Chapter Text
1993
Vi had thought she’d seen it all, having been around the block for close to a century now, but even she’d thought the moon was fucking with her vision that night.
“Stupid… itchy… gown… and stupid… big slippers…”
She poked her head out of the forest line and narrowed her eyes, trying to make sure she was seeing things right. It was a thin, sickly woman with a giant blue beanie covering her bald head, wearing a hospital gown poorly tied in the back showing half her ass, and slippers that were indeed far too big for her feet. Yet she plowed her way down the empty road surrounded by the national park trees, a good hour away from the nearest hospital.
Vi scratched her head. “Huh.” She’d been sleeping pretty damn soundly before all the ruckus from the IV pole the woman was dragging alongside her. The squeaky wheels scraped against the asphalt, the sound the most unpleasant thing Vi had heard that month.
“You know, you’re not supposed to take those,” she said.
The woman turned to give her a dark look. “Mind your own business,” she spat, and then started walking again.
“Lovely.” Vi followed her, fully awake now and casually amused. “Say, should I expect to see a truckload of nurses chasing after you with a straitjacket?”
“I don’t care.”
Vi sped up, walking at her level now, but the woman didn’t seem to give a shit, simply put. There were deep creases beneath her eyes, and in the moonlight it almost looked like the veins of her arms were glowing blue.
“Dang, what’s happened to you?” Vi asked.
“I have cancer in every bone of my body,” the woman replied flatly, staring straight ahead.
“Rough.”
The woman glanced at her. “You're perceptive, aren't you?"
Vi shrugged, hands shoved in the pockets of her leather jacket. It was a nice, brisk night. “Hey, so, just for your general knowledge-”
“No.” The woman stopped dead in her tracks, turning to her with a harsh glare. “No, no, no. I’ve been in that hospital for eleven months, every day teetering on the edge of death. I have been told what to do, and how to eat, and how to shit, and how to sneeze, and I have been told to shut up and listen, because what do I know, and I have been quiet and a good little patient, but now I won’t stand here listening to anyone any longer. I am not going back, and I don’t care about your threats… uh… uh…”
“Vi.”
“Vi! I don’t care! So if this is their clever way of chasing me down, with-” she glanced up and down at Vi, “-with some leather-clad punk from HR, or whatever department you’re from, then screw you, and screw them, you’ll have to kill me right here!”
Vi blinked. “Sheesh. Pretty rough lot in life, eh? What are you, 25, 26?”
“27 today,” the woman barked. “What is it to you?”
“Oh, nothing, just bored out of my skull tonight.”
The woman stepped back. “So you’re… not here to take me back to the hospital?”
“Nah, cupcake, I couldn’t care less what you do.”
“Don’t call me that,” the woman frowned, disgusted, “my name is Caitlyn.”
“Won’t remember that – besides, I prefer ‘cupcake’ for the big blue hat. Reminds me of the icing on those shitty store pastries. You know ‘em?”
“No.”
“You should try one. Give yourself a sugar kick.”
“I’m going to kill myself tonight,” Caitlyn replied cooly.
Vi pursed her lips. “Right. Well. Just a thought.”
Caitlyn started walking down the road again, so Vi walked alongside her. She listened as Caitlyn grumbled, just soft words under her breath she’d probably kept locked in for months, things like, “Damn you Dr. Reveck, you abominable monster,” and “I’m not spending another day in that… that shithole… where they suck me dry of life, hollow me out and tell me it’s for my own good.”
Vi chuckled at that one. “Speaking of sucking you dry and hollowing you out, I’m fucking starving.”
Caitlyn stopped again, gripping her IV pole tight. “Right, did you escape from the psych ward then? I think I left the fire escape door open.”
“Not quite,” Vi grinned, showing off her sharp pearly whites.
Instead of recoiling, Caitlyn approached her with a scowl. She poked Vi’s chest several times. “It’s my. goddamn. birthday. Have. some. goddamn. respect.”
And off she was again, dragging the pole with her, walking like a woman with one destination in mind. Vi licked her lips, puzzled, feeling like a damn puppy tilting her head to the side.
She caught up again, keeping up the pace with this furious, curious woman. “You really don’t see where this is going, baby?”
“No, darling, I just don’t care if you’re a clown or a werewolf or a lunatic,” Caitlyn said. “I don’t care! Actually, I’ve had enough of being polite: I don’t give a fuck!”
“I’m a vampire.”
“Oh, do you want a medal?”
Vi frowned, mildly offended. “Yeah, the thing is that makes you a wounded gazelle here. Lions are champing at the bit to take you down.”
“Who even says ‘champing’ anymore?”
“I’m into linguistics, sue me.”
“And it’s lionesses. Lions are useless hunters in a pride.”
“I’m not in a pride, baby.”
“Your analogy is shit.”
“Jeez, tough crowd. Where are you headed anyway?”
“I’m going to tell my parents to go fuck themselves.”
“Huh. Those are some choice words.”
“They’ve made choice decisions.”
“Don’t you want to get a drink first?”
“Yes.” Caitlyn nodded several times. “Alcohol. Excellent idea, Vi.”
“There’s a bar off the road if we cut through here. Thirty minute walk, I reckon.”
Caitlyn glanced toward the dark forest. “Who says 'I reckon' anymore?”
“Vampires, I reckon.”
“God, you're deeply unfunny.”
“High praise from a half-dead woman mooning me.”
Caitlyn tried to glance over her shoulder at her own ass, twisting her body in some odd way. “Oh well. And this bar isn’t going to call the cops on me?”
“Pretty sure they don’t have a license, so no.”
They started walking through the forest, but the IV pole was getting harder to drag over the thick floor of leaves and roots.
“Do you really need this thing?” Vi asked.
“It’s morphine. What do you think?”
“Ah.”
Caitlyn exhaled deeply, just reminded of her exhausted body. “Do me a favor. If you kill me, make it memorable.”
“You wanna be in a documentary?” Vi asked. The leaves crunched beneath her boots, but not so much beneath Caitlyn’s soft slippers.
“I’d like to be studied. I think it could be an interesting headline, too. Dead woman walking escapes hospital, stumbles upon demented punk, gets eaten and discarded.”
“Well, I wouldn’t dump you in the trash or anything. And that’s an awfully long headline, you almost put me to sleep.”
“Shut up. It’s a rough draft.”
“What d’you do anyway, before all this?”
“Nothing. I inherited a fortune and wanted to be a cop, but mother didn’t like that, so she ordered the sheriff to blackball me from the academy. Then I tried to work private, but she meddled in that too. So I pissed away my parents’ money for five years, until I broke my first bone by just walking down the street, and the rest is history. Sterile rooms, doctors, surgeries, chemo, and not a single day of peace. You?”
“Got bit in 1927. Going through this life nice and easy, I admit.”
“What were you doing here?”
“Sleeping on some high quality moss ‘till you came barreling by.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“You’re right. Fuck you.”
“Atta’ girl.”
*
They sat at the very end of the bar, which smelled like smoke and cheap leather. Every surface was sticky and every man and woman here looked like they’d missed their last bus home. They were crabby, sweaty and waiting for nothing to happen.
Caitlyn kept her IV pole close while she chugged a beer. She slammed the glass down and wiped off the layer of foam on her upper-lip.
“Another.”
Vi made a sign to the bartender, who smacked on his gum while he poured her another.
“Vi, do you fuck women?” Caitlyn asked, sticking a cigarette in her mouth.
Vi cracked a match to light it up for her. Caitlyn had said she wanted to try smoking for the first time, so here they were.
“What do you think?” Vi asked.
Caitlyn glanced up and down at her. “Would you fuck me? I’d hate to go before one last orgasm.”
“Ah, you’re…”
“What?”
“You’re a bit hard on the eyes.”
“Is it the bald head or the sandpaper skin?”
“Don’t mind the dome or the skin, baby,” Vi shrugged. “It’s your eyes. They’re dead already. Puts me off. But-” Vi tilted her head to the side, really drinking her in. “Well, fuck.”
“What?” Caitlyn asked, self-conscious for the first time that night.
“I just pictured you with a little more meat on the bone.”
“I’ll have you know I fucked my way through college. I was hot.”
“Yeah, I see it.”
Caitlyn took a long drag and then coughed out the smoke. “Damn it, this is disgusting. I thought it would be good.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because people are addicted to it? Because even my doctor had smoke on his breath?”
“They sold this shit for two bucks, cupcake. You get what you pay for. Try a fancy cigar next time.”
“I told you there won’t be a next time.”
“Ah, right, my bad.”
“Unless…” Caitlyn swallowed. “Would you turn me?”
“Nope,” Vi answered curtly, turning away. “There are vampires and there are makers.”
“Worth a shot,” Caitlyn sighed. “Can you feed on me then? Make it painless?”
“I was gonna, but I always leave a pulse. I thought you were a little weak, but you’re downright fucking dying. I’d kill you in one bite, and dead blood tastes like shit.”
“Like literal shit?”
“Like that cigarette. Some are addicted to it, but to me it’s just nasty.”
“Fine, I’ll throw myself off a bridge after telling my parents to go fuck themselves. The perfect end to this perfect night.”
“That should be pretty quick and painless.”
“You want to watch?”
“Got nothing else to do.”
“Does it get you off?”
“No, baby, I like the standard stuff.”
“Vanilla?”
“Vampire standard.”
“Well why then? You must see dead bodies all the time.”
“I’m curious if you’ll go through with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“In my experience, people who wanna die just want the pain to go away.”
“That’s a brilliant fucking line, Vi. Really original. You should write a book.”
“I could. I’ve got time, unlike some.”
“Fuck you.”
“So you’ve said.”
Caitlyn tried the cigarette again, her fingers shaking. She coughed it out and crushed it on the bar.
“Hey, that’s expensive wood, you know,” the bartender warned her as he gave her the beer.
“Get lost,” Vi told him, and for a reason beyond Caitlyn, he did.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Caitlyn said.
“Why not?”
“I…” she looked down at her shaking hands and went to grip the IV pole. “I don’t feel good. I won’t have time to find my parents.”
“Where do they live?”
“Piltover.”
“Fucking hell, that’s a day’s walk away. Two for you.”
“I know. It was a sound plan when I had rage in my stomach. Now it’s just bile again.”
“Is it that important you tell them?”
Caitlyn’s knee was bouncing up and down. “No. It’s more important I die tonight. I’m… so sick of this.”
Vi nudged the beer closer to her. “I paid for this, you better finish it.”
Caitlyn took it to her lips and tried a sip, but put it down. “Oh, I don’t care anymore. Put it on my tab.” Her shoulders fell and she swallowed, meeting Vi’s eyes. “I’m going to find a bridge now.”
Vi stood up and offered her hand. “To a bridge then, baby.”