Chapter Text
It’s straight out of a memory.
Darkened skies, whipping winds, a hurricane of white as far as the eye could see. If he still has hands and legs, he can’t feel them. Heaviness hangs over him, rendering his limbs pointless and his head immobile. Wet stains his face, clinging to an overgrown beard, long since unkempt. Heavy hazel eyes weakly flicker open while traces of buried trauma hit him like an airship.
His mother is dying.
She’s nowhere in sight, but he knows that she fell somewhere. He knows that she shelters him from the storm, protects him from the worst of it, until she collapses herself. She later ends up with prosthetic fingers thanks to the frostbite. Two are missing in total, one gold and the other black. It matches their family regalia once they find a new life for themselves in Piltover.
Piltover.
It comes back to him in feverish blurs. He needs to get back there. To. . Do what, exactly? Help who? Save someone? He struggles to think, to remember, as the whirlwind gains in strength. There’s a battle between brimstone and permafrost on every inch of his body with neither winning nor losing. Both are also refusing to concede. Deliriously, he swears he sees something in the distance. Something that is getting closer and closer to him. An unspoken call for help dies on his lips, cracked and interrupted by chattering teeth.
Nonetheless, a paling hand reaches towards the something that is closing the distance between them.
“Vik. .”
His strength doesn’t last. It fades, alarming fast, until both hand and arm collapse back into the snow. There’s an exhale, painful and long, as hazel eyes begin to slide shut. Slowly, a head leans towards the ground and he’s slipping, slipping, slipping— Into the warm, comfortable darkness that calls to him like a siren's song.
“. . tor.”
Then, there's nothing.
“The Freljord? Are you certain?”
“Yes, my lady.”
Eliana reminded her so much of Elora. And, by “so much”, Mel Merdarda meant not in the slightest. The woman, for one, was younger. She was bright-eyed and naive, not exactly corrupted by the nature of Runeterra. Yet. She was someone to be kept at a distance, occasionally trusted with secrets, though not to the point she could become a target of The Black Rose. Or any other enemy of the Merdarda family, for that matter.
Elora was much more than just an assistant.
She was a friend too.
Losing her had been devastating. Kino. Her mother. Countless lives in Piltover from members of the Council to the very people that walked its streets. Somewhere along the lines, she started to count Jayce and Viktor among the deceased. It was a mystery what happened to either, but the odds were not in their favor. Hextech and a city left in shambles, Mel found the fire faded in her eyes by the time she returned home.
“Home”.
A tricky word, that.
Once upon a time, Piltover might have been her “home”. Disgraced or not, Mel had made quite a name for herself. She had wealth, she had a modicum of power, she had a claim over what was supposed to be the most revolutionary technology of her time. All of it was an illusion. One that, ironically, was shattered by an illusionist herself. It was funny like that though Mel certainly wasn’t laughing.
Her fire may have been gone, but she’d sworn to do all in her power to protect Eliana’s.
“Where?”
“Along the border. Eyewitnesses swear it’s him. The details match. They say that he’s alive though unwell—”
“Thank you, Eliana.”
Some secrets were deemed safe to share with Eliana. Magic was safeguarded close to her heart with only a select few in Piltover knowing the truth. It felt right to leave the city after that. Maybe it was the best decision, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was running away, maybe it was a tactical retreat. Mel hadn’t decided if she regretted it quite yet. Maybe she never would. As for sharing this with Eliana though?
She may never bring herself to regret that.
“Send for a messenger to Caitlyn Kiramman of Piltover. We will make preparations to depart immediately."
They were on the couch, together, when the news arrived.
“. . Understand that they still have their frustrations with us, but I wish they wouldn’t have to block every idea we have!” Hair down, jacket removed, eye patch absent. Caitlyn Kiramman coveted the warmth of the only woman she trusted with it. Vi cuddled against her side, arm thrown around her shoulder, as she continued to unload every grievance that came with her title. “I mean, really, who just. . Denies help like that?!”
“What? Didn’t you know that us Trenchers have too much pride for Piltie handouts?"
“Vi!” A smirk was accompanied by a playful nudge. “Can’t you at least pretend to be sympathetic?”
“Sorry, cupcake. No can do. You know how expensive sympathy is nowadays?”
“How ‘expensive’ is it?”
“Expensive enough, but don’t worry. I can think of a few ways you might be able to pay for it, Councillor.” Warm breath was suddenly on her face as a finger lightly caressed her cheek. Vi’s voice was low, veering into the territory of dangerous. “Maybe you can start with putting that sexy little eye patch back on for me.”
“Vi. .” For a moment, Caitlyn is breathless. “My father is in the next room.”
“Even better.”
“Don’t do this to me, Vi.” Her plea is little more than a whisper. “Later. I promise.”
“Yeah? You better keep that promise.” Vi’s words tickled her ear. “Us fissurefolk take those seriously, you know.”
“Zaunites.” Caitlyn, with what little restraint she has, pulls away some. As much as she’d love to just let loose her frustrations, this was still her mother’s furniture and an estate she shared with her father. Her mother might have been gone for years now, but her presence remained as strong as ever. And Caitlyn only prayed that wherever she was, she hadn’t seen what the two of them had been up to in almost every square inch of the estate she’d left behind. “You’re referring to the proud people of Zaun, Vi.”
That was enough to kill their moment of intimacy.
There were rules, boundaries, that they established after becoming official. First and foremost was no talk of Jinx. Or, rather, Caitlyn was banned from bringing her up first. There were exceptions, of course, though Vi didn’t necessarily need to know the point of every discussion brought to the Council. Jinxers (and the proud people of Zaun themselves) grew in numbers even after her death. She was like a martyr to them and any hatred Caitlyn held toward her paled in comparison towards achieving peace with the newly formed nation.
It also paled in comparison to her relationship with Vi.
For what it was worth, Caitlyn wanted Vi to carry the Kiramman name someday. If she’d have it. So, at the end of the day, venting about Jinx was reserved for her father behind closed doors or the gravestones of her mother and Jayce when she was there alone. Part of her would probably always hate Jinx, just as a part of her would probably always hate herself. The two of them were more alike in ways than she'd ever care to ever admit, with innocent blood on both of their hands, but at least Caitlyn stuck around to atone for her sins. And, as much as she blamed Jinx for her mother’s death, she would never forgive her for leaving Vi behind. For hurting her. For leaving her, day in and day out, wondering the rhetoricals and the What-Ifs.
Their second rule, though, was much lighter— Leaving work out of the bedroom.
Luckily, though, this wasn’t the bedroom.
“. . That’s your problem, you know.”
“What is?”
“Us. Them. Zaunites.” Vi pulled away some, too, though kept an arm around Caitlyn’s shoulder. A hand, meanwhile, lightly patted her arm. “You’re still seeing them— Us as something different than you. Sure, we’ve got our ways, but we’re still just people. And what’s with this ‘us’ anyway? Since when did you of all people think that stupid bureaucracy was the way to fixing things? What happened to ‘I’?”
“Vi. .” A smile swept across Caitlyn’s face. “I love you.”
“I love me too.” A chuckle was accompanied by another nudge. This time, though, Caitlyn leaned in to leave a chaste peck on her girlfriend’s cheek. “Seriously, Cait. You get way too lost in your own head sometimes.”
“Yeah. I know. I just. . I don’t want her to be disappointed in me.”
“Me neither.” They were talking about different hers, but the sentiment was all but the same. “We’ll get there. Promise. And us Zaunites take those seriously.”
Had Caitlyn mentioned how much she loved Vi yet?
By Janna, it’s selfish, but Caitlyn can’t stop thinking about how good Vi would look with a shimmering band wrapped around her finger. Vi would most definitely make fun of her and her pompous Piltie tradition, considering that the two of them were practically married in everything other than name. Vi was the last person that she saw at night and the first that greeted her in the morning. It was Vi’s hand she held every night, squeezed after every nightmare, and that would look magnificent adorned with the Kiramman family crest.
Violet Kiramman.
“Caitlyn?”
Footsteps derailed her train of thought as her father came into view. Caitlyn silently thanked every last deity and spirit out there that she stopped Vi before either of them had gone too far. It wouldn’t have been the first time that the two were caught (or nearly caught) getting. . Intimate. Caitlyn did her best to be mindful though quickly found that Vi couldn’t care less. In some cases, she even welcomed it.
It was something about the danger of getting caught which always left Caitlyn’s face red as a tomato.
That, and she also found it hilarious.
“Yes, father?”
“There’s someone at the door calling for you.”
“A messenger? After hours? If it’s from the Council, they can wait—”
“It’s from Mel Merdarda of Noxus.” The name ‘Merdarda’ was already setting off alarm bells in Caitlyn’s head though for different reasons. Already, she was in the process of sitting upright, alert. “The messenger says it’s urgent.”
“Urgent enough to come calling at this hour?”
“It’s about Jayce.”
Caitlyn freezes.
Her insides turn to slosh while bits of ember kindle her veins. Caitlyn likes to think she holds no ill will towards Mel Merdarda. The woman stayed behind to protect Piltover, unleashing brand new magic that saved her life more than once, before she disappeared off to another continent. Mel Merdarda was just as Piltovian as the rest of them though there was denial of her questionable part in what was once Hextech.
Vi— Janna help her, Caitlyn loves her so much— Is the one to snap back.
“What the hell does she have to say about Jayce that hasn’t already been said?”
Neither of them, though, are braced for the response follows:
“That she's found him.”