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When Vi stirs it is to a loud clang, sharp, discordant, hollow. The air is chilly, clammy on her skin. It takes her one desperate, confused heartbeat to realize that she's not back there, that she only left the window open.
Left it open.
More like didn't fucking remember stumbling up the stairs into this apartment, doesn't know if it's today that the makeup runs in smears down her cheeks still or if that was yesterday. Her knuckles hurt. They've always hurt. She barely remembers when they didn't, closes her eyes and sees light blue hair and a smile that cracks into pink eyes and a laugh sob cry that hurts the whole way.
It's bright out. Kind of. Bright the way spaces up here near the Entresol are. Bright like the sun's got curtains, like she's got other places to be.
She spends one heartbeat thinking about where the sun could have gone, to glacial blue set in ancient, cracking ice.
Then she reaches for the bottle.
She is busy.
She had been busy before with the chase, but now that the situation has escalated, now that the ring is on her finger and the crown on her hair, she comes to the realization that her estimations were off by multiple orders of magnitude.
Ambessa helps.
She does, as loathe as Caitlyn is to admit it. Ambessa is decisive, forceful, and capable. Ambessa carries herself with an unassailable confidence that Caitlyn has never had and will never obtain. Ambessa paces slow circles on the Kiramman carpets, turns her fresh eyes on maps and schematics, knows how to ask the right questions.
The questions Caitlyn should have asked, the questions she should ask.
Ambessa asks if there are co-conspirators, asks if there are hideouts, asks if the maps are accurate. Caitlyn does not have the answers to any of those questions that she wants to give, none that she has evidence for, is one person who has done all she can and been thwarted at the end, been so close, so, so, so close.
In the moonlight, in the evening, in the quiet she has a moment to run her fingers over the wood of Mother's desk. It isn't Mother's anymore. Hasn't been for months now.
It's been hers.
Hers, like the shot.
She takes a deep breath, shoves the ice in her veins down. She cannot afford to be frozen. She cannot afford to hold back. She has paid that price over and over again.
She has a role to play. She has a job to do.
She has a criminal to catch.
The bottle doesn't hold any answers but it is the cheapest form of medication Vi has ever known. It's right there and with the money she gets from the fights it's easy to get. This new money is on a scale she's never had before, on a scale that still pales in comparison to what she's seen but fuck that.
She doesn't need that money. She's never wanted that. It wasn't the money that held her hand, wasn't the money that listened to her, wasn't the money that—
Fuck.
She takes another swig.
It burns all the way down, clear as crystal.
This is, objectively, a terrible idea.
But what is one more in a list of terrible ideas? Terrible ideas are all she has had so far, each one worse than the next, creeping closer and closer to what she knows for sure to be wrong. Her hands are tied still, the path narrowing before her with every step, the rope she has been following tightening around her neck with every passing hour. She had not known it would come to this, but how could it not have?
She looks at Ambessa differently now, sees the ruffled edges of a poorly hidden anxiety, examines the way the ships have been docked in the harbor for months on end now, a force that sits in foreign waters far from home. A leader, ostensibly, working towards some greater purpose on distant shores.
A greater purpose.
She hears what they say the Noxians are doing, gets the reports on the numbers, feels her soul slowly grind away against the marble tomb of her heart with every passing day that they find another blue haired wide-eyed Zaunite who flips them off before being carted away.
She has known from the beginning that this mantle was a terrible idea, would be a terrible idea, was what she wanted but not how she wanted it. But Ambessa had pushed Salo into that one meeting that one time and if there is something Caitlyn Kiramman is still certain of even now, it is that she is more effective than that flaccid tube of a man. Is she a better person? She no longer knows. But she is more thorough in her work, more thoughtful in her valuations, more experienced in the field.
She is stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, trapped on the ledge of her own making, mired in terrible decisions she cannot take back.
So, really, what more is one more consensual, terrible idea?
The briefest flicker of a memory of a touch to her elbow, of her weight being propped up, of the sky turning blue. Of everything changing forever.
Caitlyn grabs it, grabs all of it with her gloved hands and crushes it into dust.
There is a low purr in her chest when her knuckles strike flesh. There is a quiet that descends on her mind when she steps out into the lights. There is a stillness to the inside of her head when she eyes her opponents across the ring.
It's simple out here.
She knows all the rules and some of them aren't fucking fair but Vi's never known justice so she doesn't care.
She doesn't care.
She doesn't care.