Work Text:
When Vi awoke it was with the churning, rushing pull of a riptide tearing everything onshore back out with it to sea. Uprooted, she gasped and felt violence in her lungs. She laid there dizzy as if caught in the ocean's pull, swirling and drowning in its vortex.
The crushing pressure around her skull was immediate and overwhelming and she thought she might be dying.
But then there was a blazing flash of blue heat crumbling walls—a flash of purple coursing through Vander’s eyes—and Vi was spat back ashore, shivering and gasping and alive.
It was dark where she was, and cold. She laid upon a cot soaked in sweat that had cooled against her. The air was musty and when she sat upright her head spun like it was no longer attached.
Powder. The thought came like the crest of the next wave crashing and Vi was up in an instant, willing her body forward, anywhere, back to her sister.
She hit the bars headfirst with a thud and her eyes rang with stars behind them. Her head knocked loose again and with it any hope shattered.
Vi refused to believe it but the iron in her hands was solid and real and she was entirely alone save for the beating rhythm of her heart quickening in time with the panic that was thrumming electric through the cell.
“Help!” she called out into nothingness, down the deep and dark hallway that led nowhere good and nowhere safe.
Powder’s nose had bled in a trickle down her face. Vi’s knuckles throbbed in pain from the hit.
“Help me, please! My sister!”
A sinking and instant dread kicked over in her stomach and she saw Silco above Powder like a pitch-black shadow looming.
Take care of Powder.
Vander’s last words had been drawn like torn silk from his mouth. Vi had broken her promise as soon as it was made. Her stomach churned and she heaved out in horror, spit flying past her cracked and bleeding lips.
Mylo, Claggor. Bodies smeared under concrete.
Her forehead fell against the bars and she gripped the metal tighter and pulled with a misplaced will. A spark of pain shot down her shoulder into her spine and she grimaced.
“Help,” but it was barely a whimper. Everything she touched was broken. There was no reason to help her because there was nothing left to be helped.
She saw him then, Vander, on the ground so sick and so contorted.
Vander. Dead in her arms.
She called again but her words were strangled and unrecognizable and there was no one coming anyway so she twisted her back to the bars and howled out a grisly siren song to nobody. It echoed into the darkness.
--
For the first time today the sun breaks through and with its light the orchestra swells, the strings ring out, and Vi feels something heavy dislodge in her chest.
The song is beautiful in its classical way but it’s all still so strange—this light air, these white clouds—and so her fists ball by habit, and the sinews strain with a familiar pull. The black sleeves of this new jacket feel stiff with starch and she can’t ignore the itch against her neck, collar buttoned higher and tighter than she’s ever worn.
She’s sure she wouldn’t recognize herself if she caught a look in the mirror but the caged sensation between her ribs is one she knows well, trapped and pacing and feral.
It’s stretched into a weeklong affair by this point, Piltover holding its own funeral procession. Councilor after councilor. Coffins and family crests. Finery and pomp. Mourning and grief.
The city’s shock has turned rotten into resentment, into hatred, with each burial.
This is the first and only Vi attends, taking whatever small space Caitlyn has carved out for her. It was obvious Caitlyn had been avoiding asking. Vi, in a gift of gratitude too small for what Caitlyn deserved, hadn’t made her.
“Do you know where I can get a nicer jacket to wear?” Vi tested unprompted one evening and the look on Caitlyn’s face, soft and broken, was worth whatever constricting waistcoat she wore now.
She refuses a seat, instead choosing to stand behind the rest of the congregation with her new dress boots fitting awkwardly on her feet. Caitlyn is yards away, sitting ramrod straight beside her father in the front row. She may as well be as far as she’s ever been. Vi’s heart feels too big for her body with that fact.
The Kiramman mausoleum towers in front of them, ivory and gleaming and pristine—a steady anchor that grounds them all here and now. The orchestra plays on.
The back of Caitlyn’s head offers no clues to her state of mind and so Vi won’t try to read what’s not there. Caitlyn has extended her the same affordance and with it, a growing, unspoken ghost hangs over them, between them-
-Over all of Piltover, really.
The sun beats hot now and so Vi lets herself beat hot with it.
A violinist stands, solitary amongst the others. The rest of the orchestra quiets as she starts in on a mournful solo. It cuts through the warming air, slinking and winding its way to Vi, catching her unprepared.
She’s suddenly moved by it.
The musician’s arm and her bow skate together with a gentle sawing as if the two are one, coaxing from the instrument a sound so lovely, so sad, that Vi wishes she could open her mouth and swallow it down, hold it inside of her where it might grow and swell and make her beautiful too.
The melody lilts over the crowd and she does try to capture it then, closing her eyes in an attempt to imprint it pure and unfettered somewhere inside her.
Vi thinks, please, but it’s already gone, slipping straight through yearning fingertips and carried off on the wind to someone certainly more deserving than she.
--
By nightfall Vi’s throat was ruined. Her whole body ached, broken and pounding. Like a small, pitiful creature she crawled back to the cot and laid, allowing the tears to spill silently as they carved their way down her cheeks.
There had been so many deaths that day on the bridge. Too many to count. The Undercity had mourned for weeks. Vi had tried so hard to scare off the demons that would come to her and Powder in the following nights, clinging to each other on that strange new bed. It was futile.
Vander had led the city, brokered whatever uneasy peace he could. The wind shifted. The mourning skittered tentatively into something less hallowed, into something more celebratory. They’d gathered, their new family composed of those left behind, and they’d remembered.
The Last Drop filled with life again, beautiful and teeming. Vi was shown how fissure-folk persevered, how they remembered their dead. They drank and they ate and they shared whatever meager offerings they had with each other.
“Our people, the ones we’ve lost, are honored in our gathering,” Vander had started after a particularly rowdy evening. He commanded the room so easily with his booming voice and glass raised high.
She’d hugged Powder—small in her arms—and allowed herself a smile for what she decided was the first time in weeks.
“When we’re together here, we’re together with them.” It felt like an oath from his mouth and Vi was smart enough to snatch it up, to hold it tight.
She looked around, half expecting to find herself back at the bar, laughing as Vander’s drink sloshed from his glass, with The Lanes together in reverence, with Powder so sure in her arms.
But it was just her, alone.
She stood then, hunched and seething. The cell wall called out to her, mocked her. She rolled her useless shoulder, willed it up, and smashed her fist into concrete. Stars exploded behind her eyes and a blinding white pain short-circuited her vision.
--
The orchestra quiets. Caitlyn stands and strides to the podium, steady and strong. Her blue eyes look dark from where Vi watches and she realizes her breath has caught in her throat with the sight.
Somehow the mausoleum that had loomed over the others doesn’t dwarf her. It settles comfortably against her frame and Caitlyn’s taller for it in comparison. She’s beautiful, really.
Everything stills when she speaks.
“My mother is gone, and I want to thank everyone for being here. You all have your memories of her, and I have mine. I won’t stand here and try to convince you of who she was because to each of you she was someone different.
“To the city, she was a steward, guiding Piltover forward towards dreams built deep into its roots. To her industries, she was a gardener, planting seeds and helping them grow into something bigger, more robust. To my father, she was a partner, strong when he was soft, soft when he was strong. And to me,” she pauses, clenches her jaw, slows. “To me, well, I don’t know.”
Vi feels guilt and shame settle sticky on her skin, warmed by the sun.
“What I do know is that when my mother spoke, it was with certainty. When she moved, it was with conviction. When she said the name Kiramman, she said it like a creed. What I do know is that our cities need to heal and that we are all together in our loss today.”
Caitlyn catches her eye now for the first time since they’d parted that morning. Vi’s torn apart by her gaze, limb by limb.
“Our parents shape us, and they guide us. They push us, and they push us away. In that sacred space between our reflection of them and our rejection of them, we are forged into who we are.”
Caitlyn swallows, her voice wavering for the first time. With it, Vi buckles. Her heart rips open brand new.
“And on the day they finally depart, they leave behind their work for us. Whether we choose it or not, they leave it for us, heavy in our hands.”
Several members of the congregation stand, rifles at the ready. The flags painted gold with the Kiramman crest flap listlessly in calm winds. Caitlyn is handed a rifle and she joins them, firing the first of the shots into the air.
Vi is dizzy from the sound.
--
The lacerations across her fists were inflamed and raw. She touched the angry gashes with dirty fingers and smarted at the sting. She thought of Vander, strong hands against her chin, pressing a cold cloth to an ugly bruise that had bloomed across her cheekbone after a particularly hard hit from an alleyway brawl.
There was a time years ago she had come upon him alone at the empty bar, head in his hands. She thought maybe his shoulders had been shaking, and as she silently crept behind she’d heard muffled noises that sounded alien from him.
There’d been an argument earlier, rougher and louder than usual. Benzo had been there, ushering her and Powder out of the room as Vander had stood, cracking his neck and flexing his fists. They’d heard the shouting—the scuffle, the splitting sounds—from the basement. It had frightened them to think he might be unsafe.
“Vander?” she asked cautiously, afraid to scare him or embarrass him or break him of this silent prayer.
She was young then and her limbs hung awkwardly long at her side.
He turned to her over his shoulder and his warm eyes were wet and tired. “Hey, kid.”
She felt as if she had misstepped, wandered into something she shouldn’t have. He must have noticed because he spun on his stool, beckoning her forward. “Can’t sleep?” he’d asked and Vi nodded, willing herself to look away from him. “Same.”
His voice was comforting in her memory, rounder and maybe fuller than it was. Memory —that word rolled over inside her
Vander sighed like a great mountain creaking under its weight. The sound snapped Vi back towards him. He had trusted her with this, with this quiet moment, the least she could do was look at him.
“Sometimes,” he chewed the word, “Sometimes it feels like there’s no right answer.” He eyed her and she felt the exhaustion in his voice. She had seen how he commanded The Lanes, how he made it seem like they commanded themselves. She was forced to question that: how much did it really take?
He moved to wipe his eyes, letting her see he had been crying. She thought maybe she’d be scared to see such a thing but Vander held her gaze and in that hold she felt safe. He chuckled, “I’m just letting it out. Frustrated, I guess.”
She shuffled forward. Vander was still new to her then and she was piecing together a mosaic of the man that had taken her in. His mouth twitched as if it wanted to smile but it didn’t reach his eyes, tired still, and catching the light. Another layer peeled back.
“Sometimes it’s all you can do to take care of each other.”
She’d let some idea of him go that night and something new had filled her perception of him. It was just as big—just as warm—but softer somehow, and more real.
But alone on this cot, alone in this mildewed air, she felt even that start to slip away. She clung desperately but the tide was retreating, pulling back, washing away. There he was again, crashing to the ground, saving her, but he’d looked so wrong, so horrifying. The new veins on his neck that coursed sick with purple slowed and stopped.
He’d deserved more than that, Vi knew for sure. Mylo and Claggor, they all did. She had nothing to offer in memorial, no farewells to whisper into the wind. All she had were her fists and her tears and her blood that pounded undeserved through her body.
She’d punched Powder so easily, like Vander’s words were nothing.
When the guard finally entered her cell with a tray of food and a change of clothes Vi charged, sprung violently as if wound tight—ferocious and flailing. She slammed their skull against the stone ground with a sickening crack. Her knuckles sang electric from the pain as she pummeled them over and over and over and over, unrelenting.
Something like poison coiled in her chest. This was all she was good for.
--
Cassandra Kiramman is lowered into the ground, disappearing somewhere deep. Caitlyn and her father throw the first of the dirt together and Vi releases the breath she’d been holding.
There’s a fraction of a moment between when the service ends and when Caitlyn finds her—beelining straight past the countless high society members tripping over themselves to garner the favor of the late councilor’s daughter—that Vi considers running. She can see herself disappearing into the crowds of the Undercity, lost like so many. She can see herself fighting and bruising her way through until finally, thankfully, being put down like the rabid animal she was.
But Caitlyn’s there in an instant, rifle at her side, and Vi doesn’t get the chance. Caitlyn grabs her hand, lithe fingers around Vi’s wrist, and pulls her away from the slowly dispersing crowd.
They find a spot a ways behind the mausoleum where a tall tree above them casts dappled light across the cemetery ground.
“I know this was a lot,” Caitlyn says, motioning as if to say, the Topsiders, the formality, the excess. “I appreciate you being here, though. It means so much,” and now she motions between them as if to say, for me, for us, for our cities.
“No sweat, Cupcake,” Vi misdirects, voice sounding foreign from her mouth. Caitlyn shoots her a look that cuts through her nonchalance, earnest in its grip around Vi’s pulsing heart. Vi has no fight left so, more serious now, “I’m glad you got to say goodbye to her… I’m thankful I got to say goodbye to her too.” She shrugs, shoulder aching with lingering pain. “You don’t always get that.” Vi’s telling the truth; she’s thankful.
Caitlyn blinks, head cocking in contemplation. Vi’s legs grow unsteady, liquifying in the sun. Another moment passes and then it is with no judgment, no pity, that Caitlyn concludes, “You never got to say goodbye.”
Vi is undressed then with the shock of being seen. Caitlyn offers her quiet understanding so plainly that all Vi can do is nod so plainly back. She feels like a child.
Caitlyn swings her rifle up, holding it between her hands. “How many?”
Vi knows it probably kills her to have to ask but then the names flare up inside her, pulled forth by their own accord: Mom. Dad. Benzo. Mylo. Claggor. Vander…
“Six.”
Caitlyn holds her gaze, face melting into something new. That look on any other face would make Vi recoil, thrash against it, shake it away. But that look, the one Caitlyn’s wearing now, is so ready, so warm, so broken that Vi lets herself be taken, lets herself be swept out to sea.
Caitlyn nods and with it she raises her rifle, aiming at an angle to the sky. Vi finds herself by her side.
She fires.
One .
A few birds scatter above them with the ringing blast. Vi steels herself for the next.
Two.
Caitlyn cocks the gun and Vi thinks of the violinist and her bow, moving together as one. Caitlyn’s movements coax a different kind of music into the air.
Three .
Vi feels that heavy thing dislodge again, rattled out with the booming sound of gunfire in the afternoon air.
Four.
She’s crying now, her brow creased. She thinks of Vander behind the bar, hiding nothing from her, and so she decides she won’t hide from Caitlyn. She chances a look at Caitlyn’s face and finds silent tears to match her own, her blue eyes dark and fixed on the clouds. Vi doesn’t look away.
Five.
All the birds are gone, chased off by this private funeral procession cutting through the air. Caitlyn readies the final shot and Vi closes her eyes, face turning up into the steady sun. She sees Vander again but no longer that horrible image she’d carried for years in Stillwater. She lets that go as the sun beats behind her eyelids and her vision turns to white from the heat
Six.
She keeps her eyes closed with a lingering beat. “Thank you,” she finally offers in prayer.
“Thank you,” Caitlyn mirrors back and Vi wonders how she can be so perfect, how she can say such a thing and sound like she means it.
A still moment rests between them and in its warmth Vi feels something well up inside her. It sits in her mouth, begging and ready. But then a crow returns, cawing from a distance, and Vi remembers. She remembers that seventh name she didn’t allow herself to think, even if only to herself. The ever-present ghost that hangs between them now. Powder.
She’ll hold onto this moment for later, perfect in its private memoriam. The day the two of them said goodbye to so many.
Vander’s last words wrap around her hands, poised and ready. She hopes Caitlyn will understand. They leave behind their work for us—she’d said it herself.
So she’ll say goodbye to Caitlyn tomorrow. She’ll leave her as whole as she can, save her from the path with Vi that leads nowhere good and nowhere safe. Caitlyn, all purpose and drive. Caitlyn, broken and beaten down but somehow stronger for it. Caitlyn, deserving more than Vi could ever hope to give.
That melody from before lilts through her mind, carried back across the wind. Vi thinks maybe she did catch it and Caitlyn smiles at her then as if she’s heard it too.
She’ll say goodbye tomorrow but for now she takes Caitlyn’s hand and lets the next wave crash. There’s been enough goodbyes for today.
--