Chapter Text
Cassandra’s first hint that her day will be different is that her desk is completely clear of paperwork.
Her office at the counselor’s building looks otherwise normal; the large wooden desk she inherited from her mother sits before a large golden window, two matching chairs sitting before it. The dark leather couch that she sometimes sleeps on, when making the journey to her dim and quiet home seems not worth the hassle, is sitting innocently against the wall in between two bookshelves.
But there is a lack of paperwork sitting on the desk and coffee table.
Her office hasn’t been this clean in years as there is little point anymore to keep it tidy. She’s here so often and for so long that it’s become her main office so she hasn’t taken meetings here for some time, in fact, she can’t even remember the last time she’d done so.
Cassandra feels a rush of rage at the loss of work and it lasts only briefly, as so many of her emotions. Then she sighs and dimly hopes that whatever janitor had meddled with her office had at least not thrown anything out.
Most of her work is in one of her desk drawers, thankfully, but not all of it. She’s busy taking stock of what is missing when there is a light knock on her door.
It’s a surprise, half because she had very few visitors to her office this early, and half because the door opens before she can even respond.
The young woman in front of her doesn’t step inside, instead casually leans against the open door with one hand on the knob and the other holding a half eaten apple. Cassandra has never seen her before, even if she didn’t have a good mind for faces she would have known if she had. Her hair is bright red and shaved around her ears and around her skull. It was only visible because her of braids, a few smaller ones that pressed against her skull and one large complex one that fell behind her, brought the bulk of her hair up enough to see it.
She was dress in fine clothes, but Cassandra also noticed that they were rather plain. Thick soled made of dark leather and outer metal toe, where the hilt of a knife stuck out, along with plain dark fabric pants and a white button up shirt, the sleeves pulled up neatly to her elbow. Little jewelry, only a few small silver hoops and a dark blue sapphire stud in her ears. There with a belt wrapped around her hips, where two pickaxes of all things hung from small hoops.
Cassandra was used to making snap judgments about people. It was a skill she’s developed over her long life, and while she is well aware that people can surprise you, you can at least form a picture quickly.
This woman was an odd mix. Boots like that were obviously not popular in Piltover, but her clothes were definitely made for her. The knife seemed Noxian in design but Cassandra was not an expert in bladed weaponry and the pickaxes, strange looking as they looked, screamed of the Undercity as did the half hidden ink lines poking out of her sleeves.
She had a pistol in her desk but the woman had such a casual mood about her that she waited to reach for it.
The stranger swallowed her bite of apple, “Mornin’. Sorry to bug you this early but Mel wants to know if you’ve seen some of her notes about that water filter project?”
Cassandra hasn’t made it this far in life without rolling with the punches. As far as she’s aware Mel Medarda hasn’t taken on a lover the entire time she’s lived in Piltover but that must be who this woman is.
“No,” she replies. “I’m afraid not. I’m actually missing quite a lot of my own work, it would seem.”
“Shit,” the stranger grumbles, “I was really hoping you had them and we didn’t have a thief on our hands. You missing anything important, important? Mel’s missing pretty much everything on the water filter thing and a couple notes she left behind on your guys last meeting with Silco but that’s about it.”
“Nothing confidential,” she says. She taps her fingers against her desk for a moment before she asks as now she’s worried that she’s forgotten an introduction due to how casually this woman is speaking to her, “I’m sorry, what was your name?”
Cassandra has made social blunders before. It’s just something that happens when you’re in the public sector, sooner or later you will say something that offends or angers someone. It’s simply inevitable. It’s been years since she’s had one but it’s so very clear that her streak is now over.
The woman pales so quickly and so harshly that Cassandra worries for a moment that she’ll be seeing her husband today because she’ll have to escort this woman to the hospital as she watches grey eyes go shock wide and her mouth slackens.
She knows that she’s never seen this woman. She knows that but now there’s a splash of anxiety because she’s never seen someone fake this level of surprise and, as the shock fades somewhat, fear.
“You—,” the woman clears her throat, “You don’t know me?”
Yes, it is fear that laces her voice, clearly not fear for herself but for Cassandra? Like the idea of her not knowing her is unfathomable and cause for immense concern.
“No,” Cassandra says, frowning now. She’s tries to rack her mind for a name to match the person before her but there’s nothing.
At best she looks vaguely familiar. As if Cassandra might be able to pick her out if she stared at her long enough. Perhaps she knows a family member? Usually that is the case when she feels this level of vague familiarity.
“Ok, fuck.” The stranger brings a trembling hand to her mouth and tosses her half eaten apple into her trash can. “Shit. Ok. Um, my name is Vi.”
The name rings a bell but like her face it’s only vaguely familiar. Even if she has forgotten meeting this woman, surely it doesn’t rise to the level of dramatics this ‘Vi’ thinks it does.
“Are you feeling alright?” Vi asks, cautiously. “Otherwise, I mean?”
Really, what is the cause of such dramatics?
“I’m fine, thank you,” Cassandra says sternly. “I apologize I’ve forgotten our introduction but there is no need to be dramatic about this.”
This doesn’t seem to calm down Vi in the least. “Cassandra,” she says, concern dripping from her voice, her expression screaming fear, “You’ve known me since I was ten and we had lunch yesterday afternoon.”
Immediately she scoffs, “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve never met you before just now.”
A thought strikes her and her eyes narrow, “Is this some kind of ruse over my missing work? Because it’s a rather poorly thought out one—“
“I literally don’t give a shit about that right now,” Vi interrupts. “I’m worried about you, alright? Maybe… maybe we need to get you to Tobias?”
The casual dropping of her husband’s name unnerves her. Not because it’s unknown to the public, her husband may not go to events anymore but he isn’t a secret, but rather it’s the way that Vi says it so knowingly and convincingly like she knows Tobias as well.
A spark runs up her spine— something is wrong. She doesn’t know what, but something is wrong here.
“Who are you?” Cassandra asks slowly. Her gun is in her desk but she can’t reach it without this Vi seeing her do it.
“Vi,” the woman repeats and the surprise has fully given way to fear and not a small amount of sadness. Nothing to indicate she was in active danger.
“Look, I don’t know what’s happening,” Vi says carefully, “But we’ll figure it out. You do know me, I swear. Um, we met at a party that Mel dragged me too, where I ran into Caitlyn—“
And all at once Cassandra shuts down.
“How dare you,” she says, her voice ice cold.
It’s so rare that anyone says her daughter’s name in her presence that she can’t remember the last time it happened. Her and Tobias certainly never speak of her any longer as the wound stretched so deeply that if they approached it they’d finally be ripped apart forever. She can barely even bring herself to read the name when she visits the garden.
And hearing it spoken so casually, so knowingly, from this stranger’s lips fills her with a level of anger and pain that she hasn’t had in years.
“I don’t know what kind of trick or scheme you are trying to pull,” Cassandra continues, her fingers beginning to clench together so tightly her knuckles went white, “And I don’t care. Get out of my office before I have you hauled away.”
“Wait—“
“Now,” the word is brought fully with the weight and power that comes from being who she is.
Vi stares at her for a moment but leaves with the soft click of door behind her before Cassandra begins reaching for her pistol.
Her heart is pounding relentlessly, her hands have begun to shake.
How dare she.
How dare she.
Cassandra stands and walks over to a cabinet sitting along her walls. She tries to not depend on it too much and the weight of her family lineage and the disappointment she knows they’d feel to know that the leader of their House is a common drunk keeps her from indulging most days.She certainly doesn’t see Tobias enough for his opinions to matter much on the subject.
But when she opens her cabinet the whiskey decanter and glasses she keeps there for the harshest days are gone.
Instead, there are books. Cassandra recognizes some of them, old favorites that she would read during down times and a few bound together research papers from students in the programs she’s founded. But there are more than she doesn’t.
A few catch her eye for having an author that makes her heart drop to her feet and she pulls one out with shaking fingers.
Pocket Fundamentals of the Risks and Safe Usage of Hextech Devices, by Jayce Talis and Viktor Of Zaun, with further input by Powder Medarda.
Her hands are shaking so badly that it’s hard to even read but she recognizes the shape of the name for how can she not? It was her that picked him out, her that brought him into her home and that watched over his studies for nearly a decade. And the sight of Jayce Talis written in neat black ink brings on the sight of the last time she’d seen him because It’s burned into her mind just as much as the last time she’d seen Caitlyn.
Her head begins to swim, and she stumbles to her chair falling into it with a lack of anything even remotely resembling grace.
It’s nothing more than a cruel ruse. Crueler than anything she could have ever imagined happening to her out of the blue. She doesn’t know what enemies she has made so suddenly and so greatly that they would put that woman in her doorway to speak her daughter’s name before she discovers papers that never came to exist.
She swore, she swore, to not ever let her temper get the best of her again but that promise is feeling shaky at the moment.
“Cassandra?”
She turns to discover that Mel Medarda stands in front of her desk.
Mel must have been there for a long moment as she hadn’t heard the door open or close, nor heard the first time she’d spoken her name. She’s dressed as beautiful as always in a white dress, her hair pinned up in an elegant updo.
“Get out,” Cassandra says, tired of this interaction already. She simply isn’t in the mood for whatever the younger woman has to say.
But Cassandra has eyes that study even when she doesn’t truly care about the subject.
And Mel? She looks…. Different. She’s wearing jewelry Cassandra has never seen, not just her necklace and bracelets but her ear rings which have also expanded in number. Most strangely of all, the pattern of golden tattoos that wrap around her neck and back have extended.
“Come now, Cassandra, don’t be like that. We’re simply worried about you,” Mel says with more emotion than she’s seen from her before. The concern is real, genuine without any pretense.
She’s never been close with Medarda— they’ve worked together, yes, but they’re simply colleagues so the concern hits her the wrong way and reminds her of that Vi woman’s raw nerve.
“Leave, Medarda.”
“Something is clearly wrong, dear—“
“Yes,” Cassandra says, her voice deadly cold, “Someone has entered my office and rearranged my things. Someone put that woman up to wounding me using my greatness weakness. I have apparently made an enemy with someone that cares not for human decency, so yes, something is wrong. And as of right now I haven’t ruled you being involved out.”
Mel looks at her, studies her closely.
“We’ve known each other for a long time, haven’t we?” Mel asks as she walks towards Cassandra’s desk.
Cassandra releases a weary sigh, “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Have I ever been known to be cruel?”
No. No, Mel Medarda is a great many things, such as being deeply clever with a hidden tricker streak that Cassandra has seen appear when they deal with some of the competent Houses, but not cruel. Not directly. And while people can change, and Cassandra is no stranger to the ways people change, people don’t change out of the blue and there hasn’t been an event big enough to warrant this amount of cruelly.
“No,” Cassandra replies, stiffly.
It’s not enough to clear her completely of being in on whatever cruel nonsense this is, but she won’t immediately condemn her. Her temper may be hard to tame but she won’t ever, ever, let it condemn anyone without logic, without reason. She’s seen where that path leads.
Never again.
“That woman,” Cassandra says coldly, she won’t give her a single ounce of respect by using her name. “She said you sent her, is that true?”
Mel nods, a dent appears between her eyebrows. “You truly don’t know who she is?”
Cassandra does not scoff. “No. She seems familiar but I certainly think I would remember meeting her. Did you tell her to mention—“
She cuts herself off and takes a shaky breath. A spike of resentment rises in her throat over the missing whiskey again. At least if she had a glass she’d been less affected by this tar between her ribs where love and pride once sat.
“I sent her here to ask if you’ve seen my notes, that’s all,” Mel answered quietly. “She’s quite shaken, she isn’t sure what she said that angered you so greatly."
She lets her anger slip and scoffs, “Nonsense. Let us not kid ourselves ; Everyone in this city knows my weakness, Medarda. What I want to know is if you were involved in all of this,” she waved to the collection of books and papers in the cabinet.
Mel looks at her cabinet and the confusion grows, though she hides it better than most. There is a pause where Cassandra guesses Mel is trying to find a way to phase a question without making her temper flare up.
“What exactly is wrong?” She asks, far, far blunter then Cassandra thought she’d ask.
In answer Cassandra tosses the horrible booklet to the other side of her desk.
The younger woman picks it up and reads the cover with a carefully blank expression. Her fingers tap against the leather bindings for several long moments.
Surely she recognizes at least His name. It lives on in mutters of tragedy, of horror, of a lives lost too soon. A tragic tale of what happens when arcane is brought out of the shadows. Cassandra wonders too, who Powder Medarda is— as far as she is aware the only Medarda in Piltover is Mel.
“What do you remember doing yesterday?” Mel asks, setting the boomer down gently on the desk.
Cassandra’s eyebrows furrow, “What nonsense are you suggesting? Are you telling me that you actually believe the same as that woman?”
She stands up, she isn’t nearly as tall as the other woman but she can’t keep sitting a moment longer. Her knees still feel weak from shock and horror, but that’s never stopped her before.
“Is this some kind of elaborate ruse to make me think that I’m mad? If so you must know I’m not some easily tricked fool.”
Mel shakes her head, “Of course not, you are one of the most intelligent women I know. What I think is that someone has harmed you or taken your memories somehow. For what purpose, I do not know, but something is clearly wrong.”
Cassandra lends onto her desk, “I am unfortunately very aware of my existence in this world, Mel. I think I would be aware if I was missing pieces of it.”
“Magic is a strange thing,” Mel replies. “What I know is that you’ve known my daughter for over half her life and yet you didn’t know her name. That is concerning, no matter how you look at it.”
For a moment Cassandra is too confused to be angry.
“You have no children,” Cassandra, an edge of dumbfoundedness edging into her voice. “You’ve never had children.”
What a strange thing it is to see Mel’s face tighten further in concern even as her eyes soften. “I have three.”
There is that feeling again; something is wrong. Mel is as good an actor as any good politician but there are some things that are exceptionally hard to fake. Parental love that shines bright enough to show though the eyes like that is one of them.
But Mel has no children and Cassandra has thought that wise of her more than once.
“Something is wrong,” Cassandra says quietly to herself. “You have no children, I know that. Yet…”
“As I’ve said, magic is a strange powerful thing, especially in the hands of someone that wishes you harm,” Mel says with sad, worried eyes. “But please, Cassandra, let us take you to Lux or at least Tobias.”
Cassandra breathes deeply, her head swimming. “I don’t understand,” she admits. “I know my mind, there’s no way— you must be lying.”
“If I am, then surely your husband will not play along,” Mel points out.
“I’d rather not get him involved in this nonsense,” Cassandra says lowly. “But I suppose I have no choice in the matter. The quicker we short this out the sooner I can get back to work.”
This, surprisingly , makes Mel laugh. “How comforting to know that no matter what ails you, you’re more concerned about work. Some things never change.”
Cassandra opens her mouth to speak but is cut off by a hesitant knock on her door.
“Ah, I was wondering when they’d appear,” Mel says warmly, “I only managed to bargain speaking to you alone for a few minutes.”
It must be Vi then, and the thought of her as Mel’s daughter feels so foreign, and perhaps one of her other children.
“Come in,” Cassandra says when it’s clear that this time, Vi is respecting the closed door.
But if Vi is there Cassandra doesn’t see her. The woman is tall, taller than Cassandra even and dressed in a variation of an Enforcer uniform. Black with golden detailings, a pistol on one hip and a badge on the other.
No, all her eyes can see is a woman that looks so much like Cassandra’s mother. The same eyes and nose that Cassandra sees every morning, the same cheekbones that they share with the portraits that line her hallways, yet her hair is tinted the same dark inky blue that runs so beautifully in Tobias’s family.
Cassandra has experienced moments in life where everything seems to crash to a grinding halt; The moment she’d met Tobias’s eyes as she walked down the aisle, Caitlyn’s tiny body being placed into her arms for the first time and the moment Grayson told her of the full extent of the accident that had claimed her only daughter’s life at only fifteen.
This moment here is another.
“Is everything alright?” Caitlyn asks nervously.
Cassandra loses her grip on reality.