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Vi never thought that death would be this colorful.
Blue pushes against the inside of her eyelids, threatening to spill out of them like the blood staining her shirt. A hand presses against her side and Vi winces, clamping her mouth shut to keep a groan from escaping. Something hits her back – the ground, maybe, but she can’t tell up from down. The world still fades in and out, but the colors of it are unrelenting: blue, green, violet, blue—
She blinks, but she must be bleeding in blue, because she sees Powder everywhere she looks. Her lilting laughter echoes in her ears as her cloudy visage flickers in and out of view, but she can still make out the blue of her hair.
I didn’t mean to leave you.
Powder hums in response, coloring the wall red, green, orange, red—
She gasps, agony coursing across her stomach as her stomach muscles flex involuntarily, spasming in pain. There’s a hand on the back of her head, cushioning it from the cold ground, a soothing shhhh from somewhere above her.
Vi looks up; everything is blue. A kaleidoscope of shades dances all around her, disorientating and captivating. A wisp of something soft barely brushes her lips as someone tilts her head upwards.
The blue gives way to a familiar color, once she hasn't seen in a long time. Her mother’s violet hair kisses her cheek, and it soothes the ever-rolling waves in her chest. It only lasts a moment, but it’s more comfort than she’s been allowed to have in years.
The world tilts on an axis, and the color shifts with it: violet to blue, comforting to unforgiving, understanding to accusatory, blue to violet to blue to violet violet VIOLET—
Violet overpowers every other color as she bolts upwards, its association with her mother burning to dust as it takes over every inch of her, leaving an acidic taste on the back of her tongue. It runs through her muscles, through her veins, inflating and invigorating her perilously dying body. Her hand feels like it is made of iron as it grasps something too soft, too pliant, but she needs something to hold onto as her heart threatens to beat out of her chest—
“Violet!”
Every muscle in her body freezes at the sound. Her eyes catch blue again, but she can make out the solid outline that surrounds it now: the hair, the eyes. The topsider. Cait, looking at her in alarm, nose pinched in pain.
“Let go, if you please.” Her voice is even, but Vi can hear the starved-off panic hiding behind it. When she realizes what she’s holding, Vi understands why.
The veins in Vi’s knuckles still pulse purple as she releases her grip on Caitlyn’s arm. Dark, ugly bruises paint the spots where her fingers had been.
Vi looks down in horror as the outlines of the substance retreat below her skin: shimmer.
Caitlyn shakes out her injured arm, then offers the other one for Vi to use to get back on her feet: “We need to go, now.” All business, like she hadn’t just come close to potentially having her arm ripped out of its socket.
Stunned, disoriented, coming down from the high, Vi doesn’t know what to do other than take the offered hand. Maybe this topsider is insane, or a masochist, or just plain stupid, but once Vi’s standing upright, Caitlyn doesn’t move away but keeps holding onto her instead. She supports Vi’s weight as her shaky legs figure out how to work again, the shimmer’s adrenaline now fading.
I could have killed you, she thinks, remembering the monsters from Silco’s lab trying to tear her apart. Remembering Vander, loving and protective but feral, barely in control. Caitlyn had risked that same wrath by saving her with shimmer.
She doesn’t owe this topsider anything, not really. But guilt still swims in her gut at the memory of those ugly violet bruises her fingers left on those slender arms.
“I didn’t mean to,” Vi says quietly, as much of an apology as she is willing to give, indignant stubbornness towards this topsider not quite evaporated.
“I know,” Cait says, then turns her head and quirks her eyebrow, an infuriatingly attractive glint in her eyes. “Don’t feel bad. I’m the genius who gave you shimmer.”
“I don’t,” Vi mutters immediately, assuming the warmth in her gut has to do with her wound and not the way this rich girl is looking at her.
Caitlyn helps Vi sit on a stoop. Vi takes the moment to breathe and focus, shaking off the remains of her jitters, shimmer-induced or otherwise.
“What was the name Sevika gave you? Jinx?”
She has work to do.