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Vi never really thought of her parents often. She refused to, because then she had to acknowledge that their memory was slowly but surely starting to fade from her mind and she couldn’t face it.
She could remember more of her mother than she could her father, he worked tirelessly and didn’t come home some days but when he did, he would always scoop Powder and her into his arms and cuddle them to death. Vi was glad she would always be able to remember that, but she couldn’t remember his face. His voice, his warmth, yes. But his face? Never.
It was different for her mother. Vi could remember every excruciating detail on her face, the way her nose crinkled when she smiled, the way her eyes sparkled with mirth when she told a story. It was hard not to, not when she could see them every time she looked into a mirror. But Vi couldn’t remember her voice, the way she sang.
Vander would sometimes tell Vi, “You look so much like your mother in certain lights,” and she guesses that was somewhat true, like the way her hair genuinely looked violet in some lights. Despite the vivid pink of her hair, and the light grey of her eyes (her father’s traits), her face shape, eye shape, nose shape had come from her mother. So again it shouldn’t really be difficult for Vi to remember her mother.
(Certainly had nothing to do, either, with the sight that awaited them on the bridge. That they found their mother’s body and not their father’s.)
Vi had joined Caitlyn and her parents in a sitting room too extravagant to actually look like it was lived in. She refused to sit down, using the excuse that she preferred to stand up, not necessarily a lie, but it certainly wasn't true at that moment. She was afraid that if she were to sit down, she would fall asleep against the plump pillows and miss the hearing completely.
She half listened to the Kiramman’s, half watched the servants bustling about the house in an unexplained rush. Caitlyn said that they were always like this, Vi couldn’t fathom why. It didn’t stop her from being irritated by the disgruntled looks that were being thrown in her way. Typical that even the servants thought that they were above her because she happened to be born on the other side of the bridge. It annoyed her, they could survive several months in the Undercity with only a single month's pay she thought, and there were people in the fissures working tirelessly only to scrape up a few cogs. They even got housing with the job.
Vi needed some space.
Ironic, when all this place was space.
Vi leaned slightly over to Caitlyn, tapping her shoulder gently, “I’m just going to the bathroom, I’ll be back in a minute.”
Caitlyn smiled, “Sure. There's one just along the corridor on the left.”
Vi nodded, and turned to make her way down the hall. She heard footsteps behind her, and she thought nothing of it when someone had dropped what they were carrying, sending it to a cleaning mess on the floor. She turned around to go back and help.
“Violet?”
Vi froze, not even halfway finished turning, rooted to the spot.
That voice could only belong to one person.
Vi finished turning slowly, completely unaware that Caitlyn and her parents were now watching her closely. The man she looked at had her pink hair, maybe slightly darker, her grey eyes. Wrinkles had begun to appear, the man wasn’t old by any means but he was ageing. Smiles lines visible, her pink hair with streaks of white, age spots so small they could be mistaken as freckles.
Vi’s breath was snatched away from her, her voice terribly horse and her words coming out barely above a whisper.
“Dad?”
Vi stumbled forward, knees buckling and she felt herself being held in arms she thought were long gone. Strong and full of warmth.
She looked up, gaze glued onto her father’s face, memorising every new and excruciating detail. How could she have ever forgotten this face? How, when she recognised it so instantly? She felt the walls she had built up– some intentionally, some not– crumble slowly, cracks spreading and spreading until everything burst.
A sob bubbled out of her throat, soon turning into wails as she clung to her father like a lifeline. He was whispering something, and she could feel droplets hitting her head from where her father had rested his on top of hers.
She was suddenly nine again, before the bridge, her face burrowed stubbornly into her father’s neck while her mother sang. Her father hummed along, stroking her hair as she dozed, clinging to that feeling of safety that home always brought.
And here Vi was now, twenty-two and bawling in her not-dead father’s arms, the Kiramman family somewhere to her left but she didn’t care. They had thought that her father’s body had been mutilated to the point he was beyond recognition, that there was no way of identifying which body was his, and that only made her cry harder.
She tried to speak, she really did, but her voice would play her words like a broken record and the knot in her throat would tighten whenever she tried to. Her father only shushed her gently, rocking them gently and stroking her hair.
She was actually going to throw up, she couldn’t get a breath in and she was suddenly too hot and too cold, shaking like a leaf as she let all of the pain from the last years manifest itself through the river of tears flowing out of her eyes.
She pulled away slightly again, sniffling grossly as her father took her face in his hands. His fingers were calloused but were the most gentle she had felt in years, caressing her cheeks softly as he continued to somehow rock them back and forth. That had always calmed Vi down, Vander had known about this particular trick too and maybe that’s because her dad and Vander had been close. Very useful information during the first few months after the bridge and Vi had awoken screaming hysterically.
“I thou-” Vi took a shuddering breath, “I thought-”
Her father shook his head, bringing her back to him and placing her head on his chest, right over his heartbeat, “I know, my flower, I know,” He reassured her, and by Janna did she miss the way it felt to be allowed to feel vulnerable in someone else’s arms, “But I’m here.”
He paused, “Can you hear it?” He asked gently, “My heartbeat?”
Vi was silent, but she nodded. She could feel her father’s smile as he pressed his lips to her head, pressing a feathery kiss and holding her until she gave herself away to unconsciousness in warm and steady arms.