Chapter Text
The courtyard in her parents' garden smells of wisteria. It always has, but it's strange now, out of place.
Smoke screens out the sky in a sickish haze and the city smells of burning everywhere — in the streets, in shops, in her house, in her bedroom. But wisteria still perfumes the garden where they find her trying to scale the courtyard wall with no plan beyond go, Cait, get out.
She makes it some six feet off the ground, her feet slipping in the latticework under her mother's creeping vines, when scarred hands grab her legs and yank her down. The lattice wood tears her palms. The wisteria crushes into something damp and sticky. The same rough hands grab her shoulders and jam her against the wall, her face half-buried in this garden luxury so much so that even the smell of the smoke stops being true.
She coughs.
She tries to fight them. Kicks and twists. Someone grabs her head by the hair and knocks her into the lattice and the stone, and pain makes her vision shatter. And then cold steel cuffs bite into her wrists and it doesn't matter how hard she kicks or fights or screams. Two footsoldiers grab her, one on each arm, and they haul her away from the wisteria and the garden, and through her home, and into the street where the perfumed promise of escape burns up like ricepaper touched to flame.
Only smoke out here. Smoke and red fire and the smell-taste of something she doesn't understand at first, because why would she.
The soldiers drag her through the streets, their fingers digging bruises into her arms. She slips on spilled water from broken pipes; on rubble from shattered walls. Her foot catches on something, and when she stumbles and looks down, the thing she didn't understand snaps into place. The soldiers don't let her fall. They yank her up and force her along, past the body that tangled on her feet, otherwise motionless on the cobblestone, watching their passage with milky eyes.
The ash from a burning building drifts down like snow and she crosses some rubicon of newly apprehended truths.
Blood, in enough quantity, has a smell and a taste. And the wisteria is no more.
*
She always wondered if the things people said about Noxus were true. A cold, hard, cruel place; iron and blood, that's how her tutors made it sound. She jotted down her bored notes about it and decided she'd see it with her own eyes one day and make up her mind.
*
"Caitlyn? Please— no, Caitlyn."
Down by the harbor, the smoke isn't quite so thick, but there's a lag between stepping into clean sea air and the gritty, burning ash-feeling lifting from her eyes. She sees her mother through tears she didn't want to cry. Shackled among a crowd of captives, her hair hanging limp around her face. Her dress, like the rest of her, is filthy, and Cait's heart skips a beat.
"Caitlyn!"
The soldiers drag her through the throng. Up close, she can see that they've chained the cuffs at her mother's wrists to bindings on her ankles, leaving just enough slack that she can take choked steps, unsteady. No running now.
"Together," one soldier says.
She doesn't know what this means until one of her captors grabs her mother by the arms and forces her in the direction of the docks. Cassandra shrieks. Pain, but Cait's name again also. Cait throws her weight like she can escape the grip of the man still holding her. A girl inspired to resistance by way of this strange new reality. Who knew her mother could cry like that?
The soldier's free hand finds her hair and twists it so hard her head keels back.
"Walk," he sneers.
She can barely find her balance, can barely see. Fresh tears well in the corners of her eyes. Indifferent, he thrusts her forward, marching her after her mother and kicking at her legs every time she stumbles.
They stop when they board an airship. Commandeered — maybe. Is it commandeering when the ship was only sitting at the docks to begin with? Is that plain thieving? Or conquering? Clearly once a trading vessel, the ship has become something else, enlivened with the Noxians in their black carapace armor, slipping over and around it like shadow things shot through here and there with little veins of gold or translucent ruby red. Some tossing cargo overboard, others ripping into carrier chests. This is what a gutting looks like.
On the ship deck, the soldiers kick a hatch open — a portal to the dark downbelow. Her mother twists in the hands of her captor. Her voice pitched in a strange tone.
"Don't hurt her," she begs, dropping her weight.
The soldier has to physically drag her, chooses to let her shins bash over and over again on the ship deck, towards the hatch.
"Don't hurt her—"
Cait's skin crawls. Stop begging.
"She hasn't done anything, don't—"
The soldier throws her mother into the dark hatchmouth. There's a thud and then a yelp. Sharp sound, pain-snap. And then:
"Caitlyn! Caitlyn!"
Strange and yappy and desperate. Cait's eyes burn again.
"I think she misses you," one soldier laughs.
The other shoves her again. She staggers.
"Cry like that in front of the general, you'll be dead by daylight."
What general?
One last shove. Without her arms free to keep her balance, she trip-walks the last few steps into open air and falls so hard her knees, her hips, her guts all hurt on impact in the dark. She crumples like crushed paper.
The hatch slams shut. Only darkness. Only tears.
*
"Mom?"
"Caitlyn." Cracked voice. Pain-thin. "Caitlyn, are you okay?"
"I think so. Are you?"
"I don't— Yes. I am."
Lies. Liar. "What happened? Where's Dad?"
Nothing.
"Mom?"
Nothing.
"Mom—"
"Dead."
"What?"
"He's dead." A broken sound. Then a steadying breath. "They took the Council palace, he shouldn't have been there—"
Her heart beats in a weird way. Fluttery. Out of sync with the world. Her arms, still bound too tight behind her back, ache.
"Mom?"
"Yes?"
"They really didn't hurt you?"
The dark gets colder and darker. No crying noises anymore.
"Mom?"
"Only a little." Dry voice like autumn leaves.
It was a mistake to ask. She didn't want to hear a lie, and she didn't really want the truth either. Her eyes burn again. Heavy footsteps thud in confident strides overhead but no one comes to open the hatch. She wriggles across the floorboards, her knees, her hips, her brain all pulsing with a kind of pain she's never felt before. She all but knocks into her mother, then rests her head against her leg instead.
"It's going to be okay, Mom." Far away from here, her father picks her up and throws her into the air, laughing. She's only five years old. "We're going to be okay."
Her mother doesn't say anything. A lie for a lie.
No one comes for them for a very long time.
*
Nighttime.
When the hatch opens, cool air rushes in and shocks Cait like a spill of cold water.
"Up."
Rough hands grab her before she can blink the half-sleep out of her eyes. Her cuffs fall away. Rubbed-raw skin burns on her wrists.
"Mom? Mom!"
"Shut up" — those same rough hands, hard on either side of her head, pushing her — "and climb."
"Mom!"
Something cracks across the back of her head and she stumbles forward, pain bursting white behind her eyes. She tries to find her balance, but can't, and then the hands lift her, and then she tries to fight, but can't, and then the hands throw her over a shoulder. She screams and squirms and this person that she still can't see hoists her up the ladder and into the clear night air.
She swears as they carry her away. She bucks against scaled black armor, dark as igneous, and mostly succeeds in cutting up her own knees. She shouts that she isn't scared, they don't scare her, she won't ever be scared, and the stars skid away above them. Blotted out up ahead by so much black smoke. Even half-hanging over serried steel epaulettes, she glimpses penumbras blooming to life in the city. Fires.
She hates them she hates them she hates them and she says so and it doesn't matter. This soldier carrying her, and the one at his side, don't care.
Down torn up streets choked out with ash. Fresh smoke makes her cough and cry, armored epaulettes digging into her belly. They carry her to the steps of the council palace and then up the steps and then inside, up up high in the elevator, to the council chamber with its round table and its glassy dome and oracular window facing a bloated red moon. All of this world floating like a plane of poisoned heaven above the mortal ruin of smoke and fire.
The soldier drops her to the cold slice of floor encircled by the council table. No ceremony. Hard marble slaps her buttocks and the heels of her palms when she tries to catch herself and her hands, already dirty, slip in something sticky.
"Caitlyn Kiramman," the soldier announces.
Seven seats at the council's round table. Four of them empty.
"You're certain?"
Sticky and cold on her palms.
"Captured in her own manor, General."
She looks at her hands, slick with—
"Get up, girl. I don't tend with sniveling children."
She looks up. An armored woman sits in the council chair directly in front of her, unsmiling. Pale, pinkish scars etch seams in her face. In the seats flanking her: the corpses of Councillors Hoskel and Salo wilting like dead flowers, dried sap-spills of blood unfurled from slashed throats. Cait stares.
"Is she deaf?" the woman asks.
"I'm not."
The blood on the floor — on her hands — is cool and tacky. She pushes to her feet, slipping in the mess. Unsteady, her body hurts all over. The woman looks her up and down and leers.
"Not mute, either, I see."
Cait stiffens. "Who are you?"
"And she thinks she has grounds to interrogate me! Remarkable. How old are you?"
"I'm not telling you."
"Of course. Sergeant."
Heavy hinges — the chamber doors opening again, echoing loud. Cait tries to turn, but the soldiers at her back grab her shoulders and holds her in place, their grips cruel. Two other Noxians drag her mother around the outside of the table, pushing her to her knees behind the unsmiling woman in her stolen seat.
"Your daughter has the disposition of feral dog, Councilor Kiramman."
Her mother lurches forward and the guards hold fast. "Let her go."
The woman gets to her feet. She turns to Cassandra, the both of them framed in the red soar of the councilroom windows. A sword hangs at the woman's hip and hisses when she draws it from its sheath.
"It's not an insult, Councilor. A feral dog isn't so different from a wolf. Smaller, perhaps, but no less fierce."
"She's a child."
"I'm not a child, and I'm not a dog, I—"
The woman looks at her, mouth quirked in a cold half-smile. Cait snaps her mouth shut. A beat too late. Her face all hot. In her mother's solar where the light floods in, she watches Cassandra make notes in a dossier.
Caitlyn, it's a virtue to learn when the world wants to hear you speak.
"She looks old enough to me," the woman says, fixing that steely gaze back on Cassandra. She slips the point of her blade just under Cassandra's chin, tips her head up. "Caitlyn, is it?" she muses, watching Cassandra’s face. "Tell me something, since you're neither a child nor a dog: what should I do with your mother?"
"Let her go."
"Like mother, like daughter — wouldn't that be lovely. Why not let you both go? Free to what's left of your people and stir them up into a rebellion. An effort destined to fail, but enough to annoy me, I have no doubt."
"She hasn't done anything."
"Perhaps she should have." She twists the point of her blade against the skin stretched over Cassandra's throat. Caitlyn's mother flinches and one of the Noxian soldiers grabs her hair and yanks her head back, baring the delicate and corded column of her throat to bright steel violence. Blood runs in one slender, red root down to Cassandra's filthy shirt collar. "One of my lieutenants tells me that today is what you call your Progress Day. An arrogant holiday for arrogant figureheads who have done, as you say, nothing."
She drives the point of that sword deeper and Caitlyn lurches, straining against the brutal hands that hold her. Terrifying, surgical precision means the blade doesn't open her mother's throat enough to kill her, but cuts deep enough to scar.
A sob bubbles in Cassandra's mouth.
Caitlyn twists so hard in the soldiers' grip her shoulders feel like they might snap.
"Let her go! Stop!"
"I have a proposal for you, Caitlyn Kiramman," this unsmiling woman says. "Know that this is no small thing. I'm not in the business of treating with my enemies, but my daughter believes that mercy has a place even in Noxus. And as a mercy, I will offer you to my daughter."
"I don't want your offers—"
The woman twists her blade one half notch. "I'm not done, Kiramman."
More blood purls around the tip of her sword. Cassandra's breath trembles.
"I am offering you a political marriage," the woman says, eyes on Cassandra and not Cait. "A kindness to your people, that they may still look to one of their own to protect their interests within the rule of Noxus now that they've joined the ranks of our empire."
Her own bedroom. She stands on a dressing stool, her eyes still red from crying. The seamstress pins the waistline of a dress she doesn't want.
Enough, Caitlyn. Her mother's patience ran out days before. A fight that devolved into screamed insults—
—I'm sorry Mama, I'm so sorry—
—and Cassandra finally snapping: It's the opera, not an execution. You'll survive.
But it wasn't just the opera, it was a showcase and she was the prize, shown off to all the mothers of the other high houses with sons coming of age, and she would have to stay in those stupid box seats and listen to those idiot boys come and go, pretending like she didn't know they were all their to greet her and not her parents.
How many years ago was that?
Four, actually, yet her bedroom is so present, the seamstress so gentle. Her eyes red from crying.
She's so cold all of a sudden.
"I don't want your empire."
"Then you're free to leave." To punctuate this point, she twists her blade just a notch more.
Cait can't see it, but she imagines anyway: her mother's skin curling around steel. A bloody garnish.
"That isn't kindness," she breathes. "That's not even a real choice."
The woman looks at her. That cold half-smile returns. One of her scars puckers on her lipline, bloodless and white under tension.
"You are a savvy thing, aren't you? But soft still. Let me tell you this, girl: not every choice is fair, but there is always a choice. This is the ugliest and unfairest one — live or die. At the bottom of everything, that's all there really is."
The hard, calloused hands of the soldiers. The bloodred sky. Cait's eyes dart to her mother.
"You'll let her go?"
"I'll let her live."
Crystalline tears gather in the corners of Cassandra's eyes. The way the soldiers wrench her head back makes her look as if she's kneeling in supplication to the chamber's glass dome and the sky above. Maybe to an indifferent entity beyond that.
Cait's stomach turns over. "Okay."
The woman draws the sword back — then, in one unhesitating motion, thrusts it through Cassandra's throat where it catches somewhere in the hot, sinewed dark of a human neck. Cassandra gargles up a wet sound. The blade point erupts just to the left of her spine in a slick hissing sound. This shatter-shot moment of frozen time. All the blood drains from Cait's face.
"I'll tell you a second thing," the woman says, her hand still fast on her sword's hilt, Cassandra hanging off the other end like a speared fish. "You choose only for yourself in life. Nothing else is guaranteed. Remember that, and you will thrive in Noxus."
She rips her sword free. A bright ribbon of blood follows — hot, violent, spraying the woman's greaves with the last dazzling rush of the life that once belonged to Cassandra Kiramman. The soldiers drop her arms and her body falls with a heavy thud, twitching and choking, ashen hands slapping around on the tile, in the blood, in the dying flail of disbelief. After some time, she doesn't move at all.
A weird high note rings on the edges of Cait's hearing.
The woman sheathes her sword.
"Take her."
"Mom..." Cait lurches forward but the solders hold her fast. "Mom!"
Her voice echoes, reflected off the chamber walls, but no one answers. Cassandra rendered in black silhouette, a heap on the floor.
Cait shrieks, fighting the hands that grip her. Her feet slip in blood. She tries to run but the soldiers pull her away. She kicks, and hauls, and twists, her vision blurring.
"Mom! Mom, no, please. Let me— Mom!"
The soldiers lift her by the arms and red fire blooms in her shoulders. Her feet kick in thin air, her breath getting thinner and tighter and higher. They almost break her arms, carrying her away. Letting her throw herself around like a small and useless animal, panicked in their grasp.
She keeps screaming, first for her mother, and then for nothing. Just screaming. Sobbing so hard she's almost sick from it. Indifferent to it all, the soldiers drag her through the councilroom doors, into the elevator.
When the brass gates on the elevator rattle shut, her heart finally breaks.
She rounds on one soldier. She doesn't really have a plan, is driven now only by the hot reflex of hatred. Her teeth catch on the meat of his forearm. She bites so hard a slippery, hot spurt of blood floods her mouth. A scream. A hand in her hair again.
They throw her against the elevator wall and her head smacks the paneling and the world splits and doubles, identical images slightly out of sync. One soldier catches her by the throat before she can fall. When she gags, he leers. Her feet slip and kick on the marble flooring.
The elevator clanks to life.
She gags. Blood and spit. The soldier holds tight, tighter, tighter still. Her heart slams out a desperate rhythm, but there's nowhere to go, nothing to fight. Her legs go numb.
She blacks out before the elevator reaches the ground floor.