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There is a train that comes through Rutland every summer.
It’s a cargo train, filled with who knows what, and it always comes through town like it’s exhausted, clomping through sleepily, only gaining speed when it reaches the river.
Sometimes, Caitlyn will sit on the edge of the bridge, her feet dangling over the water, her back to the tracks, and she’ll wait for the train to come by. When it does, she’ll grip the stone beneath her until her knuckles turn white, the slip stream dragging cool fingers through her hair, her clothes, her ribs, playing with the caged thing that serves as her heart.
The river laughs at her when she does, tripping over the stones in its bed with mirth; everything else goes quiet in the train’s wake. If peace was something that could come to a person like her, Cailyn thinks it would happen a lot like that. It would come limping and nearly wasted, like an injured fawn in a malicious, endless wood, like the silence after a malicious, endless storm.
There, on that bridge, is the only place in perhaps the entire world that Caitlyn doesn’t feel compelled to imagine herself away from, into a daydream brighter and grander and kinder. It is perhaps the only place in the world that she likes exactly the way it is.
Today though.
Today is different.
Because instead of the quiet before the roar of the train whistle, a voice raises up in violent frustration.
Caitlyn’s head snaps up, seeking the source of the sound, and she is astonished to find a girl running full tilt alongside the train. The girl doesn’t see her, fixated on her task. She has about twelve yards before she’s going to run straight into the river, and she’s not slowing down.
She’s tiny. She can’t be much older than Caitlyn herself. Or taller.
At the very last second, the girl throws herself at the train, latching onto a handle on the side, and swings herself up. Caitlyn’s heart stops.
It is then that their eyes meet, clashing in surprise as the train screams past. Both of them whip their heads around to meet on the other side, holding and holding and holding as the girl grows smaller and smaller in the distance.
Caitlyn blinks, and wonders, and wonders.
The train is swallowed by the horizon and the trees both.
All the while the river laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
Caitlyn nearly forgets about the encounter.
Nearly.
It hangs at the back of her mind like everything else, adding to the cobwebs and wind chimes, the suncatchers and spidersilk. It’s there when she wakes up the next day, the sun having retreated behind the April clouds. It’s there when Mel calls her down to breakfast, and she meets Camille at the top of the stairs, like they do everyday.
It’s there when they go off to school, paper bag lunches in their hands, Mel’s warm goodbye in their minds.
It’s there, and it’s there, and it’s there, and it’s there, like a sweet, biting peppermint tucked safely under her tongue. She lets it melt, (what choice does she have?) but the aftertaste stays.
“Caitlyn,” Asami says, an apple in her hand that’s almost the same color as her eyes, pale green and slightly unnerving, if the light hits them just right. “Are you even listening to me?”
Caitlyn blinks at her, her answer an obvious no, and Asami scoffs in annoyance.
“God,” she says, with feeling. “Anyway, as I was saying, father hired three more people today, despite the fact that we can barely pay for our milk now. I don’t know what he’s got in his head, but it’s going to be the death of us.”
Asami’s voice is high and reedy, matching perfectly to her gangly, beanstalk appearance. She grew five inches over the winter, and now she can almost look the older boys that think they own the entire school house population in the eyes. Not that she’d ever want to. Asami had always had the biggest vocabulary of any kid in town, partly because of her mother’s private tutors that she insisted Asami have before she up and disappeared, but rather than make her educated and popular, it only served to get her relentlessly teased.
Not that Asami really cares. She’d rather be talking to adults than kids her own age anyway.
Which is half the reason why Caitlyn likes her. Tolerates her. Whatever.
Most of the things that come out of her mouth are so irrelevant to their ripe ages of nine and ten (Caitlyn being nine, Asami having just turned ten) that they border on nonsensical, which means that Asami doesn’t expect a response, so Caitlyn simply doesn’t give one. It works.
Asami is still prattling on about the state of the economy and the travesty that is the stock market at the present moment. Caitlyn doesn’t even know what the stock market is, past the fact that it is the reason the country is in such disarray. Nor does she care. So she lends one ear to the hum of Asami’s voice, and lets the rest of her mind wander, as it is often wont to do.
She has found that it is best not to fight these things.
Caitlyn, Mel told her once, after she recounted some made up story or another for her on a whim, you have such a beautiful imagination.
She’s about the only person in the entire town who thinks so.
Everyone else always uses the word overreactive.
She added them to her List two weeks ago when Scar said, god, Asami, stop crying, it didn’t even hurt that bad, you’re overreacting, and Caitlyn proceeded to punch him in the face.
Of course, Scar blamed it all on her, and she got in so much trouble, even though Scar deserved that bloody nose, and everybody knew it.
So overreacting went on the List, right under the word misunderstanding, making the list six words long in total. It’s a work in progress.
As if summoned by Caitlyn’s thoughts, Scar materializes in front of them, a garish smirk painted on his face. Caitlyn sighs internally.
“Asami,” Scar says, delighted, like he just stumbled upon a shiny new dime in the middle of the road. Then he turns to Caitlyn and says, “Kiramman,” with much less delight.
Caitlyn decides to focus on the shadow of a bruise still haunting Scar’s left eye, in an attempt to keep from punching him again, as Asami stiffens beside her.
“Asami,” Scar says again, pointedly looking away from Caitlyn. “We’re starting a game of kickball behind Korra’s house. You should come.”
Asami glances at Caitlyn, and then at Scar, and then back at Caitlyn, opening her mouth and closing it twice before saying, quite eloquently, “um.”
“Go ahead, Asami,” Caitlyn says, to put her out of her misery. She sure as hell doesn’t want to play kickball, but she knows Asami does.
“Are you sure?”
Caitlyn just stares at her until she gets the hint and scrambles to her feet, trailing after Scar like a lost puppy, leaving Caitlyn with her perpetually wandering thoughts.
And thus, the days drag on.
There has always been a sort of monotony to Caitlyn’s life, a cycle of blinding summers and freezing winters, the only color being the deep, bruised purple of the nightmares that infect her sleep.
Camille avoids her mostly, which is fine with her. They live under the same roof, and neither of them show up with hidden, mysterious bruises anymore, so that’s all that really matters.
Asami hovers around her for reasons that Caitlyn has yet to discover, but she respects Caitlyn’s boundaries and doesn’t need much from Caitlyn, so Caitlyn lets her stay.
And that’s it. That’s all there is.
And honestly? If Caitlyn has anything to do with it, that is all there ever will be.
Which is precisely why she is so put out the next time she sees the girl from the train.
It is almost exactly a year later. Caitlyn knows because, for some reason she has been unconsciously counting the days. Or something.
She doesn’t recognize her at first.
It goes something like this:
Caitlyn is hiding in the Talis vineyard—from what, exactly, remains unclear—when she stumbles upon a thief in the twilight.
Or rather, the thief stumbles upon her without realizing.
Caitlyn has seated herself against one of the many wooden posts that hold up the grape vines, trying to day dream the hours away, when a girl that looks about her age comes up the lane, glancing over her shoulder every few steps, like she’s convinced she’s being followed.
Her hair is dark pink and matted, her clothes are filthy, and her fingers are light as she lifts grapes from the vines with practiced ease.
Then the girl looks over her shoulder, and Caitlyn catches sight of her face.
She’d recognize that face anywhere. She’s only obsessed over it for the better half of a year.
It’s the girl from the train. From last summer.
Good god, and Caitlyn was starting to think she made that whole encounter up. It wouldn’t be the first time she accidentally let her mind play tricks on her.
Caitlyn is so caught up in her own thoughts that she doesn’t think to announce her presence. That is, until the girl reaches out and starts picking grapes right off the line, glancing around like she’s sure someone is going to jump out and start yelling at her at any moment.
“That’s considered stealing,” Caitlyn says, before her brain fully catches up to what is happening, and the girl freezes, only to whirl around half a second later in panic, a deep purple grape pinched between her thumb and forefinger. “Could get you shot in some places.”
The girl’s mouth opens, but no sound comes out.
“Really,” Caitlyn continues, her voice calm where her mind is anything but, popping a grape from her own stash in her mouth with a practiced flourish. “You’ve got to be clever enough to get away with these things. Only idiots get caught.”
Every scenario that Caitlyn has ever thought of regarding this moment, the moment she finally meets this girl from the train, face to face, flashes before her eyes. And none of them are right. None of them went like this. What is happening?
The girl stammers indignantly, color rising in her cheeks in a way that very suddenly makes Caitlyn want to commit acts of severe and unspecified violence.
“Clever enough?” The girl finally manages to exclaim, her accent off kilter from anything that Caitlyn has ever heard, her vowels too round, her ‘r’s too hard. “You don’t even know me.”
Everything about her is off putting, from her hair, her voice, her eyes, to the memory of her in Caitlyn’s head.
“I caught you, didn’t I?” Caitlyn asks.
The girl scowls. “I’m not an idiot,” she insists.
God, her eyes are so beautiful.
Caitlyn raises an eyebrow at her. “Prove it,” she says, even though she has no idea what to expect in response.
The girl’s expression hardens in resolve. Or maybe she’s just angry. Who knows.
“You don’t live here,” she says, with such surety that Caitlyn knows it’s not a guess. “Doesn’t that mean you’re stealing too?”
Just to be contrary, Caitlyn pops another grape in her mouth. “Hmm,” she says, chewing thoughtfully. “No.” Then she says, “I’m not convinced.”
“Not convinced of what?” the girl demands.
“That you’re not an idiot.”
The girl opens her mouth to protest, but then she seems to realize that she’s having a conversation with a complete stranger, and the anger on her face is immediately buried under an avalanche of practiced interference.
“Whatever,” she says coolly. “It doesn’t matter to me what you think.”
Against Caitlyn’s better judgment, she is even more intrigued than she was before.
“You’re a runaway, aren’t you?” she asks, and watches every muscle in the girl’s body tense up.
“No,” the girl says, but she’s not even a little bit convincing.
“And a liar,” Caitlyn observes.
The girl’s scowl deepens. “I am not—”
“Give me one good reason,” Caitlyn interrupts her, “why I should not go get Mr Talis and let him deal with you.”
The girl opens her mouth to protest, or cuss her out, but Caitlyn cuts her off again.
“Actually,” she says, “I have a better idea. I’ll make you a deal.”
“I don’t want to make a deal with you,” the girl says.
“Too bad,” Caitlyn replies. “So here’s the deal: I will tell no one about you being here, and I will let you leave in one piece, but only if you get me an orange.”
The girl opens her mouth again, only to stop in her tracks, thrown off. “An orange?”
“I’m not repeating myself.”
“Just one?”
“You really just keep proving me right, you know,” Caitlyn tells her. “You probably have more stupidity in your pinky finger than I have in my entire body.”
“Okay,” the girl says. “Fuck you.”
Caitlyn can’t help the smile that comes to her face at that, taking wicked satisfaction in hearing such a forbidden word after years of Mel’s swear jars.
“So you can’t do it?” she prompts.
“I never said that,” the girl replies.
And that’s how Caitlyn finds herself watching from a distance as the girl slips into the meager crowd of the town square like a ghost.
She’s really quite good at it, actually. No one spares her a second glance. If Caitlyn weren’t looking for it, she would have missed the moment the girl pilfered an orange from the fruit stand like it was nothing.
Against her better judgement, she is slightly impressed.
She waits for the girl in the shade of the bank, on the very outskirts of the square. As soon as the girl gets close enough, she holds up the stolen orange and says, “Catch.”
Caitlyn catches it on instinct, opening her mouth to say something slightly scathing, or possibly sarcastic, but then the gir pulls a second orange, seemingly out of thin air, tossing it between one hand and the next with ease.
“What?” the girl says at Caitlyn’s look, but her shit eating grin suggests she knows exactly what she did.
Caitlyn frowns, then realizes that she is frowning, and smooths out her expression. “Fine,” she says, “a deal is a deal.”
By this time, the girl already has her orange unpeeled and split in half. She separates a wedge for herself and pops it in her mouth, triumphant. “Great,” she mumbles, her mouth still full. “A deal is a deal.”
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
The train doesn’t leave Rutland until the next morning, at the crack of dawn.
Caitlyn keeps tabs on the girl for as long as she can, going into the house late for dinner, and leaving as soon as she is finished. She doesn’t trust this girl and her obnoxiously sneaky fingers. Someone obviously needs to keep an eye on her.
Thankfully, the girl has not disappeared within the thirty minutes it took for Caitlyn to eat dinner. In fact, she has not moved at all from the spot Caitlyn left her; she’s next to the river, by the bridge and the train tracks, flat on her back and staring up at the sky like she has nothing better to do.
Caitlyn is very tempted to chuck the bread she smuggled from the house at the girl’s head.
She doesn’t get the chance though, as the girl tilts her head in Caitlyn’s direction when she hears her footsteps in the dry grass.
“You didn’t abandon me,” the girl remarks, a smile slipping free from its holdings to wreak havoc upon the world.
“I could say the same about you,” Caitlyn replies. She holds up the bread for the girl to see, and then tosses it. The girl catches it with ease, even being horizontal as she is.
“Thank you,” she says, more to the bread than to Caitlyn.
Caitlyn wishes she chucked it.
“You got a name?” Caitlyn asks, if not only to break the silence.
The girl takes a bite of the roll, if not only to keep the silence going.
“And what if I don’t?” she asks, after chewing and swallowing.
“Everybody has a name.”
“Do they?”
“I don’t know.” Caitlyn sits down in the grass next to the girl just as the other decides to sit up. “Well, if you had to choose a name, what would it be?”
The girl considers her, something thoughtful in the twist of her mouth, the tilt of her head.
“It would be simple,” the girl says. “Something short. Easy to say.”
“Lily?” Caitlyn suggests, but the girl shakes her head.
“It would start with an ‘V’, I think.”
“Interesting. What about Vera?”
The girl laughs. “No.”
“Vivian.”
“No,” the girl says, after a slight hesitation. “But that’s closer.”
“I don’t know any more ‘v’ names.”
“Vi.”
“Vi? Like Violet?”
“I would choose Vi,” the girl says, her voice almost a whisper. “If I had to.”
Caitlyn looks at her, and she doesn’t look away, so Caitlyn says, okay. A cricket starts up somewhere to their left, harmonizing with the hush of the river.
“Have you got one?” the girl, Vi, asks. “A name?”
“Caitlyn,” Caitlyn replies after what feels like a small eternity. “My name is Caitlyn.”
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
“Caitlyn,” Mel asks, as soon as Caitlyn steps foot back in the house, around midnight. “Where were you?”
She and Camille are camped out in the living room, like they are most nights. Mel is sewing her quilt that she’s been working on for months now, and Camille, the nerd, is reading.
“With Asami, probably,” Camille says, without even looking up, before Caitlyn can answer.
“No,” Caitlyn says, if not to just prove Camille wrong. “I was with Vi.”
It’s weird to say the name out loud, to test it around other people. Though, as soon as it’s out of her mouth, Caitlyn wants to take it back, to hoard it like a secret. She doesn't actually want to tell anyone about Vi just yet, for reasons that remain unclear, even to her.
“Who’s Vi?” Mel asks, going back to her quilt, her voice light and unobtrusive, as always, and Caitlyn cringes internally.
She grabs an apple off the kitchen table, behind the couch that Camille is sitting on, and tries to shrug it off. “No one.”
Camille scoffs, turning the page in her book and somehow managing to make the action condescending. “So a new imaginary friend then,” she says. “Figures.”
And well, that’s one way to dissuade any further questions, so Caitlyn doesn’t bother correcting her, taking a substantial bite out of the apple and making her way out of the room.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
Another year passes like water swirling down a drain. Their cousin, Steb, comes to stay with them under dubious circumstances, so Caitlyn takes it upon herself to investigate, until she discovers that Steb’s parents kicked him out.
If she makes Scar trip and fall for calling Steb a slur, then that’s her business.
The summer comes without warning, a warm winter giving way to a muggy spring, only to collapse under the heat that June brings with it. The banks of the river have retreated so far that Caitlyn can now walk across it and the water barely comes past her shins.
She’s wading in the water, trying to catch a very elusive toad, when the train comes limping into Rutland.
The whistle screams to life as it gradually slows, and slows, and slows, and just when it reaches a reasonable speed, a figure launches itself from one of the cars and into the grass.
Caitlyn is moving before she has time to think about it.
Vi is flat on her back when Caitlyn reaches her, and for some reason, they’re both breathing heavily. When she sees Caitlyn, Vi laughs.
“You again,” she says, as Caitlyn comes to stand over her head, so they are looking at each other upside down.
“Me again,” Caitlyn agrees.
“Come to keep me honest?”
“Something like that.”
Vi climbs to her feet with minor amounts of wincing. Caitlyn doesn’t comment.
At eleven years old, Vi is still tiny—she still has to look up at Caitlyn—although they’ve both gotten a little taller. The smattering of freckles across Vi’s nose is new, and if it were even possible, her eyes seem bluer than the last time Caitlyn saw her. Her hair looks like someone took a knife to it without a mirror.
Vi is studying Caitlyn just as much as Caitlyn is studying her, and she seems to reach some sort of conclusion when a blinding smile lights up her face.
“So,” she says, “what crimes will you have me commit this time?”
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
Unfortunately, Caitlyn did not prepare a list of crimes for Vi to commit, so they decide to leave the law alone for at least a little while.
The first thing they do is go to Caitlyn’s house for a snack. Vi looks like she hasn’t eaten anything for at least three days, and no one is home at the moment, so it works.
They take their bounty back to the river, neutral territory, and eat in a companionable silence broken only by the river and the singing of over enthusiastic birds.
Caitlyn is staring at the river, it’s laughter quiet in her head, when Vi says, out of nowhere: “you look lost.”
Caitlyn looks at her, her brows furrowing into a frown.
“In your head,” Vi clarifies, tapping her temple with two fingers.
“I’m not lost,” Caitlyn says, but the words taste bitter on her tongue.
“Maybe not,” Vi allows. “But what are you thinking about?”
Caitlyn’s response is immediate and automatic. “Nothing.”
Vi raises a single eyebrow in disbelief. “Nothing?”
“Not nothing,” Caitlyn amends. “Just daydreaming. It’s nothing.”
“That’s not contradictory at all.”
“Contradictory,” Caitlyn repeats. “You sound like Asami.”
Vi tips her head to the side. “Who’s Asami?”
“An idiot.”
“I thought I was the idiot.”
“A dumbass, then.”
Vi laughs. It is a spectacular thing. Something in the action betrays its misuse, like Vi hasn’t laughed in a very, very long time. Caitlyn suddenly wants to get her to laugh again. And again. And again.
“What were you daydreaming about?” Vi asks into the silence that follows.
Caitlyn looks away. “Oh, you know.”
“I don’t.”
Caitlyn looks back at her, incredulous. “You don’t daydream?”
Vi laughs again, but it is a different laugh entirely, self deprecating and dry. “I don’t dream at all.”
“Everyone dreams.”
“Yes,” Vi allows, “but aren’t dreams supposed to be good?”
“Says who?”
“Well, I don’t know. Everyone?”
Caitlyn doesn’t know how to tell her that sure, maybe dreams are supposed to be good, but that’s the whole magic of daydreaming. You have complete control. Over everything.
Nightmares rarely have the courage to step into the light of the sun, Caitlyn has discovered.
“Close your eyes,” Caitlyn says.
Vi’s response is immediate and caustic. Defense is her second nature. “Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“That’s not a good answer.”
Fair.
“Fine,” Caitlyn says, switching tactics, “do you trust me?”
Vi pauses, her eyebrows furrowing. “Yeah,” she says, after a long moment, like she’s surprised by her own answer. “Yeah, I do.”
Something curls in Caitlyn’s chest at that response, but she doesn’t look away. “So close your eyes.”
Vi hesitates for half a second before her eyes fall closed, the corners of her mouth tucking into a tiny frown. “Now what?”
Caitlyn tucks her arms behind herself, braiding her fingers together until it is almost painful, to keep from reaching out and touching the burst of buttery light that has made a home on Vi’s temple.
“Now,” Caitlyn says, “what do you see?”
Vi’s eyebrows go up, but she doesn’t immediately say Caitlyn is an idiot, or that this is completely stuipid, so Caitlyn takes it as a good sign.
“Nothing,” Vi says eventually, but it almost sounds like a question.
Caitlyn backtracks. “What do you want to see?”
That makes Vi’s frown deepen, and her eyebrows furrow again. Even with her eyes closed, she’s so expressive. Caitlyn can’t look away.
Eventually, Vi opens her mouth and says, “my mother.”
“What’s she doing?” Caitlyn prompts, focusing on the freckles scattered across Vi’s nose and cheek bones. “And don’t say nothing.”
This time, Vi’s mouth quirks up. “She’s dancing,” she says, and very suddenly, Caitlyn can see it.
“Where?” she asks, just to be sure.
Vi pulls in a deep breath and says, “A speakeasy.”
The only reason Caitlyn knows what that is, is because of Asami and her endless knowledge of the world outside their tiny town, and her mind immediately conjures a dark, smoke heavy room, full of bodies in flashing, glittery clothes, with flashing, glittery smiles. The music that starts up in the back of her head is fast and joyful, and a little dirty, filled with a vibrant, flashfire life that feels so foreign to her.
“Okay,” Caitlyn says. “What else do you see?”
Vi hums, thinking about it.
“There’s a live band,” she says, “jazz, obviously.”
Caitlyn sees the flash of a golden trumpet, the ivory of piano keys.
“And a chandelier,” Vi continues. “It’s very sparkly. It makes rainbows on the walls.”
Caitlyn sees the chandelier that hangs in the foyer of Asami’s house, but she makes it bigger, brighter, more intoxicating.
“So what are you doing?” Caitlyn prompts, and Vi smiles, her eyes still closed.
“I’m just watching her,” she murmurs. “She looks so happy out there, dancing on her own.”
Caitlyn’s version of the day dream dissolves like sugar in hot water, as daydreams often do, but she lets Vi live in her version for a little longer, patiently waiting for her to open her eyes.
When she finally does, blinking back into focus in the dim light of the clearing, a hush has fallen over them, and neither of them move to break it.
Finally, Caitlyn clears her throat and says, “See? Easy.”
Vi’s responding smile is blinding. Then she says, “you do it.”
Caitlyn looks away, suppressing a frown, but Vi just sits there quietly, content to wait her out. Eventually, Caitlyn gives in.
She turns back to Vi, looking her straight in the eyes, and says, “do you believe in fate?”
Vi raises an incredulous eyebrow, but plays along. “No,” she says. “You do?”
“No.” Caitlyn says, “Luck?”
This time Vi smiles. It is a devious, glinting thing. “Only the bad sort.”
“Perfect,” Caitlyn says. “What about hell?”
Vi’s smile widens. “Don’t you mean heaven?”
“No, I mean hell.”
“Damn.” That single word makes Caitlyn feel like she missed a step going down the stairs.
She ignores it. “I guess,” Vi says. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“What if I told you I knew a way in?”
Vi lets out a short, quiet laugh. “I would say ‘prove it’.”
“I know a way in.”
Eye contact is a dizzying, powerful thing. Neither of them look away. Caitlyn thinks she could get well and truly lost in the powdery blue of Vi’s eyes.
“Prove it.”
Caitlyn gets up without a second thought, and Vi immediately follows, laughter threatening to overflow from her eyes, the curve of her mouth.
Caitlyn leads them along the banks of the river until they get to two trees that lean together to make a sort of natural arch.
“Doesn’t really look like a gateway to hell,” Vi murmurs, stopping next to Caitlyn and eyeing the trees.
“That’s because you have to give something up in order for it to let you in,” Caitlyn replies.
Vi looks at him. “Like what?”
Caitlyn hesitates, thinking. “Something true.”
Caitlyn almost regrets her choice of price when Vi turns back to the trees with a pained expression on her face, and a very real frown pulling at the corners of mouth. The words to take it all back are on the tip of Caitlyn’s tongue when Vi says, “I hate my father.” Her voice is quiet, but firm.
Caitlyn follows Vi’s gaze to the trees, then says, “I don’t have a father.” Then she walks through the arch, and after a moment, Vi follows her.
For a second, they both stand on the other side, looking at each other, the silence heavy around them, but not necessarily in a bad way. Then the wind picks up, a white butterfly blusters by them, and Vi says, “what does it look like?”
Caitlyn casts her eyes around the place the arch led them, the very edge of the vineyard, and says, “hell is full of flowers.”
One glance at Vi confirms that her smile is back, so Caitlyn continues.
“Hell is full of flowers the size of trees. Redwood trees, to be specific.”
Vi turns in a slow circle, her head tipped up to the sky like she can actually see the colorful canopy of petals that is taking over Caitlyn’s mind.
“This forest of flowers is never ending and unnavigable. You will never know where you are, and you will never know where you are going. It’s a maze with no entrance and no exit, no beginning and no end.”
As Caitlyn keeps talking, she starts into the vineyard, keeping her voice soft as she carves an insensible path through the rows and rows of grapes.
“Of course, because this is hell, the forest is populated with monsters. Monsters of every shape and size. There are snakes the size of dragons that prowel the ground, and they kill without mercy. There are wasps the size of eagles that travel in packs. The bumble bees can be reasoned with, but they’re very protective of their queen, so just don’t insult her, and you should be fine.”
“Who’s their queen?” Vi asks.
Caitlyn glances back at her. “No one knows.”
They are now well and truly in the very middle of the vineyard, the hills hatched with grapevines rising up like waves around them, the sun high in the cloudless sky. When Caitlyn stops, so does Vi.
“It’s really not all that bad, if you think about it,” Caitlyn continues, looking around them and imagining poppies that touch the clouds, lavender wider than she is, geraniums that tower above them. She imagines the shadows the forest would cast, the pollen that would be heavy in the air, and the distant hum of insects as they toil away for eternity. “It’s not that bad, once you get used to it.”
Vi’s voice is so quiet that Caitlyn almost doesn’t hear her when she says, “no one should have to though. Get used to it.”
Caitlyn looks at her, and Vi just smiles, and in that moment, Caitlyn knows that they are irreversibly alike, Vi and her. No one should have to get used to hell, and yet both of them are. Hell populates both of their memories, the hell that is not full of flowers, and Caitlyn thinks that, perhaps, Vi has yet to find a way out.
“Maybe,” Caitlyn replies.
Vi hums in agreement, then says, “alright. Now what?”
“Now,” Caitlyn says, “we climb our way out.”
Vi smiles and says, “Lead the way.”
So Caitlyn does.
It feels more monumental than it should be, leading Vi out of the vineyard like that. Caitlyn doesn’t look back at her once, content to listen for the sound of her footsteps behind her.
That is until they reach the shed at the very beginning of the Talis’ property. They’re staring at the mouth of the row they were walking down, and something unspeakable, something restless in Caitlyn’s chest makes her turn around.
Vi is right behind her. She smiles.
“Did it work?” she asks, her voice very, very quiet.
Caitlyn can feel the sun beating down on her shoulders, hot and ever present.
Vi is still shrouded in the shadows of the vineyard.
Caitlyn takes a step backward, and Vi gives her a questioning look.
“Let’s find out,” Caitlyn says, after what feels like forever, and Vi finally, finally takes that last step into the sunlight.
Caitlyn turns around, so she doesn’t have to look at Vi anymore, starting towards the shed.
If she’s not mistaken, this little shed is the haunt of a certain stray cat. Caitlyn has taken to calling her King.
If she’s not mistaken, she should have had her kittens by now.
Vi follows Caitlyn into the shed, and sure enough, Caitlyn can just make out the tiny cries of kittens, coming from the corner of the shed.
Neither of them say a word as they lift the tarp concealing the kittens, three of them, all snuggled up in a pile.
“Hello,” Vi whispers to them, and then she turns to Caitlyn and says, “yeah, I think it worked.”
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
The train stays in Rutland for three days, and consequently, so does Vi.
Those three days are arguably the best three days of Caitlyn’s life. Not that she would ever say so out loud. To anyone.
Still. The only word that Caitlyn has to describe it is magic, but even that doesn’t quite fit, because magic is not real, and this is. Oh, this is.
They take turns telling each other stories, taking the wild things they come up with and weaving waking wonderlands with only their words.
In the span of three days they are soldiers, knights, assassins, and queens. They are elves and wizards and creatures that only they have the power to imagine. They storm castles, and they rescue worlds, and with each new adventure, they share another truth, and another, and another.
Their only limit is time. Always time. Malicious time.
On the night of the third day, they sneak up onto the roof of Caitlyn’s house using an old ladder they found in the shed and sheer determination. There, they watch the stars come out, one by one, and Vi whispers a sad story about a star that fell to earth, only to be hunted for its life-giving power.
Caitlyn counters it with a story of her own about a girl who finds a tunnel to the heart of the world, where she stumbles upon a hiding star who begs her not to tell the world their secret. The girl agrees, and then she spends the rest of her life trying to find a way to send the star home to the sky.
“Does she ever find a way?” Vi asks, after Caitlyn finishes her story and the silence settles around them like frost on a cold night.
Caitlyn looks at Vi, only to find Vi already looking at her. “I don’t know,” Caitlyn replies.
But she does. She’s already decided the ending.
The girl never finds a way, but the star consoles her, saying their home hasn’t been the sky for a very, very long time.
Caitlyn doesn’t know what keeps her from saying so out loud.
They spend all night on that roof, staring at the stars, sleep never daring to take them, and when the fingers of the sunrise begin breaching the line of the horizon, they climb down and make their way to the river.
“I’ll do it with you,” Caitlyn says, when they pick a spot to sit and wait for the train.
Vi looks at her like she’s crazy, and Caitlyn decides that she likes that expression. She likes all of Vi’s expressions. She likes her eyes and her inquisitive mouth, and the way her nose scrunches up when she thinks something is funny. Good god.
“I won’t get on,” Caitlyn says, shoving Vi a little, because she deserves it, honestly. It has absolutely nothing to do with the way her stupid face makes Caitlyn feel. “But I’ll make sure you do.”
Vi still looks skeptical, but she nods eventually, looking more determined than she did even a moment before.
“Where will you go?” Caitlyn asks, into the silence that follows, her fingers ripping at the grass absentmindedly.
Vi opens her mouth to respond, but just then, the train whistle sounds, and they both look up.
It comes into view a moment later, already going much faster than Caitlyn expected it to be going.
“Oh shit,” she says, and Vi’s head whips around to look at her, “get up.” Neither of them move for another moment, their eyes locked in some silent conversation that neither of them can quite translate.
Then the whistle sounds again and they both scramble to their feet.
“Go,” Caitlyn says, and Vi glances at her once more, “go, I’m right behind you!”
And just like that, they’re running.
Belatedly, in the back of her mind, Caitlyn thinks that this might be what it feels like to fly.
Their bare feet pound over the sun warmed grass, but it still feels like they are barely touching the ground, barely chained to the earth; gravity has no such hold on them.
The train reaches them, and for a moment, they are all three in step, picking up speed like their lives depend on it, the river fast approaching, and then Vi launches herself at the train, and Caitlyn’s heart stops.
She blinks and Vi has hoisted herself up, clinging to the side of the train with all of her strength, and Caitlyn is still running. Vi looks back at her, the train taking her away from Caitlyn an inch at a time, and Caitlyn doesn’t stop.
Something panicky flutters at the base of Caitlyn’s throat, wrapping around her collar bone, stealing her breath, but she doesn’t have a name for the feeling.
“Caitlyn,” Vi’s mouth says, but Caitlyn can’t hear her voice over the roar of the train. “The river.”
Caitlyn takes three more desperate steps before she is forced to skid to a stop, the river dropping off mercilessly as the train whips Vi away from her.
Even long after Vi is gone, Caitlyn can’t seem to catch her breath.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
“Caitlyn,” Steb says, as soon as Caitlyn steps foot in the kitchen in search of a cup of water, “what took you so long?”
Caitlyn debates coming up with an excuse, but can’t summon the energy required for such things, and settles for the truth. “I was with Vi.” Everything in her feels almost like it was screwed in the wrong way, and she has no idea why.
Camille lets out a short, sarcastic laugh from somewhere behind her. “Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”
Caitlyn just flips her off without looking over her shoulder.
Just then, Mel clears her throat, and only then does Caitlyn design to take a proper look around the room.
There are strangers in her house.
A woman with steely gray hair, and a steely smile to match stands beside Mel, leaning against the counter with a glass of water in her hands, and at the table, across from Steb, sits a girl that looks about Caitlyn’s age.
Her blonde hair is pulled into two long braids that drape over her shoulders, and each one is adorned with colorful beads; her eyes flash when she smiles, a secret, tiny smile, and Caitlyn immediately recognizes the look.
“Hello,” she says, and her voice is a lot lower than Caitlyn is expecting it to be. She doesn’t answer her.
“Caitlyn,” Mel says, ever calm, “this is Stephanie Crownguard, and her daughter, Lux. They’ve just come up from Bristol.”
Caitlyn tips her head to the side, ever so slightly, studying Lux just as intensely as she is studying her, and she mirrors her, her smile widening.
“Can you keep a secret?” Caitlyn asks finally, neatly ignoring everyone else in the room, even though she can practically feel the holes Camille is boring into the side of her head. She rarely makes the effort of talking to Camille, let alone strangers, so she can forgive Camille for being shocked.
Lux’s expression doesn’t change, and the mischievous glint doesn’t leave her eyes.
“Depends on who the secret belongs to,” she says.
Caitlyn contemplates this for a moment, then nods and says, “come on.”
Lux doesn’t hesitate, getting up like she’d been poised to do it the entire time, falling into step with Caitlyn as she turns and makes her way out of the house, and waving to her mother on the way by.
Caitlyn hears Steb say, “Wait, what?” And then she’s outside, the sun glaring down like the world has personally wronged it, not a cloud in the sky.
It does not take long at all to lead Lux to the old shed at the edge of the Talis vineyards, and neither of them say a word for the short trip’s duration. Caitlyn glances back at her only once before pushing the front door open and stepping inside. It is only a little bit cooler, away from the direct sunlight, but not much.
Caitlyn stops first at the jug in the corner, refilling the little bowl she set there so many weeks ago with the water she takes from the Talis’ well. As the water splashes into the dry bowl, a tiny chirp sounds from the shadows. And then an even tinier one follows. And another. And another.
“There is no need to say such things,” Caitlyn says, addressing the petulant shadows. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
At that, King slinks out of the shadows, side eyeing Lux with great mistrust as she makes a beeline for the water.
“King,” Caitlyn says, pushing herself to her feet. “Meet Lux. Lux, meet King.”
Lux’s smile finally spills over the edges, growing into something more genuine, less guarded. It makes her look older, and yet younger, at the very same time.
Caitlyn beckons her over to the back of the shed, holding the tarp back so she could peek into the corner and see the three tiny, sleepy kittens, crying half heartedly for the mother that suddenly disappeared on them.
“Oh,” Lux whispers. “What a lovely little secret.”
Caitlyn hums her agreement, and Lux turns to look at her, a question in her eyes.
“Can you keep a secret?” she says, echoing her from earlier.
Caitlyn looks at her, and looks at her, and looks at her.
Somewhere in the cavity of her ribs, something aches. If she closes her eyes at that exact moment, she knows she would see Vi, holding onto the side of the train as it drags her away for another year. She doesn’t know what that means.
Caitlyn says, “yes.” Because of course she can. Of course she can.
Lux smiles. “You and I are the same, I think.”
Caitlyn raises an eyebrow. “Is that a secret?”
“It might be.”
“Ok,” Caitlyn concedes. “So?”
Lux shrugs, but it feels more monumental than that. They both know it does.
They stay in the hushed light of the shed for a long time, sharing the silence like an illicit cigarette between them.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
“I thought I made you up. That first time I saw you. I thought for sure I made you up.”
“I am not a daydream.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No, Cait. I’m not.”
Caitlyn turns her head over in the grass to look at Vi.
This is now the seventh consecutive summer that Vi has gotten off the train at Rutland at the very start of June. They are both fifteen. Vi has gotten taller since the last time they saw each other, but Caitlyn has also had a massive growth sprout.
It’s delightful.
It’s not that noticeable now, when they are both laying down in the shade by the river, right next to each other, but for some reason, it’s all Caitlyn can think about.
“That first time in the vineyard?” Vi asks after a quiet moment, finally looking back at Caitlyn.
“No,” Caitlyn says, “that first time on the tracks.”
Vi frowns.
“I was sitting right over there,” Caitlyn says, pointing at the bridge to their right. “Minding my own business, and you went and hurled yourself on the train like you had several lives to spare.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything.”
“Everything?”
Caitlyn doesn’t repeat herself, and Vi takes it for the answer that it is.
“Tell me something true?” Vi asks, after a long stretch of comfortable silence.
Caitlyn fixes her eyes on the dappled holes of sky that show through the leaves of the tree above them. She pictures a colorful school of fish flitting in and out of the gaps, joyful in their aerial coral reef.
“I have a List,” Caitlyn says, after another stretch of silence, almost as long as the first.
“What kind of list?”
“A capital L kind of list.”
A couple of the fish in Caitlyn’s imagination break off from the rest and take to swimming lazy circles in the air above her head. It’s appropriately dizzying.
“It’s a list of words,” Caitlyn continues. “Words that really have no right to exist.”
“How many words?” Vi asks. Her voice is appropriately quiet.
“Eight, so far.” Vi says nothing. “You already know one of them.”
Vi hums in agreement.
The word please ricochets around the minimal space between them, and Caitlyn lets it stay for a couple seconds, before letting it go.
“You’ll let me know if I say one of them, right?” Vi asks.
The colorful fish in Caitlyn’s imagination disappear, and she looks back at Vi. Vi with her eyes more vibrant than anything Caitlyn could conjure up. Vi with the little furrow that appears between her eyebrows when she’s worried. Vi with her freckles, and her scarred upper lip, and her trust.
“Yeah,” Caitlyn says. “I’ll let you know.”
“Good,” Vi whispers. Then: “I have a list too.”
Caitlyn waits, quietly, patiently, for Vi to collect her thoughts.
“It’s a list of names.”
The fish may have disappeared, but Caitlyn still feels a little like they are underwater, their voices warped by the density, their lungs begging for air.
“There are sixteen so far,” Vi says. “But this one is the only one that I keep coming back to.”
Vi.
Caitlyn looks at her and tries to imagine calling her something else. It makes her head hurt.
“Why do you do it?” The question escapes Caitlyn’s mouth before she gives it permission to, and then it just hangs in the space between, drowning in the imagined sea in Caitlyn’s head.
Why do you run all the time?
Why do you keep leaving?
Why do you keep coming back?
Vi never gets the chance to answer, because at that moment, Mel’s voice rings across the clearing.
“Caitlyn!” she calls, and they both stiffen. “Mr Talis needs your help with something. It’ll only take a moment.”
Vi smiles.
It is a tiny, tragic thing.
“Go,” she says. “I’ll be waiting for you here.”
So Caitlyn gets up, and she goes, and she only looks back once to find Vi gazing up at the dappled light filtering through the tree above her, tracing lazy circles in the air with her finger, almost like there’s a school of colorful fish flitting around in the sweet, summer silence.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
The three days that the train usually stays in Rutland pass by far quicker than Caitlyn remembers them ever daring to pass. It’s like she blinks, and their time is up.
She blinks, and the sun is rising on the morning of the fourth day, and Vi is standing before her, something unreadable in her eyes.
Caitlyn has a thousand things to say to her, and yet she finds herself unable to say anything at all. So she waits, looking at Vi because that’s something that she finds comfort in doing now.
Vi’s mouth opens, finally, only to close it again, like she can’t decide what she wants to say.
Caitlyn is half convinced that she isn’t going to say anything at all, and then she goes and says, “close your eyes.”
Caitlyn blinks at her. “Why.” She doesn’t even make it sound like a question.
Vi still looks agitated for some reason, wringing her hands together in restlessness. “Just—” he starts. “Do you trust me?”
Caitlyn narrows her eyes at Vi. There is only one answer to that question, but it sticks in her throat for some reason. A stray curl has blown over Vi’s eyes, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Caitlyn wants to brush it away.
“Caitlyn?” Vi asks. “Do you trust me?”
Caitlyn’s hand acts before she can consciously stop it. Or maybe she just lets it, finally giving in to whatever magnetic force keeps her coming back into Vi’s orbit, like a comet flung around the circumference of a blazing star. She reaches out and carefully tucks that wayward curl behind Vi’s ear.
“Yes,” she says.
It is perhaps the truest thing she has ever said.
Vi looks almost stricken, but then something like resolve bleeds into her expression. “So, close your eyes,” she whispers.
Caitlyn does.
Color blooms behind them, as it always does, her mind taking her places that she has never been to, showing things she has never seen, never experienced.
She sees a field of poppies, vibrant red against the emerald green of some distant mountains.
She sees someone’s hands—Vi’s hands, with her bruised fingers and the freckles that dot the elegant slope of her wrists.
She sees a sweet, shallow river, and someone is laughing, but it’s someone real, not just the voice of the water as it trips over moss covered rocks.
Then, there is a soft press of lips against her, and she sees nothing.
It’s more of a question than a kiss, really. Just a suggestion of a kiss. A ghostly brush that leaves a graveyard of goosebumps up Caitlyn’s spine, down her arms, over her whole body.
It’s over too quickly.
When Caitlyn’s eyes find the strength to open, Vi is already backing away, something tortured in the slope of her shoulders, in the iron grip of her gaze.
Caitlyn opens her mouth to call her back, to say wait, or stop, or anything, but the scream of the train whistle drowns her out, and Caitlyn’s stomach drops.
Caitlyn says, “wait,” finally getting the word past her lungs, but she can’t even hear herself over the roar of the tracks. Vi says something back, still backing away, but Caitlyn can’t read her lips, and she can’t hear her voice, all she can see is the anguish in Vi’s eyes as she rips them away from Caitlyn’s, turns, and starts running.
“Vi!” Caitlyn says, and it feels like the word is ripped from her throat.
But Vi doesn’t stop.
She runs and runs and picks up speed, and just as the train reaches her shoulder, she grabs at the handle of one of the doors and hoists herself up with an ease that makes Caitlyn’s blood boil.
Only then does she look back, clutching the side of the train like it’s her life line, the slipstream snatching at her clothes, her hair, Caitlyn’s heart.
The last Caitlyn sees of her, she is pressing her forehead to the side of the train, her eyes screwed closed as the train rounds the corner and she is dragged out of sight, leaving Caitlyn staring after the space she occupied just moments before, an echoing emptiness in her chest and the memory of Vi’s breath on her lips.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
It takes a year and a half for Caitlyn to realize that Vi isn’t coming back.
Summer bleeds into autumn after a disappointing spring filled with disillusioned hope that Vi would somehow magically appear, even though the train showed up on schedule with no Vi on it.
It takes an off hand comment from Steb, saying, “Caitlyn, you haven’t talked about your friend at all this year,” while Camille mutters imaginary friend in the background, for reality to finally sink in.
Vi didn’t come back.
Caitlyn feels so many things about that simple fact, but everything is so messy, and tangled, and warped, that the only emotion she manages to isolate is anger.
And oh, she’s so angry. It’s nearly blinding.
If anyone really notices the way she shuts down that winter, only Lux comments on it.
Caitlyn doesn’t answer any of her questions. That is, until Mel corners her one night, after the others have retreated to their own rooms, something sad and far too close to understanding in her eyes.
“What?” Caitlyn asks her, just to get it over with, accepting the mug of tea Mel gives her. They ran out of hot chocolate a month ago.
“Lux’s worried about you,” Mel replies, not bothering to beat around the bush. “Should I be?”
Caitlyn takes a sip of the tea in lieu of replying. Mel just smiles at her.
“Caitlyn,” she says.
“Mel,” Caitlyn responds evenly.
“Whatever you are carrying,” Mel says, “you can put it down. You’re allowed to put it down.”
Caitlyn looks away, out the perpetually dusty window, then down at her mug, and says, quietly, “where?”
Mel doesn’t hesitate. “Here,” she says. “Press it into the walls, write it down and burn it, abandon it in the vineyard, Caitlyn.” Caitlyn makes herself look back at her, meeting her eyes with her own. “Anywhere. Some things are not meant to be carried. Not forever, at least.”
Caitlyn disagrees. She disagrees with everything in her, but she doesn’t say that. Even so, Mel sighs, and she knows that she knows.
“Just try,” she murmurs. “Try for me.”
Caitlyn looks away, and after a stilted moment, she nods.
She leaves her with a squeeze of her shoulder and nothing more, never taking more than Caitlyn is willing to give.
It is only because she insists on keeping her promises that she actually takes her advice, if not in an admittedly roundabout way.
The first time Caitlyn picks up a pencil and writes one of her daydreams down, she nearly sets the whole house on fire, just to be rid of the physical evidence.
It goes a little something like this:
There’s a river at the edge of the woods, and it’s full of laughter.
The river has a name, but no one knows it anymore. It’s lost in time, buried with the generation that forgot to pass that little fact down to the next generation.
Most people can’t even hear the river laugh anymore; the world has become a very literal place, where everyone is expected to say what they mean, and only what they mean. Nothing more, nothing less.
That is, of course, until a child happens upon the river, and being clumsy, as children often are, the child drops her favorite toy in the water; the current carries it away before the child can retrieve it.
After this, naturally, the child visits the river every single day.
At first, they just sit there in silence, the child watching the sun as it plays along the surface of the water, and the river watching the child, but eventually, the child starts telling the river stories.
They’re short stories, and most of them don’t make sense, but somewhere around the hundredth nonsensical anecdote, the child swears the river laughs. It is a secret, sideways thing, but it is a laugh all the same, and then the child can’t stop hearing it.
It is that laughter that colors the child’s life, and slowly, the child becomes a teenager, the river carves new banks, and they grow together, trading stories and sunshine.
Somewhere around that time, the river tries to give the teenager’s toy back, the one the river took so many years ago.
The child that is no longer a child, refuses, saying it has been the river’s for a very long time now.
The river laughs, and the water sighs, and the teenager knows that it’s settled.
Then, one day, the river dries up.
There is no warning.
The teenager, who is bordering on an adult now, is distraught. Rivers do not just disappear.
They drain, sure, but not overnight.
When the teenager tries to tell someone about it, they say, “What river? There is no river.”
They shake their head at the teenager, disappointed. “You need to get out of your own head.”
That’s as far as Caitlyn gets before she breaks the tip of her pencil from how hard she’s pushing it into the paper.
All she can do is stare at the words after that, hating the sight of them, what they say and what they mean.
She burns that one, and it takes all of her self control to keep from letting the flaming paper just sit on her desk and consume the wood as well.
The only problem is, after that, she just keeps writing.
When she’s with Asami, laying in the shade of the apple orchard behind the Talis house, she writes, the trees are full of voices, and none of them are kind.
When she’s on her lunch break at work she writes, the sky is made of glass, like a window, and when it opens, rain comes pouring down. Someone in the sky is keeping all the windows closed.
In the middle of the night, she writes, the fireflies are calling me home; they sing of the Nile, the Amazon, the River Styx.
She writes, cherry seeds make better bullets than bullets do.
She writes, the foxes have taken to screaming in my ears at night.
She writes, there’s a train coming, so I put my head on the tracks to hear it whisper, and sometimes? Sometimes I don’t move my head in time.
She writes, I don’t know what’s real anymore.
She doesn’t write, Dear Vi, on any of them, but it might as well be inscribed in blood on all of them anyway.
Dear Vi, she thinks, and she’s back in that crowded speakeasy Vi conjured with only her voice so long ago, the imagined people trapped in their blissful, opulent ignorance, their flippant wealth the mark of a dying decade that Caitlyn never really got to see.
Is it a memory if it was imagined in the first place?
Caitlyn doesn’t know.
It certainly feels like one.
Then all she can think about is how many memories she has that are imagined, and the only thing she can do about it is write, and nothing gets better.
She sits by the river, on the stone bridge, and she writes.
She hides in the shadows of the vineyard and writes.
She sits on the roof, under a canopy of distant stars, and all she can do is write.
Camille starts studying under Jayce.
Asami starts spending more and more time with her dad, learning how to take over the estate, day by day, bit by bit.
Steb talks about traveling like it’s something they can afford to do.
More people come to seek work at the vineyard, and among them is a girl with blue hair and a wicked smile, who Lux can’t seem to keep her eyes off of.
Life goes on, and yet, through it all, Caitlyn still feels trapped in that moment that Vi pulled away from her, like her soul never really left those train tracks, and now she’s paying for it with every breath she breathes.
Three years pass, and everything changes, as it is wont to do, but Caitlyn’s head remains full of colorful, cruel fantasies, and her hands remain empty.
That is, of course, until one unassuming night, at the very start of the fourth summer Caitlyn has lived without seeing Vi.
Caitlyn and Mel are in the kitchen making Mel’s favorite soup, as it is her birthday, and it is the quietest that Caitlyn has felt in a very long time.
Mel is laughing quietly at something Caitlyn just said, hip checking her on her way to the stove, when there is a knock at the front door.
“Go see who it is,” Mel says, her voice laced with leftover laughter, and Caitlyn hides her answering smile in the duck of her head as she makes her way out of the kitchen to answer it.
She doesn’t check who it is through the window, swinging the door open in an easy sweep, only to freeze in her tracks.
It’s Vi.
Vi is standing on Caitlyn’s porch.
She smiles, her face settling into the expression like one would settle into a favorite chair after a long journey, like she hasn’t used those muscles in a very long time.
She says, hey, and, hi, and, Cait, hi, like she didn’t disappear for three fucking years. Like nothing’s wrong. Like it’s been moments since they last saw each other.
Caitlyn’s lungs aren’t working.
“Caitlyn,” Mel calls from the kitchen, “who is it?”
That’s when Caitlyn sees the red.
There is so much red.
“Vi,” she says, and her voice comes out as a strangled, unrecognizable thing, “you’re bleeding.”
Vi looks down at herself in surprise, as if she just noticed the bloom of scarlet across her entire front. “I think it’s stopped, actually,” she says, her voice calm and unaffected, as if she’s discussing the weather.
“Caitlyn?” Mel asks, and her voice is closer than before.
“Vi,” Caitlyn says again, belated panic flooding her brain in a wave so violent she almost topples.
Vi looks back up at her, her eyebrows furrowing in concern. “Cait,” she says, slurring the word, though Caitlyn doesn’t think she notices. “Hey, Cait, it’s okay. I’m fine.”
“Vi,” Caitlyn says, like a broken fucking record, and she can hear Mel behind her, her feet creaking on the floorboards just as Vi starts to sway. “Vi?” she says again, with more urgency, but it’s no use.
Vi’s eyes roll back as she starts to fall, and all Caitlyn can do is catch her.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
“Oh my god,” Steb says minutes later, moments later, his voice coming through the white hot panic in Caitlyn’s head, warped and hazy. “Why is there a beautiful woman bleeding out on the couch? What is happening?”
“Steb,” Mel says. “Go get Jayce. Go. Quickly.”
Or at least Caitlyn thinks she says that. Caitlyn can barely hear them over the roar of her pulse in her ears.
Vi’s hair is tumbling over her closed eyes, so Caitlyn reaches out to smooth it away with a shaking hand. It’s darker than she remembers it being.
“Vi,” she says, and she barely recognizes her own voice. “Vi, open your eyes.”
“Mel?” Camille asks, from somewhere out of sight. “What’s going on?”
Just then Steb bursts back in the house with Jayce on his heels. “They were already on their way over,” he says breathlessly, to no one in particular while Jayce makes a beeline for the couch.
“Caitlyn,” he says, his voice calm but firm, “I need you to move.”
It takes every ounce of self control in Caitlyn’s body to extract herself from Vi’s side and back away. Mel brushes by her with a stack of towels and some scissors, all of which Jayce takes without comment. She uses the scissors to start hacking away at the blood crusted remains of Vi’s shirt, and oh god, Caitlyn is going to throw up. Or pass out. Or both. She can’t feel her hands.
“Caitlyn,” Camille says, but Caitlyn can’t look at her, can’t look away from Vi, can’t move at all. “Caitlyn, you're not breathing. Who is that?”
Caitlyn doesn’t get a chance to even try and answer, because at that exact moment, Asami bursts in through the front door with what looks absurdly like a pie in one hand and Jayce’s medical bag in the other.
“Who’s dying?” She demands, her eyes wild, and several things happen at once.
The front door slams into the wall with the force of a bullet, the sound echoing far louder than it has any right to.
The pie slips from Asami’s hands, landing face down on the floor with a muted smack.
Steb curses, while Mel tries to calm everyone within earshot down with a simple, no one is dying, take a deep breath.
And Vi makes a sound like a wounded animal, shooting up off the couch like she didn’t just pass out a minute ago.
Jayce says, “no, dear, we’re not going to hurt you,” and Asami starts in surprise, dropping the medical bag beside the fallen pie, and Camille is saying, “seriously, what the hell?” And then Caitlyn is in front of Vi, both hands to her chest to keep her from taking a single step further.
“Hey,” she says, and her world narrows down to the pound of Vi’s heartbeat against the palm of her right hand, but Vi doesn’t seem to see her at all, something crazed and animalistic in her eyes, her flight reflexes triggered in every way possible, so Caitlyn says, “stop. Stop, it’s me. It’s me.”
And miraculously, Vi stops. She blinks once, and then twice.
“Cait,” she breathes.
“Vi,” Caitlyn agrees, moving one hand to the back of Vi’s neck.
“Cait,” Vi says again.
Caitlyn says, “I need you to lay back down.”
But Vi is already shaking her head. “I shouldn’t have come,” she says. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. I can’t—”
“Stop,” Caitlyn says. “Lay back down.”
“I can’t,” Vi says, and she’s shaking, swaying like a battered ship in a brutal storm, and Caitlyn can’t take it, so she guides Vi’s head down to her shoulder and holds her there, holding her up, holding her steady. “I’m sorry,” Vi says, her voice muffled, her hands knotting themselves in the fabric of Caitlyn’s shirt. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Lay down.”
“I’m so tired.”
“So lay down.”
“Can’t. Can’t stop.”
“You can,” Caitlyn says, guiding Vi back onto the couch. “You have. You’re here.”
Vi smiles as Caitlyn lays her head back on the pillow at one end of the couch, her eyes heavy lidded, her skin bright and feverish.
“You know something?” she whispers, somehow finding Caitlyn’s hand and clinging to it like a lifeline.
“What?” Caitlyn asks, not pulling away, holding onto Vi just as hard, like she might disappear at any moment, in the blink of an eye.
Vi’s voice is raspy and quiet, like she’s sharing a great, terrible secret. “I’ve missed you.”
The whistle of a train screams in Caitlyn’s head, in her heart, and every atom, every fiber of her being screams along with it, a catastrophic harmony, four simple words:
I’ve missed you too.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
Hours, years, maybe even decades later, Caitlyn sits at the kitchen table, a mug of tea gone cold, and her head resting in her hands.
Asami, Camille, and Steb are all sitting in various states of sleep deprivation around the table too, but Caitlyn barely notices. Everything has faded to a dull, whining, white noise.
That is, until Camille says, “so,” only to pause for a severely uncomfortable amount of time.
Caitlyn almost thinks she isn’t going to finish her thought, but then she says, simply, “Vi.”
Caitlyn blinks her eyes open and looks at Camille.
Camille waits again, probably under some illusion that Caitlyn is going to add something to the conversation. Finally, she keeps going. “That’s Vi.”
Caitlyn stares at her.
Steb, having apparently just put two and two together, says, “wait, what?” She looks between them both, and then at Asami, shock etched into every line of his face. “Vi? As in, Caitlyn’s imaginary friend of the past like, nine years? That Vi?”
In the hopes of shutting everyone up, Caitlyn says, “Yes. That’s Vi.”
Naturally, it doesn’t work.
“Oh my god,” Steb says. “Oh my god.”
“Jesus,” Asami mutters.
Camille’s voice is accusing when she says, “you never said anything. You never told us.”
“You didn’t ask,” Caitlyn counters, done with the conversation. Done with that night. Done with everything. She feels like she’s holding onto her sanity with only the tips of her fingers, like one would hang onto the edge of a cliff.
“We—” Camille starts, but Caitlyn cuts her off.
“No,” she says, “you didn’t. You just assumed.” Steb puts a chastised hand over his mouth. “And I didn’t correct you.”
Silence reigns for a moment, and then two, and then three, and then Caitlyn pushes back from the table, stands up, and leaves without another word.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 ‧˚⭒
Caitlyn is laying on her back under the oak tree in the backyard, the sun playing across her face in a dappled dance, the grass under her scratchy and dry, when Vi seeks her out for the first time in three days.
It’s the first time she’s been up and about in three days too. It turns out, the wound in her side was infected, giving her a terrible fever, and absolutely no appetite. Which was unfortunate, seeing as she looks like she hasn’t had a proper meal in months, maybe years.
She still won’t tell anyone how she managed to acquire a gash in her side, but Caitlyn suspects that has more to do with so many strangers constantly within earshot of everything she says, and less to do with not actually wanting to tell them. At least that’s what Caitlyn hopes.
She has barely left Vi’s side, something that no one has commented on yet, surprisingly enough, but they’ve been uncharacteristically quiet with each other. Like they’re both waiting for the ice to crack and fall out from underneath them. Like they no longer trust their own voices. Or each other.
Caitlyn doesn’t look at Vi as she lowers herself carefully to the ground, laying down parallel to Caitlyn with a sigh, putting their heads right next to each other.
The moment suspends, like a drop of water in midair, and Caitlyn finds herself holding her breath.
Vi doesn’t break the silence. Doesn’t push her, or prompt her in any way.
Maybe that’s why Caitlyn finds the strength to tip her head to the side, ever so slightly—
Only to find Vi is already looking at her, her eyes searching and no longer fever bright, her mouth a soft pink line.
Something inside Caitlyn crumbles, cracking right down the middle.
“You,” she says, and her voice is rough from three days of near disuse and little to no sleep, “don’t get to do that again. Ever.”
The corner of Vi’s mouth twitches, like it can’t decide between a smile and a frown.
“Do what?” She asks, her voice quiet.
Caitlyn’s hands twitch, but she wrangles them into stillness before she does something stupid, like strangle Vi. Or something.
“Disappear,” Caitlyn hisses. “For three years.” Vi flinches, almost imperceptibly. “Come back bleeding.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Vi murmurs.
“Didn’t mean to what?” Caitlyn asks, some spiteful, buried part of her soul clawing through the packed earth of her voice like the undead. The words are nearly apocalyptic when she says, “Come back?”
Vi shakes her head, but doesn’t look away. “Bleed.”
Caitlyn screws her eyes shut, but forces them open just as quickly.
“I’m sorry,” Vi offers, into the silence that follows, and Caitlyn wants to strangle her again.
“Don’t,” she all but snaps. “Don’t.”
“I am,” Vi whispers. “Three years, Caitlyn. I didn’t mean to. I swear I wanted to come back.”
And, god, all Caitlyn wants to ask is, why didn’t you? What kept you away? What kept you from me?
Instead she says, “you’re here now.”
Vi blinks at her, thrown off. “I am.”
“I waited.”
Vi’s breath hitches.
I wrote, Caitlyn wants to say, but the words get stuck somewhere past her lungs. I wondered.
You are the cause of every bright and wonderful thing that has occupied my thoughts for almost as long as I can remember, and I hate you for it.
Very suddenly, Caitlyn can’t lie still any more, so she stands, not waiting for Vi before pointing her feet in a random direction and starting to walk. Vi doesn’t call out, doesn’t call her back, but she knows Vi is following her. She knows because of the shape the air takes around them. She knows because the grass only whispers like that under one person’s footsteps. She knows because it seems impossible for a world to exist in which her atmosphere wouldn’t tremble at the very thought of Vi being near. Vi’s presence in Caitlyn’s life is a tangible thing, no matter the distance that dared separate them.
Caitlyn blinks, and she’s passing the old shed, and somewhere behind her, Vi follows.
She blinks, and she’s in the vineyard, the grapes just starting to blush purple. Like a shadow, Vi follows.
She blinks, and the row she’s walking down slopes up, ruthlessly straight lines hatching the hillside in a vivid green. Like a song that won’t get out of one’s head, Vi follows.
She blinks, and she’s reached the top, the light of the dying day drenching this side of the valley like molten gold, and there she stops.
She stops, but she doesn’t turn around.
Orpheus, at the gaping mouth of the underworld, terror, hope, and doubt ripping him in a thousand different directions.
Eurydice, hand outstretched, three steps away from freedom.
These stories. They rarely have happy endings.
Caitlyn turns around.
Vi is right behind her, slightly out of breath, her cheeks stained pink by the most exertion she has gotten in three days, but the dusk is setting the whole of her on fire. She’s blinding.
Caitlyn can’t look away.
In Caitlyn’s head, they are in a dark and crowded room, then, on the peak of the loneliest mountain in the world, then the ground beneath them turns to water, and they’re both drowning, but neither of them are doing anything about it.
“Close your eyes,” Caitlyn says, without really meaning to.
Vi does, trust etched into every line of her face.
“What do you see?”
Vi doesn’t hesitate. “You,” she says.
Caitlyn’s hands reach out and find the collar of Vi’s shirt, pulling her closer, ever closer, and Vi’s eyes flutter open, a smile blooming on her face like a butterfly breaking free from its chrysalis.
“You,” Vi whispers, and Caitlyn can do nothing but kiss her.
That kiss is a flash of lighting in a summer storm; it’s the blink of a lonely firefly. It feels big enough to consume Caitlyn, and yet small enough to contain within the palm of her hand, and she pulls away too quickly.
In Caitlyn’s head, Vi flies away on a train, and she never comes back, she never comes back, she never comes back.
“Cait?” Vi murmurs.
Caitlyn releases the collar of Vi’s shirt and moves her hands up to cradle Vi’s face.
“Stay,” she whispers back. Vi’s breath catches and holds in her chest, but Caitlyn plows on. “Stay. Here. Vi.”
And suddenly, Caitlyn can’t find the words to go on. She thinks, absurdly, that she must have written all of the words she possessed down these last three years, and now she has none left, like she spent them all too fast, too soon.
She swipes her thumb across the skin under Vi’s eye, her other hand going to the soft curls behind Vi’s ear and back again.
“Stay,” Caitlyn says again, because it’s all she has.
And Vi?
Oh, how Vi smiles.
It is a tiny, disquieting thing, if only because it is full to the brim with hope. Torturous hope. Wonderful hope. The kind of hope that fills your lungs. The kind of hope that you can feel in your hands, in the pulse of your heart, in the delicate blue veins of your wrists.
“Yes or no, Vi?” Caitlyn asks.
Vi’s hands find the fabric of Caitlyn’s shirt, and her nose brushes Caitlyn’s as she bridges the gap between them, pressing the word yes into Caitlyn’s mouth like a promise.
“Yes, Caitlyn,” she says, between kisses, and Caitlyn holds her a little tighter, “I’ll stay.”