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Vi fails her first mission, lack of experience and some horrible, horrible luck. She loses her parents. She doesn't lose all of her sister, but she doesn't know that yet. All she knows is that someone is still there rooting for her, and that someone out there is hoping she will fail. Surviving is a bloody business; living hurts worse, but out of spite and hope, she manages.
Here are the facts:
People do not stay. They leave and they leave and they leave, and you'll be left in the alleyway with scrapes on both your knees. You will make a mistake and they will leave and the person who comes back to you will be leagues different.
And Vi? She makes mistake after mistake, lands in a shitty cold cell and gets out and finds herself back there in less than a week. She was born into this violence (they all were), grew up looking over her shoulders for the ghosts of mom and dad, turns clean hands over sometimes expecting her sister's blood. She was born into this, so she holds it close to her chest like a fresh wound, like something gifted to her. Vander's last legacy.
There are some things she just can't fix, so she gets her knuckles bruised and presses her fingers to the red stains on her clothes like they'll go away, and spits blood from her mouth and fights the whole goddamn world.
Shimmer tastes horribly like the watered-down apple juice Vander gave her everytime she asked if she could drink what everyone else was drinking. Before it hits the back of her throat, she is thinking of only the woodgrain pattern on the bartop, the stupid joke he'd make about this being the rarest drink in the pub.
After it gets there, there is only pain, the scream ripped out of her throat, this alleyway's hazy, dreamlike darkness. She's clenching her teeth so hard she thinks they might crack but then Caitlyn's hands are warm around her face and -
"Easy, easy, easy," she murmurs, and she doesn't sound frightened at all, not like Vi would sound if it was Caitlyn yelling her lungs out with a stab wound in her gut. Her voice is cool, calm, as though this happens everyday, and Vi wonders, recklessly, do you even fucking care, would you mind if I died and you got your stupid info-
When she opens her eyes, Caitlyn is looking back.
Her face is blurry and strange, but it has this steely, focused sort of look to it that makes Vi's heart spasm painfully. All the lines of it join into a picture, and for a shaky second it's the only thing she can see. It's trying to tell her something, send her a message.
Kiss her, it says.
Caitlyn's eyes widen imperceptibly, a burst of clear blue. Vi tracks the flutter of her eyelashes until she pulls away.
The feeling swells. She imagines taking it in her palm, curling it up into a fist, crushing it till it dies. This, too, can be a kind of violence.
They get an apartment together (not together together, just. Yeah). There's a balcony that Vi can lean over to make sure she’s still alive, and the first morning after they've moved in, Cait makes her tea.
"Here," she says, setting it down. She fidgets with her hands. "There's no sugar. No milk. I figured you, um, you like it bitter?"
Vi squints at her. "Are you nervous about this?"
"No," Cait says, shoving her hands into her pockets. "You- argh. Just drink it. Everyone says I brew well."
Vi tosses the entire thing back like a shot.
"That is not how you drink tea," Cait says, and Vi ignores her, lets the taste roll around her mouth. She must stay quiet for too long, because Cait sighs. "I knew they were lying to me. All those years believing I could quit my job and start a coffee company-"
"You could've," Vi says. The truth, undecorated and bare, tastes strange on her tongue. "Who'd you sell your soul to for this?"
"Really?" Cait says. "I mean. You aren't just-?"
Vi leans forward, tilts her head. "Do I seem like someone who would lie to make you feel better?"
"Uh," Cait says. Her lips are half-parted in the predawn light, eyes wide, and Vi almost thinks- but no, she turns away and starts fiddling around in the cabinets "No, but you could be trying to get on my good side. I haven't forgotten the houseplant incident, you know."
"The plant was asking for it," Vi shoots back, just to get her to talk more. Cait's voice used to sound so cutting, like if it needled at just the right angle it could slice Vi in two. Now she discovers something else there, this hard assured edge that makes her hands feel steady without wraps or gauntlets.
Anyways, she learns three things:
- Cait eats way too much fucking salad. Like, leaves are healthy or whatever, but how can you take that over Undercity grub?
- She always smells like oranges. It drives Vi nuts, because now every time she smells oranges, she thinks oh, I wonder what Caitlyn's up to which is NOT HELPFUL when you're trying to punch a dude in the face.
- She loves dandelions even though they're a weed. She's always trying to do the right thing. When she cares about people, she doesn't hesitate, puts everything out on the line to keep them safe, keep them happy. She goes wide-eyed when Vi asks her men or women what'll it be and tips Shimmer into her mouth when she is dying.
- Nightmares suck.
That's not three things.
Point is, Cait is. Well, Cait is Cait. And Vi is Vi, and that means sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night trying to suck air into her lungs. Nights like those, she goes out onto the balcony and breathes the city in, and sometimes she'll make little mistakes, like thinking of Powder's gadgets and Jinx's weapons. They're regular nights, just not the sleeping kind.
In the morning, fear hangs overcast over the city, and she goes out and does what she can with her gauntlets and her gritted teeth. But at the end of the day she will fall into a warm bed with untended bruises, and the fighting will carry over into her dreams.
Today it's prison concrete under her feet, under her fists. She kicks and screams, smears red on the walls, gets so fucking angry that she should wake up swinging. But she sits up blurry-eyed, instead, with someone's weight on the edge of the bed next to her, which-
"What the hell are you doing?" she says, instead of thank you.
"Keeping you company," Caitlyn says, instead of do you always wake up crying?
”Why?”
”I can’t sleep sometimes either,” she says, like a secret.
This Vi knows how to do. She grew up older than the rest of them, grew up holding them through nightmares when Vander was out.
“I’m gonna hug you,” says Vi, “okay?”
“I’d like that,” Caitlyn says. And Caitlyn is strong and brave and smart and kind and dangerous, but she folds into Vi’s arms like the most fragile thing in the world.
Undercity alleyways. Back-to-back shootouts. She's been flirting with Cait since the bitter beginning, but now, in the moonlight, is when the poison seeps through - there's the press of Cait's shoulder blades under her fingers, weak and human despite the way her trigger finger never misses, and Vi thinks not I would die for you or I would kill for you, but if you asked, I would make tea for you, too.
They don't talk about it.
Vi keeps watering the plants out on the balcony in the evenings, and Caitlyn uses her as a test subject for drinks with too much sugar. They dump water on Enforcers' heads from the roof. It’s not completely awful.
Anyways.
So Vi flirts with Caitlyn sometimes. Because it's fun. Because Caitlyn needs to laugh once in a while or she'll turn into a stone sculpture or something. It's a part of their friendship, like fighting back-to-back, or trying to tell each other horror stories scarier than the world they live in. Vi does the pickup lines, and Caitlyn does her Caitlyn thing, y'know, says um or uh or that doesn't even make any sense where are you getting these from. It's easy, casual, and occasionally, it helps Vi wake up in the morning. That sort of thing.
Caitlyn’s vocabulary always consists of words like obsequious and debutante because she’s a pretentious asshole, so when she bursts through the door saying, “Ugh, it’s this obsequious ball and they want me to play the part of the debutante again-“ Vi salutes her with the watering can and goes, “Can you speak normal?”
”Oh my god, you are impossible,” Cait says. Vi doesn't argue. “My mother is putting on this stupid dance thing, and she wants me to attend! Me! As though I haven’t got enough injuries already without my pride being added to the mix.”
Vi stares. "Can't you just, like, not go?"
Caitlyn doesn't even dignify that with a response. "And she keeps asking me if I've found a girl, which, wow, mother, I apologize for not having found the time to look for love when I'm trying to stop someone from leveling a city block-"
"So you do like girls," Vi says. She sets the watering can down, and Caitlyn's eyes track her the whole way. Focused. Sniperlike.
"Not the point," Caitlyn says, and Vi has to literally bite her lip to stop the isn't it? that rises to her tongue.
”Okay,” Vi shrugs. She takes a couple strides towards Caitlyn, with purpose, with confidence. “You gonna find a date to this thing?”
Caitlyn is supposed to be rigid, arrogant, easily flustered at Vi's easy smiles. She's supposed to hear you gonna find a date to this thing and say "no, of course not, how absolutely ridiculous."
Instead her eyes narrow snakelike in the low light. She gives Vi the once-over with hard blue eyes and says, "You could come with me."
Vi says, "Oh."
If Caitlyn is flustered, then Vi is nonchalant - Vi will play it off, say, "nah, not my thing," and go back to her plants. She has no idea when Caitlyn took her gun and her self-assured edge and stepped across the chasm from Enforcer to- to this, but it's starting to become a problem.
Caitlyn takes a step forward. "Well?"
"Yeah," Vi says. "Just don't expect me in a dress."
Back in the alleyway, Caitlyn poured Shimmer down Vi's throat. Love is a lot like that, Vi thinks. It goes into your system, dose by dose, and for that single golden interval you will feel like you can carry the city on your own two shoulders. Stamp it out and it returns with a vengeance. She doesn't serve the Enforcers' rotten system anymore, but sometimes Vi goes still under her gaze, caught in the crosshairs of an invisible gun. It's a killing game, love is.
"Welcome to hell," are Caitlyn's cheerful words as she ushers them into the building. There's couples dancing all across the floor, tailored suits and some of the most extra dresses ever to exist. Vi, of course, is wearing combat boots and probably has spinach in her teeth.
"Comforting," she says, and leads Caitlyn into the thick of it. No use shying away from trouble when it'll find you anyway.
Okay, so she doesn't ask to end up showing off her knife-throwing skills, it just happens! Like, Caitlyn's egging her on, and someone's pressing them into her hands and there's a target right there so it would be a waste of weaponry! And it's going fine, too, until-
"You could be an Enforcer, with skill like that!" some businessman hoots.
Somewhere outside of the mist that settles on her vision, she feels Caitlyn's hand tightening around hers. There's probably some poetic-cinema bullshit in all this, the way their hands are holding each other instead of weapons for once. She's never been good at going beyond the literal, but what comes next is all primal instinct, spitting out blood between that knocked-out gap in her teeth; words aren't so different from weapons.
"Fuck you," she says. "If you think that I would help those people, you've got another thing coming, you hear-"
"Vi," Caitlyn murmurs, and tugs on her hand.
The businessman blinks at her, stupidly. She gives him a dead-eyed stare until he looks away, then lets Caitlyn tug her out onto the balcony.
It's cooler there, and the anger drains out of her till her fists unclench from her sides, till she's aware of Caitlyn's shoulder next to hers. Aware enough to want to pull away, to make a joke or a stupid pickup line.
"Sorry for dragging you away. I felt like you were going to punch him or something," Caitlyn says. She's worrying her lower lip between her teeth. "That would've been bad."
"Spot on, cupcake," Vi says, studying the wraps around her knuckles. They're too tight, so she finds the place they're tucked into and yanks on it, hard, starts to unravel them. Caitlyn doesn't hesitate, just reaches with both hands and helps her until they're tucked into her jacket pocket.
"I went to the Registry," Caitlyn says. "There's a vacant building across the street."
Vi glances at her. "Your tea shop."
And maybe it's the moon, the stars, but Caitlyn's smile is glowing when she looks over at Vi. She looks so in place here, on some rando's fancy balcony. Vi imagines her and Caitlyn walking in here, side by side - her tattered jacket, Cait's fancy boots - and it makes her chest hurt.
It slips out before she can stop it. "You look so happy."
"Well, I-" Caitlyn starts. Stops. Her brow furrows. "I think I am?"
"With me?" Vi asks, incredulous.
"With you?" Caitlyn asks, in her stupid posh accent. "And what would you be insinuating there, Vi?"
I don't know how to- what the hell does that mean, Cait, do you mean it or are you just-
Vi leans on the railing. Humanity shines down below, a million little lights. Their apartment building's not too far. "That you, I dunno. You maybe wanna keep on living with me, making me tea, shit like that."
Cait laughs. "Who else would I be living with?"
"Hey," Vi huffs out, sharp, swears under her breath. "Look, I'm just saying stuff, okay! I don't- I don't mean any of it. I'm just making conversation."
"Right," Cait says. "Oil and water."
Her voice is strange and low. If love is Shimmer, it's taken Vi over by now. Now comes the aftershock - the slow kill of it, turning all her veins purple. Stomp out the fire and it returns with a vengeance.
"God," she says. "Why are you like this."
"I think your life would be quite boring if I wasn't."
When Vi looks over, Cait is glancing out at the city, the edge of her face silhouetted silver. She wonders if Cait's eyes settle on the lines of the Hexgates, the Piltover Library, a Precinct she'd left.
"What are you looking for?" Vi asks.
"Our apartment, obviously," Cait says. "Ugh, is that Mason's cat on the roof again?"
"Guess so," and Vi is beginning to find that scowl intensely comforting, so she looks away, pushes herself off the railing, and says, "Should we go rescue him?"
Caitlyn's mom beats them to the door.
"Your date?" she asks Caitlyn.
Vi snorts. "Was that not obvious?"
Somewhere between the balcony and Caitlyn's mom, it's begun to rain. It travels down streets in torrents and waves, trickles of it between the cobblestones. Vi tugs the jacket tighter around her shoulders. "Fuck, my plants are gonna die," she says, because of course plants are her biggest fucking priority right now. Caitlyn nods, though, blue hair plastered to her face.
Her hand is cold and damp in Vi's and it doesn't let go. It's hard to judge when exactly Vi starts to run, but suddenly she's tugging Cait along - every misplaced cobblestone is a risk of falling, but the air smells clean for once, and her boots feel steadier the faster they run. They slide downhill, slip uphill, and still the rain comes, and still thunder takes her breath everytime it cracks. Piltover looms overhead, the whole towering mess of it.
Caitlyn's always been good in a crisis, so she doesn't let Vi trip over herself on the fire escape. Vi holds the door open, but Caitlyn doesn't move past her.
"Wait," she says, instead, "there's something on your face."
"Yeah, and I wish it was you," Vi says. And it's supposed to be a joke, but it might have been a badly timed one because now Caitlyn is so close that Vi can see a raindrop on her cheekbone and, like, this is a really bad idea. This is really, truly, the worst idea Vi has ever had.
Cait tastes like a deluge of rainwater and pink lip gloss, and for some awful reason, she kisses back. It's totally the best thing ever.
Then she pulls away, and everything else comes rushing in - Silco and Jinx and teaparties with no tea and Vi, bruises on the knuckles, anger charged in every single limb.
Instead of saying anything, Caitlyn brings her hand to her mouth and blinks a few times, fast, like she's gotten socked in the nose.
"Wait," Vi's jacket presses on her shoulders, heavy, cold. She'd be less out of breath if Cait hadn't stolen most of her air. "Wait, don't go."
Caitlyn blinks, wipes water off her face, and says, "I... wasn't going anywhere," and Vi isn't sure if the water on her face is hers, but it must be because then Caitlyn's eyes go all wide and confused. "Vi?"
"Hey, it's fine," says Vi. "We're gonna be okay, right?"
Caitlyn tugs her inside and slams the fire escape door. She barely has time to register the apartment's heatblast before Cait's hugging her, and oh god, she is crying, and how can someone feel so strong in the daytime and fragile in the nighttime?
(Something tells her she'll have time to figure it out.)
"Vi," Cait says. "You're never gonna lose me. Not if I have something to say about it, okay?"
"Who'd listen to you?" Vi manages.
"You would, asshole," Cait says, smiling with a gap between her two front teeth, and she's not wrong. She's not wrong at all.
But for now, Vi scoffs like she disagrees, and Caitlyn laughs, and the clouds crack themselves open and tear themselves apart to wash the world clean of blood. For a little space in between, there is nothing to do but live.
Until:
"Oh, shit," Vi says, into Cait's shoulder. "my plants."