Oh, boy! Oh, gosh oh golly ghee whizz, nothing HURTS SO WONDERFULLY LIKE ARCANE, DOES IT?! Wrote this in a FURY as soon as I finished Act 1 of Season 2, so SPOILERS ABOYND, DNR IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED! Everyone else, welcome to Pain Train. Destination: Pain. I don't know where else you thought it'd go...
I do not own Arcane or League of Legends. This is purely fan work. Please, feel free to comment, criticize, and above all, enjoy!
The Fractured Reunion
She wasn't sure WHY she was following this particular thread. An semi-legal pit fighting operation down in the absolute depths of the slums; she had much more important things to deal with. But something in her, her old detective instinct, screamed. So she obeyed; down in the filth and foul air, undercover in plainclothes, and-
No. NO.
Caitlyn's breath seized and her heart stopped as she watched the House fighter emerge. Saw the extra muscle she'd put on. Saw the natural red and pink of her hair drowned beneath a tide of dark dye. Saw the face that had looked so earnestly, so lovingly (so HURT) at her buried beneath sweat and anger and smeared-on tear tracks. The boss bit the head off a fish from a bucket and spat it against the gong.
She had, if anything, gotten BETTER. She was TOYING with the chemthug opposite her, dodging and throwing light jabs. There was a... a SADISM to her that Caitlyn had never believed possible. She turned and waved to the crowd as she sent her opponent reeling with a hard slap. How could she-?
"Vi..."
Caitlyn couldn't help the whisper. And somehow, as if she'd HEARD it, over the roar of the crowd and her own cry of certain triumph, Vi whirled around, her eyes blazing over the figures at the other end of the ring before narrowing and widening as they somehow set on her, rows back-
POW!
Vi flew against the wall as her opponent took advantage, nailing her square across the face. He got a few more shots in, and the mood of the crowd shifted. But Vi didn't fight back. Caitlyn could feel it, even as the chemthug beat her lower. Her gaze bored through him, into her.
SNAPCRACK!
The chemthug ROARED in pain as his knee suddenly blew out the wrong direction, as Vi heaved him up and threw him down, as she hurled herself atop him and punched and punched and punched and PUNCHED.
The energy of the crowd dulled as they realized what was happening, the boss barking orders as the sounds of blows became less hard. As they became cracking and wet; as blood and bone and brain spilled and flew with every descent and rise of Vi's fists. As pit guards swarmed in and tried to drag Vi off him, her protests nothing but an inarticulate RAGE before a injector of SOMETHING at the end of a pole jabbed her in her spine and she fell limp.
The gong sounded again, and the mood lifted slightly. Bets would still be honored. Money would change hands. The death unfortunate, but not unexpected. Caitlyn had seen all she needed to tear this operation down to its foundations. To send a squad in the next time to round up every participant, maybe even lead it herself. But...
Why she hadn't just returned Topside, Caitlyn didn't know. Why she hung around for HOURS and followed the black-haired fighter after she was finally released onto the streets with a sack of cogs in hand, she didn't know. Vi had only apparently proven her worst instincts RIGHT, so WHY WAS SHE-
Caitlyn had a second to realize she'd lost sight of Vi after the last alley turn before she was spun around. Even as alien as Vi's new look was, the HATE on her face was so much more alien. And directed at HER-
SMACK!
Caitlyn woke, head throbbing, hands cuffed behind her back to a surprisingly sturdy water intake pipe in a tiny room. She could water running and liquid gulping in the equally tiny bathroom just off to her side.
"Gotta say, I'm surprised."
Vi emerged from the doorway, looking at her with a mixture of confusion and suspicion as she drank the last of a bottle down.
"You usually turn into who you really are by the time I hit you. Lost almost as much as I've earned some nights cause you're really someone it doesn't pay to mess with..."
Vi grabbed a chair and slammed it down roughly in front of her, planting herself in it.
"So if it IS really you, I gotta ask... who the FUCK are you?"
WHAT? How on Runeterra could Vi NOT-
SMACK!
Vi's open palm smacked against her cheek. Nowhere NEAR as hard as she could hit, but the fact itself-
SNAPSNAPSNAP!
Vi's fingers started snapping in front of her face.
"Hey, Cupcake. I asked you a question, and believe me when I say this is me BEING NICE..."
Vi leaned in, some of the dye rinsed out, her facepaint gone, but that anger and suspicion and promise of violence made her look more unfamiliar if anything. And the way that old nickname slithered out from her, like a poison from the depths of her soul... Then her hair shifted, and Caitlyn saw-
"Oh. Oh, NO."
The spiderweb of flesh and steel and gold and purple at her temple.
"Heh, noticed, didja? 'If you hurt, if you must heal, seek the Herald.' Funny to see that's even gotten up to the Pilties. And y'know the really funny thing-"
"Vi, please-ACK!"
Vi's hand shot out and CLENCHED around her throat. The confusion on her face only grew, and was now joined by anger. Caitlyn remembered quite clearly that the hand around her throat had caved in another person's skull just hours ago.
"YOU DON'T... I'M NOT... HOW DO YOU...?"
Vi's growl was the sound of a bloody predator, before her grip unexpectedly released, leaving Caitlyn gasping. She reached up to brush her hair aside, the telltale mark of Victor's unnatural, wild magically polymorphism now bare to Caitlyn's eyes. Her fingers rubbed at it, flesh squelching against metal and whatever the purple substance was that flesh had BEEN.
"Funny thing is... he wouldn't let me take it ALL out. I HAD to leave some of it, some of YOU, apparently, in here or my mind would collapse around the empty space in itself. Like a hole in a ship breaking it and dragging it down, he said. I know... there was something, and I know I was HURT, but I had all the rest..."
Vi held a hand up to her temple and mimed pulling at a thread before tossing it away. Vi's expression went from strangely nostalgiac to angry again, as Caitlyn's naturally became worry and sorrow. Then a bitter, poisoned smile carved it's way over Vi's lips, a chuckle blacker than the night sky worming out of her mouth.
"And you know... What's even funnier than that? You know what's just absolutely fucking HILARIOUS?"
Her face was twisting into something... oh, Aspects. 'Her blood's in your veins.' Caitlyn had never, in her worst nightmares, imagined how RIGHT she could've made herself.
"IT DIDN'T FUCKING HELP! I STILL SAW YOU EVERYWHERE, YOU STILL HURT ME ALL THE TIME, CEPT NOW I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHY!"
Vi hurled her chair against the wall, the wood shattering. Her face a twisted mask of pain, of rage, of MADNESS.
"But you still HURT LESS, so that's something... and, with you maybe actually BEING HERE..."
Vi's face turned sadistically thoughtfully.
"He kept it for me, y'know. All I had of you, I wanted it GONE and AWAY FOREVER. But he kept it. Said I might want it back one day, so he'd keep it for me. And now I'm interested... in a little compare/contrast, Cupcake..."
Vi knelt down before her, that mad predator's smile twisting her face.
"So tell me, in your own words; just who WERE YOU?"
So, this is couched in a classic Arcane-interacting-with-OLD-LoL-Lore type: Vi goes to Machine Herald Viktor to get her memories of being Jinx's sister removed so she can better try to catch her, shenanigans and trauma and drama ensue. I've been THIS close to writing one of my own of those for years. Then the big Moment of Act 1, Season 2 got spoiled for me on Twitter and I watched it all in one sitting so that'd be the ONLY spoiler I suffer this month, and I was like:
"Oh, no, I know someone who it would be MUCH more tragic for Vi to try to force herself to forget with biomechanical magical brain surgery!"
It also gave a great excuse to play with another great fanfic type, that one of the trailers made it seem like even the actual story may be tackling: that the same sort of madness that both drives and kinda sabotages Jinx is ALSO just waiting to unleash itself in Vi, who has had both big sister expectations, the ability to punch fools, and slightly less trauma to keep it under wraps. But becoming the very thing you've despised all your life, a tool of your own people's oppression, then losing EVERYTHING in all the ways you exactly fear? Oh, Vi's dam is gonna BURST, I think. And that's before here, where she has memories and feelings technomagically CARVED OUT OF HER MIND in an effort to make the loss hurt less. Turns out that DOESN'T help, it just makes it HURT WORSE, and that makes her EVEN CRAZIER.
Vi having gone more than a little crazy is something I hope I was able to get across, given that this is only from Caitlyn's perspective. I also have to admit, in the 'first draft' she was "Princess." It was only as I started punching this into the site that I realized 'No. NOOOOOOO. OH, NO. KEEP CUPCAKE. KEEP CUPCAKE, as one of the bare things Vi HAD to keep for her own questionable sanity, only make it a term of HATE now. UGH, THAT'S SO TERRIBLE, I LOVE IT!'
I also don't know if I'll be doing more of this, for a lot of reasons from personal motivation to this being damn-near-stream-of-consciousness with no plan for anything after, to technical limitations imposed by my unwillingness to just replace my damn poor dying latop. I have some thoughts, but that's all they are. Do let me know if you want more of this, though.
Thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!