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Vi is lying on the floor again.
That's probably why the world looks like it's sideways. Pale light makes its way across the floor, catching inside greasy bottles, and running-off dust motes in swarms. Wherever she is, it smells of alcohol, or maybe that's just her breath. She can feel wooden grain etching itself into the skin of her arm, and the side of her face as she lies there staring into the distance and seeing nothing.
She wonders where she could be, because there are any number of reasons she might be lying on the floor these days. Maybe she finally lost a fight. That would explain why her head feels like it's slowly detonating, but it wouldn't explain the bottles so probably not that. Maybe she passed out drunk somewhere in the streets and loris carried her home. Maybe she carried on drinking. Maybe she doesn't care where she is or why she's here. Maybe she should start drinking again.
It's still there, the hole. The drinking didn't help, but it never helps. Sometimes being punched helps. That's why she gets into fights whenever she can as if someone might finally land a hit hard enough to knock the memory of Caitlyn from her brain and splatter it across the floor in a bloody mess of bright blue and black, but that never happens.
She doesn't move. Moving would mean admitting she still existed. Moving would mean sobering up and going out to do it all again. There's no good reason she should ever move again.
Except for the hole.
It's coiled inside of her like a fishhook, so deep that however much she wishes she could tear it out, she can't. No matter how desperately she claws at her own chest late into the night when she's drunk or bleeding, she can't ever get rid of it. It's part of her now like a tumour on the side of her heart.
Vi lets a wretched sob crawl from her throat as she curls tighter into a ball.
*
Caitlyn is shaking.
It's stupid, but it's not. She knows she locked the bathroom door, she knows there are enforcers standing outside every exit, and she knows that her golden-embossed handgun is sitting right where she left it on the counter by the sink. She's staring at it now, watching the shine not disappear as the room doesn't steam up, the shower running ice-cold.
She also knows none of that matters. She knows Jinx could kill the enforcers, and pick the locks. The hairs on the back of her neck prickle at the thought, even as she stands there, back pressed firmly into one corner of the room, shower blasting the tiles with cold water, gun glinting by the sink, her body shaking.
It takes her three tries to move away from the wall, and she immediately feels its absence. Keeping her eyes fixed on that corner, she moves over to the sink, and looks into the mirror. It's just like before, only this time there's no steam. She can see the entire room, and yet somehow she still feels those purple-pink eyes boring like worms into the soft skin of her neck.
She has to brace her hands against the countertop to stop herself from slipping away as panic claws at the edges of her vision with fingers like slithering eels. She feels it closing in around her, the deafening beat of the shower, the dark spots at the edges of her vision where she can't quite see. The world folds in until it's just her, standing there in the darkness, cold marble pressing against her hands.
Her breathing comes fast and shallow, her throat dry as bone. It's all some shade of black, and she can sense a twisted, writhing beast clinging to the back of her neck where she can't see. She reaches out for something solid to hold, and her fingers close around the handle of her gun.
*
She's there too. Well, not really there, but there enough for it to hurt a little less.
Her skin looks softer than it used to be, or maybe it really did look like that before she put on that stupid uniform again, and her face lost its awkward smile and sparkling eyes. Probably Vi just imagines it that way, because if her mind can play tricks, it may as well play beautiful ones.
Caitlyn smiles gently, like she used to before everything fell apart. Vi tries to smile back but it only comes out as another broken sob of pain. At least the hole feels smaller now. It always feels smaller when she's here, but it's the worst feeling in the world when she goes again.
And she always goes again. Everybody does.
Caitlyn's brow furrows in concern. Vi doesn't need her pity, but she can't help leaning into the phantom touch as Caitlyn's two fingers outstretch and brush against her cheek. She looks so gentle as her expression slips into a worried frown. This Caitlyn doesn't like to see her cry. She doesn't understand though. She couldn't.
"Please don't cry," whispers Caitlyn. She even has the right voice. It's that stupid posh accent that Vi fell for, just like she fell for Caitlyn's kindness and the smile only Vi gets to see.
Vi nods, a final tear running down her cheek to soak into the floorboards, which still press against her face. Caitlyn reaches out and wipes away the tear. "That's better," she says. She doesn't seem to mind lying on this floor, maybe it's still plush bedsheets to her.
"Vi…" starts Caitlyn.
"Don't say it," she croaks, and Caitlyn closes her mouth again before nodding softly.
*
She holds the gun with both hands, feeling the hard metal grip pressing against her palms. She can see the entire room. The corner by the door is still empty.
She looks back up and meets her own eyes in the mirror. They stare back, disgusted. She can see her own breaths coming fast and sharp like bell-pulls. She can see the bags under her eyes and the horrid paleness of her own skin.
She raises the gun to point at the monster in the mirror. Maybe she can make all of this go away. Blood creeps through her veins and her reflection shivers. It looks afraid, terrified even, but it has a gun too, and it's raised to point at her.
She's shaking again. She can feel it. She can feel cold air clinging to her bare skin, and messy hair sticking to her sweaty brow. Slowly, she clicks off the safety on the handgun, aiming straight at the woman's head. It does the same, and Caitlyn stares down the barrel of her own gun like she can already taste the bullet inside, bitter and metallic.
She could do it, and her finger tightens on the trigger, sweaty and cold, with the thought, but suddenly she feels a hand holding her own. She should flinch away, screaming, but she doesn't. She can see who it is in the mirror.
With one arm wrapped gently around her shoulders, Vi lowers her hands, and Caitlyn watches the gun sink until it points at the floor. She can't focus on that though, can't focus on how stupid she feels for whatever she was just doing. She's stuck staring at the face of the woman who betrayed her. The woman she left crying at the bottom of a pipe-shaft. The woman who was supposed to have forgotten all about her.
Vi smiles gently.
*
It's so perfect, the way the light catches her hair, and cascades over onto Vi's own face, almost like a halo. Vi glances away, but after a few more moments, she has to look back, has to meet those brilliant blue eyes again.
She sighs absently. "I wish you were real."
Caitlyn frowns. She looks almost offended. "I am real," she insists, reaching forward to run her fingers through Vi's hair, and she can really feel it, but when Caitlyn draws back her hand, the fingers aren't covered in black grease. They're still perfect.
It feels heavy sometimes, the jet black paint in her face and hair, but if she can't take off her skin, she can at least cover it in enough disgusting muck to stop being herself anymore. This Caitlyn wouldn't understand that. She would just smile softly if Vi tried to explain, and then she'd say some flagrant nothing.
Caitlyn is so much more than her mind could ever hope to mimic in its own shallow illusions, so this Caitlyn will never be the same. She's just a memory of a person who doesn't even exist anymore.
Caitlyn pouts at the lack of attention, and Vi blinks the image back into focus. "No, you're not," she says, throat clearing slightly with use. "You'll never be real."
*
Caitlyn watches her own expression in the mirror as it flickers from awe to horror. She wraps her arms across her chest, gun pressing into her bicep, and draws her shoulders up higher. Vi can't see her like this, she doesn't want that. She takes a step back from the mirror, where Vi remains standing just beside her, smiling still.
Her pinky-red hair feels like the only thing of colour in the room, and the scars on her face are exactly the way Caitlyn remembers them, but there's something about her eyes that's like looking at a beautiful painting and then finding out it's just a photograph. There's no Vi behind them.
She must have imagined this meeting a million times, but her mind suddenly feels as empty as her father's eyes, and this still doesn't make any sense. She takes a few breaths to steady herself for speaking before she opens her mouth. "What…" She stops, her voice sounding far too strained. "What are you?" she finishes after a moment.
She does Vi's cocky smirk, and when her mouth opens, it's Vi's voice she speaks with. "You know who I am."
Caitlyn tries to tighten her arms around her chest. She feels so exposed in this room, with this woman.
"No," she whispers. "No, you're not her. You're not. She forgot about me. She deserves someone better. She wouldn't come back."
The woman rolls her eyes, and moves forward causing Caitlyn to flinch back. "Of course it's me, cupcake."
The nickname makes her feel sick.
*
"You're perfect," explains Vi bitterly. "She was never perfect, even before she changed she was dumb, and she said stupid things, and she folded her uniform before she dumped it in a bin, and she didn't understand me, but she wanted to, and she tried. You'll never be her."
Caitlyn cries. That's another thing she gets wrong. Even if it's only a single miserable tear, she never let Vi see her cry. There were moments when Vi caught her wiping her puffy eyes with trembling fingers, but she never saw tears.
Caitlyn rubs at her cheek angrily, glaring at Vi. "I'm trying. I want you to be happy. Why don't I make you smile anymore?"
"You don't exist," Vi would scream if she could summon the voice for it. It comes out as more of a croak. She vaguely registers thirst, then ignores it. The sink on the wall feels a mile away.
Caitlyn takes a breath as if to answer, but then pauses before continuing. "I can go away if you want," she whispers, hurt glimmering in her sky blue irises.
*
She's still smiling. Caitlyn feels her stomach lurch.
"You're not real," she snaps, catching the panic threaded into her own voice.
The woman looks, for a moment, taken aback. "I told you, I'm really here. Look cupcake, it's me, Vi."
Caitlyn snaps her eyes shut, and presses her hands into the sides of her head. "Stop it, stop it. You're not real." She can feel the gun digging into her temple. Why is she still holding the gun?
She hears Vi's voice rising in pitch. "Cait, I'm right fucking here."
She clamps her hands over her ears. "Get out of my head. Go away. You're not here. You're not, you're not, you're not."
*
Vi's lips curl. Her eyes narrow. Her head throbs. She feels like she should scream or maybe hit something or even someone. Her breath is coming out in grating sobs as she looks at Caitlyn, who's brow is furrowed with sadness.
Defeated, she whispers three tiny words. "Please don't go."
Caitlyn smiles, happy to be wanted. Vi squeezes her eyes shut, failing to stop tears from seeping between the cracks, and curls up tighter. When she opens her eyes, Caitlyn is looking at her with confusion or worry.
"You're crying again," she whispers. "I thought you wanted me to stay?"
Vi falls onto her back, staring up at the ceiling, and arches her back, screaming. Tears run black ink from her face into the floorboards like blood, and the hole sits there deep in her chest like some kind of sick parasitic worm. With a cascade of ragged breaths, she collapses back onto her floor, shaking.
*
After several more cold, black moments, Caitlyn opens her eyes.
She's gone.
With a gulp of icy air, Caitlyn sinks to the floor, then scrambles back to press herself into the corner of the room. The shower still hammers heavily against the bathroom tiles. The mirror still doesn't steam up because the water is cold. The darkness still clings to the corners of her vision.
Caitlyn huddles back, cradling the gun like a child.
She can feel tears slipping down her cheeks in little rivers, and her throat stings painfully with the effort of holding back sobs. She looks out at the empty bathroom, feeling the cold swoop back in to claim her.
"I'm sorry," she croaks, voice barely louder than a whisper. "Please come back."