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Mel’s consciousness drifts sluggishly back into her body, flitting in and out as if she's waking from an ill-timed nap. Her limbs are heavy and her thoughts disjointed, but the metallic musk of war, a cocktail of sweat and smoke and iron, pierces through the fog of her mind.
When she opens her eyes, she remembers that the weight in her limbs isn't her weight at all, but the limp figure of her mother in her arms. Ambessa’s last words to her echo in her ears before any other sound filters in.
You are the wolf.
Those words, mingled with the smell of blood, make her nauseous.
When the ringing in her ears clears, the next sound that comes through is breath, quick and labored, behind her.
Caitlyn clutches her side, making a valiant effort to stem her bleeding, but she's ashen and trembling and can't maintain pressure on the wound. She winces every time she opens her right eye, shuts it again as the other weeps red.
Mel lays her mother on the ground, grief and anger like a stone in her chest, one weight replacing another. How many more of her children, surrogate or flesh, would she have butchered as a means to her ends?
Mel tries not to feel part butcher herself as her mother lies prone at her feet. The best she can do is try to mend what she can.
Her mother's soldiers…her soldiers, she reminds herself, are still picking themselves up from the ground.
“Anyone who can walk-” she calls, commanding. Caitlyn stubbornly lifts a shoulder off the ground in response and Mel, using the magic that still feels foreign in her fingertips, gently pushes her back down. “Report to medical for instructions. They'll need help seeing to the wounded. If you find anyone on your way who needs help and can be moved safely, take them with you.”
Most heed her words, moving en masse, but a handful of the soldiers move towards her mother.
“Leave the dead,” she shakes her head. They falter, but they heed her words.
“You,” she points to an enforcer helplessly frozen in place. “Follow them, come back here with a stretcher.”
He nods and dashes off, shaken.
“I can walk,” Caitlyn protests as Mel kneels next to her and replaces the gentle hold of her magic with a hand on her shoulder.
“I have no doubt that you can,” she lies, moving Cait’s hand aside to put pressure on the wound with her steadier ones. Caitlyn blanches. “But it's better to be cautious.”
“I have to find Vi-” she maintains, true distress creeping into her voice.
“We’ll find her,” she assures her, not because she can promise anything of the sort, but because Caitlyn will deteriorate faster than she’s already doing if she panics. She seems to know she's being placated but doesn't have the energy to fight Mel.
When they carry Caitlyn away, Mel stares at her hand, now scarlet and slippery. A drop lands on the white of her cloak, and she can't shake the idea that it looks like snow stained with blood. The way her mother wrapped her mouth around the word wolf as she took her last breaths repeats in her mind. Mother meant it as a compliment, and that's precisely why it makes Mel feel sick.
She wipes her hand as clean as she can on the crimson of her mother's cloak.
Mel busies herself with rescuing the trapped, the wounded, the lost. As if any amount of help she can give will let her outrun who she is. She supported the tech that brought her mother here in the first place, drew her and her armies in with their hunger for power. She thought it revolutionary at the time, something to be used for good, but it hardly matters now. Her mistakes helped devour this place.
When night falls, Mel finds herself at Caitlyn's side again, along with Vi. Mel didn't need to send search parties to find her. The moment Ekko got her back on solid ground, Piltover would have been hard-pressed to ignore her, tearing through the scarred streets, calling Caitlyn's name, a plaintive howl that Mel won't soon forget. It took all of Mel’s newfound skill to restrain Vi long enough to remind her that she couldn't barrel into an operating room, no matter how badly she wanted to see her.
She's asleep now in a chair next to Caitlyn's bed, slumped forward with her arms crossed on the mattress at Cait’s feet.
The medics that come in every few hours think she’s keeping watch over them, but Mel knows that Caitlyn and Vi don't really need her. It's more that she doesn't know where else to go. She's alone; her lover lost to a plane she can't access, her brother hunted for a power she didn't know she possessed, her mother dead at her own hands. These are the only names she knows that still breathe and have hope of understanding her wounds.
Vi’s not-so-soft snores are a welcome distraction from her mother's words that have echoed in her ears all day. Mel startles when a quiet laugh joins the snores.
“You found her.”
Caitlyn's eye that isn't bandaged is still closed. Mel quirks a smile.
“As promised. How could you tell?”
Vi punctuates the question with a particularly loud snort, and Caitlyn laughs weakly, wincing through it.
“How did you know I was here?” Mel asks when their laughter stills. This is the first time Caitlyn has awoken since she came out of surgery.
“She wouldn't be asleep if she didn't think someone else was watching me,” she sighs. “You were a lucky guess.”
They slip into silence for a moment before Caitlyn disturbs it again, voice still raspy with anesthetized sleep.
“Thank you. I owe you my life.”
Mel shakes her head, the bullet she stopped from lodging in Caitlyn's neck a horror she doesn't wish to remember. She only wishes she could've avoided the other girl's death. They're both too young.
“You owe nothing. No one's life is a bargaining chip.”
Caitlyn nods in silent gratitude before she speaks again.
“Thank you for finding Vi and staying with her, too. I know neither of us is particularly interesting company right now.”
“Uninteresting company is welcome company right now,” Mel murmurs, and Cait nods in sober understanding. “Especially when I don't expect to be able to sleep for a few hours yet.”
“Why not?” she smirks knowingly, a bitterness creeping in. Mel returns her humorless laugh.
“Tonight? My mother's last words.”
“Any words from your mother are reason enough to lose sleep. What did she say to you?” she asks, quiet anger laced into the question. It only makes Mel feel guilty, this girl her mother nearly tore apart, still trying to defend Mel against her even after she's gone.
“It was supposed to be a compliment.”
“A double-edged sword coming from her.”
“Hm,” Mel murmurs in agreement. “She told me once I was a fox who should be more like a wolf. Her way of disapproving that I chose diplomacy over violence. She told me I finally was the wolf today. Given the circumstances, it was cold comfort.”
“Neither of you have ever met a wolf,” she murmurs, half-question and half-statement. Mel frowns lightly, unsure why it matters.
“No, not a real one, thankfully. Have you?”
Caitlyn nods, and Mel raises her brows.
“I was young and even more foolish than I am now if you can imagine it.”
Mel laughs quietly, and Caitlyn smirks.
“How old were you?”
She opens her good eye, blinking as it adjusts to the moonlight filtering through the window.
“I must've been thirteen?”
Mel remembers her then, a gangly teenager, as optimistic as she was naive.
“We were at my parents' lake house, and I was just learning to shoot. I wanted to keep practicing, but my parents forbade me from staying out in the woods after dark.”
“I can't imagine why,” Mel quips.
“I couldn't either, at the time,” she grins. “So, of course, I snuck out once they were asleep. I didn't realize then that it's not like Piltover out there at night. There are no street lamps. Even the torch I had with me wasn't enough to navigate with. It was darkness unlike any I had experienced.”
Mel knows the feeling, wandering in shadows so deep she can hardly breathe.
“I didn't see the wolf until she was only a few feet in front of me.”
“You're lucky,” Mel comments.
“I think I was luckier that I didn't freeze out there. The wolf certainly tried to scare me, growling, baring her teeth. But she didn't attack. She might have, had I come closer or otherwise provoked her.”
Mel doesn't comment that Caitlyn seems not to have learned much from her encounter with a dangerous predator. The bandages and the grey cast to her already pale skin are testament enough.
“How did you get away?”
“I didn't need to. Once I backed away a little and she realized I wasn't coming any closer, she left and curled back up with her pack in the brush.”
“I still think you may have gotten lucky.”
Cait scowls as best she can with half of her face bandaged.
“I was lucky, but not the way you think. I would've been worse off if I had stumbled across an elk.”
“Aren't they prey animals?”
“Yes. That's what makes them dangerous. They survive by assuming that every unknown is a threat. I was lucky that I met a wolf instead. They rarely attack humans unprovoked. The only reason she growled at all was because I was steps away from trampling on her family.”
Mel puts her head in her hands.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but my mother justified many of her atrocities by insisting she was defending her family.”
Caitlyn tries to sit up, stiffens, and thinks better of it, but she hasn't finished making her case yet. She settles for turning to face Mel as best she can, eye glinting in the dark.
“Your mother, though brilliant, seems to have been under the impression that wolves are ruthless aggressors. They can be fearsome. But they're social animals first who care much more about the well-being of their pack than wasting energy on baseless attacks. The real wolf didn't risk the lives of her pack out of anger or pride.”
Mel turns the word wolf over in her mind again, but this time, the idea of blood mixed with snow and ruthless snarling is overshadowed by that of a scared animal trying her best to preserve the lives around her with the least amount of bloodshed.
“She used diplomacy first,” Mel realizes.
“With violence as a last resort,” Caitlyn confirms. The set of her shoulders relaxes.
They let the silence blanket the room for a moment.
“I suppose I could be called worse than a wolf,” Mel concedes. Caitlyn nods once before she settles into something of a pout, or at least her sharper version of it.
“It’s certainly a higher compliment than the one I received.”
Mel tilts her head in question.
“What?”
Caitlyn snorts derisively.
“I've been told I'm more of a mongoose.”
Mel can't quiet the bark of laughter that escapes her.
“I think that's rather apt-”
Caitlyn tries to hide the smile that threatens to break through her pursed lips.
“- since I’ve always thought my mother was a bit of a snake.”
The smile comes through in earnest this time. Vi shifts at the end of the bed, their conversation finally disturbing her fitful sleep. She sits up, relief in the set of her brows as she sees Caitlyn awake. She replaces it with a disapproving scowl.
“Why didn't you wake me up?” she demands, grief disguised as annoyance.
“It's hardly been five minutes,” Cait murmurs, reaching to play with the ends of her hair. “I was just thanking Councilwoman Medarda for looking after me today. She's the reason I'm still alive tonight.”
Vi startles, whipping around. When she adjusts to Mel’s presence, she relaxes. She fights the tears that are welling in her eyes.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, her voice cracking at the end.
She sniffles and scrapes the back of her hand across her eyes. She's seconds from falling apart, and Mel wants to give her the kindness of doing it in peace, away from her prying eyes.
“I'll let the two of you rest,” she tells them, standing as Vi ducks her head to hide her tears. Mel looks at Caitlyn.
“Thank you for your company. It was a true comfort tonight.”
“Anytime,” she answers, and Mel can see in the determined set of her mouth that she means it.
Weeks later, on her way to Noxus, Mel stops along the way. She tells her guards it's a classified matter to get them off her back.
The air is clear here with a pleasant chill to it. The lake is too cold to swim in this time of year, but it's soothing to dip her feet in it while she sits on the dock and watches little wading birds preen in the shallows.
When the sky turns golden in the late afternoon, she walks into the trees. She wanders until the sun is almost below the horizon, wondering if she should turn back when she hears a rustling to her left.
She's camouflaging herself with her magic, reflecting the woods around her back at them like a mirror so she doesn't scare them. The wolf still stares at the spot she's standing in for a moment, listening intently. When she's satisfied that it's safe, she trots into the clearing a few feet ahead of Mel. A little procession of others follows her.
The first wolf lies down, relaxing in a pile of leaves, while the others unwind in their own ways. A wiry adolescent lets one of the pups chew on her ear, making a show of being startled by the pup’s tiny barks and growls.
The other pups rough house with each other, the adults intervening if they get too rowdy. Two that insist on fighting over a stick are promptly separated.
The pair that brought up the rear of the pack, making sure everyone was with them, curl up together for a nap, glad to be off duty for a moment.
When it's getting too dark to see them anymore, Mel retreats, shielding the sound of her footsteps. She doesn't want to disturb their moment of peace.
At night, when she wakes to the distant sound of howling, she smiles.