Chapter Text
The giant clock tower in the middle of Piltover, the one that stood tall and shadowed over the Precinct, had just chimed twelve bells when a restless, rhythmic knock was pressed to the door of the Sheriff’s office.
It had been a slow morning so far, smooth sailing from the time Caitlyn stepped into the Precinct, slipped into her office, and sat down at her desk. The walk over had been pleasant, brisk and beautiful, the sun rising and sparkling over Piltover’s tall towers and smooth, shining spires. The sky above was cloudless and a bright blue. The breeze brought in from the harbor smelled like sea and salt and Caitlyn caught hints of floral fragrance as flowers, growing out of windowboxes and planters, finally sprouted, their petals unfurling and facing towards the sun.
It was starting to get warmer in the city as spring sprung. Caitlyn knew this because Calliope and the dogs were dragging mud through the hallways and the maids were tsking their tongues and shaking their heads, a small smile on their lips although. Her father was no longer wearing his waistcoat when he came over for afternoon tea, and Caitlyn knew she wasn’t going to need her overcoat for much longer. Vi was coming home from work slick and shiny with a thin sheen of sweat over her skin each evening. Not that Caitlyn would ever tire or complain about such a sight. She liked the way she could taste salt on the tip of her tongue when she greeted her wife with a kiss.
Caitlyn was still thinking about her wife and how she longed for one of those kisses now, seeing as Vi had risen early and left for work, when she reached Piltover’s main plaza and nearly walked right into the tall and towering glinting glass of the Precinct’s main entrance. Looking around to make sure no one had seen their Sheriff nearly walk into a damned door, she smoothed herself out, straightening the strap of her eyepatch, the dark and smooth-sleek one she always wore while working.
With that, she opened the door and stepped inside. She greeted Fiora, the receptionist, as she always did on her way in, quickly debriefed with some of her Deputies, somehow agreed to stop by the sparring rooms to watch some of the rookie recruits during a session, and then, finally, finally, made it into her office, letting out a soft sigh as the door clicked shut and she turned to slide off her overcoat.
She placed the brown paper bag Vi had shoved into her palms as she left that morning on the edge of the desk. It was folded over, securely tucked, but when she inhaled, she caught the steamy smell of sauce and spice. Vi always insisted on packing her lunches at least once a week, if she couldn’t come to the Precinct herself, that was. Vi was busy today down in Zaun, but Caitlyn caught a glimpse of white sticking to the pale brown of the bag, a piece of parchment taped to the tucked top.
Vi always liked to leave her a note, sometimes a detailed paragraph or just a doodle of a now-familiar frosted dessert. She smiled a small, soft smile at the sight, resisting the urge to reach out and run her fingers over the surface of the still-warm sack, to read the message her wife had left for her.
Not now, she told herself as she sat, stretching briefly before she set out to work, straightening her spine and shaking out her stiff hands. Later.
A small stack of paperwork greeted her atop her desk. It was mostly patrol logs she quickly read and signed off on, a few reports, and a plethora of concerns, complaints, from the newest portion of the Bridge Market that had opened last week, the stands now spilling into Progress Park. Caitlyn had heard about its opening through polite talk with her peers and by reading the papers in the morning. She had planned on taking Vi and Calliope, perhaps this weekend, but now all this drivel made it all seem dreadful.
The jewelry artisan was complaining about the crafts merchant taking up too much space with his long rows of fabric racks. The crafts merchant was complaining about the cuisine cook on the corner, about the smell of smoke and the grit of grease. The cuisine cook was complaining about the soap seller, stating that the floral fragrances made his allergies act up.
Caitlyn was rubbing at her temples by the time she finished reading each personal story, each problem’s statement. She sighed again and jotted down a few quick questions on her nearest notepad. She would pull a map of the park from the station’s archives later and see if she could manage to come up with a solution that benefited all parties. If not, she could hand it off to the next eager employee who crossed her path. Managing merchants that were quarreling like stray cats on some side street was hardly a part of her job description, and the newest Junior Officers were always tripping over themselves to get assigned new tasks, even the tedious ones.
She remembered how it felt to be their age, fresh out of the Academy and floating, all fuzzy and fizzy, at just the idea of being on the force. She remembered receiving her badge at that celebratory ceremony, that worn-lathered leather pouch and polished, burnt-shine of the brass badge. She also remembered coming with her co-workers out to drink after her first shift, following them like some shadow. Someone had sneered when she ordered wine rather than booze or beer, and she hid her grimace behind her glass. She settled in a booth far from the others. She sipped and stared as her colleagues grinned and gambled, bellowing and betting.
That naive girl sitting in the dark corner of some dive bar would have never guessed that one day she would be sitting in the Sheriff’s office. Funny the way the world worked. How it all turned out.
She was still in the middle of penning a pleasant yet brief reply to the merchants’ inquiries when the knock came. It was so quiet that at first she assumed it was a thud from outside, an officer dropping a box of files on their desk or a rookie tripping over themselves and their new stiff-and-shiny shoes, Enforcer-issued boots. When it came again, it was still slow. Soft. It was merely a rap of knuckles, slackened by smooth gloves, similar to the ones she wore while shooting, the ones that were placed perfectly on the edge of her desk.
She looked up, her eye landing briefly on the black bundle of said gloves, then glanced up at the door to the office. Her pen stopped, scratching softly against the paper, the way the hand had hovered and fallen against the heavy wood of the double doors.
Caitlyn straightened herself by perfecting her posture, stretching out her spine and rolling her slumped shoulder. Pen poised over the paper while she posed in the chair, she lifted her chin and cleared her throat. “Come in.”
It took a moment for the door to open, as if it was breathing, bracing. Even then, it opened slowly and smoothly, modestly and meekly. Caitlyn raised an eyebrow as a familiar Junior Officer peeked her head in. Amna Beck. She had been a teenager during the Battle of Piltover, eager to protect, but ultimately still sent out of the city due to her age. She had joined up a few years after, after finishing her time at the primary preparatory and the Academy, and had been a promising prospect since her first year. She had always been ready and reliable. Resilient. Well, she didn’t look that way now.
Head still peering inwards, Caitlyn saw that her freckled cheeks were flushed, as if she had been running, and her uniform was wrinkled. Stands of her hair were escaping her bun, side-swept and sticking to a sweat-stricken forehead. Amna didn’t look directly at Caitlyn, just in her general direction, head tilted as if in a silent question.
Caitlyn inclined her head also, just in clarification, in confusion. If her memory served correctly, in the schedule she had signed and approved yesterday, Amna was stationed somewhere near Progress Park, close to the bridge. What was she doing all the way back here?
Caitlyn’s eyebrows furrowed further. “You may enter, Officer Beck.”
Amna shuffled in, still not looking at Caitlyn. Caitlyn now saw that she cradled a clipboard to her chest, several slips of paper secured by the silver clip. Some looked typed, like an incident report, and other slips were smaller. Caitlyn squinted to see lines of hasty handwriting on pieces of parchment, the type used to write messages quickly, messages that were usually sent by the pneumatubes rather than by hand. Messages meant for emergencies.
Both of Caitlyn’s eyebrows suddenly shot up. Her heart was beginning to pick up. Maybe it wasn’t going to be such a quiet morning after all.
Amna was still staring down at her scuffed-up shoes, sucking in a breath. Caitlyn watched her swallow, her eye still narrowed, squinting to see the beads of sweat on the tip of the girl’s nose, the shakiness of her hands, the poorness of her posture. Then, slowly, she stiffened, arms falling to her sides, feet sliding to be shoulder-length apart. Suddenly, she looked like a solemn soldier.
This pose was poised and prefetched. Perfected. Corrected. Something taught at the Academy. To keep a blank face, to avoid eye contact, to allow your hands to fall to your sides or clasp behind your back. To bow your head and offer your sincerest apologies, half-hearted help and comforting condolences.
The position she had been in years and years ago, when the blood red sky had been broken open by blue. It was the pose of the Enforcer on her doorstep in the gray and gold of dawn, his uniform still smelling of soot, shaking his head all slowly and somberly. It was the pose an Enforcer would assume when delivering news of destruction. Of death.
Caitlyn’s breath hitched. Her grip tightened around the pen as she sucked in a lengthy breath. Still, Anna did not meet her eye. The furthest her gaze strayed was to the top of her desk, where a photograph was placed—a picture of her and Vi on their wedding day, their rings aging in the scattered sunlight, framed in glinted, gilt-gold.
Amna blinked, and then she seemed to break.
“Sheriff Kiramman,” she said, her voice wobbly, wavering. “It’s your wife.” It took a beat as she drew in another breath. “I’m afraid there has been an accident.”
The pen in Caitlyn’s hand did, in fact, break, ink pouring all over the paper, blotting out all of the swooping, slanting lines of her words. Of her world.
Caitlyn didn’t stay for long. She couldn’t.
The world seemed to slide two inches to the left, no, not the right. Nothing was right if Vi was hurt. If she were… Gods—
Caitlyn promptly bent over, bracing her elbows over her knees, and vomited into the waste bucket under her desk, the one stuffed with drafts of old letters to the Council and a dozen other daft figures of importance all over the city, letters she had poured over for hours, knowing that the right words to the right person at the right time secured fundings, secured safety, secured—
Suddenly, all of that was irrelevant. Not if Vi wasn’t safe.
A hand brushed her shoulder. Amna had come over, standing at her side, arm stretched between them. She could see she was talking, moving her mouth, murmuring words of comfort, of condolence, but she couldn’t make it out. She could only hear the rushing race of blood in her ears, the beating of her own heart.
The hand squeezed the said shoulder. Caitlyn jolted, brought out of her spell, and blinked. Her vision was a bit bleary, blurred at the edges. She pressed one hand to her pounding temple and the other to her stomach, over the swirling coil of nausea, of shock. Over the tiny thing, the secret, the surprise, she had been planning to tell Vi tonight. Had been planning a nice dinner and flowers and—
It crashed into her like a chemtank on a hoverboard. What if she never got to tell her? What if—
“Sheriff?”
Caitlyn’s head snapped up, her gaze sweeping the room. Somehow, Steb was now here, hovering in the doorway, his gaze downcast and his beret crumpled against his chest, his chin dipped downwards too.
Caitlyn thought she was going to vomit again. Instead, she suddenly stood, startling Amna, who had been kneeling beside her as she calmed and composed herself. Now, she wiped her chin and stumbled towards the door.
She snatched her coat from the peg and shrugged it on, still shaky, hand still subconsciously hovering over her midsection, fingers grasping at the stretchy fabric of her shirt. She straightened her coat and turned to glowering glare at Amna over the slant of her shoulder.
“Where?” She rasped, just one word that raised and rattled out of her ribs, tugging her throat, her teeth, her tongue. It recoiled, ragged and rickety. “Where is she?”
Amna stiffened again, as if struck. “Piltover General.”
Caitlyn turned again, and then she was gone.
Caitlyn didn’t sign in. She never did. She was the Sheriff, and a Kiramman, at that. Her family had always donated to the local hospital. They had their names on plaques on bookshelves in the library and on benches in the courtyard. Her family had private suites here long before she was even born. In fact, she had probably been born in one of them.
She raced towards those same rooms now. Only once did she stop, to spit up stomach acid into the closest potted pot, startling a wide-eyed, young-looking nurse, before she started on her way again. She turned and turned, rounding corners and corridors. The fluorescents were finicky and flickering. The smell of antiseptic stung her nose.
She could only really breathe when she rounded one more corner and came to a door at the end of the hall, tucked away, private, and otherwise peaceful, if only Caitlyn wasn’t one inhale away from hyperventilating. She paused and placed one hand on the cool silver of the door handle, letting the cold sink and settle into her skin. She simply shivered, then lifted her head, peering around the hall, which was deserted and desolate, dim. The hospital room was even darker when she shouldered open the door and slipped inside, nearly stumbling, nearly falling to her knees in relief.
Relief. Because a familiar figure lay in a hospital bed, chest completely rising and falling. The figure that was connected to a heart monitor, wires twisted and tangled around the tips of her fingers, measuring her pulse and pressure. Caitlyn had to clap a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob or a smile or a sigh. She didn’t know which.
“Oh,” Caitlyn said, all slow and soft. Smooth and soothing. “Vi.”
She ignored the way her stomach turned at the sight of Vi sprawled across the cramped, creaky hospital bed, wrapped in scratchy, starch-white sheets, her hands grabbing said sheets, flexed by the fistful, bandages roaming over the rolling ridge of ghostly ghast-white, of gauze and gash and gore. She also ignored the way the collar of her uniform felt too stiff and her skin felt slick, fabric sticking to the thin sheen of sweat salting the nape of her neck. She took a deep breath and reached out, brushing the edge of those bandages pulled taut over bruised, bloodied knuckles. The skin pulled tighter at the touch, peeking out as a prickly pale pink.
Caitlyn let out a low hum at the back of her tight throat, trying to replicate that dull, dry humor Vi always adored, grinning goofily with blood dripping down her brow and giggling under her breath at something a nurse said as her shoulder was set in its socket again. She had accidents before, of course, all bruises and broken bones, scratches and sprains and slings, but this was different. This was dangerous.
“Well, darling,” Caitlyn chided carefully, reaching out to slide away a side strand of red-pink hair. The troublesome right almost slid through her slender fingertips, her hair both scruffy and soft from the bottle of lavender-lily shampoo they shared in their shower. “I suppose you’ll finally have to stop blocking with your face, hmm?”
To her surprise, Vi snapped, snatching her hand away from her as if burned. Her head jerked upwards, jaw long and hard, a lolling line. Gray-blue eyes narrowed to treacherous, traitorous slits, slips of silvery slivers. The corner of her mouth twitched in tandem with her brows, one of which had a small, sticky bandage plastered to the pale skin above it. Caitlyn was busy staring at the shaking off-white of that stuck plaster-piece that she missed the moment Vi opened her mouth and growled, grinding already-gritted teeth. “Who the hell are you?”
And, suddenly, Caitlyn’s collar was suffocating.