So, I know I was very wishy-washy on whether there'd be more of this. And there ALMOST wasn't. Then I had ANOTHER idea for a reunion as AWFUL and DRAMATIC as what is now chapter 1, and almost made this a loose connection of themed one shots. But then my mind was like: "Hold UP! I can connect these two VERY disparate dots..." "You ain't connecting SHIT, man! You have any idea what you"d have to do to-" "I WILL CONNECT THEM! I CAN SEE THE THEMATIC THROUGHLINE, EVEN NOW!!!"
...So here we all are... I've written more in the last five days than I have in quite possibly the last decade, and I'm still not done. God(s), but I'd forgotten how much I missed writing like this.
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 - Chapter 2 - Broken Promises
Vi had been gone for hours, and had left Caitlyn resolutely cuffed. Which, while uncomfortable, gave her the one thing she both needed and desperately sought to avoid. Time to think. To think on just what the whole situation meant, and on how she had... described herself, to the woman who knew only that there had been great joy, then a pain so terrible she'd ripped away her own memories rather than continue to suffer it.
'I secured your release from Stillwater to aid in my investigation into Silco. One thing kept... leading to another. I gave up my rifle to save your life... We tried, we failed, we parted. We came back together under... awful circumstances, thanks to Jinx, and I had...'
She'd stopped then. She didn't know if she should SAY that, that otherwise simple statement of FACT.
I had the shot.
The phrase had been burning in the back of her mind for months. She wouldn't have... she wouldn't have... Jinx NEEDED to...
'We went after her. Together. And we... made promises to each other... we couldn't keep...'
Because Vi had SAID Powder was gone! That Caitlyn should TAKE THE SHOT! And when she HAD THE SHOT-
The door slammed open, and Vi stalked in, the same large bag she'd left with slung over her shoulder. She hurled it down on the ratty, stained mattress and sifted into the pockets, drawing out a webbed crystalline vial that held what looked like a glowing, technicolor cyst.
"What IS-" Caitlyn asked with no small amount of revulsion.
"Like I said: compare/contrast. I've got what you were willing to tell me. Now I'm aboutta get it all back as I remember it. Herald looked so fucking SMUG when I asked."
Vi unscrewed the cap and held the cyst against the mark of the Herald on her temple, and both their faces scrunched at the unpleasantness of it worming it's way back into her brain, into her MIND as the Arcane glow shone through her skull and eyes. Caitlyn felt her heart twinge as tears began to flow into the greasy facepaint still smeared beneath the brawler's eyes as the memories burned back into her.
"Vi-"
Caitlyn stopped as Vi swiftly raised a hand. She took a shuddering breath and sat down on her bed. It was a long time before she said anything.
"...Y'know WHY Jinx is Jinx? Why she picked that name? It was, it started as a nasty name one of our adopted brothers called her. Every job we brought her on would end bad, mostly because of some mistake she made. She was bad luck. A jinx. I always told him off for it, told her she wasn't bad luck, she just wasn't ready yet. She ALWAYS made bombs..."
Vi's expression turned a strange mixture of melancholy and nostalgiac, and she couldn't help the bitter snort of laughter.
"Honesty, even by Lanes standards, that was pretty fucked up. But they never worked. Until one DID. And it killed... EVERYONE. Silco had taken our second Dad, Vander, after he'd killed the old sherif. But we were all almost OUT, almost SAFE. Then her bomb went off. Only I survived. And she came running up, so HAPPY, so PROUD. And then she saw Vander's corpse and said... 'I only wanted to help.' She just kept saying that, over and over..."
She'd never told Caitlyn this. Not in such terrible, emotional detail, at least.
"So I..."
Vi took a shuddering breath, and a truly ruinous loathing overtook her voice.
"I HIT her. I smacked her so fucking hard she couldn't stand up, and I told her: our dead brother, that she'd killed, was RIGHT. She was just a jinx after all."
It wasn't loathing for Jinx that so colored Vi's voice. It was loathing for HERSELF.
"Then I wandered off to try and cool my head because, because I wasn't supposed to HIT HER, she's my SISTER, and she's BEGGING me to come back. Then Marcus nabbed me and threw me in Stillwater while Silco got his claws on her..."
Vi took another shuddering breath, wiped at the tears streaking through her facepaint. There was, impossibly, a look of soft understanding on her face, beneath the renewed and remembered pain and grief.
"I'm telling you this now because part of me GETS it. We can do... fucking TERRIBLE things when we've suffered, and we can make terrible things come from the terrible things we do."
Vi's gaze slid sideways over to Caitlyn, and she watched as the understanding bled away.
"But I also REMEMBER now. I remember when Talis accidentally blew a hole in a chembaron's kid when we hit one of Silco's factories. THAT'S what the attack at the memorial was about, by the way. He'd killed her son, so she came to kill him. He was so broken up about it, and I called him on the fact that Piltie policies were WHY kids had to work to not have enough to eat anyways in the first damn place. That he'd killed thousands like this just by not changing anything down here. I think that's WHY he made the independence offer. Didn't want to see even one more dead kid, to KNOW he'd made another one, even indirectly..."
Vi pushed herself up off the bed and threw open the main pocket of her bag.
"I remember that shot you claimed you had. I LOOKED, Caitlyn, and I don't know if you DID, because you DIDN'T HAVE IT. That kid's face was either gonna be in front of Jinx's, or behind it by the time you pulled the trigger, and you'd already missed ONCE. Don't you DARE tell me you meant to shoot her finger. If you took that shot you say you had, you would've blown her head clean off. You would've killed her to get Jinx. So I had my memories of you and anyone related to you ripped out of my mind because I couldn't STAND wondering if you didn't KNOW, or didn't CARE."
Caitlyn was about to rise vociferously to her own defense but, but had she? She was sure the shot had been clear, the girl safe, but...
Then Vi drew a large metal and wood device from her bag. Unfolded it. And all voice left Caitlyn. It was Caitlyn's old rifle, which she'd pawned for the Shimmer potion to heal Vi's gut wound... Right where Caitlyn had driven the stock of her Hextech rifle.
"Now, full disclosure: Memory-holed Me hunted this down cause she bitterly loved the irony. Blowing your pretty Piltie face open with your own gun..."
And again, that alien, almost JINX-LIKE SADISM grew over Vi's face like a cancer as Caitlyn felt the blood drain from hers. To hear Vi describe HERSELF as some other, separate person who would quite happily shoot her in cold blood. Then Vi tossed the rifle onto the bed, and withdrew a set of keys from her pocket, reaching to undo the handcuffs.
"...Thank you-"
"Good thing Memory Me has a much better use for it."
Caitlyn could barely register the movement as Vi snatched the rifle back up and flipped it, SLAMMING the stock into Caitlyn's gut. The metal drove against her liver, and she instantly fell to her knees as the reflexive vomit rose and spewed. Vi glared down, her face a mixture of contempt, hurt, and pity.
"I GET IT, Kiramman. You're hurt. You got hurt, in the worst way anyone can be. So did I. So did Jinx. And all any of us can apparently do is HURT BACK, but it's not... it's gotta st..."
Vi took a steadying breath.
"I... Part of me wants to think, to KNOW, that you're better than what you've been doing. What you've DONE ALREADY. The raids. The curfews. The evictions. The Noxians. The GREY. All to people you told me you wanted to see the humanity in, that you wanted to protect just as much as people Topside."
Vi's voice started shaking with emotion.
"Part of me wants to think your moment of terrible hurting is just... gonna be the longest of all of ours... And then I remember that I still don't know if you didn't know or didn't CARE that you were gonna kill a little girl with your own two hands. I BEGGED you before that kiss not to change because I could see you already HAD, and you were going to KEEP CHANGING unless I tried to stop it. You told Memory-holed Me one real, hard truth: we DID make promises to each other we couldn't keep."
The rifle smashed down against the floor, into the pool of vomit. Vi snatched her bag off the bed and stalked towards the door.
"Don't look for me again. If I want to see you, I doubt I'll have trouble finding the Grand Commander of Piltover. And who knows; maybe I'm still crazy enough to see the Cait I love from time to time..."