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“So there’s this girl,” Caitlyn says, carefully, like there’s a certain kind of reaction she expects and kind of fears to get. Like she is not really sure, but still hopes for the best, because they’re friends, after all, have been for gods know how many years, and because they’re supposed to accept each other and to not have secrets. Something like that.
Or maybe, well, she’s just nervous and scared of the face Miss Kiramman might make if she gets any part of this conversation.
Jayce clears his throat.
“Yeah?” He tries to sound nonchalant enough and hopes she doesn’t notice that laughter he has to hide at the back of his throat. He doesn’t look at her, either, pretending there is something extremely important in his notes – and there is, of course. But that’s not the point right now. “There must be a bunch of those in your life.”
She curses – quietly, she’s a noble lady, after all, even if it doesn’t stop her from kicking a stool by the wall. At least she doesn’t see his grin – he can congratulate himself on not getting punched any time soon.
Caitlyn sighs.
“No, you don’t get it. She is – smart. And cool. Like, really cool, not my level cool, alright. And she plays the violin, for fuck’s sake.”
She mutters. This is adorable, really – Cait is usually the one to make him blush, which is embarrassing, honestly, considering she’s eight years younger and he’s supposed to be something of a mentor figure in this friendship, so he decides he’s in his full right to humor himself and looks at her, finally. She runs her hand through her hair and doesn’t know what to do with her fingers, fiddling with the fabric of her skirt awkwardly.
Jayce knows what this is about, of course. He isn’t completely blind, in spite of his professor’s highly expert opinion; he recognizes the looks Cailtyn gives to girls at parties, and he still thinks that one moment at her school was ridiculos, but oh well. Chocolates and rumors, he supposes.
He chuckles.
“Is she pretty?”
She gets quiet for a second here. He vaguely remembers himself at her age – what was he even like at fifteen, loud and asshole? Got a crush on the most popular girl in class, broke her heart a month later?
Maybe it’s good he doesn’t remember, actually. That doesn’t sound great.
Caitlyn lets out a sigh – she looks embarrassed, which is a rare sight for him, and then she nods, still refusing to meet his eyes, still not really knowing what to do with her hands.
“Yeah.”
She’s a good kid, Jayce thinks. Has a temper, sure, but he still hopes it works out.
He turns back to his notes and shrugs.
“Good for you, Cait.”
He doesn’t see her smiling, but that’s okay.
The girl is gonna break some hearts, that’s for sure.
“So,” Caitlyn’s voice is careful. Not I’m scared to tell you about that shit careful, but should I actually do that considering this is going to become the subject of the only joke you’re gonna make for the next two weeks. He gets it, really. “Remember that girl?”
Jayce raises his brow and hides behind the glass of wine he stole away from under Heimerdinger’s nose. The professor was still kind of angry about the whole breaking into his lab situation, but mostly with Viktor – something about breaking his trust and being overall a disappointment of an assistant, his new partner said, apparently not feeling very guilty about it. It’s been almost half a year, he told Jayce, not looking him in the eyes; Heimerdinger may not agree with them, but he better get over it already.
Well. Can’t kill progress. Can’t stop it from exploding and destroying half of the valuable and extremely expensive equipment, either.
“Uh-huh.”
The wine is fine. He looks at Caitlyn and nods; he remembers some of the girls – the shy one, the one that beat the shit out of Caitlyn at the training, and that one with pink hair Caitlyn was too embarrassed to introduce herself too, and then she spent a week being sad about it and throwing stuff in the walls. Costed her mother a painting and some fancy vase from Demacia she still mourns, if Caitlyn is to be believed.
“The one with white hair. I met her at Mainspring Crescent, remember?”
Jayce vaguely does, but he nods anyway.
“Yup.”
It’s not that Jayce doesn’t listen. He tries to, really, but Caitlyn isn’t great at being close to other people – she mentions an extremely important thing once, casually, and then proceeds to talk about school and that dream of hers, which includes destroying corruption at its root and demolishing crime as a phenomenon.
Most of the time she’s just nagging about the exams, though. Jayce is sure she’s gonna do great at the academy, and becoming an enforcer seems like a fine and befitting enough goal – he doesn’t really understand where this is coming from, but, again, he didn’t tell her much about the blizzard, so maybe that’s fine.
He prefers to think Caitlyn is just like that – sharp and wishing to look at the world not from the balcony of her parents’ house only. Not yet tired, not yet disappointed.
She can do some good for Piltover. Wishes to, actually. Jayce can understand that.
“Okay, so, I think she tries to break up with me?” Caitlyn frowns and looks at him weirdly, like she isn’t sure herself. He does his best to look seriously, the wine too sweet on his tongue. “Which is ridiculous, since we’re not even dating. I mean, I may have kissed her a few times and I bought her a bunch of shit, and she introduced me to her mom, a sweet lady, really, you should’ve seen her on a horse, but that’s it. So what the fuck.”
Oh, so that’s it. Baby’s first break-up. Baby’s first break-up she’s actually concerned about.
Alright, he thinks, putting his glass away. This does sound kind of serious.
“So,” he clears his throat and meets her eyes. She doesn’t look sad – not yet, at least. Mostly troubled. She’ll probably get there later, though, but that's the problem for the future Jayce. “You think you’re about to get dumped, but you’re too scared to ask if that’s really the case?”
“Shut up,” she mutters, stealing away his wine and hiding behind his back so her father doesn’t notice her drinking from the opposite corner of the hall. Which is too much of a precaution, in his humble opinion, but he’s probably not the best judge of it. “I’ve missed the moment you became an expert on talking about feelings.”
Jayce thinks about Viktor, for a second, and the way his fingers tighten on his cane. He thinks about the way senator Medara tilts her head and smiles at him, approvingly. He thinks about the way Heimerdinger looked at him the moment Jayce mentioned magic, wary and with the pity that made no sense. He thinks about his mother and the note he burnt in the fireplace of his study the night he was supposed to die.
“Well,” he titters. She gets him here, actually. “Congratulations on our mutual misery, my friend.”
She rolls her eyes. Jayce loves that gesture. It means they’re fine.
“Forget about it. So, how are things going with that partner of yours?”
Jayce pauses.
“Oh. Yes. Viktor.”
He doesn’t think much about the bridge, back then. It’ll come later.
He doesn’t tell her this, but he thinks he likes the way Viktor speaks – a careful voice, small smirks, his long fingers pointing at Jayce’s nightmare of a handwriting and making sense of it, somehow. The way he pronounces consonants and how his eyelashes tremble just a little when he gets excited. How Viktor saved his life, and how it’s still a thing they haven’t talked about, but Viktor understands anyway.
Jayce tells her, instead, that Viktor is the smartest person he’s ever known, and he is the partner one can only dream of, even if he probably doesn’t know how to iron his shirts and refuses to stay for the drinks after a symposium.
“His accent is funny,” he adds in a voice so soft it’s almost a conspiratorial whisper.
Caitlyn rolls her eyes.
“So,” this is a difficult conversation. He wonders if that’s how Miss Kiramman felt, trying to make Caitlyn actually talk to her instead of throwing meaningless comments, trying to understand what was on the mind of the daughter that never felt secure enough to talk about her feelings with the woman that denied her the freedom out of love and fear. He hopes he’s not there yet, at least. “There is that girl.”
Caitlyn turns to him – she looks like she’s dangerously close to crying, and Jayce feels that urge to hold her and take her away – from her parents, who really try but never actually get her, from the Council that refused her the only thing she ever asked of it, from someone who might accidentally see her like this – small, vulnerable, with eyes red and hair damp from the rain.
That girl, Vi. We failed her, Caitlyn said. We failed her in so many ways.
Jayce wants to tell her she didn’t – there are many parties responsible for what’s going on in the Undercity, but Caitlyn he knows can’t possibly be one of them.
He thinks about the bridge, and then he keeps quiet.
“Yeah,” her voice is soft. He comes closer, his footsteps echoing in the long emptiness of the hall, and wonders if he ever heard her like this – kind of tired, mostly broken. “There sure is.”
She puts her arms around herself and lowers her head. There’s an obvious weariness in the line of her shoulders and something shattered in the way she holds herself, and in the low light of the false candles she almost seems like another person – one he’s just met, one that just experienced something crazy and lost something she once held dearly.
It’s strange. It leaves him helpless – not sure in the words he should put in his own mouth or what he is supposed to do with his hands.
He wonders if it is even possible, to get so far from the person you’ve loved for so long in just a few days.
“Wanna tell me about her?”
A smile on his lips, an awkward glance she gives him; an echo from the way things used to be, maybe.
Everything changed too much too quickly.
Nothing is supposed to change this quickly.
“It’s… complicated.”
He thinks about the softness of Mel’s voice, telling him about her family, the loneliness in that shape of a lullaby, her hand in his, red strokes of paint on the canvas.
He thinks about the bridge and the hurt in Viktor’s eyes.
“Isn’t it always, though?”
There’s the weight of the world on his shoulders, stones under Caitlyn’s fingers and birds pecking under her ribs. It looks rough, buddy, why don’t you get some sleep. Why don’t you go home where this world won’t be able to hurt you more than it already did.
He should ask what happened. He should ask how she managed, and what she saw there that made her put her neck on the line for the girl that’d been rotting in jail for years. He should do more than that.
Caitlyn smiles at him, weakly. Tucks a lock behind her ear.
“Yeah,” she says quietly. Bites her lip, takes her time – lowers her hands and lets out a tired sigh. She gives him a look – a careful one, almost estimating. When she speaks again, it’s her voice; when she speaks again, Jayce can feel his own heart sinking. “She’s a good person, you know. She trusted me. Never trusted an enforcer in her life, and then she decided to put her trust in me, of all people. She decided I was worth it.”
She doesn’t look him in the eyes. Fiddles with the fabric of her skirt.
“And I think I lost her,” there is something dead in the way she tells that. Like Viktor talking about the kids back in the Underground, like Mel speaking of her mother. “I think I broke something.”
She doesn’t start crying. Jayce isn’t sure she would cry in front of him at all – not out of shame or fear for her image, no, but she, too, has always had that thing in her throat that doesn’t allow for the face to break in front of another, that doesn’t allow the moment of complete despair when someone else is watching. He pulls her in a hug anyway, putting his hands around her in a frail attempt of protection. Which is funny, he thinks. He doubts there’s a person he hasn’t failed to protect.
“You’re going to be okay, Cait.”
It’s hollow shards and empty promises, words lost in the quiet that swallows them both. Her hair is still damp. Her hands feel fragile when she finally puts them around his waist.
“I know,” she says softly.
She knows better than to believe him.