"This is disgusting," Caitlyn confessed, sliding the cup away from it. It scraped against the warping table of the empty pub. Or bar. Or… she didn't know. Her tongue wiped at the roof of her mouth, trying to rid her tastebuds of the assault. It hardly helped.
The three words hung in the air; the first in the hour of her and Vi's silent companionship following Jinx's betrayal - could it be called that?
Vi didn't respond, already swallowing down her second pour. An unasked for top-up was sloshed into Caitlyn's own glass, and she didn't have the heart to reject it. Instead she swallowed down another sip of the putrid sting assaulting her taste buds. The puckering of her brow, cheeks, and eyes was not subtle, but neither was the drink Vi had offered her.
Admittedly her palette wasn't designed for the undercity. It was refined through years of manicured dinner halls, polished dishware, and only the finest, freshest goods Piltover had to offer. Even that was an understatement: her mother had on multiple occasions imported honeyfruit simply to show off in banquet centerpieces. It was a privilege unmatched by even the wealthiest of families.
Only the best for the Kirammans.
The thought made Caitlyn forget the lingering bitterness on her tongue and sent an unexpected laugh from the depths of god knew where. It was clouded in grief, but Caitlyn had never confronted that emotion before. It was difficult to articulate the unknown; the dread of watching the pinnacle of Piltover's progress erupt into a ball of flame. It was even more difficult to face the likely fate of her mother who occupied the council chamber with greater frequency than their home.
The unknown sucked her laugh dry, and Caitlyn looked for solace in the strange viscous liquid that sent her cheeks alight with warmth and brain fuzzy with confusion. She'd been raised to handle her booze, but this drink wasn't of her world.
The presence of a heavy stare sent her eyes up and locked onto Vi's. She'd never seen eyes as pale as hers. It made sense: her red hair and pale eyes. It was genetic - a lack of melanin. But it wasn't the science that drew Caitlyn in.
There was something else; something more than just the uniqueness of her features. She'd also never seen eyes so expressive or a mouth so pensive. The scars, tattoos, and grime did little to hide the wrought emotion on Vi's face.
In a few short days Caitlyn felt an unexplainable bond with the undercity dweller. She'd put her own life on the line and cried out in anguish whenever risk, danger, or uncertainty crossed her travel companion.
It was unfounded, she thought, to feel so attached, so bound to something - to someone. Caitlyn had been raised in a loving family, advantaged by the wealth and power her parents carried, but she had been trained to accept loss. She had been raised knowing of conflict; of risk and the two sides of the coin that came with it: reward and failure. She had been raised to understand that death was inescapable.
But book smarts and street smarts rarely overlapped.
So perhaps it was that; it was the bubble of Piltover's low-crime levels that had shielded her from danger; from the imagined cruelty that existed elsewhere that drove her impassioned pleas. Perhaps that was what made her lash out at the thought of harm befalling this new stranger. Perhaps it was the sudden exposure to life-altering choices and the fear that came with it that made her cling to Vi's survival.
All were possible explanations, and yet Caitlyn didn't believe any of them. All she knew was that Vi was special. She was fierce and loyal and understood heartbreak in a singular way. It was a way Caitlyn could only imagine. The thought elicited a sigh: she might taste from the well of it soon enough.
She blinked hard, gripping the bent, aged cup in her hand for distraction. The sting of a tear sent her looking for another distraction, and she found it in the off-color yellow of the drink. She tossed back half of it, letting the tang of expiration burn down her throat. It was miserable but it did the job: with every sip she felt reality slip away and an anchor tamp down her emotions.
"Is there pineapple in this?"
She didn't know where the question came from, but the moment she asked it she could taste the lingering sweet acidity on her tongue. Her lips smacked together thoughtfully. Through the harshness she felt nostalgia: the taste of her fifth birthday.
"No, cupcake," Vi replied, head returning downward and eyes concealed by a flame of red. They were the first words she had also said in as many hours. Uncertainty and loss had a knack for stripping retorts from even the driest of personalities, and the unfamiliarity sobered Caitlyn's demeanor.
Silence lingered like an old friend, interrupted by the neck of a bottle clashing with Vi's tin cup or the hurried footsteps of laughing teens outside or the thrum of music seeping through the porous facade. It was a world that continued while flames and destruction ate at the city sitting across the waters.
Caitlyn hadn't asked where they were headed an hour earlier. She simply accepted when Vi's hand reached out and dragged her through the darkened alleys to a hole in the wall. It sat adjacent to a makeshift bridge. Hurried footfalls above made the aged wood wine and groan. The structure was precarious, and on a normal day Caitlyn would verbally interrogate it for the ramshackled, under-engineered execution it was.
But on this night she welcomed the scantily-clad protection and seclusion it provided. It cast their hideout in shadow and felt like coverage; a blanket; an added secrecy and security. They had run, but from what Caitlyn couldn't yet express.
The space within the hole was abandoned except for the lone barkeep in the corner. It matched every other building in the undercity: aged, rusting, stained, and caked in grime. Vi nodded upon entering, and the enormous figure grunted in recognition. It was a recognition that indicated he was an ally in a world Caitlyn never expected to need them. These were the misgivings of privilege and ignorance, but Caitlyn had always been a quick learner.
Vi left her alone for a handful of minutes while disoriented glances surveyed the space, and lungs gasped for air. She was too afraid to speak; too afraid what words would make real; too afraid of the truth they could mean. For a moment she thought Vi had also abandoned her, but she returned. From where, exactly, Caitlyn hadn't tracked. All she knew was that her comrade; her companion; her friend was there.
She returned with the jingle of a key and a bottle. The cups came from the barkeep - for moderation, she concluded. It hadn't stopped Vi's heavy hand, and for once Caitlyn didn't mind the suspension of belief that came with a drink.
"Come on," Vi muttered when the bottle had been depleted and coins were exchanged. She didn't ask where the coins came from.
Their hands were like magnets, finding each other and acting as a guiding light that carried her up a flight of stairs to a simply-furnished room. Two cheap bed frames were squeezed into the space, book-ended by broken side tables. Caitlyn didn't bother searching for a bathroom, knowing the privacy of one in these quarters wouldn't exist.
It felt like hours had passed avoiding what happened. The simple presence of the other had been enough, but now, faced with the end of the day, Caitlyn felt the tug to say something, anything-
"I'm sorry about Jinx-"
"Her name's Powder," Vi shot back, pale eyes cold and penetrating through the darkness.
Caitlyn didn't reply. She didn't know how. Her mind was logical and pragmatic, and her experience concluded Vi's sister was 'Jinx'. Whatever person she was before had long been lost to the brainwashing and confused upbringing under Silco. But now wasn't the time to express that. Instead she watched Vi unfurl the bandages that wrapped her forearms, wrists, and knuckles. What lay beneath was milky pale skin scarred from years of fighting, yet beyond that was a delicate softness Caitlyn wanted to touch; to capture; to explore.
She resisted the tug to reach out and do just that.
"Take the far one," Vi instructed, gaze set on her task.
Caitlyn understood immediately. The far bed implied safety; pushed away from the danger of the door. Her leaden feet carried her to the rickety frame and she collapsed to sit on it. She watched the silhouette of Vi wad up the stained cloth and dispose of it at the foot of her own bed before collapsing onto it with the grace of an avalanche.
Take aim and fire. If you miss, learn from it. Adjust your assumptions and aim again.
The words from her shooting instructor echoed in her mind. There was a practiced precision to her training that guaranteed hitting the mark. It was scientific, calculated, and left little room for subjectivity.
And yet.
Yet, she was wholly unprepared for a world of variables and emotion and instinct.
She came from a world where 'calculated' and 'instinct' rarely shared a classroom together, and quite often 'instinct' was quickly shown the door.
Powder was Jinx. It was the only conclusion. Powder was gone; it was the only logical calculation. It was the truth.
And yet.
"I'm sorry about… about Powder; I'm sorry about what happened," Caitlyn tried again. "About everything. I don't… I can't imagine what you're experiencing; the hurt and the loss… I don't have a sibling, but I… I can only imagine."
It wasn't Caitlyn's fault to carry, but she needed Vi to know that she was with her. That she wasn't going to stop until they found Jinx… until they found Powder.
"It's fine."
Her calculated temperament wanted to take Vi at her word, but her instinct said it wasn't fine. She could hear it in Vi's voice: the tense anger wound tighter than a clock.
"It isn't though, is it?" she asked, knowing it was half rhetorical.
"Maybe seven years ago I'd agree with you. Or at least, Vander would have beaten it into me."
"Beaten?" Caitlyn still didn't know this Vander, and the thought of-
"Figuratively," Vi clarified.
"But?"
"But that's the thing about prison; about solitude. It teaches you lessons a normal person wouldn't expect."
"Such as?"
"That it's something you learn to live without."
"What is?"
"Companionship."
The finality in Vi's tone sent a chill down Caitlyn's spine.
"Get some rest, Cupcake," Vi muttered, pulling her hood over her wiley hair. She turned away to her side, an arm curled under her head and legs folded up to contain her warmth. The scrap of blanket given to each bed hardly helped.
She looked unusually small; unusually frail. They weren't characteristics Caitlyn associated with the bull-headed, dry sense of humor that she'd come to know. Instead they echoed of the child Vi had never been allowed to be. They illuminated the internalization of years of neglect through wrongful imprisonment and the premature deaths of her parents. They articulated the smallness Vi could feel but never express out loud. They presented the penetrable, human side of Vi, and it clutched at Caitlyn's heart in the most unexpected way.
Perhaps she could have reasoned her way out of what happened next, but she rejected the thought of leaving Vi isolated and alone. It wasn't something her instinct could accept.
The floorboard groaned, springs creaked under her weight, and Vi flinched drowsily in surprise, "What are you-?"
Caitlyn interrupted the words with instinct, wrapping fingers around Vi's waist and relishing in the warmth and safety of her nearness. The tension in Vi's arms melted away, and for that Caitlyn was grateful.
"Cupcake?"
"I'm not ready to live without it," she whispered.
a/n: Like everyone else on the planet, I binged Arcane and my sad sad little brain got addicted and yeeted out this fic.
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