Work Text:
She is not going to let go. She's not. She cannot. It will kill her if she lets go again. She's been here before, the back of her head whispers. She's been here before and she hates how she knows how this is going to go, has to fucking try. Her grip tightens in the gauntlet.
She stares right into pink eyes that look back at her with a softness, with a sadness, with a level of contentment that she has only ever dreamt she could provide.
But not like this. Not like this, her heart screams as that slim pale arm comes reaching up, as fingers reach for the gem.
"No," she begs even though she knows it will change nothing. "Don't do this, Jinx. Please, don't go."
She knows what is going to happen but she doesn't care, knows her heart splinters in its cage, knows her bones rip at her flesh from the inside out, knows her soul howls desperately, helplessly. She knows she cannot do anything else so she holds on, holds on, holds on to the warmth, to the—
"Vi?" The voice that breaks through is familiar if worried, threaded through with an airiness, a tightness that doesn't sound right. "Vi? You're dreaming" —the tone takes on a sharpness that bites right through the cloud of sleep— "you're dreaming, darling. You're here."
No. No. No, no, no. It can't be a dream. If it is a dream that means Jinx is… No. Please. No.
Vi holds on tighter, fingers digging in.
Then she hears it, hears a hiss, a wince.
"Vi, please."
Her eyes fly open at the tremor in Caitlyn's voice. Ba-thump. She sees the wrist she is crushing in her grasp. Ba-thump. She looks up into a concerned blue eye. Ba-thump. She lets go but the white marks her fingers have left on pale skin are stark nevertheless.
"Fuck," she breathes. "No, no, no. No" —she shoves herself as far away as she can— "no, no, no!"
"You were dreaming," Caitlyn says, wrist brought out of Vi's view, voice calm and soothing, everything Vi does not deserve. "You were dreaming, Violet. It's alright. You didn't—"
The sound that crawls up the back of her throat cannot possibly have come from her, the wounded, cornered beast she is as she cowers in a corner of their bed, too afraid to look, too fragile to know. "I hurt you."
"You didn’t know." A pause. "It's alright."
"It's not."
Caitlyn does not say anything for a moment, a moment that Vi finally dares to spend looking up back at her.
There are bags under Caitlyn's eyes and a gauntness to her cheeks. Caitlyn's shoulders are not held quite so straight in her indigo robe, her back bent ever so slightly. Caitlyn's uncovered eye, however, is fixed firmly, unwaveringly on her, serious and terrifyingly warm.
Vi cannot hold her gaze for long but she can take the hand that is offered to her. She takes those slim fingers into her own rough hands, runs her calloused digits over a palm that has its own tougher spots. Caitlyn's thumb shifts slowly under her touch, painting tenderness onto her skin that aches as it goes.
"It hasn't even been one night. Not even one whole night and I've hurt you, Cait."
Another measured silence punctuated only by the brush of skin on skin.
"You miss her."
Vi's eyes close as the bullet flies true. Of course it would find its mark. There is no one who knows her as well as Caitlyn does. There is no way for her to hide what she knows she carries on her shoulders, holds in her hands, flows through her veins. And isn't that the exact fucking problem? How dare she? How dare she sit here in this room, lie on this bed, and miss the person who is the reason why this room is theirs? How dare she grieve? But how can she not? How can she not, having left Powder behind and then getting Jinx back only to lose all over again forever?
Forever.
She could have—She should have—She— The bile rises up her throat again. A shiver spreads, tingling and terrible down to her toes.
Caitlyn's hand is warm and solid. "Violet," she says. "She's your sister."
How those words come floating back to her so placidly Vi does not know. Those same words she said all those months ago that brought them here, an eye less, a mother taken, a sister gone. How Caitlyn sits here and holds her hand in hers she cannot imagine. She dares not shatter this illusion, cannot bring herself to push past the truce that is being extended to her even though her heart aches for its existence, for its necessity, bleeds so many fucking shades of blue. She wishes it didn't but she cannot help it, the river pours between her fingers and empties out into the sea.
"Yeah," she croaks.
Another soft silence.
"Come here," Caitlyn says.
Vi swallows but dares not move. She is good at cradling her own bleeding heart, at patching it up, holding it together with hope. She can hold the hurt in. She just needs some time, just needs some space, just needs to figure out how to open that broken jar with her bloody fingers, grip it tight enough her iron red skin doesn't slip in the slick, force that wine dark hurt down until everyone else is safe, safe, safe. All she has ever wanted is for them to be safe.
"Please."
It is a word that Caitlyn does not say often; it slices through with pinpoint precision, shatters the glass into a million tiny pieces. This gods-damned tenacity, that stupid stubbornness. Stars, Vi cannot hold so much love in her or she will burst, but she must. She has to. That is all she can do.
It leaks out anyway.
"I don't want to hurt you."
She doesn't want to, but that's all that happens, isn't it? It's all she can do. She tries and she tries but she still can't fucking get it right. Their first night. The first night that they get to spend together and she almost cracks Caitlyn's wrist in her hand.
"I don't want you to hurt yourself," comes the swift riposte. "Which brings us to an impasse. An immovable object and an unstoppable force," Caitlyn's words are fond, her touch on their joined hands light, the tug a question, not an imposition. "We make quite the pair, don't you think?"
Vi is a wrung out towel, seeped through, blood damp. She cannot decide if she wants to laugh or cry or sob so she does not, holds only onto the hand offered to her.
Another tug, another ask.
Her heart still bleeds but she has never been any good at denying Caitlyn and she could fight this but she is so, so, tired of fighting only to lose over and over and over again. She gives in, lets herself be pulled closer and closer into warmth, settles in awkwardly, moving her bad shoulder so it isn't what's taking her weight. She leans, tips closer, lets Caitlyn's arms wrap around her, lets Caitlyn's fingers come twining around hers.
There are scars she has never seen on both of their hands.
She runs her fingers over them, trails her fingertips over skin she's not had the chance to hold, not had the quiet to appreciate, not known she could.
The room is still but the air is not heavy. The silence is comforting—it has been ever since that first night she spent on this bed, a peace she never thought she would ever have—but it is in the warmth that surrounds her, in the familiar scent of sandalwood and citrus that lingers, in the way she has never ever found it easy to not be in motion, to not have to be doing something she must, in all of these things that she can feel her breath slowing and her heart quieting.
A soft, contemplative hum breaks through after the moon has peeked her head in through past the clouds.
"I miss her," Caitlyn says for the first time. Vi can feel the sharp prick, can feel Caitlyn’s heart betray the calm of her words, drumming a beat into the back of her ribs, humming wild in the fingertips that dance across her skin. "Every room reminds me of her. Every corner I turn. Every painting there is. When I look into the mirror it's her eye I see."
Vi tenses and thinks of the wrong shade of blue before a red moon, of a glowing blue gem, the jagged edge of a shard of glass. Her heart clenches but she turns, she looks, she sees. Caitlyn's eye has drifted off into the distance. The set of Caitlyn's jaw is familiar but foreign all at the same time. Caitlyn's chin tilts up, up, up as if there is a power stronger than gravity.
There might be.
Vi squeezes Caitlyn's hand, flesh to flesh as if she could share the pain, as if she could take some of it for herself and put it far away where it can’t be reached. And maybe she can. Maybe she can because Caitlyn's heartbeat slows, because the sapphire’s chipped edge grows soft, and oh—
"Oh," she breathes, a little wobbly with the startled spark of revelation. A short, quiet laugh of disbelief breaks free, bubbling up despite everything. "I love you."
She can feel the curve of Caitlyn's smile from the kiss pressed to her temple, small, but present.
"And I you," she says. "And I you."