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Her mother says it'll be an 'enlightening' and 'educational' opportunity, but Caitlyn can't help but see it as her parents sending her away.
She asks, over and over, why she has to go on this exchange program where she won't know anyone, she won't have Jayce, she won't have the dogs, she won't have her parents, and she's supposed to be stuck with this family she's never even heard of for an entire summer. She doesn't want to go. She doesn't need to go visit some random city off the coast, hours away, miles away from everything and everyone she knows. She can learn about anything and everything from Jayce, right?
At the bus station, Jayce calms her down a little, tells her they'll make this summer a competition. When she comes back, they'll exchange notes on what they've learned—Caitlyn, in Zaun, and Jayce, at the university—and whoever's learned the coolest thing wins. It makes Caitlyn laugh through her tears, and Jayce teases her that if he wins, she'll have cleanup duties on the lab for a month, and Caitlyn shoots back that when she wins, Jayce will build her whatever she wants.
They shake on it, and then Caitlyn gets on the bus with the other Piltovan children, and she watches and waves out the window as her family recedes in the distance, the bus rumbling on its hours-long ride towards the coast.
Her mother had said a man named Vander would pick her up, and he had four children, one of whom was a daughter around the same age as Caitlyn. She wonders what that must be like, having so many siblings, when Caitlyn's only ever really had Jayce and Jayce is only occasionally around anyway, when he isn't busy tinkering. She wonders what Zaun is like, wonders if Vander's house is different from her own, wonders how the coastal town differs from Piltover's tall skyrises and bold towers.
She wonders if she'll get along with the other children. Jayce had always said she was kinda a misfit, like he was.
Most of her questions are answered when the bus slows down, rumbling to a stop in a courtyard—face pressed against the window, Caitlyn gets her first view of Zaun and her mouth drops open.
It's beautiful.
It's old, buildings creaking and aging, walls bent like aching backs, but nature's hand pokes and prods at the edges, greenery surrounding the little town with a beautiful backdrop of ocean blue in the distance. Zaun feels humble, its head bowed to nature's whispers in the breeze, its flowery secrets stuffed in cracks on the streets and the swaying of overgrown trees. The place lives, breathes, free and wild, elements of the earth wrapped up in this little town in a way that Caitlyn's never seen before in Piltover's stiff and posh skyline.
She learns soon enough, that's how Vander's family lives too.
When Caitlyn exits the bus, she sees a gigantic, broad man standing beside a withered and ancient vehicle, accompanied by two girls, one of whom waves a sign with Caitlyn's name on it, covered in rainbow scribbles of animals. Tentatively and shyly, Caitlyn makes her way to them, tries to introduce herself with a trembling hand extended out, and instead Vander kneels down and envelops her in a warm, gentle hug. His voice rumbles as he introduces the two girls—Powder, and Vi, Vi giving her a thumbs up while Powder eagerly shoves the Caitlyn sign into Caitlyn's hands. Vi hauls all of Caitlyn's things into the trunk by herself, Powder talking a mile a minute in Caitlyn's ear and asking a thousand questions about Piltover, and Vander chuckles and tells her she's part of the family already.
Caitlyn's heart blooms in her chest, like the little flowers poking up out of the jagged asphalt of Zaun.
Maybe she'll fit in, after all.
On the car ride back, excitement tires out Powder, so much so she passes out in the backseat next to Caitlyn, but Vi nudges her elbow against Caitlyn's and hands her an earbud, her other hand grasping an old, beat up tape player covered in Powder's doodles. In the hour it takes to drive back to Vander's place, Caitlyn listens to Vi's music, and thinks—she likes it. She likes all these songs, a lot.
Vi's happy grin when Caitlyn tells her so—it makes Caitlyn's heart do a skip in her chest.
—-
She can't believe she didn't want to come here.
Caitlyn has never had a summer like this, where the sun's dappled rays smile warmth onto her skin, where the ocean breezes tickle and tug at the wrinkles of her clothes, and the stars twinkle and wink at her like she's center stage. Zaun in all its charm manages to woo Caitlyn more than she'd ever expected, and she comes to love the old history buried here in the aged buildings and cracked sidewalks.
But it's Vi that manages to take Caitlyn's heart, wholly and completely.
Vi shows her the world. The world, in all its immense beauty, all its cute crookedness, in all its reckless and wild abandon.
During the day, they’ll sit on the broken asphalt of the sidewalks, sharing a popsicle between each other, laughing when Mylo’s ice cream spills out of its cone and onto the ground. They’ll run through the streets of Piltover, cheeky and mischievous as they always nab a skewer from old Jericho’s food stand and the old man will shout at them waving his fist in anger. They’ll break into that old, rundown arcade down the street and Powder will jury-rig a power siphon from the next building over so they can play on the old machines.
But it’s in those afternoons when Vi breathlessly helps haul Caitlyn up onto a rooftop, their sweaty palms against each other’s as Caitlyn grips her friend’s hand, does Caitlyn really feel like she gets to see the world for what it is. She stands on the rooftop next to Vi, panting, looking out into the numerous little squat buildings peppering this tiny coastal town, the great behemoth of the ocean waving just beyond all the way into the horizon, and she realizes that Piltover’s stuffy boardrooms and polished corners aren’t all that the world should be, as her peers believe.
The world is so much more. It can be so much more.
It’s at night when Mylo, Claggor, and Powder are fast asleep does Vi come to her, and they sneak out through the window and Vi leads Caitlyn to the beach.
There, they sit on the sand, in the peace and quiet of the gentle night, and they listen to music on Vi’s old cassette player. It’s the one time of day when they can just be alone, together, and taste freedom on the tips of their tongues. Caitlyn leans her head on Vi’s shoulder, and they watch the stars together. They listen to songs that make the world feel endless, infinite, and they’re a magical part of it, always.
The summer ends too quickly. Too, too quickly.
When Caitlyn says goodbye to Vi, to the family, she can’t help but cry again. As Vi and her siblings hug Caitlyn, Vander picks them all up in a big embrace of his own—and he says Caitlyn will always have a place here, a home, a family to come back to.
—-
Caitlyn sends letters to Vi, and Vi sends letters to her, too.
The next few years make it hard to find a way to meet, with Caitlyn busy with academics, school, and juggling family responsibility, but Caitlyn makes time every week to tell Vi about her life and everything in it.
How she feels like a misfit at school, how all the posh and preppy students boast and brag about expensive vacations or even more luxurious things that Caitlyn doesn’t take any interest into. How she spends hours with Jayce in her freetime, sitting on the edge of his lab table, her feet kicking as the man gestures this way and that with a wrench and he teaches her how to think bigger and how to be bigger. How she uses the skills Vi taught her to climb up onto the roof of her house and stare at the empty night sky because Piltover’s lights drown out the stars, but she imagines the constellations Vi must see anyway.
Vi tells her everything going on in Zaun too.
How Mylo and Claggor have taken on apprenticeships with the metalworkers in the factories, how Mylo still finds some way to fuck around and Claggor has to keep him in line. How Powder connects with a local scientist named Viktor, and the two spend hours everyday tinkering and experimenting with ways to make Zaun’s infrastructure better. How Vi herself spends time in Vander’s bar, learning the ways of business and what makes for a good drink and what songs are best for the jukebox.
Vi never fails to mention that she misses Caitlyn, though. That she still has a home in Zaun. That the waters of the ocean, the taste of ice cream, and the stars in the sky just aren’t the same without Caitlyn around.
Finally, Caitlyn finds a summer to visit. She’s older now, just about to graduate from the Academy, a teenager just on the cusp of adulthood. She argues with her mother she deserves a summer free of internships and work before she’s thrust into the unending machine called her mother’s business, and that once, a long time ago, her mother had insisted Caitlyn further her education by broadening her horizons and learning about what the rest of the world was like.
It’s logic her mother can’t deny, and Caitlyn throws her suitcase into the back of her car, and drives to Zaun, ready for a summer full of freedom.
She meets Vi again, after all these years.
When Caitlyn gets out of the car, she’s breathtaken. Vi. She’s beautiful.
A cheeky grin, her VI tattoo shifting on her cheek as she comes forward towards Caitlyn’s car. A tank top reveals the long stretch of black tattoos painted up and down Vi’s arms—all muscles, all raw, brute strength. But still, like all those years ago, Vi’s shaped by her gentleness, by the size of her heart, and when she embraces Caitlyn, Caitlyn can’t help but bury her face in Vi’s shoulder and inhale that familiar scent of faded alcohol and old oil grease. She’s still Vi; handsome and lovely, wonderful and kind.
Caitlyn reconnects with an aging Vander, gray hairs and crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. She has drinks with Mylo and Claggor in a booth of the Last Drop, listening to their complaints about new manufacturing laws, and Caitlyn keeps notes so she can remember to speak with her mother when she goes back. She observes Viktor’s and Powder’s inventions, sees the same sparks of inspiration in their eyes that Jayce has, and gives them Jayce’s phone number so they can talk to a fellow innovator.
Most of the summer though, Caitlyn spends it at Vi’s side.
Vi insists on driving Caitlyn around in her junker of a car that’s been forcibly converted into a convertible against its will because the roof got too rusted to maintain, and Caitlyn lets her because a healthy dose of adrenaline every time they hit a pothole surely does wonders for her health, but also because she likes seeing Vi’s exhilarated smile and joyous laugh as the wind tussles their hair as they speed through the streets of Zaun. They drive to all their old haunts, chase each other through the rickety skeleton of a half-finished, abandoned building, Vi testing Caitlyn on how well she’s kept up her parkour training from years before. It’s harder to steal from Jericho now but Caitlyn always pays and tips the old man his worth, because even after all these years, his skewers remain the best Caitlyn’s ever had in her entire life. Some evenings, Caitlyn laughs as she and Vi dance to the music from the jukebox, and she learns just what it means to dance like a Zaunite. Vi shows Caitlyn how she’d picked up the guitar in the past few years, teaching herself how music works because that’s something they can share together, and Caitlyn sits on the fire escape outside the second floor of the Last Drop as Vi plays her a few tunes.
At night Vi and Caitlyn walk along the beach, sand between their toes, hands held in each other’s, listening to that old beat up cassette player of Vi’s and they think of younger times.
Vi’s music tastes haven’t changed much. But once, as they’re sitting on the hood of Vi’s car in the parking lot next to the beach, Vi shyly slips a mixtape she’s made for Caitlyn into the player and waits for Caitlyn’s word on it.
It’s all love songs, all played with Vi’s voice, and Vi’s guitar.
It’s so lovely and cheesy and so Vi Caitlyn bursts out laughing, and Vi sputters and blurts out that she’d worked really hard on it and she really, really wanted Caitlyn to know how she feels—
And then Caitlyn leans a hand on the hood of the car, the other grasping Vi’s chin between her fingers, and Caitlyn kisses her—there, on that night, with the moon and stars watching and the ocean whispering waves at their ears, Caitlyn kisses Vi and Vi kisses her back.
They spend the rest of the summer in love.
Splashing each other with water from the ocean, laughing when they try to dunk each other under. Driving through the streets of Zaun, wind blowing through the hair, music blasting on the static-filled stereo. Drinking shots on the rooftop of the Last Drop, giggling when Vi drunkenly plays Caitlyn a dumb song on the guitar that’s heartfelt and lovely anyway, even with the broken notes and mismatched chords. Whispering secrets in the late, late night, hopes and dreams they want to come true but they don’t know how to make it happen because they’re old enough to know now that not every wish comes true.
Caitlyn leaves that summer, heart filled, but heart also aching because it means she has to say goodbye to Vi.
They promise to send letters to each other.
—-
Reality is never far behind.
When Caitlyn returns to Piltover, she gets herself prepared for university when it’s tragedy and catastrophe that strike, both at once, at the same time.
It’s a freak accident. A car crash. Uncontrollable, unpredictable.
Caitlyn isn’t in the car when it happens but her parents are and it’s devastation and despair that appear on her doorstep when Sheriff Grayson arrives, expression heavy with broken news.
Suddenly, her entire world turns upside down. Her parents are barely interred in the ground when boardroom executives stand at her side, at her shoulder, and lean in and whisper of business dealings that need her attention, her approval, her review because she’s the only Kiramman left and she’s the only person holding up an entire corporation and all the people who work for it.
She can’t find time to read or reply to Vi’s letters. They sit, remembered but unread on her desk in her big empty study that used to be her mother’s.
Jayce, department head of research at her company, does his best to support her but he has his own responsibilities too. There’s breakthroughs coming through every day on his ingenious inventions and Caitlyn’s loathe to take him away from what brings him joy but she’s also loathe to make him see her like this, fucked up, shattered, destroyed. She’s a Kiramman, she’s not meant to bend or break, she’s meant to hold up her family’s heritage, her mother’s and grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s life-long work and she refuses to be the one to let it all crumble down.
She can’t find time to think of Vi. She wants to, so badly, in those few precious hours of the night when she’s blessed by silence and a lonely bedroom but then the incessant reminders, requests, orders all flood into her mind again and then she’s thinking again and again about the business, the business, the business.
Sometimes, though, on her lunch breaks in that office at the top of Kiramman Towers, Caitlyn opens her drawer and pulls out an old Polaroid of her and Vi, Vi pressing a kiss to Caitlyn’s cheek and for just a minute every day, Caitlyn feels human again.
At some point, though, Caitlyn’s silence makes Vi’s letters fade, and finally, they stop coming.
It takes years for Caitlyn to restructure herself, to rebuild the part of her that’d been blown apart into a big, gaping hole that was shaped like her parents. Eventually, she gets a grip on things, on this massive behemoth of a beast called the Kiramman family business, but it’s a gargantuan effort for her everyday to keep control.
But there’s only so much one person can take. She’s a Kiramman but she’s a human, too.
There’s one particularly bad business year. Accidents keep happening with Hextech and Caitlyn does her best to shield Jayce from the majority of the blame but the world keeps blaming them both for the catastrophes, the lack of safety, when Caitlyn and Jayce both know they’d lost the battle with boardroom executives who’d sought quick riches over safety guidelines. She’s in dozens of interviews, press rooms, drafting and re-drafting apologies and promises she prays she can fulfill, that Hextech can still be good for the people one way or another.
One drunken night, Jayce and Caitlyn clink glasses together, both of them mourning what their lives could’ve been. Dreams of helping people, hopes to fix broken cities, wishes to make the world a better place—gone, because the world ran by different rules that both of them couldn’t break.
Jayce whispers a secret to her. Viktor, years ago, had warned him of the flaw in his designs. But they hadn’t been able to make a fix in time and businessmen had forced the invention out. Jayce crumples, sobbing into his hands, wishing he’d taken Viktor’s offer of skipping out of Piltover and living in Zaun and making people’s lives better there.
Caitlyn can’t help but cry, too. It’d been shame and regret all these years chaining her hand, stopping her from writing one last letter to Vi, to apologize for all the years of silence when everyday Caitlyn had thought of the shape of Vi because there’s a huge, empty spot in her where Vi used to be.
These two lost siblings look at each other, the pieces of them left by tragedy.
In silence, they pack their bags, throw them into the back of Caitlyn’s car, and then they’re driving to Zaun. In the hours-long drive there, they’re still beaten, broken down, worn down by the world, but the colossal weight on their shoulders lessen as they near the coastal town where peace lives.
When they reach the outskirts of town, Jayce rolls down the window, and he manages to smile—for the first time in months—as the wind tussles his hair. Caitlyn manages to play a song on the radio, and they feel lighter than they have in years.
Caitlyn drops Jayce off at Viktor’s, and then she drives straight to the Last Drop.
By now it’s past midnight, late enough that Caitlyn knows Vi’s definitely closing up the bar, but she can’t help herself and her feet walk to the door and her hand pulls on the handle and then she’s walking into that bar that’s been in her mind a million times and there’s Vi, Vi, Vi at the counter, Vi looking up, Vi’s mouth dropping open when she sees the broken thing stumbling in.
Caitlyn whispers all the shitty apologies she knows isn’t enough, that she’d been broken for so long and she didn’t know who else to go to put herself together because how do you fit yourself into a machine when you’re not a cog or a gear but you get grounded up in it anyway because that’s where people want you to be. She stands there, staring down at the old floorboards she recognizes because Vi and her had danced here for so many nights, all those summers ago, and then her vision blurs because the tears come forth again, grieving something else she’d lost all that time ago.
She waits for the punishment, the retribution, for Vi’s voice to carry to her and cut into her—
And yet, it never comes.
Old boots show up in her field of vision, and then a roughened hand reaches out and grasps her own.
Chest shaking with sobs, Caitlyn looks up and sees the heart she’d fallen in love with all those years ago. There’s Vi, smiling at her, small, gentle, sweet. She’s compassion dressed in tattoos and ragged clothing and she’s named Vi.
They spend hours in Vi’s bed, Caitlyn sobbing all of her confessions, her heart bleeding out on the bedsheets but Vi doesn’t mind, just reaches her hand up and wipes away Caitlyn’s tears, presses a kiss to her brow in the lull between sobs, and holds her close when exhaustion takes her and Caitlyn falls asleep in the arms of love.
The next day, as Vi makes her breakfast in this old rickety kitchen and Caitlyn sits in a chair that’s wobbly on one leg, Vi tells her all she’d missed. How Vi had insisted on sending letters to Caitlyn despite the lack of reply, how Powder and Mylo had called Caitlyn a lost cause but Claggor kept believing in her anyway. How Vander had passed a year ago—Caitlyn winced, apologized, Vi waving a hand—and Vi had taken over the Last Drop and all the charitable efforts Vander had run during his lifetime. How she watched the news on those old TVs in the Last Drop, seen Caitlyn dozens of times on the screen but Vi said she’d never really looked like herself. Then, the moment when Vi had decided to stop sending letters because maybe, just maybe, Caitlyn had moved on, that the city had changed her, that someone as prestigious and famous as Caitlyn Kiramman had outgrown a little punk rat like Vi.
Immediately Caitlyn stands up from the dining table, turns Vi around from the stove, and shoves her up against it to kiss her—fully, completely—before they abruptly pull apart at how Vi’s flannel is set on fire.
Caitlyn makes one, and only one, phone call to her business—that she’d be away for one month for her health, and that they were to consult with her business partner, Mel Medarda, on any and all decisions regarding the business. Any other calls after that—Caitlyn studiously ignores.
When Caitlyn reunites with Vi’s siblings, she gets a well-deserved punch from Powder, a scathing line of insults from Mylo, and a gentle hug from Claggor. When Caitlyn explains her need for escape—for freedom from everything, from Piltover—the siblings seem to understand, just the way Vi had. Mylo and Powder are still bitter, but Vi’s glares and older sibling aura prevent the two from really beating Caitlyn down when she’s already down enough already.
Powder sighs, rolls her eyes, and asks if she needs a hand. Help. Caitlyn doesn’t know how to respond because what could they possibly do to help her?
Rolling up the sleeves of her jacket, Powder puts her hands on her hips, gives Caitlyn a good ol’ slap for good measure, and then sits down with a notebook. If there’s one thing she’s learned from Viktor, it’s that nothing’s impossible.
They call up Viktor and Jayce too, and the two inventors come to the Last Drop. Vi closes down the bar for a day, and there, all of them make a plan to get back up because that’s what Vander had taught his family. As Caitlyn watches the people she loves most in her life work together to help her, help fix things, does she realize that this is what family is supposed to be—people helping each other out of love, out of compassion, out of care. By the end of the night, they have a rough draft of a business plan to drag Hextech out of the mud and the Kiramman name associated with better, nicer ventures.
It takes a whole month to polish out the details. Caitlyn works with Vi’s family, and even, the people of Zaun—because that’s what Zaun is, an entire town filled with those who’d been touched once by Vander’s and now Vi’s kindness, and they’re here to give back in return.
At the end of the month, Caitlyn and Jayce drive back to Piltover—this time, followed by Vi, Powder, and Viktor. Mylo and Claggor stay behind to do their part in the plan, the two of them waving as they all drive off down the road.
Immediately, Caitlyn gets to work. She stands in the boardroom and throws the weight of her name and reputation around—shows them the plans, the long terms goals she means to establish for her business, how safety comes first. She shows them the outlines of business ventures to begin in Zaun, where she’ll move certain parts of her manufacturing because Zaun has a solid, reputable foundation for industry and machinery. She demonstrates the new schematics built by Powder, Viktor, and Jayce, and Jayce threatens the boardroom that he’ll pull all his inventions if they so much as try to interfere ever again in his designs, in his releases. She then enforces necessary charitable ventures, scholarships to underprivileged schools in Zaun and elsewhere, funds poured into struggling clinics and hospitals, grants given to projects meant to repair infrastructure and old foundation because they need to repair their public image, one way or another.
When the boardroom expresses disdain or hesitation even to her grandiose plans, Caitlyn pulls the nuclear card. She and Jayce are willing to pull away from the Kiramman family business entirely, sell off their entire shares in the corporation if it means having the freedom to do good for once. Caitlyn may lose her family name and family heritage but it’s a worthwhile sacrifice to make if it means making the world a better place—her ancestors had started the business to do good, and Caitlyn believed wholeheartedly her mother would be proud of her now.
The board balks at her blackmail, at the blatant strongarming, but everyone in the room knows the strength of the Kiramman name—for Caitlyn to abandon it would make the corporation’s name lose all meaning. The board agrees, reluctantly, and Caitlyn starts her business anew.
She comes home to Vi, and they celebrate with a drink, smiles on each other’s faces. At night, Caitlyn pushes Vi into her bedroom, and makes another dream come true—loving Vi the way she’s always wanted to, and Vi loves her back.
—-
Years later, Caitlyn goes on vacation—to Zaun, once again.
By now she’s ousted the worst of her boardroom, found like-minded individuals focused on making the world better, who find the balance between economy and altruism.
It’s easier now, for her to take breaks, to make less decisions, to trust others to do the right thing.
She and Vi had made things work. Sometimes Vi would stay in Piltover for a bit before returning to handle things at the bar in Zaun. Sometimes Caitlyn would drive down for a weekend, and they’d make time for each other then.
But for this particular vacation? Caitlyn’s scheduled an entire summer here. Just like old times.
And, like a long time ago, Vi drives her somehow still-functioning junker of a car to the beach, and they sit on the hood of Vi’s car, Caitlyn putting one earbud in her ear and listening to Vi’s mixtape.
It’s all songs made by Vi, of course, played by her on that guitar.
Caitlyn listens to the lyrics, chuckling, Vi huffing in amusement too, but then comes the last song and Caitlyn goes still.
She hears the question asked, the guitar strumming behind the words, and Caitlyn sits up, jaw falling open.
Vi looks at her, sheepish, that same cheeky grin she’s always had, her hand held in front of her with an open box and a ring inside of it.
When Caitlyn kisses Vi again, ring on her finger, Vi laughing against her mouth, she thinks—dreams do come true.