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Vi wasn’t sure how long she’d been lying there.
Seconds, minutes, hours? Her eyes had begun to ache, they were dry, there were no more tears she could possibly shed. She was spent. Her throat was laid bare, painful and itchy from how much she’d screamed. It had all happened so quickly, she couldn’t react, couldn’t move fast enough. Her mind kept replaying the entire sequence, whether if she’d acted differently something could’ve changed; that she could’ve saved her. But it didn’t matter now, what’s done is done, she’d learnt that lesson over and over again. This time, it might’ve actually sunk in.
She didn’t entirely care that the platform she was on was threatening to give out, part of her died when she watched Jinx fall, it only made sense for the rest of her to go with it. She felt her face burn with anguish once again. For the first time in a very long while it felt like they were sisters again, fighting side-by-side and for once winning. Or so it seemed. All those nights down in her cell mourning the loss of her sister only to find out she was alive and to have that stripped away from her again, this time without that annoyingly hopeful shred of doubt. She was tired of mourning, tired of compartmentalising the grief she so desperately needed to feel, and now, there was no reason for her to hide. She felt raw, unpolished, she didn’t need to be brave for someone anymore. It was all too much and she heaved at the flood of emotions she’d held back for years. Somehow, her eyes found a way to water once again.
She slammed her gauntlet against the ground, the vibration of the shockwave ringing around her head, and the platform she was on creaked uncomfortably. She brought her free hand to her face, swiping down hard to wipe the sweat and tears off. The battle was over, they’d won the war, but why was it always a sacrifice? Why was there no way to rewrite the integral conditions of such a practice? It was only when her hand came to rest on her chest did she dare stray from thoughts of her sister.
What had come of Caitlyn?
Vi’s body immediately stiffened, and a new vigour set ablaze in her weakened muscles. There was still work to do, more to overcome, despite how much her body longed for rest, how it felt a pull down towards where her sister’s remains lay, but she could not succumb, not now, not after all they’d fought for.
With a pulse of steam and the whir of machinery unclasping, she freed herself of her other gauntlet. They could stay there, she had no use for them anymore. She took a survey of her surroundings, resisting the urge to look down. In this tattered state, it almost felt sickly reminiscent of the tangles of pipes and the raggedy buildings of the Undercity. Curling metal and the broken pieces of Jinx’s airship made for some sort of leverage Vi could throw herself upon. She set her foot to the ground, testing whether the platform would hold her weight, and took the leap, her hands clasping desperately to the contorted remains of the Hexgate infrastructure.
A heavy sense of urgency became annoyingly persistent with each movement she made. Caitlyn was on the front lines, toe-to-toe with that warmonger, the one who knows no mercy . The tightness in her chest only mounted, her skin feeling tight with every ragged breath she took. She couldn’t handle another loss today.
She came to the gaping hole the crash had created, by some miracle or an insane amount of luck, there was a balcony of sorts; likely a maintenance area for the clock they’d rammed into. All Vi knew was it was her only exit.
The jump wasn’t too far, several feet perhaps, but she’d felt the impact rattle up her entire body. Her knees wobbled as she blindly swiped to find leverage. Everything hurt, and every inch of her was loudly reminding her that whatever she was doing, she shouldn’t. It wasn’t like this had stopped her before, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to now.
Barging herself through the doors of the balcony, she ran, faster than she’d ever ran before, through stairwells, hallways, and rooms with purposes she didn’t care to recognise. Eventually, she started passing people, enforcers, residents of the undercity, bodies. People were frantic, there was far too much yelling and so much blood. She searched the faces, split seconds before moving on to the next, some she recognised and some were lost on her, but none were who she was looking for. Each stride grew more desperate, frantic even, she needed to get down, she needed to find her.
Vi practically stumbled over her own feet when she reached the ground floor. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been running or how long it had taken, but she was there somehow. The smoke hadn’t settled yet and people from both sides of this conflict were strewn about, living and deceased. Aid had not kicked into motion yet, at least not completely. Whatever healers were around were inundated with a task none were truly equipped for. The massacre stretched on for miles, everywhere Vi looked, there was a sea of blood, chunks of what one could only assume was once a person, and the smell, oh the smell. She could’ve keeled over and thrown up from it, but the sound of a nearby enforcer calling an all too familiar name ripped her straight from the torture.
“Miss Kiramman!”
Her head snapped around like a hound catching a scent. She followed the direction the enforcer was running before her legs moved autonomously. A grief-ridden thought anchored in her mind for a second, a sick joke of sorts in the sense that at least she may have a body to mourn over with Caitlyn. That nag of exhaustion she felt seeped into her bones and she found herself crashing into the crowds, pushing herself off of people to be the first on scene, but as she broke through to what seemed like a clearing, she wished she’d never emerged at all.
It was the glint of gold that snatched her attention first. She recognised this woman, Mel, but she was not supposed to be anywhere near the fighting, let alone caring for the wounded. That alone felt wrong. As her pounding steps came closer, she focused on the form Mel had been cradling. She had a body laid across her lap and she held them like water in her hands, one was holding their waist, the other bolstered around the back of their head. Mel was choking on her breaths as if she had to think about each inhale and exhale. She was panicking.
“Vi!” Mel had turned, sensing another presence, her gaze wide, every emotion flashing across so clearly that she needn’t say any words.
“She’s-” Mel continued, swallowing hard, “I-I don’t know what to do-”
“Cait-” Vi cut herself off and collapsed to her knees, the motion sending a jolt through her entire being. Wordlessly, they swapped places with Mel quickly retreating but standing near, almost over Vi’s shoulder. Caitlyn, her sweet love, was as limp as a fallen doe, her mouth partially open with both eyes loosely shut. The red seeped out of her left eye, spilling down her face, one that Vi had studied merely hours prior, and her nose which had only recently stopped bleeding had leaked all over and into her mouth. Some of it was dry, the flecks were darker and crisp, but most of the bloody was bright and glossy: fresh. Her navy uniform, splotchy with sodden stains, was torn and frayed in places Ambessa had personally brutalised. Speaking of, the body of the latter lay motionless a ways away. Vi pieced together a bleak scene, one that had Caitlyn going face-to-face with one of the most merciless beings she’d ever had the displeasure of meeting.
“There’s so much blood,” Vi almost choked out with one hand clasped around the nauseously vibrant stain that had pooled at Caitlyn’s abdomen.
The woman, so used to violent blows and dealing damage with her hands found that quivering fingers grasped behind the back of her lover's head, cradling her as if she were made from porcelain, which in that moment, she was to Vi. How such a relentless and powerful woman seemed so small in her palms, barely clinging onto to life.
“You’ll be alright… you have to be alright,” Vi demanded. Her teeth were bared and if she clenched any more, she feared they may shatter. Each subtle rise and fall of Caitlyn’s chest was not missed by Vi’s watchful gaze. She held her, it’s all she could do. She waited and waited for any sort of change, anything to take her out of this nightmare.
Mel couldn’t bring herself to leave. Caitlyn had put herself in the firing line, she’d ripped the blade from her stomach to take her shot at Ambessa and save them both. How could she turn away? She held her fingers across her mouth, fearing that if she let them slip she may crumble. Squeezing her eyes shut, she knew she needed to help, somehow. She put on her bravest face, but the crinkle in her brow betrayed her, and she turned to go find anyone who could spare their time, anyone who could fix this. Vi would not have been caught dead leaving her lover’s side, she hated the brief moment between blinks where she wasn’t staring. As Caitlyn inhaled, her chest rising further than before, Vi held her own.
There was a pause. Vi froze. Was this it? She held her tightly, waiting for what felt like an eternity.
A cough.
One that sent a splatter of blood across Vi’s face and she automatically grimaced, her face scrunching at the unpleasant surprise. Then another cough, more forceful this time, and Vi had learnt, for once, to move her head away from right over Caitlyn’s mouth.
“Caitlyn…?” Vi blinked, tasting the iron that had splashed across her face, the body she held groaned loudly; clearly and perhaps reluctantly coming back to the land of the living.
“Vi…?” A single eye fluttered open, her other only partially, and all Vi could see was red from within,
“Gods, Caitlyn, your eye,” Vi’s own blinked, suddenly burdened with tears.
The body in her arms almost laughed, but even that seemed too much of a strain.
“Not my best look, I’ll admit it,” Caitlyn’s voice was crackly and hoarse, every word a struggle as she had to consciously form the words around the copious amounts of blood in her throat,
“Shh, save your strength,” Vi couldn’t help but flash a weak smile, her Caitlyn: always the flirt.
She held her tight as Caitlyn turned her head to spit the mixture of blood and saliva onto the ground, forcing a hard swallow once she settled again. Vi held the wound as hard as she could without contributing to her lover’s discomfort, she hated to see the wince it garnered. She wasn’t expecting to exchange more words until proper aid had arrived, but Vi couldn’t help but chuckle at Caitlyn’s next line.
“... Did we win?” She asked, meekly,
“Yes, my love, we did,” Vi let a tear fall from her face, splattering on Caitlyn’s forehead, she leaned down to kiss where it had landed,
“Good… that’s… that’s good,” Caitlyn’s gaze faltered, going momentarily blank, and Vi gave a sickly gulp, another croak, “Where is your sister?”
Vi closed her eyes, a sad smile of sorts flashed briefly before settling into a firm line. Caitlyn understood the meaning entirely, she brought a bloodied hand up to caress Vi’s face and tried to wipe some of the smears away. It was funny to Vi, that no matter how damaged and wounded she was, Caitlyn only wished to rid Vi of the small stains on her face, so she could see her clearly. Those thumbs moved with the utmost care, like if she brushed too hard it could break her.
Caitlyn’s thumb slowed and her uninjured eye squirmed with the effort to stay focused, but it was all piling up. The exhaustion and the pain, god, the pain, she couldn’t endure it any longer. Vi seemed to take notice, and she was… talking… but Caitlyn couldn’t quite make it out. This confused her. The sound of Vi’s increasingly concerned words were blurring together. She couldn’t hear, she hated how muffled everything had become, and the edges of her sight flickered, a vignette forming. She tried to come back, to shake it away. Her thoughts started to slow and that shadow caved in.
Then it all… faded away.
That state, that balancing act on the thread of fate was strange. To be so wobbly and yet so steady, an oxymoron, yet in this place, existing at the same time. There was no passage of time here, no thoughts or feelings, the closest to pure serenity she could ever have achieved if she could even register it, but something was missing. Someone, more accurately. Even in this nothingness, that pang, or hunger at times, was all that filled the void.
The sensation of coming to was not one of emotion, it was of feeling. The warmth of your bones waking up, that heat emanating into the muscles, to the skin, long before your brain had really caught up. She was neither aware of her surroundings nor herself, perhaps, she wondered, if this is how Viktor felt in his state. There was no war here, no pain, only an illusion of a vacuum.
A single finger twitched, curious to investigate their surroundings.
Silk, she could feel silk. More fingers jerked, or the movement felt like more of an effort than what was likely portrayed. Her brain finally caught up to speed, which was unfortunate as that was when the sting started. While every nerve dusted off their cobwebs, they became angrily sore, and that was without mentioning her eye. God. Her eye. It was the worst headache one could imagine, a pulsing pain that rattled within the socket, seemingly with no escape or relief. It ached, it throbbed, it overwhelmed all of her senses as they returned.
Caitlyn couldn’t swallow her groan once she’d registered it. She’d have perhaps whined and huffed for longer if the loud scraping of a chair hadn’t silenced her immediately.
“Cait- Hey, hey, it’s alright,”
With her eyes shut, it was easy to pick apart every inflexion of that call, the voice-crack on the last word, all the while with a sweetness akin to honey. She couldn’t forget that voice even if she tried. She squinted her good eye, the light that penetrated the back of her retinas was met with another pained sound. She could feel her throat bob with how hard she swallowed, her mouth was so very dry.
“Caitlyn?” Ever so demanding, she realised there was no falling back into that sweet nothingness slumber, besides, though she’d never admit it to anyone else, part of her longed to see that stupid face.
“... Is it bad?” She croaked, and the pause between them felt too long, she could sense how Vi was holding her breath, “my eye, Vi,”
There was the briefest of chuckles, and Caitlyn opened her eye further and the world came more into focus. She was in her bedroom, hooked up to a multitude of different machines and such she didn’t fully recognise, she remembered delivering Vi here in a similar condition. When she turned to face the source of the voice, Vi looked as if she hadn’t slept in days, somehow sitting wherever they were now seemed to have rendered her worse than an all-out war. She looked so tired and though the relief was written on her face, there was a quieter more solemn emotion teetering at the edges.
“I’d say I’ve done a good job on fixing you up,” Vi grinned, though that twinkle of sadness at the corners of her eyes did not go missed, “bandages and gauze, we go way back,”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Caitlyn hummed. She brought a shivering hand to her side, her fingers splayed when they fondled and prodded where she’d been stabbed by Ambessa, “how long was I gone?”
“Too long,” Vi sighed, she brought a calloused hand to her lover’s cheek, she was so tender and gentle in a way that made it clear to Caitlyn she was likely in quite the state, “for a moment there, I thought I’d lost you,”
“Pfft,” Caitlyn almost laughed, but it threatened a coughing fit that she was not ready to fight, “as if I’d let that happen.”
Vi squinted.
“Mel filled me in,” Vi pulled the chair that she’d discarded over to sit on, “... I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
The weight of it hung between them. Caitlyn hadn’t had a moment to truly consider it. A public execution. Despite the fear coursing through her veins or the unrelenting burn in her eyes from the gas, all she could think about was her. That this was what Vi could’ve been left with. That was how she could’ve found her.
“I thought that was it,” Caitlyn sighed, Vi returned her hand to its spot on her cheek, though she bristled at the words, that much was clear from how rigid her palm went, “if Mel hadn’t been there… I…”
Vi closed her eyes at the thought. She couldn’t bear it.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” Caitlyn started. remembering what Vi had insinuated when she first found her, she hated the flash of anguish Vi only allowed to show for a second,
“She saved me, Cait,” Vi turned away, opting to stare at the walls of Caitlyn’s bedroom, “She knew she was going to die.”
There were no words she could say to alleviate this pain, Caitlyn knew that. Instead, she sucked in a breath and moved a hand to cup around the one on her cheek. She leaned into the gesture, inhaling through her nose, and closing her eyes.
“It’s not your fault,” was all Caitlyn could muster, catching her gaze again. She needed Vi to know, to stop this constant blaming of herself. It wasn’t fair, not after all they’d been through. Vi stared at her for a while, reading her lover’s expression and seeing no doubt or dishonesty, she almost smiled.
“... I know,” she said so quietly it was barely above a whisper.
They stayed like that for a while, taking each other in. Their bruises will fade and their physical wounds will heal, but in that moment where they stared through one another, they saw the unsettled dust of injuries that needed more than just time.
Caitlyn broke first, she brought her free hand shakily up to her face, she needed to know. Her fingers ghosted her skin, prolonging their inevitable arrival at the mass amounts of bandaging around her eye and head. She’d been so caught up in the moment, the severity of the wound hadn’t set in yet.
“You didn’t answer my question earlier… well, not properly,” she brushed the pads of her fingers across the bandage, Vi stilled her by clasping her hand and interlacing their fingers, bringing it down, she sighed,
“You took one hell of a hit,” Vi averted her gaze, blowing some air out of her mouth as she searched for the right words to say. She caught her gaze again, and Caitlyn noticed the crease on her forehead, “The damage was too much,”
Caitlyn closed her eye and her brow furrowed, she couldn’t hide her disappointment. Her lips pressed into a firm line and she moved her head deeper into the pillow behind her head. Sacrifice, it was exactly as Ambessa had said. A bitter humour lingered in her mind for a moment, but it quickly boiled into anger.
“On the bright side,” Vi tried, and Caitlyn turned to look at her, the boiling immediately lowered to barely a simmer, “I’ve always had a thing for a lady with an eyepatch,”
“No, you have not,” Caitlyn laughed weakly, she released her hand to give a playful slap to Vi’s abdomen, “but you’re sweet,”
“Okay, I’ll start to have a thing for it,” Vi lurched slightly, seeming to go in for a kiss, but she stopped and her face opened, letting Caitlyn read the confliction across her gaze,
“Well, don’t stop now,” she grinned, reaching to tug the collar of Vi’s shirt and connecting their lips. It was chaste, Vi clearly was too nervous with her girlfriend’s condition, but as Caitlyn pressed herself further, the former relaxed into it.
They broke apart, both the image of slightly flushed cheeks and smiling, unabashedly. That day at the Hexgate was not their final chapter, that wasn’t where the story ended and they were both keenly aware of that fact. Despite how close it got, they were together now, and all the turmoil and tumultuous events leading up to that day seemed like distant memories.
Now they could heal, both of them, together, and by god did they need it.