The days of Caitlyn’s horrid reign as Commanding Officer were just that - horrible. The job never seemed to end. There weren’t hours, or pay. It was simply a dictatorship. The base was her own house, the troops her past coworkers. She sufficiently felt like an idiot for letting herself become so naive as to fall into a clear as day manipulative plan.
That was the thing about manipulation though. It almost always started out as an appeal to the broken or the emotionally lost or weak. Quite the reason cults were a problem. Appealing to ones who were narrow-minded, stricken with mania or grief. It made you feel seen, feel heard, feel safe. It provided guidance and community, whispering comforting lies in your ear. Caitlyn knew all of this, and yet she still fell into Ambessa’s trap.
She took on this humongous role in the wake of her late mother’s death, the destruction of the city, during a manhunt for her girlfriend’s sister, who just so happened to be her mother’s murderer. To top it all off, she’d fucked up her only close relationship after less than a day. Broken, disfigured, and high-masked, she supposed it would’ve been easier not to manipulate her than to.
Ambessa made her feel powerful, feel like she was fulfilling a destiny. Doing something important, bringing safety back to the people of Piltover. Finding Jinx, after all, was not just a vengeful act but a city-wide womanhunt of a terrorist. She’d killed six enforcers with her explosions during the night of Progress Day, she’d blown up the counsel building, and then attacked the funeral. She acted the same way over and over again, but always managed to throw her off. She just wasn’t good enough to anticipate her next move.
There’d been the telltale signs as there always were. How the path always strayed to violence in the path of peace, how leads would suddenly arise and end in chaos, how every order she gave was motivated by Ambessa herself. Not a single decision she made was her own and hadn’t already been crafted by the warlord herself. There was no one to blame but herself in the end. Caitlyn had been the one to let her city down, had been the one to let her coworkers down, had been the one to let Vi down. She’d wronged everyone and everything close to her, she had to take responsibility for her stupidity.
She remembered collapsing in bed every night, bone-tired, head aching, and utterly exhausted from all the input. The heavy decisions she made with a drop of a hat, the logical arguments she held with a tight-lipped grimace, even the orders she made with a bark at the mouth and not so much as a glance. She was burnt out and yet every day she pushed harder and harder. Harder and harder, and no one ever saw it. No one could know what was going on inside that sick, sick mind of hers. She guessed it wasn’t sick so much as…encrypted. To the outside, it was horrifying. But if you had the right code and system, the symbols could piece together. She couldn’t promise the translated piece would be satisfying, though. Quite the opposite.
After months of her reign followed closely with the reconciliation with Vi and the Piltover-Noxus war, she’d utterly fallen into ruin. So much pent-up overstimulation, emotion, grief, everything spilled out of her. She remembered the last time she’d had a proper, full-blown meltdown. She must've been ten or eleven. As she grew, meltdowns shifted to shutdowns, shifted to extreme overstimulation. It wasn’t as if her struggles grew more mild, more that she’d gotten better at dismissing them. But after the war, when she’d come home to Ambessa’s plans all over her front room without her left eye and with her girlfriend in toe, she’d lost it.
Caitlyn remembered excusing herself upstairs, hurriedly climbing the stairs. She had made it to her bedroom barely before collapsing to her knees. She was sore and cut, tired and upset. So much had changed, so much she’d lost, so much had been destroyed. There was so much pressure still on her, so much filth. A layer of sweat was sticky on her skin, grime clinging to her face, a blood-soaked bandage adorning her left socket. Her uniform was tight to her form and her stab wound pulsated.
The trembling was horrific. She had sat in a ball in the middle of her childhood bedroom, a bedroom she couldn’t imagine sleeping in anymore, and had rocked back and forth, frayed not just at her edges, but through her entire system. The sobbing came next, and all that self hatred she didn’t have the energy for pushed through anyway, taking more than what she could give. She’d been ashamed to admit there was hitting. Tugging on her ponytail, scratching at her uniform.
When Vi found her, it had been one of the worst experiences. Vi didn’t even know she was autistic, and this had pushed it over the edge. She didn’t want to be seen, she couldn’t even look at her, much less tell her what the hell was going on with her. It was a lose-lose situation. Vi being Vi though, she didn’t seem to care what was happening specifically. She just did whatever she could to help.
With steady, warm hands, she’d taken Caitlyn’s and stopped the hitting and tugging. Helped lower the lights and change her bandage. Helped strip her of her uniform and clean the soot from her face. She had probably fought her girlfriend on each and everyone of those actions. Her revulsion to vulnerability paired with her aversion to touch must’ve made the tasks impossible. Still, loyal as ever, Vi never gave up. They’d been through the same war, Vi losing the rest of the family she had all in one day, and she was still the one helping Caitlyn.
There was a calming quality from her. A steadiness. Yes, she’d lost her sister again, along with her father - again. But…she almost seemed accepting. Willing to let go. With a peace to her that Caitlyn admired greatly. After all, they’d both gone out fighting. And presently, she was almost positive Jinx had made it out in a flash of Violet light, but she doubted the news would comfort Vi. For the first time in her life, she seemed content to stay where she was.
Now it was her turn to be the manic one. After the wake of that awful meltdown, many more followed. Both as she processed all the change, promptly grieved for her mother, and…reluctantly told Vi about her autism. Together, they’d identified her triggers. It had been vulnerable and uncomfortable, like getting diagnosed all over again. Everything she’d masked and repressed came back in full force. She’d walk around the house, pacing with her hands flapping in front of her. Anxious over a stupid work meeting. No longer suppressing her feelings was…intense, to say the least.
When with Ambessa, she seemed to be able to overtake any conversation with blunt facts, authority, and intimidation confidence. It hadn’t felt good, but it had felt powerful. Felt capable, like she could achieve feats never before thought about personally. That was all gone now, and she’d reconciled with that reality. She missed it sometimes, but she no longer felt like death at the end of every night, and little by little, she warded off the self hatred with Vi’s soft words, encouragement, and surprisingly, the meltdowns and shutdowns.
Caitlyn remembered a particularly awful memory from her childhood. She’d been visiting her grandparents in Ionia when she was maybe twelve, and had been enamoured with the beautiful golden, coastal city. Everything was amazing. Of course, there was a certain shroud of shame around her diagnosis still, as it had been fresh, only several months prior.
They’d taken her to a show, some sort of act, one of which she couldn’t quit remember. She did know she enjoyed it, but that it’d been overstimulating. She was ready to return to their Villa, but they’d insisted on going out to lunch after. The midday sun was too bright and her jaw ached from too many sweets bought at the show, and all she wanted to do was get home, wash out her mouth, and read for a little while, maybe lounge lazily on a hammock once the sun had turned orange and softened.
Instead, Caitlyn was ushered into a fancy, very busy restaurant. She’d tried to fall asleep the entire ride there which had almost worked, but they’d arrived before she could reach any real relaxation. She didn’t yet have a means of contact with her parents, too young and lacking the technology. They were back at the Villa which meant she was essentially stuck. As silly as it sounded, she felt her words running out. Like she only had a few left to give. When she sat at the table, the voices had muddled her ears and the sun was glaring into her eyes. All the food was expensive and authentic Ionian, completely unfamiliar. Her grandparents, of course, tried their best to keep up the conversation.
Poor them, having to deal with a granddaughter they barely knew who couldn’t properly communicate what was going on. To them, she looked zoned out and almost unresponsive, mechanical. A deep contrast to the enthusiasm from earlier at the show. Caitlyn kept her eyes trained on a spot in the room against a golden-gilded wall, trying to ignore the ornate but uniquely crafted, albeit very reflective, chandeliers. She’d used herself up by ordering a drink. Then, she completely shut down.
She couldn't speak, could barely move, thoughts racing. She didn’t touch her food or her drink, hands gripping sweatily together. She was biting her cheek so hard trying not to cry. She wanted to respond to them so badly, but she didn’t have the option. That trip had been peculiar. Her eyes welled up but didn’t spill over. The car ride home had been just as tense as the lunch, and the second they’d parked, she’d rushed inside. Caitlyn wanted to get as far away from that morning as she could. Thankfully, her father had explained what most likely happened based on their biased description. She was about to lock herself away in her room and cry her eyes out, pathetically, but her mother Cassandra had stopped her.
This, of course, made her want to sob even more. Interaction was impossible and not an option. But instead of questions or a lecture, she’d been led into her room gently, lied down, and read her favorite book to her. She’d brought it along the trip to reread. She could probably quote the book word for word, the paperback worn and well-loved. Still, Cassandra sat on her bed and read what mauve been five chapters just to calm her down.
Caitlyn remembered silently crying into her mother's lap, head resting against the gentle fabric of her summer shawl, slowly calming and kneading the material between her fingers until she’d calmed enough to sleep it off. Her mother always had high expectations of her, yes, and wanted to shelter her as much as possible. But she wasn’t a monster. She understood her daughter in ways many others couldn’t, and the comfort she’d derived from her mother wouldn’t ever leave her. It was all in the subtle nods, allowing Caitlyn to lead her own path, towards the end.
Life certainly changed after the events of the last year. But she’d settled into a good life with Vi, her soon-to-be wife. She’d dropped rank to a leading detective in a smaller enforcer firm, and Vi had joined as a recruit in her past firm. They’d created a steady rhythm, and she felt as if she was returning to an old version of herself. Still firm and stubborn, as if that could ever be whittled away, but not entirely afraid of showing the more…for lack of better words, autistic sides of her. The stimming, shutdowns, overstimulation, special interests. Vi was there for it all. Even her rants about airships.
Different wasn’t always bad, though that value would probably never leave her. Her city that she adored and both resented had been crushed and since rebuilt from the bottom up. Her father began to recover from the recent tragedies, Vi came into herself and healed from her past in safety, and Caitlyn…Caitlyn became Caitlyn again. She felt things more deeply and experienced life more fully, sometimes in overwhelming color. She’d learned to accept that it was okay if the color was overwhelming. She wouldn’t ever be alone how she had been. This new life was what she made of it, and she was going to fight her damndest for it to be everything she’d been yearning for her whole life, and then some.
Still, she’d always miss that comfort of her mother reading to her, in an orange-cast bedroom in Ionia. She was always gonna miss that, and she’d never get it back. That hole to fill would never be filled. And even as it shrunk, the pain never faded. It just shifted to sit beside her life instead of enveloping her so fully. She’d found that comfort again.
She’d found it in Vi, and it wouldn’t ever be taken from her.
That was her most certain promise.