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The moment hanging in between the thick air of Caitlyn’s room as she left is when the fact makes itself known.
The room is mostly tidy, save for the cross of messy papers on the floor just beside the bed. Said bed is sturdy, comfortable, soft. Meant to hold when you decide to thrash at night, have a little romp, maybe jump on the sheets. The ceiling is high enough to convince yourself you’re looking at the sky.
So what do you have? A flawless room, an expensive bed, a pretentious ceiling. Vi feels dirty, lying there, shoes up and face battered. She knows she shouldn’t—because Vi has fought for half her world. The proof of her tireless fight is not something she should be ashamed of. She has the wounds to prove it. Unravel the bandage on her fists and the blood will sing to tell you how she built her life surviving. Gold has nothing on that. She is scarred and filthy and an undercity rat but she will always be worth more than any price existing.
She knows, as well, even with what she has done to even exist in this moment, that she doesn’t belong here. Not in these sheets, not in beds that are fancy enough to have curtains. There is a divide, and it’s always been there, and they’ve only chosen to let go of that crack in the molds temporarily to make space for their hands to hold their hearts.
The air as it stands still is deplorable. Disgusting. Trying to make sense of something as the world around you watches—too much of it is enough to make her skin crawl.
Vi knows who she is and what she means as a purpose to stand. Vi also enjoys the touch of Caitlyn’s palm, rough but not to the point of no return, just a body to a body. The warmth of it is startling. The feeling that goes with it is scary.
She thinks of these with Caitlyn’s palm cradling hers. Here they are: bathed by the sun filtering through the windows, specks of dust suspended in the air. This is the morning of a movie, the setting to the start of a sad song. If you close your eyes, you miss it. If you open them, it may blind you. Being touched, like this, looked at gently in the way that is reserved for the broken, the bad, the angry. The ones who want something to have faith for.
And the world watching as she breaks and makes herself feels like ants on her skin but the way Caitlyn watches her as she traces a promise on her cheek is too tender and bound and god forbid loving that it just feels like murder.
Caitlyn tells her there is hope, in the faces and shapes of the Council. Caitlyn tells her that if Vi takes her hand, they could build a future together.
She stands there, back on a door that could feed an entire street on the Lanes, and tells her with the voice of an angel that their world is changing. And it’s her choice whether to come and witness it or not.
Vi’s gotten into trouble for pretty faces before. This one might take her to war.
They say when rain comes, it pours.
It isn’t enough that it pelts your streets, ground you stand in. It must stay—the rain, the water, making a home in your clothes. Clinging on the folds because nothing else will.
Not this, anyway. “Topside and bottom.” You and me. “Oil and water. That’s all there is.”
“What about us?”
“Oil and water.” Vi doesn’t know if the words weigh on her tongue because they’re lies or truth. “Wasn’t meant to be.”
Caitlyn takes a shuddering breath and even with all that is around them, the only thing Vi could think of was for her to go inside, it’s pouring, you’re going to get cold. It’s in the same vein she thinks leave me.
“You don’t mean that.” says Caitlyn.
Saying that is pointless. Vi would run to Caitlyn in a sea of gunshots armed with nothing but her fists with the world burning behind her. When she says they are not meant to be, it is a statement to the realization that hung in the air, that hour in her room, lying down as their faces meet. Soft even if she didn’t deserve it.
When a goodbye sparks, no one but the ghost of what is and what was lives to tell the tale.
“You’re good, cupcake,” Vi murmurs. She takes a step back to Caitlyn, turning into quick, desperate strides. She grasps Caitlyn’s face in between her hands, trying to feel half of her world burning through her fingers. Vi breathes and breathes. “You’re good. Good enough for you to forget me.”
Caitlyn makes a sound close to a scoff and a laugh. “Not good enough for you to stay.”
“ No,” Vi rushes to say. “That is not what this is about. You are more than what this world could have intended for me, Caitlyn—”
“Stop. Stop, Vi. This is the problem with you! Don’t you see? Stop deciding for other people! Look at me, here—” Caitlyn grips Vi’s hands on her face harder for her to feel that she’s real. “Do I look like someone who can’t think for herself? Do you think I’ve never considered whatever you’re thinking of, too? Think I never doubted this when I saw your old home, never thought maybe you wouldn’t understand me, or I wouldn’t understand you?”
The freedom that they were given from the silence that ensues is tense. Vi has thought of the meaning of abandonment time and time again, and as the rain continues to pour, she knows now she’s never triumphed over it.
“Stop trying to take on everything yourself.” Caitlyn whispers.
Vi thought all her years she’s fought for half her world. Crawled from the streets and spewed blood on stone and carved knuckles through fissures. But while fighting for it, she’s also taken the weight of it. Her shoulders are wide and laced with the world of her own making.
“You’re not going to let me do this alone, are you,” Vi asks with something that almost sounds like wonder.
“It’s about time you realized that.” says Caitlyn. “I didn’t do all of this just to let you walk away from me.”
“That’s right. Now that I’ve been in your bed, can’t let me go?”
“Stop it!”
The rain doesn’t let up. But still they are there, holding each other, reminiscent to the kind of goodbye they shared on that bridge, thinking every moment was their last.
Now, Vi’s learned not to wrench out of a grip that tries to hold you. Not when it feels like this. Not when it could just forever be like this, always.