Work Text:
"Italian Girl with Flowers" by Joaquin Sorolla, 1886
Caitlyn grows used to hearing how mature she is at a very young age.
(It is a strange thing, sometimes, to hear the same words praising from one's lips and mocking from another's. Though to be fair, her peers don't often use words as flattering as mature. 'Uptight' is a term she's grown particularly used to, but nobles are often far more favorable.)
She often smiles it off. It's better, she's learned, than acting like she already knew.
"A bit of humility around company won't kill you," her mother sighs. She never looks directly at her before events. There's always too much to do, too many servants who can't do their job right, too many earrings that don't sit right on her face. "What am I supposed to say when I have a daughter who can't keep her own hubris in check?"
"You're one to talk," Caitlyn mutters, and her mother always scoffs.
"Caitlyn, I have earned my hubris. You are a child who thinks she can outsmart any adult who disagrees with her."
"Mm, I'd say she could at least outdo seventy-five percent." Her father's opinion is rarely given but often appreciated, and her mother rolls her eyes as he speaks over a tray of hor'dourves.
"Tobias, please." Her gaze catches Caitlyn, sharp, keen, shards of glass caught in a storm. "Caitlyn, go put on that necklace we got you. It suits your dress well."
And that's that. Caitlyn’s father sinks back into the scenery, elegant and quiet as he first emerged, and Caitlyn says nothing about how she despises the necklace or how it feels garish on her slim neck and heavy against her chest.
In the end, her squeaks of protest are little more than background noise in a world of propriety and tradition. Her mother's words are as final as the fall of a gavel or the drop of the guillotine, and Caitlyn knows this. She's accepted it. To change it is as futile as it is to change the coming of the rains, so she is quiet and compliant, and in the end, she turns up the stairs and does exactly as her mother tells her to do.
(But even so, she harbors illusions of revolt the same way one screams at the sky as though a god can hear them over the swell of the heavens. It is a pointless and silly act that does little more than expel breath from the lungs, but Caitlyn holds it dear and close all the same.
Without it, she isn't quite sure what the difference is between her and the jewels on her mother's gleaming chest.)
*
"Tighten up now," her mother says, patting her on the shoulder. Her touch is too light to be anywhere near comforting, but Caitlyn scarcely notices. She is seven years old, stuck in a dress too tight at a party too loud for far too long. She cries in the corner of a long marble hallway, and her mother hurries her along, chaste, reserved, empathetic but annoyed. She should not be crying. Proper young ladies do not have meltdowns.
Caitlyn chokes on her hiccups, forcing them down. The tears are hot and salty on her fat childhood cheeks, and Caitlyn thinks on instinct that they are disgusting.
*
"Don't you have any friends your own age?"
Caitlyn ignores Jayce. It's quite easy at first, given that his eyes are almost never on her. His is a gaze caught on notebook scribbles and brassy machinery; delusions of grandeur that Caitlyn's always thought were more than mere daydreams. He makes it easy to sit with him; to lie in his workshop made of sunlight and dreams and read novels by people far more exciting than her, as though wrapping herself in enough enterprise will cause some venture to leak into her own life.
She turns a page, and Jayce looks up from his workbench. "Caitlyn."
Caitlyn scowls. It's not that Jayce is interrupting a particularly good book—the plot development is less than stellar, and the author's prose is nothing to write home about—but more so that the social aspect of her academic career is not something she likes to leave open for discussion.
"Why should I?" Caitlyn glances at Jayce over the cover. "You're much more interesting than any of my classmates."
Jayce sighs. "I am a twenty-year-old man living in your parents' attic."
"To be fair, it is a very nice attic."
It's an understatement from both parties, and they both know it. A sponsorship from a councilor is nothing to scoff at, and the Kirammans have been well-established in Piltover since the first stucco-glazed skyscrapers crawled out of the dirt. There's not a corner of their home that isn't laced in wealth-bred opulence, and even up here, in the farthest reaches of their estate, the attic stretches into a workshop with sky-high windows and a balcony overlooking the golden-armed city. It's the perfect playground for an inventor to tinker away to his heart's content; even if Jayce would balk at the idea of calling it something as trivial as "tinkering."
"Caitlyn, we are developing life-changing technology at the academy," he insists every time she dares to make fun of him. His admiration for the academy is endearing at best, if not a bit blinding to his judgment, but that seems to be a recurring theme in Jayce. Her mother says that "so much brilliance has to be balanced out by something; for him, it just happens to be copious amounts of sentimentality."
Caitlyn doesn't mind, though. She doesn't think she can imagine a Jayce without his passion or affection—even if it does happen to be a bit of a nuisance at the moment.
"Caitlyn, come on. You're twelve." Jayce talks to her over his shoulder as he jots something down on the blackboard. "You know what I was doing when I was twelve?"
"Giving unwanted lectures to unsuspecting victims?"
Jayce scoffs. "I'm serious." He finally sets down his chalk and turns to look at her, boyish face twisted into a frown. It's easy to forget that he's supposed to be an adult she defers to and respects instead of a student only eight years her senior. "You know, I only ever see you three places."
"Which would be?"
"School, home, and sharpshooting practice."
"Very worthwhile endeavors."
"You don't have a social life."
"A minor consequence."
Jayce sighs and Caitlyn sinks back against the windowsill. Of all the things in her life, she thinks she would least like to explain the dynamics of preparatory girls' school. Academia has always been her strong suit, with its wood-paneled walls and books smelling of grass and vanilla; so it's strange that the students should elude her so much. But the silly camaraderie that comes with giggling gossip during class and fretting about who likes who and who said what has always seemed to pale in comparison to the behemoth of success, given away in golden accolades and nods of approval from the people who build the world.
She has never liked her classmates much, and they have never liked her. She's the girl who rolls her eyes and reads while they laugh over joys she deems frivolous, but she's alright with that. She doesn't need her classmates, and they don't need her.
She has already had more than enough time to grow comfortable with the idea of being alone.
Jayce chews his lip, eyebrows knitted in thought. Caitlyn looks at him and sighs. "You know, I think you are the only person in the world who takes so much time to worry about my emotional well-being."
Jayce only waves her off. "Well, somebody has to."
*
There is an unspoken rule that Caitlyn is not to partake in anything below her station. Visit the lesser parts of the city. Play any game that's overly dirty. Do much of anything that isn't academic and high-brow.
She watches her mother practice shooting on the grounds of the estate. When she catches her daughter keeping eyes on her from across the lawn, Ms. Kiramman lets Caitlyn place her hands on top of her own. She hefts the weight of the barrel in her palm, finger resting on her own over the trigger.
The rifles punches back, smoke billowing as a bullet sears a target, and Caitlyn's heart sparks with all the zest of a comet pulled into orbit with a lucid noble star.
Yes, she thinks. I suppose this will do.
*
"Fourth place goes to—Ms. Caitlyn Kiramman!"
The announcer's words spread a silence on the way home. Caitlyn cradles her gun against her side, warm and venemous with all the bullets that didn't hit, and forces her gaze on the slate-colored sky sleeping above the city.
It was the wrong day for a tournament. The sky threatened a summer rain and left the air thick and broad with humidity; a heavy soup to be waded through as sweat turned her rifle slick in her grip. It's not much of an excuse, but Caitlyn has to endure the torment of her parents trying to spin it into one.
"Really, I don't know why they didn't just postpone it." Her mother is the first to break the silence; a voice that Caitlyn doesn't bother turning away from the window to look at. Irritation turns her words to stone in her chest, and instead, she's forced to try and blot out her parents' pandering justifications as one tries to ignore a background buzz. "I don't see how anyone can shoot clearly in all this heat."
"And anyways, fourth place isn't even that bad," her father adds.
(Caitlyn's breath sharpens, but her father doesn't notice.)
"I mean, there were thirty other contestants, and all of them were older than her." His words are amiable, a movement towards congratulations and satisfaction, but even the thought of celebrating such a thing makes Caitlyn sick.
"Caitlyn dear, you did very well."
"Fourth place doesn't even get a flimsy medal, father." She doesn't expect the words to come out so bitter, but there they are, raw as day and tense in the carriage. "In what world would it be a good thing for me to celebrate getting fourth?"
Her mother's hands tighten around her clutch. "A world where you were the youngest person in the competition," she snaps, and this is how it is with her. Trying to comfort with a razor-edged blade, always annoyed at the slightest disagreement. "Goodness, you're acting as though this is some private school spat. This competition was open to the whole city, and you were better than most of the people there."
Her mother huffs and pinches the bridge of her nose, screwing her eyes shut tight. "Honestly, I don't know what else you want. For a fourteen-year-old, you did just fine."
"Mother, I don't want to be good for a fourteen-year-old." Caitlyn is being impossible, and she knows it. Trying as her parents might be, they want her to be proud of herself, and can't understand why she isn't. But Caitlyn can't just ignore the discontent brewing in her core. She wants to be better than fourth place applause and "just good enough." As the carriage rolls over a bump in the road, it hides the clenching of her fists in her laps.
"I don't want to be good in comparison. I want to be good, period."
Her mother sighs, rough and exasperated, looking out the window with a gaze distant and uninterested. "Must you pick now for one of your tantrums?"
"I'm not having a tantrum—"
"You're throwing a fit because you didn't get exactly what you want, and now you're going to let everyone know just how unhappy you are. If you want to be in a snit that's fine, but at the very least try and keep it to yourself."
Caitlyn is too stunned to find the words to respond, so she doesn't, and for a while, the only sound in the carriage is the sound of wheels rumbling over cobblestone and the distant threat of thunder on a summer-streaked horizon.
"Change out of your clothes when we get back. I have you scheduled for etiquette lessons with Pierre at four."
"...Yes mother."
Her afternoon belongs to etiquette lessons in the warmth of her parlor, standing straight with perfect poise and knowing what to say to the right person at the right time, and when the time comes, she'll do it perfectly with ease as she's done a thousand times before.
And tonight she'll practice until her muscles are strained raw, knowing the weight of her gun until it's another limb extending from her skin, practicing until she doesn't know anything except bullets and gunpowder and the feeling of success in the sound of a shot.
At the next tournament, her parents will cheer the same whether she gets second place or fifth, and only Caitlyn will take the time to analyze what went wrong and what could be done so much better, because, at the end of the day, she is the only one who cares. And when it comes down to success in a world such as this, the only person who holds her to such high and lofty standards is herself.
*
"Goodness, you're so much like your mother."
The rain patters light against tall glass windows. It's a calming sound, on par with that of piano keys pressed in dimly lit parlors and bird chirps while reading on a sunny afternoon.
Their parlor isn't particularly dim, and birds don't often sing in the rain, but Caitlyn still finds peace in the velvet-lined arms of a chair at sixteen, chess pieces carved out of richly hued rosewood and father stroking his beard in thought before he lets the slightest of chuckles quietly slip through.
There are few places Caitlyn can rest nowadays. The Piltover Academy for Young Girls doesn't exactly relent the older you get, and it was only last year that she looked at the enforcers marching in the streets and felt a spark somewhere, innate and deep and deciding that that was where she wanted to find herself when the gates of her estate finally parted to set her free.
Jayce has been urging her to take a break. He doesn't have as much hold over her, considering he's transferred his workshop from the attic to the council and isn't just a few floors away from her like he was during easier days, but it's surprising how relentless he is when it comes to finding times to meet.
"You haven't slept recently." He says it over a cup of coffee, shaded on a cafe patio where the sweet smell of flowers isn't entirely natural, but they both pretend not to notice over their lattes and scones.
Caitlyn ignores him and sips at her coffee. In truth, she hasn't been sleeping much. Extra courses at school are the perfect resume builder for the enforcers' academy, and her movement from third-place trophies to second and first has not been the result of lying around. She's exhausted now, and she's exhausted all the time, but she would rather cut her lip on well-worded lies than make Jayce fret for any reason at all.
"It was a late night." A shrug and a bite of her scone, passing it off as casual and nothing at all, and for the moment Jayce only looks at her and leans back in his chair.
"You do have a lot of those," he mentions, and Caitlyn waves it off.
"No achievement ever came from slacking off. I doubt you and your little friend would have made your progress on Hextech if you had been lying around munching on bonbons all day—"
"I'm serious." His hand is on hers now, rough and calloused from years of work, and for a moment she's twelve again, laying in his workshop while she helps him with her math or listening to him ramble about things that ignite a passion in his eyes. He's Jayce, and he's warm and comforting with familiar hazel eyes and always too genuine for any of his own good, and Caitlyn softens for only a moment, alone in a cafe with one of the only people who's ever been able to make her feel like herself.
"You have a really bad habit of working yourself to death. I'm pretty sure you've had it since you were twelve, but I'm not around to keep you in line."
He smiles, and Caitlyn scoffs, but she doesn't move her hand, and she can't help noticing how soft hers feels compared to his own.
"I want to make sure you're getting rest. Not a lot of chances for the world to see how great you are if you burn out at sixteen."
"Oh hush." Caitlyn has always hated how easily a blush can come to her cheeks, and she tries to ignore Jayce's smile as she attempts to hide it behind her cup of coffee. "As if I couldn't say the same about you."
"Hey, I'm on a roll now." He grins and adjusts his tie, and Caitlyn rolls her eyes. "Word on the street is that Councillor Medarda wants to work with me personally on developing Hextech."
"You'd better make sure she agrees before she discovers what a pain you are."
Moments with Jayce are rare and only pop up when both of them are free, but in between, she has this, in the quiet of the parlor with her father in a chair. He studies the chessboard and she brings them tea, and for a moment they sit with no one else around, playing chess in a space where there the only sounds are their thoughts and the pattering of rain on tall panes of glass.
It's peaceful, most days. And it was peaceful today, too. Until her father muttered a quiet, offhand comment.
You're so much like your mother.
"What do you mean by that?" It's a careful kind of calm in her voice, precariously balanced on curiosity and tension, trying to pretend she doesn't mind the thought of being compared to her mother, if only for a moment.
Her father doesn't notice. (It's strange, Caitlyn notes, how he can notice everything in the world and nothing at all.)
"Just your opening," he says offhandedly. "It's a classic gambit. Very aggressive."
Caitlyn didn't think much of it. It's her turn to play black, as they work on a system where they alternate between going first and second, and her father opened simply enough with a pawn to the middle of the board and her mirroring him on the opposite side with her own pawn. Another pawn to the inner board, and Caitlyn responded with her knight, advancing forward on the left side rather than taking the much more classic center.
They're a few moves in now, Caitlyn with three of her father's pieces and her father with one. Despite the fact that she clearly has the upper hand, he still smiles, and his eyes shine in curiosity as he waves his hand over the board.
"You start out passive enough. Bringing forward the lower pieces to form a sort of opening line. Throw in a couple of knights and bishops." He gestures vaguely at the setup, spread out in carnage like a battlefield.
"But then—" his eyes shine at this, "—you sweep forward. You force your player into submission with a mix of aggression and subtleties." He chuckles then, light and impressed.
"You fool them, almost. It's astounding. Just like your mother plays."
It shouldn't bother Caitlyn as much as it does. It's a chess game with her father, played in the quiet of her parlor, and her father only remarked on the quality of her game.
She doesn't know why it gets under her skin. But it does, and it does so so effectively that Caitlyn thinks of her mother in every move she makes, every calculation with her rook across the board, every step of her pawn from black to white.
She thinks of her mother, arrogant and stubborn, impatient and intolerant and ruthless to a fault. Who's so venomous she boils Caitlyn's skin without even trying, so cold in her actions that her smile hardly reaches her eyes. She is cutting and impossible and critical to the end, and as Caitlyn moves her pieces carefully across the board in an effort of pushing her father into the final checkmate, she can't help wondering if these are the same patterns her mother thinks along as she pushes somebody over the edge.
The slips come up rather quickly. A distracted move, a hasty turn, and soon the tables are turned, and Caitlyn finds herself two steps away from a checkmate on the same board where she so easily had the upper hand.
"Well, I think it's safe to say you won." She shoots up quickly, chair rattling on the wood, and she doesn't miss her father's confusion as he studies the board and watches where she tripped up. "I would love to stay and play another game, but I really do have some work I need to get back to."
"Oh...alright." He's quiet as he slips the pieces back into the box, looking up at her as an afterthought as though he's just remembered something curious. "Same time next week?"
"...We'll see," Caitlyn mutters, and she's sweeping out the door, off to a world of worktables and pistols and work that never ends, and she will work herself to the bone without a second thought if only to reach the perfection she has imagined for herself, beautiful and moral and completely without flaws.
*
"Can you read it again," Caitlyn mutters, sleepy, sluggish. She is too young to read the book herself, but she enjoys the sound of her mother's voice, captivating, luscious, turning words into velvet against a soothing tongue.
Her mother reaches up and strokes at her head. She really should be asleep by now. She has lessons early in the morning, and her bed is far too soft under her back, but her mother's touch is soothing and easy. Wordlessly, she opens up to the first page and presses a kiss to the top of Caitlyn's head.
"Alright, my dear," she whispers. "Alright."
*
The breaking down happens in slow motion. It's a stiffness in her neck for no particular reason; the yawning so often that her jaw starts to cramp. No one notices other than Caitlyn, she thinks, except for her mother, who peers at her from her desk with the slightest furrowed brow.
"Go make yourself some tea," she mutters; less of a suggestion than it is a demand. "You've been very tired recently."
Caitlyn is across the room, sitting on the couch taking notes on a history that happened centuries ago to no one nearby, and she shrugs her mother off with little acknowledgment.
"I'm fine," she insists. She is tired, but she's well in work mode, and she would rather not take the chance to break that. "I'll just make some later."
Her mother frowns and turns back to her work, but she would not be her mother if she were not persistent.
"Have the confirmation letters from the academy come back yet," she asks casually, and Caitlyn stiffens in her writing, ignores another neck cramp.
"Not yet." It comes out sharp and a little bit rigid, but she would rather not press the topic of the academy right now. It's already an affair that dominates her thoughts and steals her sleep. The last thing she needs is to talk about it with her mother, who had already been more than clear in her disapproval of the whole idea.
"Hm," her mother replies. A pause, then, "You know I doubt the academy would want an enforcer who isn't able to pace themselves."
"Mother."
"I'm just saying," she continues. "You haven't been the best at managing yourself recently. Those bags under your eyes are particularly noticeable."
Caitlyn clenches her pen, feels another cramp. "Can I have one moment with you where you don't feel the pressing need to insult me?"
"I'm not insulting you." Her mother sighs, so exasperated it's infuriating, and quietly shakes her head. "That's one thing you got from your father. The two of you are always so sensitive."
"I'm not being sensitive—"
"Caitlyn, please, inside voice." Her mother looks up then, hushing her child with a condescending look, and for only a moment Caitlyn wants to scream.
"And anyway, I'm just saying that it would do you a bit of good to rest. I didn't have you so you could work yourself to the bone every moment for no reason."
"It's not for no reason!" She hates that her mother does this, hates her for riling her up like this, but there she is, whipping her head up so fast it stiffens under another cramp, but she manages to push through if only to glare at her mother.
"Mother, you know I'm trying to be an enforcer. The academy doesn't exactly take recruits lightly."
"And I don't see any reason why you would want to do anything like that," her mother scowls. "It's such a dirty line of work. You're plenty smart, Caitlyn; I don't see why you have to get a job running around the streets."
"Because I want to help people! Goodness mother, you never see that—"
And she stands up fast, and it's too fast maybe, or it's the final push in the row of dominoes, the final act in the art of falling apart, because for a moment she can't speak. Her gaze is stuttering, gaps in her vision where there shouldn't be any, a dizzying array of nothing and everything that is painfully unusual and unsettling to see.
She blinks, rapidly, and for a moment she's confused, stumbling and grabbing onto the couch for support. Her mother says her name in a far off corner, but her mouth is in a place where she can't really speak, can't do much of anything except blink; try to do away with the stunning array lining up in her vision, and she stumbles again, catches herself on the sofa.
And she reaches the part of falling where she finally hits the floor, an explosion ripping through the seams of her skull, pain and pain and pain and pain, and she grunts and falls and her mother is at her side, and in an absent part of her head before everything goes wrong, Caitlyn idly wonders if Jayce will be mad when he finds out she's cracked.
*
Caitlyn has a dream in the smear of bleary-hazed sickness that follows. She is ten years old, shaded from sun under a parasol by a pond; alone except for her and a lace-white ibis on the other side. She looks at the bird with its scarlet face and hooked, shining beak, and she thinks in the peace of what a nice thing it is to share the pond with a bird of such beautiful grace.
The ibis tries to fly away at the end, and is stopped by a strain in its wing. It falls to the ground, dead and helpless, and Caitlyn is unable to do anything but watch from her peaceful spot on the side of the pond.
*
"So. Migraines, huh?"
It's strange, now, how odd it is to see Jayce standing in her doorway. There are indistinct stretches of past in the back of her mind; years of childhood that now read like a book she had long since forgotten the name of. At some point, Jayce was woven into that tapestry, and she soon failed to notice him the way one fails to notice the smell of their own home. Him talking at her back as she brewed tea in the kitchen. Listening to her gab in sun-stroked parlors about whatever girl had happened to catch her eye. Company in a lonely childhood that she was never quite mindful of.
She notices him now. Tall stance, wide shoulders, out of place in the softness of her bedroom. He is a stark point in a home that Caitlyn has shifted to fill the hole left in his wake; always in her life but never in her home. An air that only officially appears for celebrations and disasters.
Caitlyn supposes that is this situation, she is said disaster.
She huffs at his entrance, sinking deeper into her pillows. "How did you find out?"
"Ah, your mom missed the council meeting last night." Winsome smile, smooth gate—everything is Jayce as he sits on the edge of her bed, mattress signing into his seat, adjusting to fit his presence. Caitlyn peeks up at him over the edge of her blankets. It's dimmer than usual (she's insisted on keeping the lights off), but she can still make out the slight stitch of his brows on his forehead.
"According to Me—uh, Councilor Medarda," Jayce clears his throat, "'family emergency' is code for 'her daughter collapsed in the middle of their living room.'"
Caitlyn swallows down the flood of mortification. She's never much appreciated being the center of attention; much less so the cause of such a fuss.
"You know she makes everything sound so dramatic," she insists, glare hiding the spreading blush. "I could probably stub my toe and she'd think I'd broken every bone in my foot."
"Uh-huh." Jayce leans in, smelling faintly of white tea and pipe smoke. Caitlyn supposes there was a bit of lingering in the parlor in the time between his arrival and her mother at her door, making sure she was feeling 'up to visitors.' "How are you feeling?"
She shrugs. "Tired. A little nauseous."
It's certainly an improvement from yesterday, though she isn't exactly apt to tell him that. There is already an exhaustion sticking to him like a sickly fog; faint dark spots sketched underneath his eyes, slightly rumpled hair brushed to the side to retain an air of composure. He is empathetic to a fault and so loving it's irritating, and Caitlyn knows that whatever time he had between hearing of her condition and being allowed to visit was spent worrying himself into a tizz so potent it sticks to him even now, sitting at her side.
She decides it would be best to spare him the gory details.
(Gory details being, in no particular order: searing headaches that split the left side of her skull from everything else. Pulsing and throbbing for hours on end, fading for moments only to come back with hate, ripping and clawing at the meat of her head. Ears that crumpled at the slightest sound, eyes that sent spikes with every beam of light. Pain, pain, pain, in every form undefined, vomiting into buckets and a mother's worried gaze.)
Jayce lays down on her sheets. Her bed is large to a ridiculous extent, and Jayce can drape himself over it without even touching her. "You should get some rest."
Caitlyn sinks back into her pillows. "I very clearly am."
Jayce sighs. "I mean after this. I think you need to take it easy for a while."
Caitlyn does not even begin to explain how ridiculous this is. As nice as it would be for the world to pause while she is incapacitated, there is an endless list of plans piling up while she lays in bed. Even now, she quietly plots the hours she'll need to sink into her gun and the practice range, the notes she'll need to study in order to keep pace. Hers is a life plagued with endless assiduity, ceaseless agendas that need to be done perfectly, business and tasks and everything she could not begin to explain.
So, she doesn't. She lays there quietly, and Jayce slowly inches himself to a place where he can see her over the bedsheets, and his calloused fingers quietly brush against the sweat-glazed sick stickiness of her arm. And it's almost as though he can read her mind, because in the brief silence that follows, Jayce breaks it by muttering, softly, quietly, gently as a lamb, "please, take care of yourself kid."
And it is just them, laying in her bedroom, Caitlyn wishing that Jayce simply wasn't so Jayce and that everyone he loved wasn't fretted over like a child with a scraped knee, and as he moves his hand up to cup her cheek, she wishes that she didn't so easily sink into his touch.
"You're insufferable. You know that," she mutters, head propped up, blankets warm.
Jayce chuckles. "I've been called worse."
She falls asleep with Jayce muttering to her about easy things, galas attended with esteemed council members and progress made with the infamous Viktor (whom she still has yet to meet, she reminds him, but Jayce explains that he hardly takes time for much outside of his work).
It's twilight when she wakes, purple fingers stretched across the sky and a note scribbled in the place where Jayce once was, reading in his hurried, scrawled handwriting, your mom said it was time to go. (I'm serious about what I said, though. Take care of yourself.)
Caitlyn sighs and places the folded note on the corner of her nightstand.
*
(Humans are not meant to have desire like hers. There is no space in the flesh for such ravenous aspirations, no way to reach such summits without devouring yourself from the inside out. She is a disaster in the making, a torch made of nothing but papyrus and coal, made to burn the second she felt the first spark of success.
It was cruel on the part of the gods, she thinks, to make whatever soul inside her love so ferociously that she could never send herself to burn without thinking of everyone lovely she left behind.)
*
"I see you're feeling better."
Her mother drapes against the entrance to the music room, morning tea cradled in hand and robe brushing elegantly across the floor. Even first thing in the morning, she looks dignified as a brushstroke on canvas.
Caitlyn glances up from her sheet music. She's never been particularly good at the piano—past tutors would call her 'a fair player' at best—but the keys welcome her home with all the comfort of someone who doesn't expect much; the warmth of a hobbyist looking for things casual and distracting.
The tune on her fingers isn't anything complex—something composed in Demacia to played on repeat in churches and cathedrals—but in a way, that's what's relaxing about it. Her mind drifts as her hands play easy, slightly stunted notes, and she doesn't even notice her mother until she speaks from the doorway, the scent of black tea drifting quietly among violins and harps.
"I suppose so." Caitlyn turns the page to the next part of the song. She and her mother haven't had a real talk since she collapsed. She's been more than doting through all of Caitlyn's sick spell, but annoyance still sticks to her like a stubborn cold. She's never quite been one for shaking things off.
Still, if her mother feels any tension, she doesn't show it. She drapes herself over one of the couches, pearl-white and embellished with spiral-stitched flowers. There is no sound from her lips as she sips at her tea. "I don't think I've seen you in here in months."
Caitlyn shrugs. "I was feeling musical."
"That's odd. You've never been very good at the piano."
Tensed fingers, a missed key. Caitlyn doesn't say a word.
"I used to wish you were. That's why I sank so much money into tutors." She scoffs. "I was praying that you would have an affinity towards more delicate hobbies."
"Mother, you shoot a gun."
"I know. That's the problem." Another sip of tea. "You're too much like me."
Caitlyn isn't sure what to say. She turns back to the first page of her sheet music and starts from the top.
"You know, I was never very good at staying pregnant," her mother hums. Caitlyn glances over at her, but her mother stares out the window, cobalt gaze caught on some nonexistent thing lurking in the distance. Quietly, Caitlyn rests her fingers on top of the keys.
"And then I did," she continues. "And when you were born, I looked at you, and I said to myself, god, I hope this is an easy baby." She chuckles; a short sound from somewhere buried below her ribs. "I wanted you to be quiet. Dainty. A classic, good noblewoman."
"You would have liked that I never tried for anything in my life." The words come out sharper than Caitlyn means for them to, but her mother scarcely reacts.
"Admittedly, yes, I did want that." She shrugs, unashamed. "I had already worked to build everything. You would have to work for nothing in your life."
"Well, forgive me if I want more from life than to be a placid little doll." Caitlyn pounds at the keys, hard, rough, and there's an ugly clang as she hits on the wrong note.
Her mother scoffs. "The problem is you're too much like me," she repeats. "You're ambitious. Intelligent. And with your father's bleeding heart to spare." She sets the teacup down on the table beside her with a soft clink. There is a silence between them as Caitlyn stalls at the keys, and in the vacuum left behind, her mother sighs.
"I couldn't be more proud of you, Caitlyn. And I couldn't be more worried."
Her mother has never been one for emotion. She speaks sentiment like a foreign language and has never shed a tear for as long as Caitlyn can remember. As she speaks of motherhood and children and all the complications that come with them, she never once looks at Caitlyn, and she never even wavers in her voice. But as she drapes herself against the couch and is bathed in a swath of watery morning sunlight, she holds all the poise of old paintings hung in gleaming marble museums, and all the silent emotion never spoken by their muses.
Caitlyn lets the silence press on unhindered. It's only when her mother rises, rustle of silk, clink of china, that whatever spell has held them in place seems to be broken, and quietly, her mother clears her throat.
"Your acceptance letter from the academy is in the kitchen," she says, tossed over her shoulder on her way to the door. "Do try to be careful."
*
(Caitlyn doesn't know how to reach for anything other than sheer perfection. She doesn't know if she ever has. She's worked herself to the bone since she was old enough to want and loved more than she ever thought she could handle, and she's brought herself to the precipice of a gleaming gold future. She is passionate and insightful and sympathetic to a fault, and when she steps off the edge into the future she's carved, she knows that whatever she does, she will do it kindly, and she will do it well.)