Chapter Text
Dawn cast the Kiramman kitchen in just the sort of glow that made the golden hour so golden. A light summer breeze carried birdsong with it as it trickled in through the window, which was thrown open for ventilation. It was a typical breakfast for Vi and Caitlyn. The smell of coffee hung in the air, punctuated by the aroma of Vi’s bacon and eggs, and an acrid whiff Caitlyn’s burnt toast.
“You’ll get it one day, Cait.” Vi’s words came out with a yawn. “At least it’s better than last time,” she said, scooping eggs onto their plates. “The toast is less, uh... Well, it’s really well done, which is a cut above really, really well done...” Setting the pan and spatula aside, she came up behind Caitlyn to snag her about the midriff, reeling her in. “You’ll get it one day.”
For Caitlyn, one day was not good enough. “It’s bread, Vi,” she sighed, shoulders drawing slightly in frustration as she finished transferring the batch of toast to a plate. “I'm re-baking what’s already been baked for me. How hard can it be?”
Vi could only shoot her a look of sympathy as she let go of Caitlyn’s waist to run her fingers through her magenta locks, tousling her bedhead even further. “You’ll get it.” She ducked in to press a kiss to Caitlyn’s cheek as a little morale-boost. “Don’t give up.”
“I wish I could say that helped, but at this point,” Caitlyn paused and folded her arms. “I’m losing faith.”
“Maybe relax a little when you make it?”
“Relax?”
“Yeah.” Vi gave her ponytail a fond twirl. “Relax. Maybe try making it in your bedclothes next time?” she suggested, gesturing down at her own attire. On the first night she had spent with Caitlyn, she had been offered a pair of blue flannel pants with a shirt to match, an old and untouched set of nightwear gifted to her father by a relative he was none-too-fond of. It being the only set of brand-new, unworn clothes she had received in her living memory, Vi had worn it with gratitude ever since.
Caitlyn, on the other hand, was dressed like she was going to work: a black jumper and perfectly pressed black slacks. ‘Presentability’, even in her own home, had been drilled into her head at a young age, for the Kirammans preferred to be on the ready to host guests at the drop of a hat.
“I don’t think uniform is a factor here.” Blink, and one would miss Caitlyn’s eye-roll. She scraped at the surface of a slice of toast with the butterknife, eroding the charred bits away until it was a more appetizing shade of brown. Not all of Vi’s tips and tricks were lost on her.
“You sure about that?” Vi’s head nodded in a brief once-over, before she held her plate out to receive some freshly-buttered triangles of toast. “’Cause I’m always comfy when we make breakfast,” she commented, holding up a fork of perfectly fluffy eggs. “You look uptight-- which I love,” She paused to pop the eggs in her mouth before continuing. “But my food comes out perfect, your food comes out burned.”
“Are you just saying that so you can see me in something silky and lacy for longer?”
“Not exclusively, but—“
“They say a watched pot never boils—then, the moment I take my eye off it to do something else, I start smelling smoke!”
“You didn’t burn the coffee,” Vi pointed out.
“Am I to take that as an insult?!”
Vi winked cannily at her, then her expression grew earnest. “Hey,” she reminded Caitlyn. “Compared to what I’ve eaten for the last seven years, I think I’ll take it. I’ll take the burnt toast. I’ll take the morning breath. I’ll take the bickering with you before I’ve had my first cup of coffee. I wake up looking forward to it. I hope it doesn’t get old for as long as I live.”
The words warmed Caitlyn over, like butter softening over brioche. It was true. The world had color again. Food had taste again. They had each-other again. It was too complex a sentiment to express before she, herself, had consumed her first cup of coffee. Instead, Caitlyn conveyed it in the two most precious and romantic words a Kiramman could bestow upon someone:
“You’re right.”
A comfortable silence settled over them as Caitlyn took her spot at the table, habitually draping her serviette over her lap before dragging her mug of tea toward herself.
Except Caitlyn couldn’t eat—she was too distracted by Vi.
It wasn’t that Vi was doing anything remarkable. She had tucked in to the bacon first, and was just perusing the newspaper while she mindlessly switched between eating her eggs and drinking coffee.
This was a recent thing, Vi slowing down and savoring her food. It was that seeing her so relaxed was something Caitlyn still wasn’t used to, so every once in a while it would make her stop what she was doing at stare. And, yes, Vi would notice.
And, yes, Vi would tease her.
Today, though, Caitlyn might luck out and not get caught. She was sitting at the head of the table with Vi on the corner next to her. This meant with some careful angling, Caitlyn might just be able to stare without Vi saying something.
“You’re staring again.”
So much for that.
“Excuse me, I was not staring.”
Nice try.
Vi smirked at her. “Okay, let’s say you weren’t—"
“I wasn’t,’ Caitlyn interjected. “Does it bother you?!” Now, she was second-guessing herself. She would do nothing to upset this moment in which Vi felt no need to rush her eating, keep tabs on who was near her food, or predict whether she was being observed.
Vi sighed, pulling a serious expression as she coyly pretended to think it over. “Mmm...” Her voice teased the crooked grin she was still half-managing to conceal.
“...Because if you don’t want any attention, I could—” That self-satisfied Kiramman smile graced Caitlyn’s lips as the backpedaling commenced.
“Hey—hey, Cupcake! I never said anything like that!”
“Then, say it.” Caitlyn leaned back, swigging her tea. Check and mate.
“I like it,” Vi admitted sheepishly, through the spark in her eyes was unapologetic. Now, it was Caitlyn’s turn to blush in solidarity with her as they shared a look. In the next second, an errant fork was stealing over to Caitlyn’s plate.
“What was that for?!”
“Classic misdirect. You were too busy taking in the view.” Vi gloated around a bite of Caitlyn’s bacon. “Oh, that’s cool,” she added as her attention flitted back to the newspaper.
“What is?” Caitlyn stirred her tea expectantly, as she did when she was awaiting a report.
Holding up the paper, Vi pointed to a section that had a picture of carnival rides. “The carnival, well Solstice Faire’s coming to town,” Vi said fondly, before returning to reading.
Caitlyn smiled when she noticed Vi was humming while she read. “Why is a newspaper article about that making you hum?”
“Hmmm?”
“What is so great about the carnival?”
Vi brushed it off at first. “Oh, nothing,” she sang, glancing to Caitlyn at last. “Okay. First of all, it’s the Solstice Faire, and second of all... I went once, you know?”
“To the carnival?” Caitlyn clarified.
With a little shrug of the shoulder and a wry little half smile, Vi slumped further back into her chair, sinking into the memory as though it were a warm bath.
“Excuse you, it’s called the Solstice Faire,” Vi emphasized the proper title. “ It was when I was eleven or twelve. We were all poking around Topside—Powder, Mylo, Claggor, all of us, one summer. Nice afternoon. Summertime. Couldn’t ask for a better day. We smelled something delicious. It was syrupy and sweet; buttery and salty… We followed our noses, half expecting to wind up out back of a bakery as they threw away the day-olds… But the bakery was not where we ended up. Turned out the fair was in town.”
Caitlyn nodded along. “Don’t you just hate it when that happens? Go to find a bakery and it turns out to be a carnival.”
Vi interrupted her with a wave of her fork. “Hey! I’m trying to tell a story here!” she admonished her. “So, anyways, we decided to check it out, and see what we could see through the slats of the fence. And as we were doing so, it occurred to us that the fence was pretty short and flimsy. It was just one of those temporary ones. The question came up: Why would we content ourselves with watching Topsiders go on thrill-rides… when we could do it, too?!”
Vi paused to see if Caitlyn was still listening.
Thankfully, she was.
“We hopped the fence no problem. Everyone was too caught up in the bustle to see us crawling over it. We looked to our left, and there was food from every corner of Runeterra. All sold from really fancy-looking stalls. We looked to our right, and there were people being flung and shot around on every sort of ride and coaster imaginable, with scores more lining up for a turn.”
Vi was doing that thing—that thing that was so quintessentially Violet—where she spun her story as though she were competing for Caitlyn’s attention, even if they were the only two in the room. She flicked her bangs from out of her eyes, licking her lips, gazing wistfully off.
“We had never really thought about going to a carnival or anything like this, let alone what we would do in one if we were to go in.” She hitched a shoulder, going for a bite of her toast. “We were just sort of wandering around, taking it all in, and trying to find rides that Powder was tall enough to ride...”
Caitlyn disguised her smile behind a sip of tea. She had no mental image of Vi’s kid-siblings, but the vision of young Vi taking in the marvels of such an event was all that mattered.
“It wasn’t long, though, before people started clocking us for fissure kids.” Vi spoke in a routine fashion, as though the following events were a tired but familiar tale. “A couple of carnies were following us, and the next time we snuck a peek, they were talking to the Enforcer on duty… then the Enforcer started swiveling his head everywhere. We tried to make ourselves scarce, so we squeezed into a photo booth, which was a really dumb idea, because we had cornered ourselves.”
Vi took a breath, reaching for her tepid coffee. She cast Caitlyn a meaningful glance, finding her ever the rapt listener.
“The jig was up as soon as we heard him tapping on the booth with his baton. We all kind of spilled out, and he asked to see our admissions tickets, which, of course, we didn’t have.” Vi pursed her lips, sighing thoughtfully through her nose. “I guess they didn’t want to make a show of parading some grubby little urchins out of the front of the park, so they showed us out the back way, the way they took the trash out.”
Caitlyn’s heart wanted to hurt, but if the shine in those pewter eyes was anything to go by, there was more to this story. The Zaunite held her finger up pausingly, her face radiating a certain roguish pleasure with herself that Caitlyn had come to know well.
“But on the way out, I saw the sort of stuff they were throwing into the dumpster.” With pride, she rattled them off for Caitlyn. “Redeemed admissions tickets, some spent prize tickets, unclaimed clothes from the lost and found… All stuff I could work with.
“The Enforcer didn’t want us to get any notion that we could sneak back in the rear entrance. He said was gonna tighten security up and that the place had twenty-four hour surveillance… But I had seen what I had seen, and even as we were making our way home, the ideas started coming to me.
“We were about to hit the lift when I told everyone to go on home without me. I knew Vander would be a little mad, but not worried. I doubled back, and snuck back to the rear entrance of the carnival. It was later in the afternoon now, more like evening, and for all his threats, the Enforcer was nowhere to be seen. Where he went off to, I’ll never know…”
Vi saw that Caitlyn needed a refill on her tea, and paused her story long enough to grab the kettle from the middle of the table and filled Caitlyn’s cup.
“I hopped into the dumpster and found myself a few empty sugar sacks. I scrounged around, stuffing them up with everything I needed. The coast remained totally clear. I kept going and going, and came out with almost more stuff than I could carry.
“I spent half the night sewing, hemming stuff up. The next morning, we scrubbed our faces until they were about to wear off, and scoured our nails clean. I had come across plenty of hats and sunglasses in the dumpster—I guess people lose them often enough on rides. I had enough to make us unrecognizable.”
By now Caitlyn was enthralled. She had leaned forward to rest her chin on her knuckles, so she could give Vi her full attention.
It was a great story too. Vi was good at painting mental images with her words. As she envisioned a young Vi and her family going incognito, Caitlyn realized her jaw had started to hurt from smiling so much.
“And was it everything you dreamt it would be?” Caitlyn asked with a glint her eye.
Vi made a small shrug that Caitlyn had learned was a way Vi tried to hide disappointment. “I mean, yeah, it was fun and all…”
“But?”
After a brief hesitation, Vi opened up. “I didn’t get to do all the things I wanted to do,” she admitted, perhaps a touch sheepishly. “I kind of had a list, but it went up in smoke the second we got through the gates. Taking three kids to something like this is like...” Vi looked searchingly into her coffee for a joking spin on things. “Competition cat-herding. I was so busy making sure everyone else was taken care of, I didn’t get to do all the stuff you’re supposed to do when you go the carnival. You know, ride the Ferris wheel, take a spin on a roller coaster, or do those shooting games where you hit the target and win. Woulda slayed the darts game if I got a chance to try it, trust me.”
We’ll just have to change that, won’t we? Caitlyn thought to herself.
Vi left off, trying to work up a way to parcel the experience up. She caught herself. Caitlyn had grown up having it all. “…Well, you’ve probably been, right?”
“Oh, yes. Once.”
Vi snorted in disbelief. “Once?”
Caitlyn nodded. “Once.”
Things grew silent for a moment.
“Ya gonna tell me about it or what?” Vi gestured for Caitlyn to share.
Shifting in her seat, Caitlyn let out a huff and started her own walk down memory lane. “Well, growing up, I had carnival books and carnival toys, I got the idea, but I’d never actually been to one. I’d—don’t laugh—but until I was into my teens, Piltovans… Zaunites… Everyone who wasn’t an aristocrat, I’d call them ‘real people’, which made sense to me, because they lived in the ‘real world’…”
“Makes sense.”
“Naturally, whenever the fair was in town, I’d plead for my parents to take me… To go and see all the real people crowding about, riding the rides and eating cotton candy, and playing games, and to try it with them.”
Vi wanted to make a joke about Caitlyn’s overly privileged childhood, but she could tell this was a serious thing for her. She knew how Caitlyn hated how shallow her experiences with high-status Piltover families could be.
“Now, every year, my parents would try to talk me down: ‘You already have a pony, Caitlyn, what would you want with a pony ride?’ ‘We could hire you a clown, you needn’t go all the way to the carnival to see one!’ ‘You can play shooting games whenever you please, what’s wrong with your pellet gun? We’ll tack some balloons to a board…’ And on, and on.
“And every year I’d beg them, just in case it was the age factor holding them back… Well, after years of this, when I was around eleven or twelve… They said ‘yes’.”
“I almost didn’t believe it the first time I heard it, but I realized: It wasn’t a drill—We were going to the Solstice Faire, to see the real people! We all got ready, my parents put me in some silly romper and took about twenty pictures of me…”
Vi raised her hand, speaking up as polite as she could. “Excuse me. Where are these pictures and why haven’t I seen them?”
“We can see about scheduling some time with my dad to go through them while I down myself in brandy,” Caitlyn riposted. “Back to my story... Even Jayce came along. Well, we got there in the evening, and I was immediately confused. I was expecting more lines and crowds and people milling about, having fun. It looked like they were closing up.”
Odd. It wasn’t like Caitlyn’s parents to play a joke on her, nor were the Kirammans late for anything.
“I was so upset that I had missed everything,” Caitlyn continued, “And my parents told me that we didn’t have to leave… They had hired everyone to stay until sundown so that I could go to the fair.”
“That sounds pretty sick, I’m not gonna lie,” Vi confessed.
Caitlyn lofted a shoulder noncommittally. “Dad explained that carnivals were very dangerous, that children got lost and snatched and taken hostage… held for ransom… sold into the circus… to her credit, I’d probably have leapt at the opportunity to join the circus and see the world.
“I tried to keep my chin up, but dad could sense my disappointment. He said ‘Come, Caitlyn, there’s plenty of real people, there’s one over there!’ He points to an Enforcer, who, now that I think of it, was probably trying to go on a break or a patrol after locking up. I got a bit ahead of Mum and Dad, and before they could stop me, I was begging him to come on the rides with us.”
Vi made an exaggerated gasp. “Caitlyn Kiramman begging? The scandal!”
Caitlyn didn't let that distract from telling her story.
“Now… It’s generally understood that if a Kiramman woman asks you to do something, the first thing you do is drop everything. The second thing you do is say ‘of course!’”
She interrupted herself this time to look at Vi with a knowing smile. “I hope you’re paying attention.”
“When Cait asks, listen. Drop everything.” Vi closed her eyes and pretended to commit the rule to memory, repeating it. “When Cait asks, listen. Drop everything.”
“Exactly. So, we had an evening at the Solstice Faire with House Kiramman family and Officer Whatshisname. I played the shooting games, of course, rode on a Ferris Wheel... I loved the haunted house.”
“Oh, yeah,” Vi nervously chuckled, “the haunted house...” she looked aware, hoping her girlfriend didn’t pick up on the fear in her voice.
With a reminiscent sigh, Caitlyn thought about what she didn’t get to enjoy. “There were a lot of things that I wanted to do but my parents refused,” she shook her head a little. “Not that I didn’t have fun, but it just wasn’t the same because it wasn’t real.”
“By the end of it all, I’d won myself a few strands of tickets. At first, I thought the carnival some sort of competition, and I didn’t know what to expect—perhaps a medal or a trophy, because I kept asking my parents how high I’d placed.” Something flickered across Caitlyn’s face, and she added, “I guess that makes sense considering I’d already be heavily involved in shooting competitions by that age."
She made small shapes on the table with her pointer finger. “Jayce explained to me that that I was meant to trade my tickets in for whatever I’d like from the prize booth.”
“They took me down the midway to a stand at the end where they had plushies in every size, shape, and color imaginable. Now, I had to wrap my head around the fact that money—tickets—were an object. That was both a novelty, and a challenge. One plushie stood out to me. It had to be the biggest stuffed bunny I had ever seen. It spoke to me I had to have it.” She inhaled sharply through her teeth—Vi could tell there was some big twist coming. “But, when I looked past the several rows of plushies hanging from the rafters, I saw them.”
The radiance vanished from Caitlyn’s expressive eye, exchanged for a look of solemn thoughtfulness.
“Saw them?” Vi asked, curious.
“Beyond the plushies were hung these little bags of water that had escaped my interest at first. When I looked closer, I realized each one had a tiny baby turtle in it, no larger than a golden hex...” Caitlyn encircled the diameter with her forefinger and her thumb as she spoke, her brows subtly creased. “And I asked my dad, ‘Dad, do they live in those bags?!’”
Vi, who had heard much of the tale out with a faint smirk and the occasional snort of mirth, had grown quiet. A pesky sting in her eyes caught her off guard.
“And he said, ‘Come, Caitlyn, there’s plenty of air in the top for them to breathe, see?’” Caitlyn trailed off, frowning pensively into her tea for several beats. Shaking the spell off with a little flick of her ponytail, a wide smile spread across her lips. Looking to Vi again, she continued. “I walked off from that faire, not with the bunny... But with my arms so full of turtles...” She held her arms up for emphasis, so Vi might imagine how comical little Caitlyn looked, burdened down with terrapins. “I got as many as my tickets would buy, and I made good on my promise to carry them all.”
“Wait.” Vi was dying to see the story come full circle. “Those are the turtles in the garden pond—”
“—And that’s why I take you to that log, to watch them sun themselves. They turn eleven this year.”
“Oh, Cait.” So, it was always in her.
Caitlyn had again lapsed into frowning reflection. “I didn't get to see the real world that day... But the turtles did. All’s well that ends well,” she concluded. Something else struck her, and she scoffed. “And the whole time… All this worry of me getting taken hostage—” She glanced to Vi, brows faintly quirked as the conclusion dawned on her. “It was us that took the Enforcer hostage, wasn’t it!?”
The realization that they may be talking about the same experience seemed to hit Vi first.
“Wait…” Vi wracked her past, brows knit thoughtfully as she did some rough math. “Did you… run interference so I could take my family to the Solstice Faire?”
Caitlyn’s eye grew wide. “N-no. That’s impossible…” As she put two and two together, she came to the conclusion that it was, in fact, possible.
Vi slapped the table, making Caitlyn jump. “Cait!” The year, the time, the place, the conveniently-absent Enforcer—the so-called ‘twenty-four-seven surveillance’. “Do you realize what this means?!”
“That I was an accomplice to a crime and should never have been allowed on the force.”
“Cait,” Vi said, “I’m serious! What are the odds?” She was beaming. "It’s like it was meant to be.”
A smile curled the corners of Caitlyn’s mouth. “Meant to be? Didn’t know I was dating someone so romantic.” She pressed her lips together as she pondered on the chances it would all come together like this. Finally, she said, “I suppose it also mean that I was playing the long game when trying to woo you.”
Leaning over to kiss her, Vi smiled against Caitlyn’s lips. “Well, Cupcake, I think that’s the sweetest way I’ve ever been wooed before.”
Before the kiss could truly start, Caitlyn pushed Vi back an inch or two. She wasn’t going to let that comment slide. “And exactly how many women have wooed you, Violet?” She raised an eyebrow. “Should I be worried?”
She knew she didn’t have anything to worry about, but it was fun to tease anyway.
“You know what you could do to set yourself apart?” Vi asked.
“Betray a warlord and start a war for you?”
Vi scoffed. “Please. Try to be original for once,” she said as she reached for the paper. Holding it up, she pointed to the section on the Solstice Faire. “Take me to this.”
Caitlyn straightened up in her chair and cleared her throat, like she was about to say something important. “Vi, would you do me the honor of attending the Solstice Faire with me?”
“Hmmm,” Vi mused for a moment before a smile crept in. “You asking me on a date?”
Bringing her hand to her chin, Cailtyn pretended to contemplate Vi’s question. “Let’s see, we are together—romantically—and I did ask you to go somewhere, just you and me, as my girlfriend.”
“Then my answer is yes.”
Vi rested her elbow on the table, propping her chin in her hand thoughtfully. Caitlyn leaned back to finish the dregs of her tea.
“Huh,” they both pondered, at precisely the same time.
The two of them at the carnival together. What a thought.