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Yet another take on the end of season 1 where Cait and Vi limp home after Jinx’s bombing and I write first aid because I love writing medical scenes and whumping my favorites. This is extremely self indulgent so enjoy.
Huge thank you to the person who gave my writing compliments on twitter! I’m not on there but my friend showed them to me! I hope you enjoy this piece as well!
I’ve seen the HC that Cassandra’s Council seat falls to Cait written in several places, so I wanted to try my hand at a little of that as well. There are some excellent fics that go into deeper detail than I will, though : )
Content Warning: vomiting, concussions, sedation, realistic medical treatment in general.
Weighted Blanket
Cait just tried to breathe. Her nose hurt. Her face hurt. She clutched around Vi’s broad shoulders like a lifeline.
One foot forward, one foot forward. She told herself as they shuffled together.
Everything in the Lanes had been surreal. Jinx’s rocket had hit the Council Tower. The bewildered, hesitant movements of the residents of Zaun turned to pure panic when they reached Piltover with its dust-choked streets and shouting enforcers and incessant alarms.
Someone screamed that there was a war.
Another yelled about secondary bombs.
Her mother—
Jayce—
Vi—
Cait’s face hurt too much to think; the bridge of her nose pounded with every pulse of her heart. A fresh, hot drip of blood fell from her chin, landing on the chest of her dress. Her nose bled despite her best efforts to stint it with her sleeve. Cait took the opportunity to be unladylike, spitting to the side to clear her mouth of the blood gushing from her sinuses and down her throat.
Jinx.
Vi’s sister was Jinx.
Vi’s sister had just launched a bomb at the Council where her mother and Jayce were working.
Vi gripped at the material of the enforcer jacket gathered around her waist, helping Cait stay on her feet when she paused to retch. Vi didn’t look much better than she felt—her face was swollen, one of her eyes nearly shut. A steady stream of blood dribbled from her lip.
“Vi. We have to stop.” Cait was suddenly claustrophobic. She pulled her arm off of Vi’s shoulders, working movement back into her numb limb. Her wrists burned from the heavy, frayed ropes Jinx had wrapped around them.
Vi gave a feeble nod, “We have to…” Vi staggered forward, planting her hands onto her knees and retching.
Cait placed her hand on Vi’s lower back, trying to steady her, “Sit…let’s sit—” There was a bench on the opposite side of the road. They could sit, just for a few minutes.
“No.” Vi shook her head, “Move….Adrenaline…Keep moving.”
A bloody, shaking hand reached for Cait’s, and Cait took it, running a thumb over damp bandages covering swollen knuckles. She released her grip when she saw the pained furrow of VI’s brow. Vi’s bloody hands worried her .
The enforcers met them at the bridge. Several of their faces were ones that Cait recognized.
Okay. Focus, focus. She had to find a little bit more energy—just enough to make sure they didn’t do anything nasty to Vi. The enforcers would be extra aggressive after the bombing, Cait knew, as much as she wasn’t sure she was even ready to admit that to herself.
Vi was from the undercity, and Jinx just declared war against Piltover.
“Caitlyn Kiramman! We need to get you home.”
“Are you alright, Caitlyn—”
“Councilor Kiramman!”
Cait’s head hurt too much to keep up with the people around her.
Vi. Vi’s sister had just made her an enemy to Piltover and Cait couldn’t bear the thought of her being mistreated more than she had been.
Vi’s grip tightened around her middle.
Focus, focus.
“This is Vi. She needs medical attention. She rescued me.”
Vi flinched at that, “’mm fine.” Vi protested, the words sounding thick in her swollen mouth.
“She needs medical attention.” She harshened her voice the way growing up in the house of a Kiramman matriarch had taught her. Cassandra was known for her cold, unflappable cadence, and Cait did her best to muster it, “I need to be taken to….” Cait paused, and despite the firmness she’d managed to instill into her voice, a lump formed in her throat, “I need to be taken to my mother.”
“They’re….” The first enforcer choked on his words, reaching for Vi who waivered and stepped back.
“Cait?” Vi sounded breathy, nervous.
Cait’s head and nose pounded too hard for this.
“Is my mother alive?” The words felt hollow coming from her mouth.
“The fire brigade is sorting through the rubble.” His strong hands clasped on her shoulders. He was her father’s age and Cait forgot his name. She couldn’t think right now.
“Get your hands off me!” Vi was snarling to her side at an exasperated looking medical officer.
Cait’s world canted, and she was thankful for his steading grip. The concussion nausea mixed with her raw emotions and aching shoulders and slammed into her chest. Cait hunched over and retched. Her mouth was dry; her stomach empty. Nothing came up.
“Cait!”
“Vi!”
“She’s alright. We’re taking her into a medical cart.”
That didn’t matter. Piltover had failed Vi so much. Vi surely was unhappy with that arrangement.
“I want to…stay with her—”
“Cait!” Vi sounded more distressed, her voice tight, distant.
Cait’s world echoed around her, everything felt distant, echoing, “Is Vi—”
A sudden, harsh ammonia scent. Cait wanted to retch again—smelling salts, “Ms. Kiramman.” She was being stuffed into a seat in a steam cart.
She hissed in pain as her nose was gripped with a handkerchief. It made her eyes water and the hot tears cut streaks down her dry, dirt crusted face. Thirsty. She was so thirsty and simultaneously so nauseated, “Vi…this….this cart?”
The hands steadying the back of her head and holding her nose made it difficult to talk.
“Ms. Kiramman. Can you understand me?” Cait blinked rapidly.
“Vi? Where is she?”
“Vi is on another medical cart.” The woman seated across from her on the opposite bench was saying. Elora. Mel’s assistant. She looked as harried as Cait felt. “Caitlyn, we need to reassemble those on the Council who are still able to work. As we are still hunting for your mother, the Councilor seat falls to you. Do you understand?”
Yes. That. The line of succession. Gods. Cait should have listened to more of her mother’s lectures on that growing up. Somehow, she never thought she’d be here. She had assumed Cassandra would live forever and she was never going to have to worry about the burden of her bloodline and the duties which came with it.
“Mel?”
“She and Jayce made it out of the explosion. They’re being treated.” Elora answered, “No word on your mother yet or any of the others.”
Cait closed her eyes. The world was spinning—she needed to think, needed to breathe for a second. The grip on her nose was painful, and she groaned, trying to signal her displeasure—“Have to stop the bleeding, Ms. Kiramman.”
“Councilor Kiramman. She’s Councilor right now.” Elora corrected.
Incorrect. Her mother was the Councilor, not she. But Cait couldn’t speak, she was busy trying to keep her eyes open and her head up.
“Vi…Elora….Can you….check Vi.”
“Vi is in fine hands. We need to worry about you right now, Councilor Kiramman. Given the nature of the attack, the press and people of Piltover are going to need to see their Council. Sooner than later.” Elora was infuriatingly calm, sitting on the opposite bench with her legs crossed. Cait focused her teary eyes on Elora’s heels as she sat properly with her ankles crossed, “We’ll find you a new outfit. I know you value the enforcers, Councilor Kiramman, but you’ll need something different for this appearance.”
Something cold and metal pressed to her brow, making Cait hiss through her teeth. The hands on her face held her still, Elora’s hands pressed into her knees, “Have to get the swelling down, I’m sorry.”
“We’ll get you some drugs to help the pain and keep you standing, Councilor.” Elora stated. Noxian. Of course. Cait closed her eyes.
“And makeup.” Someone else said, “To cover the bruises.”
“Shelly works with the models; she’s got an airbrush.”
Cait groaned again.
--
There were too many people and they’d already put Cait in a cart. The fight or flight instinct that Vi had honed into her main tool of survival over the past years flared, the pain of her injuries forgotten as a surge of fear turned to anger overtook her.
Hit the wall.
Make it hurt.
Deserve it to hurt.
They’ll hit you anyway. Hit them first.
They’d make her hurt; she’d deserve to hurt.
Vi’s punches weren’t strong, not anymore, not after Sevika. Not after Jinx. But they were enough. She just needed enough—
Enough to get away—
Alone. She was alone. They took Cait; of course they did. Cait was a Councilor’s daughter and Vi was Vi.
“Easy—”
Who did this guy think he was? Trying to be her friend and approaching her like some kind of cornered animal, “CAIT!” Her voice was raw and fraught.
“CAIT!” Vi didn’t want to get hit again and tucked her head behind her block, raised fists quivering against her bruised nose.
“Take it easy, we want to give you a look over—”
A slim hand landed on her shoulder and she swung, letting out a howl. She was a girl from the undercity. Scrappy. She had to survive. She was Vander’s daughter. Powder was Jinx. Jinx just started a war.
And there were too many of them, too many hands gripping her and giving the firm, familiar twist of her arms behind her back.
This was it— the freedom was short-lived. They were taking her back to Stillwater. Why else would they be handcuffing her?
“NO! CAIT!”
Cait was gone. They’d taken her too and the fact of that alone made something snap in Vi’s frazzled brain.
Powder was Jinx. Jinx stared a war. Vander was dead. Cait was gone.
“You’re alright!”
“No, please—” Not back to her cold cell, anywhere but there.
“How much?” Someone else was asking.
“Three ccs.”
Vi tried to whip around again, but there were too many, and they had her. She felt as if she’d walked into something sharp and it stung across her thigh. First instinct told her to leap away, but her legs turned to jelly and the fighting instinct turned foggy.
Her brain skipped, and her body went limp.
“At-a-girl.”
“It’s alright.”
Large hands guided her head. Vi fought to keep her eyes open as her back met the mesh fabric of a Piltover stretcher.
“You’re fine.”
There was movement and then bright lights over her head. The sterile smell of Stillwater’s hospital wing burned her nostrils. Vi did her best to blink away the tears rolling down her face, “What’s your name, lovely?” Everything hurt too much to resist. She didn’t want to get hit right now.
“Five-sixteen.”
“What?” The gloved hand pressed her filthy hair out of her eyes and touched lightly to the swollen one.
“Your name, lovely? You’re at Piltover General. Young Councilor Kiramman wants to see you’re taken care of.”
Vi felt cuffs digging into her wrists and groaned. Once trencher trash, always trencher trash. Piltover General or not, they still had her cuffed to the bed.
A blue haired child was carried out of a neighboring cubical and it made her heart skip, “Powder? Vander?” Vi tried to slow her brain. They weren’t here. Of course they weren’t. Why couldn’t she think?
“Any updates on her? Councilor Kiramman is concerned.” A woman’s voice.
“Sedated to make her comfortable. Battered and bruised but nothing life threatening.”
A quick reply of, “Good. I’ll pass it along.”
Who? Who was sedated? Who was comfortable? What was going on?
“Oh, Violet.” A male voice. Caitlyn’s dad was at her side, suddenly, wearing a white coat and shining a pen light into her eyes, “You’ve had a long day, hm?”
Vi wanted nothing less than to be comforted. She wanted to be left alone and get herself out of these cuffs and to see if Cait was alright. Vi took a breath to clear her head.
Tobais would know Cait’s whereabouts.
“Cait?”
“She’s fine. Unfortunately has to work, but she’s asking for you as well.”
“Her….Your wife?” Vi blinked, fighting the fog in her brain. One of his hands landed on her shoulder, patting her through the thin material of a papery hospital gown.
His eyes were sunken, rimmed with dark circles, “Alive. Hurt.” He patted her shoulder again, “Cait is tired but alright as well. She’s had to take the seat for an emergency Council meeting.”
Vi strained to raise her head, her sore body quivered in protest and her hands throbbed.
Tobias gripped her shoulders, easing her back with the same gentleness Cait had when she’d fed her shimmer in the Sump. How many days ago was that?
“Keep up with the pain meds. She’s a redhead—she’ll metabolize them and she’s flinching. She feels that.” Tobias was saying to a woman who Vi didn’t realize was manipulating her fingers and causing the searing in her left hand until now, “Vi. You’re safe. You were swinging. Are you here with me? Can we free your wrists and treat your hands?”
“The women’s charity donated a stack of weighted blankets. Want one?”
“Yes, that would be great.” Tobias replied. His thumb brushed her swollen cheek, trying to assess the damage in her face. That was such a Piltie thing—people just collecting blankets and giving them to the hospital. Zaun’s medical access was hardly anything to shout about. Sevika had given Vi a shot of whiskey more than once as a crude painkiller when she was a teen.
A nurse was untangling the cuffs from her wrists, “Get some x-rays on the hands.”
Vi bore the prodding on her fingers and eye socket as silently as she could, gritting her teeth to stop them from chattering and to try to resist the pain showing on her face.
“Cait?” Vi asked again.
Tobias loomed into her view again, draping the weight of a heavy blanket over her torso, “She’s alright. So are you. I must go but if you need anything, you ask, you understand?”
She managed a tiny nod, feeling calmer than she should be from whatever meds they were pumping her with. She floated in a place between sleep and wake while her hands were unwrapped. The blanket was warm and heavy and Vi’s eyelids drooped.
Vi hissed through her teeth as one of the nurses forced her fingers to uncurl; several women hushed her. They probably meant well, but Vi wasn’t used to being touched or being fussed over, and she found it nerve wracking.
Eventually the world was quiet as the staff mercifully left Vi alone. Her hands felt heavy and throbbing, wrapped in fresh gauze with an assurance that they hadn’t found any breaks in her finger bones.
“Vi?” Cait’s breathy voice at her side.
“Cait.” Vi forced her eyes open, pain and exhaustion again stopping her from sitting up.
Cait was slumped in a chair at her bedside, dressed in a pressed suit with cat-eyed makeup that looked out of place beneath the harshness of florescent lights. Vi blinked, clearing some of the haze from her vision, “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I don’t want to hear anything about ‘oil and water’, Vi.” Cait trailed off, her voice rough.
“I’m sorry.” Vi swallowed the lump in her throat, “Don’t they…have a bed for you, Cait?”
“I have another meeting and have to stand up for the paparazzi. My mother is in no shape to sit on the Council.” So, they’d painted heavy makeup over Cait’s bruises. One of her fake eyelashes had started to detach and it dangled from the corner of her eye.
“How is she?”
“She’ll be okay. But she needs to recover. She can’t work right now, she’s hurt.” Cait moved slowly, looking as pained as Vi felt as she tried to straighten herself, “They gave me stimulants… I’m shaky.” She held out her hands, showing the tremors that set into her fingers.
Vi swallowed again, her throat and mouth were painfully dry. She patted the side of her thin mattress as she used to do for Powder when they were kids and her sister got scared at night, “Want to….lay down?”
Cait gave a tired nod, pushing herself up from the chair and sinking into Vi’s mattress beside her, “Please….it’s freezing.” Vi maneuvered her arm, draping it over Cait’s shoulders while Cait’s head set onto her chest. They breathed for a few moments, soaking in the warmth of each other’s body heat, “They want me to give an address, Vi.” Cait’s fingers curled into the heavy blanket that had been set over her. It was warm and its weight soothed Vi more than she liked to admit.
“Have you given one before?” Vi asked, tipping her head so her cheek rested on Cait’s hair. Her eyelids drooped for a moment, ending with her startling herself awake, “Sorry…I….” There was an IV in her forearm, and if she weren’t so damn out of it and if Cait wasn’t resting on her she would need to remove it. She couldn’t think clearly.
Cait let out an amused sound, “Dad says they gave you enough painkillers to kill a horse because you wouldn’t stop fighting. You have no business being awake, Vi. You’re alright.”
Vi wasn’t sure what to do with that information so she kept quiet, “Your…your address…The IV….I want to come.”
“Vi, you’re hurt.”
“And you’re not?”
Cait adjusted to look up at her, exhausted blue eyes searching her own. Vi leaned forward, and Cait met her. Both drugged and stiff, they missed each other’s mouths. Cait’s glossy lips pressed into her chin, “I’m on in five minutes, Vi. Do you think you can stand?”
The room spun beneath her, and rather than being thrilled that she’d just attempted to kiss Cait, Vi found herself startling out of another nod off, “Yes.” She lied.
Cait turned on her side, leaning on her elbow so she could look into Vi’s eyes while leaning their hips together, “I don’t know what to say. I can’t let them bomb Zaun.”
“You’re….You’re a good speaker…Our Council meeting.” Vi meant it, Cait had known how to speak with command. Surely, she’d been taught by Cassandra, “I know…I know you’ll try to protect them.”
A woman appeared from behind the curtains of Vi’s cubical, “Two minutes, Councilor Kiramman.”
One of Cait’s stern, “Thank you.”s, followed by a frantic look to Vi.
“Go.” Vi said, forcing her eyes to stay open was becoming a chore, “Go. You can do this.”
Cait gave her a tiny nod, and then pressed forward, giving Vi a proper kiss on the forehead, “Okay.” As she unfolded her tall frame from the bed.
Vi fought the drowsiness, mustering a final, “Cait!” As the woman’s tall frame walked away from her, “Your eyelash is falling off.”
The same woman who’d warned about the time screamed for glue while Cait and Vi’s eyes met, the two bursting into exasperated, exhausted giggles.
“I’ll be back soon.” Cait assured.
“Don’t worry about me, Cupcake. Go. They need you.”
-
Thanks for reading! : )