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The waiting room is full. The doors to the hospital keep flying open, new waves of doctors and gurneys rushing through, disappearing down crowded corridors. The bomb collapsed the council building on top of the street it loomed over. So many wounded. So many dying. So many dead. Vi’s stomach is in knots. If she didn’t have her hand wraps on, her nails would have carved a hundred crescent moons into her palms already. She considers taking the wraps off, just to feel it, just to bleed. But she won’t. She can’t, because if she did, that would mean she’d have to let go of Caitlyn’s hand, and she can’t let go of Caitlyn’s hand.
Caitlyn is still. She stares into an invisible distance, her gaze blank, her eyes unseeing. She’s still in her Enforcer uniform. She still has pink smudges on her cheeks from where Jinx’s hand missed the mark in drawing on her muzzle. Vi reaches up with her free hand, using a thumb to press the smudges away. They’re stubborn, but they come off a little at a time, flaking away beneath her touch. Caitlyn’s gaze shifts to Vi’s face while she does it. Those blue eyes are dimmed, muted. Vi wants to say something. Anything. Anything to bring Caitlyn back to her. She doesn’t. She knows there’s nothing she can say, nothing that can mitigate this grief, this state of not knowing what comes next, of not knowing if she’ll ever see her loved ones alive again.
As she clears away the last of the smudges, brushing the flakes away with her knuckles, she lets her hand linger, drifting along Caitlyn’s cheekbone, then cupping her cheek. Vi wonders if she can feel it. If Caitlyn even knows she’s here at all. She wonders how long it will be until Caitlyn wakes up, until she realizes that all of her suffering is because Vi came into her life, because Vi brought Jinx’s wrath down on her head. She wonders how long it will be until Caitlyn turns her back forever, until she cannot stand to look at Vi anymore. There’s an unsteadiness in Vi’s chest, a swirling sickness at the thought. But as she moves to take her hand away, Caitlyn reaches up and stops her, holds her palm to her cheek. There’s a flicker in those eyes. A hardening, a focusing, an emerging from the distant fog, and her eyes shift, surveying Vi’s expression, drinking her in, seeing her as if all at once.
“I could never forget you,” she says.
Vi blinks. Caitlyn closes her eyes and kisses her palm, still holding it close.
“What?” Vi asks.
“You told me, that night, to go back to my house and forget about you.” Caitlyn looks up at her again. “I never forgot you for a moment. I never will.”
“We don’t have to talk about this right now. Your mom-”
“I need you to know, Vi,” Caitlyn says, and Vi has never seen her so present.
“Okay,” Vi nods. “Okay.”
She leans in and kisses Caitlyn’s forehead, and for a moment it’s just the two of them.