Chapter Text
“Cait?”
“Cait!”
“Cait I swear to Janna don’t- don’t you dare.”
The first thing that Caitlyn feels is this wet sensation around her eye, and this dull ache around it too. Next it’s the sound of soft sniffling, or crying? She couldn’t tell for sure. Her head was spinning, and that damn ache wasnt helping either. Then comes the smell. the stench of metal and fear encircling Caitlyn like vultures circle around rotting flesh. Finally, she opens her eyes, or actually, her eye, because when she opened her left eye, she didnt see blood or the sky or anything, rather, she saw nothing. Quite literally nothing. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on whether seeing her own lover sobbing over her was a good thing, Caitlyn saw Vi with the other eye, the one that wasn’t gouged out by her late mentor-turned-enemy Ambessa.
Vi finally takes notice that Caitlyn isn’t unconcious anymore, and it takes her a second to even do anything, that anything starting to cycle through the five stages of grief like a washing machine. Instead of that little jingle that washing machines play when theyre done however, Vi’s little cycle complete jingle was a choked sob that vaguely sounded like “Cait.” but could have just been just a run-of-the-mill choked sob before holding Caitlyn’s hand tightly.
“Violet.. you’re alive?” Caitlyn asks weakly, her voice sounding like she drowned in a sea of chili flakes.
“vi, did we win?” Caitlyn whispers, trying to sound serious but sounding more like she had a cricket in her throat. Vi still does not reply, her throat bobbing up and down as she swallows, seemingly unable to talk.
Caitlyn tries to sit up, a stabbing pain shooting through her stomach, making her wince loudly, Vi holding Caitlyn’s shoulders and gently guiding Caitlyn back down into a lying position.
“Vi, talk to me. You’re scaring me” Caitlyn demands frailly, gripping onto Vi’s calloused hand. Caitlyn finally takes notice of some weird streaks running down her face, as well as her knuckles looking very bloody, and sure a battle does do that to someone.
Then Caitlyn realizes, Vi was using the gauntlets during that battle, it would have been impossible for those wounds on Vi’s knuckles to be there if she was punching things with the gauntlets on. Then there’s the other thing, the lack of Jinx, the lack of her presence, the color, or even the sound of Jinx’s voice.
“Where’s Jinx?” Caitlyn asks, looking straight at Vi.
Vi looks at Caitlyn, then just… bursting into tears, but the most unsettling thing was that it didn’t even sound like Vi was crying because virtually no sound was coming from her, and what did come out sounded like painful wheezing and coughing. Vi covered her face, a hound’s teeth bared, but not in anger, but in grief.
Caitlyn didn’t care anymore, she sat up, despite the screeches of agony from all over her body, and she weakly held Vi in her arms, letting her cry, or rather, wheeze her way through this.
“Shit- I uh- I’ll leave you two alone.” A voice stutters.
Caitlyn looks up to see the familiar white dreadlocks of Ekko, the firelight who had also partaken in battle, and Caitlyn suspected, was madly in lone with Jinx, or should she say, Powder. Too bad he couldn’t really profess his love to Powder at this point in time.
As soon as Vi hears Ekko’s voice, she halts herself and as quickly as the waterworks started, they ended, immediately turning to leave the room, hopefully for a cough drop or something.
“I assume you’ve figured out why Vi’s not talking?” Ekko asks, sitting by the hospital cot.
“No, she hasn’t said a word to me, it’s almost like it’s too painful to talk.” Caitlyn sighs. “I’m worried for her, you know?”
“She’s worried about you Caitlyn, and justifiably, you kinda got your eye gouged out.” Ekko murmurs
“What? You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you? I swear my eye’s just swollen shut.” Caitlyn asks in surprise.
“Nope, it’s more like your eye socket is swollen shut.” Ekko says, anticipating Caitlyn’s reaction.
Caitlyn just sits there in silence for a few agonizing seconds.
“I think you remember this but you also got stabbed.” Ekko says, attempting to break that silence but the effect isn’t exactly that effective.
“Yes, I know that, I’m not daft.” Caitlyn snaps back.
“Okay, okay, just saying. In case you didn’t remember it happening.” Ekko replies defensively.
Caitlyn huffs in shock.
“Goddamnit.”
“We’ve been able to recover alot of our people, but we still haven’t found Jinx.” Ekko reports.
Oh. Crap. How the hell is Caitlyn supposed to tell him that Jinx is dead?
“Caitlyn, why are you making that face?” Ekko asks.
Caitlyn had been thinking so hard about breaking the news that Jinx had turned into powder that she didn’t realize she looked like her other eye was about to pop out of her skull.
“I don’t know how to go about saying this… but Jinx… may have.. passed… in the battle.” Caitlyn says sadly.
Ekko just stares at Caitlyn looking like he had just seen someone die.
“What.” Ekko replies.
The tension is so thick you could cut through it with a knife, but an attempt to do so would possibly cause an explosion, likely from Ekko and that explosion would likely be more like another person bursting into tears. Eventually the silence and Ekko staring straight into Caitlyn’s eyes is too much for her, and she decides to see if Ekko is not turning into a staue from pure shock.
“Ekko?” She asks.
He just… sorta leaves. Yeah, he just leaves the room. Caitlyn’s now dealing with the regret of telling him, maybe she should have left him in the dark a little longer, but no, he has to know the truth, or at least the truth Caitlyn gathered from a mute and sobbing Vi ten minutes beforehand.
Caitlyn falls onto the pillow once more, staring up at the ceiling.
“Goddamnit.” She’d murmur to herself.
As she lays there, the thoughts begin to creep by. How is the council going to work now? How is her life going to continue? What is she going to do once she’s healed? Is Vi going to stay or not? It was frankly overwhelming, especially the potentially rocky restart of the council, but this time, she will make sure it works out for everyone, with no violence whatsoever, even if it means doing it while still broken herself, and with the loss of many in the air.
Goddamnit, its going to be difficult.