Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Flat on her back in bed at three AM, Caitlyn opens the Facebook page and scans the top posts. It’s full of things ranging from medical history to clinical experiences to advice. No one’s posted in the group for five months, but Caitlyn just got approved to enter, so clearly the moderator is still active. It’s probably unhinged of her to post so late. She has work the next morning, and Cassie has school. She needs sleep, but she knows she won’t be able to sleep with this buzzing around in her head. She’ll just make a quick post then go to sleep.

She tabs a new post and starts typing furiously.

Caitlyn C. Kiramman: Hello! This is my first time posting in a group like this so I’m not really sure what to say. I’m looking to connect with other recipient parents of this donor. I have a six year old daughter and live in northern Piltover. Any parents around here interested in a sibling meet up? 

She sends it into the void then shuts her phone off, slips it under her pillow and stares at her ceiling for another twenty minutes. 

It’s not that she’ll be disappointed if no one answers. Just because they share some DNA, doesn’t mean Cassie will have any more enthusiasm for them. She’ll likely be just as uninterested as she always is, Caitlyn doesn’t know why she’s trying. Cassie’s happy, and she's so young still. She has plenty of time to make some friends. She shouldn’t worry so much. It’s in a mother’s DNA to worry, though, and fuck, she is worried. She just doesn’t want Cassie to be alone like she was. It was so hard to try and plug herself into social situations as a teen when she’d never had any before, and Cassie had it so much harder than Caitlyn did, really Cait should be doing more to connect her with some peers. This sibling pod fever dream is hardly enough, especially given the odds that another recipient family lives anywhere close enough to meet up, let alone want to meet up. 

Her phone buzzes under her elbow. 

It’s probably her mother, messaging her about some last minute meeting on the morning’s books, or Jayce on a caffeine trip while he crunches numbers. But just in case it isn’t, Caitlyn digs her phone out and tilts the screen. 

Vi Lane commented on your post in Donor #55871 Recipient Parents Support Group.

The hour is insane, it’s probably a parent from another time zone letting her know they’re so far away, but Caitlyn launches into the app anyway, eyes straining against the bright glare. 

Vi Lane: Hey, welcome to the group. I’ve got a girl the same age and live in the area. We’d love to connect with you two. 

Teeth in her bottom lip, Caitlyn whips out her keyboard immediately. 

Caitlyn C. Kiramman: Excellent! I’ll PM you!

She clicks the woman’s profile and a picture of a stunning, chiseled woman with radioactive pink hair and a jaw that could fucking knock Caitlyn out pops up. The information she’s provided is sparse, no education, no place of residence or work experience, just her birthday and her relationship status—single. Caitlyn’s teeth are deep into her lip as she quickly scrolls down, but Vi doesn’t post much, and there are absolutely no photos of her daughter. It’s mostly shares of a bar called the Last Drop’s advertising posts. She clicks on the bar’s page and finds the address. It’s a bar in deep Zaun, which isn’t surprising. Vi looked Zaunite in every syllable of the word—the tattoos, the piercings, the alternative clothes, what’s surprising is that she’s willing to make the long trip into Piltover to meet up. Maybe she’s as desperate as Caitlyn is to give her daughter a place, or a person to go to. 

She transfers back to Vi’s page and friend requests her then starts a private message chain with her. 

Hey! Love that you want to meet up! This would be our first time connecting with a sibling. What days work best for you? 

Not three minutes later, Vi responds.

Hey, absolutely. I met up with a R. family a few years back as they were traveling through and it was a really amazing experience. I’m glad to have another opportunity for it. I can do Thursday nights or Sat-Monday mornings. Any of those work for you?

Caitlyn’s glad to hear that, even if it only heightens her anxiety. She’s dreamed of something like this since she went down the road of donor conception. She'd always wanted a sibling for Cassie like she never had, but that was off the table now. It was neither practical nor advisable.

Are you free this Saturday for a park playdate? She asks. Again, Vi answers without delay.

We are. Does 11:00 work for you? We always sleep in on Saturdays :)

Caitlyn rubs the delirium from her eyes. I haven’t slept in in so long :( Yes, 11 is perfect. I found this park right before the bridge on my side. Seems to have nice equipment and a picnic pavilion for us to chat. 

This next response takes a little longer, likely because Vi’s scoping out the link. She gives it a thumbs up. 

Someone did their research. That looks like a great spot. 

My kid’s a little insane btw. Does your girl like to play rough?

Heart in her toes, Caitlyn picks her lip ceaselessly. I’m afraid she doesn’t like to play at all. This is a very desperate attempt to get her some friends. 

She has to hold herself back from dumping a paragraph of worries on this poor stranger. She decides to write them down later—those are thoughts for her therapist. 

Well Nessa’s a friend to everyone, Vi tells her with a cute little smiling emoji. I’m sure they’ll get along. 

Caitlyn isn’t. She’s been devastated by too many playdates gone horribly wrong. She knows she has to keep trying, she can't give up like her parents did, but she can’t take another heartbreak on her little girl’s behalf. 

Cassie’s on the spectrum. She communicates perfectly well in her own ways but she’s very particular about everything. Once she shuts down it’s scorched earth.

She doesn’t have to say it, people take one look at her daughter and immediately draw a line of connection, but they also draft up a label and narrative for her in their heads, and she’s found that being as upfront as possible about her needs circumvents a lot of that, outwardly at least. 

To Vi’s credit, her next response doesn’t take long either.

Nessa’s got a cousin on the spectrum. She knows how to play gently but she’s got pretty severe ADHD so sometimes she needs structure too. 

The worry slowly building in Caitlyn’s ribs ebbs a bit. Only a bit; there are plenty of kids at the OT office Cait takes Cassie to twice a week with various neurological diversities but so far she hasn’t had any luck integrating Cassie or herself into those circles. For as much understanding as those parents give their own children, they don’t reserve much of it for others, especially other adults. There’s no guarantee Vi’s adjacency to AUDHD will seamlessly blend with Caitlyn’s. 

I’m glad you understand, she says, hoping, wishing, and praying for it to be true. 

Of course, I’m sure they’ll get along great. 

It’s only a text. Cait cannot derive a lick of emotion through the written words, but something about it seems so assertive, so assuring. For a brief, blissful moment, Caitlyn believes her. 

Feel free to let me know of any specific dos and don’ts before we meet up so I can pass it on to Nessa. She isn’t always the best with rules but, Janna, she gives it her all.

That’s more than any other parent has ever offered Caitlyn. It’s no guarantee, but it’s a damn good start. Caitlyn spends the next seventeen minutes writing down every possible trigger she can think of, then trims the list down to the largest and most detrimental, as well as a couple topics of interest for Cassie that’s sure to get her chatting.

Sleep is off the table now, she’s too nervous and way too excited. Caitlyn thrives on information. She needs to know every detail to prepare herself for…anything. When curiosity takes a hold of her, she thoroughly investigates. There’s a new, tugging thread of interest in this pretty Zaunite woman with a kid who’s got fifty percent of Cassie’s DNA sequence. She tugs the thread a little harder

So you said your daughter was Cassie’s age? When’s her birthday? 

Cassie did a year of DK and was one of the oldest in her grade, and yet, she was still the scrawniest child of them all. A year was so much time in terms of a kid’s development. The date mattered.

October 31st. 

Relief rushes Cait a second, third, or fourth time, she’s lost count. Oh my goodness, how sweet! Cassie’s the eighth. What was your DD? 

For as much trouble as text messages give her, Cait feels the disdain radiating off of Vi’s next response. Oct. 17th :(

Caitlyn physically cringes. She went nine days early with Cassie and even that felt like way too long to be that pregnant. If she’d had to go an extra nine days, she doesn’t think she’d have made it with all her sanity intact. Pregnancy was a sensory nightmare for her; nine months of sensory roulette where another one of her boundaries were constantly violated by her own body. The only sympathy she got from anyone was paired with, “well, you did want this after all…” or “every woman feels this way, don’t be so dramatic.” Just thinking about it takes her back and sets her spine straight. 

Oh my god, you poor thing. Strangely enough, mine was the nineteenth.

There’s a pause just long enough to make Cait worry, then: That is…very strange—well, unlikely. That’s a crazy coincidence.

It is pretty insane to think that Caitlyn and this woman would have been going to appointments at the same clinic at the same time and carrying tandem pregnancies without ever knowing the other. 

God, I hope it’s a sign, Caitlyn admits, though she’s already convinced it is. 

Let’s say it is. Clearly, Vi feels the same way.

Hey, let’s ditch Meta, Vi suggests. It’ll be easier if you just have my number. 

She inserts a forwarded contact. Caitlyn’s stunned to see that her full name is Violet, and double stunned to have the phone number to the hottest woman Cait’s ever seen sitting pretty in her contact book just like that. 

She puts a hold on those feelings, because she’s been down the road of gorgeous butches before and she’s been burned every time, and primarily because this is anything close to a romantic gesture. This meeting is all about Cassie. It’s entirely for her benefit, not Caitlyn’s. She won’t jeopardize that with any high school fawning 

***

Caitlyn closes out her messages app and rolls out of bed at five AM sharp and brushes her teeth and hair, does her yoga routine in her pajamas then showers everything but her hair, rebrushes it then dresses for the day in her typical wide-cut slacks and open suit coat. She looks more like an unrealistic crime-show cop than a high-profile lawyer. Some things are out of her hands though, she can’t handle waistbands that are too tight, nor can she stand her legs rubbing together so loose, forgiving pants are a must. If she does up the buttons of her jacket there’s too much fabric constricting her chest so it must stay open. Her bra must be strong enough to support her breasts without giving her a back ache while also not being so tight she can’t breathe. And as for her hair, it stays down and tucked behind her ears or slicked into a low pony. Updos are absolutely off the table. If her hair’s pulled higher than her earlobes she gets a splitting headache within minutes. 

Cassie’s the same way, but insists her hair be out of her face, so when Caitlyn gently wakes her up at seven with her favorite song, she immediately asks Caitlyn to undue her braids, brush them out then rebraid them fresh for school.

Caitlyn feels bad, because while she’s an adult now with the freedom to dress how she pleases, Cassie is restricted to the unforgiving crisp sleeves, ironed jacket, school-girl skirt and scratchy knee socks with closed shoes of her academy uniform. Caitlyn remembers it well, she suffered through the exact one throughout her entire lower education. She’s been in negotiations with the board ever since the school year started to get Cassie clearance to wear a larger shirt size and some damn pants. She already has so much stimuli pouring in during class it’s impossible for her to focus. The tortuous uniform doesn’t help her at all. Caitlyn hates her Alma Mater, hated it as a student for the same reason her daughter hates it, only now, Caitlyn hates it twice as much because her daughter is the one affected by their bullshit. She hates that bitch-ass disability resource coordinator most of all. She doesn’t know why she went into a profession dedicated to disabled children when she so clearly despises them all. If Caitlyn had her choice, she would've had Cassie in a new school closer to home after the very first incident, but her mother insists it's the best school in the region and Cassie's best chance at success. Caitlyn's just worried another, worse off school won't have the resources for Cassie either.

It’s a source of contention for her every morning as Cassie squirms and whines and sometimes cries while squeezing into her uniform. Today, she only grumbles about her belt being too tight, and once Caitlyn adjusts it for her moves on to brush her teeth of her own accord, which is another uncommon victory. 

It gives Cait the confidence to put on her favorite episode of Bluey while she makes their standard blueberry pancakes and sit her down, two undressed pancakes split between them and tell her of her mother’s scheming. 

“So we have some unusual plans this week, kit-cat,” she says, getting the whiteboard calendar down from the fridge and setting it beside them. “Wednesday you have a doctor’s appointment during the morning, so you’ll have to miss morning recess and your morning maths, but you’ll be back in time for reading.” 

Cassie doesn’t look up from cutting her plain pancake with a pair of child-safe scissors. “What are we going to do at the doctors?” she asks curiously. Her tone suggests otherwise, that she resents to switch in routine (which she does) but Caitlyn knows she just genuinely wants to know. 

“She’s going to weigh you to make sure you’re growing big and strong, and listen to your heart with a stethoscope probably, like Yéyé does sometimes, and she just might put a funny band on your arm that gives you a little squeeze like this.” She reaches across the table with clear intent and gives a quick, grim squeeze to her pencil-thin bicep. “It feels a bit strange but it’s a little fun,” she lies, setting up expectations for an otherwise traumatic event. 

Cassie finishes cutting her food to her approval and with a bite in her mouth, asks, “Are they gonna pinch me again?” She asks glumly. It’s bitter sweet for Caitlyn to confirm her worries. 

“Yes, unfortunately, they’ll need to poke you three times, but fortunately, you’re old enough to get some more vaccines to keep you healthy.” 

“What am I getting protected from?” 

Caitlyn genuinely adores her daughter’s curious spirit. Truth is, even after nearly six years of being a mother she still gets nervous about talking to her own kid. The constant flow of questions provides a guide to fall back on. And having a curious but informed child could never be a bad thing. 

Once Caitlyn exhausts all of Cassie’s questions about the doctor, she moves on in the week. “Today and Friday are the same as always. We’ll go see Miss Chori after school and on Friday, we’ll go to Yéyé and Nǎinai’s for dinner like usual.” 

Cassie sticks her tongue out in protest. Caitlyn sighs but doesn’t address it. She knows Cassie doesn’t enjoy family Friday night dinners and their wash of unpredictable routine, and neither truly does Caitlyn, but she refuses to disconnect from her parents entirely. Not only is she waiting for Cassie to warm up to some friends, but to her own grandparents as well. 

“On Saturday, however, we have something new and exciting planned.” 

That peaks Cassie’s interest. Her eyes shoot up for just a moment before darting back to her pancakes. 

“We’re going to a park to meet a new friend,” Caitlyn beams, hoping some of her enthusiasm transfers to Cassie. 

“Why?” She asks, nonplussed. 

“Because this is a special friend, and it’s good to meet new people, right?” 

“But I don’t wanna,” Cassie pouts, “Can I just go to the park with you?” 

Caitlyn swallows her returning worry and keeps her smile up. “Yes, I’ll be there the whole time, but we’re going to meet some special friends there, a girl exactly your age named Vanessa and her mother, Violet. Would you like to know why Nessa’s so special?” 

Eyes dark and mouth pinched, Cassie shrugs. Caitlyn rubs Cassie’s hand to let her know to look up at her mother so she might catch some of her smile. 

“She’s your sister.” 

Cassie clearly doesn’t know what to do with that information as she immediately looks back in her lap and shoves pancake in her mouth. 

“You don’t have another baby,” she speaks up finally, bless her, sounding so perturbed. 

“No, I don’t, but the same man who helped me make you helped Vanessa’s mommy make her, and since you both have the same donor, the two of you are half-sisters. Isn’t that exciting?” 

Cassie’s attention peaks again. “I have a sisser?” she lisps through her missing front teeth. 

From a rudimentary peruse of the Facebook page, she has a couple. Three counting Vanessa and five brothers. 

“You do. Wouldn’t you like to meet her?” 

Pancake in her puffed out cheeks, Cassie gives a tiny nod. 

“Does she like puzzles?” 

Caitlyn grins. “I’m not sure. It would be a little irresponsible to bring a puzzle to the park but you can ask her if she likes them and maybe she could come over sometime to complete one with you?”

That seems to do the job captivating her. She gets a chipper little grin as she finishes her pancake. On the way to school, she asks question after question about her “sisser”. Caitlyn happily answers each one to the best of her ability. By the time they pull into the drop off line, Cassie’s whining about having to wait the whole week to meet her, and Cait can’t help but agree. She’s eager to meet Vanessa’s mother—er Vanessa too.

Chapter Text

Vi’s alarm rudely wakes up at six. It’s rude because her phone is stuck to her face where she fell asleep mid-text to Caitlyn around five. The alarm blares right into her ear drum, waking her up with a heart attack. She rushes to silence it without disturbing the sleeping six-year-old on her arm. Vanessa doesn’t even flinch, though Bagel spring boards off her feet. It’s a miracle he doesn’t bark though so she excuses the sore toes.

After rubbing the exhaustion from her stiff eyes, she curls in a bit tighter around Vanessa, kissing her wildly messy hair and spitting it out when it sticks to her lips. She successfully disentangles herself and creeps downstairs to let the dog out in the pathetic little alley they call a yard, standing with her hands in her armpits in the drizzly rain until he relieves himself, sniffs everything twice and comes trotting back inside without a care in the world. He darts off the moment they’re inside so Vi abandons her dream of wiping his muddy paws and resigns herself to streaky floors. She follows him to the kitchen where he’ll be impatiently waiting for his breakfast. 

The coffee pot is empty. The grounds from last night sit unused in the filter, the timer still blinks for five-thirty AM, never having been set. Vi would rather walk over coals than wait the ten-ish minutes the coffee will take to brew in her current delirium so she cracks open a Celsius from the back of the fridge and mainlines 200 mg of caffeine on an empty stomach. 

She kills time in the kitchen, standing at the counter in her Popeye boxers with the aroma of bitter brewing coffee in the air and the taste of artificial grape on her tongue while she checks her phone for new messages. Her last line of communication with Caitlyn had been her own unfinished, “what kind of sweets does Cassdddddoj”. She deletes the whole line and calls it a wash. She’ll play it safe. What kid didn’t like sugar cookies?

At six-seventeen, the coffee finishes, catching Vi off guard. She’d been too invested re-reading her and Caitlyn’s sleep-addled texts. She pours a measure into a lightweight, insulated cup, leaving the lid off to cool while mixes a teaspoon of a nasty slurry to thicken the coffee to something just firmer than a smoothie. She gets a second lidded cup with a straw and fills it with room temp water from the sink. She puts a single piece of toast down and while it browns, pours out the tray of Monday’s pills onto a sectioned silicone baby plate, complete with a suction bottom. The toast is up by the time she counts that each pill is present so she butters it minimally and dusts it with a bit of everything bagel seasoning then juggles it all down her arms to the first door down the upstairs hall. The light is on when she approaches, so she knocks with her elbow and knees it open. 

Her dad sits half-upright in bed, half-lidded eyes still peeling back as she slips into the room. He opens his mouth to greet her but nothing but air comes out. 

“Morning, Dad,” she greets for him, setting down her haul on the bedside table. “We talking today?” She asks while she rearranges his pillows for him. He pushes himself up and opens his eyes fully, but it’s still some time, and several sips of water later before her clears his throat like he’s coughing up a demon. 

“Morning…” his eyes go momentarily blank as his mouth makes unfamiliar shapes. “Sweetheart,” he settles on. 

Vi parts his hair from his eyes and brushes his hairline with a kiss. “What’s the damage? Do you need the bathroom now or later?” He waves her off in enough of an answer. “How are we feeling?” She picks up the desk tray from beside the bed and sets it over his lap, then rewards him with his coffee and toast. He doesn’t touch it, instead watching her carefully as she goes about the room, opening the blinds and switching on soft lights.

“I’m fine today,” he decides, though he sounds unconvinced. When she looks back at him to gauge his honesty, his eyes are drooping significantly and he’s staring somewhere slightly past her. “—But, uh…” he swallows again, and not for any physical delay. “Which one are you?”

Vi feels the half can of Celsius hit her all at once, then pass right through her. She looks away before her face can reveal her horror, instead she sees herself in the bathroom mirror and reveals it to herself. Vander’s been getting so much better, better enough to get up on his own again maybe, and he’s never had any loss of memory before. She knows that's always been on the table, she just never thought it could be so sudden like this. She’d fish him out of bed and move him around all day if it ensured he knew who was doing it.

“I…” she mirrors him with her own floundering. “It’s Vi, Dad.” Despite how small and powerless he makes her feel, she watches his expression closely for any recognition. He looks at her strangely and lifts his hand without struggle to cover his heart as his posture drops. 

“No, I…” he laughs through his next wince. “I know who you are, sweetheart. I meant…are you closer to the bed or the door?” He points to two adjacent spots as the caffeine hits her again and stays, shaking her whole body with nervous jitters. 

“Janna, Dad, you can’t fucking do that,” she sniffs, busying herself with retrieving clutter from around room. “Next time just say your vision’s doubling—the door.”

He nods and sets his sight in her direction at last. “Not trying to scare you.” He says slowly, each word a concession his body allows him. “Just…can’t make my words work today.” He closes his eyes and the tension slips from his brow so Vi sits on the edge of the mattress beside him and holds the straw to his thickened coffee to his mouth. He takes a couple of strained sips before turning his jaw away. 

“Give,” he says before going silent again. He accepts the coffee when she offers it a second time. “Toast,” he says minutes later, holding his hand up blindly. “Myself.” 

She hands it to him, guiding it to his mouth once and wrapping his swollen fingers around his coffee cup. 

“Coffee’s in the usual cup,” she says softly, “Water’s in the silicone one.” She rubs the edge of the water cup on the back of his palm to associate the two for him. “Eat your breakfast. I’m going to get ready.”

He doesn’t answer but from the hallway she thinks she hears him repeat, “Myself,” a couple of times. She blots her tears on the hem of her tank.

She gets ready in the dark as she does most days that Nessa ends up sleeping in her bed, which is most days. Not that Vi would ever complain about it. Nessa rarely ever even wakes her up, Vi just wakes up to her baby snuggled up beside her in an otherwise empty bed. Once dressed and tidied, she lets Nessa sleep and peaks her head in Vander’s room. He’s still working on that piece of toast, probably cold and hard now, so she takes it from him to soften in the microwave even though he hates it like that. He has to take his meds before seven and he can’t have them on an empty stomach so microwaved bread it is. 

She puts a load of laundry in while he finishes and after she’s watched him swallow every pill, she puts on her nurse gloves (literally) and preps his arm for the injection. His arm is so numb in that spot now he asks her when she’s going to administer the shot after she’s already disposed of the needle. 

She gets the shower running and breaks the seal of a fresh catheter, lining up all the parts on the counter where they are easily reached from the toilet.

“On your feet big guy,” she says, peeling back the covers and extracting him limb by limb. Once on his feet, he can physically walk, though he leans on her heavily and his posture is all lopsided and his free arm is now strangely flexed away from him. It goes back down as soon as he sits on the toilet seat and he inserts the catheter with minimal assistance. Vi cleans up while he showers himself except his hair since he cannot lift his arms above his head with any coordination. She washes it in the sink for him and lets him attempt to brush it while she picks some choices of clothes to wear. She suspects his vision is more than doubling because he picks a shirt and sweater that absolutely do not go together in any light. She lets him wear it anyway and next gives him the choice of his chair in the living room or the dining room. He chooses the living room so he can watch cartoons with Nessa which means all her responsibilities have been attended to and now she’s arrived at her favorite part of each morning. 

She re-enters her room and this time turns on the lights and goes about finishing getting ready for the day, opening dresser drawers and brushing her teeth with the door open. 

Nessa’s groaning and burrowing into the mattress when Vi comes out. 

“Mama…” she moans irritably, rolling away from Vi as she climbs back into bed and pulls her closer. 

“It’s that time again, pumpkin,” Vi murmurs, successfully pulling her closer. Nessa buries herself in Vi’s chest instead of sheets and the process repeats.

“Don’t wanna.” 

“Me neither but we gotta.” 

She checks her phone for the time. They’re a little behind as usual. Vi never has enough time in the day to do everything she needs to. 

Bagel hears the activity and comes to check it out. Seeing his humans cuddling without him he jumps up and starts excitedly licking their faces. Nessa shouts for him to stop between her giggles as she hides herself further in her mother, subjecting her to the majority of the kisses. Vi takes them only for so long before stopping his face with her hand and rewarding his bad behavior with the pets he desires. 

“Come on…It’s time for this pumpkin to leave the patch,” she declares, scooping Nessa from the blankets and carrying her into the bathroom. She’s still rubbing sleeping eyes when Vi hands her her toothbrush and starts her timer. Nessa glares at her resentfully while she swings her feet against the cabinet and lazily drags the bristles over her teeth. “Put some muscle into it,” Vi teases as she roots through the top drawer. “How are we doing your hair today?” 

“Pig-braids,” Nessa mumbles around the brush, a foamy trail of spittle slipping down her chin. 

Vi sets aside the hairbrush and a few elastics. “Clips?” 

“Butter fries.”

She starts brushing while Nessa spits and rinses in the sink and takes her meds. Brushing her hair is like a live dissection, untangling the crisscrossing sections of hair that get knotted every which way no matter what Vi does to protect it. She swears she goes through a bottle of detangler each week. Nessa's curls are persistent, but untrained. One day after wash, they fall right out into undefined waves. Vi adores her daughter’s hair no matter what it looks like, such a rich, marbled brown like both of Vi’s father with an almost purple undertone in sunlight, but she is a little out of her depth here. Powder was an easy kid—two dutch braids every day of her life for fifteen years. She cut it recently, strikingly just below her chin. Nessa expressed interest in cutting her hair several times now but is a little anxious to commit. As much as she loves Nessa’s long beautiful hair, Vi’s rooting for the day she no longer has to keep up with rocket science to get her hair in a single ponytail. 

“What should we have for breakfast?” She asks, holding out her arms for Nessa to hop from the counter into. She sets her seamlessly on the floor and steers her to her own bedroom. 

“Pancakes and bacon?” Nessa requests, rooting through the specific T-shirt she’d wanted to wear. Vi had meant to find it for her the night before, but she’d forgotten. 

“And eggs?” Vi negotiates, holding in her laughs as Nessa climbs her way into a pair of jeans a size too big for her. Vi rolls the cuffs for her.

“With cheese?” Nessa wobbles on one foot. Vi doesn’t need her to lift her leg, so she guides it back to the ground and stabilizes her. 

“Eggs with cheese,” Vi concedes, helping with the arm of her shirt when her elbow twists in it. 

“Go pack your bag. Papa’s waiting in the living room when you’re finished.” Nessa darts off, leaving Vi to pick up her discarded clothes and dump them in her hamper. 

She swears she only spends five minutes tidying up, but Nessa’s voice calls impatiently from the hall. “Mama, where’s my lunch?” 

“I don’t know,” Vi shouts back, abandoning the fruitless task of cleaning to join her in the kitchen. “Where’d you put it?” 

Nessa parrots her tone perfectly. “I don’t know.” 

Vi recounts the past night—park, soccer, homework at table twelve during the after dinner rush, late dinner, late bath, late bedtime. “Nes, you’re supposed to pack your lunch every night so we don’t have to scramble like this in the morning,” She sighs, rooting around for her favorite egg scrambling pan. Her kitchen’s a disorganized mess as usual. 

Nessa stares her down sternly. “You’re supposed to remind me.” 

Finally locating the pan, Vi’s hand tenses around the handle as the rest of her body goes slack, releasing all of the frustration building for her kid, before it turns right around on herself. “I am,” she acknowledges, tapping the list of daily tasks posted on the fridge to avoid moments exactly like that. “I’m sorry I forgot. We both have to do a better job remembering these things.” 

Remembering on their own to make their lunch every night is a big ask of any six-year-old, but for Vanessa it’s downright cruel. She just can’t hold onto details like that, even immovable everyday routines like this. Most six-year-olds get perfect, balanced lunches made by hand with love from the mother every day, never worrying if they’ll have something to eat during the school day, but Vi can’t even manage to remind her kid to make it herself. 

“Go get your box, we’ll make it quick.” 

“But I wanna watch Bluey with Papa,” she pouts. 

Vi rinses her empty Celsius in the sink and immediately pours a large cup of coffee. “Then quit wasting time and go get your lunch box.” 

Unimpressed, Nessa thuds all the way down the hall. It’s a good thing their only downstairs neighbors are rowdy drunks. “Can’t I just buy school lunch?” she whines, slumping back up the hall with her dollar store lunchbox in hand.

Vi doesn’t look up from the vegetable drawer she’s sifting through. “No.” The peppers she bought just three days ago are shriveled and the cucumbers are slimy. Nessa won’t touch either. Vi will still eat the peppers but the cucumbers can go. She throws them out and quickly rinses some baby carrots so they won’t look so dry when she offers them to Nessa. 

“Isha gets school lunch all the time,” she grumbles, deeming the carrots acceptably moisturized. 

“Well Isha’s mommy makes a lot more money than I do,” she says quietly, with the intention of Nessa not hearing her at all. 

“Isha’s mommy is your sister!” she says like Vi must have forgotten. “Can’t she share some money with you?” 

Vi’s glad her face is between the refrigerator doors. She doesn’t want to see how twisted it gets. “She does, Pumpkin,” she says just as softly as before, but with notable intention. “Just not for school lunch when we’ve got cheaper food at home.”

Nessa gets contemplative as she scoops a few skimpy handfuls of carrots into the veggie slot of her lunch tray. “For Papa?” 

Sighing, Vi takes an extra long sip sip of coffee. “Yeah, for Papa, now, come on, pick two snacks from the drawer then get what you want on your sandwich out. Okay?” 

Satisfied with Vi’s reasoning, Nessa starts her next task with newfound intensity. “Okay, Mama.” 

Vi glances the time and grimaces. She’s only got ten minutes. 

“Hey, no time for bacon or pancakes today. We spent too much time squabbling and being sleepy. Can we do sausage and toast instead?” 

All the way extended on her toes, Nessa nods and carries a jar of peanut butter over with both hands. Vi gets a glob out for her and transfers it to one half of the bread before tasking her with rubbing the two slices together.

While the turkey sausages spin in the microwave, Vi approves of her cobbled lunch—carrots, applesauce pouch, goldfish and a peanut butter sandwich. For today, it will have to do. 

She starts putting down as many toast slices that will fit in the toaster. The sausage is still spinning when the door to the apartment opens and two crazy kids rush in. Nessa forgets all promises of cartoons with her Papa and runs to greet them. Powder brings up the rear, clicks the bolt in the lock behind her then herds the kids further down the hall to let her through. She’s wearing an oversized hoodie a bit too heavy for the still-pleasant fall weather but she pulls it off as always. 

“Morning, Pow,” Vi calls from inside the fridge as she looks for the cheese. “Running a little late.” 

“Can I do anything?” Powder asks, squeezing past the chattering kids. The toast pops up so she starts platting them without being asked. 

“You can sit down,” Vi scolds as she sprinkles cheese over the solidifying pan of eggs. “How are you feeling?”

She shrugs, and pours herself less than half a cup of coffee. “Fine for once.” She looks a little too peaky for Vi to believe her.

“Have you eaten yet? Steal a banana.” She brandishes one at Powder till she takes it. 

“Sit down, monkeys,” she commands as she peels it on her way to the hall. “Breakfast will be ready soon.” 

“You sit down!” Vi retaliates, but Powder ignores her. 

“I’m going to see Dad!” She flips Vi off when the kids aren’t looking.

“Okay, who wants what to drink?”  Vi asks, retrieving the plate of sausages from the microwave with a towel. 

“Apple,” Nessa orders from her usual seat then promptly goes back to talking at her cousins. 

“Orange juice, please,” Claggor’s ever respectful son requests. 

Vi’s already pouring their cups. “What do you want, Isha?” 

She doesn’t answer, but when Vi looks up at her, she’s pointing at Nessa. 

“Okay, two apple juices and an orange coming up.” Vi gives Isha and Phineas theirs first. “For you, sir, madame.” She slides Nessa her cup too. “For you, pumpkin.” 

Vi turns her attention back to the food—the unbuttered toast, the murderously hot sausage links, the steaming eggs—Bagel bobbing and weaving in and out of her way, scraping the floor for scraps of dropped cheese. She isn’t sure what’s her first priority—plates, probably, they need those, and silverware, and she should probably ensure the eggs aren’t burning, which they are, kind of, but they’re still edible— 

“Vi?” Powder says from the door, holding half her banana. “Dad needs help getting in here.” 

Vi blinks at her. Powder blinks back. “Okay?” 

Powder shrugs. “Are you gonna...?” 

Vi looks down at the scorched eggs, then the undressed toast. “Yeah, okay, uh…watch these eggs.” She shoves the spatula in Powder’s hands and barrels past her. 

“Should’ve known we wouldn’t make it to cartoons this morning,” she huffs, counting off her Dad for lift off. “I’m on fire today, Dad,” she laughs, but it’s a bit wetter than intended. He only smiles strangely at her. It looks dangerously close to the face she made in the fridge just now. 

Vi remembers the whirlwind mornings of her childhood—crowded quarters as the four of them  clamored for the bathroom and the kitchen all while Vander commanded them like a ship’s captain and had breakfast on the table by eight every day in elementary school, then by a crisp 6:30 from middle school onward. How had he done it everyday without fail? How had he continuously shown up for all of them?

There’s a chorus of little ‘hi papa’s, (both spoken and signed) when they arrive at the table. Powder’s got it set with the toast on a plate, the sausage on a paper towel and the pan of eggs perched on top of a towel. She’s even got a coaster over Vi’s forgotten cup of coffee to keep the heat in. 

Vander makes Vi pause at each grandchild to award them a little kiss good morning before sitting at his usual seat at the head. Vi would take the other head, beside her daughter, but Vander’s a choking hazard. Toast is one thing, but she cuts his eggs and sausage up as small as she cuts the kids’ and lifts his water to his mouth to prep the vessel. 

The kids talk at various speeds and volumes about their expectations for the day. Vander sometimes answers with telling expressions but mostly it’s Vi and Powder quietly following along and providing various asides. 

Phineas is asking for seconds when Vander finally speaks up. “Why’re my girls not eating?” He says sternly, like they’re fifteen and twelve skipping out on a bowl of cereal before the bus comes.

Vi looks down, surprised to see her plate is indeed empty. Powder’s is too, but she’s breathing so thinly into her hand anyone could see her excuse. What’s Vi’s? 

“Ate beforehand today,” Powder explains, plastering a smile over the uncomfortable angle of her lips. “Ekko made me breakfast before he left.” 

Vander accepts her answer, and turns her wrath solely to Vi. She still hasn’t thought of an excuse. Honestly, Vi was never hungry in the mornings during their shared, before-school-breakfasts. If allowed to run her own show, she’d go until ten at night before remembering to eat, at which point she’d be absolutely starving and eat through half her fridge. For that exact reason, she always makes herself eat at the normal, expected times even if she has no desire to. She loves food, but eating is such a chore it’s taken all the fun out of it. 

She loads up on sausage and eggs and leaves the extra toast for the kids. It smells good but tastes like rubber once it’s in her mouth. Everyone else seems to eat it just fine, even Isha who’s the pickiest of them all. It doesn’t make her stomach turn, but the meal is just unexciting. 

The kids finish early and all beg to watch a show before Powder drives them all to school. They have the time for maybe an episode and a half of Bluey so they get banished to the living room while Powder and her clean up. 

“So…” Vi slides a washed, dripping plate over to Powder for her to dry. “I gotta tell you two something crazy.” 

Powder stacks the plate in the cabinet, “Spill.” 

“Ness has a sibling in Piltover. I just talked with her mom last night. We’re gonna meet up on Saturday. 

“That’s really incredible,” Powder acknowledges her eyebrow raising as squabbling about the remote radiates from the living room, “but crazy? I mean, you live forty minutes from the clinic.” 

Vi blinks the heat away from her face. The eerily coincidental details of this discovery haven’t lost their novelty. “No, the crazy part would be that the girls are only two weeks apart.” 

“Oh, damn.” Powder whistles, “Donor daddy was busy.” 

Vi makes a face, but let’s slide. “More like very popular. What’s freakier is apparently our due dates were two days off.” 

Powder steps back, eyes lit with murderous glee. “What if they came from the same…” She makes a crude gesture that makes even Vander laugh at her antics.

“That’s not how it works…” Vi laughs, but her uncertainty settles over her like a wet blanket. “Holy shit…”

Powder flicks her wet fingers triumphantly “Thank you, exactly! Even if it was frozen splunk, what if it came from the same cache?”

Vi can’t stop grinning as she thinks about the absurdities of this. She isn’t a superstitious person so she isn’t sure what kind of sign this is, but there’s no way it isn’t. Stars don’t align like this unless it’s meant to be.

Powder splashes her with more water. “Why are you grinning all stupid like that?” 

Vi flicks her back. “I don’t know, I just…feel really good about this. I’ve always wanted to give her the choice of connecting with her siblings but it’s never been practical, but by some crazy coincidence, she’s had a sister forty minutes uptown this whole time.”

“I have a sister?” Nessa’s sharp little voices break up the conversation as she and Isha suddenly inhabit the doorway. Her mouth is wide, her eyes wider, glistening with her child-like awe.

“What?” Vi says, then processes what she’s said. “No, uh, well yes, remember you’ve got a couple sisters that live far away?” 

The disappointment is instant. Still tripping over herself, Vi scrambles to course correct. “Well, I found out today that one lives pretty close, and soon, you’ll get to meet her.” Her hand on her hip, her fingers splay out a little further than intended. Nessa clocks it in seconds, her eyes doubling their previous doubled size. 

“Do you have a baby in there?” She points to Vi’s hand suspiciously brushing her lower ribs. Completely oblivious to the correlation, Vi whirls to correct even harder, pulling her T-shirt up to her ribs to showcase her, admittedly not as firm as it once was, abdomen. 

“Girl, where do you think I’m fitting a baby in here?” she teases, side-eyeing Powder’s immensely entertained expression. Nessa’s not amused though, and her eyes are glistening for an entirely separate reason now. “I meant one of your donor siblings.” 

Nessa blinks at her strangely. She’s no stranger to the details of her conception—Vi’s kept no secrets form her on that account. They’ve talked about her siblings before, how they weren’t really her siblings, but that didn't mean she couldn’t have a relationship with them someday if she wanted. Nessa had never really been in want of a sibling or even just a friend, between her cousins and her school mates, and the usual hectic pace of their lives, the topic rarely came up. 

“I want a real sister,” she mumbles. “I don’t wanna play with her if she’s just gonna go away again.”

“What do you mean?”

“My other sister only stayed for like an hour and she never came back.” 

Vi grimaces. She remembers Nessa, barely four years old and so, so sweet, asking for weeks when her big sister was going to come back to play. It had been harder than Vi expected to tell her she wouldn’t be. Vi remembered that well, she’d assumed that Nessa wouldn’t.

“Well, Sofia lives across an ocean. That’s why you only met her once. Cassie lives across the bridge. You two could see each other lots if you both wanted.”

Nessa tucks a nervous hand inside the fold of her arm and rocks on her toes, “You promise?” 

“I promise that you can ask Cassie and her mom if they’d want that when we meet with them on Saturday.”

Nessa’s mouth parts in dismay. “I have to wait all week to ask?” 

Vi’s just glad Nessa’s impatience is her biggest concern. “It’ll give you something to look forward to.” By her look alone, Vi can tell Nessa’s mind is moving a mile a minute calculating the different possibilities to come. She wasn’t an anxious thinker, more like an eager thinker. When she got an idea in her head she just couldn’t put it to bed until the thought had been thoroughly exhausted. She was a little like Vi in that way. Vi could get stuck on things, too many things—so many things she never finished anything. “Don’t focus on it too much. You pay attention in school today, okay?” 

“Okay,” Nessa grumbles, slighted at her enthusiasm so quickly condemned. 

“Go put your shoes on. You guys have to head out soon.” Vi bends to squeeze a goodbye hug from her. “We can talk more about this later, alright, Pumpkin?” 

Nessa squirms out of the embrace impatiently, already itching toward the door—the sooner she got to school the sooner the day would be over and the sooner she’d get to meet her sister. 

“Hey! I love you! Be nice to Mrs. Hannis today—hey, lunch. Don’t forget your lunch.” Vi leans across the counter to reach the forgotten lunchbox and passes it from Powder to Nessa. 

“Alright, girlie, shoes for you too,” Powder directs, steering Isha by her shoulders to the door. “Phin! Time to go!” Phineas shouts something back about never having found the remote and Vi remembers suddenly she’d left it in the bathroom when she’d replaced its batteries the night prior. 

“What’s that?” Powder asks when Isha beckons to whisper something in her ear. Powder laughs a bit too loudly before pulling it back. “What, you want a sister now too?”

Vi chokes on her coffee and has to abandon the whole ship and spit it into the sink. She’s sure Powder gives her a dirty look but she doesn’t turn around to confirm it. Vander looks at her strangely enough.

“Well, you know, kid, you gotta put in the proper paperwork for that..”

Vi’s still holding in her laugh when a rushed, chipper little, “Bye, Mama,” comes from the front door. 

Phone in hand to check her incoming messages, Vi calls back, “Bye, Ness.” 

“Bye, Auntie Vi, Bye papa!” 

Vander smiles so wide it’s a shame Phineas doesn’t see it. He waves to the wall. 

“Papa says bye!” Vi shouts back, the door clicking shut soon after.

Vi breathes in the silence as it settles back into the apartment. Truthfully, Vi doesn’t do well with silence. She likes the chaos, she likes her hectic mornings and late nights. Silence, she doesn’t really know how to deal with. 

Her phone buzzes. It’s an unsaved number, but Vi gathers right away that it’s Caitlyn. 

Cassie has asked non-stop about this playdate. I can’t quite tell it’s because she’s excited or concerned but she’s definitely intrigued. I cannot express how grateful and excited I am to meet you both. 

Vi hides her grin in her next sip of coffee. Just told Ness myself. She’s already talking about future playdates…

Oh, sweet girl. Though I’m afraid I’ve promised Cassie that she only has to meet with her once if she doesn’t enjoy their time together. 

A nervous little knot starts coiling in Vi’s stomach. Understandable. I’ll try to keep expectations low. There’s no way she’s walking back what Vanessa’s already established in her head. Vi dangled a relationship over her head prematurely. If it all went poorly, it would be Vi taking the blame from Nessa’s heartbreak. I really hope they get along. 

There’s a pause in response just long enough for Vi to refill Vander’s coffee cup and add a spoonful of thickener. 

She tips back her head and drains the rest of her cup as Caitlyn’s answer comes in. 

If Vanessa’s anywhere near as lovely as you’ve been about this I’m sure they will.

Vi’s coffee goes halfway down her neck. Vander’s laughing in stitches as she hands him his cup. 

“Should put thickener in your coffee.”

Chapter Text

Snacks, headphones, fidgets—so many the bag is overflowing—Caitlyn checks Cassie’s backpack again. She’s got all her favorite snacks packed—chocolate cookies, crackers, blueberries (in an insulated thermos so they stay cold,) and Goldfish, just in case Cassie decides to mix it up. In the center pocket are three headphones—the larger pair that don’t squeeze her head as much, the smaller one that blocks sound more effectively, and earbuds, which Cassie doesn’t at all care for. Caitlyn keeps them in the bag in case she ever asks for them but Caitlyn herself uses them more than Cassie ever does. The zipper bag of fidgets has all of Cassie’s favorite comforts. Caitlyn bought two new ones for this day specifically, but she had to throw one out because the rubber smell was so vile she nearly threw it out the seventh-story window. The other new one, she’s keeping in her coat pocket in case she needs to whip it out as a distraction, or hopefully, as a prize for a job well done. She thinks she has everything Cassie could need, but she checks the bag a fourth time just to be sure. 

If Cassie has a meltdown because of Caitlyn’s incompetence, Caitlyn might just throw herself out the window too. Caitlyn needs this playdate to go well. She needs Cassie to prove she can do this. Caitlyn knows she can, she’s such an infectiously happy little girl when all the stars align. Once you get her talking, you can’t get her to stop. Caitlyn knows she has it in her, she just has to figure out the tools to help her do it. If it goes poorly, that’s a failure of Caitlyn’s, not Cassie’s.

She sets the bag on the counter beside the two water bottles offset with a splash of pink lemonade to disguise the tastelessness of water. Seated on a kitchen barstool, Cassie fists a fork and a crayon in either hand, scribbling around the greasy coloring book page with one hand while the other delivers bites of blueberry pancake. There aren’t any pieces of pancake left though, her fork blindly strays the empty plate, her eyes never leaving her coloring book.

“Cassie? Are you finished eating?” 

Cassie doesn't react to her name, but Caitlyn watches her eyes narrow in consideration. 

“Do you want any more breakfast?” Caitlyn clarifies, “yes or no?” 

They’ll need to leave soon, but she’d rather they be a little late and well fed. A hungry Cassie is a grumpy Cassie. 

Cassie thinks about it, then shakes her head and returns to her coloring. 

Caitlyn stopped assuming the unsaid with Cassie years ago. She reaches for the plate but doesn’t touch it. “Can I clean this plate?” 

Cassie nods, replacing the fork with another crayon and double-fisting the sea of scribbles. 

“I have snacks in your bag if you get hungry later. Do you want five minutes to finish coloring or are you ready to leave?” 

Cassie’s head whips up to read the microwave clock, her narrowed eyes bursting with anticipation. “I’m ready!” she proudly declares, dropping her crayons and jumping from the stool. She rushes for the door with nothing but socks on her feet. 

“Put on shoes and a coat, please,” Caitlyn orders as she does a preliminary rinse of their breakfast dishes before slipping them into the dishwasher and running it. She dislikes the smell of the cleaning pod so she always coordinates to run it while they're out of the apartment. 

It will probably be a bit too warm to need a jacket, but Caitlyn knows to be prepared. Cassie picks her favorite sneakers—the Velcro ones with flashing lights in the heel. She puts them on all by herself and that has Caitlyn tearing up for unexpected reasons. 

“I’m ready!” She repeats in emphasis, tugging on Caitlyn’s arm as she laces up her own sneakers. Her outfit would look cute with her strappy sandals, but the uneven ground of wood-chips at the park would bode horribly with that, as would her comfort. Comfort over fashion, unfortunately. Another thing Caitlyn’s given up on is looking remotely fashionable. She dresses to the occasion when she has too, but otherwise it’s loose T-shirts and comfortable joggers and tennis shoes. Mel tells her she does look cute—a cute mom—but from such a glamorous woman, the sentiment falls a little short. At least today, Caitlyn made the effort to match her joggers with her jacket. 

Cassie runs down the hall to the elevator where she bounces impatiently, spamming the button while Caitlyn gets distracted from locking up with her buzzing phone. 

Are you guys dog people?

She has Vi’s number saved as just “Vi”. It feels arbitrarily too soon to be on a first, no last name basis, given the fact they’ve never met in person, but what other Vis does Caitlyn know?

We love dogs! 

Caitlyn had dogs growing up. They’d been her only friends until the age of fourteen. She’d cried for weeks when they passed away a month before she left for college. Cassie loved dogs too, the only reason she ever ended up agreeing to visit Caitlyn’s parents was because of their two Dobermans, but Caitlyn hadn’t yet found the time or the strength to bring a pet into their home, too busy with Cassie and much too sensitive for another heartbreak. 

She gives Cassie her headphones before they enter the parking garage so the echoes won’t derail her. Cassie takes them off the moment she’s buckled into her car seat and Caitlyn plays some gentle music with the depth of cotton candy. 

“Are we getting cake pops?” she asks the second Caitlyn pulls the car into the coffee shop’s drive through. 

“Yes, we’re getting some cake pops for you and Vanessa to share at the park.” Caitlyn orders the requested strawberry flavor and two iced vanilla lattes. She isn’t sure what kind of coffee, if any Vi drinks but a vanilla latte is inoffensive and enjoyable for all.

“Mommy, can I have mine?” Cassie asks impatiently after Caitlyn puts the bag on the front seat instead handing it directly to her. 

“We’ll have them at the park,” Caitlyn tells her. Cassie’s unimpressed. 

“But I want mine now.”

“These are for us to share with Vanessa and her mommy when we meet them, kit-cat.” 

“But you’re drinking your coffee.” 

So she is, Caitlyn sets hers down and doesn’t touch it but Cassie keeps going. Caitlyn had really wanted the girls to share the treats together, but there was no actual reason they had too. It wasn’t worth starting off on a grumpy foot so she hands Cassie the cake pop with a caveat. 

“You can have this now, but I only bought two and the other one is for Vanessa to eat, okay?” 

“Okay, Mommy.”

“If you have this now you won’t have one to eat with Vanessa later.” 

Cassie glares at the rear-mirror, her grabby little hands stretched out wide. “Okay, Mommy.” 

Caitlyn raises her eyebrow, pulling the treat back a little further. “I don’t appreciate you speaking to me that way, but here you are.” She leans far enough for Cassie to reach. A warm little hand brushes her in the transfer. 

“Thank you, Mommy,” she murmurs, eyes out the window. 

“You’re welcome,” Cait softens as they merge into a fast lane. 

“Mommy?” Cassie whispers once her cake pop is crumbs. Her legs are bouncing and her little face is puckered up. 

She doesn’t like Caitlyn getting stern with her. It makes Caitlyn feel heartless for the simplest of boundaries or redirections. She was the same way as a child, any scolding from her parents or teachers, no matter how small, sent her into tears and then full on spirals once she hit secondary. It makes perfect sense to her that a sensitive mother made a sensitive daughter. She wonders how her own mother managed to be so firm with her without feeling like her heart would bleed out of her ribs.

“Can we play quiet until we get there?” 

Caitlyn smiles encouragingly. She can tell herself in the middle of the night that the therapies and the strategies don’t work and Cassie’s as unequipped as she was a year ago when she received her diagnosis, but a year, ago Cassie never would’ve recognized her need for silence and she never would’ve had the tools to ask for it. Caitlyn feels wildly out of her depth most days, and she knows there is so much work still to be done but it's the little things that keep her going. 

“Thank you for asking,” she praises, turning off the radio. “Your headphones are in your backpack.”

Caitlyn doesn’t mind the silence. She doesn’t particularly like it either. She feels neutral about it mostly. Too much sound has her retracting into herself like Cassie, but too much quiet rattles her thoughts. She isn’t so rattled now as she is antsy. Her week has been an anxious, eager blur, her mind fascinated with the hypothetical of meeting Vanessa and her mother. Cassie has never met with a donor sibling, but neither has Caitlyn met with another parent of a donor-conceived child. As much as she’d like Cassie to get a friend out of this, she wouldn’t mind making one herself. If their children hate each other, or are terribly indifferent, is it odd for Caitlyn to still speak with Vi? About more than their kids, that is. 

Caitlyn has friends…she chats with her co-workers acceptably well and Jayce and Mel, of course, but…She doesn’t have any mom friends. Gods, she’s just as unsociable as her kid. No wonder the two of them are so closely glued at the hip. 

Her best friend is a six-year-old. Her six-year-old. 

Maybe Cassie isn’t the only one who needs this to work out. 

***

They arrive seven minutes late, which Caitlyn feels terribly about until she realizes Vi isn’t yet there either. She gives Cassie the option of staying in the car for a while or getting out and exploring the playground on her own. As always, when given the chance to get out the confines of her car seat, Cassie elects to explore the jungle gym, with the caveat that Caitlyn venture alongside her. She hopes this time allows Cassie to get comfortable with her surroundings rather than bored of them before Vi and Vanessa even arrive. 

A dinged up van that looks as if it’s from a different century pulls into the lot nineteen minutes after the agreed upon time. It looks out of place next to the shiny SUVs and sleek newer models parked around it. If the ill-fitting car didn’t give it away, the blinding pink hair of the driver certainly does. 

Caitlyn squeezes Cassie’s hand, snug in her own. “Cassie, my love, our friends are here.”

Cassie rips her arm away. “No! I wanna keep playing!”

Caitlyn keeps calm. Matching energies is the worst possible thing she could do. “Well, good, after we introduce ourselves you and Vanessa can keep playing to your heart’s content.”

The mention of Vanessa seems to remind Cassie of the reason they’re here at all. She doesn’t tug Caitlyn’s hand in either direction, following evenly with her steps, her scuffed little sneakers tip-toeing over the wood-chips. Right before their feet hit pavement, she freezes, yanking Caitlyn’s arm with the entirety of her own. Her eyes are large and nervous, she doesn't speak until Caitlyn’s stooped low, her ear to her mouth. 

“Can I keep these?” She points to her headphones, a cheerful lilac against her dark blue hair plaited in two even braids. At her almost desperate plea, Caitlyn soars with pride. 

“Of course. Remember, we wear them when we need them especially, and whenever we want them too.”

Emboldened, the pep returns to her step, pulling on the leash of Caitlyn’s hand that she refuses to drop until they stop at Caitlyn’s car to retrieve their gifts. She stops in the lot, unsure until a car door slams and they follow the noise of it to the unusual car sandwiched between huge, bulky mom cars. When they reach it, a woman’s back cheats out from the open back door, the universal look of a mom fumbling with car seat clips. 

Caitlyn doesn’t move, eyes taking in the glimpses of features from the few photos scrubbed from her socials that Caitlyn’s cobbled together joining as one; blunt ends of marbled dark pink hair sticking out from a generic baseball cap, tattoos spilling out from a tank across taught back muscles and toned arms, basketball shorts…mother fucking crocs with socks. 

It makes Caitlyn feel better about her joggers. 

She freezes momentarily, unsure what the proper protocol in this situation is. Should she announce her presence? Wait for Vi to turn around and see them? Retrace her steps and try this whole thing again? Get in her car and drive far, far away?

Why is she nervous? New people make her nervous, but Vi isn’t new, not exactly…they’ve spent the last week obsessively checking in with each other and putting out their own subtle (and not so subtle) feelers. If their message history was an indication of their familiarity, they should be old pals, but this is a stranger, one Caitlyn’s sanity and her daughter’s happiness hinges upon. 

While she stands there, questioning every decision she’s ever made, Cassie tugs her arm and whispers loudly over the muffled quiet of her headphones, “Mommy, she drew on her skin…”

Vi startles, banging her head on the roof of her car as she looks over her shoulder. Eyes watering from the shock, she grins. “Look at that, Ness, they did wait for us.” She gives Caitlyn a flustered, appreciative look. “We had a few detours this morning. Nessa was worried you might have already left.” She steps away from the car to allow a wispy little girl to hop out. She’s not much larger than Cassie, which is to say, she’s still quite small. She’s got beautiful dark hair so layered it’s almost a different shade from every angle. She has so much more of it than Cassie does, but she too wears it in two straight braids down her back. 

Vi, Caitlyn had already studied at length in photos, and though she is so much more striking in person, so much more…electric, it’s this little girl that steals Caitlyn’s attention now. 

She looks like Cassie. 

She looks like her mother too, the same strong nose dusted with a fine spray of freckles, the same wide face, the same powdery storm cloud blue eyes, but the shape of them and how they sit on her face is all Cassie, as is her jaw when she turns to look at them, as is her smile when she erupts into one. 

She weasels between the car and the open door, precious, little fingers tightening into eager fists.

“Hi, Cassie, I’m Nessa, can we play again sometime?”

Vi barks out a single quick laugh into her elbow. Cassie looks at Caitlyn, bewildered and asking with her silence for something to say. 

“Ness, back off. You can’t ask that before you play at all,” Vi says, all teasing smiles without an ounce of malice. “What are you going to ask first instead?”

As if only just realizing what exactly she’d said, Nessa nods excitedly. “Oh, yeah! Can we—would you maybe wanna play with me?” Her eyes are saucers, and yes, she looks just like Cassie bouncing with excitement.

Caitlyn, still holding the (now watery) lattes, gives Cassie a look of encouragement. Lips carefully folded shut, she nods. 

Nessa rocks on her heels, her eagerness blurring a line with anxiousness. When Cassie doesn’t say anything else, she points at her face. “Your headphones are a pretty color! My cousin has a blue pair, she puts stickers on them, I hel—”

“I like stickers,” Cassie interrupts, her eyes narrowing in fixation on that detail. Caitlyn sets herself a mental reminder to buy stickers on their way home. 

“I get stickers in school if I do all my work on time, but those are boring, I have better ones.” She gasps, whirling to face Vi. “Mama, do we—”

“Right here, we do.” Vi reads her like a book, reaching into her cramped van of car seats and pulling a folder from the back pockets of the passenger seat. She hands Nessa a sleeve of Bluey stickers. Nessa waves them triumphantly and holds them out for Cassie to see. Cassie’s perks right up. Caitlyn edits her mental note to get some Bluey stickers on the way home. 

Cassie reaches out with confident hands and removes her head phones. She peels a sticker right off the sheet and sticks it on the center side of the right ear. Caitlyn takes a sharp breath and holds it while counting down the coming meltdown but Vanessa only grins and peels another one off. “This one goes with that one.” She coos at the laminated little dogs. “They look soooo good!” 

Cassie beams. She makes a grabby little motion and Nessa holds the entire sheet out for her to take. 

“Cassie,” Caitlyn murmurs, trying and somewhat failing to land her voice somewhere between gentle guidance and bottomless anxiety. “What do you say?”

Cassie thinks about that earnestly. She holds up the sheet. “Which one should I do next?”

Nessa starts pointing at one in particular, but Caitlyn nearly faints. “You just received a gift, Cassie,” she reminds, and shit, how quickly she can go from an almost forty-year-old with her daughter at the park to herself at six years old, getting chided by her mother on birthdays, on Christmas, on new years, or any time she failed to express the proper emotion.

Cassie notices the immediate change in Caitlyn's demeanor. She looks at Nessa’s toes as she says, “Thank you.” 

Nessa barely reacts, examining each sticker carefully. “Yeah! I’ve got lots more too!” She goes right into giving Cassie counsel on her next sticker without taking a single breath. 

Caitlyn shudders from relief. Had that happened the other way around, the whole day would’ve been ruined. Vi bumps Cait’s elbow with her own. She has an easy-going nod to offer that lulls Caitlyn into a sense of security. 

“Hey,” she greets under her breath so as not to distract the chattering girls. “Sorry we kept you waiting so long. It’s good to meet you finally.” Without thinking, she offers her hand. Caitlyn stares at it, both of her own occupied with cups slippery from condensation. Her fingers are wet and slimy. She’d like to put them down. “Double fisting?” Vi asks, spotting her error and tucking that hand away. “I respect it.”

It’s a beat of silence before Caitlyn realizes what she meant. 

“Oh, no, uh, I got us some coffees, I wasn’t sure what you like, but, I figured a latte would be safe.”

“Oh, no,” Vi grimaces. “I am strictly a black, two sugars gal.” She seems genuinely remorsefully, and maybe she is, because Caitlyn would be so sad if she didn’t like lattes and had to survive off bitter black coffee. 

“I’m sorry, I—you know, I could have just asked what you wanted…” It seems silly now that she didn’t. Her surprise gift was failing two for two. 

“Hey, hey, no, it’s good,” Vi assures her, hands up and flat. “I came prepared…” She opens her car door and pulls out two paper cups stamped with the logo of the bar she probably works at. “I came a little too prepared, actually…I take it you don’t like black coffee?”

Caitlyn mirrors her grimace from a few seconds ago. 

“Excellent,” Vi takes a huge swig from one of the cups then pops both lids and combines them. “More for me.” She tosses the empty cup into the back seat. “Thank you though, that was a sweet gesture.”

Caitlyn nods, “You as well.” 

They both sip their coffees, content, if a little awkward. The girls are still chatting away about what stickers should go where. Cassie hasn't even asked Caitlyn for her back up pair yet. She should probably say something, ask Vi about their drive or something conversational like the weather—a little gloomy now that they’re so close to Zaun, something to ease them into conversation like she’s practiced. 

Her mouth is open, but she’s interrupted by a muffled bark coming from inside the van. She jumps, and so does Vi, for separate reasons of course. 

“Ness, we forgot about Bagel!” She hurries over to the trunk of the van and Caitlyn’s seconds away from shrieking at her to wait when she does wait, kneeling on the ground to Cassie’s level to say, “Hi, Cassie, I’m Vanessa’s mom. We’ve been so excited for this all week so it’s really nice to meet you both.” She nods at Caitlyn who’s still catching her breath, but has caught it just enough to lose it again. “Now, I hear you like dogs.”

Sucked right out of her laser-focus on the stickers, Cassie fumbles at the new person in her face, but at the mention of dogs, she opens up and nods eagerly. 

“Good, because I’ve got a really crazy one in the car that needs two nice girls to run around and play with.” She pops the trunk and a shaggy Australian shepherd jumps out and, butt wiggling, inserts itself between both girls, throwing its head from side-to-side, tongue out. Nessa starts calling in a shrill little voice for the dog—Bagel—to sit, but Cassie starts up shrilly too, giggling and shrieking, jumping around the excited pup with abandon. It’s not at all how Caitlyn’s taught her to handle dogs, but with how Bagel is soliciting attention, she can’t fault her enthusiasm.  

“Mommy!” Cassie shouts between giggles, “It’s kissing me!” She sounds equally surprised, perturbed, and elated. Caitlyn’s parent’s dog do not kiss. They are so well trained they barely raise a paw out of turn. They’re sweet, but serious creatures, the perfect pets for quiet, easily over-stimulated Cassie. Caitlyn doesn’t think Cassie’s ever seen a dog so unruly. 

Vi starts to pull on the lead clipped to the dog's harness, clicking her tongue for it to settle but her cues are meaningless under the temptation of so much attention. Cassie doesn’t give up, running her hands up and down its beautiful coat, almost entirely white if not for the spattered black and grey speckles. It looks like a clean dog, but not clean enough for Cassie to be rubbing her face into. Caitlyn says nothing. They’ve already agreed on a bath tonight anyway. 

“You can give him a treat if you like,” Vi offers, pulling out a discreet baggy from her huge, zippered bag. “Bagel, sit!” She calls in a firmer voice. The dog sits right on its hindlegs, blinking up at her in wait. 

Cassie holds out her hand expectantly. The second it’s in her hand, she holds it out, above his head. She glances at Vi, barely able to speak for how wide her grin is. “Does he shake?” Bagel snaps to attention at the magic word, popping his paw into her palm. She looks at Caitlyn disbelievingly, like she’s in a dream. Caitlyn’s in one herself, except in Cassie’s excitement, her hand is drooping closer to this unknown dog’s huge mouth and teeth. He could take Cassie’s arm off to the elbow in one bite. Caitlyn’s talking herself down from being a worry wort when Cassie clicks her tongue in attention. “Bagel! Gentle.” At the command, Bagel nibbles the treat out of her fingers with his tongue. Her sneakers flash pink and purple. She turns to Nessa, all smiles. “Why’s his name Bagel?”

“Cause he looks like the seasoning!”

Cassie scales back, her brows shrinking in concentration. Caitlyn’s not sure if she knows what everything seasoning is. They don’t use it in their kitchen, and they rarely eat out to protect their shared pickiness. She doesn’t comment on that though, only goes back to petting Bagel with eager hands.

“Can he play with us?” she asks Vi’s vicinity. She answers with a nod and transfers the lead to Nessa. The dog is half her size and definitely weighs more than her but she holds it with authority. The dog, for the most part, respects it. 

“You have to stay in that fenced in spot over there, okay?” Vi points to the dog park behind the jungle gym. “Just bring him back if you wanna play on the playground or anything.

Cassie nods, internalizing the rule while Nessa just waves her mother off and starts inching toward the grass. 

“Cassie,” Caitlyn calls out, handing Vi the extra latte and bending to retrieve the dropped, forgotten head phones. “Do you need these?”

Cassie barely glances at her, “No.”

“Do you want them?”

Cassie doesn’t look at all. “No.”

Caitlyn holds them anxiously, torn between believing her kid and making an executive call for everyone’s happiness. She takes a gamble and hooks them on her arm with just as much pride as anxiety. 

“And they’re off,” Vi exhales as the three set bounding toward the dog park. “That went well, don’t you think?”

Caitlyn sighs with her. “Better than I could’ve hoped. You’ve got a really easy-going kid there.”

“Oh, no,” Vi whistles, “she is not easy going. She’s just excited and easily distracted.” 

“Well, regardless, she’s a sweetheart.” Caitlyn holds up the decorated headphones in emphasis. 

“That she is,” Vi agrees. “Cassie’s got a lot of joy in her as well. I don’t think they’ll have any problem getting along.”

It’s a bigger compliment than Vi knows. Caitlyn knows Cassie’s happy in her own ways,  but she still worries about her overall happiness, if she’s doing enough to protect her. Hearing from an outside source that the rest of the world can see how happy she is is invaluable. 

“Well, this is a great parking lot and all,” Vi says, kicking a pebble under her car, “but I’m curious about this fancy picnic pavilion.”

Caitlyn leads the way. The dog-park is a bit further from the tables than she likes, but they pick the closest one and settle in.

“It’s gotten rather cold unexpectedly,” Caitlyn notes, thankful Cassie kept her coat on. “My weather app said skies would be clear.” She frowns at the greying skies. She should know better than to trust a forecast.

“Welcome to Zaun,” Vi grins, “or close enough, anyway. Those aren’t clouds, that’s smog. We’re used to it, but I’ve got masks in my car if you need it.”

There was a bit of a sour smell to the air when they first arrived, but Caitlyn’s since gotten used to it.  

“I’m alright, thank you. Is it always like this?” Caitlyn doesn’t like the heat, it’s too heavy and overstimulating, but grey skies make her a little gloomy.

Vi shrugs. “Eh, it clears up on windy days, but yeah, it’s not anything unusual.”

Cait gets lost in thought. So this is what the family business tackles; she’s always thought of their environmental efforts to tackle the big stuff like air and water quality and pollution, but her family name tries to protect little kids’ right to play in the sun too. It makes her feel proud to be a part of it, as disconnected as she is from the actual work, as well as a little ashamed they haven’t yet fixed the problems outright. She’ll talk to her Mother about getting more filtration turbines past the bridge. 

“So, should we address the elephant first?” Vi asks, her eyes conspiratorially elated. Caitlyn has a hard time following, instantly captivated by whatever obvious thing that’s gone completely over her head. “They’re little twins.” 

“Oh, I know,” Cait sighs with relief. “They look more like each other than ourselves.”

Vi shakes her head in disbelief. They’d seen pictures of the donor before selecting him. They have a reference to assign all these unknown features in their children’s faces too, but it’s surreal to do it in the flesh.

“At least Nessa’s got my big nose.” 

From the side, it is big—well, every nose looks bigger from the side Caitlyn supposes. Vi’s nose is easy to look at. The only other person she’s ever thought that about was the little girl who grew up cradled in her arms.

She doesn’t really think about what she’s saying next, only that, objectively, Vanessa looks like Vi in more than just her nose, and that Vi's eyes are, objectively, pretty. 

“And you’re pretty eyes,” she assures. 

Vi toasts her coffee cup with the air, those pretty eyes conveniently angled on their children. “Same with you.”

Caitlyn laughs, “My big nose?” 

Vi laughs too, “Yeah, sure.”

The following silence is as quick as it is awkward. Vi returns with a composed, curious face as she asks her most pressing question. 

“Does Cassie have curly hair?” 

“Yes, oh my gods, no one in my family has curls, I have no idea what to do with it.” Caitlyn and everyone in her family has flat, fine hair that holds no shape regardless of product. She’s gotten tips from friends, mostly Mel, before but nothing works on Cassie’s non-committal hair texture. 

“I’ve tried everything,” Vi commiserates, “the creams, the mousse, the moisture mist…nothing works.”

“I just throw her hair in braids and hope for the best.”

“Damn,” Vi swipes the air with a snap. “And here I was hoping you’d have some tips for me.”

“I’m afraid we’re just as helpless as the other.”

Some shouting from across the grass draws the attention. They’re too far to hear exactly what’s being said, but Cassie’s on her hands and knees while Nessa stands resolute with her hands on her hips. 

Vi’s up in record speed, taking a few long steps forward to call out, “Ness! Don’t be a bossy pants. Play nice!” 

Some of Nessa’s confrontational energy melts away at her Mother’s frank reminder. She nods and slowly joins Cassie on all fours in the grass. Vi returns to her seat, unbothered. 

“She’s the oldest daughter of an oldest daughter,” she says knowingly, “pray for her.”

Caitlyn knows a thing or two about that, being one, being raised by one and raising one herself, compounded by the fact both her and Cassie are only children to boot. “I’ll pray for you,” she promises, knowing what hell she put her mother through. 

“Pray for us all,” Vi settles on, “may we be free from tyrannical control of bossy first-born daughters.” 

“You’re not bossy,” Caitlyn assures, “You’re firm.” What Caitlyn would give to be able to speak to Cassie so casually and have her word be understood. Cassie needed gentle, crystal clear intentions to derive any meaning from them at all. Caitlyn’s good at that at least, she’s needed to perfectly craft her intentions and tone of voice to make people understand her all her life. 

“I like to think so, “ Vi sighs, “I don't know where she gets it from.” 

Caitlyn joins her with an exhale of her own. “Unfortunately I know exactly where Cassie gets hers from.” 

Vi turns, tapping the air with her finger. “Is bossiness a genetically linked trait?” She teases. “Can we blame this one on our donor too?” 

“Hmm, this one’s on us,” Caitlyn murmurs, gears spinning, “But you know what is influenced by male DNA? Morning sickness.”

Vi blinks, adequately surprised by the knowledge. “Is it? Were you also really pukey in your first trimester?”

Caitlyn nods in commiseration, “Terribly, and during my second trimester as well. I couldn’t go into work, it was so horrible.”

“Oh that bad, huh?” 

Caitlyn concedes on the grounds that she’d had a lot more leeway than most. “Well, my Mother so happens to be my boss. She forbade me from coming into the office.” Caitlyn had worked from home more often than not ever since getting pregnant, only going in for meetings and the unavoidable. Her corporate position allowed her certain graces. The nepotism helped as well. 

“Damn, my dad was my boss and the most I got was a puke bucket under the bar,” Vi jokes, but there’s something layered to it. She covers it up with another joke, “Can’t recommend bartending while pregnant. Between the puke and the exhaustion, and the envy…” 

Caitlyn could barely stand working at a desk all day, she can't imagine being on her feet all day past even fifteen weeks. 

“So you’re a bartender?” It’s fitting, given Vi’s overall aesthetic and her socials, although Caitlyn does wonder how a bartender afforded even a single round of IVF. She does a quick check for a wedding ring, regardless of her clearly not-maintained socials, but Vi’s hand is hidden behind her coffee cup. 

“I mostly do managerial stuff now but I fill in where I’m needed. It’s the family business so we all chip in how we can.” 

Caitlyn’s “family business” is a bit more structured than that. She’d gone to school for ten years, she’s salaried, and her duties are well defined in her contract. She’s just as much an employee as she is the CEO’s daughter.

“We? Vanessa has a few aunt and uncles then?” She has at least one if she has a cousin. 

“Yeah, there’s four of us all hodgepodged together. My dad collected strays.” The way Vi says it lets Caitlyn know she was one of those strays. Caitlyn considered adoption before her mother talked her out of it. Sometimes, her “reserved for her therapist” thoughts tell her she would’ve been better off sticking to her guns. She doesn’t wish for anything that Cassie wasn’t in her life exactly the way she entered it but sometimes the guilt and self-doubt eats at her. 

“Lots of cousins?” 

“My sister and brother have three and a half goblins between them,” Vi explains, “We’ve got another brother running around shooting his shot wherever he can.”

“You guys close?” Caitlyn does a poor job hiding her envy for such a large, loving family.  

“We are now, yeah.” Vi says far too casually. “My brothers work back of house at the bar so I see them everyday. My sister’s stupid smart so she’s got a fancy IT job on your side of the bridge, but my place is the go-to baby-sitting spot so there’s always one or more of them or their kids at least hanging around causing trouble.” 

Caitlyn likes her private spaces and her down time. She isn’t sure she’s built for that kind of close companionship with anyone, anyone who isn't Cassie that is, but it's sounds nice in theory. 

“What about you? Any siblings, or cousins for Cassie?”

“I’m an only child. I’ve got a close childhood family friend but he doesn’t have any kids. I guess that’s why I was so anxious for this to work out. I want Cassie to have friends, of course, but I always wanted to give her the family experience I never had growing up.” Before checking for any adverse reaction, she goes right ahead and covers her bases. “I don’t want to impose anything on you, but if Cassie does want to see you guys again, I’d love for her and Nessa to have a genuine sister relationship with each other.” 

“Hey, same here,” Vi agrees without hesitation. “Nessa’s in no short supply of family but she’s got the largest heart of anyone I know and she’s so excited to have a ‘real sister’,” she pops into air quotes that make Caitlyn’s heart all warm and fuzzy.

“So, what do you think?” Vi nods at the dog park across the field. “Are they hitting it off, or…?”

The girls are on their hands and knees, following Bagel around and acting, generally, like dogs. They don’t seem to be speaking apart from the occasional imitated woof.  

“I think they’re hitting it off beautifully.”

“That’s…” Vi shakes her head in disbelief. “Well, that’s just the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Could I take a picture? Just for my Dad. He’d love this.” 

“Please do,” Caitlyn nods, “and send it to me.”

Vi tilts her screen out and Caitlyn melts. The photo’s grainy but even zoomed in all the way she can make out both girls’ smiles. They both stare at their kids in awe for a few contented moments. Caitlyn, as usual, is the one to break it. 

“So, does Nessa have another parent in the picture?” She tells herself she wants to know because if her daughter’s going to have a relationship with this family, she needs to know all its members, but she hadn’t seen a ring on Vi just now. 

“No,” Vi says in that tense, far-off way that makes Caitlyn suspect there once was someone else in the past. Vi’s back to full energy when she asks, “You?”

Caitlyn sags just a little, but for opposite reasons. She’s a little insulted that Vi hadn't Facebook stalked her back. 

“Just me,” she parrots, “from the beginning."

Vi slides a sly smile as they settle back into a comfortable lull.

“So…were we desperate?” she asks good naturedly, “delusional? Or both maybe?”

Cait forces out a tense little laugh. “Yeah, both probably.”

Caitlyn at least, is easily-influenced as well.

“Hey,” Vi tilts back on the bench seat to throw her legs up on the opposite seat. “We’re fucking doing it though, aren’t we?” 

Caitlyn was certainly doing it. She was doing it all. Not like Vi was. Caitlyn didn’t have the extensive family of siblings to commiserate or socialize with, the involved, supportive grandparents to help out, or so it seemed, any of the ease and confidence Vi oozed while doing it. She doesn’t really know Vi. It’s a little silly of her to compare their lives but Vi just seems so put together. Messy mom van, twenty minutes late and all. Caitlyn’s so envious of this near-perfect stranger and her infuriatingly captivating bright eyes and brighter hair and her little girl that just seems so, so happy.

She doesn’t realize she’s tearing up until Vi is offering her a tissue. 

“You okay there, Mama?” 

That’s the first time someone’s asked her that (someone she doesn’t pay to ask her that) and it feels so…well, good, yes, but shitty too, because how has no one else in her family noticed how terribly she’s been holding herself together? She doesn’t cry, but she gets that tissue wet with a couple blinks. 

“Obviously I don’t know you very well,” Vi continues warmly. She’s got such a ‘mom voice’ out  but Caitlyn doesn’t mind it at all. “—But it seems like you’ve got a pretty great kid there. You’re doing a damn good job.” 

That’s when Caitlyn properly cries and the whole pack of tissues it forced on her.

“Would you mind telling my mother that?”

“Ah, so, you’ve got a nagger?” Vi infers. “She might be your mother, but she’s not Cassie’s mother.” 

Caitlyn laughs her frustration away, and, naturally, has to go back in for damage control. “I love my parents.”

“Of course,” Vi shrugs. 

“They’re wonderful grandparents, but…” She’s getting into stuff she talks with her therapist about. It’s quite the commitment for a first meeting, but Vi’s so trusting and comforting she brings it right out of her. “For as much as they pressured me to have a child, they don’t help as much as I thought they would.” That sounds callous and selfish. As always, Caitlyn hasn’t perfectly articulated herself. “I wanted to have a kid, obviously, I’m not…that stupid, but I only ever did have one because of their nagging. I wanted to wait until I had a life partner, but that never ended up happening and they kept lamenting their lack of grandkids and I guess was getting a little desperate and lonely. They told me it would all work out, but I just…don’t really have that village I thought I would.” Caitlyn doesn’t have many friends, she couldn’t expect a whole town to show up for her, she’d planned from the beginning for her village to be small and intimate but she didn’t even have that. “Cassie’s so high needs they don’t know what to do with her anyway, which is impressive really, given they've had eighteen plus years to figure it out.” She gestures at herself and catches another sideways smile from Vi. “They try, sometimes, to get involved, but it's just been Cassie and I against it all for so long.” She sniffs, her tears for the most part drying up. “I just worry I’m not enough for her. I know you’ve got…the whole sports team with your family but do you feel like that too when it’s just you and Nessa?”

“Absolutely,” Vi doesn’t hesitate. “My family’s...a lot,” she settles on. “And gods, do I love them but it’s hard work being a family. I’m the oldest and it was just us kids and our pseudo Dad growing up so we all had to take care of each other but a situation like that’s never equal.” 

Caitlyn can’t imagine not growing up with either one of her parents, strained as their relationship is in places. 

“Even now that all of us are adults I still feel like I take on a lot of responsibility,” Vi admits. “I run my dad’s bar now that he’s…” A bit of pain leeches into her once-comforting smile. “He has MS. He’s been sick for a while now and I’m, for the most part, his sole caretaker. My siblings help where they can but I’m the only one who can stay with him and keep the business afloat.” She sounds resigned over resentful. Caitlyn can’t help but admire this woman’s determination. “Ness has lots of people she can go to if she needs them but at the end of the day it’s just me doing bedtime and breakfast and schoolwork and everything else moms do. I’m surrounded by family to support us but It’s hard not to feel like you’re doing it all when you're…” she shrugs helplessly, “doing it all.”

Caitlyn shakes her head halfway between amazement and sympathy. She can’t imagine adding a sick parent to her plate. Her Father’s at high-risk for prostate cancer and that’s terrifying enough. 

“How do you do it?” 

“A lot of Celsius,” Vi says seriously, “and Adderall.” 

She certainly has the twitchy Adderall fingers. Cait’s been distracted by her fingers curling and uncurling around her coffee cup this whole time.

“Obviously those help,” Vi says, even more serious than before, all pretenses and jokes dropped. “But uh, really, you just do it cause you have to, and you love them.” She shrugs, suddenly not looking so robust. “If you didn’t do it you wouldn’t love them. That’s why you’re here, making yourself uncomfortable with this gabby stranger to bring your daughter some happiness.”

Caitlyn startles, checking her hunched posture. “I’m not uncomfortable,” she protests, and really she isn’t. She’s a little chilly, but that’s all. 

Vi rolls her lips inside her mouth to keep herself from snickering. “You’ve barely looked at me this whole time and you're squeezing the life out of that plastic cup.” She points to the empty coffee cup, a veining crack sprung in the plastic from squeezing its sides in so much. “If I’m talking too much you can tell me to stop.” It’s a well-rehearsed statement. Caitlyn has a few of her own to compare it to. 

“That’s ridiculous,” she dismisses, forcing some expression into her face and ensuring she looks Vi right in her sparkly eyes. She’s always had trouble with eye contact. She knows she has to do it, but she can't listen to what people are saying and really understand what they mean if she has to remind herself the entire time to look at their eyes, but Vi’s eyes are so fucking easy to stare unblinkingly into. “I’m asking you questions. Of course you’re going to talk.” She considers the cracked cup and the hand that needs something to squeeze. Her hand slips inside her coat pocket and squeezes Cassie's new fidget out its box. “You could talk a bit softer,” she concedes as she reaches into Cassie’s bag for the ear plugs and pops one in the ear neighboring Vi, “but I want us to talk. That's why we’re over here bitching and not over there with them.”

Momentarily frozen, Vi bites a chunk of her bottom lip, eyes empty until she finally seems to process what Cait’s said. “Sorry, guess I’m—” At a loss for words, she goes red. “I don’t get out much. The most socialization I get are my bar regulars.” 

“Me too,” Caitlyn agrees, smiling before she hears herself. “Well, not the regulars, I haven’t gone to a bar in years, but apart from Cassie and my parents I don’t really “hang out” with anyone just for fun. 

She hadn’t hung out with Jayce or Mel in ages. It was downright impossible to find Cassie a sitter, as clingy and particular as she was. Sometimes the two of them came over for dinner and stayed past bed time or took them both out for breakfast but their meet-ups had become few and far between in the wake of motherhood. Caitlyn would prioritize her daughter’s long-term well being of her own fleeting enjoyment every single time. She doesn’t regret or resent that, it just is what it is. 

“So I guess this is—fuck, where’d they go?” 

Caitlyn's eyes snap up in concern, joining Vi’s in the direction of the empty field, but her carefully trained eyes find movement soon after. She points several yards to the left of the fence where both girls are chasing after a loose Bagel bounding right toward them. He reaches them first of course, decorating Vi with sloppy kisses before turning his attention to Caitlyn. She crumbles instantly under the affection of such a sweet baby. Of course even Vi’s dog has piercing blue eyes.

“Mom! We wanna use the swings!” Nessa shouts from the playground. Vi raises a hand in acknowledgement and Nessa darts off, running from swing to swing while she waits for Cassie to catch up. 

Vi loops Bagel’s leash around the leg of the picnic table and since he’s panting from running around, removes a compactable silicone dish from her bag and pours bottled water into it. 

She hauls that massive bag up onto her lap, digging through it for some chapstick. “You ever see a butch with a mom purse?” She asks, slipping Caitlyn a wrapped mint. After drinking two lattes back to back, Caitlyn needs it. 

“Oh, no, this is a mom bag,” Caitlyn admires, trapping the durable material between her fingers. “Very utilitarian.” She could fit her whole kitchen sink in there probably. Definitely the bathroom sink. 

Vi humors her with a smirking laugh and tucks the bag away. She leans in and, as if it’s a secret, murmurs, “You’re gay right?”

“Oh,” Caitlyn swallows. “Yes.”

“Good.” Vi cringes, “Well—good for my gaydar.”

Feeling in particularly high spirits, Caitlyn nudges that flustered streak. “Are you?”

Vi looks at her unblinkingly, then she clocks Caitlyn’s poorly expressed sarcasm and jabs the air with her finger. “You’re funny”

“What gave me away?” Caitlyn wonders in genuine want of any answer. As a teenager and young woman she’d been so concerned with appearances. She wasn’t boyish enough to flag that way, nor was she feminine enough to feel the extra E. Back then, she’d felt the need to perform more femininely than she felt so she’d fit in more. She’d used a softer voice, suffered in pretty tops and skirts. She’d done well in university, made friends, pulled a few girls, gotten job interviews, and garnered her mother’s approval, but she’d been miserable. She gave up and now, at her most comfortable, thought she looked like a straight woman who didn't know how to use foundation.

Vi stares at her, rubbing her hands in evaluation. 

“Well, you’re from Piltover but you look like you’re on your way to a WNBA game, and the kicker…” Vi wiggles her fingers, all blunt and roughly maintained. Caitlyn’s are similarly short but she keeps them well-rounded and trimmed.

“I’m afraid I haven’t been with anyone in years,” she confesses. “I keep these short for my sanity.” Long enough to get dirt under them and Caitlyn’s a hysteric mess. She heads the breakdown off at the start.  

“I hear you,” Vi toasts with a box of raisins she’s pulled from who knows where. She offers Cait a handful, but dried fruit makes her teeth sticky, so Caitlyn declines. “Getting back out there just isn’t a priority when you’ve got those crazy things to look after.” They watch Nessa dart from swing to monkey bars to climbing walls, while Cassie watches curiously from her swing. “I haven’t even thought about it in years. I'm busy enough.”

Was Caitlyn busy? She didn’t work nearly as much as she used to now that she had a child at home. She was fortunate enough for that, but her time home was spent entirely with her kid, not a second of it reserved for herself, except the brief hour she rose before the crack of dawn for, and her therapy appointments, which she took in her car once a week while Cassie went to her own.

Mom friends were the best of human inventions, better than Ms. Rachel even, and gay mom friends were even better. She hasn't ever made a mom friend, and it's been so, so long since she had a gay friend. She could get Cassie out of the house to play with a friend and so could she? Is this what most mother’s had? The ones who didn’t have to build their entire lives around their child’s fraughtly maintained well-being? Could she have had this the whole time?

“Well, if you’re not too busy…” She swallows carefully. “You wanna do this again sometime?”

“Think Cassie will want to?” 

Caitlyn glances at Cassie, her shoes flashing across the playground after Nessa and some of the other kids. “I think she wants to. Are you free Tuesday?” 

“Nessa is. I work, but could probably get someone to watch my bar long enough drive her here if that works for you.” Vi crushes the empty raisin box.

“No need,” Caitlyn dismisses, “We can come to you guys.”

Vi chooses her next words carefully. “The parks in Zaun aren’t like this you know.” She’s serious, but Caitlyn spots the beginning of a joke in the creases of her mouth. “Does Cassie have her tetanus shot?” 

“As of three days ago, she does,” Caitlyn says proudly. She won’t let poorly funded public parks keep the girls apart. “Send me your address. I’ll come pick Nessa up.” 

Vi looks a little nervous still so Caitlyn reminds herself to listen to her words from the other perspective. Would she be okay with Cassie riding in the car with someone she’d only met in person once? Not really, but if that person was Vi, she’s leaning toward maybe. “if you’re okay with that of course.” Her mouth pinches in realization, “I don’t have another car seat though.”

As some of her apprehension falls away, Vi shakes her head, “You can walk to a park by us. Nessa knows the way. I’ll have my niece and nephews until five roughly but I won’t pawn them on you. They can stay with me.”

Caitlyn does not have the confidence to watch four unfamiliar children, especially in public. Nessa is risk enough.

“Maybe in the future we can get them all together,” she nods. 

Vi joins her, “They’d lo—”

“No, Cassie! Stop! Stop!” Nessa shouts from the top of the jungle gym, inserting herself between Cassie and the largest slide. “Let me go first!”

Vi blinks, half with surprise, the other with mortification. “Ness!” She shouts, eyebrows furled. “What are yo—”

“It’s wet!” Nessa shouts back imploringly. “She’s gonna get wet!”

Cassie shrinks away from the slide, looking down at Caitlyn with her big, scared eyes that beg for Caitlyn to save her. Caitlyn joins Vi on her feet, but while Caitlyn’s mobilizing, Vi’s pulling back in recognition.

“Her cousin won’t go down wet slides,” she tells Caitlyn, her eyes flooded with relief. “She always goes down first to dry them off.”

Momentarily distracted from Cassie’s distress, Caitlyn exhales into her hands. “Shut up, that’s so sweet.” And psychic, because if Cassie’s clothes got wet when she wasn’t supposed to be swimming, the playdate would very swiftly end. 

From the look Vi gives her it’s clear she feels the same way. “Hold on, Ness. I’ve got a towel!”

From her bottomless bag, Vi digs out a towel and jogs over to throw it on the puddle of water in the slide's basin. 

Caitlyn approaches the jungle gym, tall enough to glance into the highest structure. Cassie’s still pulled away, unsure. She hadn’t been snapped at exactly, but Nessa’s sharp tone has clearly upset her in ways she can’t articulate. 

“Cassie?” Caitlyn murmurs, tone warm and comforting. “It’s alright, Kit-Cat, she isn’t mad at you. She was looking out for you so your pants wouldn’t get wet.”

Cassie latches onto that. “I don’t want them to get wet.”

“Exactly. Wasn’t that nice of Nessa to do?” 

Cassie blinks fat tears out of her eyes. Her shoes start blinking from the force of her rocking heels alone. Caitlyn sighs, checking her watch. They’d gone almost an hour, that was more than any other playdate had lasted without incident. 

“Do you want to take a little break from playing and have a snack with me in the car?” She holds Cassie’s head phones through the bars of the railing. Cassie takes them immediately, but to Caitlyn’s surprise, she shakes her head. “Do you want to go home?”

Cassie’s pupils double in size. She shakes her head frantically. Caitlyn should know better than to ask unclear questions. Of course Cassie doesn’t want to go home. 

“Are you feeling overwhelmed? Do we need to go home?”

Cassie shake’s her head more determinedly, less fearfully. “I wanna keep playing,” she whispers.

Caitlyn can’t stop the grin that takes over, or the little one that matches her own. “Okay, Kit-Cat. You keep playing then.”

She takes a step back, meeting Vi with the wet towel and proud eyes. 

“Mama, there’s four slides over here!” Nessa announces in awe, already having moved on from the excitement of the big slide. On the other side of the jungle gym are four symmetrical slides are lined up and in need of toweling. “Race with us!”

Vi look sideways at Caitlyn, biting down her smile. “Race you to the top?”

Caitlyn compares her sneakers to Vi’s crocs. “Absolutely.” 

***

Lunch in the oven, television on, and cocoa in arm’s reach, Caitlyn scrolls through her messages.

Vi: You guys make it home alright?

Caitlyn runs her free hand through Cassie’s unbraided, freshly washed hair. Her knees stained with grass and shirt collar soaked with tears, Caitlyn hadn’t denied her a bath. 

Sobbed the whole way back, but yes! We’re nice and dry now drinking cocoa:)

Caitlyn never would’ve thought her daughter sobbing her eyes out in public because she didn’t want to stop playing with her new friend would feel so good, but she’s on Cloud 9. 

Cassie cried for thirty minutes, then quieted up in the elevator and although she’s barely said two words since, Caitlyn knows she’s content snuggled up beside her with her blanket and her cup of cocoa.

Vi: We made cookies for you. Got completely lost in the sauce of course. They’ll still be good on Tuesday but idk if they’ll survive in my house that long:(

I had a treat for Nessa as well that slipped my mind in the chaos. We can call this one a draw : 

The floating bubbles on Vi’s end oscillate for a wile. Caitlyn’s attention keeps getting pulled from Cassie’s desired dog documentary to watch them fade in and out. 

Vi: Hey, just cause I’m not trying to hide it and I think you’d like to know if I’m gonna be around Cassie, I’m an ex-con. 

Caitlyn stares at that, unsure how to respond, or how to draw the connection between kind, funny, caring mom of the year Vi with a prison cell. 

Vi: I did seven months for robbery and public endangerment at eighteen. I was with a bad crowd and did some stupid shit but that was seventeen years ago and that's all behind me now. I just want to get that out in the open. 

Here’s the transcripts of my sentencing if you want to know the specifics. 

She sends a PDF attachment. Caitlyn is tempted to open it, but invading Vi’s past like that seems so invasive. She appreciates Vi being willing to share it, but she doesn’t want to rifle through Vi’s laundry. Caitlyn’s only ever worked in environmental law. She hasn’t touched criminal law since her criminal justice undergrad years before she switched to an Eco science major. She’d see too many young people, mostly from Zaun, get screwed over by a system too exploitative and hypocritical to ever claim its purpose was rehabilitation. 

She starts typing:

Thank you for telling me. I appreciate your honesty, but I can see already that you’ve got your life turned around. 

Thanks for today. Cassie wasn't the only one who really needed this. It's been so long since I've had a new friend.

I’ll see you Tuesday :)

Chapter Text

“Hhm, let’s see…” Vi juggles the shaker tin and the vodka bottle while she pads the seconds out. “Are there any Qs?” 

Nessa turns instinctively to the intimidating woman on the bar stool beside her. She doesn’t have to ask for the woman to pick up the face down guest check and show her the written word. 

“Well?” She asks stoically, but not unkindly. “Any Qs?” 

Nessa scans the word intently, eyes all scrunched up and lips, bless her, mouthing each letter as she reads it. To not to spoil the game, Vi looks away, straining out straight iced vodka into a martini glass. She begrudgingly hands it over to the young woman who ordered it. The days where Vi could pound back hard liquor are long behind her, voluntarily, yes, but she doesn’t think her old ass could break down that much undiluted alcohol anymore anyway. 

“No Qs, Mama!” Nessa declares proudly as she two-handedly adds a Q to the list of letters below the sketched gallows. 

“Awe, that’s my last leg isn’t it?” Vi groans as she counts out change for a ten. The Martini was almost nine dollars, but here she is counting out change for a dollar sixty to hand back into someone’s palm instead of her tip jar. 

“No, you still have your eyes, and nose, and mouth, and your hair and…”

“Kids are too forgiving these days,” Vi taps her knuckles her in front of Nessa’s begrudging playmate. “Another one, Sev?” 

Sevika holds up her empty pint in response. 

“How about an X? Your word have any Xs?” Vi calls out over the flowing tap. 

“Mama…” Nessa grumbles. “Stop guessing stupid letters. Guess a real one.”

“What do you mean ‘real one’?” Vi gives it back. She throws a quick glance around her bar but everyone’s filled up and satisfied so takes a moment to slow down and stare at her kid. Her kid’s currently glaring at her like she stepped on her toes. 

“Like a vowel or something. Nothing even has an X in it anyway.”

Vi can address that later. “Hhm, how about a U then?” 

Nessa looks at her sheet, counts out the letters on her fingers then eagerly fills a space. “Good job, Mama! Guess another one!”

Even though she already has her guess of the whole word locked in, she pretends to think carefully about it. “Is there a…well look who it is.” An embarrassingly out of place shiny SUV pulls into the gravel lot. Vi hasn’t yet memorized Caitlyn’s car beyond big and black, but no one else in a car that nice has any business being at her shitty dive bar. If the model hadn’t given it away already, the car pulls right into the center spot in the front row of lines where Vi hastily tied a red party streamer between two traffic cones. She’d designated a close spot for Caitlyn’s car so she could keep an eye on it through the window. Not that she thinks anything would happen to it, but…better safe than eating her words, right? 

Caitlyn exits her car a moment later and stands awkwardly beside it while observing the building with an unreadable expression. Quite suddenly, Vi’s worrying about the exterior of her shitty little dive bar. Were the flower pots getting enough water? Were the windows clean? Had she swept up all the cigarette butts lately? 

Unperturbed by the absolutely streaky windows and dead plants, Caitlyn walks around the other side of the car and extracts Cassie from the back. They enter right as a group of loud mouthed college kids start ordering casual three-forty-eight PM shots. Vi pours them quickly, sliding them in fours across the table. “Go study for your midterms, boys,” she dismisses, leaning around one of them to wave the pair over. 

Vi swipes the guest check from Nessa and whacks it all silly on the bar top. “Miss Caitlyn and Cassie are here to pick you up. You can stop harassing my regulars now,” she says with all the love in the world. Sevika gives the slightest twitch of her lip, which passes for a smile with her, so Vi returns her own and Nessa sticks her tongue out at the grumpy woman, then hops down and rushes them with the widest grin. 

“Ms. Caitlyn, guess what?” she shouts, eagerly rocking on the length of both feet. Vi knows where this is going and returns to making another drink while she eavesdrops. 

“Hello, Vanessa,” Caitlyn greets pleasantly, squeezing Cassie's hand to initiate a hello from her as well. “You’ve got something you’re just dying to say, aren’t you?” 

Nessa can barely contain herself, but manages a coherent nod.

“What is it?”

She leans forward, as if it’s a secret but makes no attempt to whisper when she shouts, “My auntie Powder’s gonna have a baby!” she chirps, wide-eyed. “I’m gonna have…” she stops to count on her fingers quickly, “four cousins!”

“Four?” Caitlyn repeats, almost as stoically as Sevika. “That’s very exciting, I trust.” 

Vi buries her laugh at the woman’s adorable fumbling, passing it off as a genuine laugh for old man Mink’s horribly unfunny dad joke.

“You pass on my congratulations to your Aunt, okay?”

“Okay!” Nessa turns to Cassie, still grinning and goes to tug her hand. Cassie sees it coming and allows the connection, squeezing so hard Nessa’s fingers go a pinkish-white. Nessa doesn’t seem to care at all though, just cheerily announces what she wants to do at the park.

“We’ll leave in a moment, okay?” Caitlyn inches toward the bar. “Wait right here while I talk to your Mother.” She approaches the bar, having to wedge herself between two patrons to secure a communication channel with Vi. “Still want her back by five?” 

Vi has her back to Cait, pouring two beers at once. “Five thirty even,” she shrugs. “My closing bartender called off so I’ve gotta cover her shift tonight.” She tries not to sound overly grumpy about it. Life happens, people have to call out all the time, but when they do, Vi has to pull all nighters getting the place shut down. She isn’t twenty and full of energy anymore, she’s almost thirty-six years-old, a business owner, and a mother, she’s fucking tired. 

“Who’s going to watch Nessa?” Caitlyn asks curiously. 

“She’ll hang out down here until bedtime,” Vi says nonchalantly because that’s how their evenings go most nights Vi can’t get off. Claggor and her try to split their nights out front evenly, but he’s still training Mylo as Kitchen manager, and he’s got his own family that needs him. Vi takes the extra nights because she’s already right there, and someone has to do it. It might as well be her. “We live upstairs.” 

When Vi turns around, Caitlyn looks unconvinced. She looks like Mrs. Hannis when Vi insists Vanessa and her do read every night, and do all (okay, most of) the exercises. Vi rushes to assure her, “My Dad’s up there and she knows how to work the landline if she needs anything.”  

Caitlyn still looks vaguely horrified. Vi shrivels a bit, avoiding her eyes as she slides the beers over to a couple. “I know it’s not ideal.” She polishes an already polished glass. “It works for us.”

Caitlyn nods, a sudden clarity freeing up her pinched face, but Vi knows she was judging her just now, like all the newcomers that sit at her bar and question why a six-year-old is drinking apple sprite spritzes and badgering them to play tic tac toe with her, and like all of Nessa’s teachers do when she comes in for parent-teacher conferences. At least Caitlyn’s kind enough not to draw undue attention to it. Vi knows she’s a sorry, substitute for a mother most nights. 

“Thanks for being willing to get her away for a few hours and wear her out,” Vi allows herself a moment of vulnerability to say, “it really helps me out.”

“Of course,” Caitlyn seizes her opportunity to insist. “We can do this more often. It’ll give us something to do and add some structure into our quieter days.”

Vi shoots her a sideways grin but keeps polishing the same glass. “Every Tuesday’s perfect.” Someone on the opposite end of the bar starts flagging Vi down. She abandons the sparkling glass. “Call me if there’s problems.”

“Okay—oh, uh, my car’s going to be fine out there, yes?” She eyes it nervously from the window. Just as Vi’s car had looked out of place in Piltover, her SUV sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the lemons. 

“Oh, yeah, I can see her from right here,” Vi dismisses. “No one would mess with it so close to the building. What would these punks want with your fancy-ass car anyway?” 

Caitlyn just rolls her eyes, peels out from between bar stools and recollects the girls to leave. Nessa pulls away from Cassie’s hand to run around the side of the bar and hug Vi’s waist. 

“Bye, Mama,” she murmurs, her face in the soft pocket of Vi’s stomach. Vi gives her shoulders a shake and sets her loose. 

“Bye, Pumpkin—Hey! Wait up, does your word have a P?” She asks slyly. Nessa knows she’s caught, but rather than try to invent a new word to fit the already guessed letters as she’s prone to do, she nods. “What about a K?” Vi goes further, an infectious little grin spreading from Nessa to her. “Is your word pumpkin, pumpkin?”

“No fair,” Nessa pouts, despite her smile. “You’re too smart.”

“Sure am but you're smart too,” Vi promises. “Look at you, spelling words all by yourself.” Sevika spelled it first, but Nessa copied it down, and that’s monumental, so is her proud little smile at Vi’s praise. “Go have fun with your sister for me,” she whispers it into her ear before she kisses it. 

Nessa runs off, eager to resume her spot at Cassie’s side but Caitlyn redirects her other side, and after giving Vi a wave that’s more fingers than hand, takes Nessa’s firmly and leads them out. 

Vi watches them through the window until they merge with the busy sidewalk and are carried off downstream. Once Nessa’s gone, it occurs to Vi that that is the first time in a while she’s been alone behind her bar, no kids to entertain or worry over. For the next hour or so, she doesn't have to be anyone’s mom, except old man Mink’s, maybe who’s already well on his way to getting cut off. 

If she’s to survive the rest of her shift she needs some sugar. She swipes Nessa’s half finished apple juice and sprite and sips the outer edge.  Nessa’s always bringing home swarms of elementary school germs, but Vi seems to dodge most of them herself, gods willing. 

“Thanks for indulging her,” she tells Sevika after knocking half the sippy cup back like a shot. “Sorry she bothered you for so long.” If she cared enough about Sevika’s perception of her, she might offer her a beer on the house, but she decides in that moment, Sevika’s approval is not a hill she’ll die on. That’s just another reminder she isn’t a stupid, carefree kid anymore, although, she supposes she never was.

“I prefer your sister’s kid,” Sevika grunts, “She at least, I can blot out. Yours never stops talking.” She blows a rumbly laugh out of her heavy lips. “Fitting.” 

Stirring in a little more sprite with the juice, Vi frowns. “I don’t talk like she does,” she defends. No one talks like Nessa, not as much or as passionately. 

“Not anymore,” Sevika agrees. “You’d go on and on even worse than her at her age.” 

Vi pretends to be busy counting her receipts for her jar. Everyone says that—that she was so rambunctious and talkative as a kid, but Vi doesn’t remember herself so outgoing. From a young age, she’d been hyper-vigilant of her surroundings. She had to be. As the oldest, if she spaced out, someone sipped through the cracks and got hurt. She had enough to think about inside her head, she didn’t need to think about things outside her brain too. It was part of her identity in high school—aloof, observant Vi, always on the outside of most things. Kids always misconstrued her as uninterested in them, but the truth was Vi was uninterested in herself. Her peers liked her better when she was quiet anyway. If she opened her mouth people started writing her off—annoying, dumb, weird, she’d heard it all. She’d trained that muscle in her jaw to stay still quite well. It paid off in prison, for the most part.

She hands Sevika that extra beer. “Prison teaches you to shut the fuck up,” she admits. Prison didn’t steal her voice, but it sure tried to beat out of her, so did manipulative women trying to make her feel small.

Sevika passes her half-drank beer to old man Mink in solidarity. He blesses her on the spot and calls Vi heartless for cashing him out. All his big talk aside, he still leaves her twenty-five percent.

“Ey, here’s an ugly face I haven’t seen in some time,” Benzo shouts as he slides past packed bar seats to occupy Nessa’s empty one. He risks life and limb slapping his arm across Sevika’s back in greeting. “You’d think we planned it.” He nods at Vi gripping the tap of his usual stout. “Afternoon, Vi.”

“You just missed your grandkids,” Vi tells him. Powder was early getting the kids today. She’d gotten out of work a few hours early. Must be nice…

Benzo beams at that pluralization. “Ain’t that something,” he toasts. “I take it you’ve known for a while.”

Vi laughs through pursed lips. “I fucking bought her that test. She made me look first. So, technically I knew before anyone else.” It’s a far cry from the first time Powder got pregnant. Vi had been the very last to find out then. If asked about it now, Powder will insist it was because Vi was already pregnant herself and she felt guilty stealing the attention (like Vi wanted any of it) but everyone knows it’s because Powder hated her guts at the time. So did Vi—hate Vi’s guts, that is, or rather, she’d very recently decided not to hate them. Either way, Vi’s just so fucking grateful this time is so much different.

“Gods, you’re a good secret keeper then,” Benzo figures, “The poor girl was losing her breakfast under my roof and I never suspected a thing.”

“You’d miss the elephant in the room if it came and sat on your chest, old man,” Sevika points out. 

“You’re not so much younger than me, granny.” 

Unbothered, Sevika takes a swig of her drink. “Grandpa,” 

“Well, yes, I am,” Benzo beams, turning to Vi with renewed focus. “Speaking of grandpas, how’s your old man today?” 

Vi chews on her smile. “I don’t know. He wasn’t talking much this morning so probably pretty shitty.” She doesn’t miss their concerned expressions. “You two would perk him up though, for sure,” she hurries to assure them. 

Benzo hits the bar with his fist. “Well you go tell him I swung by just for him, okay?”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing him,” Sevika admits. “I come here almost every day but I haven't seen him in ages.” 

When Vi was a kid, It was always the three of them—Vander, Benzo and Sevika (plus or minus Vander’s megalomaniac ex) camped out at the bar during the slower hours or after close well into the night, most of the time cracking jokes and raising spirits, and occasionally talking all the heavy topics they couldn’t discuss in front of the kids. These days, Vi took Vander’s spot between the two of them, or between her brothers. It was surreal to succeed her Father in even the simplest of ways. 

“Yeah, he’s um…been a bit of a recluse lately,” she discloses. “It’s hard for him to get around these days.” She forces a smile, because otherwise she’ll tear up. Sevika and Benzo both give her a sympathetic look which threatens tears in her anyway, bastards. “The stairs and him don’t get along.” She’s lost track of how many days it’s been since he left the apartment. Since before Summer. He hadn’t been to any of Phineas’ little league games last spring, so maybe it had been since the holidays. She remembers all of them at Powder and Ekko’s. 

“I have to go check on him anyway. I’ll let him now you guys are here.” She sticks her head in the expo window and flicks the bell. A sharp change rings through the cramped, greasy kitchen. 

“Mylo, get out here!” she shouts of the loud, awful music they play back there. Mylo looks up from the wings he’s tossing, a beard net over his pathetic stubble. Vi always maintained he should hair net his eyebrows instead. 

“What’d I fuck up now?” he shouts, “seat ten? Because I meant to ask if you meant blue cheese on the side or—”

“You’re fine—watch the bar while I go check on Dad.”

Mylo comes out the kitchen door, holding a half order of underdressed wings. “I can go.”

Vi’s already logged him into the bar tablet. “No, I’ll go. He needs his evening meds and you don’t know how to—” she shuts herself up, because Vander doesn’t need his business broadcasted to the whole bar. “He’ll need the bathroom,” she murmurs. “It’ll be easier if I just go do it quickly.” 

He hands her the wings. “Suit yourself. I’m gonna hook up all these lovely ladies down here with shots though.” 

Vi swipes his backwards hat and shoves it over his eyes. No matter how old they get, she’ll always be his bully big sister and he’ll always be her annoying little brother. “The fuck you are. I do your payroll.”

Hands in the air, Mylo slides down the bar regular by regular, hitting them up with handshakes and compliments. 

Upstairs, Vander’s just as she left him at two when she last had a moment to pop in, in his chair with the TV on some old sitcom with the volume barely audible. He isn’t watching it, his eyes on the floor.  Bagel's asleep on his feet and jumps up to greet her. Vander doesn’t. He doesn't even look up.

“Mylo made you a snack.” She reaches to trade out his lunch plate, but freezes. The plate is untouched, cold grilled cheese and brown apple slices. “You still working on this?” It’s probably too hard for him to eat now. She can microwave it if he still wants it, or save it for later. 

He shakes his head. 

“Well, here.” She sets down the basket and swipes the fork off his lunch plate and sticks a wing with it. 

He shakes his head again like a toddler refusing his vegetables. 

“I know you’re hungry. You barely touched your breakfast.” 

“I’m not,” he mumbles, not having so much as looked at the food. 

“Do you want something else? Claggor can make you something off menu.”  

He looks at her sternly. “I don’t want anything.” 

She doesn’t know how to fight him on that. Maybe he doesn’t want anything, but he’s due for another round of meds that will wreck him on an empty stomach. She’s noticed a difference about him since the kids started school again. He was always a large man, wide with muscle and raw strength. The years of inactivity and medication made him bulky in softer ways, but he’s slimmed down significantly in scarcely a month and a half. Vi used to struggle when all his weight was leaned against her, but now she can hoist him up with ease. 

“I’ll leave these here. If you get hungry during rush, you can call the bar phone and Claggor will make you something, K?” 

He doesn’t answer. 

“If you don’t want to eat, Benzo and Sev are here. They’d like to stop in.” 

His shoulders melt into the back of the chair. He doesn’t look quite so flinty anymore. “Maybe next time.”

Vi’s glad he’s refusing to look at her, because her face is properly pinched. “You said next time the last time they were here.” 

Vander shudders, his gut sucking in with each breath. “Tell them I’m sleeping,” he sighs. “Please?” 

Against her better judgement, Vi rubs his shoulder. “Okay.” she grimaces, sniffing the air. “Lets, uh, get you to the bathroom then.” 

“M’fine,” he insists, shaking off her arm when it comes to collect him. “You just go take care of what you need to.”

“Dad, you’re, uh…” she winces, throwing the hand towel his lunch plate was served on onto the floor where the urine’s started to pool. “You’re dripping.” It’s more than a drip, but he’s so disconnected from down there he can’t tell the difference. “It’s okay,” she promises when he has the wherewithal to look mortified. It isn’t the first time this has happened, but it’s certainly the perfect storm of the day. “We’ll just get you cleaned up quick.”

“M’fine, it’s fine,” he grunts, pulling at his waistband to pry off the wet fabric clinging to his thighs. “You’ve got a full bar down there. I hear it. Go take care of them.” 

“Fuck the bar, I’m taking care of you.” She reaches for his waist to fish him out of the chair but he brushes her off. 

“I’ll still be here when you get back.”

“You can’t…” she shakes her head in confusion. “You can’t just sit in it. On your feet...” She tugs. He isn’t as strong, nor as heavy as he was, but his dead weight is still immovable. 

“Don’t make me,” he pleads, his body so heavy against hers. “I can do it, just…Get me a rag.” 

He isn’t making sense. A rag is useless. The chair cushion has to be sprayed and soaked and thoroughly cleaned, and so does he. A shower would be ideal but they’ll both have to settle for a quick wipe and fresh clothes. 

“Don’t make me baby you,” she scolds. “You’re getting up on three.” 

“I can’t.”

At the sincere terror in his voice, she freezes, noticing then that he hasn’t at all picked his legs up to evade the soaked cushion, his hands are discordinated and twitchy. 

He looks so small and defeated when he tells her. “I can’t move my legs.” 

***

Vi doesn’t return to her bar until almost five-forty. She spends the half hour blotting up piss, wiping down thighs, lifting Vander by the leg into a new pair of pants, and forcibly dragging him onto the sofa, then spends the next hour on the phone with his physician. She’s on the phone so long that Claggor steps off the line to come check on them. He understands the situation at a glance, going right up to Vander and speaking in a lower register while Vi wraps up the call. She kneels on the ground in front of him, resting her hand on a knee that doesn't feel it. 

“The hospital’s delivering you a chair tonight. Tomorrow you’ll go in for steroids.” Her mouth tightens. “The usual.” Their familiarity with the process doesn’t cheer any of them up much. The last time Vander was unable to walk at all had only lasted two days, and he’d retained sensation the whole time. That was two years ago, though, and his condition had only deteriorated since. 

“Are you comfortable? What else can I do?” 

He looks sadly at her, his hand weakly twitching around hers. “You can move on with your day,” he insists. “I’ll…figure it out.” He sounds so exhausted. Vi’s body has tried to give out before, she knows a similar exhaustion, a chronic one like his, all self inflicted though. As never-ending as her addiction felt then, she’d gotten past it with a few debilitating reality checks and time. Time would only make Vander’s prognosis worse. She can’t handle the thought of being in his helpless shoes. She can’t stomach the fear of not being able to provide for and protect her family—her siblings, as old and independent as they were, her father, her daughter, herself even. If such a helplessness came for her one day, she doesn’t think she could live with it. In those unsavory ways, she feels Vander’s melancholy to the marrow of her bones.

“We’ll figure it out,” she corrects, planting her warm hand against the back of his cold, stick neck. “We always do. In the meantime, don’t you ever hide your suffering from me again.” 

He gives her such a sharp, scathing look that her hand falls away. Fists at her side, she leaves Claggor to dote on him. 

Just as she emerges from the back, the front door opens with a chime and Caitlyn fills her vision. She enters just as she exited, holding both girls hands, at the mercy of Nessa’s determination. 

“Mama!” Nessa storms her, running into a jump Vi barely has the presence to spot. She catches her mid air and gives her a good squeeze even though her arms feel like jello. 

“There’s my girl,” she mumbles. Her mouth feels like cotton. “Did you have fun?”

“So much fun! Can Cassie stay the night?” 

Vi so happens to be staring in Caitlyn’s general direction when the question’s thrown at her. Caitlyn’s look of surprise mirrors Vi’s. They don’t need to shake their heads to communicate the other’s decision. 

“No, you both have school tomorrow,” Vi reminds her, to Nessa’s despair. “But, actually, Pumpkin…you are gonna spend the night at Uncle Claggor’s, okay?” 

“What? Why?” The sudden switch up in routine is enough to trump an otherwise exciting event. Her eyes widen fearfully. 

“Cause Mama’s gotta work tonight, and I have to some things later. You’ll go home with Uncle Claggor after dinner and then Aunt Powder will pick you and Phineas up in the morning and take you back here for breakfast, okay?" 

It’s not a new set up to them. The siblings have been using each other for baby sitting ever since Phineas was born nine years ago. It still takes Nessa a few moments to switch gears and change her evening plans. 

“Okay.” Her pouty lip sags. “Does Cassie have to go home now?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” 

Caitlyn steps toward the bar, Cassie still connected by the wrist. 

“Go say goodbye while I talk to Ms. Caitlyn, yeah?”

“Can I go show Cassie my dog puzzle?”

Caitlyn nods her blessing so Vi tries to remember where Nessa’s dog-breed block puzzle (a gift from her Papa for her second birthday) is. She thinks it’s in the living room on top of the bookcase, kept up high from the last time Claggor’s youngest was over, as he was prone to putting everything he could pick up into his mouth. 

“Go ask Mylo to grab it for you,” she points to Mylo still slinging drinks at one end of the bar, shamelessly flirting with the same group of women from earlier. “Papa’s sleeping.” The lie comes so easily. She doesn’t have to even think about it. She knows Nessa is well aware her Papa has…needs, just as Vi knows there’s a day, in their near future probably, where Vander’s illness will be completely unavoidable with her. Until then, Vi will keep Nessa from all this uncertainty and anxiety. Vi will do whatever it takes to make sure her little girl gets to be a little girl as long as she can. 

Nessa nods and scurries off, stealing Cassie from her mother with a simple tug of her hand. They run behind the bar like they own the place. “Monkey face!” she shouts, earning Mylo’s attention immediately. He lights up, forgetting all about his row of women to shower Ness with the undivided attention he’s always given her. 

Not blocked by patrons or clingy children, Caitlyn finally has an opening to approach Vi.

“Hey." Vi's voice is unnaturally low in her throat. She means to cough out the tension, but it’s stuck there. “How’d everything go?”

“It went perfectly,” Caitlyn beams, then beams wider as she remembers something. “Oh, it was so precious, Nessa was very concerned for my father.”

 “Your…” 

“She asked Cassie, who was watching her Papa, if I was playing with them.”

All that tension melts from Vi’s throat with her next exhale, both hands coming up to thud against her heart. “Oh, bless her. My Dad got diagnosed when she was a baby. She’s only ever known him sick.” Maybe Nessa was aware of more than Vi gave her credit for. 

Caitlyn’s wonderfully sweet smile pulls back into a more concerned, motherly look. She lowers her voice, as if anyone could hear them over the din of the bar. “There is one thing you should know…”

Vi sighs, "What’d she do?” 

“Nothing, honest,” Caitlyn promises. “But there was this chalk project where everyone had written their names on the pavement and Cassie was insistent that they add theirs' but Nessa got very upset to the point of tears and refused too.” 

There it is. Vi’d been bracing for that. She looks over her shoulders at the girls, both of them piling onto Mylo’s shoulders and squealing. You’d never know Nessa had been crying just an hour ago, her smile was bright as ever. 

“She had a little cry on the bench with me then kept playing as normal.” Caitlyn isn’t asking for an explanation. She’s making Vi aware that Nessa might need a longer snuggle tonight. 

“She can’t write her name.” Vi gives her an explanation anyway. Like Vi's the one who can’t do it, there’s a hot shame on her cheeks. Caitlyn’s confused, concerned expression only makes it hotter. “She can read it, but physically writing it out and pairing up letters she hasn’t quite grasped. She’s working on it in school, and at home of course.” Even as she tries to minimize it, she grimaces. Nessa's is in the first grade and can barely read or write. Her resource aid at school tells Vi that it’s normal for kids with ADHD and that Vanessa just needs more work on it than other kids, but she says it in that disappointed, judgy way that makes it loud and clear just what she thinks of Vi and her parenting. She’s rude and a little unforgiving, but she isn’t wrong. Vi is so perpetually busy that something must be sacrificed everyday to carve out enough time to practice with Nessa, something that’s proven mostly futile so far. Vi is completely out of her depth with what else she can do to help Nessa grasp the basics. She feels like a failure of a mother enough as it is, she doesn’t need this shame to remind her, but she will feel it everyday for as long as it takes so Nessa doesn’t have to. The suggestion that, again, Nessa is aware of more than Vi assumed is devastating. “We work on it everyday. We’ve got the work books, the flashcards. I promise I’m not just letting her run wild while I’m stuck back here.” 

“Vi,” Caitlyn places a cold hand on Vi’s forearm, pulling her attention back toward her. “You don’t have to defend yourself. I fully understand the factors that might cause a child to fall behind in school.” 

Vi blinks rapidly as her adrenaline plummets. She hadn’t been defending Nessa, she’d been defending herself. Vi is very good at feeling shame and very good at never letting anyone see that, but Caitlyn saw right through her. How did she do that?

“About earlier…” Caitlyn deepens that chilly hand on Vi’s arm, sending a shock of cold to her elbow. “I overheard that Nessa will be spending the night at her cousins’. It wasn’t my intention to criticize your daily routine.” 

Still at a loss for words, Vi keeps blinking. “And you didn’t. It’s uh…my dad.” She swallows. Her face is still so hot. “He’s having a flare. I don’t want Nessa to be alone with him right now.”

Caitlyn nods sympathetically, “I’m sorry to hear that. Can I do anything to help?”

What could Caitlyn do apart from what she’d already done? She’d kept Nessa out of the apartment during all the tense phone calls and raised voices. 

“No, no. um, it’s all good. She can sit at the bar with me while she does her spelling.” Old man Mink is still hogging up the seat beside Benzo, but his glass has been empty long enough Vi can kick him out. He’s far enough gone that there'll be no hard feelings. 

“What if she sat at a table with Cassie and I?” 

Vi peels her attention off Mink and back onto Caitlyn, her lips carefully pulled back into a sweet, gap-toothed smile. 

“You don’t have to—”

“I don’t really feel like cooking tonight,” Caitlyn interrupts with an indifferent shrug, “I’m so dreadful at it, and the girls are having so much fun. I would be more than happy for Nessa to join us for dinner.”

Vi watches Nessa swing from Mylo’s arms, Cassie giggling contentedly. They’ll be time for her spelling later. 

“You guys can sit at that table over there.” She points to table twelve. No one ever sits there. The whole joint knows it’s the family table and will tell any newbies who try to sit there. “I can put something in for you. Let me go track down a menu…”

“No need. Nessa was telling us all about your famous chicken tenders.”

Vi smiles to herself. Nessa practically lived off those chicken tenders. It was a hard-won victory whenever Vi was able to get an actual dinner in front of them. 

“Cassie and I will split a basket.”

Behind them, Mylo shouts for Vi to quit flirting. She ignores him and the heckling of her regulars. Caitlyn pays them just a little bit of mind. 

“Can I make you a drink?” She asks, “on me.” 

“Do you have Doctor Pepper?”

Vi has never been more in love. “You bet your ass we do.” 

Caitlyn blushes, looking at her toes as she asks her next question. “I see you have coconut cream back there. Could you put a splash in my cup please?”

Okay, all of Vi’s admiration for Cait is gone, just like that. 

“It’s very good, I promise!” Caitlyn insists, red in the face. 

“Go sit down,” Vi orders with a shudder. “I’ll make your weird ass concoction. Anything for Cassie?” 

“Whatever Nessa has.” 

She calls the girls over, hoisting Cassie onto the tall stool while Nessa struggles up hers like it’s a mountain peak. After another minute of struggling, Caitlyn asks her something, then lifts her onto the chair too. Sat right next to Cassie, she pulls tiny toys from her pockets, instantly cluttering up the table with their games. Caitlyn sits opposite of them, her attention carefully split between the girls and the bar where Vi’s ringing in two baskets of tenders. 

“Vi, who’s the fair maiden at your table?” Benzo asks as soon as she’s in earshot. 

Vi doesn’t know how much of the cream she has to add to Caitlyn’s whacky drink but she guesses roughly half a shot and stirs it into the soda with a bar spoon. “That would be Vanessa’s half sister,” Vi answers vaguely. “Can you see the resemblance?” 

Sevika laughs, flashing Benzo a knowing look. “We mean the babe, kid.” 

Vi straw tests the Doctor Pepper. Holy shit, it is good. Her face reflects her enlightenment. 

“Janna be, I think you’re right, Sev.”

“Of course I’m right.”

Vi walks away without acknowledgement, balancing a soda glass and two lidded cups of water in her hands. Nessa's had enough sugar today and so probably has Cassie.

“Mama, Ms. Caitlyn said I could eat dinner with them!” Nessa beams. Vi can’t help but feed off some of that happiness. 

“Yes, Ms. Caitlyn offered. Wasn’t that kind of her?” 

Nessa knows what that’s codeword for, so she bats her lashes and thanks Caitlyn profusely. 

“Of course,” Caitlyn returns. 

“Nessa, after dinner…” Vi begins, “Nessa, listen to me. After Cassie and Ms. Caitlyn go home, we have to do your spelling, okay?” 

Nessa nods, tongue between her teeth. Cassie and her keep playing, both hands awkwardly holding the tiny figurines with poor dexterity. 

WIth Mylo back in the kitchen, Vi’s got a bar full of empty drinks to attend to but just as she always does when Nessa’s with her during shifts, she spares a glance every so often her way. Nessa’s thoroughly invested with whatever game her and Cassie have curated with Super-Kitty bobbles. Typically, Nessa is distracted enough that her eyes travel around the room, but It’s Caitlyn that Vi routinely meets eyes with. It’s all reassuring nods and slight smiles with them, but it’s enough for Vi to drop her shoulders and start slinging drinks like usual, at least until Sevika makes another blunt remark and then the cycle repeats. 

The kitchen's a little slammed at the moment, so it takes a while for the food to come out. Any hungry six-year-old gets grumpy, but the girls stay chipper, even as Cassie spills enough salt on the table to bury a super kitty. Caitlyn starts nervously sweeping it up with her napkin but the girls are instantly enthralled with tracing shapes in it. Once Vi waves Caitlyn off, she abandons her cleaning project, a curious look replacing her embarrassment. Vi watches her brush Nessa’s arm, then show her something she traced in the salt. She nods encouragingly and when Nessa tries to copy her with little success, Caitlyn reaches across the table and moves her hand with her own. The process repeats a few interspersed times, so many that Vi loses interest and looks away, but ten minutes later, a familiar set of footsteps are running up to her. 

“Mama, I did it!” she shouts, excited little arms meeting Vi’s hips. 

Shaker in hand, Vi looks down at her. “Did what?” 

Like it’s Christmas morning, Nessa grins up at Vi expectantly. "I wrote my name!” 

Vi nearly drops the tin. She manages to get the contents in a cocktail glass and the glass in front of the right seat. She grips Nessa’s hand hard. “Show me?” 

Nessa pulls her over at break-neck speeds and there, on the table, is her name shakily traced in salt. After sufficiently showing it off, she pushes it flat and shows Vi how she holds her wrist and drags her finger through the coarse grains. She gets a bit stuck after ‘VAN’ but after a few demonstrations from Caitlyn, she finishes her masterpiece. 

Vi’s tempted to start crying right there, but she holds herself down and sings her praises into Nessa’s ear instead. Mylo brings out the tenders soon after so Nessa gets adoring praises from him as well. Then she has to tell Benzo, Sevika and Old Man Mink and anyone who’ll listen. Even total strangers spare her a high-five. 

From then on, every time Vi glances over at them, Nessa’s distracted from her food (not at all like her), tracing letters in the salt. Each time Vi meets Caitlyn’s eyes, she mouths a profuse thank you. 

Sometime just after seven, Caitlyn approaches the bar with a fifty dollar bill in hand. Vi has already house accounted the food so she chooses to ignore that flash of green. “How’d you do that?” she asks instead. Like it’s nothing for her, Caitlyn shrugs. 

“That’s how I taught Cassie to write. The sensory input helped solidify it in her mind.” 

Nessa had never been a particularly sensory-seeking child. Stimulant seeking, absolutely, but sensory not so much. Of course, she loved playing with the sands and slimes and squishy toys with Isha, but rarely asked for such things on her own. Vi hadn’t even thought to connect that with learning. The games she’d made their practice were all terribly unstimulating in comparison. 

“Vi,” Caitlyn swallows something carefully. Her mouth is clean, but Vi’s eyes keep going to that little tooth-gap. She thought Pilties were all about appearances. Maybe they are, because while, technically, an imperfection, it’s really working for her. “Does Vanessa have Dyspraxia?” 

“Dyslexia? She hasn’t been tested for it yet. She reads alright.” 

Caitlyn’s cold hand comes to rest on the sticky bar top. “Dyspraxia,” she repeats. Vi hears the difference the second time around.

“What is that?” She asks in a low voice. Whatever it is, she doesn’t need to be broadcasting her daughter’s medical records to the two strangers on their left and right. 

“It’s a coordination disorder,” Caitlyn explains. “It affects motor skills. Cassie and I have it. It’s common with ASD…” she softens her tone, "and ADHD.” 

No professional has ever even mentioned this to Vi in passing. They’ve only stressed the elevated chance of learning disabilities and intellectual difficulties. They never warned Vi her very physical, always moving child might have trouble with the physicality. Nessa was a bit of a clutz, always bumping into things and tripping on nothing. As a baby, she refused to use a spoon, or her fingers, electing instead to eat right off the plate or fist something into her mouth. She hadn’t crawled. She’d just gone right into walking shortly before her first birthday. Vi viewed those things as simple quirks rather than symptoms of a deeper disorder. 

When she stays lost in thought, Caitlyn keeps probing. “She mentioned she plays soccer?”

Vi smiles humorlessly, “Yeah, she’s terrible at it. Two left feet.”

Caitlyn returns the smile, but it’s genuine in every muscle of her body. “Cassie too. I noticed today while they were playing that they move similarly, especially how they grab things. I thought I should mention it, in case Nessa's pediatrician hadn’t brought it up.”

“Thank gods you did,” Vi shakes her head, moody for all the right reasons. “No one’s noticed this before you. Not her doctor, not her resource aid, or her teacher...or me,” She grumbles into her hand. “They all just beat me over the head with how important it was to be teaching Nessa at home too.” She rolls her eyes. None of Nessa’s teachers had any faith in her. Probably because they had no faith in Vi. A child can succeed only so far as their parents allow them, Nessa’s aid once told Vi snidely. She cried in her bed for hours that night, only shutting up when she heard Nessa’s clumsy feet outside her door. “Thank you, again. I’ll look into it.” 

“Of course.” Caitlyn sighs as her enthusiasm wavers. “I scoured the support group to see if anyone else's children had similar diagnoses, but all I could find was a few cases of color blindness.” 

Vi feels shameful again. She’s sure Caitlyn can tell. “Guess this one is our fault too.”

Caitlyn tilts her head curiously. “I don’t think that’s a helpful way to view it.”

“Definitely not,” Vi grumbles, unable to rally herself to look at Caitlyn properly. “I’m just…” Her reasoning seems dumb now. “—Coping with humor.”

“I think it’s rather fortunate actually,” Caitlyn chirps up, suddenly chipper. “If it had come from the donor or just because, we wouldn't be able to relate to them like we do. We wouldn’t know what it’s like.” Her voice gets so sad suddenly. “I wouldn’t know how to help Cassie.”  

When Vi speaks next, her voice sounds an awful lot like Caitlyn’s. “I don’t know how to help Nessa.” It’s the honest truth. Vi knows her kid’s got it good enough. She’s safe, loved, and full every night. She’s got it leagues better than Vi had growing up, which isn’t good enough for Vi at all, but despite that, there are bumps in the road she is completely unequipped for, even if they're the same bumps she’d gone over at her age. Nessa’s brain being modeled after Vi’s doesn’t help her one bit. 

“Well, what did your par…” Caitlyn’s mouth hollows out as she corrects herself. “What did your father do for you when you were younger?”

Vi wonders what it must be like to come from Piltover, where people in power cared about different kids like her and Caitlyn and Cassie and Nessa, where parents were equipped with the knowledge and resources to help their kids beat a system never designed with them in mind. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel so fucking guilty. 

“I’m not even diagnosed." Vi only goes to a doctor regularly now because she has to take Nessa every year, and because everyone relies on her to be healthy and capable of taking care of them. She goes for those reasons, but she doesn’t mention her deepening executive dysfunction, or the Adderall she buys off Mylo for cheap. Really, whatever is wrong with her, it isn’t enough to bother with. The pills help, so does caffeine and the constant motion. Vi gets by fine. Once again, it’s her loved ones that feel the fall out of her ineptitude. 

Caitlyn’s smile is as soft, but genuine as ever. She’s a stoic woman, Vi’s decided, unless you get her started on something she’s passionate about. How admirable it is that she’s so passionate about helping others? “Then perhaps it’s time for some mother-daughter bonding.” 

Vi laughs. She feels a thousand pairs of eyes on her but doesn’t care. “Ah, yes, my favorite bonding activity…psychiatric evaluation.”

.

“It’s more riveting than you might think.” Caitlyn brandishes the bill forward. “How much do I owe you?” 

“Nothing.” Vi steps back when Caitlyn holds out the bill again.

“Do you know how wealthy I am?” She asks so bluntly there’s no room to assign any haughtiness to the question. “You’re not paying for my thirteen dollar tenders and three dollar Doctor Pepper.” 

“There’s a labor discount for babysitting my kid,” Vi dismisses, “and for educating her. Thank you, again.” 

Caitlyn grouchily pockets the crisp bill. Her grumpiness softens into begrudging respect. “Anytime, Vi.” She steps back, rocks on her heels as she builds up to something internally monumental. “And, um, for the record…” She swallows so hard her throat clicks and lays her whole arm across the bar to squeeze Vi’s forearm. “I think you’re very admirable too.”

If she takes any joy from Vi’s statue-like shock, she doesn’t show it. Vi doesn’t blink as Caitlyn picks her way through the crowd back to the table. She probably doesn't breathe either. Caitlyn extracts one girl from the other and when Nessa initiates it, gives her a parting hug around the shoulders. She waves to Vi, who’s still processing, on the way out. Sevika and Benzo, and mostly Old Man Mink all call out to her as well as she waves them off too. 

By the time the shiny SUV pulls away, Vi’s mortified, her stiff legs groaning as she tries to force some movement out of them. She ignores several waiting guests to B-line straight to table twelve.

“You little shit,” she whispers, her usual silly smile not quite reaching her eyes. Though she has no clue what Vi’s just unearthed, Nessa only giggles at her mother’s foul-language. “You were supposed to be in bed last Wednesday when Aunt Powder was over.” 

Right away, Nessa knows where this is going. Her shoulders slump with great dismay. “Ms. Caitlyn promised she wouldn’t snitch on me,” she pouts. 

Victoriously, Vi dots the air with her finger. “So you admit it, you heard Powder and me talking after you and Ish went to bed.” 

Nessa shrugs defenselessly. “We wanted a snack.”

“An hour after bed-time, yeah, alright.” Vi blinks the initial humiliation from her face. When staring down at her daughter, it’s hard to feel like a bumbling school girl. “What else did you tell Ms. Caitlyn I said?” 

Vanessa avoids eye contact, swinging her feet and tilting her chin in faux nonchallance. “Just that you said she was nice and smart and…” Knowing she’s told on herself, she quiets down. 

“And that thing I said before that?” Vi pushes, but Nessa stays strong. 

“Just that. Nothing else.” 

“Yeah, okay you little menace." Vi leans in and dusts Nessa’s temple with a kiss. Nessa knew from the start that Vi wasn’t mad at her, not when her embarrassment was leagues louder than any irritation, but she still melts reassuringly into her touch. “Next time no taking Mom out of context to Ms. Caitlyn or anyone else—and no eavesdropping—and no ignoring your bedtime.”

Nessa grumbles out a sullen agreement, then resumes tracing in the salt. “Look Mama, I wrote more.”

Beside her name are the words 'dog', and, predictably, 'pumpkin'.

“What perfect timing you have,” Vi announces, “Would you like to try something new with your spelling tonight?” 

Together, they make quick work of clearing the table. Nessa takes the baskets to the dish pit while Vi sweeps up the salt, but she never makes it that far. Under the basket is a crisp fifty dollar bill. 

Yeah…Caitlyn was admirable alright. 

***

To: Caitlyn K

Sent at 9/19 4:02 AM:

Okay, so just for the record…I’m not embarrassed that I said you were hot. I’m just embarrassed my kid ratted me out before I could tell you myself.