Work Text:
“Cait?” Jayce asked, soft and quiet. Caitlyn could hear the multitude of things he wanted to say, to tell her, to ease her wounded heart. Like a caring brother, he didn’t ask her if she was alright, didn’t ask if she was okay, not when he knew better. He just stood behind her, waiting, patient, worry emanating from him and seeping into the room, into every crevice.
It was hard not to ignore. Somewhere, deep within Caitlyn’s mind, where logic feebly managed to reach out through the overwhelming weight of a broken soul, she knew she had to answer Jayce’s good intentions eventually.
Caitlyn shut her eyes, fists clenched into balls in her lap. She leaned forward, trying to stifle a sob, but instead she felt the echo and ghost of bandaged hands clenched tight around her throat.
Strong arms came around her then, holding her. It wasn’t the embrace she wanted, but it was a familial hug that had Caitlyn burying her face into Jayce’s shoulder, her throat still raw and burning as she choked and suffocated, her ribcage crushed in a thousand directions even as Jayce held her as gently as he could. Grief turned the pieces of her into dust, cracking parts of her body as it shuddered and shook. Heartbreak was the well from which her tears came from, an infinite source, neverending.
Jayce held her close, murmuring false comforts and gentle lies. His rough hands rubbed up and down her back.
It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be. Jayce knew it. Caitlyn knew it too.
—-
When Caitlyn deigned to leave her little bunker room, it almost felt like being back in Piltover as people came to her, sympathetic, sorry. And like she’d been back at Piltover, Caitlyn put on false graces, murmured soft ‘thank you’s and ‘I’ll be fine’s. What else could you say as one of the poster childs for the rebellion? What else could you say to ensure normalcy kept the cogs and gears of the rebels in tact?
Caitlyn couldn’t afford to let herself show vulnerability, couldn’t let whispers about her mental state slip out of the walls and out towards Piltover, to give their enemy the satisfaction of knowing they’d snapped her in half, broken her, shattered her into pieces that she was still trying frantically to glue together. Mel had tried to dissuade her from just ‘turning herself off’ because she ‘needed to mourn’ but Caitlyn wouldn’t have any of it. Keeping herself busy was what kept her mind out of the crevesses and recesses of her mind, where she’d be just a footstep away from falling off an edge and never coming back.
Caitlyn needed to be put together in front of people.
Which was why, for some time, she avoided people entirely.
She didn’t go out during the day, just so she could dodge the crowds of people working feverishly each day in the underground tunnels of the long lost city of Zaun. When night fell — when she felt like turning her gaze to the little clock ticking away at her nightstand — Caitlyn would methodically put on her jumpsuit and slip away through the empty halls. She could keep to herself, and most importantly, she could make sure she didn’t run into the one person who’d crushed her throat and her heart.
Viktor tended to work late. He told her once, that he’d liked the solitude.
The first night Caitlyn had come to his lab, taken a seat next to his work table, she’d given him just the briefest explanation.
“I just…need to be near someone,” Caitlyn said.
Viktor looked at her, for a long moment. His smile was small. “Stay as long as you like.”
It was comforting, hearing the little whirrs and buzzes as Viktor tinkered with this or that. He didn’t try to spark conversation with her, didn’t try to push her to do anything. Once or twice he’d ask for her assistance in grabbing a tool or lifting a box of bolts onto the table, but most of the time, he left her in peace.
Which was just what Caitlyn wanted. She could focus on what he was doing, could fit together in her mind the pieces of the machine like a simple puzzle, a logic problem that’d keep her brain occupied.
One night, Viktor turned to her, lifting the goggles off his brow. “Caitlyn, I was wondering — would you perhaps be interested in adding enhancements to your rifle?”
“Enhancements?” Caitlyn croaked. Her throat was still raw. She couldn’t tell if it was from the injury still or from the days she spent sobbing on her bed.
“Nothing grand or obnoxious. Just small tweaks to improve its range and performance,” Viktor said.
“That sounds fine.”
“Would you be opposed if I had one of my assistants do it?” Viktor asked. “She suggested it in the first place, actually. And you know I’m not much for…making weapons,” he added, hesitantly.
Often, Caitlyn wondered what Viktor might’ve been like in another world. She still remembered the Games in which Viktor had won; he’d outsmarted his enemies, crafted long range weapons and devices that took out the other competitors from a distance. So many had underestimated him, and they’d paid the price, deeply. It was so obvious he had a brilliant mind — and in another world, his inventions could’ve been so different.
Caitlyn knew enough about Viktor from Jayce to know that Piltover had forced him to build them weapons, means of oppression. Here, beneath Zaun, he wasn’t required to anymore — he spent his days instead building armor, means of protection.
But it wasn’t all that different. Viktor still contributed to means of war. And Caitlyn knew Viktor’s heart like her own; he couldn’t not help. He couldn’t not use his mind to do something about their crusade.
Maybe that was why Caitlyn liked to sit next to him on these long, lonely nights. They were kindred spirits, in a way.
“That’s fine, Viktor,” Caitlyn said. “I’ll get my rifle and leave it here, then.”
—-
Caitlyn sat by Viktor’s side as he tinkered with yet another invention, when she heard footsteps pause at the doorway of the lab.
When Caitlyn looked up, she stopped breathing. She could recognize those blue braids from a galaxy away.
“Hi,” Jinx said, tone forcibly neutral. “Got your rifle.”
When Caitlyn stiffly turned her head to look at Viktor, a thousand accusations in her gaze, Viktor gave her another small smile. “Jinx suggested it. I think it best if you to talk over the enhancements together.” He stood up, gave a nod to Jinx, who nodded back, before he took his little invention away into a side room. Viktor then pointedly closed the door.
Caitlyn sat there.
Jinx stood there.
They stared at each other for a long, taut, tense, minute.
“I’m gonna sit.” Jinx strode forward, plopping herself down onto the chair next to Caitlyn, before shrugging off her backpack and dropping it onto the table. She didn’t look at Caitlyn as she said, “So. Your gun.”
“…Yes.” Caitlyn’s throat felt so dry. She couldn’t tell what was happening to her chest; it felt so tight, felt so weird to look into the face of someone like Jinx and see a familiarity in the tightness of the girl’s brow, in the furrows and lines in her forehead.
“Your dad made it, right? A long time ago? During the time of the dinosaurs?” Jinx asked, glancing at her. She pulled out Caitlyn’s rifle from her bag. “It’s old as shit.”
“My father’s not that old,” Caitlyn said. “And it’s a family heirloom, upgraded over time.”
“Whatever. Anyway, it needed more upgrades. I made it better.” Jinx began to disassemble her rifle, pointing out here and there the new pieces that she added or the old parts she replaced. Her tone bordered on a barely controlled kind of hostile to a barely hidden kind of anxiety. Whatever the two of them were feeling, it sat huge and awkward in that foot of space between them. It was like at any second the ground would crack open underneath them and drop them into lava or the roof would blast apart and they’d be launched into to the moon.
Caitlyn had no idea what was happening. Why was Jinx even here? What was the point of this meeting? Why would Viktor do this?
“You got all that?” Jinx asked, turning to her fully this time. Her expression was hard, but Caitlyn could tell from the look in her blue eyes that Jinx was feeling something else entirely. “Makes sense, right? The recoil’s a lot better now, and if you use the bullets I make for you, you’ll be able to shoot farther with greater accuracy.”
“Yes, I understand.”
Jinx breathed out, gave a long exhale. She scowled, eyes narrowed. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”
“Sorry,” Caitlyn said. “I mean to say, thank you, for improving it. It’s needed maintenance for a while, I’m grateful you—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jerking up out of her seat, Jinx stood before Caitlyn — even fully standing she was only just a tiny bit taller than a seated Caitlyn — and with her hands clenched into fists at her sides, Jinx looked like she was a second away from clocking Caitlyn right in the head. “What the FUCK is wrong with you?!”
“I don’t under—”
“You’re not gonna ask about Vi?” Jinx spat. “You’re not gonna ask how she’s doing? Did you even go to visit her when she was all cooped up? Do you even give a shit about her still or did she wring it out of you—”
Faintly, Caitlyn wondered at just how similar the sisters were. They threw up anger, rage, wrath and fury so often. They’d been raised in a district that’d taught them vulnerability was a weakness, a flaw to be exploited. It only made sense Jinx would snap at her, bite at her hand, snarl and spit.
Jinx continued ranting, and she started pacing around the room, throwing up her hands. “You know, I thought it was so stupid when you two put up that dumbass romance in the Games. Like my sis would ever like a Piltie, but then you two kept it up and I couldn’t stop denying it anymore.”
Caitlyn sat there.
Barking out a cold laugh, Jinx said, “You two really got me, you know? I really thought — I really thought Vi found somebody who loved her back and made her happy and could make her forget about like, saving the world or whatever! Someone that could go and take care of her for once!”
“I. I—”
“What, are you gonna tell me you still love Vi? Huh?” Jinx whipped around, shooting across the space between them both until her face was right up in Caitlyn’s. “You gonna tell me that after shit hit the fan, you just drop off the face of the earth and hide up here in Viktor’s little lab hole? Like a coward—!”
That triggered Caitlyn; Jinx fired shot after shot, and she knew one would land.
“Don’t you dare say that to me,” Caitlyn hissed. Making to stand so she towered over Jinx, Caitlyn said, “What do you expect me to do, Jinx? She hates me! Piltover—”
“Yeah, yeah! Brainwashed her! Fucked her up! Turned her into,” Jinx mimed a messed up motion of her hands, a frantic twisting of her fingers. “Someone who hates your guts. And you’re gonna let that stop you, after everything you and Vi and everyone else did together to jumpstart the rebellion? You’re telling me you’re just gonna give up and hide down here because of that?”
“Are you. Is this an ultimatum, you’re giving me?”
“Wow, you really do have a brain!” Jinx rolled her eyes, dropping backwards onto the chair and spinning in it. “Yeah, this is an ultimatum, you giant blue beanpole.” She kicked Caitlyn’s knee with her foot, giving Caitlyn another hard look. “You get what I’m saying, right?”
Yet again, compulsory logic had Caitlyn understanding Jinx perfectly. The Vi she’d loved — the Vi that she’d been through hell and back with twice over — wouldn’t have wanted her to lose herself if something happened. It’d be insulting, to Vi’s memory. To who she’d been before.
When Caitlyn didn’t answer for a long moment, Jinx heaved a giant sigh, and she leaned back in her chair, the back of her head tapping against the table. “Look, I get it. You’re depressed, I know,” she said tiredly. “Vi’s not really been the same since we got her back. I miss her too. But she remembers me normally, at least.”
Jinx glanced at her. “I still don’t really like you and I never really liked you with Vi anyway. But I’m not stupid. The rebellion needs you. Just because Vi’s…Just because Vi doesn’t remember you right doesn’t mean you should just mope around forever.”
“I know,” Caitlyn said. “I know.”
“If I promise I’ll work with Vi, can you…I dunno, get your shit together?” Jinx asked. “We need the big guns out there for morale.”
“Since when did you get so good at battle tactics?” Caitlyn asked weakly.
Jinx snorted, but the way she looked away, her shoulders sagging a little, told Caitlyn more than anything else. “Just get out there and take those bastards down or blow ‘em up or whatever. Then I’ll think about tolerating you.”
—-
Going into the ring with Jinx hadn’t quite been the most constructive of therapy sessions but Caitlyn could understand why Viktor and Jinx had seen fit to throw her into the volatile cocktail that was herself and Jinx in one room. She’d been bruised, battered before, but at least the beating Jinx had given her reminded her of reality, made her feel emotions again, made her remember.
It jumpstarted her motivation again, at least. Time was meant to heal all wounds, but they didn’t quite have the luxury of time on their side, not when war threatened their lives.
Instead, Caitlyn shouldered past her grief. The Vi she knew was gone, and she had to respect that memory. This wasn’t the best of ways to deal with her emotions and her sorrow, but it helped her move forward, just a little. It helped her accept things, at least. Maybe that was enough, for now, and when the war was over she could…
Caitlyn didn’t know what she’d do. She didn’t think about it.
Caitlyn spent months on the frontlines, perched atop shattered highrises and cracked rooftops. Jinx’s enhancements were foolproof. Each Enforcer she took down on the opposing side, each bullet shot clean through with perfect accuracy, fueled morale for the troops ahead and behind her. She wore her distinctive blue uniform, modified from the Games; Mel had seen fit to ensure that the symbols of the rebellion wore distinct outfits, primed and perfect for the press coverage that tailed them anywhere they went.
Sometimes, if Caitlyn had a moment, she’d turn her sights to where she could see Jayce down below amongst the rubble, his brilliant white, red and gold jacket hanging off of him, identifying the Man of Progress from a mile away. If it wasn’t his uniform that made him stick out, it was his giant hammer.
Caitlyn remembered the day Jayce had come back from his year of the Games. Sponsored by both her family and the Medardas and other prestige council members, Jayce had gotten his hands on that famous Talis hammer early on. From then on, Caitlyn had watched as competitors threw themselves at him. She still recalled the look of horror on Jayce’s face as he’d looked down at the combatants he’d so easily torn down; later he’d tell her it was for his own survival, but Caitlyn could see a lie in his gaze as easily as she could see the way his hands trembled when he carried his hammer. In another world, maybe, like Viktor, Jayce would’ve been a different person. Not a soldier, not a fighter. A tinkerer, a scientist.
If Caitlyn trained her scope down in another part of the battlefield, she’d see Ekko’s distinctive white hair and signature bat in his hand. He’d been a blessing to the rebellion. He rallied the other districts to his name, eased tensions between the inner districts and the outer. Behind closed doors though, Caitlyn knew that Ekko fought tooth and nail for the outer districts’ fair share — Ekko and Mel would argue for hours, pushing and pulling this way and that until concessions were equal. He was the hero and voice of Zaun, and he made sure he was heard.
After checking in on her comrades, Caitlyn would settle back into position, and fire at enemy snipers in the distance.
Sometimes, though, if Caitlyn saw a flicker of bright red, she’d find her gaze inexorably drawn to it.
She’d go breathless for a moment, then shake her head. Wishful thinking wouldn’t get her anywhere. She knew Vi remained behind, with Jinx, Mylo and Claggor. Vi would never see the battlefield.
Caitlyn hoped it’d stay that way.
—-
Subconsciously, Caitlyn also hoped she’d never have to go back to the underground district. If she could remain out here, doing her work, she’d never have to think about what awaited her back there.
Being on a battlefield, however, made that wish a little difficult.
Static came loud and sharp in her earpiece, and Caitlyn winced as she pressed a finger to it. “Hero? Do you copy?”
More static. Jayce was trying to tell her something, but what?
Throwing her back against what was left of a building, Caitlyn tried to reorient herself and her surroundings. In the distance, she could hear the furious patter of gunfire, sounds of explosions and shrapnel and screams. Breathing hard, Caitlyn checked her rifle once again, knowing that she was running low on bullets. Whatever lie between her and the no man’s land ahead of her would mean taking a thousand risks onto her back.
But she needed to make it to the rendezvous, somehow.
The sharp crackle of Jayce’s voice hit her ear again. “Chief—run—!”
Caitlyn heard it. The whistle. The all too familiar sound of a missile incoming.
—-
Caitlyn had never quite put a lot of thought into what it might be like to die, or what it might feel like. She certainly didn’t have any time to even remotely confront the idea of it when she’d immediately blacked out from the impact — of either the building falling on her, or her colliding into the ground, or some other massive force knocking her out.
If she was dead, she didn’t know. If she was unconscious, she wouldn’t know either until she woke up.
Flickers of white dashed across her vision, once or twice. She might’ve hallucinated the sounds of muffled voices, too. If she was dead and in the afterlife, Caitlyn had no thought to spare on it—maybe that’s what it was, just a nothing in the void, where you’d go to when soul got torn from body and feelings and nerves just weren’t connected anymore.
So when something — or someone — forcibly crammed her soul back into her skeleton, her bones, shoved it straight into that hollow space between her ribcage and fired up the synapses there, Caitlyn drowned — she drowned in herself, overwhelmed and flooded with a cacophony of agony. Like someone had torn her lungs out and then set them aflame with a wave of oxygen, Caitlyn gasped and writhed, choking on a doctor’s attempts to wrangle body and mind back together.
—-
Everything ached. Everything hurt.
Caitlyn lie on her cot in the infirmary, breathing in, slowly, breathing out, slowly. Inhale, exhale. She thought of Jayce’s calm words as he held her hand and kept her tied to the present, and she tried her best not to remember the blood in his hair or the tatters in his white jacket. She thought of Viktor sitting at her bedside, tinkering away, soldering and buzzing with his tools, a gentle kindness in which he knew the sounds comforted her. She thought of Mel’s drawings, how Mel had doodled and painted little landscapes of worlds and dreams a ways away, taking her mind to distant places so she’d forget about the pain for just a little bit.
The doctors had told her she’d be up and walking in a few weeks. There wasn’t any lethal damage, but the injuries would scar her for lifetime to come.
Caitlyn counted herself lucky. She at least lived. She couldn’t say the same for some of their troops.
Her survival had also been a major boost in rebel spirits. At least Caitlyn could still pull miracles out of her ass. It’s what they needed right now.
That’s what Jinx had told her one day, when she’d come to visit.
“You know me,” Caitlyn said, with a weak smile. “I can’t die until my work is done.”
“Okay, workaholic,” Jinx said. “Seriously though, don’t die, okay? If you die from something stupid like a bomb I’ll literally come kill you myself.”
Caitlyn didn’t comment on the stupidity of that statement. “So, how is Vi doing?”
Lying on what could’ve been her deathbed felt like an opportune time to address the subject. Caitlyn had moved on, too. She’d stitched her heart back together, sewn it together with what little thread and string she had lying around, gluing some parts together in a haphazard, roughshod way. But if that’s what it took to get her heart beating again, then so be it. She couldn’t be wounded so easily anymore with thoughts of someone long lost.
Jinx’s face crossed through a myriad of emotions. “She’s, uh, she’s fine. She’s doing heavy lifting work with Claggor most of the time. Inventory stuff, you know. He keeps an eye on her. She’s kinda normal now, sort of.”
“That’s good to hear,” Caitlyn said. “And you? What have you been up to, Jinx?”
“Building stuff with Viktor and Jayce.” Jinx shrugged. She didn’t say anything about how Caitlyn changed the subject so quickly. “You know, I’ve come up with some pretty cool stuff that actually looks cute. Can’t fight Pilties unless you look great while doing it,” she added.
“Mel would love to hear you say that. She’s a fan of appearances.”
Their conversation was civil. It was refreshing, for Caitlyn to talk to someone who didn’t pull their punches. Jinx made to leave, but she gave Caitlyn a strange look right before she left through the doors.
“You gonna be here for a while, beanpole?”
Caitlyn made a pointed look at herself hooked up to a multitude of health monitors and IV drips. “No, Jinx, I plan on getting up right now actually and backflipping my way to Piltover. You know, as one does after getting hit with a missile.”
Jinx scoffed. “Bye, asshole.”
—-
After one night in which the doctors had hit her with a large dose of painkillers after redoing her bandages, Caitlyn groggily awoke in the middle of the night, throat dry.
Some water, and then she’d go back to sleep.
Strangely, as she felt consciousness slowly dredge her back to the present, she had the distinct feeling that someone was holding her hand.
“Jayce?” Caitlyn slurred, squinting a little through the blurriness of her vision. “What’reyoudoinghere?”
Strange. Jayce was wearing a lot of red. His hair too looked red. Did he dye it?
“Oh, shit,” her not-Jayce said. “Fuck, fuck—”
The hand holding her own abruptly tore away, and Caitlyn faintly missed the feeling. It’d felt so gentle and warm.
“Wait,” Caitlyn said.
“Clag— Clag— she woke up—” That red figure, so blurry — Caitlyn wished she could focus through the haze of painkillers. “Shit—”
A deeper voice, but not Jayce’s answered, “We have to go—”
“Jayce,” Caitlyn said again, ignoring the little logical brain cell that kept telling her the people with her were not Jayce. “Wahter—?”
That red figure hesitated, for the briefest second. Another larger figure came into view. They seemed to look at each other.
Caitlyn closed her eyes again, fading away once more. She couldn’t fight the drag of her medication any longer, but just before she sank into slumber, a cup was gently pressed against her lips and she tasted kindness.
—-
Caitlyn gritted her jaw, air hissing through the bars of her teeth as she stood in the shooting range.
It’d taken her weeks to regain her stamina and her strength. Ekko had had to watch her pitifully do the minimum reps and lifts in the district gym before her body would give out and she’d be panting, exhausted from something that’d been so easy just a few months ago.
“Take it easy, Cait. If you push yourself too hard you’re just gonna end up back in the infirmary,” Ekko said, kneeling down next to her and offering her a water bottle.
“I have to get better soon, Ekko,” Caitlyn said tersely. “The sooner I’m up, the faster I can get back on the field and help.”
“You can’t help if you’re knocking yourself to the floor everyday.”
“I’m fine.”
Caitlyn didn’t voice another reason she was in such a hurry to get back out to the frontlines. That faint memory she had that night in the infirmary seemed like something she could’ve definitely hallucinated while on a dozen different drugs, but confronting the mere idea that it’d been real had her heart and her brain spiraling in a hundred different directions. She couldn’t afford to think of the implications, not right now, not when the war was still happening.
Ekko sighed. “Just switch out workout routines, okay? Do that much.”
So Caitlyn alternated when she’d tear her body up at the gym and when she’d tear her fingers apart at the shooting range.
The first few weeks of firing practice had been awful. She missed almost every shot—her bullets would come so close to the bullseye but they weren’t spoton. That was unacceptable. Caitlyn was the best shot they had — she couldn’t tolerate just ‘close.’
Caitlyn fired more shots, one after the other, each bullet coming just a little closer to its mark.
Her fingers ached, and her arms were sore, but still, Caitlyn persevered. She fired, again and again, ignoring that buildup of tension in her chest. She had to get better. She had to. She had to do better, she had to be better. Not just for her sake, but for everyone else’s too.
Sweating and breathing hard, Caitlyn lowered her rifle, fingers clenched around it.
When she turned towards the exit, Caitlyn’s heart leapt into her throat, and she froze.
She definitely did not hallucinate the flash of red hair dashing away from the edge of the door.
—-
Caitlyn was on edge for another week. It was a bad mental state to be in, to jump at the merest flash of a color of red, and she tended to carry her rifle around with her now as she walked around the base.
A celebration happened at the end of the week, a wedding party of two people that Caitlyn wasn’t familiar with. She hung back by the food table, idly turning her paper cup full of punch in her hand. Mel had somehow miraculously conjured up celebratory food and drink for the wedding and Caitlyn briefly thought of how much effort it must’ve taken to get the whole party going in the first place.
Morale remained fairly steady throughout the base, but Caitlyn wasn’t ignorant of the whispers stuffed in corners, the hushed voices tucked between gaps in doors. The war was dragging, taking longer than expected; their progress was slow, slower than what Mel and the others wanted. They needed something else to push forward, to shoulder through the last bits of no man’s land between Zaun and Piltover.
The wedding was definitely needed. They all needed a break. Maybe Caitlyn would take the rest of the night off and read a novel in bed.
Caitlyn threw back the rest of the drink, turning to toss her paper cup into a nearby can—
And stopped dead in her tracks. She would’ve dropped dead too if her heart hadn’t suddenly ricocheted up into her throat.
Vi stood there.
Everything Caitlyn had built up so meticulously over the past few months of forceful isolation and solitude abruptly exploded, shrapnel of her composure shattering straight through her heart and mind.
For a split second, Caitlyn was on the receiving end of her own rifle, because suddenly seeing the silver of Vi’s eyes once again — the bullet careened straight through her, tearing apart her insides and blowing out the sticks and glue she’d used to piece herself together. From the wreckage of herself, the debris and rubble lying on the floor, rose up a fragment, a memory.
A nightmare.
Caitlyn felt the ghost of hands around her throat, tightening.
Except the Vi in front of her was just standing there, hands loosely hanging at her sides, her mouth slightly parted like she too were surprised and stunned that Caitlyn had turned around to look at her.
Suffocating. Caitlyn was suffocating. She whipped around and started blindly stumbling and half-running to the exit, the muted logic of her mind having always kept in check where each escape might be in the event it’d ever have to do something like this. To run, to flee, from the vestiges of herself that she’d locked away and buried.
Caitlyn didn’t hear the choked and pained ‘Wait!’ behind her. She didn’t feel the subtle shift of air by her arm, as if someone had tried to reach out to her and failed.
—-
Caitlyn left that night for the frontlines.
Her hands trembled and shook as she gathered her gear into her pack. She left a hastily written letter behind for Jayce, telling him she’d headed out early and she’d catch him out there.
The party celebration meant the halls were thankfully mostly empty, and Caitlyn had never moved so fast in her life — she practically sprinted into the hangar, lungs burning as she booked it up into a hoverplane. She chucked her bag of things and her rifle down, throwing herself into the driver’s seat and her fingers — still trembling — went through the motions of closing the back hatch—
Except, she heard Jinx behind her. “Wait! Don’t close—!”
Something in Caitlyn got her to jerk back on the lever, and she turned in her seat to see Jinx wheezing at the foot of the lowered hatch, laden with a bag of things too.
“I’m coming with you, beanpole,” Jinx said, swallowing. She strode up the hatch and into the small cargo area of the plane, leaning against a large crate and bending over for a second to catch her breath. “Anyway, you know you were gonna just tear the plane right out of the damn floor? It’s still anchored down.”
“Oh.”
“How about,” Jinx said. She tossed her stuff down, slapping a hand on the crate next to her. “You sit there, close your eyes and do that rich people meditation thing you people do, and I’m gonna go out and take out the anchor. Got it?”
Caitlyn knew she was definitely at the bottom of her barrel if she was taking advice from a mad scientist, but she did as she was told. “Fine, Jinx. Does — does Vi know you’re coming to the frontlines?”
“Yeah, s’fine.” Jinx waved a hand behind her as she left the hatch. “I’ll be back in a sec.”
They were up and airborne in minutes. Caitlyn felt relief as she watched the forests behind her fade away, obscuring the hidden hangar entrance — and in the night, the stars shone up above them.
Surprisingly, Jinx stayed silent for most of the ride. She’d glance over at Caitlyn every now and then, something flickering in her wide blue gaze, but then she’d look away again and do a little whistle as she kicked her feet back and forth.
It was when dawn began to rise up over the horizon, and the two came closer to the frontlines near the borders of Piltover, did Jinx deign to say something.
“So. Caitlyn,” Jinx said.
Caitlyn glanced at her. Since when did Jinx use her full name? “Yes, Jinx?”
“So.” Sucking in one cheek and then the other, Jinx said, “It’s too late to go back, right?”
“Yes? The plane doesn’t have enough fuel to make it back. We’d have to land at the outpost and refuel there, if you’re having second thoughts.”
“Nope! Not having any second thoughts. Not even third. Or fourth.”
“Um, okay.” It felt weird thinking this, but Caitlyn wondered if she’d ever been this annoying of a little sibling to Jayce when she were little.
“I need you to promise me you won’t crash the plane,” Jinx said, suddenly serious. “You got that?”
“And…why would I crash the plane?” Caitlyn asked.
Turning in her seat, Jinx looked into the cargo area of the plane. “Come on out, sis.”
Caitlyn felt the blood drain from her face as she dared to look behind her.
Vi tentatively stepped out from behind a crate, hesitant and tense as her gaze flickered from Jinx, to Caitlyn. When their eyes locked on the other’s, blue to silver, sky to steel, Vi swallowed.
“Um, hey,” Vi said with a hesitant smile, doing a little wave of her hand, like she weren’t an apparition of Caitlyn’s imagination, like she weren’t a living echo of a memory long buried. “I’m, uh, here.”
That smile.
Caitlyn’s eyes stung, because she could remember with perfect clarity the first time Vi had shown her that little crooked curve of her lips, with that cute scar. It’d been when she’d patched up Vi during their Games after she’d been stabbed. Vi had called her ‘cupcake’ then too.
Caitlyn almost crashed the plane.
—-
There were moments on the rooftop when Caitlyn would flex her fingers, inhale, and exhale, before taking her shot. Maybe Jinx was up to something; maybe it really only was her that needed to this breathing thing.
Clearing her mind of thoughts — or, trying to, anyway — Caitlyn pulled the trigger. Her opponent on the other tower crumpled and fell off the edge of his perch.
“Firelight team, you’re clear,” Caitlyn said, pressing a finger to her earpiece. “Rooftop enemies neutralized.”
“Copy that,” Ekko sounded off. “Movin’ ahead.”
Since Caitlyn had dutifully ensured she didn’t have a single thought in her brain, she found the scope of her rifle angling down towards where she could see Ekko’s squad lithely jumping and climbing up fallen pieces of rubble. It wasn’t hard to spot the distinctive hair of District 13’s most famous sisters; they stuck out like a sore thumb, vibrant blue to bold red, lagging a little bit behind the rest of Ekko’s team.
Something twisted in Caitlyn’s stomach. She watched Jinx scale up an angled incline, then reach behind her to tug Vi up with her.
It’d been Vi who’d suggested she go handcuffed. Ekko and Jinx had vehemently disagreed, but Vi insisted. A failsafe, in case there were some kind of hidden programming still buried in the depths of her mind.
Vi turned around for a moment.
Then, Caitlyn didn’t breathe. She forgot all about that routine, methodical way to inhale, exhale.
From this impossible distance, there wasn’t anyway Vi could see Caitlyn — Vi’s gaze looked behind her, around, and Caitlyn read the words on her lips, could see the expression on her face.
Ekko’s voice triggered Caitlyn back to the present. “Chief, bogeys incoming to your position, southside.”
“Copy.”
It wasn’t hard, dispatching them. As Caitlyn lowered her rifle, carefully reloading it with bullets, a shiver of suspicion ran down her spine. It’d been…too easy.
Caitlyn realized it too late. By the time she hurled herself down the stairwell, making it down five flights of cracked stairs, she heard the stampede of footsteps and clanking of Enforcer armor booking it up to her. She had seconds — calling for help would waste ample time but maybe she could but backup was at least ten minutes away last time she checked the nearest squad’s position but maybe she had enough bullets and maybe she could hold her ground on the roof —
There had to be a finite number of times someone’s heart could stop in their chest before they died, and Caitlyn was definitely on her way to reaching that upper limit all because of a one, very red-haired, silver-eyed fist fighter.
—-
Caitlyn’s steady hands failed her as she tried her best to wrap fresh bandages around Vi’s palms.
“You should’ve been more careful,” Caitlyn heard herself say. “You should’ve—”
“Held back, yeah,” Vi said, breathing hard as she sat slumped against a wall. It was difficult, trying to shove trembling fingers through the handcuffs at Vi’s wrists. “Sorry.”
Caitlyn didn’t look up to meet Vi’s eye. They were alone, just the two of them.
When Caitlyn had radioed to Ekko, she hadn’t been remotely surprised to learn that Jinx ‘somehow’ lost track of Vi when the enemy squad had snuck towards Caitlyn’s location. And Caitlyn knew better than anyone just how headstrong Vi could be. How stubborn she could be. How brave she could be.
“You said that to me, right? In the Games,” Vi said.
“Said what?” Caitlyn asked, lying about a memory she knew just as well as she knew the lines on Vi’s palms.
“Told me to hang back. Then that one Piltie got a stab on me,” Vi paused. “Right?”
Caitlyn finished wrapping the bandages. She ignored the wish and desire of her heart to hold onto Vi’s hands a little longer. “Yes. Camille, from the first district. She stabbed you.” Standing up and pointedly making sure not to look at Vi, Caitlyn carefully looked out the doorway of the rundown building they were hiding within. “We should get moving before light falls.”
“Look,” Vi said from behind her, and Caitlyn heard her stand up. “I know. I know I’m not. I’m not the person you want me to be.”
“I really don’t think now’s the best time to have this conversation.”
“Yeah? Then when? We don’t even know when the next attack will come,” Vi said, an edge of impatience to her voice. She sounded closer than before, and Caitlyn felt a shiver run down her back again. “Look, I just — just talk to me.”
Blinking hard to stop that stinging in her eyes, Caitlyn turned, face forcefully kept as neutral as possible. “We can walk, and talk. Is that suitable?”
Something flickered in Vi’s gaze as they looked at each other. If Caitlyn reached her hand out, she could grab Vi’s freshly bandaged hand in her own.
“Yeah, yeah. That works,” Vi said.
—-
“So it was real? The…the kiss?”
Caitlyn swallowed. Those terrifying moments when she’d thought she’d lost Vi. It’d been a spur of the moment decision, to crash her mouth against Vi’s, the both of them panting and panicked after a narrow escape from one of the other competitors. Caitlyn had thought at the time that if she’d died right then and there then at least she would’ve died with Vi.
“Yes, it was real.”
—-
“It wasn’t…It wasn’t made up. The whole relationship.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Caitlyn said, after a long moment. She leaned back against a wall in an alleyway. “It was real. The realest thing I’d ever had in my life,” she said, voice cracking. “You were the only one who ever saw the real me.”
Vi, across from her, didn’t say anything.
“In Piltover,” Caitlyn said. “You had to be flawless. Perfect. I never was.”
“You look like it.”
Caitlyn snorted. “I’m far from it. I’m sure you realized it when—”
“You cut yourself, chopping vegetables.”
Caitlyn jerked her head around. “What?” she whispered.
“I…remember,” Vi muttered, turning away. She started down the alleyway. “When we moved in together, after the Games.”
—-
“You really wanna take these off me?”
Caitlyn delicately undid the handcuffs at Vi’s wrists, tossing the cuffs aside and throwing the key away too.
“If you wanted to hurt me, you would have already,” Caitlyn said simply. “We both know handcuffs aren’t a barrier for you to fight. And if we run into an ambush, I’d prefer that you were more free to move than you were in our last fight.”
Vi rubbed her own wrists, her expression unreadable.
Caitlyn turned her back on Vi, and Vi followed behind her.
—-
“So, Deckard—”
“You pummeled him into nothing, Vi,” Caitlyn said. “You don’t remember that?”
“No,” Vi said, brow furrowed. The two stood next to each other in an archway of what had to be a long lost church. “I just…I just remember, being afraid.”
“You weren’t wrong to feel that way. His sponsor gave him a chemical agent that gave him a beastly kind of strength.” Caitlyn looked up at the sky, and knew it’d be nightfall soon. “I was so afraid he’d hurt you,” she said softly.
When Caitlyn heard no response, she glanced over, and she forgot to breathe again.
“I remember I was just afraid that he’d hurt you. Caitlyn,” Vi murmured.
—-
“I don’t get it.”
Tiredly, Caitlyn slumped down against the wall of another rundown building. She’d radioed Ekko earlier and told him of their ETA, but they’d still be another hour until they reached the encampment the Firelights had setup; they’d had to take numerous detours to avoid patrols and other enemy units. “You don’t understand how we got together.”
“I don’t understand anything of why I,” Vi said, swallowing, pacing back and forth. “Why I feel anything like that for you. You’re a Piltie. You’re from the upper districts. You’re th—”
“Worst kind of person you’d ever meet,” Caitlyn said, weary. “I know.” She tried, very hard, to push down that little lift of her heart when Vi had used the present tense. “I can tell you why I,” she had to take a second to stop herself from choking on the heart in her throat. “I can tell you why I feel that way for you.”
Turning on her heel, Vi gave Caitlyn a strange look. Her lips quivered. “Yeah?”
“You’re brave,” Caitlyn whispered. She drew her knees up to her chest. “You’re stupid and reckless, at times, too, but you’d fight tooth and nail for what you believe in. In the Games, when you ran and carried me to safety after we fought Urgot, I could tell, right then. Your heart. It was — it still is — good, more than anyone else’s.
Caitlyn swallowed. “You didn’t have to save me — you could’ve left me there, but you didn’t. You came back for me. I was from the other side — the upper districts — and you still chose to save me anyway. That’s what did it for me.”
“Did what?” Vi asked, hoarse.
“When I realized I’d do anything to save you,” Caitlyn whispered. She stared at some scruff on her boot, her vision blurring. Caitlyn’s body shuddered, collapsing inward. “Vi, whatever becomes of us, of whatever happens in the next few days — I need you to know that you’re real to me, in every way that matters.”
Vi was so quiet. “You still feel that way?”
“I don’t know.” Caitlyn buried her face in her knees, exhaling shakily. “I don’t know who you are right now, really. The Vi that I love or a version of her that’s forgotten what’s real about me — or hates me, even.” Shutting her eyes tight, Caitlyn continued, “But despite it all, whoever you are now, Vi, I know your heart is good. If I’m to die from you, then I’d rather it be you than anyone else.”
Vi didn’t say anything.
Swallowing an awful truth that sank glass shards through her chest, to her stomach, Caitlyn stood up, fists clenched at her sides as she blinked back the tears. “We need to go.”
—-
The next morning found Caitlyn waking up early, and sitting in a hole in a wall, watching the sunrise make its way through the tangled mess of broken skyscrapers and shattered rubble.
The crunch of gravel behind her had Caitlyn turning around. Somehow, even now, she could recognize those heavy footsteps.
“It’s hot water,” Vi said. She held out a little tin mug. “Not tea.”
“Not tea,” Caitlyn repeated. Vi sat down next to her, close enough to touch, but still with an inch of space between them. With a steaming mug between both their hands, they watched the world move forward.
“Your favorite tea is green,” Vi said suddenly. “It’s green. Your dad made it every morning.”
“He did.” Caitlyn took a sip of the hot water. “And then you made it for me, every morning.”
“Yeah. I did. You liked it in the mug with a chip in it, with Jinx’s drawings. That was my mug.”
“It was your mug, yes.”
The buildings became silhouetted and outlined with the golden glow of the sun. In half an hour, the two of them and Ekko’s team would leave their encampment and make it to another safe house further in the city, once they traversed the minefield of Piltover’s underground tunnels. It’d be the last leg of their journey.
“Cait.”
Closing her eyes for a brief moment, Caitlyn wondered at the sound of her nickname, said in such a familiar way again. Her heart ached.
“Look at me, Cait,” Vi said softly.
When Caitlyn opened her eyes and turned her head, she went breathless. Vi was leaning in, close, and in that silver gaze, Caitlyn could count a thousand stars — she used to do so, every morning and every night the two were close like this, sharing moments of the world that belonged to them and them alone, when they could forget about the looming doom that awaited them.
“We could die today, tomorrow,” Vi said in a low voice, almost a growl. “I wanna remember one good kiss with you before that happens.”
Caitlyn sat there, lips parted, speechless.
Vi’s hand trembled a little as she reached up, but Caitlyn didn’t flinch away; instead, those gentle, rough fingers brushed her cheek. Just like before, once, a long time ago.
In that kiss, Caitlyn remembered all of another lifetime, memories buried and hidden, now unearthed and brought to the surface. Her fingers reached up of their own accord, one hand threading through strands of red, the other brushing against a soft buzz. She’d done this a hundred times, maybe even more — and the way Vi cradled her face between her calloused palms, the way Vi leaned in just a little more, the way she’d done it a hundred times before.
“I dunno who I am right now, too,” Vi whispered when they broke apart, panting, and Vi didn’t move away when Caitlyn tilted her head forward, their brows touching. “But I think you can help me put me back together.”
“I’d. I’d love to.” Caitlyn had to fight back tears, and she couldn’t help but a laugh a little when she saw Vi trying to do the same.
Vi’s little grin — oh, Caitlyn had never felt so complete. What she’d been before, just sticks and stones, so paled in comparison now to the house built and held in Vi’s palms.
“You’re real to me too, Cait. You’re real.”