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Caitlyn was finally, finally alone.
Slowly, she let out the breath that was sitting tight in her chest, but her body was still rigid. Her hands rested lightly, palms down, on the smooth, dark wood of her desk. Her back was perfectly straight, as it had been since the moment she’d left her room that morning. Her jaw ached from clenching it.
So.
Here she was.
The Commander.
Caitlyn Kiramman sat at the great wooden desk, staring at the door where the last of her entourage had departed.
Since the ceremony, where Ambessa had forced her hand, publicly nominating her - essentially appointing her - the day had blurred by in long stretches of intense conversation, planning, and coordinating. There were logistics to moving soldiers into Piltover - how to handle disseminating information among the populace, where to set up their Zaun command centre, what their initial response to the attacks should be, where to set up security checkpoints. All of it top priority, top speed; to be handled delicately but immediately. Critical decisions had to be made, and from here on out it would be Caitlyn that was making them.
She had rushed to orchestrate a reasonable but unambiguously firm response to a report of violent demonstrations being held on Drop Street down in the undercity. She’d been taken to have her new uniform pieces tailored. She’d moved into her new office at the enforcer headquarters, the one previously occupied by Marcus. She had met with every last agent, aide, assistant, and official with whom she would be working.
Now it was early evening. The sun hung low over the colourful, varied architecture of Piltover. The lengthy meeting (discussing what to do with Zaunite detainees, and how to best handle conflicts between Noxian and Piltovian military protocol) had finally wound down, allowing Caitlyn to dismiss the small crowd from her office.
“We can resume discussing any additional points tomorrow,” she’d told them, to-the-point and clipped. She sounded so austere, Caitlyn had thought distractedly. She’d tried to soften her tone to sound more gracious. She didn’t think it had worked. “For tonight, you all should be getting home to your families. I have much to think about - good night.”
And so they left, filing one by one out of the large wooden door that led from her office.
The door shut behind the last of them: Maddie, who turned around and gave her a small, quick smile before she left.
And finally she was alone.
She tried to breathe a sigh of relief, but no relief came.
Instead, in the sudden, profound quiet, Caitlyn’s mind roared into overdrive. It was her first time alone since - since everything.
It was her first time alone since the ventilation chamber. It was her first time alone since the promise; the kiss; Sevika; Jinx. The fight. The aftermath.
She felt empty.
She felt cold.
It was her first time alone since Vi.
“I keep telling myself that you’re different. But you’re not. It’s her blood in your veins.”
“Then why are you the one acting like her?”
How dare she. How fucking dare she.
Even now the words made her tremble with anger. What Vi had done felt like a betrayal, a lie. Caitlyn wasn’t sure that she could forgive her.
And so in a moment of weakness and rage and anguish, Cait had done something that, in turn, could never be forgiven by Vi.
She knew - she knew she had broken something between them. There would be no going back. She might not even see her again.
Caitlyn had climbed up that ladder and hadn’t turned back, not once, even as Vi’s ragged, broken sobs echoed, and echoed, and echoed after her. She knew that, if she did, she would come apart at every seam like a stuffed toy ripped limb from limb.
She had heard Vi cry before, many times. She’d felt strangely privileged to bear witness to her vulnerability; her guilt; her grief. But she had never heard Vi make sounds like that - utter anguish, utter despair. Caitlyn recalled the wretched, uncontrolled noises that her father had made when he’d heard what had happened to her mother. The similarity twisted deep within her, and she felt sick.
Caitlyn realized her hands were shaking. She clenched them into fists, leaving behind sweaty handprints on the polished wood. She needed to get a hold of herself. She couldn’t handle that train of thought right now - it was all too much, too fresh, too raw.
If she allowed herself to dip too deeply into those feelings - it was rage; it was regret. It was something dark and wriggling and vicious inside of her, something she had never known. It scared her.
Her breathing was starting to turn uneven and harsh, and she wrestled with her lungs to get it under control. Caitlyn closed her eyes and slid her fingers into her hair, trying to ground herself.
This was pathetic.
She couldn’t be falling apart like this. She was responsible for the entirety of Piltover’s response to Zaun - she couldn’t be dissolving into a trembling mess every time she had a second alone with her thoughts.
And besides, she reasoned, this was her own doing. She could sit here and blame Jinx and Vi until she was blue in the face, but ultimately, she was the one who had led the strike team and let Jinx get away. She was the one who had lashed out at Vi and left her at the bottom of that ladder. And it was Caitlyn Kiramman, no one else, who had accepted the mantle of Commander, and with it, the weight of two cities and all the people in them.
The pressure, the anger, and the shame were all hers to bear - so bear them she would. It was what she deserved. People were hurt because of her - Vi only the latest in a list that was only growing longer. If she didn’t feel guilty for it, then she truly was no better than Jinx.
Once again, anger bubbled in her gut like bile.
“It’s her blood in your veins.”
“Then why are you the one acting like her?”
She was nothing like Jinx.
If Caitlyn deserved to feel guilty for her words and actions, then Vi deserved to feel guilty for hers. Vi knew what Jinx had done to her - how deeply those wounds ran.
Caitlyn felt it within herself - she knew she was changed. Damaged. She panicked more easily, slept less. Jumped at shadows, flinched at movements in her periphery. Every night, she dreamt of Jinx - her mother - Vi - Jinx - her mother - Vi, looped on an endless repeat.
Caitlyn had confessed it one night to Vi, after yet another promising lead had dried up, leaving Jinx even further from their grasp. Caitlyn had told her: she was frightened that this feeling would never leave. That she would always be haunted like this, sweating through her dreams and dreading every shower. She was scared that until Jinx was dead, she would never stop feeling this way. And she needed to stop feeling this way.
Vi had nodded, her eyes soft and kind and filled with so much concern. Delicately, she’d laced her fingers through Caitlyn’s own, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “We’ll find her, Cait,” she’d said, her voice low and thick with emotion. “She needs to face what she’s done. She’s not-” Vi had swallowed, her bottom lip quavering as she blinked back tears. “She’s not getting away again. Not this time.”
And Caitlyn, the absolute fool that she was, had trusted her.
Vi knew about the knot of anguish that coiled around her, knew the depth of pain she felt, and had chosen to twist the knife anyway. Whatever pain Caitlyn had inflicted, Vi deserved every bit of it. Vi deserved -
SLAM .
Caitlyn’s hand stung.
She realized she had slapped the desk with an open palm, the noise and sensation physically snapping her away from her bitter revery. Cait breathed hard and fast through her nose, appalled at her own thoughts. She was such a piece of shit.
Whatever Vi deserved, it was absolutely not what Caitlyn had done. To be struck in the stomach with the butt of a rifle and left sobbing at the bottom of a ventilation shaft.
Vi had already suffered so much. She had served her time - seven bloody years in a cold Stillwater cell, tortured and alone. She had lost everyone - her parents, her guardian, her brothers, her sister. And now Caitlyn.
She was such a piece of shit.
Vi deserved peace. Vi deserved love.
Maybe now, with Caitlyn and Jinx out of her life, she could find some. It was a faint hope, tinged with bitterness, but it was one that Caitlyn clung to.
The towers of Piltover glowed in burnished orange as the sun sank to meet the horizon. She could see the stone and glass towers of the university glowing in rich, saturated hues. Beyond it was the ocean, dark and calm beneath a bank of clouds rolling in from offshore. To the northwest, she could make out the dark landmass where the Kiramman hunting lodge was built.
Caitlyn stared out at it, her face troubled. Slowly, she forced herself to take a long, shaky breath in. Slowly, she let it out. And then again - another long, slow breath.
She sank into another memory - another time she had stared out at the ocean, preoccupied, seeking clarity. It was just after the shooting contest that Grayson had let her win. She had approached the old sheriff, and they had spoken, gazing out as Caitlyn was now at the dark, calm sea.
“I’m an enforcer,” Grayson had said to her. “For me, knowing how to handle this weapon means being able to protect people. Protect this city”
Young Caitlyn had looked up at her - broad and dark and muscled; competent, loyal, and calm - and been consumed with admiration. She’d idolized her; she’d wanted to be her.
“Begs the question, young Kiramman. What are you shooting for?”
Slow inhale. Slow exhale.
From that moment on, she had wanted to become an enforcer - and not just that, she had wanted to make a difference. Grayson was the sheriff, and she had real power - not just the power to make arrests and issue tickets for small offences; not the political, bureaucratic power that her mother wielded - power to protect and defend. Grayson didn’t just run at the beck and call of her superiors - she made the decisions. She could make real change.
So when Ambessa had put forth Caitlyn’s name to assume her place as Commander, yes she had been pressured into it, but Caitlyn knew there was a part of herself that wanted it. She had no interest in power for power’s sake, she considered that weak and egotistical. All she had ever wanted was to make people’s lives better.
Ambessa, for all Caitlyn’s misgivings about her true motivations, had given her the authority to do just that.
So.
Here she was.
The Commander.
All the influence she had ever imagined for herself - far beyond what she had imagined, really.
Now what would she do with it?
She knew what Ambessa said her first priority should be: Ambessa urged caution, citing the attacks on Piltover and its people, and wanted to immediately set up security checkpoints at every entrance into Piltover. That meant one at each station of the Hexdraulic Conveyor, each roadway in, and two along the Bridge of Progress. She also said they should prepare for some degree of resistance, possibly even riots and retaliatory acts of terrorism, and arm the enforcers and Noxian soldiers accordingly. Anyone who resisted would be detained in Stillwater to have their file reviewed.
Caitlyn was glad to have her counsel - Ambessa was experienced, powerful, and wise, and Cait was none of those things. She needed her expertise in this. It was almost a relief, to know that the formidable general would be at her back through this.
But right now, the thought of sending troops surging through the streets of Zaun made her feel disgusting.
Helpless against her own mind, she thought again of Vi, whose parents had been killed by enforcers.
She thought of Vi, who had spent over a third of her life locked away and tormented in Stillwater.
She thought of Vi, her lips warm and soft and full of emotion as they had pressed against hers.
“Promise me you won’t change.”
“Promise me you won’t change.”
Caitlyn wanted to scream.
How could she use her first act as Commander to throw Zaunites into Stillwater? That was not what this position was supposed to be for; this was not how she wanted to use her power.
Arrests were inevitable; she had no qualms about that. The criminals deserved to pay a price for their crimes - her mother deserved justice, like Ambessa had said. All the people hurt in the attacks did.
But Stillwater… did anyone deserve that?
To be imprisoned in Stillwater was to become less than human. Vi hadn’t even been a piece of meat to them; she had been a game. A toy. Caitlyn had lost sleep in those first few nights after freeing her, thinking of the Warden and his obvious zeal for his “chats;” the way she had seen Vi shiver and tense at the approaching clank of his heavy iron cane. Cait had seen row upon row of cramped stone cells, slick with damp and dark with mould. She had smelled the dirt and rot and fetid, human smells that pervaded the air. Each prisoner she saw had worn the same wary, guarded expression, huddled in the shadows.
Caitlyn scowled and stood, her back aching from long-held tension. She crossed to the windows and looked out across Piltover as the long, blue shadows spilling across the city slowly ate up more and more of the landscape, until only the very tops of the tallest towers remained in the sunlight. As she watched, the blues crept higher and higher, until the last of the gentle gold vanished and the whole of her city was swallowed in twilight.
“Promise me you won’t change.”
She wouldn’t do it.
She could not knowingly send someone to be beaten for sport, or starved as a punishment, or locked away in solitary for days at a time. That was not justice, it was cruelty. No person - innocent or guilty; man or woman; from Zaun or from Piltover - not even Jinx herself deserved to be subjected to that sort of treatment.
Vi was gone from her life - Caitlyn had made sure of that. If she thought too hard about it, she would start crying, so she didn’t. No matter how guilty she felt about it, or how deep the chasm of regret yawned inside of her, she could not undo her actions - she just had to live with them. But perhaps, before she brought the full force of martial law onto Zaun, she could still do one thing - right one small wrong in a world full of wrongs.
Slowly, a plan started to take shape in her head: a reformed Stillwater. Still a prison, of course, but one that was monitored; audited. Full transparency from the staff. Nutritious food and cleaner cells. And the deepest cells, the ones reserved for child molesters, the vilest of murderers, the criminally insane - and for an unconvicted fifteen year-old girl - would never be used to house prisoners again.
It would not be perfect, but it would be better. She knew she could make it better.
Caitlyn sighed, looking out across the city as stars began to show themselves in the darkening sky. This, she thought, was what this sort of authority should be used for. It was not redemption. It was not an apology. It just felt like the right thing to do.
She wanted to do it for the people of Zaun and Piltover - for Vi.
It would be her first priority.