Work Text:
It goes like this:
Vi pulls her mother's dismembered body from the ash of the ruined council building. Her face is unrecognizable, marred by burns and sheared glass. She dares not look into those wet, crystalized grey eyes for the fear of what she'll find.
You did this, she hears the voice in her head, you and your family killed mine, for what?
Power?
Greed?
Equality?
The last question stains deeper than the blood coating Vi's remaining Atlas gauntlet.
Vi, to her credit, doesn't say anything. For as brash as the woman might be, she knows her place.
There's no undoing this, Caitlyn thinks as she looks at the destruction of Piltover.
This is war.
This is the end.
* * *
Her mother's funeral, for all it's worth, is a quiet affair.
And, on a Tuesday, nonetheless.
Her father, thankfully still alive despite everything, holds her closely. A few family friends mull about here and there, mumbling words of condolence and mourning, but she can't pay them any heed. They didn't know her mother; hell, she barely knew her own mother. Lost in the cruel, delicate underworld of politicking and callous chess with the pawns of the people, her mother was always a distant figure. She was something Caitlyn yearned for, but never actually touched. She wonders what her mother would have thought in her final moments. Would she have wanted revenge?
No matter, Caitlyn thinks bitterly, for the world is different now.
Where flowers once bloomed, only death and destruction are left in their wake.
Since her death a week ago, Caitlyn hasn't seen Vi.
The Zaunite had taken off after dazedly helping the rest of the decimated council (thankfully Jayce and Mel survived the blast; Caitlyn couldn't bare to think if she had lost them, too), she'd disappeared into the wailing darkness, never to be seen again. Caitlyn should care, after the efforts Vi went to bring her back hom—to Piltover—yet, she can't. Her mother is dead and she was killed by Vi's sister, of all people. She should care where Vi is, but at the same time, she can't. Perhaps Vi leaving was for the best. She can't imagine looking into those devastated grey eyes to find more pain.
When they bury the remains of her mother six feet in the ground, Caitlyn looks up to see a familiar mop of red hair in the distance.
She blinks, and it's gone, yet Caitlyn knows it for what it is.
As selfish as she may be, even Caitlyn knows that she is not in pain alone.
It should make her feel better, not being alone.
It doesn't.
* * *
After the sadness, anger creeps in.
And with it, the drink.
Her mother kept a stash of good whiskey in her office—a place that she can no longer frequent without being physically ill—and Caitlyn took it like it was the last clinging remnant to her dead mother.
She drinks, but each sip tastes like the ash of that day.
The war wages on.
Vi doesn't come back.
Caitlyn doesn't care.
(Oh, but she does).
* * *
Three weeks after her mother's death, she finds Vi.
She's the Sherriff now—what with the destruction of the Enforcers and all—and she stumbles upon an underground, illegal fighting pit.
That's where she finds Vi—broken, bleeding, and bloodied beyond recognition—and her heart sinks.
She shuts the ring down, throws the fighters into cuffs, and then approaches the redhead.
"Vi," she says sternly, "what are you doing?"
Vi, for all her prior bravado and strength, can only look up at her uselessly as she rasps,
"I'm trying to fix this."
* * *
As it turns out, Vi has turned into a vigilante of sorts.
She's headhunting Silco's remaining goons, gathering information through the pit fights in both Piltover and Zaun. She's trying to get tabs on Jinx, and Caitlyn doesn't want to know what for.
She doubts she and Vi want that terrorist for the same reasons.
It's clear, when Caitlyn threatens to slap the cuffs on the woman if she doesn't stop the needless violence, that she strikes an unpleasant nerve.
Vi's head hangs low from where she sits, slouched over on a rickety chair too small for her muscled body. It's imperceptible to anyone else, but Caitlyn can see she's trembling.
And then the question which feels like a dagger to the heart,
"Are you sending me back?"
Caitlyn arches her brow in confusion. "Sending you where?"
W hen Vi winces and looks away in shame and fear, it hits her.
Oh.
She still remembers the scars on Vi's back from when they'd first met. She knows Vi's aversion to touch, to loud noises, to too many people. She knows how Vi barely held it together in front of the council. Ten years in a windowless cell is nothing compared to a few fights in a pit.
"Please," Vi begs, trying and failing to keep the quiver from her voice, "please don't send me back. Not there. Please."
Caitlyn's eyes water as she sucks in a deep breath. She wishes her misplaced anger at Vi would dissipate, but Vi left her—she left her after her sister murdered her mother, and she can't forget that.
But she won't send her to Stillwater.
Never again, no matter what, would Caitlyn ever send anyone back to that wretched place.
"No," Caitlyn tells her as Vi's eyes flicker upwards hopefully, "I have other plans for you."
* * *
Caitlyn won't tell her, but blue looks good on Vi.
It's a morbid thought, and Caitlyn feels slightly guilty dressing Vi up in an Enforcer's uniform like some smoke and pony show. She stands and watches Vi like a hawk, her own stomach churning as she sees the sickening realization dawn on Vi's face.
"Is this who I am now?" Vi asks her as she flexes her Atlas gauntlets, her expression weary. "A weapon for your war?"
Caitlyn flinches, but then she remembers what her mother looked like after the blast and the anger returned. She reaches for her desk and takes a swig of her whiskey.
"This isn't my war," Caitlyn sneers as she sets the glass down. "Your sister—"
"I know," Vi interrupts with a sigh. "I... I know. Just... does this not make me a traitor? I'm wearing the uniform of the people who killed my parents."
"Your sister killed my mother," Caitlyn says roughly, ignoring Vi's wince. "I suppose that makes us equal."
She turns her head, ignoring the voices in the back of her head shouting at her to take it back, to wipe the look of devastation from Vi's ashen face. She wishes she could undo the hurt, because this isn't Vi's fault.
Yet, she can't.
"Your mission is to find Jinx," Caitlyn says as she hands the file over to the redhead, avoiding her gaze, "and eliminate her."
Vi recoils, the gears in her gauntlets whirring as they tighten and hiss with the force of her curled fingers. "Cait, wait, maybe I can talk some sense into her, maybe I can—"
"Can what?" Caitlyn snarls, eyes widening in maddening horror. "Look at what she did! She killed innocents."
"Fine," Vi says, her voice cracking as she steps around the desk to look at her pleadingly, "but let me bring her in. She needs help, Cait. That fucker poisoned her. She's sick. She doesn't deserve death. I can't... that's the only family I have left."
Caitlyn closes her eyes and looks away as she hears Vi whimper, "I can't lose her, too."
There's a moment of silence before Caitlyn takes a deep breath and opens her eyes again, looking blankly over Vi's trembling shoulders.
"Find Jinx," she repeats, ignoring the tortured expression on Vi's face. "I want her in my custody by the end of this week, Vi."
When Vi leaves her office, sniffling under her breath and leaving a trail of papers floating in her wake, Caitlyn collapses into her chair.
She takes another swig of her whiskey, the burn settling down her throat like a forest fire. She picks at a hangnail at her thumb as she tries to erase the broken expression from Vi's face.
She promised no Stillwater.
Yet, this is somehow far, far worse.
* * *
It goes like this:
Vi finds Jinx on a Friday.
It's a trap, they both know it.
The only difference is that Caitlyn is angry and vengeful and Vi is determined yet devastated.
She wants to go in alone.
So be it, Caitlyn thinks, chugging back another shot of whiskey.
No, that voice screams again, don't do this.
Don't let her go.
Not like this.
* * *
While she picks off the remaining Chembarons, Caitlyn decides that she can't fight the feeling of guilt any longer.
Vi doesn't deserve to be the fault line upon which she places the ceremonial pike of her grief. Her anger is displaced and she knows it.
Only, she's too late.
She finds them by the seedy underbelly of the bridge between Zaun and Piltover—a bridge that once united two sister cities but now is a crumbled ruin to earmark the past.
Something that was, but will never be again.
Caitlyn watches as they fight, like feathers of a same bird, a dance of fire and ice as they come together in electric flashes of red and blue. Jinx's eyes are wild and crazed, Vi's are ashen and dull. They're both formidable fighters, but there's only one person trying.
For a moment, Caitlyn wonders if she'd be the same if their positions were reveresed.
Could she kill her sister—a mass murderer, but still her sister—if she had to?
As she watches the fight unfold with a sickening churn in her gut, she knows the answer.
* * *
Vi doesn't fight as much as she defends.
She's pleading with Jinx, telling her that she can still be protected, that she can go with her and they can be together and that they can leave this world behind—
But Vi is as foolish as she is brash, even Caitlyn knows this.
Jinx, especially, knows this.
"You think she's gonna let me go?" Jinx howls in crazed laughter, her hand reaching out and clawing a line of four ragged lines down Vi's face. "You're dumber than I thought!"
Vi snarls in pain as Jinx heaves her boot upwards and punts it into her chest, sending her flying backwards into rubble.
Caitlyn draws up her rifle, peering through the scope as makes out the defeated expression on Vi's face.
It's then, she realizes, how much she regrets everything.
Vi looks up, lip torn in two and mouth bloodied as she huffs out a breath. Her chest deflates and she refuses to get up as she allows Jinx to prowl closer as she brandishes her newly retrieved revolver.
"Why can't you accept that things are different?" Jinx hisses down at her, her own voice strained with grief. "Powder is dead, Vi. You killed her!"
Vi flinches, but Caitlyn watches in horror as her expression turns from defeated to resigned as she sighs,
"I know."
Jinx freezes. Vi sniffles as a hissing sound emerges from the Atlas gauntlets. Caitlyn watches as they unlatch and fall to the ground with a loud clank.
"I know," Vi rasps once more as she looks up to Jinx with a mournful half-shrug, "I'm sorry. You may never forgive me, but I'm sorry."
Through her scope, she can make out the angry tears in Jinx's eyes as she looks to the abandoned Hextech. "Oh no," she growls as Shimmer-pink tears slide down her cheeks, "no, you don't get to give up just like that. Put them back on, Fat Hands. Fight me."
Ironically, Vi probably couldn't even if she wanted to.
Through the foggy lens, Caitlyn can make out the grievous injuries Jinx has already inflicted. Her left arm hangs at an awkward angle, clearly broken and dislocated. Her uniform is ripped and dotted with blood and ash, her stomach bleeding heavily from a deep gash on her midsection. Her left ankle is twisted and her face is covered in bruises and cuts. Jinx stalks forward, slamming her boot back into the corner of Vi's jaw, knocking it to the side and causing the older woman to let out a heaving cough, spitting out a tooth from the impact.
"No!" Jinx screams manically as she kicks Vi again, "fight back, you bitch! I didn't wait ten years for you to roll over like a damn dog. Fight. Back."
Caitlyn grits her teeth, unable to let this go on for longer.
She aims her rifle and fires a warning shot.
* * *
Firing the bullet is the first mistake.
Jinx turns around and spies her, eyes squinting into a scowl.
"Great," she hisses as she gives Vi's prone body one last kick in the leg. "You brought the Princess."
Caitlyn steps out from the shadows, gun still raised as she feels her grief run through her veins like the Shimmer than runs through Jinx's. She keeps her sights trained on Jinx, who only laughs and raises her own revolver in response.
"You gonna kill me?" Jinx asks, arching her brow as she chuckles. "Is that what you sent my sister for? Couldn't finish the job yourself, Princess?"
Before Caitlyn can respond, she hears a wheezing cough and her eyes flicker over to where Vi's helpless gaze stares back at her from the ground.
"Please," Vi rasps as she holds out a hand pleadingly. "Don't do this, Cait."
"Oh please," Jinx chuckles sadistically as she continues her slow advance, like a predator stalking their prey. "Go on, Princess, shoot. I'll give you the first shot."
"Hand yourself over o or I'm taking you in, dead or alive," Caitlyn threatens, cocking the rifle back. "Now, Jinx."
Jinx stops walking, her head cocking to the side curiously before she lets out another strangled laugh. "That's cute. You tryin' to give me orders?"
"Wait!" Vi calls out, awkwardly scrambling to her knees as she crawls towards them. "Powder listen to me—"
"Powder's dead!" Jinx screams, reeling on Vi once more. "What about that don't you get, huh, Fat Hands?"
"I love you," Vi says hoarsely, "I love you, no matter who you are. Jinx or Powder. You're my sister. You will always be my sister."
"Sister, sister," Jinx goads, though her voice lacks any sincere taunt—rather, it appears to be sad and withdrawn. "Bet you wouldn't miss her, would you?"
Caitlyn grits her teeth. She's had enough of this.
"Jinx," she says, stepping forward once more. "I won't say it again. Hand yourself in. Now."
There's a moment of pause before Jinx's downcast expression once more shifts into a dastard smirk. This time, she looks up and eyes Caitlyn directly, her lips curling into a tight smile.
"Tell me, Princess, do you miss Mommy dearest?"
Firing the bullet is the first mistake.
"Don't worry," Jinx sneers, raising her pistol in her direction. "I'm sure you can send her your regards."
Rising to Jinx's vile taunting is the second.
When Caitlyn lines up her next shot, she doesn't miss.
(Oh, how she wishes she did).
* * *
Vi has always been fast.
Caitlyn knows this.
But for once, Caitlyn wishes Vi was slow.
* * *
It goes like this:
Caitlyn fires the bullet.
There's a flash of red, but it's not blood.
It's Vi.
* * *
There's a moment of silence when it all unfolds.
Caitlyn stands, her rifle held loosely in her hand.
Jinx is staring at her over Vi's shoulder, eyes wide open in shock.
And Vi is standing, back to her, a blooming stain of crimson blotting upon her back.
* * *
Caitlyn stands still, frozen as she watches Vi's body slump into Jinx.
Her muscled arms are still somehow wrapped around Jinx, her head slid limply into the crook of Jinx's shoulder.
Caitlyn's eyes well with tears as Jinx's hands shakily come up and clasp Vi's shoulders.
And then, in the smallest broken whimper, Jinx breathes out,
"Vi?"
Caitlyn drops the gun and retches.
* * *
If there was ever a moment Caitlyn understood siblinghood, it was now.
Despite the lines between them, despite how much Jinx tried to bury her love for her sister, it still remained.
When Vi's lifeless body slumps into Jinx, Caitlyn swears she feels the world stop.
* * *
For someone who wielded a council-destroying superweapon, Jinx is mournfully gentle as she lowers Vi to the ground.
In the films, death was always a dramatized event.
Caitlyn remembers the first film she'd seen with her mother, where the main character died a martyr to save his wife, but not without a lengthy and drawn out speech about love and longing.
This isn't that.
Caitlyn wishes this was that.
* * *
It takes what feels like hours before she's finally able to move.
Jinx has Vi cradled in her lap now, and as Caitlyn stumbles forward, she can see that Vi's glassy eyes are open.
Unseeing.
She thinks of Vi's last moments.
Fighting with her sister.
Playing dress up in the uniform of her parents' oppressors.
Being tortured and captured as a child for a crime she never committed.
And despite it all, Vi vowed to protect her family.
Vi never knew peace.
Caitlyn had foolishly hoped that one day she would, that day before the council, back when she was foolhardy and naïve. She said this world could be better. She promised Vi of a new hope, of peace between their cities.
It was all a lie.
She watches as Jinx leans over Vi, her hands cradling that pale, frozen face. She's holding it tight to her chest, like a child gripping a toy or soft plush. Caitlyn can only watch on in agony as she makes out soft, hiccupped sobs.
Jinx said Powder was dead.
Except she wasn't.
As Caitlyn looks over at the girl rocking Vi's dead body back and forth, her heart aches.
Vi died thinking Powder died, but she was only buried deep beneath the pain.
"Please," she hears Jinx whisper softly, "no, I didn't mean it... I didn't mean it, why'd you do it? Why'd you do it?"
Vi doesn't reply.
"I'm sorry," Jinx rasps as she shakes her head, "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry."
Silence.
"Please," Jinx—no, Powder, pleads, "come back, Vi."
Caitlyn wishes she would, too.
* * *
It rains.
The blood washes away under the torrent as they continue to sit there. For a moment, Caitlyn is grateful.
Someone as brave and beautiful as Vi didn't deserve to be covered in blood in their death. Her eyes are still open, staring lifelessly into the grey clouds. The bridge between Zaun and Piltover. A Zaunite dressed in an Enforcer's armor, killed beneath the same bridge that killed her parents. It was as if all of Runeterra was mourning the death of their child from the stars. Caitlyn can't stop looking down at her prone body, her mind filling with the regrets of unsaid and said words. She pulled the trigger that ended Vi's life, but she killed Vi long before she drew her gun upon her sister.
"I want to take her home."
Caitlyn blinks as she looks over to Powder, who stares up at her with Shimmer-pink eyes, wet with tears. The younger girl clears her throat as she takes more of Vi's limp body into her arms.
Her heart lodges in her throat.
All she can do is nod.
Take Vi home.
Vi deserves more, but home is a start.
* * *
When they cross over into Zaun, the entire city falls to it's feet.
Powder has Vi in her arms, carrying her bridal style as the two of them trudge through the underbelly of the city. All around, the citizens stop what they're doing and stare on in shock and awe. Powder pays them no mind and Caitlyn brandishes her rifle to threaten anyone close. It's laughable, the two of them walking down the streets of Zaun with Vi's dead body curled between them like some sort of peacemaker. The rain comes thundering down in torrential waves, but it doesn't deter either of them. Powder is determined to take Vi home, and Caitlyn is determined to see her through it.
Home, as it turns out, is The Last Drop.
The bar silences the minute Powder kicks the door open.
The patrons all hush as they both walk through.
"What's the noise for?" A sarcastic growl sounds from up ahead. "Did someone forget to feed Deckard again?"
Caitlyn looks up to see Sevika saunter down the stairs until she halts at the sight of her and Jinx. Her eyes flicker down to Vi's motionless body.
She grips her rifle tighter, but Sevika glances back up, a brief expression of grief flashing through those dark eyes.
Powder grits her teeth, looking past Sevika to the door behind the bar.
"Everyone out," the younger woman says quietly. "Now."
At first, she expects Sevika to put up a fight, but the older woman only grunts and moves to the side.
No words are necessary to communicate her grief.
Caitlyn's heart lurches once more as tears fill her eyes.
No matter their bad blood, Vi meant something to her.
Did Vi know that?
(If she didn't, she never will).
* * *
The room under the bar isn't what she expects.
There are four small bunkbed cots lined up against the walls. There's dust and mothballs lining the floors, indicating the years of disuse, but Caitlyn knows what this room is.
She imagines what a young Vi would have looked like here. Returning home from pillages in Piltover, with bruised knuckles and a toothy grin. She imagines her fishing out a toy for Powder, of her wide, proud smile as joy overtook her sister in place of rage and violence. She imagines Vander and her brothers roughhousing together. She imagines laughter and happiness despite the poverty and the hunger and the loss. From the little Vi had shared about her life before Stillwater, she knew that there were still moments of brilliance amongst the darkness.
"A little help here, Princess?"
Caitlyn watches as Powder stands before one of the bottom bunks. Her eyes are unyielding as they stare through her. She gestures to the bed with a kick of her foot against the wooden pillar.
She gets the hint.
Caitlyn slowly pulls back the thin sheet, holding back a cough at the dust that rises up.
Powder shoulders past her, although not coldly, and kneels.
And then, with a gentleness Caitlyn could've never imagined, Powder lays her sister upon the cot.
* * *
Caitlyn steps off to the side as Powder continues to kneel, her hands framing Vi's face.
Her eyes are still open, staring at the bottom of the top bunk lifelessly.
Powder is murmuring to her, something a whisper so low that Caitlyn can barely make it out.
Except she does catch one thing.
"I won't be scared of you," Powder says in a croak, "when they came back, they were scary, but I know I won't be scared of you."
Caitlyn doesn't need to ask to know Powder is talking about the voices in her head.
"I don't remember Mom or Dad anymore," Powder whispers as she strokes Vi's head. "You'll find them, right? I... I need to know you'll find them."
Family, Caitlyn thinks as she holds back her tears, Jinx wants Vi to find her family.
To not be alone.
Isn't that what she always wanted?
(But at what cost?)
"It started and ended with you," Powder rasps as tears slide down her cheeks. She reaches up and places her fingers over Vi's eyelids. "It was always you, Vi."
And with that, Caitlyn's heart shatters as Jinx slides those eyelids shut.
* * *
Powder pulls the cover over Vi's shoulders.
It looks like she's sleeping.
Like a mother would tuck in their child, Powder hesitates before she leans down and presses a soft, tender kiss to Vi's forehead.
And then, the final goodbye, as Powder whispers,
"I love you."
* * *
Caitlyn follows Powder out the door to the empty bar.
The tables are cleared and no one remains.
It looks barren.
Caitlyn is about to question Powder, but then she sees Powder holding a bottle with a cloth hanging out of the lip. It's only then that she smells the alluring, acrid smell of gasoline.
Finally, she understands.
* * *
Outside, a crowd has gathered. Word has spread in the short time, and it seems as though everyone in Zaun got the message.
It's funny, almost, because not even this many people showed up to her mother's funeral.
This isn't a planned event. No one received an invitation.
This is... this was Vi.
Caitlyn's eyes burn with tears as she takes them all in, their ashen, mourning faces as they remained united in their grief for the true heir of the Hound of Zaun.
She turns back to see Powder light the cloth with a matchstick. The young woman pauses for a moment before she launches the bottle through the window.
At once, the building erupts into flames.
Caitlyn's eyes burn from the heat and her grief, and she can't help but finally let out the cry she'd been holding in.
It feels like hours as she watches the flames flicker and spit, before the embers turn to ash and the crowd dissipates.
She turns, expecting to find Powder, only to realize she's alone.
(Is this how Vi felt?)
Yes.
Yes, it is.
* * *
It goes like this:
Caitlyn buries her mother on a Tuesday.
She watches Vi's body burn on a Friday.
Caitlyn knows only one thing is certain.
Her world will never be the same again.