The sky was orange. Not because the night was approaching and the light was scattering in a different way, but because the city was covered in smoke and fire. A perpetual sunset of death and destruction.
Vi kept twirling the piece of paper between her hands. A message and no one on either side to send it to.
The important part was they managed to escape. Vi threw a look at the mattress where Caitlyn was lying, out like a light, her face still covered in dirt and soot, a bandage covering the cuts on her arm, a bruise forming on her cheek.
Vi’s chest felt hollow, an abandoned arcade where she, Powder and her friends used to hide in. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Powder firing her gun in a frenzy. Then she saw Jinx, standing by the bridge with a rocket launcher propped on her shoulder. Caitlyn’s scream as she saw where the rocket was headed still rang in her head like Vander’s shouting that fated night her parents died.
“Hey, hey, Cupcake,” she had said, “Cupcake, look at me. What do we do now? What will Piltover do?”
The smoke she could see in the horizon did not make her feel any better. When Caitlyn didn’t react or move beyond her ragged breathing, Vi moved closer to her, guiding her face with her right hand to look at Vi.
“Caitlyn,” she whispered.
That got her attention.
“I need you to help me with this. What will Piltover do?”
“I- I don’t know. I-,” she searched Vi’s face for something. Whatever it was, she couldn’t find it. “They were going to hold a vote. I, uh, I heard them talking about it. They were all in that building, Vi.”
“What happens if the council can’t convene for whatever reason? What happens then?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know, okay?” she yelled, her hands trembling.
Vi’s thumb brushed the side of Caitlyn’s face, moving a stray hair out of the way and behind her ear. Vi needed her to think clearly, to be the detective that didn’t stop until she found Powder. Jinx. No matter how much experience Vi had in the lanes, she still spent years in prison and she never understood Piltover politics to begin with. She needed Caitlyn if they wanted to get out of this alive.
“Cupcake, I need you to help me figure this out,” Vi took a moment to examine Caitlyn’s face for injuries, but beyond some ugly bruising that was beginning to form on her cheek, there wasn’t any damage that she could see. When she spoke again, she tried to be as reassuring as possible. “We have to get out of the streets. Things are going to be hellish in a minute, so tell me. What does Piltover do when there’s an attack on the city?”
It took her almost a minute, but eventually, she spoke.
“The enforcers will be alerted. They’ll close all entrances to the city. Start evacuating people who might be in the impact zone. Uh, they’ll- they’ll evacuate the council-“
“In what direction?” she interrupted, not wanting Caitlyn to linger on the council.
“North. The mountains are safer than the sea. The attack could come from Bilgewater and they have an advantage there.”
“That means the South will be empty?”
“Not really. Some people won’t leave their businesses and- and well, if they fear the city is under siege, they’d rather die than leave their shit behind,” Caitlyn grimaced as she tried to get up.
“Hey, are you hurt?”
“Well, I hit my head,” she deadpanned.
Vi rolled her eyes and grabbed her arm to support her. When Caitlyn got up and Vi drew her hand away, it was stained with blood.
“Hey, let me see your arm,” Vi asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Blood is supposed to stay inside the body, Cupcake. Let me take a look.”
With a huff, she extended her arm and let Vi take a look at it. Vi carefully removed her gloves and frowned when she looked at the extent of her injuries. There were some rope burns and bruises, but what worried Vi were the two gashes that were open in her forearm. Blood wasn’t spurting out of them, so the veins were safe, however, they were still wet to the touch.
“Are you hiding any other injuries?”
She yanked her arm away from Vi and covered the cuts with her torn shirt. “I’m fine. We need to get to Sidereal Avenue before they start closing the streets around the area.”
“Sidereal Avenue? We’re not going North yet, that’s directly into the hands of the enforcers,” Vi reasoned.
“I need to know what happened to the council. I’m an enforcer, I need to help, I-“
“Cupcake, I hate to break it to you. But they’ll consider you an annoyance at best and a traitor at worst. And you’re hurt! You can’t help anyone like this.”
“I’m fine,” she turned around and took a couple of steps before her legs gave in. Vi caught her before she stumbled to the floor.
“What you are is stubborn. We’ll rest and then we’ll make our way North.” When Caitlyn looked like she would protest again, Vi added, “you can’t shoot anyone with a concussion. Come on.”
Caitlyn rolled her eyes, but let Vi carry most of her weight as they made their way around the streets. When they reached a Hexdraulic Conveyor, Vi started to drag them towards it.
“We’re not going back down,” Caitlyn objected.
“So, you wanna break into a house here?” Vi raised an eyebrow in question.
Caitlyn looked around and pointed to what looked like a defunct store half a street up. “There. We’re not breaking in if the place’s abandoned.”
When the door didn’t budge after a few tries, Vi kicked it in.
“So much for subtlety,” Caitlyn whispered.
The counters were covered in dust and spider webs, the place looked as if no one had been there for years. They went to the back, where there were boxes piled up against the back, a small table with some folders on top and a dirty mattress on the floor with a rag on top of it.
“I don’t think we’re the first squatters this place has seen,” Vi pointed out.
Caitlyn made a sound that could’ve been a laugh if she hadn’t stopped midway to grimace in pain. Vi helped her into the mattress and knelt down next to her, brushing the hair out of her face.
“I’m going to check if there’s anything we can use to clean you up. Don’t go running out of here while I’m not looking.”
Caitlyn rolled her eyes and motioned her to go.
The store wasn’t big enough for someone to hide, but Vi still looked everywhere. There wasn’t any running water in the place, but there was a bottle of liquor behind one of the counters so that’d have to do. When she went back to Caitlyn, she was staring at the empty space above the boxes, a haunted look in her face.
“Cupcake?”
Caitlyn turned her head in her direction, “my dad would’ve preferred I stayed in the music academy.”
“You went to the music academy?” Vi asked, kneeling next to her, carefully sliding her sleeves up to expose the cuts on her arm.
“Yeah. I played the violin. Family tradition.”
“This is all I found. It’s going to sting,” Vi warned, stopping her brain from forming the full picture of a younger Caitlyn playing violin for her parents, then poured the alcohol on her arm before she could protest. She grunted but stayed put, letting the excess liquor drip on the floor. Vi used the cloth that had obviously seen better days to dry her arm off.
“Let me see your face,” she said, turning her to take a look.
Her cheekbone was swollen and a bruise was blossoming where she had taken a hit, but there weren’t any more visible cuts. She looked at her blue eyes but Caitlyn’s gaze was unfocused, unseeing.
“You need to sleep this off. Or at least try to.” It was a sign of how defeated she felt that she just nodded and lied down. “I’ll stay on the lookout.”
“We need to alert the enforcers about Jinx’s weapon,” Caitlyn said, her voice even smaller than before. “We need to send a message. Something.”
“Hey, don’t worry about that. We’ll figure it out. Sleep now, okay?”
Vi sat on the floor with her back against the wall, a clean line of sight to the door and Caitlyn.
When Caitlyn stopped squirming and her breathing evened out, Vi took a moment to let go of the sob that had been building inside her chest for the last couple of hours. It shook her body silently, tears rolling down her face without any control on her part. The seconds blurred in the deep sorrow that she couldn’t shake off her body, that would stay with her until her dying breath, be it at hands of enforcers or her own sister.
She wanted to scream, to punch something, to punish someone for what Powder had become but there was no use. Powder changed because Vi wasn’t there to help her, because Vi couldn’t protect her when Vander was killed. She should’ve fought harder, she should’ve tried to escape prison one more time, she should’ve known Powder was alive and fighting for her sanity outside the walls of Still Water, afraid and lost, thinking Vi abandoned her when she needed her sister the most.
If only she had known, Powder would be okay, Caitlyn wouldn’t be hurt, people wouldn’t have died. If only Vi had known. If only Vi had tried.
Now she lost her sister once again and this time there wasn’t a way to bring her back.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, her mind reeling with possibilities and could-have-beens, but eventually, her sobs dwindled and her mind cleared enough for her to acknowledge with a pang of grief that Powder was no more. Jinx needed to be stopped and only Vi could stop her. The bloodshed needed to end.
She stood up, rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck, her movements stiff from exhaustion. She rummaged around the folders on top of the table -a bunch of shipping manifestos-, and ripped a page to write a message in it. What to write, though, did not come to her as a revelation.
In the end, she scrawled Jinx’s gone rogue, she’s got a rocket launcher powered by hextech, but then she didn’t know what to do with it. She folded and unfolded the piece of paper until the creases in it resembled the layout of the Piltover streets.
A message. A no one on either side to send it to.
She glanced at Caitlyn’s sleeping form on the mattress and noticed the rapid fluttering of her eyes before she sat up with an aborted scream. She dropped to her knees besides the bed in a second, holding her steady when her body threatened to give in.
“Easy, easy,” Vi said,
Caitlyn’s uneven breaths took a moment to settle in a regular pattern, her eyes wildly searching her surroundings. When they finally registered, she sobbed.
“Hey, hey, hey. Cupcake, look at me.”
Caitlyn kept her head down, as tears rolled softly down her cheeks.
“Cupcake, listen to me. We don’t know the extent of the damage yet. A lot of things could’ve happened between the moment Powder took you and when the rocket was fired.” Caitlyn was shaking her head already. “No, we’re not giving up before we know for certain what happened, okay? In a few hours, we’re leaving this place and we’re going to go to the council. We’ll find that pretty boy friend of yours and your mother panicking because you disappeared, whole and unharmed. And your mother will give me the stinky eye again and probably blame for everything.”
She wouldn’t be wrong, but Vi didn’t say so. Caitlyn almost smiled when she said it, so it was enough. Whatever kept her holding on for a second longer.
“And if they’re not?” she asked, finally looking up, staring at her with an intensity she hadn’t seen in her eyes since the day they spoke to the council. It felt like an eternity had passed since then.
“We’re going to find Pow-,” Vi stopped herself with a sigh. “We’re going to find Jinx and stop her. I swear it on my life, if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll stop her.” Caitlyn looked ready to crumble again, so she added, “now, let me lie down for a sec. I need a nap.”
She moved to stand up when Vi asked, “what do you think you’re doing?”
“Standing guard, obviously.”
“You probably have a concussion.”
“And?”
“Sit down, for fuck’s sake.”
Vi moved to lie down next to her, the springs in the mattress digging into her side as she let a breath out. When she closed her eyes, all she could see was the purple shimmer in Powder’s eyes, the bullets as they rained around the dinner table. She sighed and looked at the ceiling, taking off her jacket and putting it under her head as a makeshift pillow.
“Did you do these yourself?” Caitlyn’s fingertips reached to trace the outline of her arm tattoos, softly moving up her bicep, she was leaning in closer to her, as if trying to catch a good look of the swirls of ink.
“Most of them, yeah,” she replied, ignoring the chill that went up her spine when Caitlyn was so close. It felt too good, too familiar and they simply weren’t there yet.
Caitlyn kept her touch light and feathery, a hint of something else lurking beneath the surface. It reminded her how she felt the first time they laid on a bed like this: confused, fragile, overwhelmed. This time, the confusion has been replaced with grief, she felt as if she’d break if pressed too hard in the wrong direction.
Vi looked at Caitlyn’s still face and wondered what she was thinking. Piltover was on the verge of civil war. This was the city she grew up in, the city she swore to protect, and she was spending the night with a bottom-dweller, wrapped in the embrace of darkness and the glow of a neon sign from a building down the street, its purple light bathing her skin in an eerie shade that resembled shimmer. She must definitely feel conflicted about her position in this mess, a personal responsibility that she could not avoid much longer.
“Did it hurt?” she asked in a hushed tone, her fingertips still moving upwards, slowly, maddeningly.
“It stung, sure. But it’s not terrible,” Vi’s voice was low to match hers. There was something about the way Caitlyn’s eyes did not leave her skin that made the moment stretch into infinity, the tic-toc of the old-fashioned clock on the wall as far away as Caitlyn’s home on the other side of Piltover.
When Caitlyn’s hand reached her shoulder, sliding under her thin cotton t-shirt, she shuddered.
“If you’re cold, why won’t you put on your jacket?”
“I’m fine,” Vi said instead, not wanting to put into words what was happening inside her head.
Caitlyn drew her hand away and Vi immediately missed it. She shook her head and lied down, facing Vi.
“You know, I thought this was just another case of corruption. Someone accepting bribes to smuggle illegal Noxian goods into the city,” she said, moving one of her arms under her head. Vi’s mind immediately went back to that time in her bed. She thought Caitlyn couldn’t look more beautiful than when she was lying across her, serious and understanding as Vi talked about her lost sister, but now, under the fading purple light in a dirty room in the outskirts of Piltover, a bruise blossoming on her cheek and a badly bandaged arm under her head, there was something so stunning, so true about her that her heart skipped a beat.
“I’m sorry,” Vi mumbled.
This was all her fault. If Caitlyn suffered because of it, she would never forgive herself.
“Shut up,” Vi arched her eyebrow in question. “Did you put her up to it? Did you fire that damn rocket launcher?” When Vi didn’t say anything, Caitlyn continued. “I’m sure there’s a brain behind that pretty face, use it.”
Vi’s smile was small but it felt like the only genuine thing in her life. Her brain could only think of one thing and it didn’t seem appropriate to bring it up now. She wanted though. She wanted to bring it up so badly. “Maybe I like it when you do the thinking.”
“Well, I think nothing good comes out of a guilt trip.”
They stay silent for a while, looking at each other in the dim light of the room.
“I wish we had met somewhere else. Some other time,” Vi confessed, a muted whisper that barely felt real.
The corner of Caitlyn’s mouth twitched upwards. “I think we met at exactly the right time.”
Her hand touched the side of Vi’s face, as lightly as she traced her tattoos just a moment ago. Vi took it and brought it to her lips, kissing her knuckles softly.
“I would’ve taken you on a proper date, dressed up and everything. Tried to charm you with my sunny personality,” that got a short laugh from her, the corner of her eyes crinkling in amusement. “I’d buy you some Cavernberry whiskey shots. Maybe a walk around the pier? Is it still romantic to walk next to the sunk vessels of yesteryear?”
“It’s never been romantic,” she said, but her eyes looked like she wouldn’t mind a quiet walk down the coast. A change of scenery, perhaps.
“Then we’d catch a play in one of those fancy theatres topside, so we can hold hands through it and kiss in the intermission.”
“Only during the intermission?”
“Well, maybe I’d try to steal a kiss when I dropped you home. But it’d have to be quick, I wouldn’t want your mom shooting me before the second date.”
Caitlyn smiled, shaking her head. Vi’s heart clenched inside her ribcage as her eyes followed the curve of her lips. She’d burn kingdoms to see that smile again.
“I wouldn’t mind if you stole a kiss now,” Caitlyn’s voice was small and tired, but when Vi looked at her bright blue eyes, she saw her own longing reflected in them.
Vi kissed her hand again, one knuckle at a time, shifting her body closer. She hesitated a couple of inches from her mouth, unsure if Caitlyn really said it or if her mind was playing tricks on her. Caitlyn, however, didn’t, pressing her lips against Vi’s tentatively.
The soft press of her lips didn’t last enough and Vi reacted quickly, letting go of her hand to catch her face and bring it closer again.
Vi had thought there was only one way out of this mess, with a bullet to her head when she failed to stop the destruction brought upon Piltover by her sister. Now, with Caitlyn’s lips against hers, the sweet taste of her mouth on the tip of her tongue, the warmth of her skin under her hands, she thought that maybe, just maybe, there was still another way.
When they broke apart to breathe, Vi pressed her forehead to Caitlyn’s and sighed contentedly.
Tomorrow would be another day.