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Vi lay in the bathtub and took in the tiled walls around her. They were clean, pristine almost. She wasn’t certain about the material composing them but she knew the tiles in this bathroom were likely more than Vander had ever earned in his life. Even with the protection money boosting his account. The walls were remarkably absent of the grime and algae Vi had come to associate with a wash room. It was also noticeably absent of the noise and bustle of others. Bodies forced into a concrete shell together and horsed down with icy water. She closed her eyes and trembled, thinking it was strange how initially she’d been afraid to bathe alone. It had felt more vulnerable somehow. Until she became used of it.
Vi took a moment to look at her body. She’d never had the opportunity for much vanity in the past. One didn’t ogle themselves in prison, not even when she was in solitary for hour upon endless hour. No one wanted to be caught naked in Stillwater. Now though, she knew no one would interrupt her. A sly glance to the door confirmed it remained shut. Thought Caitlyn and Vi had bathed together occasionally, both seemed to prefer their hygiene rituals in solitude. Vi for the novelty, Caitlyn for contemplation.
Vi glanced at her stomach, it hadn’t rounded by any stretch of the imagination but it was not the washboard she had become inured with of during her incarceration. Having access to an abundance of food did that to a body apparently. Though Vi had hardly been underweight at her muscle mass when she left Stillwater, her ribs and wrist had been far more prominent with their protrusion against her pallid skin. She wasn’t sure if she missed the look or if it felt more like she’d lost who she was. That’s supposed to be the point, idiot. Vi chastised and sunk deeper into the steaming bathwater. She wasn’t meant to be 516 anymore.
Still the climbing percentage of her own body fat, while apparently natural had been disconcerting. It removed her hard edges and replaced them with something soft and approachable. Who wanted to be approached unless they wanted to be broken? Or so she thought.
A quick glance towards her bare hands, wrap-less and naked for the exclusive occasion of washing, revealed them to be swollen and pink. They were a rosy shade, shockingly similar to her bright unnatural hair. It was strange to see, how something as simple as warm water could make the body appear as pink and delicate as a newborn baby. Honestly, it disgusted herself to see herself so… Weakened by luxury. Even if Caitlyn protested that a single bath a month was hardly indulgent. Sinking into her own bespoke, heated pool of water made Vi feel like royalty. It made her forget the darkness. The dankness. But she shouldn’t. She should never forget who she was or where she’d come from.
This was the proverbial bed she’d made for herself that evening after all…
Her knuckles were still bruised, dried blood flaking from the surface where she’d not only hit a fellow enforcer but also a witness and their intended arrestee. The scumbag in question had been allowed to leave, uncuffed with no arrest. Only wearing a swollen lip and dark look in his eye. Vi would remember that smug pricks face and she’d be back for him… Eventually.
Police brutality was not novel to Vi but it did still leave a sour taste in her mouth be on the wielding side of that power. Yeah, she supposed it was also pretty fucked up that she thought of it as power. Perhaps even worse that her extensive experience on the other side of the nightstick had not dissuaded her from resorting to it on a hair trigger. A childhood ruled by violence and survived with violence had made her a monster. She wasn’t really so different from Jinx if you thought about it.
Vi sighed, the water seemed thicker almost but she knew it was just the build-up of steam in her lungs meeting her apathy. She sunk deeper into the water knowing that scumbag was allowed to leave because of her temper. It just seemed so unfair that she’d never been allowed to leave custody after being hit by enforcers or guards or just anyone who thought they could, why was it so different for him? He wasn’t even a child for fucks sake! The rules were cut from a different cloth for folks topside, as ever. She sulked, petulant and sore still unwilling to sooth her deep rooted hurt.
“We’re trying to change that Vi!” Caitlyn had shouted at her when Vi had complained as much. She’d been shamefully frogmarched to the Sherrif’s office. She had gone willingly. She always did when it meant she’d be suspended.
“I’m such a prick.” Self-loathing was not a new shade for Vi even if it felt rather different while she bathed in a lavender scented room. A room that despite her best efforts felt like it was a part of her home.
Once a brute, always a brute, right kiddo?
Vi grunted at the soap less water she lay in before slapping it with an open palm. The irony of meeting her distaste for her own violence with yet more violence was not lost on her.
“It’s Vi for Vicious.” She’d told Caitlyn while flexing. They’d both laughed their way into each other’s arms and spent a quiet night beneath a blanket.
“Not Vi for Virtuous?” Caitlyn had asked back, holding Vi close to her chest like she mattered. Like she was something precious to be held and not someone dangerous to be locked away in a box, the key forgotten. Vi had chuckled sadly, burrowing into Caitlyn’s neck just so she could pretend for a moment it might be true. Vi for Virtuous. Now there was a thought.
The water made a louder smacking sound than she’d anticipated but it didn’t stop her from delivering another futile blow.
“Vi?” Caitlyn tapped her knuckle against the bathroom door, conservatively. Of course, she would have heard that. Nothing escaped the resident Sheriffs keen notice. “Vi is everything alright in there?”
Vi wanted to scream at her. To yell that nothing was alright, that it never would be but she stewed in the silent broth of her bath and grunted. There was the sound of hesitant shuffling, Vi could almost hear Caitlyn deliberating whether she could enter the bathroom or not. It infuriated her. How could this woman still care about her precious feelings after what she’d done and continued to do?
For a smart woman, Caitlyn was one of the most stupid people that Vi had ever met.
“Vi,” Caitlyn swallowed hard, “Vi can I come in for a moment? I don’t like how we left things.” Silence followed her request so Caitlyn changed her tactic. “Vi if you tell me to go, I will. If you say nothing I’m coming inside.”
“Right, ok then. In I come. But really Vi, if you change your mind I-Right.” Caitlyn reached for the door handle, she twisted it and begun counting down. “Three, two…” Vi realised she was still giving her an out, still giving her the opportunity to turn her away. As much as Vi didn’t want Caitlyn to come in, she wanted to tell her to go even less. “Two and a half… Two and three quarters.”
“I fucked up,” Vi confessed when Caitlyn entered the room. She ran a wet hand through her hair, displeased at the way it dripped more water onto her face than she had intended. She dipped both hands underwater, wrang them out in the air slightly and pressed them to her face. She looked through her fingers into the room, prison bars of her own making. Would it always be like this? Was her history doomed to repeat itself until she inevitably died in a ditch somewhere? Alone and afraid.
“I know Vi,” Caitlyn moved to the side of the bath and crouched beside it. Squatting with her arm rested flat on the side of the bathtub. “But it’s-“
“-Don’t say it.” Vi growled, unapologetically interrupting her.
“Vi it’s,” Vi glared at her, hands already forming fists. Caitlyn knew she wouldn’t strike her but the warning was also clear. Vi had told her plenty of times that she didn’t want to hear how her behaviour was ok. That things would get better and that Caitlyn being the Sheriff afforded them certain privileges. Vi had confided to her one night through hiccupping tears that she was no better than the Enforcers who had terrified her during her childhood. Caitlyn had held her close, Vi clutching onto her like she was adrift at sea and only Caitlyn was keeping her above the water. Caitlyn had known what to do then, she’d known the right words and gesture to calm her down. Now it was evident that she knew nothing. “You’re traumatised.”
“What part of me makes you think that I don’t know that?!” Vi screeched, her voice echoing off the tiled walls. She stood up in the bath and water sloshed over the sides of the porcelain tub. Caitlyn watched it cascade onto the tiles before looking back up towards Vi who towered over her now. Caitlyn opted to remain crouched. She didn’t want to make this situation any worse than it was apparently getting. “What part of that makes any of what I did, okay?!” Vi’s voice cracked and she threatened to fall back to her knees in the tub but remained standing. She clutched the side of the bathrub, one palm flat against the wall as she attempted to get out of the bathtub. Distressed as she was, the water spilled over the edges again. Caitlyn thought it might be best if she moved to grab Vi’s towel, at least give the poor woman something to cover herself.
“You know what’s really sick, Cait?”
Caitlyn reached for the towel, it was fluffy and warm from the radiator beneath her fingers. She stoked it absently, wordlessly offering it to Vi. She was unsure if the question was rhetorical but she expected Vi would continue with what she wanted to say with the way Caitlyn looked at her. She held out the towel and Vi was slow to take it from her. Instead of wrapping it around herself, Vi began to roughly towel herself dry, like she only had minutes to do so. Caitlyn’s lips parted, she wanted to urge Vi to slow down, to say that things were different now but something told her that was the opposite point that Vi was trying to make to her.
“What’s really sick, is that I don’t even fucking regret it.” Caitlyn thought Vi sounded far too pained at the mere thought of her actions for someone who didn’t feel an ounce of regret. She didn’t believe Vi for a moment but she remained silent, unwilling to interrupt.
Vi almost snarled, baring her teeth like a caged animal, not a woman stood beside an unfinished bath. Half wrapped in a towel embroidered with her lovers’ initials. “I’m pissed off that I got caught.” Her tone shifted from hurt to amused outrage but she seemed to choke on her laughter. Caitlyn desperately wanted to reach out and embrace her, to bridge the gap between them.
Vi continued her rant, pointing at herself incredulously, “me, Caitlyn! Caught!” With no response to bounce off of Vi laughed again. It decayed into silence quickly. “I’m pissed that it matters now, but it never mattered before!” Caitlyn knew what she meant. She was truly sorry what Vi’s childhood had looked like. What the childhoods of too many Zaunite generations had looked like but it was going to change. While Caitlyn had breath in her lungs, she would bring the change she had promised. She had to.
“I’m angry you think I can be different when I can’t!” Vi was breathing heavily, her body trembling with the weight of her confession. “Cupcake, I’m never going to change.” She sucked in a shaky breath and tried to compose herself, but once she’s started, Vi couldn’t seem to stop. The floodgates had opened and everything she’d beat down into herself, into others, spewed forth.
“I’m not the woman you thought I was. I’m just not. Fuck Cait, I never even was that woman.” Vi’s eyes were desperate. She needed Caitlyn to understand her. To stop seeing good where there was nothing but a black heart and ill intent. “That thing you broke out of jail? Who was more soldier than person? She wasn’t real. I didn’t even-I wasn’t-I was reckless. I had one goal and that was to find a sister I hadn’t even known was lost to me! I thought she was dead.” Vi lost her tempo, her tone lost its sharp edge and the reality of all that loss crashed down onto her weary shoulders. “I thought she was dead.”
Caitlyn’s lips twitched and she pushed her hair over one of her shoulders, so that it didn’t fall entirely across her back. “I think-“
“I don’t want to hear it, Caitlyn.”
Caitlyn’s eyebrow twitched, she didn’t appreciate how Vi said her name like it was a warning but she continued regardless, “I think, that maybe I pushed you too far, too fast.”
Vi looked at her, utterly dumbstruck for a moment before she burst out into peels of laughter. Caitlyn had preferred the shouting rant after all. Caitlyn stood there dumbly, cheeks heating with embarrassment as the joke she had apparently made passed right over her head.
“I’m so sick and tired of you blaming yourself for what I’ve done. You think I hurt people because of you?”
“No, of course not.” Caitlyn’s tone was sharp and final, it broached no room for argument. “I think I misjudged your protestation against joining the enforcers for a lack of confidence. I just wanted you to feel encouraged, to be happy working by my side. I wanted to show you things could be different. I just, well I suppose I never gave you adequate time to heal.”
“There is no healing for someone like me, Cupcake.”
Caitlyn swallowed the retort she felt biting at her tongue. Now was not the time to escalate. “Yes there is, just not in the way I tried to push you and I’m sorry for that.”
“Hours ago, you were pissed with me, but you were going to send me back out on the job!”
“Yes, I was.” Caitlyn breathed through her nose, “I realise that was a mistake.”
Vi arched a brow sceptically before her face crumbled into the expression a toddler made after being sufficiently soothed by a parent for their outburst. She looked so fragile, like she could shatter if she just-
She collapsed to her knees but Caitlyn was there to catch her. “I’ve got you Vi." She pressed her forehead to Vi's and shut her eyes. "I said it before and I meant it.”
“I don’t deserve you.” Vi said, small and quiet. She did not pull away from Caitlyn.
“You deserve a chance.”
Vi clenched her jaw and Caitlyn could feel the tension against her face as she stiffened. “A chance to hurt more people?”
“A chance to choose not to.”