As if by the will of some benevolent god or unseen electronic fairy the giant metal snake comes to a sudden halt with a deafening screech. The polite man gets off the train without ever noticing the cautious stare that's directed at him. The little girl signs in relief, sliding back in her uncomfortable seat, the girl's grey gaze falling back upon the misty window of the huge speeding construct. The neon signs outside bathing her thoughtful face in an eerie blue glow. Hextech, Vitameds, shops and workshop advertisements flashing in colors beautiful and eye-catching.
Welcome to Piltover, the city of tomorrow, currently a dirty smudge of metal and wet, light pollution. The child glances at the people walking on the twisted streets that are unfolding beneath the rails, silly wet silhouettes running around the raindrops, clenching their coats and umbrellas as they rush back to their posts in a hurry.
The girl can see the spirits following them, whispering softly in the passersby's deaf ears. Futilely attempting to influence their lives and their decisions. The exhausted white-collar workers simply keep walking, never noticing those anomalies of transparent bodies floating behind them. If one were to examine the scene closer, however, they would gradually notice that the peculiar spirits don't actually stroll by all the wandering pedestrians. There are some exceptions to this rule. People that died and came back before their lights were completely extinguished. Extremely ordinary folks living extremely ordinary lives. Quite rarely, mournful people that have previously died at some point in their lives, yet still carry the memories of their past incarnation.
Mournful people just like her. The girl's grey eyes shift downwards, inspecting the youthful hands of her new body. The lack of scars in her small pale hands.
The great silver train halts once more. The metal doors slide open and the ticket inspector gets in the car. He passes through the passengers, checking their tickets, humming quietly as he marks the valid tickets of each passenger he dutifully inspects. The middle-aged man stops in front of her, his aged eyes inspecting her sunken face and ragged clothes. The deceased pinkette sneers at him before handing him her ticket. The inspector merely raises an eyebrow at the reaction, but decides to ignore her childish antics and walks away after a while with an acknowledging huff.
It is not Vi's fault. This is the second lifetime the former enforcer spends on the streets, struggling for her daily survival. Being hostile towards figures of authority comes naturally to her.
The girl gets off the train near the center of the city. Hiding her face inside her ratty hood, the possessed girl paces amongst the crowd. Her cold red hands shoved deep in her pockets, trembling miserably from the early winter chill. With her mind being currently preoccupied and lost in contemplation, resurfacing memories of freezing nights filling the Returner's thoughts, Vi passes by another pedestrian on the sidewalk. A nondescript man that's whistling a happy tune as he walks.
Vi barely manages to suppress a shudder when her solemn leaden eyes abruptly meet the pedestrian's washed up greens.
There is a demented specter cackling madly behind the back of the man. It looks like a crazy clown with shivs held in both hands, a creepy smile stretching from ear to ear across the clown's painted face.
Tsk, the female ghost of the past quickly dives inside a nearby alley. Sprinting among the rubbish bins and ruined machinery until she is completely certain that the madman is nowhere around her.
That's good. Vi attempts to calm down her nerves. That was close, very close indeed. Because if the man's psyche carried the likeness of the Demon Jester the pinkette is lucky that she spotted him in time to recognize his murderous intentions and avoid him before becoming his victim. As if on cue, somewhere in the distance, far away and behind the possessed girl, another woman screams in terror.
/
She is hungry, so very unbelievingly hungry. The living-dead girl holds her stomach miserably, eyes cast on the dirty floor. She has to get her hands on some money and fast or this little girl might expire like her former body. Just in time, the Possessed One notices a potential target approaching her from the opposite direction, their strides long and distracted. Vi smirks to herself.
She remembers the moves. First she stumbles, one of her hands pressing against the victim's shoulder while the other one slips inside their pockets. Look at the victims lips, it is easier if you don't look them straight in the eyes. If you do, they might recognize what's happening and you'll be in trouble.
You have to look lost, lost and weak. Try to look apologetic and ashamed of your carelessness. Right yourself -good so far- now quickly, bow your head down and apologize. Offer a rueful smile as you hastily walk away feigning fear. Success...
A handcuff clicks shut around the little girl's wrist. Damn, she blew it.
The deceased girl frowns, Vi's goody-two-shoes attitude getting lost in an instant. The ghostly child's baleful gaze rises from the unamused firm lips of her target to the unknown woman's face.
Meanwhile the living ghost's hand forms a fist, her body coils. Every muscle becoming tense and ready to spring into action. And then the homeless girl freezes. Hostile grey orbs widening upon meeting those familiar cold brown pupils.
"Young lady, you are under arrest for-"
But the deceased enforcer isn't listening. She just nods her head dubly, the words completely escaping her grasp and deaf ears. The walking corpse can only stare in surprise and awe at the brunette woman that's dragging her to a parked hex-mobile. The female police officer's signature mechanical rifle slung behind her straight back and her top hat bouncing hilariously with her every purposeful stride. Caitlyn.
Just how in the world did she manage to try to pickpocket Caitlyn of all people?!
The Sheriff unlocks the hex-mobile and then motions for the disguised pinkette to get inside the car. The possessed girl silently obeys her, seating down on the passenger seat without a complaint. There are dark bags visible underneath the righteous brunette's tired eyes, the former enforcer notices them when she glances at her workaholic partner through the vehicle's front mirror.
Caitlyn looks so… wrong right now. The immensely disciplined brunette woman she holds so much respect for looks so hollow, sad and defeated as she circles the vehicle.
The Sheriff gets in the car without a word and the Possessed One hastily averts her gaze and turns her head to stare outside as the hex-mobile comes to life with a soft hum of the engine. Then police cruiser starts gliding forward. Vi tries to ponders on her next course of action.
Something is unexpectedly tossed on the handcuffed girl's lap. Somber leaden eyes blink in confusion, Vi's cloudy gaze lifting from her hands to the small package resting on top of her legs. The undead girl's malnourished palms reflexively wrap around the offered object.
The thrown object appears to be some kind of sandwich wrapped in thick brown paper. The deceased woman takes a peek at the focused face of the driving brunette, the girl's stomach growls in protest of the inexcusable delay.
Vi has to take care of the child's body. She is a living person now and she has to eat, the pinkette reminds herself. Coma patients need more food in their stomachs than the average orphan. Hastily the returned spirit unwraps the sandwich and takes a few big bites out of it. Caitlyn smiles as she watches the girl like a hawk through the mirror.
The Returner tries to ignore the stare of those gentle brown pupils with all her might. It seems that the pain that Cupcake had recently experienced thankfully hadn't stripped the sharpshooter off her kindness.
"Where are your parents, young lady?" Cupcake gently asks the hungry kid. Although judging by the detective's sad brown eyes, Caitlyn most likely already knows the answer that the orphan is going to give her.
Vi shakes her head as she swallows another mouthful of food. The deceased cop's gaze focused anywhere but the frown of her Sheriff. The little girl's uncertain drab eyes hiding the real aquamarine sorrow of the enforcer's averted orbs.
"There are organizations in Piltover that can shelter you and take care of you until you grow up." Caitlyn, same good ol' Caitlyn attempts to extend a helping hand to another street rat of Piltover, even if the considerate woman doesn't recognize that it is the second time that she attempts to help that same thieving rascal.
Vi snorts and silently takes another bite out of her sandwich. Understanding finally dawning on her when the deceased pinkette abruptly notices that the short drive from the train station to the police headquarters is taking far longer than she can remember.
Cupcake is playing her for a fool, driving around as she interrogates her. Striking up a seemingly innocent conversation with her while trying to help what might appear to any other cop in the city as another lost cause, a thieving, treacherous orphan. Vi smiles softly at the thought. Despite her former partner's professional attitude and efficiency, Caitlyn, has secretly always been a big softy.
"I am going to be fine." The possessed girl reassures her former partner, and Vi still hasn't gotten used to the alien timbre of her new voice. But that's a good thing right now. The pale Returner quickly realizes. This voice is her sword and shield to fend off Cupcake's questions, Vi will just have to hide behind the foreign tone color of her new voice until Caitlyn lowers her guard and she can attempt to bail out of the police cruiser.
The Sheriff scowls at her, no doubt about it. Vi can feel her piercing brown orbs burning holes against the side of her face.
"No you won't," The brunette sniper growls suddenly, and Vi doesn't remember Caitlyn ever producing such an unladylike sound before her passing. Hearing the sheer quality of the exhaustion reverberating in the Piltovian woman's posh accent is all kinds of shitty and painful for the deceased street rat. "The Zaunite chem-gangs of the city are going to really mess you up unless you do the smart thing and accept the city's protection." Caitlyn continues, her concern exposed for once, unbelievingly raw and startlingly bare.
The comatose girl that's possessed by the ghost of the brush enforcer closes her eyes. With her hunger sated for the time being, Vi presses her head against the reinforced glass of the window as the shady streets she grew up in keep passing her by.
"You need the city's protection if you don't want to end up a slave in some chem-baron's brewery." Caitlyn insists.
Vi doesn't answer. Maybe Cupcake is right, but she can't just return here and disturb the life of her partner for a second time. The body of the little girl that Vi had woken up in had been in a comatose state for years before her soul had somehow managed to slip inside it and possess it. The human husk that the former pinkette presently inhabited was alarmingly weak and malnourished and sickly, but Vi would make do with what she had and let Caitlyn bury their friendship along with her original body.
"I can check on you once a week to make sure that your new guardians are treating you right…" Cupcake adds reassuringly after a tense pause to encourage the visibly thoughtful orphan to accept her deal.
The Possessed One can't help but smile at her fondly.
Cait, same kindhearted Cait. The fools working at the PPD station that called the intelligent brunette a heartless stuck-up bitch didn't know the first thing about this magnificent woman. Caitlyn's offer was unbelievingly tempting. Vi would love to acquire a get-off-the-streets free card from the sniper and not have to worry about finding food and a place to sleep for a while. Yet the solemn enforcer had grudgingly acknowledged that she had to sever her ties with her partner, before she made some sort of mistake and revealed herself to the ingenious brunette.
"No thanks, copper." The street rat spits.
The policewoman grunts in response, and the young girl opens her eyes. She knows this neighborhood well. Caitlyn will never find her if she suddenly darts out of the hex-mobile and dives into the back alleys. The Returner's hand stealthily reaches for the car door's handle.
"I once knew someone just like you." Caitlyn whispers mournfully in the next heartbeat.
For the second time in a few minutes the dead woman freezes, all bodily functions ceasing for a short tense moment.
"Vi… my late partner.. she also used to think that every cop in the city was out to get her, that she had to do everything on her own." The Sheriff's shaky timbre that audibly accompanies her dear friend's mournful confession hits Vi's chest with the force of a chem-punk's hydraulic bat.
Tired grey eyes slowly close and the childish hand reluctantly leaves the door's handle. The Possessed One leans back on her seat like a sack full of rocks.
"Was she wrong?" Vi dares to ask over the low hum of the hex-tech engine, and Caitlyn remains silent for a few long minutes contemplating the answer.
"I don't know." The police officer finally croaks softly at the strange girl after a while. "She didn't live long enough to tell me."
Caitlyn…
Wet gray eyes open up to stare at the profile of the heartbroken Sheriff. Against her better judgment Vi tries to catch a glimpse of her partner's eyes, but the brunette Sheriff is currently busy staring at the road ahead of them with tears rolling down her face. Her fingers, wound as they are around the steering wheel of the vehicle, clenching the smooth surface tightly in their grasp as if the sad woman is subconsciously trying to strangle the inanimate object.
The pinkette enforcer spares a moment to gather her thoughts. She wets her lips once, then twice.
…
"I think that Vi trusted you." The street urchin whispers after a while.
The silently crying Sheriff of Piltover spares the handcuffed pickpocket on her passenger seat a quick glance and then shakes her head from side to side. The sharpshooter's gaze returning back to the red traffic light in front of her. Raindrops dribble soothingly against the car's windows.
"I.. I am not so sure about that." Caitlyn slowly admits. "Vi grew up as an orphan just like you, and just like you she had a grudge against the system. She probably hated me for forcing her to wear the budge and become my partner. Perhaps if I hadn't been selfish enough to threaten her into joining the force V-Vi would be alive right now."
"She took a bullet for you!" The little girl's hiss is thick with churning emotion. Her sunken face twisted into an expression of anger and something else that Caitlyn can't identify at the moment. "I read all about it in the newspapers, Sheriff. Vi jumped in front of you to shield you with her body the moment she saw the crook whip out his gun. That doesn't sound to me like someone that's secretly holding a grudge against you, copper. Quite the opposite in fact, it is undeniable proof that Vi cared about you deeply."
Caitlyn suddenly slams her foot on the brake pedal, the hex-mobile abruptly comes to a halt, and it is only the hand of the Sheriff that's clenching her shoulder painfully that stops Vi's head from slamming against the windshield. Caitlyn then slaps her. Vi nurses her stinging cheek as she stares at the rational sharpshooter with wide eyes.
The sight of the brunette woman's hurt expression proves to be far more painful than the ache of the Sheriff's fingers colliding with the disguised pinkette's youthful face.
"S-she was a f-fool if she actually believed that she was making me a favor by sacrificing herself to shield me! Trading her life for my own without even a hint of hesitation, jumping in front of a flashing gun barrel without a second thought! Do you think that makes Vi some kind of hero?!" The crying brunette challenges her. "Do you truly think that I can just be grateful for Vi's sacrifice and continue my life and career alone when knowing that my dearest friend thought that my life was more important than her own?! That V-Vi is dead because… because I froze up at the wrong moment and like an imbecile?!"
The little girl doesn't answer. She doesn't even move. The immense pain that Vi can see in Caitlyn's eyes is stealing her breath away, crushing her throat and shattering her heart. The dead woman knows from experience how it feels for something foreign and scorching hot to pierce one's heart. This gut-wrenching feeling of guilt that's squeezing her chest right now is much, much worse in the disguised pinkette's opinion.
"No, I don't." The wretched dead soul finally mutters sadly, and Caitlyn wipes her eyes and rests her head against the steering wheel. The kind Sheriff keeps sobbing, hurt and alone, the honking of immobilized cars around the police cruiser muffling the sounds of her crying.
The hex-mobile's door opens then. With a surprised jolt the brunette Sheriff raises her head from the steering wheel in order to stare at the grey-eyed child that's standing outside in the frigid drizzle.
"It wasn't your fault that I died, Cupcake." The crestfallen Returner bitterly mutters over the sounds of the falling raindrops and the hex-mobiles' obnoxious horns. "I am sorry that things had to end this way. I just acted without thinking like I always do. I didn't take into consideration you or your feelings… I apologize for that, Cupcake, but I want you to move on and be happy without me. Find a new partner. Someone that you can trust to have your back. I didn't die to make you suffer, and I never hated you, not even when you had me finish my paperwork. I died because I was just unlucky and acted like an idiot like usual. So stop torturing yourself over it. Please…."
The strange girl then flees in the rain and Caitlyn instantly follows her, her immobilized hextech car left abandoned in the middle of the highway as the Sheriff of Piltover chases after the living ghost of her dead partner that's sprinting among the frigid raindrops.
The mannerisms were exactly the same. The sad, crooked smile at the end of her speech being recognizable despite the unfamiliarity of her partner's new visage. Yet there was one single person in all of Piltover brave enough to actually dare call her 'Cupcake' in front of her face.
There was no absolutely no way that the running street urchin was in reality her deceased partner. It was unthinkable. Utterly impossible, and yet the Sheriff's heart was hammering against her breast as she pursued the orphan girl like a mad woman. Caitlyn's chest welling up with hope as the distance between the two decreased. The policewoman's much longer legs along with the hysterical brunette's frantic strides carrying Caitlyn forward astoundingly faster than the shorter strides of the street rat's malnourished legs.
And when Caitlyn finally grabs the wrist of the little girl and forces her to stop running, the way that the orphan child refuses to look her in the eye and stares at her feet screams so much 'Vi' that the brunette Sheriff's breath hitches in her throat.
"T-there is no way that you are her." Caitlyn whispers breathlessly. The policewoman's grip on Vi's wrist is tight like a iron vice as Caitlyn uses her other hand to lift the girl's chin and gaze intently into her big grey eyes.
"You are right, copper." The mouthy orphan exhales tiredly whilst averting its shaken gaze. "I was making fun of you. I was trying to distract you so I could escape. My plan almost worked."
But Caitlyn is entirely too focused, staring deeply into those squirmy leaden lakes of shame and guilt and noticing all those familiar little lines that form the orphan girl's expression to pay attention to Vi's brittle excuses. The diligent sharpshooter is far too busy staring into the windows to the deceased woman's soul, and inspecting the way that the rude rascal's eyes try to avoid her tearstained visage to give Vi's words any consideration.
"There is no way that you are her." Caitlyn repeats, uncertain. The sheriff's grip on the child's wrist faltering as the older woman gently cups the squirming girl's face in her hands and leans down to scrutinize her youthful features.
"I-I am not." Vi whispers under the falling rain, her own voice cracking with pain at the desperate expression that her best friend is currently wearing. Caitlyn's eyes frantically darting from the girl's teary orbs to her youthful features and then back at those twin oceans of emotional turmoil.
"Y-yes, yes you are." The shaken brunette abruptly gasps, drawing a quick flinch out of the sickly orphan. "You.. truly are Vi, aren't you?" Caitlyn chokes out, the policewoman's wet orbs abruptly turning the size of saucers at her discovery. At the very next moment a pair of trebling, feminine arms suddenly encases the deceased pinkette into a suffocating hug.
Vi initially freezes when her prudish and oh-so proper partner opts to kneel down amongst the dirty puddles of muck and rainwater to embrace her shorter, rigid form.
"P-please, tell me that I am not just seeing things, tell me that I haven't lost my mind because of grief and that this is real." Caitlyn begs in-between her choked sobs.
Vi doesn't reply, yet she can't find it in herself to push away her crying friend and abandon Caitlyn in her time of need. The street rat's smaller arms silently wrap around the shaking body of the posh sharpshooter. The little girl shoots seething, threatening glares over the quivering shoulders of the crying brunette, driving away the swarms of pointing pedestrians that pause at the sight of their drenched Sheriff hugging a pickpocket.
Unbeknown to Vi most of the gaping civilians don't walk away simply because there is a little girl that glares at them from afar. Thin shred's of her original aquamarine hues briefly flicker inside the ghostly depths of the enforcer's grey eyes, rays of bright azure light momentary bleeding into her sad leaden pupils. The bone structure of the little girl's face suddenly changing, the outline of an old numeral tattoo resurfacing underneath the street urchin's sickly skin.
A mere heartbeat later, those changes have already disappeared. Vi closes her eyes as she proceeds to soothingly rub calming circles across Caitlyn's back.
Gods, how Vi had missed Cupcake's rare embraces.
The story behind the story: This one is a very old story. It is at least four years old and I wrote it during the time that I was writing the first chapters of 'The Angel Of Piltover'. I discovered the story yesterday while checking my incomplete stories folder and I decided to edit it and post it separately from the other one shots due to its size.
Notes from the first draft: The story focuses around Caitlyn and Vi and follows the normal lore with the exception of Vi's death. Vi somehow died a few weeks or months before this meeting. Caitlyn mourned her death and is still trying to recover from her loss. Meanwhile Vi unexpectedly wakes up in the body of a young comatose girl and escapes from the medical facility in order to see Caitlyn one last time and make sure that she is alright before leaving Piltover forever. The present Vi doesn't know how all of this is possible or why she woke up in the body of the comatose girl, but she keeps seeing things. Shadows and ghosts trapped between the worlds of life and death. Fragments of her previous lifetime that got stuck in her psyche when she was resurrected. It seems that Vi has gained a supernatural ability, she can now see the specters of various League champions behind certain people when she is near them. We cannot be sure if Vi's death has given her some kind of insight in the souls of those surrounding her or if the shadows of the champions are just figments of her imagination and Vi is subconsciously judging the characters of those people and personifying them with similar personas she has met on her previous life. Anyway in the first draft of the story, Vi wouldn't reveal her real identity to Caitlyn after she arrested her. Caitlyn and her were supposed to stumble upon a murder scene on their way to the station and Vi would see the shade of a champion fleeing from the murder scene. Seeing the horrifying shade of the demented Zaunite psychopath, Dr. Mundo greatly unnerves Vi and the young child pretends to be a medium or a witness in order for Vi to stick close to Cait and protect the Sheriff from the murderer that's on the loose, and all the people with hidden agendas and scary champion shades that only Vi can see near the brunette.
That was the gist of the plot as far as I can remember or have written down under the chapter. The story was incomplete and ended where Caitlyn cuffed Vi, but I could still recall some of the plot and patched it up to the best of my ability so as not to just delete it. Feel free to use the prompt/idea if you want to write something along those lines. Peace.