Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Everyone, out.”

Those words could freeze over hell. Right now, though, they only compel three young bodies to make a run for it.

Mylo’s eyebrows shoot to the ceiling as he walks backwards out of the room, Claggor at his side with a somber look. Vi gets a wet glance from Powder like this’ll be her last chance to look, following their brothers reluctantly into the next room, where they’ll pretend not to listen.

Fine. That’s fine.

Vi keeps her glare trained where Powder had just been- anywhere else, really, but at Vander across the kitchen, radiating the kind of tough concern that instantly has her hackles up. Like she doesn’t deserve to be yelled at, just because she looks small. Fuck that. 

“I know what you’re gonna say,” Vi mumbles. She does. It’s the same thing, every time. Why change the words, if Vi won’t change?

Vander blows out a breath. “You know, and yet-”

“I get it. You want me to sit on my hands.”

“I want you to just think for a moment-”

“Do some breathing exercises, right? That’ll show ‘em.”

Vander sighs, worn, weary, so fucking burdened. “Vi, listen-”

“I don’t care about fucking detention or- or suspension, or-”

“But you should,” he says, pleads, more like, stepping only slightly closer like too much closer too fast might scare her away.

Vi’s knuckles sting as she tightens her fist. Not an unfamiliar feeling. Probably won’t ever be. 

“For Powder, I’ll-”

“Vi,” Vander summons some kind of pseudo-fatherly authority into his exhausted voice, “You’re acting like you haven’t got a future of your own. You aren’t invincible. There’s only so many strings I can pull.”

And doesn’t she know it? Doesn’t every ache say it loud and clear? 

“They won’t leave her alone,” she mutters, her voice dangerously close to breaking.

The broken noses never change anything. She can bloody her knuckles as much as she likes- in the end, she’s the one in the hotseat, every time. Being Vander’s kid means something- means she brings trouble with her back home, instead of leaving it on the doorstep of Zaun High. 

“I know,” Vander sighs, a great exhale of helplessness, “God, I know, kid, but there are better ways to deal with these things-”

“Strongly worded letters, right?” Vi laughs, this poisonous snicker of contempt, “Like you guys are doing?”

A flash. Vander is hard to anger, these days, but she has a knack for wringing it out of him. “Vi.”

“Let me know when that works out,” Vi spits, and the thought of storming up to her room right now is stifling, so, she stomps right out the front door and onto the dark streets of Zaun.

Vander doesn’t call after her. Never does.

Zaun community park is, admittedly, less of a shithole than it had been once. Fortunately, tiny baby Vi didn’t care that it wasn’t anything more than a dirt square. Kids could make rainbows in sewer water.

Now, the park boasts a playground, definitely not up to regulation, definitely liable to have some kid leap down the rock climbing wall and break something- if Zaun didn’t breed tough. Next to it, a field, more dirt patch than grass but entirely usable, save for the lack of nets. If you squint, the trees could make a slightly off-centre substitution.

Vi has her favourite one. This old as hell oak, raining acorn hell down on her for as long as she could remember. There’s no need for shade in the almost pitch black night, but the bark is a comfort against her back, and the ground is firm underneath her.

This part of town gets quiet. Further in, you get the bumping entertainment district- as entertaining as this place gets. It’s all bars and food trucks and the occasional live music, however much life this city still manages to breathe that night. Closer to the bridge, it’s like the city shuts up for Piltover’s sake, like the water doesn’t mute them most of the way already.

Vi’s anger feels like this writhing black mass stuck between her ribcage. It screams and claws its way out, it sleeps until it wakes with a hunger. She’d rip it out and stamp it out if she wouldn’t break a few ribs in the process- if she knew how to be anything but angry. 

If she knew what she was like without anger at all.

The dark evenings of Zaun have a way of tempering it, at least. Hard to fume when the air’s a little colder. Zaun doesn’t get fall colours besides the dark maroon of trees too depressed to be orange. Hell, there are maybe five trees in the entire city, and Vi greedily hogs one of them on the nights she could rip something apart.

She’s not a lonely person. Not really. But there are so many people in that house. So many demands and wide eyed stares. She loves them all- she’d love them more if she had the choice to love them like a sibling, not a shield.

Just a few minutes alone is all she needs. But who is Vi to want the simplest fucking thing?

Something moves towards Vi from out of the dark field. She nearly flinches- a habit she thought had bled out of her a long time ago. But the object roll, roll, rolls, and deposits right at her foot, flattening the yellow grass.

A soccer ball.

And, very quickly, something- someone else, rapidly approaching.

“Oh. Hello.”

Admittedly, it’s the very last sound Vi expected to hear, out here, in the dark, in a Zaun park. A tiny posh thing, evidently just as surprised as Vi is, with infinitely less reasons to be.

Closer to the flickering streetlamps, Vi can now make out the gangly body of a growing girl her age, her black- no, blue hair, wide eyes and filthily Piltie clothes. A tshirt and shorts, deceptively simple, threads too perfect to be from anywhere this side of the bridge.

For a moment, they simply stare at each other. Vi can see her take stock of every one of her flaws- scraped knees, busted shoes, mismatched socks, asymmetrical hair. The audacity to try and make her feel out of place while she’s literally sitting in her place has Vi bristling instantly.

“What are you doing here?” 

Evidently not the question the girl expected. In a snap, she’s frowning. “It’s a public park.”

“It’s late as hell,” Vi helpfully points up to the void-black sky, “Parks close.”

“Not this one,” comes the- proud?- response. Then, as if to hammer it in, “I checked.”

Yeah, Vi could’ve read know-it-all from a mile away. Perfect clothes, perfect posture, perfect face- she’s probably got enough money that it makes her important.

“Also, you’re here, so you’d be breaking the rules as well,” the girl continues. The streetlight hits her eyes, and they flash a pale silver that momentarily strike Vi silent.

She shakes it off, quick. Narrows her eyes. “Don’t you have enough fancy parks to frolic in back home?”

“They close,” the girl informs her, frustration making her shoes kick up grass and dirt. Spiky shoes. They add at most an inch to her, keep her rooted in the ground. 

“You’re seriously clueless,” Vi scoffs. “Walking around in the dark like that, here.”

“Why?”

“Are you serious?”

She shrugs. “I’ve been fine thus far.”

Vi blinks. She hasn’t had the pleasure of speaking to many Pilties, but some part of her thought they couldn’t all be that unaware. Vi hates being wrong- oh, but she kind of loves this.

“Also, I’m not walking,” the girl adds. Vi nearly throws her head back to laugh.

This chick!

That nothing’s happened to her is crazy. That one look at the murk of Zaun hasn’t sent her running back to one of her several luxury mansions is even crazier. Luck and fate must work differently for the rich and elite. She probably likes the adventure, likes to slum it for a bit like it’ll make her a more interesting person.

“...Could I have my ball back?”

Vi blinks. She’s not holding the ball hostage, but the girl is still stood a good distance away- probably doesn’t want to get close. Doesn’t wanna get bit by the grumpy girl with the bloody knuckles. 

“This is yours?” she pokes it with the toe of her fucked up shoe. Good material, nice and rigid. The bin at the rec centre has a few, but they’re these lumpy things the kids like to smack each other with rather than kick.

The girl looks around. It should read as mocking- it comes across completely genuine. “There’s no one else here.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“I’ll… leave you alone?”

Vi smothers the urge to grin.

She groans instead, gets to her feet, and- outside part, right?- kicks the ball with the broad side of her foot. It gets the job done. Vi blinks, and the girl has the ball snug under her cleat. Huh.

And now she’s smiling.

“That was a good kick,” she says with the tiniest quirk of her lip, like she couldn’t believe it. Her eyes trail up Vi’s legs in an uncomfortably analytical way- she’s seen that look in Vander as he cuts out the fat parts of a porkchop for Powder. Purely technical, way too technical.

“Whatever,” Vi twitches, “Are we done?”

“Oh,” in an instant, that tiny smile is gone, and cold indifference washes over that aristocratic face. “Suppose we are. Goodbye.”

Only as she turns away does Vi think she’s mistaken disappointment for indifference.

By the time it hits her, though, she realises she doesn’t care either way.

“I thought you left!”

Predictably, Powder fastens herself to Vi’s front the moment she puts a toe upstairs. It’s a welcome warmth- anything would be, really, compared to the empty look of nothing she’d gotten from Vander in the kitchen, like he hadn’t moved at all since she’d stormed out.

In her shared room with Powder, it’s so easy to remember why her knuckles always hurt, and just as easy to remember why it’s worth it.

“I did,” Vi soothes, “But I came back, didn’t I?”

“But what if you don’t, one day?”

Death, or simple escape- both ludicrous ideas. Vi could come back bloody and bruised, yeah, but she’d be absolutely stupid to let her life hang in the balance. And running away?

“That won’t happen,” Vi assures her, pulling her away by the shoulders to offer her best smile, “I just needed some air. I’m okay.”

Powder sniffs. It’s hard to convince her, sometimes, but her eyes aren’t too puffy from crying and her crayons are strewn about the floor- Claggor must have helped her settle down. She’ll have to thank him in the morning.

“I drew you a picture,” Powder steps away, fishes through half finished scribbles for what she’s looking for, “Mylo said it wouldn’t help but I did anyway.”

Vi scoffs. “Tell Mylo to stuff it.”

“I did!”

Vi has to ruffle her hair, for that.

The picture is this vibrant splash Powder’s been calling her own lately- big, pink and tough Vi scowling with razor sharp, bared teeth, standing on a tower of-

“What are those?”

Powder beams. She points, “Stupid Deckard and his friends,” moves her finger, “Shiv from the cafeteria that one time, and,” she points to the top of the pile, “Laney, Kara and Lou except I don’t remember what colour Lou’s hair was so I made him bald.”

More than Vander’s words, more than threat of expulsion from the one thing that gives her a chance at life- this is what sends a prick of static through Vi’s chest. That tiny shard of, maybe I shouldn’t beat kids up in front of Powder anymore.

“I look scary,” she says, trying so hard to sound proud.

“You look cool,” Powder giggles, her eyes full of sparkling awe.

Vi sniffs. A warmth like fire expands in her chest. The black mass shrivels up, just the slightest bit.

Alright. Maybe a few more right hooks.

Some nights, like this one, Vi has the house to herself.

Powder is at Ekko’s place, their neighbour a few doors down. Claggor tends to go with her- he likes messing with Benzo’s scrap. Mylo found a posse that do god knows what out on the town- nothing illegal, probably. She’d be able to smell the lies on him.

Vander tries to drag her to work at The Last Drop, but her brain is sluggish from another miserably boring day at school and it’s Two Beer Tuesday, which brings out the actual bottom of the bucket scum the Lanes have to offer. She’s still got that guy’s rotten fish smell stuck in her nose somewhere and all she’d done was walk past him once.

An empty house should be a fucking blessing. It’s too many people for so little space, but it’s all she’s ever known, so anything less makes her skin crawl. Being in her room without Powder in it feels weird.

For once, she has the first pick of the most comfortable spot of the living room sofa- least uncomfortable, more like. Nothing good plays on their TV because the cheapest cable, predictably, has the worst shows. Vi is not interested in forty minutes of supposed giant fish-hunting in Bilgewater because there never is an actual giant fish at the end. 

She indulges in stretching horizontally across the entire sofa exactly how Mylo likes to piss them all off on movie night, but the satisfaction isn’t nearly enough of a distraction. A feeling nags at the back of her head, persistent as a mosquito:

Your siblings all have friends and you don’t.

Which she’s never cared about, because her siblings are more than enough. They never leave her alone. Except now, they do. And what the fuck is she if not a big sister?

A big pile of nothing.

Well, the smog-stink of Zaun is as good a brain clogger as anything. So, she hauls herself off the couch. Locks up behind her, takes a breath, and sets out for that familiar place.

And, as luck would have it- she finds that familiar person.

“Didn’t you hear me last time?” 

It rings out like an accusation, and those tight, straight-line shoulders flinch with alarm as blue- oh, they’re blue- eyes round on her, at once softening with recognition. Why?

“You’re back,” the girl breathes, sounding surprised.

“I live here,” Vi helpfully throws an arm out to the city behind her like a reminder it’s there at all, “That’s my line.”

Coming here once made her weird. Coming back a second time makes her an idiot with zero self-preservation initiative. Zaun hasn’t magically become more safe, nor more appealing since the last time they saw each other. 

“I told you,” comes the response, decidedly less annoyed than it could be, “Parks close. I like this one.”

“Is there a Piltovan law that forbids you from playing during the day?” Vi drawls, almost laughing, eyeing the ball beneath her foot, “No time between violin and table manner lessons, huh?”

“That’s not it,” the girl furrows her brow- the shadows of the streetlamps make her scowl look almost lethal. “Since you’ve obviously decided not to put forth the effort of understanding me, I have no reason to explain myself to you.”

Then she picks up her ball, tucks it under her arm, and walks away.

Vi gawks. What the fuck?

And if she spends at least an hour staring into the dark after her, turning over that entire conversation like a high-speed washing machine, well- no one will ever know.

Bang- knuckles on metal, and not a wince in the aftermath. The face inches away from the impact zone startles, and sweats, teeth grit with a frustration born of powerlessness. 

“Does that get it through your thick head?” Vi asks, tone like the warm smoke of a sputtering engine that could quickly get much, much hotter.

Deckard licks his lips, nervous as a dog, smiling all crooked, “You want me to tell them you’re threatening a classmate?”

The boy’s gym locker room is empty this time of day, and smells no less of highschooler sweat- this close though, all Vi tastes is fury. None of Deckard’s posse are here to outnumber her. None of Vi’s siblings are here to tell Vander about this.

Still, her father’s words pace a hole in her head. It’d be so easy to toss Deckard around- let him squeal to someone, sure, if it makes him too scared to fuck with Powder again. No. She lets him imagine the now dented locker as his head, in an alternate universe where nobody cares enough to steer Vi down a better path. His stomach, perhaps, in one where Vi doesn’t carry any inkling of hope for her future.

She raises an eyebrow, calling his bluff. “Want me to tell ‘em you’re stealing lunches like a bad movie bully?”

Her fist drops from the locker, her knuckles wailing with pain. They’ll probably bruise, which is better than them cracking. Bruises make the whole hand feel a bit stiff, but tears make holding pencils an absolute bitch.

Deckard composes himself as she backs off. Must realise how stupid he’d have to be to turn on her now. Vi isn’t stupid either- this’ll only be enough to stop him from doing things where she can see him. Powder isn’t always eager to confess he and his goons got the drop on her- as if they aren’t four years older than her! 

“I gotta say, I think I miss your right hook,” Deckard leans back against the locker like he’s done anything worthwhile to deserve the smarminess in his voice. “You going soft?”

You’re acting like you haven’t got a future of your own. You aren’t invincible. There’s only so many strings I can pull.

Vi makes fists again- one stiff, one limber and aching to see use. 

“I’ll show you soft if I catch you stealing from my sister again,” she growls, throwing a dark look over her shoulder. “We got a deal?”

She’s at the door before she even hears an answer, a quiet, faraway mutter of asshole following her out of the room.

For the first time in a while, something new works its way into her routine.

Vander keeps pestering her, her knuckles keep panging, the mass still screams at her like a pissed off cat. Rather than break her hand on a wall they don’t have the money to fix (or change her mind about wailing on Deckard), outdoor time does the trick every time.

And every time- same girl.

Doing drills in a dark, empty field, making passes to empty air, juggling the ball beneath her feet. Approaching Vi like she’s a rumbling dog.

“Is your hand alright?”

Vi startles from her deep stare into the balding Zaun park tree, the girl having apparently put her kicking on pause just to approach Vi with questions. 

She’s brave, Vi can give her that. And nothing else.

“We are not talking,” Vi shoves her greening, hurt hand into her hoodie’s front pocket. She wasn’t about to give up her usual spot just to get away from this annoyingly persistent Piltie, but she isn’t going to suffer her questioning either. She thinks, perhaps, they can coexist on this turf exactly like how Piltover thinks it coexists with Zaun- one side, ignorant, the other, seething.

The girl blinks. Then, shrugs, and gets right back to kicking her ball around, just a little bit further away than she had been before. Vi doesn’t bother smothering her grin- just lies back against the familiar bark, and watches one of the tree’s last leaves get blown off a branch.

Only when there’s nothing else to entertain her does Vi give in to watching her.

She’s good, from what Vi can tell. The Last Drop plays soccer on its TV sometimes, but it hardly draws a crowd, unless Piltover’s playing. Without a Zaun team to cheer on, their regulars just cheer on whichever team is up against the Portals.

Vi doesn’t… watch her that close. And not all the time, and not with any real interest. She’s never close enough to figure out whatever great soccer secrets necessitate her coming all the way out here to practice alone. She always heads out after an hour, likely to catch the evening’s last bus across the bridge- or maybe she has a chauffeur. 

Today’s the same schtick. Vi sits under her tree, now bare of leaves, and watches her pack up. Pack up, and head further into the city, which is no longer the same schtick at all.

Vi’s scrambling from her spot before her brain catches up with her body. A panic signal pulses through her- what the fuck, why the fuck- but by the time it does, she’s already skidding to a stop in front of the completely bewildered and sweaty Piltie.

“I was just leaving,” the girl almost whispers, and it occurs to Vi she thought she might’ve been on the edge of being jumped. That’s only a little funny right now.

“The bridge is that way,” Vi heaves, pointing in the complete opposite direction. You broke routine, which is catastrophic, somehow.

She blinks. “There’s a shortcut,” she says, holding up her phone- probably the latest model- with a map opened on the screen.

Vi squints. The dotted line takes her right through an alley Vander always tells them isn’t framed between two underground gambling dens anymore, but to avoid regardless. She’s certain someone’s shitty poker skills have gotten them killed there once. 

“Word of advice,” Vi says, “You take shortcuts if you wanna get murked.”

“I’ll be fine,” the girl visibly bristles. Then, she turns and keeps walking.

Vi nearly chokes. “You-”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Vi discovers, very quickly, that as much as she wants to go lay back down in that dark park, alone, she wants this Piltie teenager’s dead face off tomorrow’s newscast even more.

Bad press for Zaun right now, when her sorta-uncle’s crew is so close to earning what they deserve from the council would, quite simply, suck. And by some fucked up association of her being the last person who’d have seen this girl alive, it’d be her fault. 

And so, “Follow me,” she finally says, voice full of reluctance, and the girl’s head whips around.

That’s how Vi finds herself leading a Piltie stranger through Zaun, through a shortcut she wouldn’t find online, slightly slower than her first one but also less guaranteed to make her disappear.

The end of fall has a special way of making most places ugly. Zaun is privileged to be ugly by Piltie standards all year round. Right now, there is no self-conscious part of her, steaming with insecurity- in fact, let these sights be enough to finally keep her away. Show her that the park is barely good enough yet still the best of what they have to offer her. Vi’s home is not her playground for rebellious adventure, nor pity fodder. 

The girl follows quickly behind, and Vi could be grateful that her time isn’t being wasted with sightseeing. If she were also quiet.

“I didn’t realise things were so bad around here,” she murmurs. Vi looks behind her to see her gaze is everywhere.

Vi knows what it must all look like to her. Faded shop signs, their owners forced to close down their livelihoods due to money concerns. Grime that the neighborhood volunteer cleanup crew just can’t seem to keep away. Buildings yellowed and greyed by persistent smoke. Uneven, cracked ground beneath her feet, way overdue a refresh, lacking the funds to get it. 

She looks at all of this, and her gaze is not exactly wide with wonder, but furrowed with consideration.

There’s no pity. No overblown shock. This… thing in Vi’s chest, begging to be loosened and unleashed, stays strangely stuck.

“Course you didn’t,” Vi mutters, “Bet mom and dad tried real hard to keep you from coming here.”

“They don’t know I’m here,” comes the casual response.

It’s said with so much casual nothingness that it takes Vi a full ten seconds to stop in her tracks. She whirls on the girl, eyes wide, eyebrows narrowed. “Do they… usually let you just disappear into the night?”

Vander does. But that’s Vander. Vi actually has problems to compel her away from home. This girl must have everything she needs- what the fuck can she find on this side of the bridge? 

“They think I’m with my friend Jayce,” her voice takes a smug edge, “I do a lot to buy his silence.”

“And it’s worth it?”

“To practice?” she blinks her wide blue eyes, scoffs, “Of course.”

“Practice what?”

Stupid thing to ask. What else, idiot? But every hard line of this girl’s young face softens in an instant, and Vi doesn’t know her name, but has seen her enough to know that’s not an easy feat to achieve.

“Soccer.”

Vi is looking her up and down before she realises how obvious it looks. “You didn’t seem the type.”

The girl’s lip twists. “That’s rather reductive.”

“Oh, excuse me.”

“I’ve been playing since I was young. School teams in the fall, youth league the rest of the year.”

Vi gets to walking again, letting out a wry scoff. “Sounds busy.” She doesn’t know where someone could possibly find that amount of free time. Can you buy it off a shelf? Vi has one hobby, and even the, at most, three times a month it takes her out of the house is too much time away. 

The girl falls in behind her, follows Vi like a fawn. They cut right through Zaun’s plaza, entirely undeserving of the title- the fountain is empty, rotten foliage crusting around its insides. Once upon a time, it probably bloomed with water, but Vi thinks of the colour their sink runs sometimes, and concedes it’s probably prettier like this. 

“Does your hand hurt?”

Vi whips around. The girl’s got her eyes trained on Vi’s hanging fist, banged up and fading green, the one she’d almost put right through Deckard’s head. Her skin prickles as she shoves her hand back into her pocket.

“You don’t know when to let go, do you?” she snarls, having fielded this question once before. Looks like she hadn’t been scary enough.

The girl winds her hands together, a worried furrow wrinkling her brow. “I get bruises like that, sometimes. Sabena doesn’t know how to aim for the foot.”

“It’s nothing,” Vi sniffs. Some part of her bristles with offense- this Piltie cannot conceive of a pain even adjacent to the kind people in Zaun have suffered. “We get hurt all the time.”

“I don’t think bruises matter more on one side of the bridge,” she huffs, “Pain doesn’t make more sense on you than it does me.”

Vi stares into this unblemished face- no, is it? There are circles beneath her eyes like a good night’s sleep has eluded her. Tiny acne scars on her chin. Exertion has made her cheeks red and sweaty. When Vi averts her eyes, she ends up taking in her miniature limp, the stiffness of one calf.

“You… keep a diary of proverbs or something?” Vi’s brain finally lands on a sufficiently avoidant and witty comeback. Perfectly tailored to swerve past unpacking all of that.

The girl makes a small noise, both amused and perceptive. Vi barely contains a sigh of relief when their destination comes into view.

The bridge bus stop is empty this time of night- it isn’t too late, but it is much later than most Zaunites would care to be in Piltover. Vi watches her step up onto the sidewalk, clutching her ball under one arm.

“Thank you,” the girl says, sincerity making her voice breathy. It sends something prickling beneath Vi’s skin, but it’s not an itch.

“It’s… fine,” Vi tries to look anywhere else. She wants to complain, to huff and puff and give this girl no reason to thank her, but she feels… light. “Needed the air anyway.”

Walk away. Turn around and go.

“I’m Caitlyn.”

Vi’s eyes dart onto a small smile. This girl is looking at her all sweetly like she’s got a reason to, like she’s cracked some wall. Vi cocks her head. “Okay?”

A hum. “Can I know your name?”

Vi scoffs. “So your parents could find me and hang me by my ankles?”

“So I can call you by it.”

She hesitates. Wants to think there’s no reason to tell her- what are the odds they’ll see each other again? But she’d thought that the first time. And the next. 

As long as Vi keeps going to that park, well- she knows who she’s bound to find. 

“Vi,” she murmurs, like she wants the Piltie to hear whatever she hears.

“Vi,” she parrots, and it sounds all fucked up in her accent but not that fucked up, and not that wrong, either. She hums again, visibly turning the name over beneath her tongue like hard candy. “Bye, Vi. Goodnight.”

Vi’s out of there as fast as her legs can carry her. Around a corner, too, so she isn’t tempted to do something stupid like look behind her. 

That was all so weird. Fuck, are names are dangerous. Because she isn’t just a face anymore. When she thinks of the park, she won’t think of the dark or that oak tree or that weird Piltie girl playing solo ball, she’ll think of- 

Caitlyn.

And that night, holding her bruised hand close, she tosses and turns about it.

After two hours of fruitless rotation, Vi’s had enough.

Frustration takes her down the steps of home at a quiet pace, careful with Powder’s uncanny ability to wake up when the air shifts. Her sister is thankfully fast asleep on the top bunk, worn out from her day at Ekko’s place. 

Her heart’s weird in her chest. Not something she’s used to. She always known her body, could always count on its consistency. Fists, clenched. Teeth, sharp. Heart, beating, only ever out of tune for a short list of things. 

What the hell.

“...Don’t be stupid, alright?”

Vi raises her head, having been staring at the stairwell wall for an indeterminate amount of time. A quiet, gruff voice forces her from her little spell, and curiosity drags her further downward, avoiding that familiar creak on the last step, bracing herself against the wall next to the kitchen doorway.

Inside, it’s dark, but the soft bend of the floor beneath heavy feet is unmistakable. 

“Right,” Vander exhales, soft. “Tomorrow. Squash your impulses. We do this politely and planned,” a low, answering murmur comes from what must be the phone her father talks into. Then, “Night.”

A click- back into the receiver. The house buzzes with something unknown, raises the hair on Vi’s arms. 

“They’re going to hear us out,” Vander mutters, with wonderment- with slight trepidation. 

Talking to himself, Vi thinks. He must have been, because she can sense the shift in the air when he notices she’s there like a physical thing- mere seconds later.

“Didn’t I say off to bed with you?” Vander flicks a light on- had been talking in total darkness, probably too lost in conversation to notice the room had gone black. “It’s a school night, kiddo.”

Warm light floods the room as Vi lingers at the kitchen entrance, leaning against the frame. “Was that… Silco on the phone?”

Vander’s eyebags could always sink a horse, but somehow, he looks just a bit lighter than he had at dinner. That’s good. Anything to ease his burden even slightly.

“Your uncle, yes. We wake you?”

“No,” Vi blurts before she can think to lie. Lie about what? If her father can take one look at her and deduce that thoughts of a Piltie girl are keeping her up at night, it’d be a goddamn miracle. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Vander makes an affirmative noise. “I know you’re worried about Powder,” he takes on a far off, guilty look, “God knows I’m not helping, what with all of… this.”

Powder. Of course Vi’s worried about her. A threat shouldn’t forever be enough to keep Deckard and his dogpack down. Sooner or later, he might take it a step up from lunch-stealing, and Powder might do more than break down in a gym closet. Vi thinks about the time she bit Mylo when he was being too annoying. Vi thinks about the way she screams when she’s too far in her own head.

And, like always, Vi thinks about the state of Zaun. About her father and Silco, how they have to beg the council for attention, day after day. How they… got it?

“They’re going to hear you out?” Vi finally parrots.

Vander smiles. It has a way of immediately settling Vi’s bones. If Vander’s got reason to smile, everything’s okay, because here’s a man with just about everything on his massive shoulders.

“Councilor Kiramman reached out to your uncle personally. She’s always been a quiet ally, but something must have kicked her into gear,” he tells her, nearly incredulous, “One of our demands might go through next week.”

“That easy?” Vi scoffs, narrows her eyes with sudden suspicion.  “You think he might’ve threatened something? Or Sevika?”

She respects Sevika, long time friend of the family. Tough with her words, practiced with her boxing mitts. There aren’t many hard hitters in Zaun willing to knock Vander’s kid around- likewise, not many kids around the block are itching to tank a wallop from Sevika. In exchange, Sevika respects her.

Does Vi respect him?

Silco’s an enigma- supposedly, an uncle. She knows him best as a name said hushed, angrily into a phone around the corner of this house. He’s in the few pictures Vi has of her heavily pregnant mother- seems he couldn’t bother to wait around for Vi to pop out. 

Vi thinks of pacifist Vander and his words, of Sevika’s fist, of Silco in every shadow Zaun casts. A bite leaves a bigger mark. A bite gets you bit back. Not much room left on Zaun’s skin for new wounds. 

But Piltover. So unblemished-

“I don’t want you worrying about all this,” Vander’s stern eye clocks her tense hand, crescents dug into her arm with five chipped nails. The dark hopefully dims the colour of it, masks the bruise in a space he’s more likely to call her out in.

“I live here,” Vi shoots back. 

Vander moves, and Vi bristles. He always turns his back to her when he thinks she’s being childish, when he wants the separation to convey, this is no longer an adult conversation, and I’m talking to my teenage daughter. Vi is quite acquainted with the stone wall of his back and how quickly it stops her in her tracks. 

He does not turn. Not this time. Instead, he settles back against the counter, breathes out in apparent relief for the break it’s given his weary feet, and settles in for what may instead be one of his rare face-to-face lessons. 

“I’d rather you get the good news,” he says, finally, once he thinks the silence has brought Vi’s boil down to a simmer, “Not the scraps and rumours of our work in progress.”

Vi has never felt more sixteen in her life. 

“What can one councilor do?”

An amused huff. “More than a cluster of Zaunites.”

“Doesn’t that piss you off?”

“I see it does you,” Vander gestures towards her with his heavy head, “I feel it in- some part of me. Can’t be shaken.”

Vi’s chest boils. “I’m angry for Zaun with my whole body.” Why aren’t you? 

“Mm, and if all that made me was anger, well, what’d be left when there’s nothing left to anger me?”

Vi freezes. Again and again, Vander cuts right through the meat of her, straight to her insecure, hesitant heart. The parts that make Vi run on anger, on fear- it is these things that motivate her protection of her loved ones. How does Vander stay upright? 

What the hell keeps him running?

“A dead machine,” Vander answers himself where Vi can’t. “Served my purpose. Don’t get to live to see it come together.” He shakes his head, shakes off a memory, perhaps, of a time he’d been like Vi. Young, enthusiastic, furious. “Just making sure I’m there to smile the day Zaun makes you all smile, too.”

Vi pulls at dry paint in the crack of the doorframe. She watches the scratches catch light with every minuscule twitch of her head, feels sweat pool in her palms, the air of the kitchen suddenly go freezing. 

“Sometimes,” she starts, hesitates, continues quieter, “It doesn’t feel like there’s another side. After.”

“There is,” Vander assures her. He fixes her with a look so pointed, so loaded, it burns where it lands. “Whether there’s anything left of you to see it… that’s on you, kiddo.”

She’d left her bed for a distraction. It is not any easier to get to sleep when she crawls back into it.

Vi’s rock goes skittering across the uneven road, racing alongside the raised curb circling Zaun park.

Where do I fit into all of this? Vi catches up, kicks the tortured thing a further distance in a burst of defiance, If I can’t be angry for Zaun, what the fuck do I do with all this?

Tuesday’s conversation with Vander haunts her like a bored yet incredibly committed ghost. It has been four damn days and still she turns it over in her head as if to come up with better comebacks for a do-over, find cracks she can exploit to win, and she continues to hit stone wall after stone wall.

There are no alternate endings. She was destined to have her ball of anger yanked and dangled like a cat by its scruff and scrutinized. Only, a fussy cat gets a timeout in a locked carrier- the ball gets stuffed right back into her goddamn chest, agitated by its time in the spotlight. 

It’s great to know she’s furious and shouldn’t be. But no one’s ever had the decency to teach her how to stop it.

And so she keeps kicking this poor rock, wondering whether it’ll sand down and make its rolling torment a smoother ride, or split in half under all this pressure. Vi wonders what’s next for her. 

Glossy edges, or blowing up into a thousand sharp pieces.

Once she’s lapped Zaun park twice, nearly lost her rock to a manhole thrice and worked herself from spitting mad to a deflated, limpish balloon, she pockets her rock, crosses the barrier of the curb and travels the park diagonally.

There is no pretending she’ll just so happen to end up in the soccer field.

Caitlyn comes into focus pretty quickly, and Vi lingers on the hill to watch her dribble her trusty soccer ball. It might look more impressive were she at all being contested, but with no one trying to steal it from her, it just looks like some kind of interpretive dance routine. Then again, the shadowboxing Vi does in her room when Powder’s not around might look just as stupid to some creepy stalker watching her from a distance.

Her foot plants in the dirt, her other leg making a slow windup, as if judging the potential kick’s trajectory. Just as she’s seemingly about to give the ball a real kick, her head jerks to the side, sharp eyes landing on Vi and softening instantly. There aren’t that many people who’d look relieved at the sight of her. It’s weird.

“Vi! Hello!”

Vi makes her way down the hill as if this is a thing they do and not some unlikely accidental acquaintanceship. But Caitlyn greets her like an old friend and, mercifully, starts the conversation without pressing Vi about why she’d shown up.

“We lost against Golden Cog High,” she eventually tells Vi, a funny kind of displeasure evident in her furrowed brow, “I wanted to practice my shooting.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Vi says, taking a seat beneath her favourite tree, a respectable distance away from Caitlyn, who’s fingers start to fiddle nervously with the placket of her blouse.

“That’s alright,” she says, tucking the ball beneath her foot. She doesn’t start winding up again- just picks up her dribbling where she left off.

Vi wonders when exactly they’d established a routine. Caitlyn makes no further efforts to talk to her, apparently having sensed irritation from Vi, who thinks, fuck, she might’ve been scowling this entire time.

She rolls her rock in her jacket pocket, loosens her eyebrows and basks in the sudden loss of pressure it produces, and tries to look less like she’s twelve seconds from burning something. All the while, she watches Caitlyn try not to watch her, and it’s a little sweet and a lot nerve-wracking. 

“What position do you play?” Vi suddenly blurts out, the silence crawling down her neck too much to bear.

Caitlyn looks up from her ball with blinking, owlish eyes, a smile gracing her lips about half a second before she smothers it. All at once, Vi has her full, undivided attention, and it’s an intense, almost living thing.

“They place us wherever they need us,” she says, “I’m a midfielder more than anything, but I’d love to be a forward. The others hog it, though. They get to score all the goals.”

“Cool,” Vi says intelligently, for lack of anything else to say. It occurs to her very quickly that she does not talk to many teens her age without punching or getting punched. This would be less scary if the Piltie decided to whack the back of her knees. 

Caitlyn just nods. She has this wild look in her eye, like a creature unleashed. “It is. It’s fun. Do you play? You’d make a good goalie. You’re very wide.”

Vi nearly chokes on her spit. “Wide?”

It’s not a lie. Claggor likes to joke she inherited Vander’s frame. Three of her favourite shirts had to go to Mylo, unable to keep up with her growing shoulders. 

“Oh,” Caitlyn’s eyes blast open, clearly mistaking her shock for offense.  “That wasn’t very polite, was it? I apologise, I’m… not…”

Vi snorts. “Not a people person, clearly.”

With the expression she gets from that, punching her would’ve been better. Caitlyn’s flushed face cracks open with shocked hurt, and she steps back, bunches herself up in an achingly familiar way.

Exactly like Powder does when Vi’s big mouth takes over. A target, struck right in its weak spot. Fuck.

“Sorry,” Vi scrambles to say, quickly standing, face heating, “Wasn’t polite of me either. Guess we both put a foot in our mouths.”

They are twin pictures of fumbling teenagerhood, faces a furious red, fingers in unstoppable, fidgeting motion. There is no one Vi would ever let see her like this, because hardly anyone could throw her off to this degree. She should be terrified of this girl.

Terrified? No, she should be angry. God, her entire nervous system is out of whack.

“You weren’t wrong,” Caitlyn says quietly, the sadness leaving her face, though her body is still angled away from Vi as if she’d be vulnerable otherwise.

“Neither were you,” Vi reminds her, and thankfully, it gets a little giggle out of Caitlyn. 

“Truce, then,” Caitlyn smiles softly, and- holds her hand out for a handshake.

This whole damn thing is already so weird that Vi doesn’t even hesitate in taking her hand. Her palms are cold, soft, supposedly not having seen a day of hardship in their lives- though she finds they are slightly calloused somehow. Her fingers are bony where Vi’s are thick and cracked, but where Vi expects to see perfect nails, she instead sees uneven, chewed ends and dirt stuck beneath them.

“Why are you always here?” Vi finally manages to ask, quickly letting go so they don’t accidentally spend this whole conversation holding hands.

As they settle back into their earlier positions, Caitlyn answers: “Not always. That’d be too suspicious,” she considers her then, suddenly scarily curious and clearly avoiding the real question, asks, “Have you ever come, and I’ve not been here?”

Strangely, the answer is no. Unfortunately, this answer makes her look like a stalker, and so she does her most convincing impression of nonchalant honesty. “Few times.”

“Hm,” oh, she completely didn’t believe that. Vi doesn’t think she’s that bad of a liar, which means this girl is terrifyingly perceptive, and only sometimes merciful enough not to smash her dishonesty wide open. 

They are plunged back into silent coexistence. Caitlyn, kicking her ball, and Vi, contemplating underneath her tree. She’s almost willing to admit it’s pleasant. No one’s asking her anything. There are no expectations out here, no people to put on good behaviour for. Nothing to attend to but lying back and glancing at the other girl a few times.

Eventually, though, Caitlyn is back at her side, flushed with exertion, but looking quite satisfied about it. She grips the streaked ball in her hands.

“I have to head home a bit early,” she says, almost disappointed, “I’m helping my father make dinner.”

“Okay,” Vi responds, because it’s polite, even if she isn’t sure why she’s been offered the information. “You want my permission?”

Caitlyn cocks her head. “Well, it’d be rude to leave without saying goodbye.”

“Alright,” Vi says, “Bye, then.”

Caitlyn giggles, as if in on some secret joke. “See you next time, Vi,” she smiles, a little bit smugly, and Vi flushes. Is she being called predictable?

She’s left to wonder about that, and she does, long enough that when she’s done, it’s probably high time for her to head out, too.

What a weirdo, Vi thinks, but not as rudely as she’d expected to. There’s something a little endearing about earnestness, especially in a person like Caitlyn, who’s birth on the other side of the bridge dictates she should be treating Vi like she’s less than the grass clumped beneath her cleats. 

Vi’s just about to turn and head home when her eye catches the glint of something in the dirt Caitlyn had been running in. She’s got a keen eye for shiny stuff, courtesy of a not-so honourable stint in kleptomania a few years ago when Powder first started eyeing art supplies in shop windows.

Upon closer inspection, it’s a pin- golden, crossed keys, intricate. There’s no secret it was dropped from Caitlyn, which could make it real gold for all she knows. It’s a symbol, but not one she recognises.

See you next time, Caitlyn had said. Well, shit, if that’s so certain, she’ll just get to ask her herself, won’t she?

When the house feels too small to fit them all on a day off, they haul their asses down to the arcade.

That an arcade of all things can survive in Zaun is a miracle. Vander’s friend Benzo runs it with the extra funds he can scrounge out of his repair shop, and Vi’s family’ll keep feeding him quarters for as long as they’re too rowdy to spend a Saturday at home. 

The guns for the shooting game are practically indented, familiar in Powder’s small but skilled hands. The targets always move the same and Vi dreads the day Powder gets bored of it, but she thinks that day might still be far off.

“Twenty point eight,” Ekko announces, clicking his watch and beaming, “Faster by point three!”

Powder lowers her gun, sucks her focused tongue back into her mouth with a grimace. 

“I flubbed the third shot,” she groans, slams the gun down just a bit too hard on the desk next to where Ekko sits, the boy cringing, careful, can’t replace those!

Mylo’s sizing up the punchline machine in some sort of stance he probably thinks looks cool, professional, when he looks more like a clumsily stretching cat. Claggor pretends not to adjust the difficulty dial out of sight, saving them all the headache of his whining when he inevitably gets pummeled thinking he can beat Vi’s score.

Vi sits on the ground because the place lacks unstained seating, legs parallel to the floor and apart, hands limp between them, eyes fixed to the wet patches of the ceiling. The pinball machine ding, ding, dings, to her right, endlessly, excruciatingly, the Yordle painted onto the side inviting her to play with a too-wide, smudged smile.

In her hand, Vi twirls that weird golden pin.

She’s well aware it could be- probably is made of real gold. It did come from Caitlyn’s pocket, after all. A few weeks ago, she’d have pawned it off in an instant, but she- well, who in Zaun has the cogs to buy real gold?

Reasonable, she thinks. Rational reason to hold onto it. To keep twirling it.

“You’re weird today.”

Powder’s voice snaps her to attention, fist going tight around the pin. She’s been hiding it for two days, isn’t certain why when she has a wide array of options to pick as an excuse for why she has it. Found it. Snatched it. Got it as a gift from one of my hundred thousand real friends.

Vi scoffs. “Sounds like someone doesn’t want my tokens.”

Powder narrows her eyes. “You have a face.”

“Everyone’s got a face.”

“It’s weird,” Powder insists, in that voice of hers that means Vi isn’t getting out of this so easily. “You’re not doing the punching machine. You always do the punching machine.”

Vi glances at it. She looks at her high score, forever proudly displayed above it, and the five other past high scores of hers stretching out beneath. She thinks about the anger that makes her fists fly- searches for it, doesn’t find it, for once.

“Maybe I’d rather watch today,” she says simply, as if this is enough of an excuse.

Powder crosses her arms. “But you’re always the same.”

Ouch. 

Vi takes this like any hefty blow, square on the chin, hopes she doesn’t look too bewildered. “I can do different things, can’t I?”

Powder takes a good, long look at her. To be scrutinized so heavily by her little baby eyes would be funny in any other context. With something to hide, it’s just terrifying. Vi wishes Mylo would just get going with the damn machine already and give them all something different to look at, because any second now, the others are going to get in on this. 

Fuck.

After an eternity, Powder’s glare takes on this determined, dangerous sheen. “I’m gonna find out why you’re being weird.”

Vi almost blows out an explosive breath. With all the nonchalance of a man spending his last cog on bus fare, she tilts her head and shrugs. “Be my guest.”

They’re back home just in time for dinner- Shepherd’s pie, a Vander classic, and they eat it over the sound of Mylo’s insistence that the punching machine had a loose screw. Wouldn’t have been fair to beat Vi’s score with an advantage, which he swears he would’ve, and Powder tells him he’s an idiot with a mouth full of mashed potato.

In between every jab, she gets a look from her sister that could pry apart steel beams.

Vi’s putting dishes away when she finally gets a glimpse of the stack of papers Vander was eyeing all throughout dinner. She can practically smell the Piltie incense on them- council work, no doubt. He’s been at it like crazy, holding meetings at the Last Drop, talking into the phone for hours after they’ve gone down for the night.

With a flick of his pen, Vander sighs, sets the paper aside so the ink can dry, and gets to reading the next piece of a seemingly endless pile. Vi doesn’t intend to more than skim it, hoping to glimpse something good in the fine print, but what instead catches her eye is-

Crossed keys.

She stops, barely thinks to wipe her sopping hands on her jeans before she’s grabbing the sheet, blinking, checking again.

“Confidential council stuff, kid,” Vander says without any real reprimand, not sparing her a glance from where his eyes crawl all over the text.

“What is this?” she asks, eyes narrowed.

“Politics,” Vander says with a sardonic huff, “Just making sure everything looks good.”

“No, this,” Vi presses her finger to the symbol, a sudden force behind her voice that has Vander finally glancing at her.

“These are from Councilor Kiramman,” he tells her, eyeing the symbol, “You know Piltover and their houses. Everything’s gotta be labelled.”

There’s no mistaking those keys. They’re way too specific, too unique, for it to be a coincidental match. Vi can’t take the pin out now and compare, not in front of Vander, but she knows.

Caitlyn had a Kiramman pin on her. Why did Caitlyn have a Kiramman pin on her?

It’s obvious, isn’t it? she thinks to herself as she speed-walks out of the room, finds temporary refuge in the downstairs bathroom so she doesn’t walk upstairs to face her siblings looking like she’s cracked some great, crazy conspiracy. In the mirror, she finds her furrowed brow, her eyes darting to the lump in her jean pocket. 

Caitlyn had that pin. The pin looks the same as the Kiramman’s crest. Councilor Kiramman is working with Vander and Silco personally. 

Vi grips the damn thing in her hand, lets the sweat of Zaun smog smear all over it like compensation, and leaves the bathroom to grab her coat.

It’s a cold night.

Vi finds her. Right where she always is- kicking a ball around in Zaun park, after dark.

She’s in a precious little sweater vest over a white chemise, appropriate for the weather, decidedly inappropriate for the part of town she’s in, the massive black jacket she’s drowning in doing an… acceptable job at making her blend in. 

The sky is a starless pitch black, the air thick with the warring autumn’s cold and Zaun industry smog’s warmth. 

Vi comes shooting out of the shadows like a missile, and Caitlyn visibly flinches, then- brightens when the streetlight must hit Vi’s hair. 

“Vi, hel-”

“You dropped this.”

Caitlyn frowns, looks down at Vi’s extended, open hand, and her smile turns into a thin line at the sight of that little golden pin.

“Well,” she says, flat as still water, and looks straight at Vi’s wrist instead.  “Thank you. I was wondering where that went. You kept it for me?”

“You’re with the Kirammans?”

Caitlyn’s head whips up. She looks entirely like a caged rabbit for a moment. Vi has certainly given her reason to feel like one, pinned beneath the streetlight beams and her hard, burning glare.

“I’m-” she straightens, raises her chin, “I am.”

Vi clicks her tongue, tries not to keep her face stuck in that sneer, knows she fails when the ball in her chest gets rolling. It grabs at her ribcage and pulls it apart like a jailed beast, demanding its freedom.

“You didn’t think that was something I needed to know?” she seethes, pacing, letting the offended energy motivate her limbs into frantic motion. Been a while since she’s had something to make her this angry, this fast. All those familiar parts of her stutter back into motion.

“Does it change anything?”

“Does it?” Vi shoots back.

She’s expecting a haughty scoff, for that Piltovan sheen of superiority to glaze back over Caitlyn’s eyes. It’d make her life a whole lot easier. It’d be just the thing to get her restful nights back.

Instead, Caitlyn’s mouth opens and closes, eyes growing wider, posture shrinking like she could fold her rapidly growing stature back into the tiny frame she’d started with. It makes Vi’s skin crawl to watch big people turn small, forced to by circumstance. Vi is the intimidating circumstance. 

“I didn’t want- I didn’t mean for- I just-”

Caitlyn makes a fist, opens it, closes it, over and over. Working out what she should say next, shaking her head after every failed attempt. Finally: “I didn’t think who my parents are would matter to you.”

“Oh, and you think everything would be just hunky dory if something happened to you on our side of the bridge?”

“Vi.”

Her name on those lips is far too familiar, as if the syllable spells an old friend, not an acquaintance at best. There is no one else in Vi’s life to speak it in that accent, the shape of it unique in her ears for as long as Vi keeps her ass on this side of the bridge. There are a thousand uptight pricks who’d be glad to put all their accented derision into the sound, same shape, same lilt, and still she might hear that particular Vi every time she remembers her name.

Fury makes hot sparks in her chest. The smoke floats up her squeezing throat. 

“I shouldn’t even be-” Vi mutters, wrings her hands, keeps pacing like staying still is a bad idea, “I could get in trouble just talking to you.”

Caitlyn’s eyes freeze over, instantly. She is ice, frozen down to her previously twitching, nervous fingers. This is a face grazed by words it has heard many, many times. This is the defense it has learned to shield against them. 

She musters up no further arguments- or, none come to her mouth fast enough. The polite thing to do is to wait for one, but Vi has put far too much stock into the impatient asshole side of this spat and it’d probably be a shame to waste it all by switching gears now.  

Her chest rumbles with a growl she barely manages to restrain. Her pacing feet make her body turn, make her look like she’s walking away, getting the hell out of here, but before she can- from behind her comes this tiny sound.

“Please don’t go.”

The warble in that posh voice, the way it shrinks to this tiny dot of fear- Vi’s feet root to the ground instantly. Her chest roils, and writhes, and she breathes, calm down. Calm down. You’re not an anger machine. 

In an out, she catches her breath, wills herself to stop bristling like some offended cat. She turns her head for nothing but a quick glance. Caitlyn’s eyes are gleamy, eyebrows twisted, hands twitching together, thumb occasionally flying to her mouth to chew the nail like she doesn’t realise she’s doing it, but has to. All the ice has melted off of her. She is reduced to a watery, uncertain thing.

Vi spins to face her fully. Sincerity comes easier, lands easier, body to body.

“I shouldn’t have lost it on you,” she mutters, Zaun’s autumn air taking her words the rest of the way to Caitlyn’s ears.

The girl practically shrinks with relief. All at once, Vi realises it hadn’t been the anger she feared- it was the leaving. Some part of that takes a chip out of Vi’s heart, caulks it with sticky guilt. She’s familiar with a look like that. It’s probably waiting for her back home.

“I understand why you did. You aren’t the first to…” Caitlyn trails off, clears her throat. “I apologise for not telling you. It’s not my… favourite fact about myself.”

“Being rich and important?”

Caitlyn smiles, and it doesn’t reach her greying eyes. “Being a councilor’s daughter,”

Vi has to wade through several layers of contempt for Piltover to see to the core of that issue. When she does- well, she thinks about how beloved Vander is, how much he’s doing for Zaun. She thinks of friendly hands patting her shoulder at a bartop and telling her she looks just like him. Acts just like him. Will be just like him.

In the end, aren’t they both the daughters of people with more to take care of than just them?

Vi hadn’t come here expecting to find more common ground with Caitlyn after what she’d learned, but it’s better than having lost a-

“Your mom is working with my dad,” Vi blurts, ears burning.

Eventually, they’d found themselves by Vi’s favourite tree, Caitlyn with her knees crossed primly on the thinning, dirty grass and Vi with her legs spread, leaning back on her hands.

She’s close enough that she finally notices- there’s a gap between Caitlyn’s two top front teeth. Vi can see the thinning baby fat on a face that looked so sharp and mature at a distance, the fading acne on her chin, her empty pierced earlobes. Vi thinks of all the little imperfections Caitlyn could see on her in exchange, which isn’t fair- none of hers could possibly make her more interesting to look at.

Vi’s sudden outburst has Caitlyn cocking her head at her like a curious doberman, hair falling from where she’d tucked it behind her ear at least a dozen times so far. “Mister Vander?” 

Mister. Hah. He’d laugh if she told him about this, which will literally never happen.

“So you’re involved,” Vi guesses, and the shy, guilty look she gets from Caitlyn confirms her guess right away. “What’d you tell your mom to kick the council into gear?”

“Not all of them. Just her, I’m afraid,” Caitlyn sighs, picking at grass with her restless hand, “And… not enough to make her suspicious. Nothing about you.”

“She still thinks you’re with a friend?”

“He’s very convincing. And she quite likes him.”

Vi hums, letting the air sit between them for a moment that borders on uncomfortable. She hadn’t ever given a damn about hierarchy or supposed Piltovan importance, but as it turns out, sitting next to an embodiment of Piltovan importance in the shape of an awkward teenage girl is a whole other matter. One day, this girl will sit at the council’s table and forget she ever sat with Vi like this, and Vi will be-

She grits her teeth. Spiraling about what awaits her in the future is this new annoying thing she’s been doing, typically reserved for her bed in the dead of night, not in a park, next to someone who’s had it all laid out in front of her before she was even conceived.

“So I have you to thank for things finally happening?” Vi finally splits the silence once she finds the nerve to, “One word was all it took? Not a thousand from all of us?”

Caitlyn closes her eyes, mouth twisting in a rueful half-smile. “I resent it.”

Vi shrugs, ignoring the sharp satisfaction stinging her chest. “At least it’s done something. I can hate that it took this long ‘n be grateful it won’t take longer. As long as something actually changes.”

Nothing ever happens, Mylo’s voice echoes in her head. They’d laughed then. Easier to laugh than to break something they can’t afford to replace. Hope was a silly emotion you burned for a sunny tomorrow or a stray couch cog, not on the belief that one day, your coat could come home without the stink of smoke tucked in your pocket. 

“My mother is not one to quit when she’s committed,” Caitlyn says, “She’s hardly taken a moment’s rest. She’ll rope the other councillors into her plans soon, I’m sure. There’s already talk of an eighth seat.”

“A what?”

“Oh!” Caitlyn claps both hands over her mouth comically. “Um. Please don’t tell anyone that. Confidential council business.”

“An eighth seat,” Vi parrots, heart already hammering- she thinks she knows the answer, but can’t bear not to ask it. “For who?”

Caitlyn smiles, a soft, empathetic thing. “Zaun, of course.”

Sparks twinkle beneath Vi’s skin. She is suddenly made monumental, ten sizes bigger, a knowing vessel for the thing that’ll change everything. She knows enough about Piltover’s politics to realise how huge that would be. Not nearly close enough to what they’re owed, but there’s no jumping from grass straight to the treetops- gotta haul your way up those rickety branches first.

God, she hopes this one doesn’t snap beneath her weight.

“Leaking government secrets,” Vi’s voice is a warm fuzz, fanning over her own suddenly sore cheeks. “You’re pretty rebellious.”

“I consider myself a misfit, actually,” Caitlyn tells her a little bit shyly, but there is no mistaking the smug undertone.

Vi thinks it’s rare, odd, to give your shortcomings a name straight from your own mouth. All her worst insecurities were dubbed by sneers across hallways, or gentle bearded frowns on the other side of a dinner table. Then again, who besides her has ever had the gall to sneer at this princess?

“Could’ve fooled me,” Vi snorts, “Thought you’d fit right in with the rest of them.”

Caitlyn grips her clothed knee with her dirt-scratched, earthy hands, and Vi’s image of her shifts just slightly, loses that certain untouchable shine, the one Piltover burns into her eyes on the horizon.

“Hardly,” Caitlyn scoffs, accent thickening with her irritation, “It’s all so stuffy, so rigid. You can scarcely put a toe out of line without drawing attention.”

“Rules are boring,” Vi says simply, leans back onto the grass to get a full view of Zaun’s smoggy sky. There are no visible stars out here, but even if there were, industry would take them from her, grey them over.

“The wrong rules are boring,” Caitlyn’s voice comes in from beyond her peripheral vision, “None of them are important. Perfect manners. Maintaining your reputation.”

Thump- Caitlyn lying down in turn, no doubt, getting her back grassy. Her ball is somewhere close, always close, like a silent third party. 

“Can’t say we have the time to be worrying about stuff like that,” Vi huffs, swears her breath moves the clouds if she squints. 

“I like it here. I can be myself. No strain. Only a dark field,” a pause, a shifting in the grass, then: “And you.”

Turning her head, Vi finds crystal blue, staring right back at her, a potential smile hidden by a folded fist as Caitlyn leans onto her side, ponytail trailing in the grass.

That look dries her throat.

Vi has not been on the receiving end of such a look in- well, ever. Not only cracked open, yawning wide trust, but respect without urging the weight of it onto her shoulders. She holds this look, and holds it like a marble. Small, weightless, but certainly not fragile. She is not responsible for this trust. This is simply a thing she has.

It’s not any less terrifying. Marbles are rolling little things, easily slipped between suddenly sweaty fingers. She thinks, god, when will companionship not translate to obligation, and finds that particular voice sounds just like Vander’s.

“I’ve been pretty crabby with you, though,” Vi murmurs, tries not to let her ugly guilt slip between the spaces of each word.

“It’s refreshing,” Caitlyn says, the smile audible in her awed voice even if she hadn’t been looking right at it, “No one in Piltover is ever earnest. They smother their intentions with platitudes.”

“Keep it mean, then,” Vi jokes, because a joke is easier than facing the full brunt of Caitlyn’s brutal honesty, “You got it.”

Caitlyn snorts. It trails off into this girlish trill of a giggle- undignified, maybe, where she’s from. Out of place here, too, but perfectly fitting for the face that produced it.

Vi whips her head back towards the sky, feels ants of sheepishness come crawling out of her grass bed and up her arms, and her hands make fists so hard and so fast that she takes a few blades home with her, caught in her fingernails. 

“Do we have a soccer team?”

It comes out her mouth without much prior thought. She’s gazing out over the dingy quad, watching her fellow students wolf down their lunch slop, and the question just spills out of her. Not like she’d been thinking it. The things you put in cages just have a tendency to want to break out.

Mylo quirks an eyebrow at her. He’s chewing on his last gummy bear- must’ve bribed them off someone. “Who?”

Vi lightly slaps the back of his spiky head. “The school, dumbass.”

“How good’s your team?” Vi asks on an oddly warm day at the park, neither of them dressed properly for it.

“Oh, yeah,” he finally swallows, “Gert’s on it. Says they’re a bust. Don’t got the bus to go anywhere, so they just split the team and play against each other.”

“A Piltie bus wouldn’t have the nerve to cross the bridge,” Claggor chimes in.

“Damn,” Vi scowls. How’d this place hide a whole soccer team from her? Vi isn’t sure, and she also isn’t sure why the hell she’s still asking questions about it. “We aren’t any good?”

Caitlyn seems caught off guard by the curious question. She cocks her head. “We’re top of the local league, which doesn’t mean much. It isn’t varsity. But I suppose it’s school pride, if nothing else.”

“Piltie schools have equipment and coaches who give a damn,” Mylo rolls his eyes, clearly stealing the complaint straight from his crush’s mouth, “We literally only have one net.”

“It moves around,” Claggor snorts.

Mylo turns his curious gaze on Vi. “You thinking of joining up?”

“Do you play Zaun?”

Powder looks up from her sketchbook, suddenly fully alert. She tends to zone out when she’s got a pencil to the page, especially while Mylo’s speaking, but her eyes are narrowed now.

“She’d have to stay behind after school,” she says, scoffing, like that’s unthinkable, like that’s unacceptable. 

“My bantam team didn’t,” Caitlyn answers, “I’m guessing your school wouldn’t have one to match.”

“No,” Vi tells Mylo honestly, shooting Powder a reassuring look. She wrings her hands underneath the picnic table, palms suddenly slippery with sweat with a ruse she doesn’t even know she’s keeping up. “Just… curious.”

Mylo’s quizzical eyes burn the back of her head as her teeth make paste out of the inside of her cheek.

Snowdown comes and goes. Zaun gets a new, never before seen couple inches of snow, thick enough to roll balls with but not enough that they don’t take some dirt with them and turn into grey, muddy eyesores come morning. 

Vi walks past a ton of them, wets her old sneakers with the melted muck, watching how Zaun’s smog becomes impossible to ignore when it brightens against the cold air. Her hometown’s hardly a winter wonderland, but the few string lights left hung up by a couple festive shopowners help make the picture a little less bleak.

School starts up again tomorrow, so Vi takes the opportunity to strut around town in Vander’s Snowdown gift to her- a burnt brown, artfully scratched leather jacket.

Vi doesn’t need gifts. She’s always insisted her gift funds go towards Powder’s, to get her sister something truly great. All she needs every year is her family to smile. 

A lucky trade at Benzo’s, Vander told her when her eyes had bulged at the sight of the folded, unbearably cool jacket. Every part of her had screamed to reject it, but how could she have? Wearing it had felt wrong at first- now it’s a second skin. Made for the wide shoulders she doesn’t yet fully have but one day will. Squaring out her body perfectly.

Looking in the mirror with it had been like dreaming wide awake.

So she preens a bit under the stares she gets. Gets a girly little wave from the diner owner’s teenage daughter, out on the terrace cleaning tables, and for a moment immerses herself in a world where it’d be okay for her to entertain it. To walk over there and chat, maybe even flirt, with the confidence wearing this jacket has granted her. 

Of course, that world isn’t this one- and, she’s out here for a reason.

Her show-off detour has her taking a different, longer route to Zaun Park, treading an empty, abandoned parking lot framed by some rickety apartments. In the quiet this space plunges her into, it is impossible to ignore the extra sets of footsteps echoing after her own.

Vi clenches her fists.

Turning reveals exactly what she’d suspected two blocks down. The lowlight and streetlamps have a way of making people look more intimidating than they are, and Deckard is unfortunately no exception. Two thirds of his trio fan out behind him- a crunch at the mouth of the parking lot reveals the third stooge is cutting off her convenient escape route. 

In seconds, she is lazily surrounded. Deckard’s shadow stretches over her, the dramatic winter lighting lending itself well to his obsession with trying to intimidate her. He is taller, but he only packs a punch because he’s undisciplined and overcompensating. 

“I didn’t think you had the balls,” Vi grins, cutting off whatever smarmy opener Deckard was priming when he opened his mouth.

At once, his faked easy demeanor shatters- pissing off overconfident dimwits in fun, but unfortunately, never quite so beneficial in the long run. Vi knew that locker room talk hadn’t taught him shit. Crying to teacher won’t help if her beaten bloody ass can’t even crawl out of the empty parking lot after the fact.

“I’d like to set a context for the semester,” he scowls, puffs of air misting his irate eyes, “I know school’s where you go to learn lessons, but- this locale seems like a pretty decent second option, don’t you think?”

Vi slips the jacket off. Getting it muddy is a tragedy, but Deckard’s snot would be harder and grosser to wash out.

“You practice any other cool lines you wanna share?” Vi pops her knuckles, “Or should we get right to it?”

It goes about how she expected it.

There is no triumphant moment, no staring at her fists in wonder after the fact- as undisciplined as Deckard may be, four against one is hardly a battle. Just a beatdown.

She gets as far as spraining an ugly nose before she’s hitting the ground, slush cracking between her teeth as the first kick comes, and then the next. And the next. She tucks her arms and legs close to shield her stomach, and that’s about all the damage she can prevent- they lay into her with a sick kind of finesse, hard enough to hurt but gentle enough that this is a lesson and not her final moment.

They start to snicker instead of yell once they realise they’ve won over her. Whatever they say is lost, her ears full of snow, her brain tucked onto a shelf so she can check out of this. It doesn’t make the pain any less awful, but the kicking’s got a nice rhythm to it.

Deckard spits at her just as Vi becomes certain the next kick is going to her lunch back up. His trio falls in line, sneering, and Vi truly does try to strain her ears and listen to Deckard’s killer exit line, but really she’d just love to take a nap right here. She thinks she might’ve, for a few seconds, minutes, because the next throb of pain drags her brain off the shelf and by then she’s alone.

Curled up in an empty parking lot, waterlogged and tossed around like a stray mitten in the wintery road- this is truly the most pathetic version of how this Sunday could’ve gone, and sometimes she truly is grateful for the variety in her life. Not now, though.

“Fuck,” she hisses, hands burning where she presses them hard into the icy concrete, pushing herself to her shaky legs. One nearly buckles beneath her, but she breathes through it, finds the point of pain on her body that threatens to knock her back down the least and pretends that pain is all over her instead.

They didn’t even take her fucking jacket.

Throwing it back on is like adding parsley to a freshly-hacked up hairball. Or, more festively, a Snowdown bow to a geriatric dog’s favourite childhood chew toy. 

Well. Her pants are scuffed and soggy and her hair’s growing icicles but at least her jacket is quite nice.

“Ow,” she winces on her first step, and thinks about home. Thinks about the look she’ll get for the state she’s in. Of how Vander’s gentle patching up is a disguise for an inescapable interrogation session. 

She thinks of why she’s out here. She thinks of what’s- who’s closer, right now. Someone who, in her banged-up state, her brain is desperate to see, who also offers the least amount of consequences. 

So, like a coward, she slinks out of the parking lot, towards the last place, and the last person she should be thinking of when she’s in pain.

Coming over the hill and seeing Caitlyn’s form is just the thing she needed to remember how much fucking pain she’s in.

It’s as if the familiarity knocks awareness back into her- she is practically tumbling down the hill towards her, feeling right pathetic in her new jacket, and watching Caitlyn’s smile drop at the sight of her feels exactly like another fun kick to the stomach.

“Vi!” Caitlyn cries out, forces her down to the crunchy, iced grass, eyes wide with alarm.

“Happy Snowdown,” Vi slurs with a lethal bitterness, Caitlyn’s hands pressing some truly awful agony into her shoulders. 

She must have winced, because those hands are gone in an instant, and that’s also painful. She’s a big, pulsing bruise right now, infuriatingly fragile.

“What the hell- you-” Caitlyn hovers, her entire face a sheet of fear, “What happened?”

“Fight,” Vi manages to gurgle, arms panging, barely strong enough to keep her sitting upright anymore.

She’s tougher than this. It wasn’t even the worst beatdown she’s ever suffered. But this proximity certainly makes it feel that way. Or maybe it’s the cold, and the ache it brings- Vander always complains about it. Then again, he complains when it's hot, too, so who knows.

“You need medical attention,” Caitlyn says matter-of-factly, or perhaps a bit desperately. Her face pinches angrily when Vi laughs in response- softens a little, when the laughter makes her wince.

“Just a scratch,” Vi assures her, because it is, “Need to lay down. That’s all.”

The fall she took might cling to her bones for the next few days, but she can laze-off the worst of the dizziness, as long as she isn’t concussed. That hadn’t been fun last time. 

Suddenly, she’s shifting. Vi’s head weighs a thousand pounds right now and she can tell it’s moving- the pain sears through her, brain sloshing. But then it’s gone, in a nice, weightless drop, and the sopping end of her fringe is no longer stuck between her teeth. She’s lying so still, it’s like no part of her body exists but her head. And her head feels a lot.

A gentle touch. Foreign, almost frighteningly. Something shockingly calloused strokes the puff of her cheeks, soothes the sting of her cracked lips. A murmur vibrates against the top of her head. 

“I’d like to patch you up,” it’s Caitlyn- who else? “If that’s alright.”

Have they ever been this close? Stupid question- Vi is quick to realise her head is no longer touching crunchy, frozen dirt, and Caitlyn’s concerned face is upside down. There’s no mystery where her cushion comes from. Her trench coat smells like fireplace smoke.

“Yeah,” Vi swallows a coppery gulp of saliva, “You- yeah. Thanks.”

Caitlyn gives a shallow smile, and she stops her gentle stroking of Vi’s face to rummage in the inner pockets of her trench coat. Vi manages to sit up, albeit slowly- the world doesn’t spin quite as bad as she’d been dreading. The worst of the pain has somehow faded. Now, the bulk of it comes from her cuts. 

Her jacket comes off to expose the little pavement cuts on her arms, a result of her mistake to bare them in the fight. The center of her face radiates with a thin line of pain, which means they got her nose somehow. She’s lucky it’s not another break- it’s already hard to breathe though it sometimes.

The distinct sound of shuffling stops. Vi turns her body towards Caitlyn, whose hand has stopped moving inside her coat, eyes locked onto Vi’s arms, until she jumps back into sudden motion under her scrutiny. From the seemingly endless depths of her coat, she pulls out a plain tin, decorated by nothing but her own name in almost illegible handwriting, except for the painfully obvious C and K.

The contents of the tin are shockingly colourful little bandaids.

“Sorry, I mostly have penguin ones,” Caitlyn apologises, sifting through them. She smiles. “I like penguins.”

Vi’s lucky she isn’t bleeding out. Caitlyn takes her time introducing her to her array of options, fingers twitching with restrained giddiness. 

“This one is an Adelie,” she says, “They’re rather cute. Or would you prefer a Gentoo?”

They all look like penguins to Vi. She’s too dizzy to properly quip back, though, so she communicates this with a blank stare that brings instant pink to Caitlyn’s already winter-rosy cheeks.

“Right, right,” she murmurs, and carefully takes Vi’s arm.

She’s methodical in her work, and uncomfortably analytical- Vi thinks there is no part of her arms left unscrutinized, down to her hands. Caitlyn gives her an oddly concerned look over the white, scratched-over state of her knuckles, which makes Vi’s head feel like it’s full of jumping thumb-tacks. By the time that’s over, she’s got two on one arm and three on the other, her very own army of penguins whose species she’ll probably somehow remember.

Then comes her face. 

Caitlyn grabs it so hilariously delicately, and Vi would seethe about this if making the weight of her head someone else’s responsibility didn’t feel so nice. There’s a bruise blooming on her jaw that the shadows of any room will hide nicely, but the scratch on her nose is smack-dab center. Caitlyn clicks her tongue, and Vi glances down at the bandaid box. She laughs like a puff of air, wheezy.

“What kind of penguin is that one?” she asks, and Caitlyn follows her gaze to the one on top of the pile.

Pink, offensively. A cute, frosted delight in the center, cherry-topped, surrounded by floating sprinkles. Standing out almost comically against all the others.

Caitlyn does not look impressed. “That’s a cupcake.”

“And that was a joke.”

“I know,” Caitlyn says flatly, “It was the last one from my previous box, and for the snide comment, it’s going right over your nose.”

“Damn, preserve my dignity at least, Cupcake.”

Caitlyn’s eyes go wide, lip curling as if her butler’s served her fresh compost for dinner. “Pardon me?”

Sweat breaks out under Vi’s arms, which is probably a post-fight symptom. “Don’t like the nickname?”

“I’m not the one wearing the cupcake bandaid,” Caitlyn says as she forces it onto Vi, a shit eating grin on her face, “If anyone’s the Cupcake, it’s you.”

“But you’re the sweet one,” Vi whistles, her droopy grin curling her words.

Caitlyn looks at her quite hard, then. And, gently, she drags Vi’s pounding head right back down onto her lap, to keep doing the thing she was doing earlier that felt quite nice. 

“They hit your head quite hard, I think,” she whispers, a little smile audible in her fond voice.

Fuck, maybe, Vi thinks. What is wrong with me?

She must make a confused little noise. Caitlyn pets her head with not as much force as she could be using, giving a pitying but not condescending hum. “Don’t doze off. You might be concussed.”

“M not. I can tell.”

Caitlyn gives a shuddery sigh- Vi forgets how sad of a skill that is to have. “Alright. Still,” she continues, “I’ll keep you awake. I have a lot to say. Unless that’ll bore you to sleep?”

“You couldn't," Vi slurs, and the hand on her head freezes, then resumes with an obvious added tenderness. 

“Very well then,” Caitlyn murmurs, sounding despicably Piltie but also so very Caitlyn. “Oh, care to hear about my last game?”

Dinner that night is takeout from Jericho’s, with enough grease to trip an elephant and all the salt of Runeterra’s oceans. Just the way she needs it. The walk home had allowed her to shake off the worst of her pain, pulling herself together before she reached the doorstep of her house.

Right now, the food helps, too. Vi is glad to stuff her face- so is everyone else, apparently, because she has never experienced a more quiet dinner table in her life.

Her family is typically eager to share the day’s bullshit in loud, overlapping detail, reluctant to subscribe to the concept of one at a time, nor the courtesy that is swallowing before talking. There never isn’t anything to talk about over the sound of their chewing.

Right now, though, Claggor keeps shooting fleeting looks at Vander, who hasn’t once glanced up from his food, while Powder lines her fries up in order of length with the kind of spiteful concentration that’ll soon give her a headache. Weirdest of all is Mylo, who’s committed to this uncharacteristic silence so hard he’s actually chewing with his mouth closed. 

The first few bites of Vi’s fried shrimp were too good for her to really care, but concern sets in properly after her fourth mouthful. She swallows, noisily, looks at Vander, then looks at Claggor, who immediately tries to avert his eyes like he hadn’t been staring.

Powder is less obvious about it. Mylo wouldn’t know subtlety if it gave him a black eye. Eventually, he downs his drink, sets the cup down on the table with unnecessary force, and, finally, ignores the pleading no no no look Vander shoots at him.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” he throws his hands up and makes direct, dangerous eye-contact with Vi, “What is that on your nose?”

Vi blinks. She brings her hand up to her nose- to wipe away any sauce she’s probably missed there- and instead her finger makes contact with something foreign and certainly not saucy.

Her eyes blow wide, and that’s when she knows she’s been caught.

The fucking cupcake.

The table explodes into good ol’ fashioned Wick family pandemonium.

“I tripped!”

“Kids-”

“There’s no way you carry bandaids like that around!”

“It’s the only one I had, okay?!”

“You’re so full of shit-”

Powder gasps- when had she pulled up Vi’s sleeve? “She has more on her arm!”

Vi worms out of arm’s reach, leaning so far off the chair she’s almost perpendicular with it. “Get off me!”

“Settle down,” Vander raises his voice above the current of noise, weary but firm, “It’s not a crime to treat her scrapes, now, is it?”

Vander looks at her meaningfully, then. There is zero illusion he believes her little fable about tripping- Vi has not once cared to cover her scratches. The only wounds she bothers to hide are the ones Vander would disapprove of, and she certainly doesn’t hide them behind cupcakes and penguins. 

Mylo glares, probing eyes desperate to figure her out, and Powder bunches together like she’s about to pounce on her arm again. Vi catches her breath, prays that Vander’s stern voice is enough to hold them all back for at least a little while longer, until-

“You got them from someone,” Claggor finally says, like it physically hurts him to participate but he can’t help it, “Didn’t you?”

His question plunges the table into silence. 

Vi knows guilty is written all over her beet-red face. Mylo looks like he’s struck gold. Powder looks betrayed. Between them, Vander’s scrutiny falls away to reveal- shock, and that is what rattles her most.

“Do you have a friend, Vi?” he asks, in a tone of voice one might use to coax a rain-soaked kitten out from beneath a house.

The guilt reshapes. She’s been in fights before, ones Vander pretends not to know about and that she never verbally admits to. That kind of guilt is a bitter thing- this one is hot, a burning stone she can barely hold onto. She cannot meet the look in his eyes- and she makes a choice, right there.

“I got into a fight,” she spits out, crossing her arms tight, eyeing the sudden unappetizing slop in front of her. “Someone saw. Had nothing but kiddy bandaids to patch me up. She must’ve been a mom.”

Powder glares suspicious daggers at her side, and Vi looks head on, knowing she’d crack under the weight of such a probing look. Claggor looks desperate for that to wrap this whole thing up in a neat little bow, while Mylo raises an unruly eyebrow to let Vi know just how little he believes that.

Vander furrows his brow, the sudden, uncharacteristic confession having thrown him off, but he must sense how uncomfortable she is. Still, his fatherly aura of that’s enough has her siblings retreating back into their curious silence. Vi gets his special we’ll have to talk about this look instead, and so she pushes herself off her chair and excuses herself with an impolite mumble. 

Fucking great.

In the bathroom, she rips half the bandaid off, exposing the angry red scrape. It could scar, and it’d be such a stupid place to have one. Not cool at all. Still, the cute, pink thing burns more than the wound does, and so it comes off, dropped in the trash, wrapped in toilet paper for good measure.

The ones on her arm, though- those remain as she lies on her bottom bunk, staring at the plushies weaved and strung up in the frame above her while she forms a plan to avoid having to talk to Vander, ever again.

The fear of almost being found out does not keep Vi away from the park, for reasons she cannot explain. It would be reasonable to abandon ship, swerve off the road to avoid the collision, yet her feet take her down that familiar path that very next weekend.

Caitlyn is there- she never isn’t. She looks a bit silly kicking her ball around in a trench coat. Hell, it should look silly on her in general, but Vi has accepted that some people can pull off dressing like lawyers at sixteen and Caitlyn is one of them.

“My youth league teammates are… unpleasant,” Caitlyn says when she seems satisfied with the amount of practice she’s had. Recently, practice has seemed like the excuse she uses to come here. She kicks her ball around a bit, then fidgets with it on her lap while she sits with Vi on the uncomfortable ground. 

They’ve talked about life. The shallow little things about both Zaun and Piltover. About school, which they don’t tend to linger on, and about home and family. They’re a week into the new semester, which means Caitlyn has finally met her youth soccer league team. Had told her how excited she was for it while she held Vi’s head in her lap- which Vi has definitely not thought about a lot- and Vi feels a little prick of resentment towards the ungrateful Piltie bastards that have ruined it for her already.

“You can call them assholes,” Vi says, certain that unpleasant doesn’t begin to cover it. “You won’t get the spray bottle.”

“Arseholes, then,” Caitlyn scowls, and Vi lets out a sharp, night-splitting laugh. “I don’t know what they’re doing, joining up when they so clearly hate it. On the other hand, you have these thoroughly infuriating individuals who are trying way too hard. They’re-”

“Tryhards,” Vi supplies helpfully.

“Yes!” Caitlyn shouts, “We ran a practice game, half against half, and they seem allergic to passing! Of course you’re going to score a lot, you’re hogging the ball! You’re midfielders, what are you doing running it down? The strikers are wide open!”

Caitlyn gets a little lost in her passion sometimes, and it’s as if the world no longer exists around her. That’s fine. Vi is happy to watch- Powder gets like this, too, with her gadgets. But while Vi tends to focus on Powder’s words, with Caitlyn, they blur into one big static cloud, because she’s captivated by her gestures.

Her hands fly like a shadow-puppet show. Get too close, get smacked by a stray backhand. She emphasises particularly deadly parts of her rants with hand-chops, curls her fingers like outstretched claws when her chugging brain can’t pull out a word fast enough. Vi leans her head on her hand and accepts this’ll be her fate for a few minutes, until Caitlyn inevitably realises how long she’s been in her own head, flushes, and babbles out an apology.

That might be her favourite part.

“That’s not to mention, they always seem to be in on some joke that I don’t-” Caitlyn stops. “What is that smell?”

Vi blinks. She sniffs the air- it’s thick, chemical, like a soggy wet-wipe, a little stony. One of Zaun’s signature seasonal fragrances.

“Rain,” Vi tells her, adding, “The smog makes it a bad idea to stand around in it.”

“Odd time of year for rain,” Caitlyn comments, seemingly disturbed by how little sense it makes.

“Everything’s upside down here,” Vi informs her nonchalantly, “Doesn’t last long, but when it rains, it rains hard.”

To prove Vi’s point, the air shakes. Above them, the clouds are a concerning shade of grey. They stare at one another, alarmed, as Vi’s words dawn on them both.

“...Shit.”

Vi helps Caitlyn to her feet quickly as the first drop of rain hits her right on the healing nose scratch. No amount of running will save them from being drenched now, and Vi’s clad in her leather jacket- not appropriate rain attire, and a travesty to get wet.

“You said it’s a bad idea to stand in it?” Caitlyn parrots.

“It’s not acid. Don’t make that face. Could put you in bad shape, though.”

Caitlyn nods. “Where should we go?” she asks, just as drops begin to fall insistently. 

Vi swallows. Caitlyn’s never been anywhere in Zaun but the park, and on the path to the bus stop. Vi is not keen on dragging a councillor’s daughter to any one of these shitholes, not because they’re shitholes, but because it’ll draw attention. Considering this, there really is only one viable option, which she realises with the dread of knowing you’re about to hit the Pilt after leaping off Progress Bridge. 

“I know a place,” Vi says stiltedly, just as a sheet of rain drops down hard. She’s about to mourn her precious jacket, and recently washed hair, when-

“Here.”

“Wha-”

She is enveloped in one of the nicest materials she’s had the pleasure of wearing around her body in years. Only when Caitlyn slips back into view from where she’d stepped closer does Vi register her now slimmer, coat-less figure.

Vi does not have time to contend with the implications of this action. Vi, in fact, would love to run like hell right now- and she does, Caitlyn hot on her heels, down the streets of Zaun and towards Vi’s inevitable fate.

The streets are blessedly clear, as is the entrance to The Last Drop- Zaun’s people know better than to risk poisoning by rain. Caitlyn’s trench coat is big enough to make a miraculously effective shield, keeping the rain from ruining her hair and jacket.

Caitlyn, of course, is drenched when Vi turns to look at her once they make it to the door of the bar. She winces apologetically, then pushes the door open with a perhaps unfair lack of urgency, and their winded bodies burst into The Last Drop.

The door shuts behind them, plunging them into the jazzy quiet of the bar, and the soft clinks of glass which bring an ease to Vi’s bones despite her underlying buzz of anxiety. The television plays at a low volume, which means whatever’s on it isn’t important enough to draw a crowd. The rain is practically deafening against the walls of the bar, and Vi hopes Vander had gotten around to fixing the shoddy roof part she’d found with her sister last time they climbed up there.

“Alright, so-” Vi stops in her tracks, “What are you doing?”

At her side, Caitlyn is on her knee, untying the bows of her shoes with completely unnecessary precision and slipping them off. She looks up at Vi with a questioning gaze.

“I can’t wear cleats inside,” she says like she could’ve added duh, stupid to it. “They scrape the floor.”

“Just- okay-” Vi stutters, watches water drip off Caitlyn to puddle on Vander’s precious wooden floors, “Fine.”

She looks around, nerves making her hands twitch. The Last Drop isn’t supposed to make her nervous. 

“Go sit over there,” she points to the bar’s least coveted bunk, this isolated thing in the corner, too far from the drinks for their regulars to hog it. 

Caitlyn clearly does not appreciate being ordered around, but, miraculously, she must recognize she is out of her depth here, and defers to Vi without any huffing. Thank god. It’s pretty empty in here, but some guy sitting near the door is already staring like he caught her Piltie accent on the air. Vi’s glare has him whipping his head back down to consider the bottom of his empty mug.

Vi gives Caitlyn her coat back because leaving her soaked and shivering in the corner is the exact opposite of chivalry, even if the thick coat is now clogged with water. Better than nothing. Then she steels herself, takes a deep breath, and turns towards the warship on the horizon;

Vander, motionless behind the bar, rag stuck in the beer glass he’s been cleaning ever since they stepped inside.

She approaches him, head down, desperate not to make eye contact until she has no choice. There are no customers at the bar top to distract Vander’s attention away from her. The drink rack behind him must be close enough to his eyes that it counts if she stares there instead- but even boring holes into their shittiest whiskey bottle can’t save her from Vander’s impeccably bewildered raised eyebrow.

“Vi,” he says in greeting, and she can’t read his tone at all. It’s amusement and suspicion and shock all rolled into one.

She nods as her eyes read Stillhouse on the label, over and over again. “I need a towel.”

“Clearly,” oh, now he’s definitely laughing at her as he reaches beneath the bar. “Was there anything else you wanted to tell me?”

“Nope,” Vi takes the towel the second he drops it on the bartop and spins away, so focused on getting away she nearly rams into the damn bunk. 

Caitlyn is sitting perfectly prim, knees crossed, hands atop one another in her lap, watching Vi with this clueless little smile, happy to be here with her hair plastered to the sides of her head. She wrings the damp strands with the towel and Vi should probably take a seat but she is so fucking on edge.

She instead leans on the bunk and drums her fingers on the table’s edge as she half watches Caitlyn, half watches the bar. For what? Danger, of course, though in her uneasy state, danger could reasonably be anything between a car crashing through the wall or a too-long glance from a patron. Already she’s fast-forwarding to the talk she’ll have with Vander, living there in that moment, trying to picture the look on his face. 

“This-”

“What?” Vi blurts, startled, and there’s no way Caitlyn can’t see how anxious she is.

Caitlyn has neatly folded the wet towel over the edge of the table and somehow evolved from wet bunny to artfully damp rabbit in the time it took for Vi to swerve past three nervous breakdowns. Her eyes are wide and stunned, and Vi thinks whatever cool image she’s been projecting since they met has eroded a bit.

“This bar is nice,” Caitlyn picks up from where she left off,  “I’m surprised they let us in.”

“Why?”

Caitlyn blinks. “Well, bars don’t typically admit the underaged.”

“Oh,” Vi says dumbly. Right. “Um. Yeah, this is my dad’s bar.”

Caitlyn doesn’t seem put off by Vi’s bizarre behaviour. In fact, she looks unfairly amused. On Vi’s home turf. For such a round, pockmarked face, she sure can pull off smug. 

“That’s your father over there, then? Vander?” she asks in a tone that guarantees she already knew what this place was and was waiting for Vi to divulge it, smiling, “You look like him.”

Vi would find that hilarious in any other context.

“I get that a lot,” she says, because there is no way she’s about to get into all of that right now.

Under the dim bar light, Caitlyn’s hair dries to a frizzy texture, flyaways caught by the lightbulb above them. Her coat is a sopping lost cause, and her polo won’t ever smell like anything but Zaun’s rain, but she doesn’t look nearly as prissy about it as Vi expected from a Piltie.

Caitlyn’s not like other Pilties, though. She’s had a while to come to terms with that.

As it turns out, the game playing on the television is soccer. They’re sitting too far away from the screen to properly make out the teams, but blobs of grey take up most of the footage, so she thinks whoever they are, they must be winning. Caitlyn would probably know. She should ask, instead of looking anywhere but right at her.

“Are you uncomfortable with me being here?” Caitlyn finally asks before Vi can speak, and when Vi turns to look at her, she’s wearing a nervous, insecure smile. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

Damn it. She’s not winning any hospitality awards, that’s for sure. “No, no, it’s… not you,” Vi assures her, raising her leg to hop into the booth, “It’s just-”

“Are we out of orange juice, dad?”

Lightning shoots through her with a vicious crack.

Oh, no.

“Last carton’s up here,” Vander calls back.

No, no, no-

It’s too late. Of course, from the very first place Vi should’ve checked upon arrival- that scratched up bunk with their names carved into it in the back- comes Powder, who catches Vi’s eye across the room instantly, lighting up.

Then- her expression twists into a vicious scowl.

Before Vi had foolishly decided the Last Drop was their best shelter from the rain, she’d thought, if I’m lucky, I’ll just have to deal with Vander.

Vi is not lucky. Vi broke a mirror once as a kid while trying to look cool practicing boxing moves and it probably cursed her. Around the corner behind Powder are her two brothers and Ekko, and the universe laughs its ass off as eight eyes find Vi across the room.

Grabbing Caitlyn by the arm and running her out the door will accomplish nothing but make her look guilty and also make Caitlyn sad. Maybe. She beat and was beaten to shit by four smarmy kids a week ago. Can’t she look another four of them in the eye?

Not kids she shares a bathroom with.

Her family is upon them in seconds. “Well, well,” Mylo starts, because he always has to be the most insufferable of them. “Was wondering where you were, Vi.”

“Hello,” Caitlyn says cheerfully and so fucking unhelpfully.

Vi whips around to look at her, and she must be pulling a pretty severe face, because Caitlyn’s jaw snaps shut and she takes on a meek expression, which Vi- doesn’t want either, but-

“Who is she?” Powder asks like a snake bites.

Vi feels the venom enter her bloodstream. Claggor places a careful hand on Powder’s shoulder, but it does nothing to dampen the intensity of her glare. The collision of these two parts of Vi’s life is a car crash with casualties. 

“This is Caitlyn,” Vi gestures towards her, then holds her hand out towards the four kids looking at her like they’re trying to peel back her skin. “Caitlyn, my family.”

“Nice to meet you,” Caitlyn says giddily. Too giddily. No one’s ever seemed excited to face the five of them all at once. “Vi’s told me about you.”

Mylo’s bushy eyebrows shoot up. Vi barely keeps her forehead from meeting the table.

“Oh? So you guys talk a lot, then?”

Caitlyn so generously looks back at Vi to hand her the reins to the carriage she’s already run off course and into a ravine.

“...A bit,” Vi mumbles, and prays that Caitlyn recognizes the omission as a current necessity. 

Ekko has snuck past them to lean his arms on the table, glaring at Caitlyn with his scrutinous baby face. “You’re from Piltover? What’s that like?”

“Yeah, what’s a Piltie doing on our side of the bridge?” Mylo pipes up with so much forced bravado it would make Vi guffaw were this not her own personal hell.

“It’s not illegal, is it?” Caitlyn says, cocking her head, narrowing her eyes. 

“Ignore him,” Vi says quickly, slightly impressed that Caitlyn hasn’t bowed, but certainly not in any state to think about it, “He’s trying to get a rise out of you.”

Mylo only grins, so perfectly aware he holds the upper hand here that it makes Vi sick. Claggor watches on like he’s powerless to stop this, the shitty bystander, while Powder looks more betrayed than Vi’s ever seen her, or ever wants to see her again.

“I like going to Zaun park,” Caitlyn continues, turning that intense stare of hers onto Mylo, “That’s how I met Vi.”

“You play?”

“I do. On my school’s team in fall, in a youth league the rest of the year.”

“Interesting!” Mylo says like one might fawn over a toddler’s scribbles. He glares at Vi without turning his head, a pointy smile spreading on his insufferable face. Instantly, she’s shot back to that day- do we have a soccer team?- and she knows he knows. There are no illusions about why she asked. There are no further mysteries about how long this has been going on. “Do you play against Zaun?”

“This fall, perhaps. I’ve been pestering my coach,” Caitlyn is handling herself quite well against Vi’s brother, blissfully oblivious to the sinister, pointed undertones of his questioning. 

Mylo clicks his tongue. “Bit unbalanced, don’t you think?”

Caitlyn doesn’t take the bait. “Well, I’m excited.”

Across the bar, a patron chokes on his next sip. Someone must have scored, because a tiny, near inaudible cheer comes out of the TV. Powder still hasn’t said a word. It is silence, intolerable, the walls piping down like they want in on watching Vi’s downfall. Wait. The walls are quiet!

“Wow, I think the rain’s stopped!” Vi shouts a bit too loudly, clapping her hands together, “What’d I tell you? Hard and fast.”

Caitlyn blinks, takes a moment, notes the lack of patter on the walls. “Oh, so it has.”

“You should probably head home, huh?” Vi says with fake disappointment, shoving past her brother and lightly brushing past Ekko to grab the soccer ball and take Caitlyn by the arm.

Nobody stops her. Not even Caitlyn, who lets herself be dragged without question. Vi isn’t oblivious to the four pairs of eyes burning into her back- wouldn’t be surprised to find blisters there later. She practically throws the doors open, and forces them closed again rather than waiting for them to close themselves. 

Outside, the ground is soaked, and the air is almost unbearably pungent, but Caitlyn does an impressive job at pretending it doesn’t bother her, her nose wrinkling only slightly as she scrambles to put her cleats back on. A chill passes through them, temperature dropping with the sun- it’s dark, courtesy of winter’s short days, and only a little later than their usual splitting time.

The soccer ball is still wet and streaked in Vi’s hands.

“I’m sorry about them,” Vi says immediately, seeming sheepish to drown her guilt, which ping-pongs from side to side, unsure of where to settle.

“Nothing to apologise for,” Caitlyn assures her, much too generously, “They’re spirited. I suffer a lot worse at school.”

Caitlyn’s hair is bumpy, made wavy by the impromptu shower. Is that its natural state? It’s always so straight when she has it down. Her shirt collar is weighed down, exposing more of her collarbone than she seems to prefer. Her arms are full with her ruined trenchcoat. 

Vi is setting the ball down and pulling off her jacket before she can ask herself what the fuck she’s doing.

“It’s, um,” Vi coughs, “It’s cold out,” she mumbles, and hands it to Caitlyn.

Caitlyn blinks, mouth dropping in a little loose circle, more thoroughly thrown off than she seems used to. She takes the jacket very carefully.

“Oh?” she breathes.

“You’ll probably get sick if you wear that soaked thing on your way back,” Vi is quick to explain, just as quick as Caitlyn is to throw the jacket on.

It drowns her more narrow shoulders, but otherwise fits well. Surprisingly, the Zaunite look of it isn’t offputting on her Piltie self, and Vi isn’t sure what to make of that.

“Thank you,” Caitlyn smiles- a big, gapped smile, “You’re very kind.”

Bending to take her ball, she ends up closer to Vi than before when she straightens again. She tucks a darkened strand of hair behind her ear, and Vi inexplicably tracks the movement. Just as Vi realises she should probably say something, Caitlyn’s smile softens. “Bye, Vi.”

She leaves Vi like that- to contend with the thought of her being kind. When’s she last been called that? Why’d she deserve a smile like that? As she watches Caitlyn disappear into Zaun, her head practically spins. Forget the fight she was in a week ago- now, more than ever, she needs to lie the fuck down.

Vi ambles back into the Drop, and finds her siblings exactly where she left them, like time had stopped marching without her presence. They snap their heads towards her, and Vi isn’t sure if they even talked while she was gone- practically hopes they hadn’t, because it couldn’t have been good.

Mylo’s grin practically lifts his eyebrows off his head. Claggor offers an apologetic smile- too little, too late. Powder is still looking at her like that. 

Ekko’s eyes dart between them all, then back to Vi. And while he could break this awful silence with something merciful, an olive branch, he instead addresses the elephant in the room with all the unsubtleness befitting his age.

“Where’s your jacket?”

Vi takes a deep, rainsmelly breath, and contemplates a nice nap at the bottom of the Pilt.

It’s a nice, tense Saturday- just a day later- when another very weird thing happens.

Vi is on the couch, doing a very good job at pretending what happened yesterday didn’t happen. Everyone else, not so much. She’s gotten two meaningful looks from Mylo and already made Claggor flinch several times by walking into any room he’s standing in. Powder’s locked herself in their shared bedroom, and although Vander confirmed she was doing fine in there, getting lost in her art, it still feels like there’s a blender where Vi’s heart should be. 

This silent treatment has lasted over twelve hours. Didn’t even let her put her to bed last night. Vi knows that sisters fight and that she should probably apologise, but-

What for? her indignant mind scoffs, and she squashes the thought.

So, with her own bedroom off limits, she waits on the couch like a statue made to be gawked at. She’d much prefer it if everyone got their jeers in- now she knows Vander talked to her brothers about keeping their mouths shut, and that’s a sickening image. Vi must be the only sixteen year old for whom talking to a girl her age results in a fucking family crisis. 

“Vi, a call for you.”

She jolts, interrupted from her grumbly spiral by Vander at the mouth of the living room, peeking in. There’s a soft mirth to his face that puts her on edge instantly, even before his words set in. A call? Vi doesn’t think she’s used this phone in any way other than picking it up for Vander when his hands are full.

Vi stands, finds the phone unhooked and on the counter. Vander hovers across the kitchen- a stern, yet panicked glare has him retreating with his hands up in surrender, smirking all the while.

She picks up the phone, cradles it close to her ear, and squeaks, “Um, hello?”

“Vi!”

That little happy accent blasts through the speaker, the crackle of their shitty phone doing nothing to diminish how posh she can make that single syllable. 

Caitlyn.

The absurdity of this situation drops on Vi like several pounds of snow. 

It was bizarre having her in the Drop yesterday, but to hear her voice in Vander’s messy kitchen, next to the fridge with Powder’s art on it- she barely holds back a bark of nervous laughter. 

“…Hi. How did you get this number?” she finally manages to stammer.

“My mother and your father talk,” Caitlyn says, with distinct pride, “It isn’t difficult to find amongst her files. She’s very organized.”

Vi isn’t sure how to word you got the phone number to your mother’s political ally through questionable means just to talk to me? without betraying how weirdly touched she is by it. Instead, all she manages is, “Cool.”

“By the way, I got home just fine yesterday. Thank you again!”

“Oh, right,” Vi says dumbly, kicking herself. It should’ve been the first, gentlemanly thing she asked. “Glad to hear it.”

“Your voice sounds different through the phone. I’m sure mine does too. I’ve always hated the sound of my voice through a device, it’s awful. Not that you sound awful! You sound good. Normal! It’ll be a shock to hear it in person again.”

The room grows several degrees warmer. Vi glances to make sure she isn’t leaning on the stove- she isn’t, and it isn’t even on. But an inexplicable heat is rushing up her neck, and suddenly her head feels like it’s encased in a steam cloud. This is fondness, she knows. She’s had human emotions before, but they’ve never quite felt like a stampede of bunny rabbits across a rainbowy meadow. 

There isn’t much she can say, against such an onslaught. Caitlyn gets rambly sometimes, and Vi can only imagine how her free hand must be working overtime, doing all the frenzied moving that’s typically a two-hand job. Or maybe she’s on her bed, and her fancy Piltie cellphone is on speaker mode, and whatever sub-intelligent mumbling Vi is capable of right now is echoing across her princess bedroom. 

“I can’t hog the phone,” Vi blurts out, like a true paragon of courtesy, “We, uh, only have one.”

“Oh, of course!” Caitlyn says, apparently not at all diminished by Vi’s less than one star behaviour, “I didn’t call to chat for long. I just wanted to let you know I’ll be at the park tomorrow. I know coincidence was our thing, but I think we’ve tested fate enough.”

Our thing flies into Vi’s ribcage and plants itself there like a shiv. She’ll bleed out if she removes it- she doesn’t dare touch it. But fuck, is she gonna be feeling it. Our thing. 

Our.

“Caitlyn,” Vi promises with sudden urgency. “I’ll be there.”

There’s a pause, almost involuntary, before a giggle comes through the speaker, crackled but no less bright. “I’m excited to see you. Bye, Vi.”

Vi sets the phone down on the counter like it’s a hot stone. Half the mechanisms behind her face twist and pull every which way to stretch her lips in a smile, while the other half, set in their old ways, fight against the urge. 

In the end, there is no winner- Vi can scarcely take a deep breath before she spots the person standing in the kitchen doorway, still as a ghost, eyes just as haunted.

“You lied to me.”

Her sister’s voice is tiny, fractured, a smack on the far right side of a piano, the notes left forever unresolved. Vi would swaddle this little voice forever if she could, take it to a cave on some undiscovered island to protect it if she knew how to swim that far. Now she takes the brunt of it, and can barely find the bravery to look Powder in the eye.

Instinct is the fed beast that has kept her alive. Here, it tells her to coo and give up. So rarely has she been right to stand against Powder. Some new critter is gnawing at her ankle, though- how is this fair? 

“What did I do?” she grips the counter behind her with both tense hands.

Powder’s lip curls. There is no malice in her sneer- it’s the prelude to a tremble. “When did you meet her? How long have you been her best friend?” 

There is no lying about who was on the phone. No more lying at all. A misstep here is a dangerous thing. Calling for Vander is the coward’s move. Fighting Deckard one on four hadn’t scared her one bit, and right now, Vi is terrified.

“Powpow,” she tries, carefully.

“Do you like her more?” Powder accuses with a squeaky shout, “Is she more fun?”

“Never,” Vi says instantly. It’s easier, to promise something like that, than to explain the various modes of like- how different parts of her can be comforted by different people. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“It was an accident,” Vi assures her, approaching with gentle steps, “It wasn’t meant to get this far. I just- I kept seeing her. She kept coming around.”

Her sister is not a ticking time bomb. That is an ugly thing the kids at school say when she has to be taken out of class to cry. Vi is the impulsive, volatile grenade- she is the one who lashes out so Powder doesn’t have to. 

Her sister is not a bomb, but Vi knows just how to defuse her.

“It’s barely important,” she insists, “Not enough to be worth telling you guys.”

“She can’t beat my score on the shooting game,” Powder argues, cheeks puffed, and it’d be an adorable face if she weren’t truly desperate for that to be enough to keep Vi’s affections.

Vi smiles wobbily, despite herself. “She can’t.”

“You’re not going to replace me?”

Her heart shreds to ratty tatters. She lunges for a hug- Powder accepts it, burying her snotty nose in Vi’s chest, small hands pulling at her lazy day t-shirt. She’s ten sizes smaller in her embrace- they are not a day older than the day mom and dad died.

“Nothing, no one, could ever replace you,” she whispers fiercely into her hair, between two bug hair pins. 

Powder does not wail. She simply sniffles into Vi’s shirt, and they stay like that until Vander finds them, and makes them a kiddy lunch without a single word.

With every one of Vi’s sudden escapades now under scrutiny, it’d probably be wise of her to cut back on them. However, Vi is currently walking a very thin line of politeness, and a broken not-promise would be just the kind of thing to ruin her non-existent reputation forever.

Luckily, Vi finds herself in an empty house the very next day, and thus, there’s no necessity for excuses. Perfect timing, and perhaps the universe taking pity on her atrocious luck. 

Zaun is cold and dry, crispy beneath her feet. Probably makes bad terrain to play ball in. Caitlyn had told her schools have their soccer seasons in fall, because the weather’s not hot enough to overwhelm, and cool enough to be refreshing. 

When she makes it to the hill, her eyes search for that dot in the distance, tearing down Zaun park’s shitty soccer field, but she can’t seem to make out a figure against the grass. Caitlyn is not typically hard to spot, even in that dark trench coat she favours. 

She’s a self-described creature of habit. The fact that she isn’t where she said she’d be, isn’t where she always is, is an immediate cause for a concern that surprises even Vi. She’s oh-so familiar with that little pinch of fear in her chest for others- typically reserved for a very small group that does not take applications.

“Caitlyn?” Vi murmurs on the wind because shouting would be idiotic, even though whispering is more idiotic. 

She explores the rest of the park, which she hasn’t had reason to in a while. Next to the run-down playground, it’s a mostly flat, open area, save for a little stone-paved nook that could be a fountain with the right funding. It’s secluded, and sitting backwards on it gives you a descent view of the river Pilt, which apparently looks murkier on this side of the bridge. Piltover’s lights have a way of gilding the things they’d rather not see.

Vi checks the nook last, and finds Caitlyn from behind, silhouetted against the distant Piltover. The gold flatters her, glitters at the edges of her hair. This is the most Piltie she has ever looked, but Vi’s tongue feels thick in her mouth for an entirely different yet simultaneously unknown reason.

Caitlyn must sense she’s there- her spine straightens even further, somehow possible even with her consistent and already perfect posture. Her eyes glint when her head tilts to regard Vi, a flash over the dark blue. She’s never dressed that appropriately for her evening solo-practice sessions, but even now, Vi can tell she hasn’t come here for that tonight.

“No ball today?” Vi asks, looking for the familiar shape in the dark silhouette of the stone bench, as if camouflaged in its shaded underbelly.

“Practice was rough enough,” Caitlyn says, her voice low and thus deep. Unnaturally so, as if forced from her squeaky teenage throat. 

The light illuminates her more the closer Vi gets. She’s in a skirt today, which is rare, offering Vi a look at her legs. Her knee-high socks are rolled down to uneven heights to reveal light, plum blotches down both legs. 

Vi’s not very acquainted with such harmless bruises. Most of hers linger as sickly shades of green. But the sight of these ones on Caitlyn has a little, unstoppable frisson passing through her.

“You’re hurt,” she remarks, bites her lip so it comes out less patronizing. 

“It’s a bruise,” Caitlyn scoffs, “I’m hardly that breakable.”

It’s not venomous, but it certainly isn’t amused, either. Vi is blasted back several months into the past, where they couldn’t seem to say the right things to each other, ever, and didn’t have to care if they did.

Vi helps herself to a seat, within respectful distance of Caitlyn- not close enough for their silhouettes to merge, but close enough that their fingers may touch with the next entirely involuntary bodily twitch. They’ve been closer than this one, which makes the distance its own, third presence.

The Pilt thrashes against the wall of the canal, typically a soothing hum- cacophonous, now, in this silence. With nothing else to listen to, the bang of waterlogged trash is unmistakeable, and bleak. 

“You weren’t in your usual spot,” Vi finally murmurs, an aborted huff of amusement tailing her words. She’s tempted to smile with all her teeth, but she’d probably look too much like a stressed-out animal.

Caitlyn opens and closes her fist on her lap. When she’s not in motion, chasing her ball like a hunting hound, all her little misfit-mannerisms become brightly lit, unmissable. Her lips twitch- she could be smirking, but the side of her mouth Vi can see isn’t the side doing it.

“Hm,” she hums, eyes on Piltover across the canal, “So, I… keep coming around enough to have a usual spot.”

Vi is about to quip- to hang on for dear life to the only substantial words she’s gotten out of Caitlyn so far- but then the girl looks at her with both breathtakingly blue eyes and she knows now they were a pointed arrow.

It pierces her chest. 

Suddenly, she’s wondering- did I just put the phone on the counter? It’s a bad habit of hers. Sometimes, if she’s walking with it, she’ll set it down somewhere across the house and Vander will ask where it’s gone, twenty minutes later, when he needs it. You’re lucky they hung up, he would joke, otherwise, they'd have heard us looking for it like a pair of idiots.

“Cait,” Vi’s voice cracks on the single, daring syllable.

Caitlyn’s entire face pinches at the nose, Piltover’s light exposing the mist in her eyes treacherously. It’s not the face she made when Vi told her she wasn’t good with people, nor the one staring back at her when she was two steps from leaving. Those were acceptance, fear- this is pain, and it shows the same way on her face as it would on a commoner’s, a sibling’s. 

“I’m not daft,” Caitlyn curls her fists in her lap, looks right at them, voice squeaky, “I know the words were reserved for your sister. I’m not hurt.”

Vi shakes her head. “You are.”

No amount of straining can get their hands to touch now. So Vi moves closer, and anyone watching would see one silhouette.

Caitlyn takes a shocked breath at their proximity, but otherwise does not move. Her eyes twitch as if moving her gaze would be physically painful. Her hands keep flexing, open then closed, the same way her sister chews the collars of all her shirts to soggy tatters. Self-soothing, harmless, lest it turns harmful.

To force a response out of her now wouldn’t be fair. Even as the silence eats Vi alive, even as the panicking coward in her head grows louder, afraid. 

Vi makes a lot of mistakes, but they tend to be the same ones, over and over. A warning punch landing too hard. Coming home with an ugly cheek bruise. Getting short with Powder when the day’s tested her enough.

This is new. This is a mistake from which she stands to lose something. That is terrifying, foreign, because she’s lost before- big things, lovable things, and this, right here, counts. When did it start counting?

So she stares at her hands, too. Considers her whitening knuckles. The cuts will reopen the next time she storms into Sevika’s garage and wails into a boxing bag without bandaging them first, but they’re closed and calm now. Haven’t had much reason to wail on anything. They tremble in her lap, forever in minuscule motion thanks to the damage she’s put them through, but also, anxious- that the outcome of this confrontation will give her reason to split them open in that damn garage again.

“Tell me this isn’t just an accident anymore.”

Vi’s first full breath bursts out of her.

“What?”

Caitlyn looks at her fully, directly. All her attention, all at once, is practically enough to knock her over. But more than that, those eyes can’t hide anything. Everything Vi could possibly want to know about how Caitlyn feels right now is swimming around in there. 

It’s so fucking hard to meet them.

“Tell me-” Caitlyn swallows, tries again, “I don’t- I don’t want to trap you in this cycle of humouring me.” she licks her lip nervously, bites it, eyes flitting all over Vi’s face. “You can tell me to go home to my… shiny house. I won’t mind.”

Her smile falters in milliseconds. Her bruised leg moves outwards and away, foot digging into the ground, already readying herself for a quick escape. Vi wouldn’t even have to speak. A simple nod would do. Fuck that.

The light might be low, but Vi’s sight has never been this clear. Their history stretches out behind them, incomprehensible. How does this work? Why must it work? 

Because it’s lovely. They are simply two girls, alike in teenage insecurity. They’ve always been, even with that bridge between them. A bridge Caitlyn kept stubbornly crossing, uncaring of metaphors, of how dark Zaun gets at night- uncaring of the unpleasant girl watching from Zaun’s oldest oak.

Coincidence had been off the table for months. They’d been desperate to meet each other this whole time, hadn’t they? Screaming for solidarity, reaching for unity exactly where they never could have expected to find it. 

“No,” Vi says simply, the word dropping with an unbearable weight.

Caitlyn's stiff posture loosens as if she’s had a string pulled. There is no relief in her eyes, only her stance. A simple no isn’t enough. 

“I only ever come here to see you,” Vi finally splutters. With the weight gone, these words now tumble out of her like vomit. “I’m sorry. I like being around you. A lot. I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t. I don’t stick around for things I don’t like.”

“Oh,” Caitlyn’s eyes finally widen. In the low lighting, it’s practically impossible to tell, but the lit edges of cheek glow a slight pink. “Blunt.”

“Too blunt?”

“I told you,” a smile finally curls her lip back up, and it’s like the sun rising over the Pilt, “It’s refreshing.”

Their hands both fidget on the concrete bench. Vi’s is tense, fingers curling like uncertain spider legs, while Caitlyn’s tap, tap, tap, playing a tiny, invisible piano. They’re alike in this way, too- nervous, down to their fingertips. Vi bridges the gap- she settles her palm over Caitlyn’s hand, and the fidgeting stops.

That possible pink edge blooms just a bit darker.

Vi can barely look at their limp, touching hands. Is it too heavy? Is it hurting her? Is this turmoil showing on her stricken face? She swallows, and sighs. It’s still just cold enough for a puff of white to billow around her mouth, lit gold. “I owe you a lot more than I give you.”

Caitlyn’s hand wrestles out from beneath Vi’s. There’s barely a moment to mourn the contact before her hand lands fiercely on top of Vi’s, curling as if caging her palm to the bench. “You owe me nothing.”

“I’m such a dick to you.”

A pause. "You gave me your coat.”

“So did you.”

They giggle together, lightly. They’re absurd, like this, but it’s a nice thing to be, with company.

Vi can feel all five pads of Caitlyn’s fingers. What she'd thought was a trap is now so obviously an intense caress, an insistence Vi had been too cowardly to initiate. She knows how to get the first punch in, knows the risk behind a haymaker. But she’s brave- she’s always had to be, learned how to choose to be. And so, she throws her scariest blow yet.

“I’m- you’re-” Vi bites her lip, and it tumbles out of her. “You’re my first real friend, you know.”

Caitlyn’s eyes go wide. Vi is not given long to wonder if she’d said too much before Caitlyn is launching herself into her arms in a hug much more crushing than her frame should be capable of.

Every inch of Vi sings beneath her touch. Powder is lovably clingy and Vander’s hugs are safety and home but it has been so long since she’s felt a friendly touch. The only reason people who aren’t her family get close is to hurt her somewhere that’ll stick. She’d expected her very essence to reject the proximity as if attacking a foreign body, but she settles into her embrace, exultant.

Vi shakily inhales the smell of grass and incense clinging to Caitlyn’s shoulder- and exhales a breath she thinks she’s been holding all her life.

“You’re mine, too,” Caitlyn whispers where Vi’s hair muffles everything but the relief.

Zaun’s gross, cold winter turns into a wet late-winter, the sky taking on a more hopeful shade of grey. April is the month all the students of Zaun high begin to realise there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and either keep at it, or drop the ball. For Vi, who’s begun to think she won’t need to sacrifice schooling any time soon, there is no way in hell she’s slacking off now.

Meanwhile, Vi and Cait’s meetups have taken them further into Zaun- for foodstand bites, watching the sunset off the roof of an abandoned building, or, if she’s feeling brave enough, a visit to the Last Drop. Caitlyn talks about her youth soccer league team, and the games they’ll very soon start playing. Piltover apparently gets decent weather this time of year- absurd, Vi thinks, that the only thing Zaun could possibly hog from them is all the damn rain.

Sevika’s told her she’s been getting better at boxing. That she’s begun to develop a visible technique- her throws aren’t the desperate, survival jabs of a street rat anymore. There is hardly anyone to test it on besides Sevika’s punching bags, though, which is just as unfortunate as it is fortunate. 

That’s all to say: it is shocking how good things are going. Vi has not smiled this much since before the event that threw her entire life upside down several years ago. Unfortunately, this has set a precedent that nice things do not last, and this paranoia cannot be beaten like a punching bag. Her nights are much more sleepless, and way more annoying.

Chief among her worries: she’s been spending less time with Powder. Not through any lack of wanting- it’s her sister who’s always with Ekko, or needing alone time, and this is a simple result of growing up, of having people besides each other around. She won’t be a hypocrite, nor the uncool, needy big sister. But Powder has a way of lingering on things Vi thought they’d already talked through. In that way, they’re definitely sisters- Vander says stubbornness hadn’t had the decency to skip a generation. So Vi gets the silent treatment on days Powder decides she’s upset with her, and she can’t begrudge her her coping mechanisms, even if they hurt. Even if some part of her has learned to consider herself, to grumble over how it isn’t fair.

It helps, to have Caitlyn. Used to be she’d have the empty house to herself, when her siblings were out with other people, because there was nowhere else for her to go. Now, she uses the phone a lot more, and within the hour she’ll be watching Cait practice her kick set-ups until they find something distracting to talk about instead.

Vi’s life has expanded beyond what she thought possible. She now lives in a world in which her care can extend beyond her family, her knuckles are able to scar over before their next beating, whenever that may be, and Powder doesn’t depend on her every waking moment. It’s as lovely as it is bitter, that good changes can bring along bad ones, too. She learns to take it all, and like a good brawling history, count her wins over her losses.

“Mylo, watch the stove,” Vander instructs, leaving the boiling pot of soup on the stove and exiting the kitchen without further explanation.

Powder instantly lunges for the ladle. 

“Don’t let him cook!” she shouts, shoving her brother out of the way, the two of them scuffling way too intensely for how close to a vat of boiling liquid they are. Vi almost cringes right out of her seat, putting all her willpower towards keeping her ass on the chair. No coddling. Even if Powder isn’t tall enough to see into the pot.

“I’m just watching it!” Mylo shouts in return, just as Powder’s pushing hand pulls his lip down.

It’s a rainy evening in Zaun, meaning warm, struggle soup for dinner. All the week’s scrap ingredients go in the pot, and they suck it down. They’ve been having it less lately, dinners becoming more elaborate, meat cuts looking prettier. Vi has learned to spot the telltale signs of Vander coming into money- a good week at the Drop, a stray refund. This particular stretch has lasted longer than usual.

“Last time you were allowed into the kitchen, we ate moldy potato stew!”

“It was just a few sprouts! You’re acting like I- like I made a weapon of mass destruction or something!”

“More like a weapon of ass destruction,” Claggor pipes up from the table neck to Vi with a snicker, “I was stuck in the bathroom for-”

“Vi? Could you come out here?”

Vander’s voice comes from around the kitchen doorway, and she turns to Claggor, who nods. They’ve developed a secret chain of command- when Vi isn’t in the room, supervision duty falls to him. This is also a slightly new thing she’s been doing, sharing responsibility. If she comes back to dinner spilled all over the floor, she won’t let the guilt disintegrate her from the outside out. Not completely!

When she meets Vander in the hallway, he’s tucked into the corner, and there’s a little gleam to his eyes that looks almost bizarre on him. For a moment, her heart sinks- had it been Caitlyn on the phone? She knows what amusement looks like on him, though, and this isn’t that. This is a hope she’s only seen in him when he’s next to mom in the old pictures.

She eyes him curiously. “What is it?”

He doesn’t waste her time. “Your uncle’s in.”

The room expands around them. Her breath catches as a cough in her throat. He hasn’t even elaborated yet- and she’s almost scared for him to, because if it isn’t what she thinks it is, she might crumble right here.

“You mean…?”

“Well, there’s quite a bit of paper to go through first,” he chuckles, “You know. Typical Piltover.”

“But?”

“As early as November,” he nods, and Vi’s hopes are confirmed all at once, in an almost dizzying punch. “Probably next January. The seat’s his.”

And she knew. Far earlier than anyone else, she’d known Zaun might get a seat. But might was a strong word. So often are things suggested, and that’s that. Zaun’s had a supposed shot several times in its history, Vander’s told her, even back in his mining days. None of it means anything without a signature, without a name to it.

Now, Vi’s uncle is going to be a councillor.

He wants what’s good for Zaun. Vander must have conceded that. It’s weird, suddenly, to realise she now also has family on the council. A leader of Zaun as a father and an uncle as their politician- by Piltovan standards, does that make her some kind of royalty? Not important.

“It was that easy?” she asks, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

Vander fixes her with a serious look, which typically means she’s said something naive. “Nothing about that was easy, kiddo,” he says, his voice gruff with all the struggle he’s been through to get to this moment, “It’s taken years. You just didn’t see most of it. Wasn’t in a language you understood.”

“Which was?”

“Politics.”

Vi scoffs. She’s never going to understand enough of it. Can’t conceive what they’ve done differently that they haven’t been all these years. Just outside their window, Zaun looks the same, and she can’t imagine how different the view might be in ten years or so. It all feels so outside the realm of possibility- even as it enters it. 

“We’ve had maybes, we’ve had fleeting interest turned sour by the slightest shift in economy,” Vander shakes his head, a frown tugging at his features, “When endorsing us didn’t favour their wallets, they’d turn away, and we’d move onto the next. Councillor Kiramman is… quite the stubborn woman, though.”

Like mother, like daughter, Vi thinks with a sudden tug of fondness. She shakes it off, because this is not at all what she should be focusing on.

A Zaunite will be on the council. For the first time in its city’s history, it will have a representative on the body ruling it. One man doesn’t have much sway, but a voice where it matters most in Piltover’s ears is one step closer to fixing the cracked roads, getting to stand out in the rain and smell like anything but industry.

She might not understand politics, but she understands what could change. A future opened up, for Powder- fuck. For herself. 

Vi crosses her arms. She remembers the scolding, last time they traded blows over politics. “Why are you telling me?” 

“I told you. Good news only, right? You deserve to know what’s happening for your city,” Vander smiles at her, then, cheekily, “Considering I don’t think we’d have gotten here without you.”

In the kitchen, the phone rings. Vander calls, “Could one of you pick that up?” and a shrill shout comes back from Powder: “I got it!”

Vi barely registers any of this. She’s too busy turning Vander’s last phrase over, spinning it like meat on a skewer. What did Vi do? And it hits her- it must be a very visible realisation, because Vander’s smile widens the moment it clicks, and a hot flush comes over her face.

“That girl you brought around…” he says gently, and Vi has learned how to lie to this man over countless worse things- who gave her that bruise, where had her packed lunch gone, why she hadn’t been home in hours?

But there is so very little to lie about anymore. The hardest part’s already over- the person who needed to hear this precious word most has already heard it. There is no fear, no reluctance, when she addresses her father with simple, raw honesty.

“Caitlyn,” she says quietly, and a small smile softens her face, “She’s my friend.”

Vander’s next breath seems to shake him. At once, she’s tugged into a hug. One day, she’ll have big enough arms that they’ll fit all the way around him. She dreads this just a little- there is no other time she feels this safely enveloped, arms splayed across his chest, holding onto this warm, threatless pocket of space.

“There you go, kiddo,” he whispers, emotion cracking the very center of his voice. In the murmur, she hears what he doesn’t say: Good. Finally. “That’s what I want to hear.”

It’s the next day, in the halls, between History and Adv. Common, that an unpleasant memory appears in the distance.

Vi hasn’t had to deal with his ugly mug in a while. She thinks he’s maybe had the decency, or perhaps the smarts, to avoid her on purpose, but watching Deckard approach now, she realises she’s overestimated him.

He was building suspense.

Flanking him are the boys who nearly put a dent in her stomach, the reason she can now tell the difference between an Adelie and a Gentoo. It is broad daylight, there are teachers standing at the mouths of their classrooms, and still Vi’s hackles go up- old habits die hard.

“How’s the dignity?” Deckard calls once he’s close enough. His snarl is drowned out by hallway chatter, but Vi hears every word no matter how badly she doesn’t want to.

With the sight of him comes that typical urge to wipe the smarm off his ugly face. It’s an unscratchable itch- this, she thinks, will never go away. But what doesn’t rise up alongside this impulse is the need for vengeance. To put him in his place, help him correct what he’s done to someone smaller and weaker than him, even if he’s kept away. It’s then she realises it:

She’s not angry anymore.

It’s no longer a thing living inside her. Not something that exists before it has a reason to. This, which has defined her for so long, is gone- and she still exists on the other side. She thought she’d go up in smoke. But she’s very much whole, hand on the cold metal of the lockers, standing here without the urge to tear at something

So, she snorts. It’s an effortless noise, and the look in Deckard’s eyes is so much more satisfying than swiping his knee out from under him could’ve been. 

“I’m talking to you,” he growls, stepping closer. Two of his boys look at each other with sudden fear- that, too, is gratifying.

“You really wanna try that here?” Vi says, making a vague gesture to remind him of where they are. It’s not quite crying to teacher, but the threat is there regardless, and Deckard’s eye twitches.

He slams his hand into his pocket, fishes for something, deposits whatever it is into Vi’s open, gesturing palm with very forced amusement. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

Vi doubts that. It probably isn’t as fun for him if she isn’t snarling, salivating with the urge to lunge at him. He’s stomping away before she can properly grin at him, his boys following without even glancing at her. Only when he’s down the hallway proper does Vi look at her palm, and her heart seizes.

Powder likes to fidget. She’s taken one of those cubes, with the six different sides, and tinkered with it to an almost unrecognisable point, splashed it with neon paint, varnished it in messy clumps. Vi’s holding the little thing now- Deckard had been, just seconds ago.

Fuck.

She expects that familiar urge to rise in her now. Deckard probably expects it, too- if she looked now, she’d probably find him staring over his shoulder down the hallway, ready for her to make a scene. 

Instead, a different urge arises- and Vi knows exactly where to go looking, Adv. Common be damned.

Powder is exactly where she’d expected her to be- the gym equipment storage, sitting against the wall. It’s her favourite crying place, a good screaming place, too, if the day’s been bad enough. There are no gym classes after lunch on Tuesdays, which is lucky for them both.

Vi doesn’t hear anything as she approaches, even with the heavy door slightly ajar. She throws it open, does a quick scan, finds a little blue bundle tucked preciously next to the shredded gym mats, head in her knees. 

“Powder!” she cries out, already throwing herself across the room. She knows exactly what to do for however bad this one is, the words already building in her throat.

Before Vi even touches down next to her sister, though, Powder is looking up from her knees, face dry and- alarmed.

“Vi, I’m fine!” she shouts as Vi takes her little hands, presses her thumbs into her palms and rubs them in a circle.

She makes an extremely quick assessment- Powder’s eyes aren’t red, her cheeks aren’t puffy nor wet, her nails are a normal amount of bitten, there’s no blood beneath them. Her hair isn’t particularly mussed, nor can she spot any torn strands around. She looks just like she had at lunch a few hours ago, just a little more annoyed. With Vi.

Vi presses the fidget cube into Powder’s palm. Her lips make a straight line, but she takes it, starts to click on the button side of it, and Vi is, frankly terrified. She’s so calm- are these the deceptive seconds before the storm? 

“Your breathing okay?” she asks almost frantically, “He didn’t put a hand on you, did he?”

“No,” Powder says with a beleaguered sigh, then snorts, “Didn’t have the balls.”

Vi’s hands fall awkwardly to her sides. They are face to face, lit only by the slightly open door, which never properly closes unless forced. She’s useless right now- knows how to calm a crying, screaming Powder, not a Powder who isn’t phased, even when Deckard stole her means of working out her stress.

“You’re… okay?” Vi asks carefully, as if the words could be the thing that set her off.

To her shock, Powder smiles. It’s a face she hasn’t seen in a while. These are the most words Powder’s willingly traded with her in the last two months, the brightest her eyes have been.

“The… breathing square helped,” her sister murmurs, “I just… wanted some quiet. To cool down.”

Zaun high doesn’t employ the greatest guidance counselor, but hearing that any of her tricks have helped at all- god, Vi will praise the cranky old woman straight to her boss’ face. Vi can’t quiet the breath of relief that escapes her. “Good. Good.”

Powder brings her knees closer to her chest. “Can you stay?”

Vi’s chest pangs. “Not going anywhere.”

They settle side by side against the wall. Vi ensures they aren’t touching, lets Powder decide when she wants the proximity. Her sister angles one foot outward to touch Vi’s. Within the walls, pipes groan, but this is still the quietest room in the entire school. They’re both gonna get earfuls, or worse, a disappointed look for missing class, but Vi would stay here forever if Powder asked.

The click, click, click of Powder’s cube, Vi thinks, is the opposite of soothing, but one look at Powder shows how well it’s worked on her, chest expanding with her controlled breathing. In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold again. When she lets go of her last exhale, she looks at the floor.

“I wanted to hurt him,” Powder whispers in that tiny voice. 

“But you didn’t,” Vi smiles. Her sister shrugs.

“Vander gets mad at you when you fight,” she says, finally looking over at Vi, eyes gleamy, “I don’t want you to fight anymore.”

Vi’s heart cracks. “Pow.”

Powder shrugs again, but she scooches closer. “He’s peaking in high school anyways.”

A laugh bursts out of Vi- this is a saying she’s stolen from Vi. It’s both adorable and terrifying how absorbent Powder is, sucking up Vi’s mannerisms like a sponge, parroting anything she finds funny. She hopes it won’t bite her someday. Right now, though, it’s something to giggle about.

“That’s right,” Vi nods, “And you’re gonna get a fancy degree.”

“Or go live in the woods,” Powder gives her a wry grin.

“Wherever that big brain of yours takes you.”

Powder’s head knocks against Vi’s arm, and this is all the permission she needs to put an arm around her sister. This is the closest they’ve been since the silent treatment started and, god, she’s missed this. Vi isn’t sure how she’d possibly gone without it, how she’d survived the bitter looks and nights without whispered goodnights from the top bunk. She’ll grip onto this harder than anything.

The fidget cube clicks again. 

“Caitlyn,” Powder murmurs against Vi’s arm. So quiet, Vi isn’t sure she’d even said anything. When the word registers, she’s certain she must have heard wrong.

“...What?”

Powder groans. Vi can practically feel her eyes roll. “She was on the phone. Last night.”

“Oh,” she says, carefully. They’ve cultivated such a pleasant peace, here, and Vi can think of a thousand responses that would shatter it all in an instant. 

“She has a… soccer game in Piltover next week,” Powder finally says, “Wanted me to tell you. I think. Her accent is weird.”

Alright, Vi thinks, because this is too much to process. “Are you…” she tries, involuntarily and nervously twitching her fingers against Powder’s shoulder, “Are you okay with this?”

“With what?” Powder practically scoffs.

“Cait,” Vi says, makes a fist against the floor with her other hand, balances the dangerous words precariously on her tongue before dropping the bomb, “Being my… friend.”

A long pause follows. Vi can’t help when her heart rate speeds up. The lie, the assurances she’d tossed out towards Powder in their kitchen back in February, it all crumbles. By the look in Powder’s eye, the edge to her voice, it’s clear she’d probably already known. It doesn’t make the admission any easier- calling Caitlyn her friend hasn’t been this difficult since the first time she’d said it.

Powder is still, contemplative, leaning against her. The fact that she isn’t tearing away in disgust must be a good sign, right? She clicks away on her cube, pursing her lips over and over, and Vi recognises the sign of an inner cheek being chewed the same way she sees it in a mirror.

It takes her a while. But, eventually, Vi’s patience pays off. 

“Mylo always says you have no friends,” Powder mutters simply, “Now he’s wrong.”

Vi’s shoulders drop minutely- for all the pressure that’s fallen off her, it’s like they’ve dropped forty feet. The crack of light coming through the door now feels like sunlight, the oppressive warmth of the room a hug. Her breath shudders with relief. This is Powder’s blessing. There will be no more sacrifices.

She can’t help it. Vi squeezes Powder closer, smothers her, grinning wide enough to blind a room of people. “Thank goodness for that.”

It’s an oddly sunny, springy Saturday in Zaun, and Vi’s on the couch with Claggor, mindless cartoons murmuring on the TV. 

Mylo’s somewhere in the kitchen behind them, making an easy early lunch to prove he can, which is why Vi can’t in good conscience leave the room, even if nothing good is on. Powder’s at Ekko’s place, predictably, and sleeping over. This is a typical Wick family lazy weekend, and Vi’s entire body itches with the need to get off the damn couch.

They can always tell Vander is approaching before they even hear him- they like to joke that the air shifts out of a room to make space for his big body. The floorboard creaks as their father walks into the kitchen, his eyes on the back of Vi’s head.

When she whips around to look at him, he’s leaning casually against the wall, in one of his nicer sets of clothes. He doesn’t even get dressed up like this for his shifts at the Drop. Vi raises an eyebrow at him, and she gets a bizarre grin in return.

“Fancy a soccer game, Vi?” he asks.

Vi blinks. “...What?”

Hopeful Park is gorgeous. Of course it is.

Vi thinks of the shoddy excuse for a playground that has the audacity to call itself a park waiting for her back home. The grass here is well kept, verdant and bright, too pretty for the time of year it is. The cobblestone walkways are flawless and smooth, framed by benches and lawn lanterns. The playground pits are full of harmless wood fibers, as if dirt and sand were too unclean for the city’s precious kids. 

It feels sanitized- like a temporary film background set, not made for actual use. And yet, kids run amok like they do back in Zaun, swinging from their safe monkey bars, sliding down their plastic slides. Beautiful murals in Piltovan style splay against the walls of little buildings they pass-  any sport one could wish to play can be played here, well-accommodated. 

A little hazel-haired kid shoots off the slide with a grin, before turning his big, awed eyes on Vi and her father. Whether it’s Vander’s size or Vi’s out-of-place, rugged demeanor making him gawk is unclear, and, frankly, irrelevant. Vi isn’t feeling as singled out as she’d expected to be. She almost considers waving, but then another child comes sliding down, kicking the kid over and starting up a wave of tears.

“Same on this side of the bridge, eh?” Vander murmurs almost conspiratorily as they keep walking, the kid’s mother rushing over to fret over her son.

Yeah, the only thing, Vi thinks. She’s been thoroughly rattled since their bus had crossed over the bridge into Piltover. The memory of what Powder has said- Caitlyn has a game- had only kept her brave for a few minutes, before the tall buildings and gorgeous roads had her stomach twisting bitterly. It’s certainly the weirdest turn any of her Saturdays have ever taken. 

Beneath the bitterness, though, some part of her buzzes with anticipation.

Vander’s council business demanded he meet with Councillor Kiramman today. How fortunate was it, then, that Caitlyn has a league game today- the perfect way to kill two birds with one stone, a happy coincidence! Vi had tried not to look too skeptical as Vander explained it to her, but her heart’s always been on her sleeve. She thinks something a lot more deliberate than fate transpired behind the scenes for these two things to intersect like this.

Who’s she to complain, though, getting exactly what she’d been too shy to admit she wanted?

The soccer field is unfairly well groomed. It almost kills her how much they could probably spare towards the upkeep of this place. The stands are perfectly movie-esque, a real set of highschool bleachers, already sparsely populated. 

On the field itself, the game rages on.

Yellows versus dark blues, as far as she can tell- there’s a monitor up above putting Home at two, a one-point lead over Away. 

Her heart sinks a little. “Are we late?”

“Damn buses. You know how it is,” Vander sighs. “Looks like it’s almost halftime. Let’s figure out if she’s winning this thing, aye?”

Hot embarrassment floods through her, and she manages a small nod.

They find seats quite easily, getting bewildered, snide looks as they do. Vi suspects those families out on the playground were regular Piltovans- these must be the rich parents of Caitlyn’s haughty league teammates. 

Speaking of…

With a better view of the field, she searches for Caitlyn on both sides of the field. She’d never specified her league team’s name, nor their colours. From a distance, the jerseys are hard to read, but if she squints, she can make out Surges on the yellow ones and Diamonds on the dark blues, paired with the players’ numbers in big. Unfortunately, none of this is particularly useful information- looking for Caitlyn in a sea of ponytailed upper-class teenage girls is like looking for a special needle in a pile of unremarkable yet functionally identical needles.

On the field, an interrupted shot sends the ball careening towards an empty corner, earning a shout from the bottom of the bleachers. It almost makes Vi jump- it sounds way too angry for an early afternoon soccer slip-up. A dark-haired man paces along the edge of the field, acting remarkably like the professional soccer coaches she has glimpsed on the Drop’s TV. Except those are the big leagues, and those coaches stand to lose a hefty sum of cash and prestige- Vi isn’t exactly sure what’s on the line for this youth league babysitter.

With the ball speeding out of range, there isn’t enough time for anyone to get it back, and a way-too loud whistle blows, an overglorified ref signaling the end of the first half of the game. Half the stands cheer- probably the winning half. She doesn’t know if that’s her yet, but Vander jostles her, and so she at least claps politely.

People begin to descend- some of the obvious parents stand and wave, brandishing expensive cameras at their disgruntled spawn below, who gather by their respective coaches. The blue team belongs to that intense coach, and just as Vi is about to check out the other team’s side, a number catches her attention.

Six. On the back of Caitlyn’s dark blue jersey.

Her heart skips a beat- the relief of having spotted her, probably. From behind, all Vi can see is the jersey is a bit big on her. Vi can’t get her to turn without shouting, which would be just about the worst thing she could do, so she settles on descending from the bleachers.

“You must be Vi.”

A voice plucked straight from the world’s haughtiest period piece scares her halfway off the last row, and she whips around to stare at what Caitlyn is probably going to look like in fifty years.

A severe, well-carved woman with cheekbones like a knife and eyes like a healthy, drinkable ocean frozen over stands before Vi, in a delightfully Piltie yet completely situationally inappropriate get-up, the frills of her cravat and buttons of her blazer fluttering and glinting mockingly. What catches Vi’s eye instantly, though, is a very familiar gold pin tied to the lapel of her vest- two crossed keys.

Under normal circumstances, Vi could not conceive of ever crossing paths with a woman like this in her worst fever dreams. This being the timeline in which she’s befriended her very likeable daughter, however- well, here they are, at a soccer game.

“I’m- am. I am,” she stutters, quickly losing her grasp of even basic common in front of a woman who’s great-great something probably invented the language. “Nice to meet you?”

“Councillor Kiramman,” Vander greets professionally, choosing now to come up next to Vi, “Apologies for the delay. Public transit’s a finicky thing.”

“Yes, I’ve been looking into its funding,” the woman- the councillor- agrees, “It’s quite alright. We’re winning.”

Vander smiles. “So, your little girl is playing for Home?”

“The Diamonds,” a sour look takes over her face, furrowing her brow impossible further, “Benched for the entire first period, can you believe it? I was just on my way to talk to Marcus. What a disgraceful coach.”

“He, uh, looks busy,” Vi remarks, glancing behind her at the gathered blue team. 

They’re in a strategy huddle, seems like- from this angle, she can see Marcus’ mustache, which is a perfect addition to her already glowing opinion of him. It looks stupid. He gestures roughly with his hands, making cutting motions, pressing his finger so hard into his clipboard he could puncture it. 

The girls around him watch with varied attention, kicking their cleats into the grass or massaging the skin beneath their irritating socks. They’re all sporting similar ponytails, and rugged, sporty faces, but they’d probably look so Piltie in anything besides their jerseys.

Vi knows how to figure people out. She can spot a bully across a school hallway, catch a tight fist as it forms in a pant pocket. She instantly knows which of these girls she’s meant to dislike- she’s tall, carrot-blonde, impressively broad-shouldered, face utterly kickable. Her smarmy eyes keep glancing away from her coach, landing on Caitlyn again and again with a lazy contempt, grinning as if amused by the depths of her own superiority.

Caitlyn doesn’t notice it. Her head’s trained on Marcus, and though her eyes aren’t visible from here, Vi knows how it feels to be on the receiving end of that intense stare. She isn’t missing a single word- and she’d been benched all period!

Still, Vi knows her friend- needing her mother to force the coach to put her on the field would be worse than not playing at all. Having her interrupt her team’s huddle, mortifying. Vander seems to have an unintentional handle on keeping the councillor distracted, thankfully, but Vi wouldn’t take any chances.

“I thought my daughter here might like to watch,” Vander says, a firm hand coming down on Vi’s shoulder, reminding her she’s still part of this conversation. “They’ve become fast friends, haven’t they?”

A bolt of panic shoots through Vi, so sudden she nearly doubles over. How much does this woman know? But the councillor only nods, lips a thin line of neutrality that Vi is starting to believe means she’s feeling completely fine. “Caitlyn will be happy to see you. She’s been so excited to have you at a game.”

Vi blinks, and wills herself not to flush. “She has?”

“She’s incredibly skilled,” the woman starts, the furrow loosening, “But lacks more people to prove it to. We’ve been hoping for a fresh face in her life. We should’ve known she’d go looking for one where we least expected it,” she gives Vi a sharp look.

Ah. Vi quickly understands there are no illusions about how they met. Not for one second did this woman think Caitlyn was spending that much time at her Piltovan friend’s house. In hindsight, it’s hilarious how bad Caitlyn was at being rebellious- terrifying, what Vander and this woman could’ve talked about when the political chatter was done with.

Vi remembers a conversation about being hung by her ankles. The councillor doesn’t look like the idea’s floating around in her head, but Vi doesn’t feel entirely off the hook yet. Good thing there are witnesses around.

A team cheer rings out behind them. The Surges have concluded their huddle, with the Diamonds not far behind them. The words are shouted too loudly to be decipherable, but every single one of the girls looks ready to dominate this second half.

“Anyhow,” The councillor checks her watch, and nods. “Vander, we’ll talk more after the game. Vi, you’re welcome to join us at the house. Caitlyn would be glad to have you.”

Vi is afraid to find out what this family calls a house. She hasn’t seen a single modest building since stepping into Piltover, and they aren’t anywhere close to the upper side. Still, this is preferable than being left to navigate herself out of Piltover alone. And, she admits, spending time with Caitlyn will be nice.

The ref’s whistle indicates their fifteen minutes is up. A motivating howl rises up from both teams as they flood the field, and with a glance, Vi finds Caitlyn still on the bench. A pang of annoyance goes through her, but she smothers it as they split, her and Vander finding their seats once more.

That ginger she already hates takes center field, and the game resumes with the Diamonds intent on maintaining their lead. Forty-five minutes is a long time to keep defending for, though, and Vi anxiously shoots her stare from the bench to the field.

“Close game, huh?” 

Vi jolts. The bronze statue of a boy sitting next to her, whom she’d considered an unimportant part of the noisy crowd, suddenly addresses her with way too much familiarity. He’s a stereotypical, yet obviously personally ineffective 400-page novel kind of handsome, barely older than her, growing a teenaged beard. There’s a sharp toothiness to his smile, a similarly endearing gap in his teeth, and way more life to his eyes than any of these stiff nobles.

“Yeah?” Vi agrees, wariness dripping from her voice.

The boy holds out his hand for a shake. “Jayce.”

Recognition lances through her. Vi’s eyes widen with glee, and she shakes his pencil lead-stained hand with eager strength. “Oh, you’re Jayce.”

“The one and only scapegoat,” he grins, “Cait hasn’t shut up about you.”

“And Cait said she’d bought your silence.”

“Yeah, well, she was crazy to think she could hide anything from Cass.”

“Cass?”

Jayce points his head to the bottom of the bleachers. There, close to the Diamond’s bench, is Caitlyn’s mother, Cass, next to a man who is certainly Caitlyn’s father. They’re as if Caitlyn was split into two parts, the perfect pieces of her parentage. Her father looks friendly enough, smiling even as his wife stares entirely unsubtle daggers at the back of Marcus’ neck. 

It is suddenly very believable that this woman had glared the truth out of Jayce’s cowardly body. Vi narrows her brows at him, and he puts his hands up, hilariously offended.

“To be clear, I didn’t tell her anything. She didn’t for a second believe Cait was coming over that much.”

“And she still let her walk into Zaun, unsupervised, that many times?”

“Unsupervised? Oh, absolutely not,” he fixes her with a sudden haggard look, “I got a lot of schoolwork done at that diner window, you know.”

Vi thinks, there’s a diner overlooking Zaun park. Geosey helps her mother run it. She tries to flirt every time I’m over. Then, in a blinding blast of realisation, she gawks, “You were watching us?”

“Not like a weirdo,” Jayce hastily clarifies, which wasn’t remotely close to Vi’s problem with all of this, “Only close enough that I could barge in if anything happened.”

Vi scoffs, like an overheating train letting off steam, tilting her face to conceal the burn in her cheeks. They truly sucked at this whole secrecy thing. “Like you could do anything, pretty boy.”

“Hey, I work out!”

The whistle blows- the ball has gone out of bounds. The girls kick grass on the field as one of them runs to retrieve it, and they gather to seemingly set up a throw-in. One of the Surges stands behind the painted white line as the other players get into obviously practiced positions, all salivating to catch it.

As the Surges player tilts the ball back behind her head, Jayce says, quiet enough she barely hears it over the shouts of the game kicking back up, “You better be serious about being Cait’s friend.”

A prick of offense passes through her chest. “Who says I’m not?”

“She’s been happier than ever these last few months,” he says seriously, and there’s a very real glare of threat in his eyes as he regards her. “I want that for her. She’s had her heart broken enough times. The last thing she needs is for all of this to be a joke to you.”

Vi is kicked back into the memory of that park bench, in February. Of a similar sentiment whispered from someone else’s mouth, the moment it dawned on her how serious she should’ve been taking this from the start. There is no chance in hell she takes any of this back now- how could she even laugh?

“It’s not,” she says, the backdrop of soccer noise falling away to make space for this sincerity, “I promise.”

“Good,” Jayce says, and the sharp glaze of his eyes washes away, satisfaction replacing it. 

In the corner of her eye, she sees Vander nod gently. 

Vi isn’t sure where to focus her attention anymore. The ball is traded harmlessly from team to team, and when she tries to match Jayce’s line of sight, hoping to extract some soccer wisdom from the clearly more experienced boy, she finds he’s staring at the Diamonds’ coach with a slowly stretching sneer.

“Why isn’t he playing her?” she asks, and Jayce clicks his tongue with displeasure.

“Favouritism,” he tells her, pointing towards the field with his head, “The ginger girl is Jonah. She’s never been nice to Cait, but Marcus thinks she’s a great player. Bad chemistry can wreck a game. That’s his excuse, according to Cait.”

“But Cait’s good, right?”

He eyes her quizzically. “All those months of practice, and you can’t tell?”

Vi isn’t sure how to tell him how little actual practice went on whenever they met up. She thinks it might break him- the guy was forcefully commandeered to babysit them whenever Caitlyn had even the slightest urge to go to Zaun. Vi has watched Caitlyn lamely kick her ball around. She has no idea what she looks like on a field- and she quickly discovers she wants to find out with alarming urgency.

A cry goes up- Vi is almost too late to spot the wild shot, one too bold to be safe, but it pays off. The Surge’s number 3 ties up the score with ten minutes left. Jayce reacts like he’s just been shot.

“I hate overtime,” he laments under his breath as a wave of polite cheers goes over the audience. Vi already spots a few parents checking their watches.

Down below, a huddle is called, and Marcus looks as serious as a heart attack convention. One of the girls- a sweetfaced blonde- breaks into a limp, walking on her seemingly fragile calf. Her eyes go wide and alarmed, even as another girl flanks her for support. Probably pain from overuse- that, Vi is intimately familiar with.

Caitlyn is on her feet in an instant. She tears at the grass with her cleat, fixes Marcus with a determined glare Vi knows would knock her flat. A wordless conversation seems to transpire between them- Marcus’ whole body sags, and though he slams his clipboard on the bench, Caitlyn’s eyes light up so bright it shorts out the city in Vi’s chest.

“I think he’s putting her on,” Vi says, excitement surging up her throat.

Sure enough, she’s walking out with the rest of her fieldmates as everyone gets back into position, for possibly the last time this game. Jayce makes an excited noise that may turn into a supportive shriek, and when Vi looks down towards Councillor Kiramman in the stands, the woman is smiling into her glove.

The energy sitting next to her is way too high for as low stakes a game as this. Still, Vi finds herself getting sucked into it- wishes, with a little bit of jealousy, that she’d gotten to see Cait play as much as this guy has. 

“What happens in overtime?” she asks.

Jayce keeps his eyes on the field, but a smug grin overtakes his face. “Doesn’t matter. Cait’s not gonna let it get to that.”

With that intimidating decree, the game picks up where it left off. With an actual reason to keep her eyes on the field this time, Vi finds herself catching the intricacies of these plays. She suspects youth leagues don’t entirely abide by professional rules, nor positioning, not when the girls seem to be running wherever they please. Something becomes extremely clear, very quickly: they’re all trying to make the big goal.

There is very little purposeful passing- the ball only goes to another foot if forced to. Caitlyn lingers on the outside, and Vi remembers she’d called herself a midfielder, and seems to be sticking there. Her commitment to her position is admirable, but fruitless- despite being wide open, not for a second does it ever seem like one of her teammates will take her help.

It makes Vi’s hands grip the edge of her bench. Caitlyn has always spoken about soccer with such a passionate grin- these are the assholes she’s forced to play with? She’d heard they were bad players. She didn’t think they would deliberately be avoiding her.

Jonah has majority possession. She plays well, though alarmingly brutal, giving the girl guarding her no chance to breathe. Vi gets the impression this girl believes she’s the star of her own continually unfolding biopic, and that it’ll be called The Impossible Goal or something equally self-aggrandising. She glares every time the ball is stolen for her, immediately shouting to her teammates, who scramble to get it back.

Next to Vi, Jayce is mumbling a steady stream of nonsense, intercut with a low, urgent Cait here and there. With the ball in a constant custody battle in center field, there isn’t much for Caitlyn to do but wait for it to slip over to her. Over the scuffling, she shouts, but is outright ignored. Every time the ball rolls to the Diamond’s side, she springs into eager motion, but just as quickly as the tide turns one way, it turns the other, and Vi- well, she’s bored.

“This is what people go crazy for at the Drop?” she murmurs to Vander, who smothers a chuckle to fix her with an admonishing, fatherly look.

“They’re tired. First half was probably a sight, I’m sure. They can’t all be nail-biters.”

Vi concedes. Professional soccer is played on a bigger field, with bigger players, with entire teams you’re meant to root for. Vi doesn’t care about these Diamonds- they’ve made a pretty shitty impression. Vi cares for Caitlyn, who’s out there being ignored, who is apparently so good she has Jayce talking about her like she’s a mystical soccer legend. Vi wants to snatch the ball from that smug redhead and hand it to Cait on a silver platter herself.

Caitlyn’s cleats knead the grass. Vi can only imagine how furrowed that brow is, in up-close detail. Her ponytail could be messier, with more action to exert her- she looks incredibly annoyed with how much juice she’s still got. Her teammates sweat and heave, thoroughly and understandably exhausted by how long they’ve been playing. 

Vi knows how the fight works. At your most beaten comes the second wind- when you haul your broken body to victory. There are only two minutes left, but she’s well acquainted with the way the tide turns, knows not to underestimate these grass-streaked knees and hunched backs. Every single person on the field looks like they hate overtime equally. Two minutes is so much time for anything to happen.

“C’mon, Cait,” she finds herself growling beneath her breath, fists tightening like in the precious seconds before the brawl breaks out.

The predictable happens- everyone lunges forward to play hero. Jonah tears after the Surges player with possession, and the ball is helpfully handed right over to her without much fight. She dashes across the field to sudden, rapturous cacophony from the benched Diamonds, on their feet and urging her on. Even the players on the field seem to stagnate, as if clairvoyant, like the game’s been decided by this reckless play. 

Then- interception. A brave Surge swiftly interrupts her hero’s journey, kicking the ball to a perfectly set up player in yellow before the Surges’ goalie even has the chance to feel threatened. The play is gorgeous, and with the Diamonds caught unawares, the Surges seemed perfectly primed to take it to the goal.

Jayce makes an anguished, war-torn noise. Even Vander’s body untenses- a wave passes over the audience, the realisation and relief that there won’t be any need for an overtime. Vi does not feel this relief. 

No, she’s seeing something everyone else has missed.

So comfortable in her assured possession, the Surge striker fails to account for a lone, eager midfielder, who’s had so little to do all this time that she’s on the job like a hunting hound. Caitlyn intercepts that final, decisive pass with an almost comical ease, and all the air is sucked out of Vi’s chest.

There’s no one guarding her. A clear, open slice before her, a parted sea. Vi watches the shackles come off Caitlyn’s legs. In her burning eyes, she reads, you asked for this.

What happens next is far beyond the realm of possibility Vi believed they existed in. She almost thinks she’s blinked through a lot of inbetween information. But it’s undeniable- Caitlyn’s leg kicks out with a lethal, pointed force, and the crack her cleat makes against the ball rings out across the grass.

For a moment, it’s as if she’s completely misfired. The ball flies, but it seems to fly wrong, and Vi’s stomach lurches- until, suddenly, it rights itself, ascending higher and higher, and she realises that it’s curving. 

From midfield, to the Surges’ net, it flies uninterrupted, too quick to be predicted. The Surge goalie is too slow- the moment she realises she has to position herself comes just before the moment she realises her positioning is wrong. This unpredictable ball, from this unpredictable shot, as it turns out, finds a predictable end in the corner of the net.

Jayce shoots to his feet in jubilation. Even a few of the adults break out into their most enthusiastic cheer yet. Caitlyn’s dad shouts. Vander’s jaw hangs loose, eyes wide. Next to him, Vi is his mirror image in more ways than one.

What the fuck?

The benched Surges gawk, dig their cleats into the dirt with a minimized displeasure. Their coach shakes her head good naturedly, sets her clipboard down even with half a minute left on the clock. 

What… the fuck?

Vi feels giddy glee shoot through her entire body. Pride tastes like sucking a split-open battery. She positively buzzes- feels an almost dangerous urge to rub this in so many people’s faces. Caitlyn is still on the field, but her hands twitch and shake, as if the excitement is prone to bursting out of her chest.

Now’s the moment her teammates should be bowing in reverence, Vi thinks. Tackling her, if not that- patting her back, at the very fucking least. Around her, though, they only dawdle, nodding minutely, bare minimum approval. Down on the Diamond’s bench, they clap politely, while Marcus stands motionless, the furrow of his brow practically visible from behind.

Vi’s glee takes a sharp turn towards fury.

What… the fuck!

Caitlyn’s excited twitching slows down, and she takes a long look at the ground- even from this far away, Vi can see her smile die. 

Sweat breaks out on the back of her neck. Her fists tighten, nails digging into her palms, making tiny, incensed crescents. Something oh-so familiar rolls back into her chest- her reliable friend, that furious black mass, who’s helped her be angry for Zaun, protect her sister, and, now: be righteously infuriated on her only friend’s behalf.

Vander puts a hand on her shoulder. She must look ready to leap. No part of her registers that the game has restarted with little fanfare, its fate already decided. Jonah appears to try to force a throw-in, as if to buy time her team doesn’t need, but time runs out, and the Diamonds win, no overtime required. 

Now they rejoice. The blue jerseys huddle and cheer- Caitlyn joins in, but isn’t specifically acknowledged. They gather up for the handshake line, one side looking predictably furious about it, and the audience gets up to leave as the teams split towards the building where the changing rooms must be. 

Vi seethes her entire way down the bleachers.

“What’s wrong with all of them?” she turns on Jayce, “Are they hazing her? What’s their fucking deal?”

To his credit, Jayce looks just as upset, but like it’s no surprise. There’s a resigned, weary anger in his eyes. “You should know. She’d rather practice alone in Zaun. If Marcus has it out for her- what’s that say to the rest of the team?”

Fucking Pilties, Vi thinks with more Zaunite vitriol than she’s felt boil her alive in the last few months. Vander keeps his hand on her shoulder, like she expects she’ll take matters into her own hands any second now. She’s fiercely tempted. She knows where the locker room is.

Caitlyn had only called them arseholes with further prompting. Vi thinks there are far worse things she could call them, and she’s eager to work out the list. 

“I ought to make a formal complaint-”

“Dear, I don’t think that’s necessary-”

“He’d be lucky to lose only this job! I’d take his entire license away!”

Caitlyn’s parents approach, and Vi sees she’s misread their roles in Caitlyn’s life. Though severe, the councillor looks just about as ready as she is to tear someone’s limb off for this. Her gentle father is supportive, but passive, concerned about the scene-making potential of his wife’s outburst. Vi nearly shivers- she’s glad to have met her first Kiramman in a park, and not at the other end of a council table.

“Quite the game, ey?” Vander greets the councillor, “Your girl is something.”

“Of course,” Cass says quickly, embers of her fury sparking off her words. Now there’s a proud woman who needs no convincing. 

“She’s really good,” Vi agrees, and those piercing blue eyes turn towards her. She is a dissected lab frog- none of her bloody guts evade the councillor’s scrutiny. But she seems to accept what she finds, nodding, satisfied with her honesty.

“You’re the little friend, then?” Caitlyn’s father turns to Vi, not nearly as intimidating as his wife, though a little patronising. “Tobias,” he introduces himself, and Vi shakes his hand with none of the force she put towards shaking Jayce’s earlier. 

“Should’ve seen how mad she got,” the boy in question comes up behind Caitlyn’s parents, grinning, “I thought she was gonna get her own jersey and march down there.”

Vi balks. Is he that desperate for a beatdown? “I wasn’t-”

“Now, now,” Councillor Kiramman waves Jayce off, clearly quite acquainted with the boy and his grin, clasping her gloved hands together, “How about lunch? There’s a lovely patio place nearby. On us, of course.”

Vander and Vi meet eyes. “We wouldn’t want to take advantage of your hospitality,” Vander says quickly, though Vi can tell the thought of a Piltie restaurant has slightly unnerved him.

“Nonsense. This is the least we can do,” Cass insists, then, with sincerity, “Your support of Caitlyn means a great deal. Lunch, then we talk at the house, Vander.”

He looks to Vi again- ultimately, it’s her choice. Unfortunately, Vi is nothing against the force of her hunger, and a Piltie meal they don’t have to pay for sounds like something she cannot miss out on. She nods, so Vander smiles. “Thank you, then.”

“Oh, Caitlyn will want to shower. She typically prefers to wait until we get home,” Tobias nudges his wife, reaching into his pocket, “I should let her know-”

“I can go tell her!” Vi says immediately and stupidly. Jayce races an eyebrow at her, and she can literally feel the amusement radiating off of Vander, but Cait’s parents look grateful. 

“We’ll be in the plaza,” Cass says, pointing off towards a distinct fountain shape not far off from the soccer field, “Tell her not to rush.”

The soccer locker building isn’t even as big as the Drop, but much like everything else out of Piltover, it’s got the filigree of a painting frame. 

Vi doesn’t find Caitlyn on her way to the building, nor loitering at its entrance. A few of the girls- Diamonds, she recognises- are lingering there, and eye her as she arrives, visibly assessing her. Vi almost laughs when she remembers- what had Caitlyn said?

You’d make a good goalie. You’re very wide.

She lets them wonder if they’d seen her on the Surges, and tries not to glare at them. Vi’s witnessed enough soccer to know she prefers the bleachers over the field- Sevika’s one-on-one boxing lessons over that pathetic ostracization routine. Even if some part of her wishes she could make a way better teammate for Caitlyn.

Before her back can hit the wall, a murmur she’d thought was the hum of a ventilation shaft suddenly takes on a sharper shape from around the building.

“...what your problem is?”

“Hm. Tell me.”

The second voice has Vi inching along the wall towards the conversation. Sure enough, when she sneakily peaks out behind the corner, there stands Cait- and Jonah, jerseys off, down to their undershirts, ponytails mussed from the game. She can see half of both their faces: Cait’s, neutral, and Jonah’s, so fucking smug.

“You think you’re the hero of the Diamonds,” Jonah continues, eyes narrowed, “Making the big goals. Winning us the games.”

“I did this time, didn’t I?”

Jonah’s jaw ticks. Caitlyn’s eyes twitch towards it.

“Listen,” Jonah says with all the sticky pleasance of overly processed honey, “No one wants to play nice with you, princess. We’re lucky Marcus doesn’t bend to you.”

A flash comes over Caitlyn’s eyes. For the first time, she falters. “I don’t-”

Jonah takes a step forward, nearly crowding Cait against the wall. She’s too close. Way too close. An alarm screams in Vi’s head, her blood boiling instantly, and she’s stomping forward before she has the chance to think better of it, fist readied.

“Something the matter over here?”

Caitlyn’s eyes widen at the sight of her. Jonah whirls on her, and Vi takes sweet, sick satisfaction in watching her recoil. Not what you expected to see, huh? 

Jonah is taller, bigger than both of them. But Vi’s shoulders are unnaturally broad for a teenager. She’s got more scars to her than this girl’s got estates to her family name. Vi’s across the bridge from home, but no part of her feels out of her element, facing the exact kind of bully that roams the halls of Zaun high, right here on Piltovan soil.

“Just briefing with my teammate,” Jonah says, and Vi both hears and sees the Piltie demeanor wash back over her, donning a professional, infuriating voice and perfect posture. She knows the platitudes are coming- knows how to dodge them like a haymaker.

Vi does not speak in obscured truths. And she certainly isn’t going to bend to this girl’s fake civility.

“Get lost,” she says simply, but by the nature of her appearance, the words have weight. Vi can’t wait until she’s old enough for tattoos and piercings, the kind that’ll get people to run when she says that simple phrase. Right now, though, the half-shaved hair and ragged knuckles do a decent job- Jonah grunts, shoots one last cutting look at Caitlyn, and retreats with a stomp.

Vi huffs. “What a piece of work.”

She turns towards Caitlyn, who is still red from the game- though Vi was sure she’d looked fine on the field. Regarding Vi with wide eyes, she finally seems to break from her stupor, and smiles blindingly wide.

“You came,” she says, her voice pitched with relief.

Vi’s fury is gone in an instant. It’s frightening, how at ease she suddenly is- if Jonah were to come back, she isn’t certain she could bounce back quick enough. “Didn’t see me in the bleachers?”

“I thought I might’ve,” Caitlyn fidgets with the strap of her gym bag, heavy over her shoulder, “I didn’t want to look inattentive, though. Even if it didn’t amount to anything. Marcus only played me because Kharine was hurt.”

Vi stamps down her simmering indignation. Caitlyn doesn’t need her to be angry right now- she needs to hear what none of her deadbeat teammates bothered to tell her. “That goal was fucking amazing, Cait.”

She scoffs. “A curved shot isn’t all that difficult.”

That’s not the arrogance she expected. Caitlyn has been shy before, but never bashful about her skill. Vi’s heard a similar excuse for a supposed fluke from a younger mouth- always after someone had tried to prove Powder otherwise.

Vi grips her shoulders. The sudden contact seems to shock them both- Cait makes a tiny, involuntary noise from her throat, arms locking into her side. This close, Vi can make out the individual flecks of pink flush on her cheeks, the patch of dirt across her forehead like she’d gotten it there trying to wipe the sweat off. 

“Whatever those assholes said, I want you to forget it,” she says, low and serious to make the sentiment land, “Cus from where I was sitting? I could barely believe it. You champion.”

Caitlyn deflates. She takes Vi’s hands off her shoulders, but not to yank her off- she twines their fingers, brings their joined hands up between them, and rubs at a healing, scarred knuckle, now lacking the bruises she’d once fretted about. 

“Thank you,” she breathes, her eyes taking on that familiar, proud glint, “I’ve been practicing.”

“Not at the park with me, that’s for sure,” Vi snorts.

“I tried! You’re rather distracting, you know.”

Vi thinks of the derogatory term Jonah had just used. Princess. She herself hadn’t been above thinking about her as one, either. She’d certainly stormed in to protect Cait like she was a helpless damsel. But she hadn’t flinched for a second against Jonah, and knows how to get her knees muddy- she is no tower-trapped maiden, no matter the circumstance of her birth.

Circumstances she knows, very technically, they now share. If family on the council makes Caitlyn a princess, then they’re both nobles. Oh, Vi will have plenty to talk about with her later- she is buzzing with the urge to tell someone else about Zaun’s fighting chance, wrestling with the odd urge to thank Caitlyn, somehow. 

If not for putting them a step closer towards healing, then, for putting Vi a step closer to her own.

The purpose of her coming over here suddenly flashes back into her mind- she’d have been perfectly willing to waste their time talking, until someone came to get them. Every option of someone is bad.

“Oh, uh,” Vi clears her throat, taking a step back, her hands falling away to go into her pocket, where they won’t be tempted. “We’re going out for lunch, by the way.”

Caitlyn cocks her head, frowns. “...We?”

“All of us,” when Caitlyn blinks, Vi further clarifies, “Vander, your parents, Jayce.”

Bewilderment flashes over Caitlyn’s eyes. She laughs a little nervously, fingers twitching involuntarily where they’re still suspended between them. She quickly tucks them to her chest. “That’s going to be… interesting.”

Vi laughs too, clearing her throat again like a nervous habit. “Your dad thought you might want to shower…?”

Cait nods, the realisation of the lunch to come throwing them both off. Vi had thought that day at the Drop was hell enough- she cannot imagine how much worse this is about to be. Caitlyn’s gotta know how scary her mom is.

“I won’t be long,” Caitlyn says, barely turning on her heel before she stops. “Oh!”

She drops her bag to the floor, kicking dust all over her neon cleats. Vi watches a bit uselessly as she rummages, blinking when she finally holds out a perfectly folded bundle towards her. Recognition doesn’t kick in quite immediately, but when her eyes land on that burnt brown collar and fuzzy interior, she realises what this is.

“Sorry I held onto it for so long,” Caitlyn says apologetically, and Vi takes the jacket she got for Snowdown out of her hands. It’s pristine- somehow more pristine than when Vi had lent it to her, that rain-wet evening outside the Drop. She must have gotten it touched up. 

“...Thanks,” Vi says breathlessly. 

Cait beams. “Can’t forget,” she says, and once again goes fishing for something, this time inside the interior leg of her soccer shorts. What she pulls out isn’t as quickly recognisable. Small, round and grey- a broken off piece of Zaun, with its edges smoothed out deliberately.

“I found this in the pocket,” she explains, and Vi can’t believe it- that rock she was kicking around! “I assumed it was yours. A very nice rock. I hope you don’t mind- I tend to… fidget with things, so it’s smoothed a little bit,” her voice lowers, pulling Vi’s hand forward, dropping the rock delicately in her palm as she winks conspiratorily, “I kept it with me every game. For good luck. I think it worked.”

This thing used to be so jagged. She’d started on it summer of last year- a simple product of boredom, first, then for soothing. It helped to put force onto something inanimate. Vi doesn’t see it as anything important- but Cait thinks it scored her that goal. That her stupid, angry ritual had eventually contributed to her monumental win, and all the others since she’d found it in her jacket.

Well, it has her a bit speechless, but this isn’t anything new, not around Cait. Vi’s fingers close around it, and she can practically feel the tracks left by Cait’s fingers, all the times she’s needed something else to work her worry out on. 

When Vi looks up from her hand, Caitlyn is standing closer. Much closer. About as close as Jonah had tried getting. She drowns the rock in a sudden wave of palm sweat, curses this teenage tendency, looks Caitlyn in the eye.

“Thank you for coming, Vi. I mean it,” she says, fixing Vi with her inescapable, soft eyes, “I wasn’t sure if you were here, but I played like you were. I hoped you were impressed.”

Vi nods hastily, rushes to swallow so she can speak. “I was.”

The smile she gets makes her earnestness worth it. Caitlyn puts a hand on her neck, so gently, and Vi expects to be pulled into another hug, but neither of them move a muscle. Until Cait’s hand twitches.

Her thumb strays. Vi freezes. Don’t move, you’ll startle her, her brain instructs in a panic, like a butterfly’s landed on her. And it certainly feels like it, moments later, when Caitlyn’s thumb brushes delicately across the line of Vi’s jaw.

Those blue eyes go somewhere. Vi’s too frazzled to track where, but she certainly isn’t looking at Vi’s. Caitlyn stiffens- she comes back to her body, it seems, when she steps away, her thumb the last thing to leave Vi’s personal space. 

“I’ll be right back,” she murmurs, and her gaze is on Vi until she disappears around the corner.

The park’s noises rushes back in. Another kid is crying in the playground. The ventilation shaft hums on. Those loitering girls chitter around the bend, and a door shuts. None of this is quite as loud as Vi’s heart, stampeding in her chest.

She’s never quite had a friend before but, generally, she knows your heart rate isn’t supposed to quicken at the thought of them. Friends don’t make each other blush. Friends aren’t so flattered by a stupid rock. As quick as it had arrived, friend has become a word she wants to hear less- because her body thinks something far more precious has now become available instead. It isn’t enough anymore. Her greed is boundless.

She clutches the rock to her heart. Knows the churning in her chest isn’t the black mass of her anger, because the black mass isn’t typically fluttery. It doesn’t desire Cait’s gapped smile. But she does.

Wait.

Realisation is a gutpunch, thrown by the most vicious bastard of all.

Oh, fuck.