Chapter Text
“Violet! Could you please come over and look at this case for me?”
Vi swiveled on her office chair at the startling voice, nearly splashing the hot coffee in the cup she was holding onto her white shirt. That would have been a second unfortunate incident to happen to her today and it was barely 10:00 AM.
Vi shook the remnant of sleep off her head and stood up, putting the dangerous cup away before anything could happen. “And good morning to you too, Mrs. Babette. Lovely to hear your beautiful, booming voice so early in the morning. It never fails to liven up the entire prison.”
The short, old woman gave her a snort and pushed up the glasses on her nose. “Please, child. The entire prison has been livened up since hours ago. You’re the only one who’s still asleep on your chair. Late night again? And what’s with that… angry oil slick covering your hands?”
Vi looked down at her hands and frowned at the residual black, oily stains, somehow still refusing to leave her skin even after she had tried to clean them several times. “Buddy broke down on my way here and I had to do some emergency fixes on the road. And yes, I had a late night.”
One of Mrs. Babette’s eyebrows arched up. “Even after knowing you for so many years, Violet, I still can’t believe that you give your truck a name and you pick Buddy out of all options.”
“Hey,” Vi puffed her chest out in defense. “The old guy has been with me through thick and thin, alright. He is my Buddy. I’m not just gonna call him… truck.” She walked over to the old woman. “Now, enough with the babbles. What case were you talking about?”
“Oh, right, here,” Mrs. Babette passed the files in her hands to Vi. “An inmate who was released last month is being returned to custody. She was convicted of theft before but was released early due to good behavior. She's reincarcerated because she committed the same crime again after release.”
Vi sighed, looking at the files. A photo of a skinny, disheveled woman in her late thirties stared at her. The files stated that she was a mother of two daughters, barely ten and twelve years old. Their father, the inmate’s husband, was an on-and-off construction worker. Vi’s heart stirred uncomfortably. Hopefully, he was decent enough to take care of the girls during his wife’s incarceration.
“Has her parole officer tried to help her find employment at all after her release?”
Mrs. Babette made a distasteful noise. “That useless man did no such thing, it seems. From what I know, this woman didn’t even have a correctional social worker counseling her pre-release, let alone assisting her post-release.”
Vi snapped the folders of files in her hand shut and sighed. “The warden really needs to hire a few more of us. Three correctional social workers for a prison this big is ridiculous.”
“Oh, child. We know the warden isn’t going to do such thing until either I, Sevika, or you quit or pass away. That man is only concerned with his own wellbeing," Mrs. Babette waved her hand. “Speaking of Sevika, where is she?”
“Probably had a late night for her other job too. I’m sure she’ll show up soon, sleep-deprived and cranky as usual.”
Mrs. Babette shook her head. “Between you tending your father’s bar after your hours here and Sevika working as a security guard after her hours here, you girls are going to wind up in coffins faster than I do, and that’s saying something considering how old I am.”
A laughter bubbled up from Vi’s throat. “Well, welcome to late-stage capitalism, where working multiple jobs and sleeping only 5 hours a day is still not enough to make a decent living. You should be happy you’re old and already have a house before all this mess, Mrs. Babette. The rents nowadays are atrocious.”
Vi walked out of the small, dingy office room assigned to the three of them and nearly crashed into a nasty, angry-looking male officer the size of a giant. He had probably just been punched by one of the inmates, judging by the bruise under his eye. He glared at Vi, grunted, and shoved her with his shoulder.
“Asshole,” Vi muttered under her breath, cursing the fact that she needed to keep this job because otherwise, the guy would have earned another fist to his face, strong enough to not only bruise his eye but also break his pudgy nose.
“Ugh, what a day,” she said to herself, and it was barely 10:00 AM.
It was well after midnight when Vi finally entered her shared apartment with her sister. Her whole body felt sore and heavy with a bone-deep exhaustion that made her feel like she could slide onto the floor and fall asleep right there, with her jacket and boots still on.
From the right corner of the dimly lit apartment, where her sister’s room was, came a ray of bluish light from the opened door and a loud rock song that gave Vi a headache.
“Powder! Do you really need to listen to rock so loudly at this hour? Seriously?”
Vi tossed her jacket onto the coat hanger, toed her boots off forcefully because she was too tired to untie them, and kicked them off somewhere in the doorway. She dragged herself over to their small living room and crashed unceremoniously on the couch, face-first.
Somehow, her little sister managed to hear her voice over the loud, reverberating music. “Hey, sis! You’re home! Check out this cool new gadget I've just made!”
Powder jumped onto the couch with absolutely no regard for her—really, the girl all but threw her whole body weight onto Vi’s back—and Vi groaned as several of her joints cracked. “Powder, seriously, you’re no longer a toddler and you no longer weigh like one. Get off my back before you break my spine.”
“Sheesh, okay old ass,” Powder slid off her back, rolling over to the other side of the couch but still dangling her new invention in front of Vi’s face. “But really, check out this thing I made for my new project in uni.”
Vi cracked a heavy eye open to look at it as best as she could. “Uh… what does it do?”
She was capable of many things in life but robotic engineering was not her strongest suit. Powder was the gifted one in that field and the one accepted into the most prestigious engineering school in the country. And Vi was proud of her for it.
“It’s a robotic hand. Look, it can do all kinds of gestures.” Powder pressed a button on the thing and it flipped a middle finger up at Vi.
Vi snorted against her will. “Please don’t pull off that gesture when you do a demonstration in front of your Professor. I don’t want to be called in for your trouble.”
Powder feigned a miserable sigh and leaned back on the couch. “You boomers are really no fun.”
“I’m not a boomer. I’m barely 29.”
“Uh, huh, sure you are,” Powder eyed her grabbing the remote on their coffee table and turning their TV on, switching over the channels until she settled on a news broadcast. “You’re watching the news on your old ass TV while groaning about your lower back.”
“Are old ass the only words they taught you in that fancy school of yours?”
“Aged? Elderly? Geriatric? Ancient? ”
Vi threw one of the sofa cushions at Powder and she laughed, catching it just before it landed on her face. She hurled it back at Vi and hit Vi right smack at the back of her head, and despite her annoyance, Vi laughed too.
“One day, when you’re my age, you'll see.”
“That sentence is definitely not helping you against your boomer allegation.”
“Ugh, whatever,” Vi rolled over to her side and glanced at the bright TV screen, getting her nightly, mindless screen time before her bedtime. The news reporter was talking about the ongoing trial of a big scandal involving one of the richest families in their country, the very well-known and very venerable Kirammans.
At least they were venerable, before the matriarch of their family, Cassandra Kiramman, got entangled in this very public scandal that had been going on for almost a year with no end in sight.
Cassandra Kiramman, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of their country, was accused of receiving billions of dollars worth of bribes from some shady corporate executives to give them leniency after one of their chemical plants had leaked and had contaminated a whole region. The incident had caused a serious uproar.
“You would think that coming from an affluent family with old money and being paid by the country higher than most would stop people from doing bad shit to get more money, but apparently not,” Vi grimaced.
“Well, your first mistake there is to assume that people will ever feel satisfied with what they have,” Powder yawned and stretched lazily like a cat. “Your second mistake there is to watch depressing shit before bed. You should just, I don’t know, scroll through your dating app page or something. Do fun things.”
Vi cringed at the reminder of her dating app that had remained unopened for… weeks or even months now.
It wasn't that she didn't know how to have fun. God, she actually missed having fun more than she cared to admit to Powder. But with the current lack of time she had for herself, and the current lack of money—which she didn't want to admit to Powder either—there was no room for her to date and have fun.
Vi sat up suddenly, the thought of money leading her to another realization that beat her exhaustion. “Powder, I almost forgot. Have you told your school that we’ll need more time to pay off your tuition this month?”
“Uh, I did,” Powder shifted on the couch, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “But don’t worry about it, Vi. I’m planning to take more shifts at the restaurant I’m working at to cover some–”
“No,” Vi cut her off, her voice resolute and final. “You’re not going to work more than you already do. You should spend some of your free time for other things after school. You know, hang out with your friends or something. That boy Ekko is always hanging in our bar, asking about you. Isn’t he your friend from uni?”
At this, the tips of Powder’s ears reddened. “Yeah, but I don’t know, you look like you’re about to pass out one of these days pulling your job and taking care of dad’s bar at the same time. I think I should help more—”
“Nonsense, I’m not about to pass out from some regular jobs. I have everything under control,” Vi waved her off, making it clear that she wanted to hear no more of it. “Now, go turn off that loud music of yours and go to sleep. You have class tomorrow.”
Powder looked like she wanted to say something but eventually decided against it. “Fine, fine. You go clean yourself and sleep too. You look like hell.”
With that, she walked off to her room, leaving Vi alone on the couch to stare at the water stains on their ceilings and contemplate all of her life decisions leading up to that point.
But she had made no wrong decisions that had actually led her to this difficult point. Sometimes, shit just happened in life and fucked people over, regardless of their right or wrong decisions.
Vi had gone to university, graduated properly, and did well enough financially initially. She would help people in need during the day as a social worker, and then helped her father, Vander, in their family bar at night.
Everything was fine and dandy until Vander got hit by a hemorrhagic stroke and left paralyzed on the wheelchair. Even now, a year after the initial attack, he hadn't fully recovered. He needed constant assistance to perform even the most basic tasks. It was so severe that he had to stay in a nursing home, because neither Vi nor Powder was capable of watching and taking care of him 24/7.
Both of them had to work extra not only to feed themselves but also to pay off his medical bills. And God, the amount of those medical bills was truly something.
The ache in Vi’s head pounded harder at the thought, and she decided to let the thought go before she spiraled down to somewhere darker.
Maybe Powder was right. Maybe she needed to stop inducing depressing thoughts before bed. Maybe she should open that abandoned dating app for the hell of it. Even if she couldn't afford to date currently, she could still entertain the idea for fun if not for anything else.
Vi fished out her phone from her jeans pocket. The bluish glare of light from the TV screen beside her accompanied her as she tapped the app open and browsed through the first page.
A photo of a redhead with a bob cut appeared on the screen. Rose, 22 years old. Looking for a beautiful woman to add some spices into my current love life. I have a boyfriend who's willing to join.
Vi raised an eyebrow. What the hell?
She swiped the profile away.
A photo of another woman appeared, this time sporting long, blonde hair with a layered cut. Francesca, 24 years old. Dom. Looking for a sub able to withstand pleasure and pain. Rope play on the first date is preferred to test suitability.
Wow. Maybe Vi was really getting old. Maybe coffee dates and movie dates were really things of the past.
She almost gave up and threw her phone away when a profile caught her eyes.
A photo of a woman with midnight blue hair—so dark, it was almost black—half turning away from the camera so that only a part of her face was shown captured Vi’s attention. Vi tried to squint, but the dimly lit room the photo was taken in made it impossible to discern more details of the woman’s features.
She was shadowed so calculatedly that Vi could tell nothing but the color of her hair and the color of one of her eyes, which was startlingly blue. The bluest Vi had ever seen. The kind that could put the hue of the sky on a clear day to shame.
Cait, 29 years old. Looking for someone discreet for a temporary marriage. Will require at least one year of involvement. Compensation will be more than reasonable, paid in cash.
Vi blinked.
She reread the sentences, and then blinked and reread them again.
This was even more of a nuisance than the previous two profiles.
Was someone out there truly so bored or so lonely that they would pay money to have someone pretend to be their spouse? Or was this actually a weirdly elaborate plan of a psychopath to get someone into their house and torture them in secret?
Compensation will be more than reasonable, paid in cash.
How much is… more than reasonable? Vi wondered. The promise sounded tempting, and it was claimed to be paid in cash.
Whoever this Cait woman was, she didn't sound like she cared much about the money she had to burn away for silly deals. A rich, bored woman maybe?
Vi tossed her phone on the coffee table and stood up. She needed to sleep. Clearly, the sleep-deprivation must be getting to her brain if she was starting to consider a crazy, unhinged rich woman’s offer on a dating app.
She had less than 5 hours to sleep before she had to start the grind all over again for scraps.
“Good morning, Vi. You look like shit.”
“Aw, thanks, Sevika. What a nice thing to say to your friend first thing in the morning. You’re the best,” Vi dropped onto her chair, rolling her neck and massaging the back of it with her hand. She had slept on it weird and now she was in pain, great.
“You should go back to hitting the gym more regularly, that will solve your body aches,” Sevika sat on her desk uninvited, very much like Powder when it came to not respecting her personal space. “Your arms are starting to look like noodles.”
“Excuse me?” Vi scoffed. “My arms are still bigger than most. They're fine. They’re more than fine actually because I still lift. They’re nowhere close to noodles and you’re just being insufferable because you’ve got slightly bigger arms.”
“Slightly, huh?” Sevika barked out a laugh, mocking but otherwise unmalicious because they both knew that Vi was lying. As much as Vi hated to admit it, Sevika was huge and built like a tank.
“Red Bull?” Sevika offered her the can of the sweet poison in her hand, to which Vi declined.
“Only a crazy person drinks Red Bull at…” Vi checked her watch, “About 9:30 AM.”
“Whatever, more for me then,” Sevika slid off her desk, walking over to her own. “What's your agenda for today? Busy?”
“Hah! As if we ever get to be not busy, understaffed as we are,” Vi leaned back on her chair. “I have counseling to do with some inmates and then I’m going out to the public attorneys’ office later.”
“Oh? One of your inmates needs a defender for an appeal?”
“Yeah, the one who just got reincarcerated yesterday. The poor woman was stealing some things because she couldn’t find a job after her release. No one would hire her because of her history. Her husband turned out to be a useless alcoholic, and she had children to feed. Her parole officer was useless too and didn't give a shit,” Vi stopped. “Not that I have high hopes for the public defenders I’m about to see to care more than that asshole officer.”
“They probably won’t,” Sevika agreed. “They’re probably just sitting on their chairs, lamenting their low salary and wishing that they work as private attorneys somewhere.”
“Most of us get paid little but it doesn’t mean we get to fuck over other people’s chance at life,” Vi stood up. “Do you wanna go there with me? Maybe you can frighten them a little with those oh so big arms of yours and get them to agree with our plea.”
“Hah! Nope. I’ve gone there yesterday and I've had to resist my urge to punch some pretentious people in the face.”
“What pretentious people?”
“A lot. One of them being that pompous rich woman. Kiramman? Caitlyn Kiramman, that is. I can’t stand how patronizing she sounds when she talks to people sometimes,” Sevika threw her hands up. “I feel like she thinks she’s better or smarter than the rest of us, but she’s doing it in that fake polite, rich lady tone of hers, so nobody can call her out on it. It’s driving me insane.”
“Oh, that one. Tough,” Vi nodded, agreeing simply because of the rumors she had heard about the woman. Actually, she had never had to talk to Caitlyn Kiramman herself. They walked past each other sometimes, in the public attorneys’ office during Vi’s occasional visits there, but they had never actually had to work together on a case yet, so Vi knew nothing about her save for the rumors.
Caitlyn Kiramman. The one and only daughter of Cassandra Kiramman. The sole heir to their generational family wealth as far as everybody knew.
Her brilliance as a lawyer had hurtled her up the courts so quickly, making her one of the youngest lawyers to ever go head-to-head with some of the most senior lawyers in the country. And she had beaten them too. All of it came crashing down though, because of her mother’s scandal.
After Cassandra Kiramman’s dishonorable downfall, Caitlyn herself, for reasons unclear to the public, was removed from her previous position and moved to a small public attorneys’ office, going from handling cases for big organizations and politicians to handling… well, smaller cases.
Some suspected that Caitlyn had been involved in the bribery scandal. But if Vi’s memory served her right, Cassandra Kiramman had proclaimed that her daughter knew nothing of the fiasco. Many disbelieved her.
Many also said that Caitlyn Kiramman was arrogant and rude, thanks to her previous success and her imposing family name.
She was probably seething in the small public attorneys’ office she was in now, and counting the days when she could get back to her big, shiny office in the central business district of Piltover, handling big money and big fame.
“Well, I hope I’ll never have to work with her then,” Vi said, patting Sevika on the shoulder as she passed her. “See you later, dude.”
Vi really should keep her mouth shut sometimes, because the universe had a funny way of giving her the exact opposite of what she wished for.
For instance, sometimes she wished for a rainless day because she forgot to bring her umbrella, only for the sky to pour almost instantly.
Sometimes, she wished for a peaceful weekend where she could just doze off on her couch, only to be called in for an unexpected problem in the prison.
Earlier today, she wished to never work with a certain, rumored-to-be bitchy person, only to get told that she had to do exactly that.
Vi shifted uncomfortably in her seat, the seat opposite of hers staring back at her emptily. She looked around, noticing that Caitlyn Kiramman had kept no personal effects at all in her small office room. The desk and the entire room was pristine, devoid of any personal trinkets and felt almost… sterile.
Maybe she really hated having to work here.
Vi glanced around some more and saw nothing but shelves filled with extremely neat rows of folders. They were color-coded, sorted by size, and placed symmetrically on each sides as if Caitlyn had measured them one by one. Not a single paper sticking out of place.
This woman’s house must be quite a sight. Her cutleries were probably sorted by size too, and her coats were probably hung in a color-coded manner.
But she was probably not punctual, because Vi was told that she would come at 2:00 PM but it was reaching 1:59 PM and she was still nowhere in sight—
“Miss Violet? From Zaun Correctional Facility?” The door behind Vi flung open at exactly 2:00 PM, and in walked the owner of the room Vi had spent 20 minutes waiting in.
Surprised, Vi spun around and shot up to her feet, only to find herself staring face-to-face with a pair of startling blue eyes. The bluest Vi had ever seen. The kind that could put the hue of the sky on a clear day to shame. Wait—
“I apologize for making you wait, Miss Violet. I had a prior engagement I needed to see through,” Caitlyn didn't offer her a handshake, like most newly met people did, and instead, walked past her to get to her own seat at the opposite side of the desk.
“Sit. Please,” she said the last word a tad later, as if it were an afterthought or something that she was trying to remember.
Vi only realized that she wasn't sitting yet because Caitlyn was also not sitting yet. She stared at Vi, raising an eyebrow subtly as if she were wondering why Vi was still standing. Maybe she was.
“Sorry, yeah,” Vi cleared her throat, sitting down gracelessly.
Was Caitlyn Kiramman always this tall? Vi had never paid much attention to her height before, but standing face-to-face made her feel like Caitlyn was over six-foot tall.
God, what an unimportant, random thought. Vi shook her head.
“You look dazed, Miss Violet. Are you unwell?” Caitlyn placed her designer bag on the desk and shrugged off her pristine white blazer, somehow doing it with more grace than anyone should have when they were… well, shrugging off coats.
She hung the blazer on the coat hanger behind her and settled on her chair in one fluid movement, somehow still looking regal even only in her simple black turtleneck and white pantsuit. Also, how did she make that loose ponytail look so professional?
“Miss Violet?”
Vi was a dumbass.
“Yeah, right, sorry. I’m just… a bit tired. Haven’t had my coffee today.”
She had, in fact, had three cups of coffee today. But Caitlyn did not need to know that.
“Do you want me to make you one?”
“Huh? One what?”
“Cup of coffee.”
Vi would go down in history as the first ever person to make Caitlyn Kiramman look confused.
“You said you haven’t had coffee, I’m offering to make you one.”
“Oh, there’s no need for that,” Vi waved her off, her face hot with embarrassment.
“I would say there is a need for that, seeing as you’re so dazed and unfocused without it.”
Vi raised her eyes to level with the woman, suddenly wondering if this was what Sevika had meant when she said Caitlyn sounded patronizing when she talked to people. Was she? Patronizing Vi?
Vi tried to discern any hint of condescension on her expression but Caitlyn showed no sign of such thing. In fact, her face showed no signs of anything at all. She looked almost expressionless save for the little wrinkle on her forehead.
“I’m fine, trust me,” Vi shifted in her seat, pulling out the files from her messenger bag with eagerness. The sooner they moved on from this strange, awkward conversation, the better.
“Now, let’s talk about what I’m here for. I have this inmate, Mrs. Smith, who was released early from prison but was returned because of repeated theft. She’s being forced to serve two years.”
She slid the folder over to Caitlyn, who took it and read through it carefully.
“From the way you’re speaking, I’m assuming you believe that this woman deserves a shorter punishment?”
Vi was taken aback by how completely emotionless Caitlyn sounded after reading through all of those files. “You don’t think so? Even after reading her background? She’s a mother of two young girls, who are both in constant risk of suffering abuse from their alcoholic father as long as she’s not there to protect them. They were the reason she needed to steal in the first place to get something to eat. She had no other choice. No one would employ her after her release from prison.”
“Miss Violet, I didn’t say so.”
“You didn't have to spell it out, your careless tone has told me all about it.”
God, maybe the rumors were right. Maybe Caitlyn Kiramman was a bitch.
Caitlyn sat back on her chair, her blue eyes widening a bit at Vi’s snappy words. Then, her expression smoothed back to her normal calm.
“Miss Violet, I apologize if the tone I used was… inappropriate for the situation. I didn’t mean to imply anything negative. I was merely asking a question. Sincerely.”
Vi blinked, debating with herself whether this woman was telling the truth or was fucking with her. Was she? Fucking with Vi?
Caitlyn held her gaze, steady and unwavering.
Vi didn’t know what to think of that look.
She couldn’t put her finger on what Caitlyn really meant or not meant.
She was difficult to read.
“Just, please take your time to go through her files and think of what’s the right thing to do here, please,” Vi said, standing up because she needed to get away from this weird, uncomfortable situation. “I do believe she deserves a shorter time in prison. And I do believe that any lawyer worth their salt should be able to achieve that, with enough will to present proper arguments about this to the court.”
She grabbed her messenger bag from the floor, turning away to exit the room. “I’ll see you again soon. Give my office a call when you’re done reading her files.”
Vi left the room, feeling the intensity of Caitlyn’s stare following her back until she closed the door between them.