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01.
The problem is: even after seven years with bloody knuckles and a rocket between you, you still know her like the back of your hand. Seven years, and you’re a kid again, watching her take on guys twice her age and size for a backpack full of junk.
But she doesn’t fight like she did back then. She keeps dropping her guard. Even drunk, she wouldn’t lose a fight like this. He’s left heavy, but Vi keeps leaning into it. Chasing each kiss of the fist, blood steady down her nose, the gash on her lip. So used to protecting other people that when it’s only herself left to protect, it’s like she doesn’t even try.
No Caitlyn, either, so. That’s something.
Probably even explains it. You figure you should probably feel happier for having ruined something in her life, but you don’t, because you just got something back. You want to share it with her, like it’ll fix things, like Vander-turned-wolf can mend a seven year gash.
Vi drops, and the crowd roars, but they don’t disperse as fast as you want, and you kind of are on a time table, here. With a flick you lift Zapper and fire a few shots at the ceiling, just enough to make people panic and fan out. Vi stays on the sand, content to lay in a puddle of herself, neck and back all exposed in a way that almost makes you squirm.
You know that look. After all, that was you, trapped beneath her hand. The waiting. Just one more blow. You drop down into the arena. Her eyes, glazed over, skirt across yours. Maybe self destruction runs in the family.
“Up and at ‘em, sis,” you say, tucking Zapper away and squatting down by her head. She reeks of iron and misery.
“What if I wan’na stay on the floor,” she says. Her words are catching, slurred, her teeth slick-red. She doesn’t look scary like this. Doesn’t even look unhappy to see you, specifically. Just unhappy in general, and exhausted, and sad like the shitty floor of this shitty fight club is better than whatever’s waiting for her at home.
Seven years. Bloody knuckles, one dead-undead dad, and a rocket. Vander’s still her dad, though, and she’s your— your something, alright. The shadow that greets you when you ask yourself where things went wrong. A record, spinning in the Last Drop, eulogy to the dead. Dead-undead, because the three of you just can’t seem to die right, despite your efforts.
“Tough shit,” you say, pulling her arm over your shoulder, and she spits blood down her chin in the shape of a fuck you.
02.
She’s out for three hours. You get bored about one and a half in.
Face-down on the mat she calls a bed, surrounded by a vigil of empty bottles and a bucket of coal-black axle grease. It’s not much of a place. She’s scratched the days into the wall over her head, because a cell’s a cell, no matter the shape, you guess.
It does make you pause, though, turning to look down at her, the pile of her muscle and bones curled at your feet.
She has a lot of scars. In general, sure, and she always did, but there’s impossibly more, now. All down her back, over her arms, a defensive curl. Fights she couldn’t have won. You trace them with your finger and she doesn’t even twitch; circles like the blunt edge of a cane, knuckled shapes like a fist, shallow swipes of makeshift knives.
You think about the Warden at Stillwater— what was left of him, anyway, after Vander— and the splintered halves of his cane, and you wonder. Seven years is a long time, and you hadn’t thought about it much because you lost yourself somewhere in there, but maybe Vi did, too. Maybe she’s as changed as you are by a thousand unkind touches in a small, sunless box. Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that she’d stuck to her blue-bellied girlfriend as hard as she had.
Why wouldn’t she cave to the first gentle touch? Why wouldn’t she take an inch and cling to it like a mile? Because you had Silco, which you’re starting to think may not have been a fantastic first choice for replacement-dad, but it was someone, and you have Isha now, sure, but what did Vi have? One dead dad, two dead brothers, and four stone walls. And then a pretty face came, told her some nice things, hugged her on a bridge, and— what then, you wonder. What then, for Vi to find herself in the empty bottoms of pits and bottles.
You reach out, tracing her cheek. VI. Vi. A part of herself that they couldn’t take away. Maybe she broke the mirror to lose that reminder, too. You’ve been there. You’d know.
Seven years, you think, sinking down against the tallied days of three long months against your back. She can sleep a little longer. She looks like she needs it.
03.
“Lookin’ good, sis,” you say, and, okay, maybe you should have seen this one coming.
04.
“You don’t actually need my help,” Vi says. “You haven’t for a long time.”
Which is funny, you think, curling a hand around the back of Isha’s head, because you don’t think you ever stopped.
“He’s your father, too,” you say lamely, and you wonder when the dad-shaped hole in your life became less Silco-shaped and more Vander-shaped.
Vi doesn’t respond to that, which is probably for the best, because you didn’t have anything else that might get her to stay.
05.
You watch her fight Vander and you think, she could have killed you. You realize suddenly just how much she was pulling her punches. She fights Vander like it’s seven years ago on the catwalk, fighting off an entire gang for family, because that’s Vi, your sister, who will always protect you even when she hates you. Even when you hate her. Even when— and it startles you to realize this, firebolts of clarity— you might love each other, still.
The smoke settles, thick like smog and you flick open your lighter and you don’t know what you’ll do if Vi is dead. If Vi died and you killed her, because you asked her to trust you and she listened.
You haven’t let yourself be hopeful in seven years. You don’t want to jinx it.
But still—
Still. That’s how you find them, close enough that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
“What are you waiting for?” Vi asks, holding out a glove that months ago held you pinned to the altar. Hurt and love and grief and hope, all tangled up. “He’s your dad, too.”
He’s your dad, too, because you’re still sisters, despite everything, or maybe in spite of it.
Your sister, pulling her punches, staring down Pow-Pow’s barrel, down Caitlyn’s barrel, for Isha, for you. Your sister, stepping between you and the bullet. Your sister shoving you and Isha out of Vander’s warpath. Your sister, trusting you, even though she had no reason to and every reason not to. Your sister, who always, always comes through.
You’re different, both of you, but if Vander’s changed and still found ways to love you, then maybe— maybe love can change, too.
06.
“What do you think?” she asks, head slanting only slightly in your direction, listening without looking. She wants your opinion? Is it respect? Regret? Guilt? You can’t figure it out, don’t have time to.
“You… actually want my opinion?” you ask, because you have to, because that fluttery, useless muscle in your chest won’t just settle down.
She doesn’t say anything, but her shoulders shift, and you know that move, remember seeing it whenever she was gearing up to argue with Vander. Saw it last when she pushed herself between you and Isha and her girlfriend’s gun. You know her. You remember.
And it’s funny, and it’s cruel, how you’ve spent all this time hating her but you still want to make her proud.
“I hate fortune cookies,” is what you say, and Vi huffs but the corner of her lip twitches upwards like she can read concession within the words, like she knows you. Like she remembers, too.
And maybe she does. Would that be so bad?
07.
Vi tackles you to the ground, her back to the blast, brilliantly blue, and Isha—
Isha is—
I’m sorry, you scream, because you get it now. You see her more clearly now than you ever have. You understand how hard Vi must have tried to keep you safe when all you did was make it harder. How much it hurts to watch a father— a little sister— how much it hurts—
You claw at Vi’s back, desperate to get her off, the blast burned into your retina. You can’t see around her. She’s big and broad and stronger than you, always stronger, even as she wanes.
“Don’t look,” she says into your hair, voice wet with something like blood, and you squeeze your eyes shut automatically. You don’t know what else to do. You can taste the burned ozone when you open your mouth, the words like glass, fiber-sharp.
“Isha,” you say, “she’s—”
“She’s gone,” Vi says, and there’s a breathy rasp to her voice that means she’s more injured than she’s letting on. Her blood is hot against your back. “She’s gone. We have to go.”
“I can’t leave her there.” Can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t—
Vi grabs your shoulders and turns you, jostles your eyes open so you can meet her gaze. Powder blue, just like mom.
“She’s gone,” she says, and— oh.
And you’d known that, because you know Hextech, know the gems, know how bad it gets when shoved together like this, because—
because wasn’t this you? A monkey bomb full of little blue crystals, and you’d only wanted to help, only wanted to keep Vi safe—
because you’re a kid again and Vi is looking at you, desperation edging on panic, saying you’re all I have left.
You fall into her arms with a sob, and she’s the only thing keeping you up, and the only thing keeping her up in Caitlyn. You catch her eye over Vi’s shoulder, and she doesn’t even look resentful. Just soot-stained and lost. You killed her mom, and you saved her life, and she saved your dad— for all it matters, now, how brief his freedom was— after hunting you for months.
So where does that leave you? Where does the hurt go, the blame, the mourning, the love, all chewed up and rotten, a dead dog on its last leg.
“We can’t stay here,” she says, talking to Vi but looking at you.
“Give her a minute,” Vi rasps, but she’s sagging, curling over her stomach, shaking with exertion in your arms. Three months of fighting and seven years in a box. Everything has a breaking point. Maybe even her. Caitlyn’s expression gentles.
“You’re hurt,” she says, softer, an again hidden somewhere in there, rife with meaning. “You need medical attention. I can—”
“Your mom got a funeral,” Vi bites out, dulled teeth, words settling uneasily over the three of you like a blanket of ash. Seven years, and so much can change, and also nothing at all, because it’s always your sister between you and the line of fire, and you’d tried to be that for Isha and where did that get her but dead.
“Your mom got a funeral.” Vi repeats, quieter, apologetic but no less stern. “Give her a minute. And then we’ll go. Not gonna bleed out in that time.”
Caitlyn expression falters and she looks at you again, and you wonder what she sees, because everything is underwater and far away and gone in the crater where your heart lies carbonized. It’s a game and you’re all losing; mothers, fathers, sisters.
“Alright,” she concedes, and it’s not forgiveness, but she’s not shooting you, as much as you kind of wish she would. Take the choice out of your hands.
Two dead dads, two dead brothers, one dead sister, and seven years a Jinx.
You’re all I have left. You’re all I have left.
“Vi,” you choke out. “Vi, I—”
“I know,” she says, and she does. She knows. She knows. You love her so much it feels like it’s going to claw its way out of your chest. Her hand pets down the back of your head, blunt nails, and you are five-seven-eleven, and she is yours. That’s all you have left.