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It was one of those days.
Caitlyn took a deep breath, letting the crisp air fill her lungs and willing it to soothe the fraying strands of her composure.
The woods were silent around her, a deep stillness interrupted only by the soft crackle of falling leaves and her own breathing.
How long had it been since she’d come here for the simple pleasure of shooting?
Not since before her mother had died.
Caitlyn took another breath, this one more shuddering than the last.
Shifting her rifle so that it was cradled in one arm, she used her free hand to tug ivy from a faded wooden target. The plant stubbornly resisted before finally giving way, stripping away small splinters as it fell.
Caitlyn returned to the other end of the clearing and seated the rifle against her shoulder, pressing her cheek against the stock to line up the sights.
She exhaled, slow and controlled.
The target blurred. Her eye ached.
She pulled the trigger in one smooth motion.
And missed.
Birds exploded from the nearby trees in a cacophony of sound and movement, but she remained still until the noise faded.
Wrong. She snapped the rifle without looking, sending the spent casing flying and loading another round in its place.
Caitlyn resumed her initial position and fired off several more rounds, the motions practiced and sure. So, so wrong.
Her eye patch pressing against her cheekbone. The way her depth perception was a little off. Shooting used to be as instinctual as breathing, but now—
It felt wrong.
Caitlyn lowered the rifle, frustration coiling deep and heavy in the space between her stomach and sternum.
She sank onto a moss-covered log, resting the rifle beside her and waiting until it connected with the bark before releasing it.
Her hand went to her side, hovering over the letter inside her jacket pocket before dropping to the log. The moss was soft beneath her palm, offering little resistance when she dug her fingers into it.
She squeezed her eye shut until she saw small bursts of light behind her eyelid like ink spilling across a page.
The woods slowly came to life around her, birdsong and the occasional rustle of something darting through the undergrowth mixing with the never-ending sound of falling leaves.
Caitlyn heard Vi before she saw her. Purposeful, no doubt. Vi could move like a shadow when she wanted.
“Hey,” Vi said, her voice soft and a little raspy. “I was wondering where you ran off to.”
Caitlyn tipped up her face, loosely gripping the back of her thighs to bring her closer. “How’d you find me?”
“I just followed the sound of gunfire.” Half of her mouth pulled up when Caitlyn snorted, the movement tugging at the scar on her lip. “Haven’t seen you out here before.”
“It’s where I learned to shoot,” Caitlyn said, the words tasting like ash. She ran her thumb along Vi’s calf, tracing the seam of her pants. “A lifetime ago.”
“That long, huh? You’re looking pretty good for an old lady.”
Caitlyn smiled despite herself, leaning into Vi’s touch when she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”
“Good, ‘cause it is.” Vi glanced over her shoulder at the run-down set of targets before jutting her chin at the rifle. “Thought that fancy doctor of yours said to take it easy for a while.”
Her smile faded. It was a familiar argument—one that’d started in the hazy days following the battle after Vi had found her slumped against a wall in the hallway, half-delirious from a fever and pain medication.
She’d carefully cradled Caitlyn’s face, her expression hollow with exhaustion but her eyes alight with concern. “Take it easy, Cait. You need to rest.”
Caitlyn couldn’t take it easy though—not then, and certainly not with the world shifting so fast around them.
Not when there were still so many things she had to make right.
Vi was watching her warily, her head tilted slightly to the left like she was preparing for a fight—the constant push-pull between Vi thinking she was doing too much and Caitlyn believing she wasn’t doing enough.
“I finally met with the engineering guild this morning,” Caitlyn said instead, leaning back and crossing her legs.
Vi’s eyes lit up. “No way! How’d it go?”
“Let’s just say they were less than pleased to see the Undercity’s engineers there too,” she said, her lips twitching when Vi snorted. “But, after a lot of back and forth, they agreed to focus on improving the Undercity’s infrastructure.”
The first order of business would, of course, be rebuilding the ventilation systems. An uphill battle, but one she’d throw all her weight behind to see won.
“Shit, Cait, you’ve been trying to get those stuffy jerks onboard with this for months,” Vi said, grinning. “Ekko’s gonna flip when he hears. This is great!”
It was. When she’d sat down at her desk after the meeting to sift through the pile of correspondence, Caitlyn had felt almost hopeful. And then—
She took a shaky breath at the sudden burn in her eye, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Cait?” Vi crouched in front of her when she didn’t respond, placing her hands on her knees and peering into her face. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
Caitlyn shook her head, not trusting herself to speak when faced with so much sincere concern.
She retrieved the letter from her pocket and handed it to her, her hand dropping listlessly to her lap.
“Oh. This is…” She bit her lip, her eyes flickering toward Caitlyn before dropping back to the letter.
Vi sat beside her and rested her elbows on her knees while she read, the furrow between her brow deepening with each passing second.
Caitlyn tilted her head up to look at the gray sky through the branches above their heads. Pictured the Talis emblem and Ximena’s handwriting—familiar in an uncanny way, like catching her reflection in passing.
She crossed her t’s the same way Jayce did. Had.
He’d just been officially declared dead a second time, after all.
Jayce, who’d vanished for months and turned up—different. Hardened. Wild-eyed and a little crazed, like that brilliant mind of his was fraying along the edges.
He’d held her back after the war counsel and just looked at her, some of the tempered steel in his expression finally softening when she arched an eyebrow.
Caitlyn had let out a surprised oof when he pulled her into a tight hug, his palm coming up to cradle the back of her head.
She’d listened to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, breathing in his familiar scent, and felt all of fourteen again—sitting beneath an umbrella in the pouring rain with her heart in her throat.
At the time, she hadn’t understood why it’d made her stomach twist. She’d attributed it to the looming battle, or maybe the uncomfortable knowledge of much they’d both changed—how much he’d changed, this grim, haunted stranger who wore his grief like a mantle.
About Viktor. About we’re meant to lose this fight.
Now, she realized it’d felt like goodbye.
Vi carefully refolded the letter and returned it, her eyes brimming with some dense, weary emotion as Caitlyn took longer than necessary to tuck it into her pocket.
“I thought he would come back. The way he did before,” Caitlyn admitted quietly, the words doing nothing to calm the violent, howling tangle of misery lodged deep in her rib cage. She gave a weak laugh, the sound devoid of humor. “I know it’s silly, but—”
“It’s not. I thought the same thing about—" Vi swallowed roughly and looked away, a muscle in her jaw jumping. “You never stop hoping. Not really.”
And who would understand all of this better than Vi—how it felt to keep grieving someone?
Caitlyn grasped her hand, their fingers curling together, and some of the tension eased from her shoulders.
“No, but…I came out here hoping it would help,” Caitlyn said, gently tracing the scarred contours of Vi’s knuckles. “This used to be something that was—mine. And now it’s gone, like so many other things.”
Another bitter truth spoken aloud—the dull edge of a knife pushing into bruised skin until it drew blood. The raw, festering wound of her grief.
Caitlyn hadn’t tried pressing along the edges of this hurt yet, scared of what she’d find. Even now, even with the letter a burning weight against her side, she didn’t dare touch it.
She’d indulged in her grief for too long in all the wrong ways. She no longer had the luxury of it.
“Maybe it’s not gone,” Vi said suddenly, twisting to face her and making a sweeping gesture at the targets. “Maybe it’s just…different.”
“Different,” Caitlyn echoed skeptically, tilting her head.
“Yeah. This isn’t like the other stuff. The stuff we’ve lost.” Vi pulled a knee to her chest and stared at the ground, her nose scrunching while she cast around for the right words. “It has potential.”
Potential. Caitlyn chewed at her lip, rotating the word in her mind with cool precision to test the weight and feel of it. “So…?”
“So you try again.”
It was startlingly simple. And yet—
“Complexity bias,” Jayce told her once when she was younger and complaining about something that’d felt, at the time, insurmountable.
He tapped her forehead, grinning when she smacked his hand away with an indignant scowl. “You’re overthinking this, Sprout. Sometimes the simplest answer is the best solution.”
Maybe she’d been framing this wrong the entire time. Because maybe—just maybe—there were still things that, given time, had the potential to be fixed.
Vi watched her work through the idea, her eyes wide and earnest. Always so open with her emotions—always sincere, regardless of what she said.
A wave of tenderness washed over her, fierce and encompassing, a bloom of warmth that made something in her lungs catch.
She brushed her fingers along the curve of Vi’s cheek and cupped her jaw, her thumb resting gently on her bottom lip. “I thought you were strictly enforcing doctor’s orders.”
Vi pressed a kiss to her thumb, her eyes crinkling at the corners, and Caitlyn felt the tug of her grin beneath her fingertips.
“Fuck that,” she said empathically, pulling Caitlyn to her feet and handing her the rifle.
After examining the target—the grouping clustered along the bottom right corner—they returned to the spot Caitlyn had stood earlier.
“Nice and slow,” Vi said, standing on her blind side and placing a hand on her lower back.
Caitlyn seated the rifle against her shoulder and pressed her cheek against the stock, making a deliberate adjustment to her aim.
She focused in on the target, letting the world fade around her until all that existed was the rifle and Vi, a warm, steady presence at her elbow.
Vi, filling the uneven cracks in her soul.
She exhaled, slow and controlled.
Vi, forming the shape of her heart.
She pulled the trigger in one smooth motion, waiting until the thin trail of smoke dissipated from the end of the barrel before lowering the rifle.
Not quite a bulls-eye, but better. Closer. Potential.
“There,” Vi said only a little smugly, putting an arm around her waist. “Not gone. Just different.”
Caitlyn laughed softly, leaning into her and pressing a kiss to her temple. “I think I’m starting to see that.”
They’d lost so much—but not everything.
They were still here. They were still together.
It was more than enough.