Strays
There's a value in routine, in stability.
The sun rises in the east every morning and Caitlyn rises with it. She opens her eyes as the light touches her face and she gets out of bed without the aid of the hextech alarm she'd set the night before, just in case. Always – just in case.
She's a morning shower person.
She stands in the hot water and the steam and she thinks about her coming day. She thinks about her press appearance with Jayce, her meeting with Heimerdinger to discuss an equipment requisition, her phone call to the mayor's office about getting funding for that equipment. She thinks about patrol assignments and she thinks about a few well-deserved promotions and she thinks about the cupcake Vi will sneak onto her desk when she's not looking sometime in the late morning when the criminal-turned-hero shuffles into the station well after everyone else and still yawning.
Caitlyn thinks about her coming day and she smiles.
She steps out of the shower, she dries herself, dries her hair, and puts on her uniform. She closes every brass buckle on her boots with a satisfying 'click,' grabs her briefcase and hat from near her front door, and heads to work.
There's a value in routine, in stability, and life is good.
It's late fall, but not so late that it's cold. It's crisp. The ornamental trees that line Piltover's larger boulevards are shedding their leaves for the coming winter, covering brick walkways in a glory of orange and gold. A few wisps of white cloud do nothing to obscure the clear azure sky above.
As she does every morning, Caitlyn stops at a corner coffeeshop on her way to the station. The barista is a young woman, Vi's age, maybe. She has Caitlyn's order – latte, soy milk, please – memorized. It's been clear for a while that the barista is more than a little bit attracted to Caitlyn, but Caitlyn doesn't know if she should bring it up, much less how, so she doesn't. It's awkward – Caitlyn's not interested - but not so awkward that she'll alter her routine to avoid it.
It's only two blocks from the coffeeshop to the station and Caitlyn nearly always arrives three minutes before nine. She smiles graciously at the clerks who arrive at eight and she greets the few officers who get to work before she does and she goes to her office to review her schedule and enjoy her latte. Her schedule is rarely substantially different from the one she charts in her head during her shower, but double checking such things never hurt anyone.
Being the Sheriff is something that Caitlyn isn't sure she'll ever quite become accustomed to, even with all her routine. More than once she's had to convince herself that she can do more good running the Piltover Sheriff's Department than she can pounding the pavement. Her field skills are, in her opinion and by the accounts of others, far and above anyone else in the department. She could individually solve more crimes than any other detective in her employ, and that is why she sits in her office reading their reports rather than walking the streets and knocking on doors. She orders and she advises and she teaches because someday she'll have a department full of officers of her caliber or near to it.
Fieldwork is more engaging than paperwork, but Caitlyn is playing the long game.
Caitlyn takes her phone call with the mayor at ten sharp and it lasts forty-two minutes. There's resistance to increasing funding for her department, there always is, but with the mayor's support, Caitlyn's father's clout in the legislature, and her own personal celebrity, there's a good chance it will work out.
Caitlyn's qualifications for her job go beyond just competence and deductive genius.
When Caitlyn hangs up the phone, she does so with a smile. She's not fond of long phone calls, but she does love when they yield results, especially when it's on account of her own effort.
She stands up from her desk, stretches, and heads for the bathroom.
The bathroom in the station is in need of a new coat of paint but is kept quite clean by a dedicated janitorial staff and a group of conscientious employees. Or, at least, the women's bathroom is like that. There's a women's bathroom and a men's bathroom and Caitlyn has never had occasion to look inside the men's room. She assumes though that it's almost as clean as the women's bathroom – almost, because men.
Caitlyn does her business, washes her hands, and goes back to her office.
On her way back, she passes the station break room. Even from the hallway she can smell stale coffee – the machine in the break room, according to some of her officers, tends to act up. The smell makes her glad for her morning latte from down the street. Maybe she should ask the mayor's office for a new coffee machine? Probably not. It would be yet another uphill budget battle and it wouldn't add anything to the department's mission anyway.
The first surprise of Caitlyn's day is Vi.
Every morning, Vi leaves a cupcake on Caitlyn's desk, but it's a rare occasion for Caitlyn to catch the younger woman in the act.
Vi checks that the coast is clear only once and so she doesn't notice that Caitlyn has rounded the corner of the hallway just in time to see her sneak into the office.
The smile that's been recurring on Caitlyn's face all morning comes back. She walks down the hallway, quietly, avoiding the middle of the corridor where the floorboards creak.
When Vi finishes setting the cupcake down on top of a stack of patrol reports and turns around to leave, she finds Caitlyn, arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe and blocking her way out.
The sun is shining bright through the window behind Vi and all Caitlyn can see is the golden halo around the cupcake-leaving-renegade. Even if Caitlyn can't see Vi's face well, she can read body language perfectly fine. Vi isn't sheepish about having been caught. Not in the least.
"Hi Cait," Vi says. Her voice is loud and brash, as always.
There's a reason Caitlyn never went to school for acting. There are many reasons, actually. The point being – she's not good at acting. But she gives it a try anyway. Feigning severity, Caitlyn frowns. "You're late for work, Vi. You've been late every day this week."
Vi is, perhaps, the one person in the entire world who can't see through Caitlyn's terrible bluffs. Or maybe Vi just humors her. "Aw, Cait, I have a reason! It's a good one! I promise!"
Caitlyn arches an eyebrow and waits.
Vi digs around in one of her pockets and pulls out a dingy grey phone, clearly a model from several years ago. It's a wonder it still works – Vi, being the hextech genius that she is, has probably resuscitated it a few times. Vi steps over to stand next to Caitlyn as she flicks through menus on the phone screen.
Vi smells like machine oil and there's grime under her fingernails, probably from a workshop. Even when she's not working on her gauntlets or some other useful gadget, she likes to tinker, to keep her hands busy. It's charming and quirky and it makes it clear how Vi got to be a hextech savant.
Finally, Vi lands on the screen for her phone camera's gallery. She pulls it up.
Staring up at Caitlyn from Vi's screen is a fluffy white ball of kitten.
"I'm calling her Ripper," Vi announces. "And I'm training her to pounce on my foot. She's going to be an attack cat!"
Caitlyn stares at the picture of the kitten and, through the picture, the kitten stares back. "Ripper," Caitlyn says. "You're calling her Ripper."
"Yeah!" Vi says. "And she's got extra toes – when she pounces her feet land and her toes just go like – FWUMP."
Vi demonstrates, spreading out all her fingers and dropping her phone in the process.
Caitlyn catches the phone almost as soon as Vi drops it.
She's a detective. She saw it coming.
Caitlyn hands the phone back to Vi, who takes it sheepishly. "Er, thanks Cait," she says. "But yeah – see? Perfect attack cat."
"I do see," Caitlyn says, and she's not in the least bit sarcastic. She sees quite clearly. This whole… Ripper the attack cat thing is Vi, genuinely, through and through. "Don't forget though, if you want to let Ripper freeload meals off of you, you do have a job."
"Aye aye, Sheriff, ma'am," Vi says. When she salutes, she manages not to drop her phone again.
A second surprise for Caitlyn's day. Vi is nothing if not full of surprises.
Caitlyn gives a nod in reply to Vi's salute and she steps aside, unblocking the door. Vi scampers off to do… whatever it is she does at the department.
Caitlyn initially had Vi assigned as a beat officer. With her attitude, Caitlyn assumed she'd be best suited to chasing down criminals in the streets of Piltover. Caitlyn had been right in that Vi was good at that, but wrong in that it quickly became clear that that was not in fact what Vi was best at. Vi, more than anyone else in the department, including Caitlyn, has a knack for community relations, especially in the seedier parts of the city.
Something about Vi attracts people to her. It's magnetic. When Vi works a city sector, citizens from all walks of life gravitate towards her.
While Caitlyn doesn't fully understand how Vi manages it, Vi is the face of the department that Caitlyn wants in the streets and so she gives Vi quite a bit of leeway in determining where she goes and what she does. Caitlyn isn't one to interfere in a well-functioning system. Routine. Stability. These are her values.
Also, sugar.
Caitlyn closes the door to her office and sits back down behind her massive oak desk. She drops her empty latte cup into the dustbin next to her seat and picks up the cupcake Vi left. It's a chocolate cupcake with lavender frosting and yellow sprinkles.
Caitlyn starts by licking away the frosting. It's the cleanest way to eat a cupcake, if not the fastest in the immediate sense. She calculates there are definitely time savings in not having to clean up as many crumbs. And the one time she'd walked into a meeting with frosting still on her nose…
When she finishes the cupcake, Caitlyn folds up the paper wrapper and drops it into the dustbin next to her empty cup before turning to her notes covering what she needs to bring up during her meeting with Heimerdinger.
[] [] []
Every now and then, Caitlyn finds it necessary to deviate a little from her morning routine.
When her hextech alarm goes off, it's still dark out. Caitlyn yawns, turns off the alarm, and struggles out of bed.
She washes, dresses, and stumbles out the door still rubbing sleep from her eyes.
The pet store is more than a little out of way of Caitlyn's normal route to work. She has to take a bus part of the way. She's built an extra forty-five minutes into her morning schedule just for this expedition.
Piltover is quiet as Caitlyn walks to the store. The sun is just beginning to light the horizon, warming the sky before it can itself be seen. The street lamps are only just starting to turn off for the day. The leaves on the brick walkways crunch satisfyingly under Caitlyn's booted feet.
Caitlyn did not have pets as a child, though several of her friends had. Caitlyn herself has never been particularly interested in a dog or a cat or even a fish. It has been, in her estimation, years since she's set foot in a pet store.
She'd forgotten how… incredibly wet-dog large pet stores smelled.
Caitlyn crinkles her nose and forges ahead boldly where no Sheriff has gone before.
The cat food is in the back of the store, large brightly colored plastic sacks stacked one on top of the other. The array of options is an impressive testament to Piltoverian ingenuity.
Determined to approach the problem before her rationally, Caitlyn starts with a green and blue bag that proudly announces that it's a vegan diet for cats. She finds the ingredients list and reads through it from start to finish.
The next sack of food is, apparently, formulated specifically for older cats and the picture of Ripper that Vi showed Caitlyn the day before was definitely of a kitten so Caitlyn skips ahead.
The red and orange cat food is as proud to be all-meat as the green and blue food was proud to be all-vegan.
Out of the corner of her eye, Caitlyn sees stacks and stacks of canned food down the adjacent aisle. She puts down the red and orange bag and heads to the cans. Does Ripper the Attack Cat have teeth yet? Maybe wet food instead of dry?
By the time Caitlyn leaves the store with several bags of canned kitten food, it's become quite clear that forty-five minutes was not enough.
She doesn't stop for a latte and gets to work ten minutes late even so.
The clerks are surprised. The officers who've never gotten to work early enough to see their boss arrive and the officers she normally greets individually are ignored in her haste to get to her office and get on with her day.
It occurs to her that she wishes the coffee machine in the breakroom could be trusted.
Today, instead of one long call with the mayor, Caitlyn makes several short calls with various professors at the University. Heimerdinger is confident his are the best schematics, and they normally are, but Caitlyn wants to field proposals from other prominent technicians, just in case.
Through it all, she can't stop thinking about the kitten food in the plastic bags under her desk.
When she finishes her calls she arranges the cans into a tidy pyramid before she heads to the bathroom. She washes her hands three times – but only dries them once because water is cheap but paper towels are always running low in a department that has its own workshop and a ban on getting machine grease on paperwork.
The kitten food is gone, replaced with a vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting, when Caitlyn gets back to her office.
She closes her door, sits down, and thinks that, while she didn't get a latte that morning, sugar is surely just as good as caffeine.
The day passes just as every other day. Days, after all, have a routine. Caitlyn leaves the station having not seen Vi at all – a not uncommon occurrence.
That night, Caitlyn is kept awake by one terrible thought though – Vi, being Vi, has no doubt started making cat toys out of metal wires and gears. These things are almost certainly a choking hazard. Ripper the Attack Cat deserves better.
Caitlyn rolls over in bed and sets her hextech alarm clock an hour earlier than she'd had it.
[] [] []
As it turns out, there's more variety among cat toys than there is among cat food brands.
Caitlyn ends up with five different toys and has to skip her latte for a second day in a row.
And, again, she doesn't see Vi, but she's confident that the deviation from her routine was… what's that word Vi likes to use? Worth?
For the second night in a row though, Caitlyn can't sleep.
Cats like catnip. Do kittens like catnip? Is catnip good for felines?
She sets her alarm clock and gives up on her latte.
[] [] []
When Caitlyn gets back from the bathroom, Vi is sitting on her desk, swinging her legs back and forth. Her hands, always moving, are turning the catnip packet this way and that.
Caitlyn frowns and it's not a bluff – there is absolutely no justification possible for Vi's bottom being all over Caitlyn's paperwork.
For once, Vi doesn't seem to see Caitlyn's displeasure. "Cait!" she greets cheerfully.
"Off," Caitlyn says, "The desk."
In a scene straight from Caitlyn's nightmares, Vi slides off the desk, taking a stack of reports with her. She lands on the floor amidst a flurry of paper.
Caitlyn sighs. Loudly.
"Oh, uh, sorry about that," Vi says. She immediately drops down and starts sweeping up the reports, getting them into a haphazard stack that she dumps on Caitlyn's desk. The reports are likely now hopelessly out of order. "Right," Vi says, as if she has actually accomplished setting everything to rights. "So, uh, I had a question."
Caitlyn's annoyance is already ebbing. Vi is just too… earnest. Vi is too earnest to stay annoyed very long. "Yes?" Caitlyn asks.
"WouldyouliketomeetRipper?"
It takes Caitlyn a moment to parse out what exactly Vi has just said. When she finally does, she finds herself starting to smile. Just a little bit. "Will she attack my foot?" Caitlyn asks dryly.
"Hell yeah!" Vi says, punching the air. "I'm training her good!" She pauses, then, "That is, ah, Ripper only attacks feet when you bait her. She won't just attack your foot if you don't want her to. I think."
"I see," Caitlyn says. This time, she's not really sure if she sees anything. She's not entirely clear on what being an attack cat actually entails and for the first time it occurs to her that it might be sensible to be scared to find out. But. Forward. Caitlyn considers her schedule. "Do you have plans after work today?"
"Yes," Vi says.
"Tomorrow then?" Caitlyn asks.
"No," Vi says hastily.
Caitlyn mentally fumbles. Vi is that busy? She realizes belatedly she's not too clear on what Vi does outside of work. "Two days from now?"
Vi's brow furrows. "I mean, yes I have plans tonight. My plan tonight is introducing you to Ripper. And no to tomorrow because tonight."
Caitlyn smiles and nods because she's learned that this is sometimes the best way to communicate with Vi. "Come to my office at six then?" she suggests.
"Sure thing Sheriff Caitlyn ma'am," Vi says, saluting.
Caitlyn gives Vi a mock-stern look. "Get to work, officer."
"I'm on it!" Vi declares as she dodges around Caitlyn and leaves the office. Just past the door, she turns a little bit and gives Caitlyn a goodbye wave.
Caitlyn smiles and closes the door firmly.
The cupcake today is red velvet and it is delicious.
For the rest of the day, Caitlyn is distracted from her work by thoughts of… not work. It's terribly disruptive to her routine.
What's also disruptive to her routine, and what she didn't account for when she made plans with Vi, was skipping dinner in order to visit Ripper the Attack Cat. When six comes around, she's hungry. She imagines Vi must be too. It is not a tenable situation. Plans must be altered.
"Would you like to stop for dinner on the way there?" Caitlyn asks.
Vi is at the door of her office, already wearing a jacket against the cooling weather outside. At the mention of dinner, Vi glances down to her stomach as if she heard it say something, then she looks away and down.
"My treat," Caitlyn says.
Vi looks up again. She's not quite happy but not upset either. "Uh, sure," she says.
Caitlyn puts on her own jacket, purple felt with yellow-gold trim, and leads them out of the station. She takes them to an Ionian place down the street. She's heard it's a favorite among the officers, but she herself has only been a handful of times. It is the kind of place her parents never patronized when she was a child and the heaviness of the food is an acquired taste.
Caitlyn gets a plate of fried rice and Vi goes for sesame chicken.
Caitlyn eats slowly, picking at her food. Vi devours her dinner in what must be record time and immediately begins fiddling with her disposable chopsticks, getting the wood where she broke them apart to line back up again.
To keep Vi from becoming too bored, Caitlyn ventures into conversation. "Where do you get the cupcakes from?"
Vi doesn't stop playing with her chopsticks, but she does light up at the chance to tell a story.
The story she tells – Caitlyn isn't sure how much of it is the truth and how much of it is embellishment. The gist of it though is that Vi saved the owner of a small bakery from a gang of thugs and now she gets free baked goods every morning on her way to work. There may or may not have been a giant robot involved. Caitlyn likes to think that she would have heard something at the station if there had actually been a giant robot, but in Piltover one never knew.
In any case, it explains quite a bit. How Vi can afford daily cupcakes when she balks at dinner, for one. Where does Vi's salary go? Caitlyn hopes she pays all her officers a living wage and she doesn't think Vi does any drugs. Maybe her hextech hobby?
"What about Ripper?" Caitlyn asks. "Where did the kitten come from?"
Vi has moved on from chopsticks to the paper wrapper her straw came in. She's folding it in half, repeatedly, then unfolding it accordion-like. "Ripper just showed up one day," Vi says. "Looking all adorable and fluffy. Couldn't say no to a face like that."
"I see," Caitlyn says. She's thinking about how well Vi does with community work and how it's so very Vi to be unable to say no to a stray kitten. Vi herself, is something of a kitten. After all, since meeting her, Caitlyn herself had had a terrible time denying Vi anything.
Caitlyn finishes dinner and together they throw away their trash and stack their dirty dishes up in the bin near the door.
It's dark outside – the days are ending earlier of late – and it's gotten chilly. Caitlyn wraps her purple jacket close around her and they set out with Vi in the lead.
Caitlyn has never been to Vi's home before. From the station, they take a bus, then a transfer. Caitlyn is glad she knows the city like the back of her hand, otherwise she might have been worried about navigating her way home later.
The part of the city that Vi lives in is… It is not actually a slum because Caitlyn has seen housing stock maps in Piltover and Vi's neighborhood is just outside the lines of the slum, not in it. Vi's neighborhood is a block of tenement buildings. Shabby tenement buildings. But, then, shabbiness is, in Caitlyn's mind, what differentiated tenements from apartments.
Caitlyn has seen Vi sheepish before. She's had to catch Vi's phone more than once.
But the Vi pointing at the front door of her building is not the Vi who accidentally drops her phone when she gets excited. "It's nicer than it looks," Vi says, tone light, shoulders hunched.
There's really nothing that Caitlyn can think of to say in reply. The white paint on the building door is peeling so badly she can see that the cheap wood underneath is water damaged. Everything she can think of, no matter how genuinely she might say it, could be taken for sarcasm. She settles on, "It's not bad at all."
Vi lives on the fourth floor and, as they climb up the narrow stairwell inside the building, Caitlyn fears that if there is ever a fire, a good portion of the residents will die. The building cannot possibly be up to code. But she doesn't comment on it. She started out as detective working on the streets. She's seen worse than this. She has never, however, been quite so disturbed that someone she knows lives in such a place.
Vi's front door looks like all the other doors on the hallway. It's a faded olive green with a doorlock and a deadbolt. Vi unlocks both before stepping into the apartment and flicking on the lights.
Given the state of the building and the neighborhood, Caitlyn, for all that she thought well of Vi, expects the apartment to be a disaster of some sort. It is not. It is nearly empty save for a bed and a cluttered workbench. A portable stove near the bed is all the kitchen the apartment has. A pair of gauntlets, slightly smaller than the ones Vi keeps at the station, sit in a corner at the far end of the room. There's a closet, and that's probably where Vi keeps her clothes and, hopefully, food.
"Mrow!"
"Ripper!" Vi bends down and picks up a large white furball. "Hey, Cait, close the door so she doesn't make a run for it."
Obligingly, Caitlyn closes the door. As she closes it, she notices a food bowl and a water bowl and a litterbox and a stack of the kitten food she bought a few days before. Her eyes are lingering on the kitten food when suddenly there is a real live kitten in her face.
Startled, Caitlyn almost trips backwards.
Vi has taken it upon herself to shove Ripper the Attack Cat into Caitlyn's face.
Compared to the picture of a few days prior, Ripper looks a lot bigger in person. Kittens grow fast, or so Caitlyn has come to understand after talking to several pet store workers.
"Isn't she vicious?" Vi asked, as if she's totally oblivious to the fact that Ripper the Attack Cat is the cutest ball of fluff Caitlyn has ever laid eyes on. Vi pulls the kitten away from Caitlyn's face and sets it down. "And watch this!"
Once the kitten has safely landed, Vi sticks out her booted foot. "Get it, Ripper!"
Just like a good attack cat, Ripper jumps on it, landing flat on top. Vi picks up her foot and the kitten goes along for the ride.
Vi sets Ripper back down and the kitten gets off her foot and toddles over to Caitlyn. Ripper sniffs at Caitlyn's feet, tail held high.
"Quite the attack cat," Caitlyn says.
"You betcha," Vi says. "Be right back." Vi heads across the room to the closet.
On a whim, Caitlyn takes off her tall hat and sets it on the ground. Ripper notices immediately. It takes her no time at all to trot into the hat and make herself at home. By the time Vi comes back with the cat toys Caitlyn bought a couple days prior, Ripper looks quite cozy.
Caitlyn stands somewhat stiffly, hands in her pockets, as Vi bends down on the floor and wags a rubber mouse in front of the hat before slowly pulling it back across the beige carpet on the floor. She does this several times before Ripper comes lunging out of the hat, many-toed-paws extended to land on top of the mouse.
Vi looks up, grinning. "You wanna try?"
[] [] []
Caitlyn wakes up to her alarm clock. The sun is up. She stayed out all night playing with Ripper the Attack Cat and now she has overslept.
Caitlyn rushes through her morning routine and skips the latte on the way to work.
She'll be getting a cupcake later anyway.
When the cupcake appears on her desk, it's vanilla with white frosting and red and blue sprinkles.
Caitlyn doesn't see Vi all day, nor does she see Vi the next day or the day after that, though the cupcakes continue to arrive on her desk. Before long, she finds herself falling back into her routine.
It is unsettling how… disappointing she finds it.
After a week of not seeing Vi, Caitlyn rearranges a few things on her schedule and makes time to go out to Vi's desk.
The officer is absent from her desk and, well, Caitlyn is a detective and it's almost – no, no almost, it is – embarrassing that she actually thought Vi of all people would be sitting around at a desk all day.
Caitlyn grabs a pen and a sticky note, writes "See me – Caitlyn" and leaves the note square and center on Vi's desk.
It takes three more days for Vi to appear.
"Most people respond to orders faster," Caitlyn remarks. She can hear herself speak and she recognizes that she sounds annoyed. She's more relieved that Vi has finally reappeared than annoyed, but it's rather too late to try to correct herself now.
"Sorry," Vi says. She avoids eye contact. "I, uh, don't actually sit at my desk. Ever. One of the bros told me about the note."
"What are you doing tonight?" Caitlyn asks.
"I, ah, nothing?" Vi answers.
"I'd like to see how Ripper's attack cat training is progressing," Caitlyn says with an entirely straight face that she's rather proud of.
"Oh," Vi says. In what feels like slow motion, her expression changes from shock to excitement. "Yeah, sure!"
It's nice to see that Caitlyn can surprise Vi sometimes instead of it always being the other way around.
That evening, they go to the Ionian place again and Caitlyn pays again. Vi orders General Yi's chicken and then performs a vanishing act on it.
Caitlyn, who normally thinks of herself as unflappable, finds the thought of Vi doing nothing but watch her eat rather… She's not sure the best word for it. In any case, she endeavors to get Vi talking.
By the end of dinner, she's learned that Vi is a big fan of glazed chocolate donuts, hates the smell of whatever brand of cleaner the janitors use at the station, and thinks that brunettes are quite sexy. On the last one, Vi says it, then immediately grabs her glass of water and chugs as if her life depends on it.
Caitlyn raises an eyebrow and files that tidbit, along with everything else, away for future reference.
When they get to Vi's apartment, Caitlyn finds that Ripper the Attack Cat has grown and now has claws. She still thinks Ripper is adorable and, well, she and Vi always intended for Ripper to be an attack cat so she doesn't blame the scamp for leaving scratches in her boots that will need to be buffed out later.
It's an enjoyable night and when Caitlyn gets home she sets her alarm clock to wake her up extra, extra early.
[] [] []
The next day, Caitlyn delicately sniffs when she enters the bathroom at the station.
She decides she doesn't know what Vi was talking about – there is nothing in the least bit offensive about the brand of cleaner the janitors are using. The bathroom smells vaguely of citrus and there is nothing wrong with citrus.
She rushes through washing and drying her hands and gets back to her office in time to see Vi leaving with a chocolate glazed donut sticking half out of her mouth and a stack of canned cat food cradled in her arms. Vi waves at her, managing not to upset the cans, but doesn't stay to talk. It's probably for the best. She did have a donut stuffed in her mouth.
[] [] []
Caitlyn waits another week and this time when she leaves a note, she leaves it on her desk, stuck partly to the chocolate glazed donut, instead of on Vi's.
The next day, Vi's waiting for her in her office. She's in Caitlyn's chair which is, honestly, not as bad as on top of Caitlyn's paperwork-strewn desk.
"Hi Cait," Vi says.
Caitlyn very briefly considers greeting Vi as well, but she's anxious and anxiety is best quelled with action. "I don't have time to go see Ripper, but would you like to get dinner with me tonight? Not Ionian?"
Vi's eyes narrow, slightly.
"I have a reservation for two at Kench's Kitchen downtown," Caitlyn says, laying all her cards on the table. Hopefully.
Vi's answer is measured and guarded and that is not what Caitlyn expected or wanted. "Kench's Kitchen is really fancy," Vi says.
Caitlyn sees the problem immediately and attempts to backpeddle. "It can be somewhere else," she suggests. "Is there somewhere you like?"
A silence descends and Caitlyn swears she can hear her own heartbeat. She has made a severe misstep. She made an assumption. She... really should have known better.
After what must have been several eternities, Vi finally says, "There's another place, edge of downtown… It looks nice. I've been wanting to go for a while."
"Of course," Caitlyn says, words coming incredibly fast on account of her relief. "Where is it? I can-
"I'll handle it," Vi cuts in.
Caitlyn nods. She knows better than to argue this. "See you at six then?"
"Right on, captain," Vi answers. She sounds hesitant, still, but upbeat. A good sign, all things considered.
That night, Caitlyn is more than a little nervous when she realizes that Vi has chosen a Shuriman restaurant. She's pleasantly surprised to find that the food, despite being exotic, is quite good. Vi eats quickly, but not as quickly as she normally does because Caitlyn goes out of her way to get Vi talking and keep her talking.
As a detective plying her skills in her private life, Caitlyn knows very well that it might be underhanded to intentionally so dominate the direction of the conversation, but she finds herself wanting, needing, to know more about Vi. She's made several mistakes, small ones, in the past few weeks concerning Vi and she very much does not wish to make more.
There are some things that Vi is happy to talk on and on about. Hextech. Ripper. What she thinks the neighbors upstairs are up to when the ceiling vibrates so much dust comes down. The last batch of thugs she brought into the station for lockup.
And there are some things that Vi clams up about and that Caitlyn knows better than to press her on. Family. Childhood. Anything more than superficially personal.
Caitlyn finds it both frustrating and intriguing. Vi is a mystery to be solved. Vi is a challenge.
When dinner meanders towards a natural end, Vi reaches for the check. Caitlyn doesn't stop her. Vi is a mystery, but not a complete mystery.
All in all, Caitlyn judges dinner to have been a success.
Unexpectedly though, she finds herself regretting not ending the night at Vi's apartment playing with their cat. Ripper is astonishingly good at purring.
[] [] []
The sun rises, Caitlyn rises, Caitlyn goes to work.
Business as usual.
Except...
Throughout Caitlyn's workday, she's plagued by the question – what now?
The cupcake of the day is chocolate with white frosting and white sprinkles.
It's a truly disruptive thought, nagging at her when she tries to get things done, splitting her focus constantly and disrupting her routine.
She feels as though she needs to do something, to be proactive, to continue to engage. She worries that if she fails to do so… well, suffice to say, she worries.
By the end of the day, Caitlyn decides that she has lost far too much productivity and stands to lose entirely too much more if she doesn't come up with a plan.
So she does.
[] [] []
Caitlyn walks to the bathroom, but instead of going in, turns around and walks back to her office.
Vi's not there.
Caitlyn blinks. This is not routine.
She turns around and she goes to the bathroom, does her business, washes and dries her hands, and goes back to her office.
There is a chocolate glazed donut on her desk and no cupcake.
Caitlyn sits down, then gets back up.
She goes to the bathroom again.
She comes back again.
Still no cupcake.
Caitlyn checks her schedule. There's nothing pressing.
She ventures out into the rest of the station. She checks the breakroom. She checks Vi's desk. She asks the clerks out front if they've seen Vi – no, they haven't. Vi hasn't come in.
Caitlyn borrows one of the phones at the front desk to call Vi. No answer. She leaves a message.
Caitlyn instructs the clerks to alert her immediately when Vi arrives and then she goes back to her office.
She then proceeds to do the impossible – she gets even less work done than she did the day before.
At six sharp, still with no sign of Vi, Caitlyn puts on her thick winter coat and heads to the bus.
It's her first time going to Vi's apartment alone and, despite being the Sheriff of Piltover, at night in the dark alone on the bus she feels on edge. But as long as she's moving, as long as she's doing something, she feels she can keep the thoughts prowling the fringes of her mind at bay.
The front door of Vi's tenement isn't locked. Vi's door is though, and when Caitlyn knocks, no one answers. Caitlyn presses an ear to the door. She hears nothing.
"Ripper?" Caitlyn calls.
Still nothing. But then, it's a thick door.
Well then.
It has been a while since Caitlyn went out into the field but, well, she likes to think she's still sharp and on her game. From an inner pocket of her coat, Caitlyn produces a set of lockpicks and sets to work.
Vi's locks prove far more secure than anything Caitlyn has ever faced in a fire-code-violating tenement before. Vi probably built them herself.
Several times Vi's neighbors pass by Caitlyn but none of them say anything about how there's a strange woman clearly breaking into their neighbor's apartment.
It's one of those buildings.
When Caitlyn finally gets into the apartment, there's no one there. No Vi. No Ripper.
Caitlyn closes the door behind her, listens for the thunk of the tumblers in the door lock resetting, and examines the room. She tries to ignore the way her heart is pounding and the heavy fear sitting in her gut. It's not useful for her investigation.
The apartment looks just as it should – almost empty except for Vi's larger belongings and her workbench. Vi's gauntlets are still in their corner, and that tells Caitlyn quite a lot.
There's an odd smell in the air – the apartment smells like Vi, machine oil and a particular brand of industrial cleaner that Caitlyn can never quite place, but it also smells like something… foul.
Caitlyn inhales deeply and manages not to cringe. Yes, it's definitely foul. She follows her nose to the puddle of vomit under the workbench, too small to be from Vi.
Her lips press into a tight line and her brow furrows.
She's alone in Vi's empty apartment, unsure where Vi went, unable to do anything. And their cat. Her cat…
Panic is a black thing, a heavy thing, a thing that swallows up the world in a physical way.
But. She's Caitlyn, Piltover's best detective.
She could, she thinks, probably track Vi down if she set her mind to it. She could check every veterinary clinic in the area – but were there any veterinary clinics in the area? It did not seem like the sort of neighborhood to provide that particular service. And would Vi have gone to one in this area of the city?
She could track Vi down, but it would take time, more time, likely, than just… waiting.
Caitlyn is nothing if not a rational actor.
Caitlyn finds a roll of paper towels near Vi's workbench and she cleans up the floor as best she can. While she's at it, she finds Vi's phone, carelessly left on the workbench. That explains why Vi didn't pick up or return Caitlyn's call. She dumps the soiled paper towels into the trash and uses a bottle of Vi's cleaner to wash her hands.
On a whim, she sniffs her now-clean hands.
They smell a bit like Vi, but not quite.
Caitlyn sits down on Vi's bed to wait.
She wills herself very hard not to think about what must be wrong that Vi and Ripper have been gone for the entire day and now well into the night.
It doesn't work.
One by one, possibilities play through her head on repeat, every iteration grimmer than the last.
Eventually, Caitlyn falls asleep, alone in Vi's bed.
[] [] []
When the sun lights Vi's apartment and Caitlyn wakes, well, it would be a vast understatement to say that her routine has been disrupted.
She's still alone in the apartment and there's no sign that Vi and Ripper returned at any point in the night.
Caitlyn gathers herself up and hurries off to work, pausing only long enough to make sure that Vi's door locked behind her.
She does not stop for a latte.
When Caitlyn gets to the station, not only is she late but she doesn't beeline for her office. She passes the clerks and then stops on the floor of the station. She picks out three officers she knows are competent but also too lazy to have been working on anything important.
Her instructions are straightforward but she can see that the officers think they're odd. Well, that's too bad for them, she's the Sheriff and they're her employees. "Call every veterinary clinic in the city," she says. "Ask if they've seen Vi and a small white kitten."
She does not tell them that the kitten's name is Ripper the Attack Cat. It's not relevant information.
It's noon when one of the officers knocks on the door to Caitlyn's office.
She's gotten nothing productive done at all.
He's a big fellow who spends more time at a desk than on the streets. "Ma'am?" he says.
Caitlyn sets her pen down with a little too much force and looks up with a little too much speed. "Yes?"
"The clinic at 4th and W says Vi's sleeping in their lobby," the officer says.
"Good work," Caitlyn says automatically. She's already looking at her schedule. It's all important, of course, but it's less important. And it's not like she'd have gotten anything done elsewise…
Caitlyn stands up and grabs her coat and strides out towards the front door of the station.
Sometimes it's good to be the Sheriff.
Instead of trying to figure out the buses, Caitlyn hails a taxi.
The taxi driver has a Zaunite accent and part of Caitlyn wonders if he's an illegal immigrant. It doesn't really matter to her though because, possibly on account of coming from Zaun, he's a ruthlessly good driver and he gets her to the clinic in no time at all. She steps out of the red and black hextech vehicle with a slight case of motion sickness from the last series of turns he took.
She makes sure to give him a very generous tip.
The clinic is not in Vi's neighborhood and is not as desperate as Vi's neighborhood. It's not the kind of place that Caitlyn's classmates ever would have taken their pets, but, well, very few people could afford that kind of place. As the front door slides open in front of her and Caitlyn quickly takes in the white walls and white tile floor and reception desk, she finds that she is satisfied that this facility is good enough for her cat.
It is also, she supposes, good enough for Vi, even if the low-backed lobby chairs look like terribly uncomfortable places to sleep.
Caitlyn nods a greeting to the receptionist and walks straight to where Vi is collapsed in a chair. As she approaches, Vi stirs, apparently not actually fully asleep.
"Cait?"
Caitlyn is determined to handle the situation with care. Now is not the time for a mistake. She pushes back any annoyance that lingers over having not been informed about the situation and she pushes back the vast majority of her anxiety about their attack cat. "How are you, Vi? How is Ripper?"
Vi mutters an explicative. "Detectives…" She doesn't move to sit up from her odd curled-up-slouch.
Caitlyn sits down in the seat next to Vi. It's a little bit awkward, but she twists around so that she can face the co-parent of her cat.
And then, as she did the night before, she waits.
Caitlyn is determined, absolutely determined, not to make a mistake.
"I'm fine," Vi finally says. "Don't know about Ripper. Still waiting. She…"
Caitlyn waits.
Vi unfolds herself, sits up, then slouches forward to rest her head in her hands. "Ate something off my workbench," she murmurs. "They had to get it out."
Well.
Caitlyn saw it coming, weeks ago, but this isn't the sort of thing she wanted to be right about.
Caitlyn can read in Vi's posture exactly what she's feeling, but that doesn't give a terribly large amount of guidance for what Caitlyn should do.
No mistakes.
Caitlyn consults her gut.
Her gut is often wrong, but, then, logic can be wrong too.
Caitlyn touches Vi on the shoulder first, gauging. Vi doesn't pull away. It's as much indication of permission as Caitlyn suspects Vi will give, so she takes it. She goes ahead and wraps her arm around Vi in a side-hug.
Vi doesn't pull away.
Caitlyn notes that Vi is shaking, but she doesn't remark on it.
Not the time, not the place.
They sit that way for a while.
Eventually, Vi stops shaking. She leans into Caitlyn and rests. Maybe she sleeps – but Caitlyn can't be sure and she's not going to ask.
Caitlyn isn't sure how much time passes. She thinks she remembers seeing a clock when she came into the clinic, but to turn and look for it would be to disturb Vi and she's not willing to do that.
It's a doctor with a clipboard who disturbs Vi, disturb them both, really, because Caitlyn had finally managed to get herself in small increments into a comfortable position.
As the doctor approaches, Caitlyn fixes him with a stare that she hopes conveys that if he doesn't have good news, he needs to back away, now.
"Miss Vi?" he asks. He's a tall, skinny man with curly blond hair.
"Yeah?" Vi answers.
The doctor offers Vi the clipboard. "There was more than one foreign metal object in your cat's stomach and our charges have increased accordingly."
Before Vi can reach for the clipboard, Caitlyn snatches it away. "I will take care of that," she says. She glares at the doctor. "And I expect that you have good news for us."
The doctor does a doubletake. "Sheriff Caitlyn?"
Caitlyn says nothing. She knows this routine.
The doctor grabs the clipboard back. "Ah, we can settle the bill when, ah…" he looks down at the clipboard, "Ripper is released. If you're handling this, we don't need anything upfront."
"So Ripper will be released?" Caitlyn asks. She arches an eyebrow, asking the silent question.
"Yes, of course," the doctor says. "We'll probably hold her for several days just to monitor her condition though. She'll definitely make it. We'll make sure she makes it."
"Good," Caitlyn says. She says it with the air of finality she learned from listening to her parents speak to the help and it sends the doctor on his way.
"You're scary when you do that, you know that, right Cait?" Vi says.
She is, to Caitlyn's pleasure, much improved. There's a quiver in her voice, but that's not inconsistent with a shift in mood for the better. Relief is as strong an emotion as any of them.
"Of course I know," Caitlyn says. "It's rather the point."
Vi chuckles. It's quiet and tired, but it's definitely a little bit of a laugh.
Caitlyn counts it as a win.
"Uhm, Cait," Vi starts. "Thank you for, uh… handling that. They've been really… and the bill…"
Caitlyn wraps her arm back around Vi and hugs her tightly. "Think nothing of it," she says.
Vi squirms.
Oh. Mistake. Well, Caitlyn thinks, this is a better time to make a mistake than before. So how does she recover? "I owed you," she says. "For breaking into your apartment yesterday."
That. That gets a real laugh.
"Detectives," Vi says and she says it it's a swear word. "Damn, Cupcake."
Both of Caitlyn's eyebrows shoot up and it's a pity Vi's nestled in a hug because that means the effect is lost. "Cupcake?"
"Uh," Vi says. "Er," she tries. "Cait. Damn. Cait."
"I don't mind," Caitlyn says. And she doesn't.
"What?" Vi asks.
"I don't mind if you call me Cupcake," Caitlyn says. "You come up with interesting names. Ripper the Attack Cat."
"Ok, hey," Vi says. "I named her Ripper. You named her Ripper the Attack Cat."
Caitlyn sniffs. "My point stands."
Vi laughs again and it's a good sound. A bright sound. "Okay then, Cupcake."
"Just, ah…" Caitlyn starts. "Perhaps not at the station?"
A/N: I don't normally use the end note section for notes, but I didn't really want to present this fic with a preface. Sometimes I have feelings. Sometimes those feelings result in sitting down and writing and doing an 8k oneshot for a pairing I basically never write for in a single sitting while listening to "Hallelujah" on repeat for seven hours straight.
The other song that inspired this fic is "Otherness" by Assemblage 23. "Hallelujah" was the sentiment that I wanted, "Otherness" was what drove me. There's a pair of lines in the latter song, "To treat compassion / As the truest form of wealth." I wanted a story about compassion and understanding. So I attempted to write one. I'm not sure if I hit the mark exactly, especially since by the end of the seven hours of writing I was definitely edging on exhaustion, but I think that even if I fell short, this fic should have just felt *nice* to read.
Ripper the Attack Cat, I feel I should mention, is based on a couple cats. One of my friends really did train a cat to attack people's feet when they stuck them out (it was not his cat, the owner was most displeased even though it was so cute and ridiculous - but then, I didn't live with Pumpkin). This same friend also had cats at home that were polydactyls and he liked to tell us about what they looked like when they pounced on things.
Finally, thank you to CrimsonNoble for talking me out of taking this fic in the wrong direction (because the original plan was not nearly as upbeat as the final product).