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When Caitlyn wakes in the infirmary, Violet is there waiting for her.
The first thing she registers is Vi’s hand wrapped around hers as Cait struggles toward consciousness. She feels Vi squeeze it tight, like a gust of wind might blow her away. It’s enough to urge her the rest of the way through the darkness.
The world comes into view as much as it’s able – her eye, she remembers, and pain blossoms behind the bandages – but she can see Violet, the center of her universe, her only tether in this unknown world she’s been thrust into, and she is beautifully, miraculously alive.
Vi’s strong arm holds her when Cait finally cries, guilt and grief and exhaustion oozing out of every crack of her that she had tried to patch over with anger and vengeance. The wound on her stomach agonizes as her breathing heaves, the salt in the remains of her eye tortuous as she sobs, but she can't stop.
“Jayce?” Caitlyn tries once, her voice muffled against Vi’s hair as she tries to catch her breath. She feels Vi pause, then shake her head.
Caitlyn’s throat constricts; her cries become quiet, choked out, almost completely silent, but no less violent—the death throes of someone suffocating under an unforgiving hand. Or the Grey, her guilty conscience suggests, digging the pit beneath her even deeper.
Screams catch in her throat for everything she’s done, for everything she’s lost — but they don’t find their way out. So instead, she tilts her head down, wilting, until her forehead is buried in Violet’s chest.
Violet pets her hair, carefule and gentle, until Caitlyn’s sobs taper off and her lungs have room to breathe again. When she pulls back, her mind still swamps with grief, but the world is a bit clearer than before.
She finally notices that her lover’s arm is in a sling. Cait puts her hand on Vi’s shoulder, concern washing out the remnants of her sorrow.
“What happened?” Caitlyn asks, her voice rough from her sobs.
Violet shrugs with half of her body, but Caitlyn can see it now: the puffiness around Vi’s red eyes, the stained tear tracks on her cheeks. The empty, desolate look in her eyes, like something precious has been plucked out of her irises. Every inch of Violet’s face tells the same story: she's lost her sibling, too.
Caitlyn pulls her other half in tight, ignoring the pull on her stitches in favor of having Violet safe in her arms.
“I’m sorry,” Caitlyn whispers, and she’s surprised to find that she means it. Violet holds her in turn, but she doesn’t say a word.
It’s not until after Caitlyn’s been discharged that she notices it: Violet’s silence.
They return to the Kiramman manor. The spots in her home where her mother should be standing still haunt her, but the shadows are easier to bear with Violet by her side. She and her father watch over her as she heals, but gone are Violet’s quips or affectionate nicknames. Instead, when Caitlyn tries a light joke to clear the air, all Vi can manage is a half-smile before slinking off to the shadows.
As Caitlyn gets stronger, Violet is no less attentive, constantly helping her move or fetching what she needs. But there aren’t any deep chuckles, breathy confessions, or even sobs. A fog has settled in the space between Violet’s mind and heart, and it reflects in the emptiness of her eyes. She’s not cruel or punishing, just distant, as if half-wandering through a haze.
The last time Vi spoke, she had pulled Caitlyn in for a desperate, anxious kiss, and whispered: don’t die. Now, Cait wonders if Vi even realizes how long it’s been since those last words had been gifted.
Caitlyn doesn’t push. She’s tired of pushing, anyway. She speaks to Violet and doesn’t expect an answer, just prattles on into the silence for the sake of something to do as she loses her mind at the slow pace of her recovery. She complains about the uselessness of her body, her butchered side and lone good eye, when Violet changes her bandages. She shares precious stories about her mother and Jayce; she confesses how badly she misses them, in the hopes that Violet knows that she understands her grief, her hopelessness.
“I miss you too,” Caitlyn whispers one night, words slipping out without her say.
Suddenly, fingers wrap tightly around hers, and when Caitlyn looks up, Violet’s eyes are alive again, but they’re bright with guilt and desperation. They practically radiate with stinging tears. She hurts to look at. Vi opens her mouth; nothing comes out.
Caitlyn is reminded of a story her mother told her as a girl, of a siren trading her voice for the life of her lover.
Time and time again, Violet has traded her life and happiness for others. She placed her heart in the hands of those she loved and could do nothing but watch as those she trusted squeezed it into atrophy. Caitlyn has done it herself: stomped on Violet’s vulnerable heart without a second glance and left her to bleed out. It’s not something she thinks she’ll ever be able to forgive herself for.
But she won’t make the same mistake twice.
“It’s alright,” Caitlyn soothes, kissing the back of Violet’s hand. “Take all the time you need.”
Vi’s shoulders slump, like a puppet with its strings cut, and when she leans forward, Caitlyn catches her easily. She might not understand this mutism completely, this invisible burden this impossibly strong woman carries, but she can still be there for her beloved. She can learn to be as patient as her mother was.
The world spins on.
They hold a memorial for those lost, both in Piltover and Zaun. Caitlyn makes an address, but Vi can’t bring herself to go, the shadows on her face almost drowning her Cait's mere suggestion. That’s alright. They can have their private memorials in their own time.
Questions of governing come to her door, the remains of the Council eager for a return to a status quo that she knows now would be disastrous. So Caitlyn suggests that she offer her seat on the Council to a Zaunite, and the flicker of surprise on Violet’s face is worth more than every coin in her family’s treasury.
After her position is relinquished, she spends days pouring over the contents of the Kiramman key, seeking out means of reparation for Zaun instead of a weakness to exploit. It won't pardon her for everything she’s done, but that’s not what she cares about now. Now she wants what she wanted when she first met Vi: for her home to be a safer, better place. Caitlyn isn’t a counselor anymore, but she has the means to make a difference. She’s determined for it to be a positive one this time.
Violet sneaks up behind her at times, kissing her head or wrapping her good arm around Cait’s shoulder. The silence is less loud nowadays, a little easier to bear, but Caitlyn would still give everything she had if she could hear Vi’s voice again.
“You’re safe,” Cailtyn reminds her: over shared tea on a bright afternoon; while reading together on the sofa with their fingers intertwined; huddled close together in the dead of night. Violet will usually squeeze her hand in response or offer a hollow smile, and Caitlyn tries to hide her disappointment. She’s not sure her words reach her, so keeps repeating them. She’ll do it for as long as it takes for Violet to believe them.
And then, one day, from the next room over: humming. Light and low, but unmistakably there.
When Caitlyn walks into the den, she half expects the music to be a figment of her imagination. But there Violet is, slumped on the coffee table, staring into the fire. Her eyes are still muted, but she breaks the silence with rough yet careful notes. They're the most beautiful thing Caitlyn has ever heard.
For the first time in weeks, Caitlyn breathes.
“Is that… singing?”