingers unlocked and the man dropped like wet garbage, heaping at her feet. His nose and mouth drooled down his chin. He was crying.
Staggering, Vi caught herself against a shelf, her heel dragging backward through vodka and glass. She turned away. A stabbing pain lanced above her eye and she pressed a hand against it.
Below her, the lech was still babbling, his face an ugly fountain of fluid.
"They're saying she's the only one that coulda dunnit," he wept, "So many at once…"
Fuck.
"...like a miracle."
Vi's mouth stung with rage and bile as she whipped around.
"The fuck did you just say?!"
The man cringed. He pressed his nose to the floor and refused to answer. Probably his smartest move in decades.
Vi wanted to brace herself between the counters and kick his guts in anyway.
—anarchy and fault lines
Snatching Caitlyn's letter off the bar, she lept back up into the rafters and shouldered out of the exhaust hatch. It slammed back down after her, silencing the sound of jaundiced blubbering below.
On the roof, she stood heaving in the fading light. Pulling in ragged breaths, she tried to steady the animal twisting in her chest. It clawed and clawed and clawed until she had to set her teeth to cage a scream.
It tore out of her anyway.
Whirling, she lashed out with a fist and broke her hand against a smokestack.
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[Time until sunset: approx. 45 mins]
[Estimated route-time to Babette’s: approx. 50 mins]
[Estimated route time to Babette’s with a broken hand: 3.5+ hrs]
Notes:
Depending on your sensitivities, this may have been the darkest chapter of "Saltwater".
For me personally, it was Chapter 10.
Chapters 10, 11, and 14 contain the bleakest and most disturbing content in the entire fic. It will never be so dark again.
We are through the worst.
---
If you or someone you know needs support and care due to S.A.:In the U.S.: There is a toll-free 24/7 hotline for sexual assault crisis counseling and referrals in the United States.
The number is 1-800-656-HOPE.
It is operated by a non-profit organization, RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network). RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).
For international resources:
A list of rape crisis hotlines around the world
The above information was compiled by the University of Minnesota’s Aurora Center and their Office of International Programs. See their Handbook of International Centers for Survivors of Sexual Assault and Harassment
If you have a link to an organization in your home country you'd like me to share, please provide it and I will add it to the list.
Drink Spiking
To learn the signs of symptoms of drink-spiking and what to do if you or someone you know may have been targeted, click here.
Disclaimer: With the above, I have done my best to compile vetted and trustworthy references/resources. I do not have any experience or expertise in this area. If you do and see something that needs to be added/updated/changed, please alert me immediately and I will do so.
---
A huge thank you to @Just_Athena_G and @_CafeKat_ for the betas on this section. Almost everything you read has been through all of them.
And, again, an ENORMOUS thank you to @FoulMouthPrude for supporting me with their invaluable insights as an Adult Psych professional. This chapter is extremely sensitive and Pru did two runs of the content to ensure compliance with psych principles.
Pru, always, having your expertise as a post-check/cross-check/pre-check on this content has been absolutely essential. I cannot thank you enough for that support.
---
Now.
I'm fucking tired of these two being separated, aren't ya'll?
---
As of 07-DEC-2023, I have updated the opening sequence of this chapter to make it more concise. The original version is preserved here.
Chapter 15
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
[approx. 9:15 pm]
Fresh violence was boiling toward the bridge by the time Vi dragged herself over the edge of Babette’s roof.
Mantling one-handed over the safety wall, she collapsed into ash and gravel. The distant echo of whoops, screams, and explosives rang sharply in her ears.
Cradling her busted hand against her side, she sat up in the dirt and slouched into the shadows, propping herself up against the brick. Her head fell back. Slowly, she caught her breath. Sweat sat thick in her hair and shirt and the exposed skin of her good hand stung with splinters.
She pulled one out with her teeth and grimaced. Fiberglass. She fucking hated fiberglass. She spat the sliver into the dirt and went to dig out another.
Then another.
A fourth.
All the while, her eyes sat trained on the roof’s far corner, at the downclimb to the brothel. The last few dozen yards between her and—
She winced and pulled her knees in towards her chest.
Caitlyn’s letter felt like a brick in her pocket.
She put her finger back in her mouth and chewed.
Another splinter.
Was that six?
She wasn't used to losing count.
It took biting into a callous and opening up a sore before she finally admitted to herself that she was stalling. Stalling, after burning her own exhaust to get back here. It was pathetic. And stupid. And—
It didn’t matter. She still didn’t move. She stared into the dark and tried to swallow the sickly bulb of nausea rising in her chest. Putting her face in her hand, she cringed.
Good news. All she’d wanted was to bring Caitlyn some good fucking news, to get back to the brothel and slip into their room and tell her it’s okay it’s okay I did it your dad knows now he knows you’re okay.
But, no.
Instead, the news was just shit. Complicated, ugly, brutal shit. And Vi had failed. She’d layered failure on failure. Part of her—a large part—was tempted to curl up where she was and pass out in the gravel. She didn't want to give out any truths. She didn’t want to face the questions. Caitlyn would have a lot of those—she always did—and Vi’s nerves were already crawling at the idea of coming up with answers. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t.
However.
She gripped the front of her hair with an overtaxed hand and pressed the heel into her headache.
However, however, however…
There was only one thing she could think of that sounded worse than coming back to Caitlyn’s questions—
—and that was not coming back to her at all.
So.
Pulling air through her teeth, Vi reached backward with her elbows and pressed herself up onto her feet. She barely managed to get her legs underneath her. They rattled violently and a muscle in her calf cramped so badly she nearly put her canine through her lower lip. Half-standing, she forced herself to breathe until the knot released.
When she finally steadied, she pushed forward off the wall and stumbled towards the downclimb, her live-wire of a broken hand held protectively against her ribs.
As she passed between two chimneys, she cut across a long, thin shadow.
“Vi.”
Vi startled so badly that she sprang sideways into the masonry. “Fuck!”
Her heart hammered backward against her spine.
God, where is your head? Pay attention.
That could have been anyone.
It wasn’t anyone, of course. It was Caitlyn, silhouetted in blue halogen. Vi looked up to find her standing with her back against a lighting rod, her arms folded across her chest. Vi couldn’t see her expression in the dark, but she could damn well guess at it.
Bending at the waist, she pressed the heel of her good hand into her knee and sighed. "Tell me you weren't up here the whole time."
The words crumbled out of her, crackling and hoarse.
Caitlyn didn’t move, but she answered.
"Alright,” she said evenly, “‘I wasn't up here the whole time.'"
Vi’s lip lifted. She tried to force out a chuckle, but her throat closed around a cough. The air out of her lungs tasted like iron and burnt plastic.
“Cute,” she rasped, “but you're a shitty liar.”
Caitlyn stared at her. "I know. That's why I don't bother lying. At least, not to you." She shifted her weight, crossing one leg in front of the other. "I was up here most of the time.”
Vi sagged with a sigh. “Of course you were." Sweat rolled back up her neck as she hung her head.
Caitlyn pushed off the lightning rod and took a few paces toward her. She stopped with Vi in her shadow, her arms still crossed. Seconds stretched around a thick silence before she finally spoke.
“It's late,” she said.
Vi stiffened. The words were spoken too softly to be an accusation, but they hit her like one anyway. Pulling herself upright, she scowled.
"Yeah.” She inhaled. “It is."
Caitlyn took another step closer. Vi could see her fingers tighten against her sleeves.
"You said you'd be back before dark."
Mn. Right.
Another accusation, another step forward. Vi pulled away, dragging her heel over gravel. "I know what I said."
Caitlyn stopped again. "So?”
“So what?”
“So…where were you?"
Vi flinched.
Worry.
There was worry in those words. Caitlyn had tried to skim it off the top but she’d left some behind, bubbling around the edges. Somehow, hearing it made everything worse. It made Vi feel trapped, like she had to answer, had to, and she didn’t want—she couldn’t—
…I can’t.
Don’t…don’t make me.
She set her jaw until tendons pulsed.
Please. Don’t ask—don’t ask me—
“What happened?”
She closed her eyes. Sucked in a breath. The day’s memories came at her like a battering ram and she just stood there and took the blow. What else could she do? Trembling, she tried to pull her hands into fists to calm herself.
Stupid.
Shattered bones screeched and whipped a white line of flame up her arm. The burn cut across her shoulder and down into her chest. It was so fucking hot and her rage had such a low flashpoint that—
“—shit!”
I can't.
Bristling with pain, she arched on Caitlyn with an acidic glare.
“Look," she snapped, "I don’t owe you any fucking explanations, okay?!”
It came out shaky and seething and looking to blow any further questions out of her goddamn blast radius.
And oh…
Oh, the regret was instant.
The words twisted back on her, writhing and fanged. She heard their ugliness and their wrongness and she hated herself for having said them.
Because she did owe Cait. She owed her so goddamn much, and here she was, staggering back at the end of the day with nothing to offer her. Nothing but failure and bad news and a shitty fucking attitude, apparently.
Her gaze dropped, pulled sideways by shame.
Caitlyn barely reacted. She only turned her head in that sharp, considering way of hers, the Undercity's thin light catching in the angles of her face. Her eyes were steady. Uninjured. Appraising.
Vi trembled under them, waiting.
“Right,” Caitlyn said at last, “shall I give you an opportunity to point that anger someplace else?”
The air left Vi’s lungs.
She nearly buckled right there.
Fuck her.
She’s incredible. Patience with teeth. Empathy with a gun—
So screwed.
She doesn’t know what I—
Vi tucked her hand tighter against her side, tweaking the break to scorch off the thought.
"Sorry,” she managed, “I didn’t—I’m sorry.”
Caitlyn lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, I know." She took a step closer, her arms loosening over her chest. “So. What took you so long?”
“Had to take the long way around."
"And why's that?"
Vi looked at her sidelong and then dropped her temple against the chimney. She could see Caitlyn’s gaze hovering along her tucked arm. Sighing, she closed her eyes. “Why do you ask me stuff you already know the answer to?”
“To see if you’ll tell me.”
Vi winced.
Too much.
Pushing off the brick, she tried to duck away towards the downclimb. Caitlyn tsk’d and stepped into her path. She reached up and touched her fingers to Vi’s shoulder—because that’s all it fucking took—and held out her other hand.
Vi huffed.
“Okay, what are you?” she demanded, “Worried or pissed?”
And just like that, she was handing over her arm.
Caitlyn took the limb in her hands. Her eyes lingered on the bloodstains, but she didn’t comment on them. Her thumb moved absently along the tendons in Vi’s wrist.
“I can be more than one thing,” she said, shifting aside to move her own shadow. “But I’m not pissed. Or maybe I am, but not at you.”
Vi made a face. “To me, pissed is pissed.”
Caitlyn’s eyes flashed up to hers. “Oh yes. I’m very aware of that, thank you.”
Vi felt her ears tingle. She sank into her hood as Caitlyn took her hand and turned it carefully in the light.
"Did you break it?”
Unintelligible grumbling.
“So…that’s a yes?” Caitlyn pressed lightly into the outside of her hand in a way that said don’t bother fucking lying.
Vi clenched her teeth. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”
She knew so. Her little finger canted inwards, shivering awkwardly over her palm. She couldn't move it.
Boxer’s fracture.
Stupid fucking injury.
"How?" Caitlyn asked.
Vi shifted uncomfortably, rolling her ear toward her shoulder. Her fingers spasmed.
“—the people are saying saying so many at once it’s it’s Silco’s girl the people are saying they’re saying she’s the only one that coulda dunnit letter bombs Topside so so many at once like a miracle—”
Her breath hitched. She felt her hand re-splinter in her head. "Don't wanna talk about it."
"Vi."
Cait.
She set her teeth. The anger reared up again, but this time she managed to catch its tail.
I can’t.
I can’t.
Not—
“Not now,” she shook, “Please, I—bad day.”
A beat.
Caitlyn sighed. "Alright.”
The questions stopped. Staring at the ground, Vi felt a light touch trace the inside of her elbow. Her fingers twitched again. Different reasons.
Caitlyn had to have noticed, but she didn’t say anything. Moving in close, she returned Vi’s arm, guiding it back into place against her ribs. Her hands lingered. One of them skated upwards to brush lightly against scabbed cuts and gravel. Eventually, they both settled on Vi’s shoulders.
It was only then that Vi realized how unsteady she was. She swayed, rolling forward over the tread of her boots, trying to reorient herself. Caitlyn tightened her hold until the swaying stopped. Her fingers smoothed back over raw skin.
“Come inside?"
Vi tried to answer. Her throat stuck and she had to cough to get the word out. "—sure."
“Okay.” Caitlyn gave her shoulders one more squeeze and stepped back, her hands falling away.
Vi was wrenched by the loss of contact.
She pitched forward, chasing it. Her heart, barely slowing from her startle between the chimneys, suddenly drummed into a frenzy.
Wait.
Wait.
But Caitlyn was already a few paces away from her, stopping, turning, waiting for her to follow. Vi couldn’t even see her face anymore. The light behind her was too bright. Vi stared into Caitlyn’s silhouette, searching the dark space where her eyes would be, trying to—
Trying—
The long lines of Caitlyn’s body changed, curving questioningly.
Her head tilted. “Are you…?”
Vi pulled in on herself and continued to stare, wide-eyed. Her left leg started to shake so badly that she had to lean most of her weight onto her right to make it stop. She didn’t know what to say.
She opened her mouth anyway. “I…c-can you…”
She just wanted—she—
The gasp was audible.
“...oh. Oh, no...oh, Vi…”
Caitlyn came back immediately. Reaching out, she pulled Vi gently, urgently, into her arms.
Vi went ramrod. She stared into the smog, stunned.
How?
How did she—?
How how how how—
"How?" she rasped.
Caitlyn sighed and set her chin into the hollow of her shoulder.
"Dunno,” she murmured, “just seemed like you were asking."
Vi screwed her eyes shut. Slowly, the rigidity of reflex let go. In its place crept a new kind of not-tension. The shaking in her legs worsened. The wan feeling in her marrow bled outwards. Her arm trembled with fatigue as she lifted it to gather into the back of Caitlyn’s jacket. Everything had to be pulled tighter just to keep her upright.
Bad day. Bad…bad day.
An ache rose into her throat and stayed there.
It bottled the air inside her chest.
“I’m so sorry,” Caitlyn whispered, “I thought maybe you didn’t want—you seemed a little—ah…”
…pissed off?
“Pissed off.”
Vi tightened her arm around her back.
“It’s okay," Caitlyn said quickly, "You’re okay. I’ve got you. Take—take however long. Here, just…”
A hand brushed along the back of her head. It hovered, nearly there, nearly gone, not pushing or guiding. Just offering, If you want.
Vi foundered immediately. Her head settled into the cool swale of Caitlyn's shoulder. Her eyes stung but no tears came. Her lips hurt. Everything tasted like copper. She tried to swallow and felt things cling.
Thirsty.
—"When was the last time you ate? Or…"
She grimaced.
—Whiskey.
—Sevi—
—the Last Drop.
More than a day ago.
Not great. Not—
A hand softened against the nape of her neck and she tensed. The contact both summoned and soothed a rush of panic as it settled over the bruise flaring beneath her hood. For an instant, everything was knives—blood—screams and the memory made her mouth move against Caitlyn’s skin. Things tugged and pulled and she felt ready to break open and beg, wait, please please don’t go but don’t grab don’t hurt don’t hold me too hard please not there just be—just be—
She stopped. Her eyes flickered.
—as if she’d ever have to ask Caitlyn to be gentle with her.
Her pleas evaporated without ever knowing shape or sound.
It’s okay, she thought, it’s okay. You’re fine. She'd never—there’s no—there’s no—
She grimaced. Why was it so hard to think?
—there was no pain, no possession, no force in the hands that held her. She could pull away if she needed to. Caitlyn would let her. She’d let her run, flee, fight, hide…she always—she always had. She always, always, always let her go, even when—
—“Where are you going?”
—even when—
—“What about us?”
Her throat hurt.
Ah, fuck.
—even when even when even when Vi was being monumentally fucking stupid.
She winced.
—“She still needs you.”
Right.
Right.
I know.
God, I never should’ve…
—decay and crows and flies—cloud tattoos and fuchsia eyes—blue anarchy and fault lines—
She let me go but I never should’ve…
—"I paid your girlfriend a visit."
Fuck.
Maybe if I hadn’t, I…
—“Whatever happens—”
I…
—“It’s on you.”
Shit.
Her vision scattered into black spots and she heard rain. She caught herself against Caitlyn’s hip bone. As her knuckles went white, she realized that her hand was still stung through with fiberglass.
Good, she swallowed. She squeezed a little harder.
Good.
Then her heart rate soared. Her pulse split into twos and threes, tripping over itself, overlapping.
Fuck.
Not good.
…god, please, not again.
The sting wasn’t enough to ground her.
Something was burning in her chest.
More spots.
Louder rain.
“Hey.”
Hn?
“You’re not breathing.”
Yes, I am.
…no, wait, she's right.
She strained her ribs. Worked her throat.
Nothing happened.
"Can’t."
“You can.”
She tried again. She couldn't pull anything past the sand in her lungs.
"Breathe out. You've been holding your breath."
...oh.
She arched forward on an exhale that narrowed into a sharp, desperate sound.
Her vision cleared. There was no rain.
Her ears burned and she cringed.
So much for 'she can never know about this...'
Caitlyn only held her. When she spoke, she sounded relieved and maybe a little—
"There,” she said, “there…okay…"
—maybe a little shaken.
Vi felt an arm brace the small of her back. There was a tremble in it, but it faded quickly.
"Sorry,” Caitlyn went on, “I wasn't going to—but that was nearly a minute of you just…” She sounded unsteady. “Never mind. I thought I was going to need to sit you down."
"Sorry,” Vi panted, “Forgot."
"'Forgot?' Forgot what? To breathe?"
"Uh-huh."
Caitlyn’s frown was almost audible. "That happen often?"
“Uh…”
Vi thought about her collapse in the steelworks that morning and decided it didn't count. Then she thought about 5:00 a.m. Then about the black floods beneath Stillwater and the stupid stunt she’d pulled to try and make them stop.
"No," she said.
Another pause. Longer this time.
Caitlyn surprised her by nosing into her temple and squeezing a short laugh between her teeth. Her tone was bitter with affection. Her words were muffled by hood and hair.
"You're so full of shit," she scoffed. Hardly more than a whisper.
Vi smiled weakly against a ridge of collarbone. Always right on target, this one.
"Sorry," she wheezed.
"Don't be. Just...in and out for me, please."
"'Kay."
Easier said than done. Her lungs were snatching at air as if it might dart away.
“Slow down a little.”
“Trying.”
“I know—”
“Trying…I just…”
“You don’t need to—”
“…stupid.”
"It’s not. Not at all. Here."
"Wha’…?"
“Shh. Vi, stop talking.”
She did as she was told. Something breeze-like traced a path between her shoulder blades. Its motion unwound the maze inside her chest. It guided air down, coaxed it back up. Once, twice, a third time…a fourth. More.
She shuddered and let herself stop counting.
Each line ran a little longer, moved a little slower. Her shoulders loosened.
“Better?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Good.”
Vi faltered. She moved her tongue through her mouth. Pressed her eyes closed. “Don’t stop, though?”
She felt greedy for asking.
“Wasn’t going to.”
No hesitation at all.
The hand on her back dropped to tap her thigh. "Now, unlock your knees."
"'Kay."
She tried.
Her left leg dropped out from under her.
"Fuck."
She buckled. Caitlyn's fingers tightened against her neck, trying to catch her. Her eyes flew open. Something surged. The pressure was barely anything and didn't hurt but she spooked anyway, snapping backward.
“—don’t!”
Caitlyn sucked in a breath.
"Shit.” Her hand was gone and elsewhere immediately. “I—sorry. Sorry! I’m—easy, you're alright."
“—not there.”
"Okay, I—"
"—please—"
“I won’t. Vi, I won't. I promise, just—”
“—sorry.”
“No. No, don’t. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I didn't—"
“I know,” Vi gasped. “I know. Not…not you, it—r-reflex.”
She was breathing hard again and hating the sound. Hands were on her shoulders. Supporting. Not confining. Creating distance. Too much of it. Too far. Caitlyn’s expression was too present, too wide-eyed and blue-on-blue with worry and halogen. Too much. Too—
Arms resettled around her, closing it all up, putting them back how they’d been. The press returned, the steadiness, the structure. The world softened and simplified. No more eyes, no more—
She tensed as a hand drifted near to the place she didn’t want it.
“I won’t,” Caitlyn whispered, and the hand came to rest high on the back of her head.
The tension ebbed.
“...thanks.”
“Of course.”
She felt a vibration and realized it was heartbeats and bodies shaking against each other. She heard Caitlyn swallow.
“Is there…” A pause. “Is there anywhere else?”
Ah.
Vi felt a prickle.
That was a Very Careful Question.
She shook her head.
“No,” she mumbled, "just there."
“Okay.”
The word hung strangely. She could hear the distraction in it, could feel another question coming. She braced.
Caitlyn took a breath. “Vi, this morning. In the hall. Was that…was it really about the cut?”
Vi frowned.
This morning...?
Her scalp tingled, remembering a short, sharp tug.
Oh.
Oh, that.
Uh…
Well, no, but—
“Yes.”
“Mm.” Fingers traced pensive loops between her shoulder blades. "So…this is new."
It wasn't a question, so Vi didn’t answer it.
"From today?"
Scars pulled in Vi's back as she groaned.
Yeah. Yeah, but Cait, please…please—
"—not now."
"Right. Sorry."
"S'okay. I just—"
"Shh. You don't need to explain. I shouldn't have—bad habit."
"But—"
“Shh.”
—but then she felt a familiar curl. A gentle pressure. The beginnings of slow, cautious circles stirring against her hood. They ruffled the hair beneath. Something raced along her skin and she leaned into it. Her protests steamed away.
Huh.
Sparks lifted and fell.
This again.
She closed her eyes.
Shivered.
Sighed.
The voice in her ear was soft. “Is this still...?”
Vi nodded. “Uh-huh.”
It went straight to her blood.
Caitlyn sighed, then, too. "You're alright."
Well...yeah. When you do that—
When you do that—
Vi finally began to power down. Springs relaxed and pistons settled in their shafts. Lights blinked off. Red metal cooled to black. Caitlyn scaffolded her as she depressurized, giving her time, giving her more, making miles out of inches. Wasting gold in shattered concrete.
Vi caved and let the glow hold her together for a while.
Her retinas glittered over.
Gold.
Her brow furrowed.
Gold everywhere.
—"That's your definition of opulence? Sunny rooms and fancy sandwiches?"
No.
Fuck no.
It’s this.
Just this.
This is all I could ever—
—thief.
She spasmed. Her jaw clenched and her eyes tightened at their edges. Something barbed rolled up her throat. She heard it hit the roof of her mouth and break.
Caitlyn heard it, too, and somehow, somehow, she moved and made space where there shouldn't have been any left. Vi found herself pulled closer. Closer, and under, and deeper. Into what, she didn’t know. Didn't matter.
"Vi?”
God, her voice made everything else seem a world away.
“What's wrong?"
Vi surfaced from the pull of something thick and realized it was probably the shallow end of sleep. Ten hours across four days—not enough. Not nearly—
A touch trailed down her arm, prompting.
That voice again, right there, so soft: "What's wrong?"
Oh.
Right.
"What’s wrong?"
Ah, Cait…
A dozen things. A hundred things. A thousand fucking things. I made a shell out of my sister and she blew a hole through your life. Yours, and everyone else’s.
But she couldn’t say that.
Not yet.
She needed—
She gulped.
She had to pick something else.
Her mind turned over. She thought about pretty girls with blithe, bloody knives. About shimmer monsters on the shores of the river. About an unsent letter and an unspent token and how they sat like failure in one pocket and murder in the other.
—"If it makes you feel that dirty—"
There.
That was it, wasn’t it?
"I feel—I’m gross," she gasped. It was close enough to the truth. She could feel the grit and slip of grime and sweat on her skin as gentle fingers soothed her spine. She tried to repeat herself to warn Caitlyn off. “I—”
It had the opposite effect. Caitlyn sighed and it sounded like she was giving up on something. Vi felt her draw closer, press harder, shake her head against her ear. Careful hands tangled not-so-carefully into black canvas.
"You're here," Caitlyn said.
Her tone said more than the words did, but Vi still didn’t understand. She swallowed. “I…I tried but I couldn’t…I—"
Failed.
"—I still have the letter.”
Caitlyn let out a sound, something brittle and disbelieving. “Vi, I don’t care. I don’t care, do you understand? You came back, that’s all that matters. That’s all I wanted.”
…what?
“Today was…god, it was awful. I can’t believe I let you go. As soon as you—so stupid, and all for a—” She stopped. Let out another sound. Continued. “I was terrified something had happened to you.”
Vi felt her eyes widen and then crease.
Oh.
Oh, oh oh.
Her jaw tightened.
Right.
She—
“—you’re not ‘others’—what am I supposed to do if you don’t come back—how am I supposed to find you—you think I’m just going to sit here—I care about you—you’re not everyone—you’re different—I care about you—you’re different—I’ll keep showing you—that I care—that I want—”
—she cares, remember?
She cares and you left her you left again and she stayed because you promised you promised you’d come back come back before dark before the riots and instead you were late really really fucking late and oh yeah you showed up with a broken hand looking-acting-sounding like a complete fucking dumpster fire.
Congratulations.
You scared her.
You’re lucky she’s smart-patient-steady and not out there doing stupid shit because you sure as fuck would’ve been.
Now say something.
She swallowed. "I'm okay."
Wow. Genius.
"You're not."
See?
“Yeah, I am, I—”
“Vi, being alive is not the same thing as being 'okay.'”
…right.
She tried something else.
“I…” She hesitated. “I came back.”
That seemed to work.
“You did,” Caitlyn admitted, and fuck if it didn’t sound like she’d distilled all the world’s relief into those two simple words. Then, she added with an edge, “And you’re staying.”
She said it firmly. Like she expected a fight.
She didn’t get one.
Vi closed her eyes. Opened them again.
“’Kay," she said.
That single syllable was met with silence. And stillness. And more silence. Then the whole structure of their embrace changed. Caitlyn pulled back without putting an inch between them, shifting just enough to find Vi’s gaze. She was frowning.
“Really?” she asked.
Vi could only manage a loose shrug. Her arm fell away from Caitlyn’s back to hang raggedly at her side. The world lost focus.
Yeah.
I’ll stay.
They could argue the details later.
—“...she still needs you.”
I know.
I know.
And until she doesn't…
She could feel herself wandering into the hinterlands of consciousness.
There was movement again. Shifting and leaning. A cool, cautious touch floated into her hood, so slowly. Trying not to startle her, she could tell. Fingers caught lightly along her jaw, lifting, asking—look at me?—and she relented.
Blue eyes searched her face. They were kind, caring, and concerned, and they didn't like what they saw. Vi could tell by the furrow that appeared above them. She hated herself for putting it there.
It wasn't deserved.
Caitlyn pulled her teeth over her lower lip, frowning.
“Okay…” she whispered, eyes still roaming, “Now, I’m…hm. Okay.” A thumb drew a gentle pattern over her cheekbone and Vi knew Caitlyn was tracing lines of black ink. "We really need to get you inside."
"Okay."
“Are you able to walk?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And climb down?”
“Think so.”
An eyebrow lifted. "Vi, it’s five stories with cobbles at the bottom. I need you to be sure."
"I'm sure."
"Not like last time?"
"Wasn't sure last time."
And I sorta thought I was gonna die anyway, so…
Blue eyes hardened—appraising, mapping lines, looking for uncertainties—and then softened again.
“Alright.”
Shifting, Caitlyn rearranged weight and limbs, and Vi found herself back in the sidelong embrace that was now all too familiar for them.
“Come on,” Caitlyn said, squeezing her wrist, “This is the worst I’ve seen you look and still be upright.”
Without meaning to, Vi dropped her head forward and let out a sound that was part laugh, part cough. “This doesn’t even make my top ten, cupcake.”
The hand on her wrist squeezed harder.
“That’s not the comfort you think it is.”
Oh.
...right.
"Sorry.”
Her apology was met with an exhale. Fingers loosened to move, slide, lace into hers. They caught and held, pressing fearlessly into blood and salt. Vi watched it happen and something about it made her throat close. The sting of fiberglass vanished amidst a flurry of sparks.
Caitlyn stopped them just short of the roof’s edge. “Hey.”
Vi turned her head and looked up.
The blue was almost too close, too dazzling.
“Yeah?”
Caitlyn caught her gaze but failed to answer. Something heavy sharpened the angles of her face. It looked a bit like concern, a bit like guilt, and a bit like some third thing Vi wasn't sure she'd ever seen before. Swallowing, she curved back into the arm supporting her, nervous.
Her retreat startled Caitlyn out of her silence. Brow furrowing, she shook her head wordlessly and wrapped herself tighter around Vi’s ribs. Her eyes flooded with raw affection.
“Sorry,” she sighed, “but there's no way I would have made it two days.”
Vi stiffened. Her eyes went wide and she realized with a pang that the look she’d seen on Caitlyn’s face was the scattered aftermath of dread. Her heart began to pound. Something desperate rose up in her chest.
You’re lucky she’s smart-patient-steady—
"Caitlyn,” she choked, “I wouldn’t have made it two fucking minutes.”
A wry smile worked its way up into blue eyes. “I know.”
“I…I don’t know what I would have done if I'd come back and you were gone.”
The smile deepened and warmed.
“Oh, I do,” Caitlyn said lightly, “That’s why I’m still here.”
Turning, she sat them both against the safety wall, waiting for Vi to drag her legs over the side before doing the same herself. With one hand on the brickwork and the other tucked behind Vi’s knee, she dropped down to stand on a jut of windowsill.
Vi stared down at her broken hand, watching her little finger tremble. “Thanks. For staying."
“Vi.” A hand slid behind her other knee. She looked up. Caitlyn was in front of her, her head tilted on a half-smile. “Vi, I’ll be here. Always. So long as I can help it. "
Vi stopped breathing.
Caitlyn stroked her leg. "You do know that, don’t you?” Her expression softened. “That’s how this works now, I’m afraid. As many times as you’re willing to come back, I’ll be here."
“As many times as…”
“And,” her smile cut upwards, "If you disappear again, I’ll find you. I’m an excellent hunter.”
“I believe you.”
Blue eyes narrowed.
“Do you?” Caitlyn asked. Her tone was curious, penetrating, sad. “Which part?”
Vi stiffened.
She couldn’t answer. Not without lying. Not without omissions. And god, she was…
She was so tired of lying.
Wrapping around herself, she exhaled. The sound shivered between them like a plea. Caitlyn read it easily off the air, as good without words as she was with them. Her expression peaked and she reached out to run her fingers lightly along the angles of Vi’s face. The touch felt like water and air. Vi leaned into it, lulled by the quiet exploration. Her eyes began to drift closed.
Then Caitlyn caught her thumb in the sharp divot of scar along her lip. Harmless enough on its own—
—until she pressed, teasing awake a nerve that had never quite healed.
A jolt ran straight to Vi’s spine. Her back snapped into an arc, her eyes flying open in shock. Fiery claws bit down somewhere deep, ripping a gasp out of her before guilt or reason could catch it.
She froze, staring.
Caitlyn stared back, startled. Her eyes were wide, magnetic, and briefly concerned. They pinched and flickered with a gentle question: Am I hurting you?
But the words never made it to her mouth.
Tilting her head, Caitlyn looked down. Concern morphed into curiosity as she moved her thumb over and into Vi’s scar again, pressing along the silver line, testing it. Then, all at once, she rolled down its length like a flint wheel, striking a flame off Vi’s lip.
Another jolt. A harder arc. Air went the other way this time, leaving Vi in a sharp, helpless decompression.
“Sh-shit.”
She fought her gaze back down out of her head just in time to see darkness roll in and eclipse blue eyes. They stared at her. For the second time that day, Caitlyn changed. The lines of her body resettled, steeped in raven-black intent. Holding Vi in her shadow, she began to stroke absent circles over her scar, working it gently—possessively—until Vi began to feel it in two places at once.
…shit.
Vi gulped, wincing at the heady split difference of want-and-dread.
Shit, shit shit.
Claws flexed again, biting deeper. A supple red something stirred in its sleep.
Don’t.
Don’t wake it up.
Please.
I can’t—
We can't—
Caitlyn was speaking to her. Dark eyes lowered and lifted, pausing to run a humming line along her mouth.
“You can tell, can’t you?" Caitlyn asked, "What I’d like to do?”
The words were voltaic. Vi nearly crumpled. Forcing down a breath, she nodded.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can tell.
But—
Caitlyn nodded with her, moving slowly. So slowly that she didn’t seem fully present. She took a long pull of air that shuddered in, held, and shuddered out. Her touch stilled against Vi’s lip.
“I’m…obvious. Aren’t I?”
The words were quiet.
Restrained.
A chastisement.
Again, Vi nodded.
Caitlyn stared at her a moment longer, steady and still. Then her breath hitched. Her shoulders dropped and the dark look in her eyes swirled up and away, leaving behind something knowing and sad and impossibly gentle. She shook her head. Her hand floated slowly back to caress Vi’s cheek.
“So are you,” she whispered. Her smile was tender and small, a return to the person Vi knew.
It should have been a relief. The intent was gone, the yawning pressure had lifted, and Caitlyn was Caitlyn again. Even so, her eyes still lingered in ways and in places that made Vi's mind erupt in a tangled mess of please-yes-no-don'ts and I-want-but-I can’ts.
It was almost worse, now, because instead of being dark and closed with want, Caitlyn’s gaze was blue and open and shining with something else, something deeper.
Something far, far more dangerous.
No…
A tremor sped in to claim Vi’s limbs.
Don’t, she thought, no, Cait, don’t.
Please.
You can’t.
Too much.
I don’t deserve—
You don’t know—
She needed to say something, anything, but she couldn’t move, couldn't speak, couldn't tell her—
—didn’t matter.
Caitlyn already knew.
Of course, she knew. Not the specifics, but she could see the cracks and the guilt and the fear because by now Vi knew she wasn’t just obvious, she was fucking transparent. And so Caitlyn offered her something else, something in-between. Something that brought Vi right up to the line between confession and sin without demanding either.
With the slightest shake of her head, Caitlyn brushed her fingertips beneath Vi’s lip. Her eyes followed in a modest line, and when she looked up, her gaze was heavy with the same knowing sadness as before.
“I won’t,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t. Not there. Just…here?”
Her hand moved, and Vi felt its weightlessness drift down her cheek, along her jaw, to the space just underneath. Once there, Caitlyn stopped. She stayed close—so, so close—and her fingers lingered where they’d fallen, but she didn’t move. She watched Vi carefully, just…just waiting.
Vi searched her in turn, brow furrowing, trying to understand, trying to figure out what Caitlyn wanted from her, what she was waiting for.
She didn’t know.
Then a thumb ran along the tendon in her knee, and something soft moved through blue eyes, and Vi realized with a desperate, crumbling sensation:
God…
Permission.
Caitlyn was waiting for permission.
For something so—
Ah, for fuck's sake...
A shudder tore through her. She gasped, feeling the split and drift of something tectonic. It hurt. She recognized it immediately. Once again, her notions of okay and definitely fucking not okay were wrenching farther apart. It had already happened half a dozen times in the past few days, always because of Caitlyn.
All the care Caitlyn afforded her, all the right ways of touching and being, they felt incredible, indescribable.
But they also made Everything Else that had happened seem so...so much worse.
Breathing through the rip, she screwed her eyes shut, trying not to remember, trying to push things back, trying frantically not to compare.
Fuck, she thought. Permission? Since when? When was the last time anyone had offered her this much control? This much fucking respect? Before Caitlyn, she could barely even remember. Prison was prison. The Lanes were The Lanes. She—
“Open your eyes. Please?”
She nearly refused. The impulse to shelter was so strong. She wanted a corner, wanted some walls, wanted to slide down and bend into nothing while she waited for her soul to stop rearranging itself.
But then:
"Please, Vi. I can't...I can't tell what you need when you close up like that."
Oh.
A glimmer of understanding.
Is that...is that why she's always asking?
"Look at me—look at me—look at me…?"
Because she—?
"Look at me."
Vi did. She opened her eyes and lifted her gaze and what she saw robbed her of the ability to speak.
Tears. They gathered and glowed along Caitlyn's eyelashes, but they didn't fall. They hung there, bright and sharp. Untumbled shards of glass. The eyes above them were clear and focused. Immediately, Vi felt herself being examined. The attention was familiar.
—blue-black-white-pain
—her left side going numb, her world going dark
—once for yes, twice for no
Caitlyn, checking for wounds.
Okay.
With her broken hand, Vi reached out and down to her knee, wrapping her first two fingers around one of Caitlyn's. It was instinctive. She squeezed. Caitlyn looked down and then back up and yes, of course, she understood.
She had a mind that could split a target at a thousand yards.
She looked steadily into Vi's face.
"You're not used to this," she said quietly, to let Vi know she remembered.
Hesitation, then:
Twice for no.
I'm not.
Caitlyn nodded, still searching, still building out answers to questions she didn't need to ask aloud. "But…"
Her eyes roamed.
Vi waited, stared, willed understanding from this person who seemed so able to see through her.
"But you still…”
A light touch brushed against her cheek.
“You still want—"
Once for yes.
Of course.
The look that flooded Caitlyn's eyes nearly killed her. Maybe being transparent wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
"You're sure?"
Vi squeezed her fingers one more time and held on, running her thumb down the side of Caitlyn's wrist.
Yes.
Yes.
Please.
"Okay."
Sighing, Vi settled into the hand still lingering along her jaw. With one last, careful look, Caitlyn drifted a finger under her chin and coaxed her head to the side.
Vi gripped the brickwork. For one, irrational instant, she locked up, somehow managing to convince herself that Caitlyn might still shift and give her something she wanted but didn’t deserve. Something that couldn't be undone or given back when it all—
But of course. Of course, of course, Caitlyn didn't. She was everything Vi trusted her to be, just like always.
Vi’s world redrew itself in vague, impressionistic lines as fingers ghosted up and through fight-wild hair, taking weight, giving her somewhere to rest. She leaned.
The vagueness only deepened as breath and lips mingled into a single touch. As it settled against her cheek, she shivered. Caitlyn felt the racing spasm and stopped, pulling back to a hover. It only lasted a moment. Eyelashes stirred against Vi’s skin and she realized Caitlyn was waiting again, listening, making sure. She barely had the wherewithal to squeeze her fingers, once for yes, yes it’s okay, please it’s more than okay you can’t possibly know how this—
Caitlyn made a soft sound, let out a sigh, and closed the twilight space between them again.
Air moved in Vi’s lungs but she had no idea whether she was breathing in or out. As Caitlyn drifted down to her jawline, she braced herself for a flare of red, for something wild and uncontrolled, for something she'd have to cage, starve, kill, but no—
No.
No.
Instead, all that came for her was a soft, glimmering tide of sequined gold. It rolled up and over her, washing into dark corners, warming places long frosted over. Her hand relaxed against the brickwork. The rest of her body followed.
Caitlyn guided her forward as she began to list. Vi found herself settled against dark hair, her head tilted aside to accommodate a warm pattern of murmured reassurances. The words sighed along her skin, all breath and vibration:
“I want to make you feel safe, Vi. More than anything, that’s what I want.”
Another pause, another kiss, another aimless, eddying touch. Caitlyn traced a scar and hesitated.
“Do you believe that much, at least?”
Vi pressed her eyes closed.
Fuck.
If she’d had anything, anything—any water-strength-salt—left to give, she would have cried. But she didn’t. She was wrung out, helpless to do anything but soak up whatever Caitlyn would give her.
Her own words roiled up desperately, leaving her in rush.
“Y-yeah. Yes. I do.”
And it felt so fucking good to tell the truth.
Caitlyn hummed against her throat. The sound was thick with relief and other things.
“Good,” she whispered. “Good. I'm glad.”
Then, more softly, so softly Vi wasn’t sure the words were for her:
“We’ll work on the rest.”
One more kiss, firmer this time, and yet somehow less intense. Caitlyn’s hand, too, became heavier, carding through mussed hair and smoothing Vi back into the world. Vi looked up, feeling blurred along her edges, her mind an unfamiliar blend of dazed and alert.
Caitlyn was there waiting for her as she surfaced. Her expression was a medley of emotions, wobbling slightly, and it was clear she was trying very hard to hide worry with care. Still, she smiled.
“Now,” she said, brushing hair out of Vi’s face, “Would you like to climb down off the side of this five-story building with me…?”
⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙ ⚙
Notes:
She's home.
---
There is now some incredible artwork inspired by this chapter. I've made the rare decision to put the links to these pieces here in the notes to preserve the flow/readability of the related scene. All other pieces are thusfar embedded directly into the text as hyperlinks.
Artwork:
---
UPDATE: a minor edit as been made to improve blocking; the scene should now read more clearly.---
Note: based on some responses I'm getting, I think the final moments of this chapter are being slightly misinterpreted, enough that I'm mulling an edit with my betas. For the time being, please understand:
Caitlyn kisses Vi on the cheek, not the mouth. Vi is not in a place or condition for them to share a first kiss and Caitlyn has the wherewithal to see this.
From the chapter:
With the slightest shake of her head, Caitlyn brushed her fingertips beneath Vi’s lip. Her eyes followed in a modest line, and when she looked up, her gaze was heavy with the same knowing sadness as before.
“I won’t,” she whispered, “I wouldn’t. Not there. Just…here?”
Her hand moved, and Vi felt its weightlessness drift down her cheek, along her jaw, to the space just underneath.
---
This concludes Vi's POV arc.
We will now be back in Caitlyn's head for the duration of the fic.
I'll miss Vi. I've spoken about this before, but writing for her character has changed me deeply both as a writer and a person. These past several months have been an incredible journey, but also extremely taxing. It hurts to say goodbye, but it's necessary. Continuing to write in her perspective is not sustainable for me, but we'll still visit with her POV in "Saltwater"-compliant one-shots.
Thank you all for your support as we moved through her perspective. I know the rise and fall was a rollercoaster. I know she's so incredibly different from Cait. Thank you for giving my portrayal of her a chance. I hope now we all share a similar vision of her within the context of this fic so that her behaviors/needs/anxieties/actions/choices all make sense and hit harder as we view them through Cait's eyes.
---
A huge thank you to @Just_Athena_G, @_CafeKat_, and @FoulMouthPrude for the betas on this section. Almost everything you read has been through all of them.
---
Gentle reminder:
If you're reading a fic and you see a section you'd like to screenshot and post on social media, please make sure to provide the title, author, and link to the fic in the main post/header tweet. Fanfic is fan work, too, and deserves the same level of sharing etiquette and consideration as fanart.
---
I'll now be taking a little break.
I need to clear out Vi's energy and get back into Caitlyn's head. I also have some other things I'd like to do: a bit of drawing, some podcasting, and finishing some wip fics. I also want to go back and tweak some typos and formatting in this fic itself.
I'll let you know soon when you can expect Chapter 16.
Thank you for reading. <3
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Ollie_Ollie_Oxenfree on Chapter 1 Tue 08 Feb 2022 01:38AM UTC
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Akanevm on Chapter 1 Wed 04 May 2022 06:44AM UTC
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Ollie_Ollie_Oxenfree on Chapter 1 Wed 04 May 2022 07:13AM UTC
Last Edited Wed 04 May 2022 07:15AM UTC
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AbsolutelyEgg on Chapter 1 Wed 11 May 2022 01:22PM UTC
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Ollie_Ollie_Oxenfree on Chapter 1 Wed 11 May 2022 02:40PM UTC
Last Edited Wed 11 May 2022 07:28PM UTC
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