Caitlyn's eyes were ice, frosted stars that blazed with cold fire. Her jaw clenched visibly, nearly audibly, and it was clear she was struggling to constrain her anger until they were safely out of the sight of the entire department.
"Vi," she barked, causing a few junior officers within earshot to jump, "My office. Now."
The Piltover police station was not known to be a quiet place. At the moment, however, all the usual hustle and clamor of the bullpen had subsided into a chastened silence. Thankful that their leader's furor was directed at someone other than them, witnesses to the exchange either ogled openly at Vi, or else awkwardly pretended not to have noticed anything at all.
The taut silence held, punctuated only by the stern clip-clip-clip of Caitlyn's boot heels on the tile floor as she commanded the corridor towards her office. The Enforcer, for her part, sniffed once and swaggered after the Sheriff, gauntlets folded nonchalantly behind her head. Even so, her proud stride was somewhat undercut by her ragged limp and her smoke-singed uniform.
She ignored the whispers that bubbled up as soon as the Sheriff had exited the open room, ignored too the stares bearing her both accusation and pity. She's gonna get it, they said,and it's about damn time. They didn't bother to say the last part aloud. They didn't have to.
Caitlyn had paused at the door, her grip on the old wood practically violent in its false composure. She stared Vi down relentlessly with that frigid stare, a vein starting to throb over her left temple. Vi's hands slid down to her sides but she held her chin up as she sauntered into the office. If it was to be her execution, let them at least see her face it standing.
Once inside the office, away from prying eyes, she swallowed hard. Caitlyn wasted no time to step in behind her, slamming the door with the first physical indication of the rage that threatened to boil over. She also wasted no time to get to the point, whirling on Vi like a predator, stabbing her finger at the Enforcer with vicious intent.
"Just what the hell were you thinking?" she demanded, voice trembling with the effort to keep her volume to indoor levels.
Any apologies Vi had been willing to stoop to offer died on her lips, her throat seizing up at the plain disgust stamped all over her partner's face. It stung, this treatment; as if she were some rookie, green as spring, and not the highly resourcefully hero she knew herself to be. Recklessly, she reached out and grabbed Caitlyn's hand out of the air, closing her metal fingers around the slender limb with immense care. "What makes you think I was thinking?"
Wrong move, and they both knew it. Vi braced for the backlash, staring down at where her monstrous gauntlet engulfed the Sheriff's entire forearm.
The light changed in Caitlyn's eyes. Where they had been alive with pent-up emotion, now they went flat, like a flame had been blown out. If Vi shivered, she sure as hell didn't let Caitlyn feel it.
"Let go of me," Caitlyn ordered, her tone black and poison. She didn't move, didn't pull away, although they both knew Vi's grip would have evaporated at the first attempt. Thicker than the silence out in the bullpen, tension crystalized the air around the two officers as they waited to see who would be the first to back down.
But bulldog Vi had to state her piece. "Screw the regs; I knew what I was doing-"
The slap was ringing through her skull before she even realized Caitlyn had drawn her hand free. She suddenly found herself looking out the long plate-glass window, the blinds pulled half up against the afternoon sun; found the Piltover skyline resolving in the distance even as her vision began to blur. Immediately she clamped her eyes closed, feeling the warm moisture gathering on her eyelashes, the flush of shame burning her cheeks.
When Caitlyn spoke, she sounded as far away as the tall gothic buildings had appeared, and just as dark and brooding: "Don't you dare say that to me ever again. I don't want to hear it, understand?"
Slowly, so slowly, Vi's eyes opened, and she turned to Caitlyn in a slow-motion swivel. Her face was hot, she knew, but she felt as though it must be someone else's face, surely. Just as it was someone else's body who took a shaky step back and pulled the gold-badged cap from someone else's head.
She had turned her back to Caitlyn and unclipped her nightstick and walkie-talkie from her belt before she really felt like she was in control of her own actions. But by then it was too late. With only a heartbeat's worth of hesitation, Vi dropped her gear onto the neat surface of Caitlyn's desk, the items impacting with a sickening sound of finality.
"Vi," Caitlyn ventured, the barest sliver of concern breaking through her carefully flat inflection. "What is this?"
Vi hid her rueful smile as she shook her head and turned. The last step, her muscle memory found the hidden catches under her wrists, and her gauntlets fell haphazardly to the floor. Vi didn't even look down at them, staring instead at the frosted glass of Caitlyn's office door. "You don't want to hear it," she shrugged. "I'm done."
"Vi-" the Sheriff's response was lightning quick, but Vi didn't dare prolong the scene. Her stomach turning, she shouldered roughly past her partner, reaching with a numb hand for the knob. She didn't bother closing it on her way out. She didn't bother looking back.
The tall, leadlight windows set the dusty loft awash with the gentle rays of sunset. The rosy sheen gave some human color to the otherwise sallow face that stood wide-eyed in the doorway, mouth hanging comically open without a sound.
Then Jinx began to laugh, a discordant noise full of high-pitched squeaks and grating snorts, and she only stopped when Vi slugged her in the mouth.
Staggering back, the Loose Cannon dragged her thin hand across her bleeding lip, smearing red carelessly over her chin and cheek. "I thought police brutality was a no-no," she cackled, showing red-rimmed teeth.
Vi grit back agrowl, managing to articulate the words, "Who said anything about the police?" With that, she shoved Jinx back into the grandly empty loft which served as her not-so-secret base, and kicked the heavy door shut behind her.
If Jinx was surprised, she didn't show it. If she was scared, she didn't show it. In fact, the only recognizable expression she ever seemed capable of producing was one of giddy, if oddly vacant, amusement.
The villain put a fingertip to her crimson smile, curling one boney arm behind her back. Looking up at Vi under her sheaf of blue hair, she batted her eyelashes and tried to turn her maniacal grin into something more subdued. She failed. "My dear Fat-Hands," she cooed, "if this isn't a business call, then - could it be? Pleasure?"
Vi did actually growl this time, low and dangerous. "Something like that," she spat, delivering a sucker punch directly to Jinx's bare gut.
"Urk!" Jinx said, doubling over, her braids whipping the air. She clutched at Vi's sides automatically, winded, and dug her nails in with a feral urgency. Vi pushed her off, feeling fabric and skin tear as her nemesis refused to fall back without a fight.
Then she was reeling backwards herself, her head rapping sharply against the door, hands clutching at where she knew her nose to be - the place that now felt only of squishy pain after Jinx's forehead had made impact. Blinking back the rising nausea, she forced Jinx's whirling figure to stay more or less in place. Wiping her bleeding nose on the back of her uniformed sleeve, she pulled her lips back in a curling sneer.
"You've got the idea, pipsqueak," she nodded, prodding the mushy center of her face to make sure it was still whole. It was, and she swayed off from the door as Jinx straightened as well from where she had folded forward with her hands on her knees. Blood trickled down her brow and over the bridge of her nose, though Vi couldn't quite determine who had provided it.
"Rule number one," Jinx sang, voice reedy, "don't talk about fight club. Do you know what the second rule is, Fat-Hands?"
"Shut up," Vi snapped, shaking her head and bringing her fists in front of her, ready.
Jinx began to circle Vi, and the pink-haired woman turned to match her shark-like prowl. "That's right!" the walking scarecrow caroled. "Rule number two, don't talk about fight club!"
"I said shut up," Vi demanded, delivering her barb with a dizzy right-handed jab. She blinked hard, hoping to get both her eyes looking in the same direction again.
Jinx threw herself out of the way, overacting the dodge. She milled her arms like a drowning man, pretending that she was just about to topple over, and just as she regained her balance, she fell back on her rump anyway. "Cheater!" she shrilled, "I haven't finished telling you the rules yet. Ref says: 'You're fouled!'" Though she dropped her voice down an octave to give character to the imaginary referee, there was nothing playful about the way she kicked out and wrapped her combat boots around Vi's legs, twisting and bringing the other woman down to the ground as well.
In a quicksilver heartbeat, Jinx pounced, and as Vi struggled to come to terms with her new relationship with gravity, the girl's wire frame had her pinned to the unswept floorboards. Slender, shaking hands snaked around Vi's wrists, unbelievably tight. Vi tried to sit up and throw the lightweight off, but another meeting of her face and Jinx's forehead had her swimming in pain.
The next thing she knew, unreasonably cold fingers were tracing unseen patterns on her cheek, feather-light and incongruous to the pulsating bloodbeat behind her eyes. "Hey now," Jinx chirped, a sound just on the eerie side of bright, "You shouldn't let her hit you, you big dummy."
Claw-like nails abruptly cut half moons into Vi's cheek, encircling the lettering there. "You know I'm the only one who's allowed to hit you."
Vi hissed, turning her face away, feeling that familiar dread pool in her stomach. Oh God... "Get off," she said, but no fire found its way into her words.
Jinx's laugh was hideous. "You first."
A Cheshire moon had drifted into view of the tall, leadlight windows, and Vi returned its smile with a scowl of her own. She didn't bother looking at her own reflection, mess that it was. She jumped, feeling a chill hand slid under her ruined uniform jacket, and her skin crawled at the touch. Deflating into a grimace, she turned quickly and took that spindly wrist in her large, warm hand, feeling as though she could crush the brittle bones with just a little more pressure.
Jinx just grinned, her eyes not quite focused, the blood sucked clean from between her teeth. Her pale skin gleamed in the weak moonlight, a canvas for red marks and purpling bruises, not all of them Vi's own handiwork. Vi released her, throwing the scrawny arm aside, something like fever-sweat beading on her brow. If she wasn't sick, she didn't know what she could be.
"You're going back to her." It wasn't a question. It never was. Vi nodded, stiff, a puppet. Jinx's expression didn't change, or maybe her pink eyes went a little wider to the sides.
Throwing off the deep-seated repulsion she felt, Vi bodily moved Jinx out of the way so she could stalk with purpose to the door. There came no patter of bare feet behind her, no girlish giggle or villainous parting shot. Halting with her hand on the latch, Vi caved, jerking her head to the side.
"Catch you later," she said, gruff.
"Is that a promise?" At this Vi gave in fully, turning to see Jinx still facing the windows, face tilted upwards to the leering moon.
Vi snorted, shivering at the implication despite herself. "It's a goddamn threat."
The last thing she saw before she fled the loft was that manic smile beaming at her from the ghostly reflection on the metal-framed glass.
Caitlyn answered the door just as Vi was about to have another desperate go at the knocker. She was in her dressing gown, but clearly hadn't yet been to bed; her red-rimmed eyes attested to that.
"Good heavens," she breathed, looking at Vi as if she were a specter come a-haunting. "I was worried you wouldn't come home." There was no scold to her voice, no judgment to her touch as she brushed fingertips to swollen flesh.
Vi tried to grin, tried to keep her chin up, tried to be a decent human being, and failed spectacularly at all of the above. Falling in on Caitlyn and clinging to her like a lifeline, she let the angry-hot tears spill down, unfettered by dignity or propriety.
"Cait," she wailed, a long and broken syllable.
Piltover's Sheriff spared not a thought before wrapping her arms around Vi's quaking shoulders, soothing the ravaged Enforcer with nothing words. It was a long minute before Vi had taken in enough consistent breath so that she could speak, and when she could it was still mostly blubber. If Caitlyn minded, she didn't let it show.
Whether or not they were successfully articulated, the words Vi meant to say blistered out, hot and stinging in their conviction.
"I'm not like that, I'm not like her," she may have said, "I want to be good. I want to be good."