Chapter Text
Seeing how Vi’s been living breaks Caitlyn’s heart.
Not necessarily the size of the room, or how solid the bed is when she sits down on it.
Instead, it’s the bottles - the countless bottles, all empty - the broken mirror and the dark, murky blood staining the already stained floorboards.
Some of the blood stains aren’t uniform either, having little spots where something must have fallen in them. A droplet, of some kind.
Tears, most likely.
It breaks Caitlyn’s heart.
Vi doesn’t need her tears to join those that were once on the floor though, nor does she think that would go over particularly well. So instead, she just sits there on the edge of the bed, back ramrod straight.
They lost Jinx shortly after….it all happened. To be frank, Caitlyn still couldn’t care less, but something’s obviously changed between Vi and her not-dead sister. Thankfully, though, - and how morbid is that thought - Vi was in enough pain to not immediately rush after Jinx right away. Not that she could, considering the only reason they made it here was because she put all her weight on Caitlyn.
She weighs less than she did last time they did this. She’s still muscular (obviously) but she’s clearly not been taking care of herself. Which, again, Caitlyn would say something, but she suspects that it wouldn’t be appreciated.
She’s stitched her up though, as best she can with what she had to work with. Which isn’t much, but it should hold, until they get back to Piltover. Or find Jinx, and Caitlyn loses Vi all over again.
Which was my own bloody fault , she muses
“So….you caved pretty fucking fast, Cait.”
“I…. what ?”
“You heard me,” Vi retorts, and okay, they’re going to do this now. “You couldn’t betray Ambessa fast enough. That a thing with you now?”
“You….”
Caitlyn’s about to start into a rant, defend herself. Tell Vi about how, after the waves of grief and anger and hatred wore off, she had realized pretty damn quickly that Ambessa was not who she thought she was. That there were things to learn from her, sure - she took down Vi pretty quickly, she thinks rather smugly - but her methods never sat right with Caitlyn.
But….she knew that months ago. And still, she stayed.
All it took was seeing Vi again to flip, and….really, that makes too much sense, doesn’t it?
Vi takes her silence as an excuse to keep talking though, and frankly, now that she’s here with her, Caitlyn just wants to hear her voice. “Do I have to watch my back? Planning to hit me in the back of the head this time, instead of the gut?”
“That’s uncalled for.”
“Is it?” Vi continues, wincing a bit as she leans forward with her forearms on her knees. “Trust isn’t given, Cait. And you lost it the second you threw in with that fucking warmonger.”
Caitlyn wants to defend herself, she does. She wants to tell Vi, to plead with Vi, to understand why she did it. What she was feeling, how this was the only way to stop that roiling, persistent wave of pure and utter hatred. That she wouldn’t have survived if she did anything else but work with Ambessa.
But…Vi’s felt this way too. Vi’s lost her parents (and she just lost her father again ) and she never did what Caitlyn did.
“I know.”
It clearly surprises Vi, the lack of fight. Caitlyn sees that strong, bandaged hand start to reach out, twitch, stop itself, and fall back to Vi’s knee. She sees it .
“I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t forgive myself. But…just please, know that I won’t be going back to her. And if you don’t trust me….trust Ambessa.”
Caitlyn made her bed ( again ) the second that she betrayed the elder Medarda. There’s no going back for her, no defence that she can conjure up that will make Ambessa trust her again. Ambessa’s too smart for that.
And Vi seems to agree, given the breath she lets out.
“Yeah…yeah okay,” Vi sighs as she leans back, wincing again. Caitlyn assumes that it’s from her stomach, but a quick glance up lets her know that Vi must have rested back against one of the many many many empty bottles that litter her room.
“You’ve been busy,” Caitlyn mutters, and Vi just scoffs, tossing the bottle out of view.
“Yeah, well some of us have better ways of coping than becoming fascists.”
“And it wasn’t your only way of coping, I take it,” Caitlyn chooses to ignore that statement, her eyes flitting over to the many many many bloody wrappings in the corner of the room.
Vi just shrugs though, even if Caitlyn swears that her cheeks are a little pink. “Only thing I’m good at….and I needed to make money.”
“Money to drink yourself deeper into the gutter.”
“Oh excuse me, Commander Kiramman,” Vi bites back - and it’s vicious enough that it is a bite - waving a hand in the air in a way that Caitlyn assumes must be a mock bow, given her stomach won’t allow the motion proper. “And what were you up to topside, huh? Obviously something far more refined than this.”
And at that, Caitlyn can’t help but blush.
And feel another wave of shame when she realizes she hasn’t thought about Maddie, not once. Certainly not since Vi came back into her life.
Vi must catch something in her face, something that she can latch onto, considering she doesn’t let up, not for a second. “Who’s the lucky girl, Cupcake?”
“I…. what?”
“Some of us drink. Others fuck,” she shrugs, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Which, Caitlyn supposes it is, but she'd rather not talk to Vi about her sex life.
And that’s all it was, really. Sex life, not love life.
“It was Maddie, yeah?”
“I….how did you?” Caitlyn stammers, eyes immediately going to Vi’s face. And what she sees there, it’s…..it’s difficult to parse through.
There’s anger, sure, that’s expected. But there’s also sadness and jealousy and….and longing, Caitlyn almost thinks. But she can’t hope for that, not after everything that’s happened.
Vi clearly has something to work out though, and Caitlyn can’t bring herself to stop her. “Needed someone to fuck the feelings away? Even back then, she was fucking devoted to you. Probably couldn’t wait to get between your legs. Unless…yeah, you were the one fucking her, weren’t you?”
“Says the woman that spit in my face,” Caitlyn mutters. She can’t stay silent forever under Vi’s barrage, and even if it’s not a defence, it’s still something to grasp on to.
“Didn’t know that was a kink of yours, Cupcake,” Vi goes for that nickname again . It’s a grounding point for them, Caitlyn thinks. Something they can both hold onto. It means something special, something from back when they were….when they were better. Relatively speaking.
“I…you’re right,” she sighs, before immediately gasping and backtracking. “Not about that! About using Maddie. I….I needed something, and she was there. She doesn’t deserve that. You don’t get to be jealous, however.”
“Oh, I’m not jealous,” Vi counters back, and even Caitlyn can tell that’s a bold-faced lie. She can read it all over Vi’s face, there being almost as much longing there as Caitlyn knows that she’s showing. “You can fuck whoever you want.”
“Whoever?”
“Umm….sure,” Vi stammers, clearly picking up on what Caitlyn’s insinuating. “Probably shouldn’t when Ambessa wants to rip that pretty head from your shoulders, but after…yeah. Fuck whoever you want.”
“Okay. I will…if they want to, anyway,” Caitlyn mutters, more to herself than anything. It’s a promise, to herself, that when all this is over, she’ll try to make amends. Maybe they’ll never be what they were, and she’d understand that, she would. But…even after all that’s happened, there’s still something there. Vi still looks at her with that same look in her eyes that she always did. It’s just buried under rage.
And Caitlyn knows that she feels the same way. The second she saw Vi again, she….she knew.
They have so much to talk about though, and it’s not going to happen right now. They’re scratching the surface, throwing barbs at each other when the hurt goes so much deeper.
“Ambessa thinks that I ‘captured your heart’.”
Oh no
“I….um what did….”
“That she used me not being there to get to you,” Vi continues on, the mood suddenly shifting. It’s not angry, just….sad. Melancholy, almost.
“I know why you couldn’t be.”
Vi’s stubborn, sure, but she’s also true to herself. It’s one of the things Caitlyn admires most about her. She cares and she loves, but she’s who she is, and she always has been. “You wouldn’t have been you if you had stayed. I’m not mad at you for that,” she shrugs, because really, that’s all that can be said.
“I know,” Vi agrees, and this time, her hand does find Caitlyn’s. “I’m still pissed at you.”
“I know,” Caitlyn agrees, and this time, she lets her hand squeeze Vi’s. “You should get some rest. And then we’ll go find Jinx.”
Vi’s head shoots up, and Caitlyn just shrugs. “I won’t kill her. I want to - fuck, I want to - but we need her against Ambessa.”
That’s progress, Caitlyn thinks. That anger is never going to go away, but she thinks she can….she can handle it better, now. With herself, with Vi….she thinks she can do this.
“Okay,” Vi agrees, giving Caitlyn one final look before she closes her eyes. Before she does though, her eyes fall to Cait’s lips, just for a second.
There’s still hope , Caitlyn tells herself as she gets up, planning to busy herself with cleaning her rifle.
There’s still so much hate there. So much anger between them, and fury and rage. There’s love too though, and sadness and longing and jealousy. But, Caitlyn thinks, they can do this, if they really put their minds to it.
There’s still hope