Dirt
Vi doesn’t want to get up. It’s an unfamiliar feeling.
The smoke from the explosion drifts up below the ledge. Vi watches it rise, carrying pink specks of glitter, wondering how much of it was smoke and how much of it was the ashes of her father and Jinx. Powder. Jinx. Her sister.
She thinks of how easy it would be to roll off the thin ledge, to disappear into the smoke, choking to death or hurting to death from every broken bone in her body when she hit the tarmac below, depending which one killed her first. She thinks of how easy it would be to dishonor Jinx’s sacrifice. She thinks of how hard it would be to keep living in the shadow of her sacrifice. Maybe that was why Jinx chose to go out the way she did. Like a child with dyed blue tufts.
Reality hits her, always sooner than when you’d expect. She hears the explosive roar of the aftermath, the agonising creak of the foundations, the fire whooshing up the tunnel. Her entire body was engulfed with pain, flaming from her shoulder, her twisted arm, her ankle. It’s nothing she hasn’t felt before.
Is there a reason to lie here? Is there a reason to get up? Is there a reason to just exist?
The fire is a meter’s lick away from her when she hears the voice in her ear. Screaming.
“Are you still in this fight, Violet?”
Vi gets up.
Caitlyn doesn’t want to wake up.
It’s a suffocating feeling, being caught in between life and death. She thinks she deserves it, remembering grey-green fog choked out of people’s mouths in alleys.
Everything sounds so far away. She can only catch glimpses of sound, trying to piece together the nonexistent world around her. Vaguely she heard a woman screaming her name, then a drawn-out beep from some sort of machine.
In the dark, she starts making up things to see. To stimulate her light receptors with something, or they may forget how to work. She sees Grayson teaching her how to shoot, the rifle ricocheting in her strong, tanned hands, the target flipping backwards. She sees her mother in a garden of violets, reading a book. She sees Jinx, her smile melting into the twisted frown on her wanted poster, then morphing into the image of her curled in a corner of the prison cell, defeated and small, drowning in a sea of long blue hair. She sees Maddie in the bed they used to share, brains blown out and blood spattering across white covers, her head weighing her shoulder down.
She dreams–or is it another image she’s conjured up?--of Vi. They skate through the sky and when they inevitably fall through, blades having ripped up the clouds, a blimp catches them just before they’re bounced skywards again. They lie in her bed in the Kiramman estate where Vi sleeps and Caitlyn watches the steady rise and fall of her chest, trying to memorise every sharp edge of her face. In a garden of violets, Vi falls to one knee. There is no ring, but Caitlyn nods.
In her dreams, Vi’s mouth is moving. She speaks, but Caitlyn doesn’t hear and Vi doesn’t know Caitlyn doesn’t hear. Caitlyn doesn’t find it unsettling, but she misses Vi’s voice.
The day she finally hears it, it’s desperate, choked with unshed tears. She says, “Please wake up. Please do it for me.”
Caitlyn screams. It’s the only way to get the cold air gushing into her lungs.
Someone shakes her violently. Vi groggily smacks the side of her head so her surroundings blur back into place. Her back hurts from being crunched up into a hard hospital chair for hours on end.
It’s Caitlyn’s father.
“She’s awake,” he says, and Vi runs.
Caitlyn opens her left eye to a world of monochrome. Her hands are ashy grey against a backdrop of white, grey shadows cast where the blanket crumples. The buildings outside are grey, trees black. They used to be gold, interlaced with blue stained glass. Through her right eye, she can see nothing but darkness. Stabbing pain ebbs through it and her back curves forwards, bringing her hand up to scrabble uselessly against a rough bandage. There is nothing underneath it. She knows her right eye is left somewhere else on a battlefield, squashed in jelly and in blood.
Still, that didn’t explain why the world around her looked like she was stuck in one of her mother’s black and white movie archives.
The door bangs open, and Caitlyn sees the first splash of colour since she’s been awake.
Vi’s flaming red hair tickles her nose as the woman envelopes her in a crushing hug. Caitlyn raises her own trembling arms, looping them around Vi’s back with the little strength she can muster. As Vi pulls back, Caitlyn notices the miniscule red cuts and scars on her grey face, littered like freckles.
“What happened to you?” she asks softly, thumb gently stroking a red horizontal slash across Vi’s cheek tattoo. Her eyes are still steel grey, as she remembered them, but the soft powder blue tinge was nowhere to be seen. Vi laughs, tears welling in her stormy eyes. “ You’re asking what happened to me ? If you must know, I’m in a much better shape than you are, cupcake.”
Caitlyn studied Vi for a moment, then decided to repeat the question at a later date.
“Could I speak to a doctor?” she says finally.
VI jolted. “Ah, shit, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I think your dad’s gone to notify them. I’ll go and check–” Caitlyn grabbed her hand before she could leave.
“Stay with me for a second?”
Vi hesitated, then pulled up a nearby chair, intertwining their fingers. “Always, cupcake.”
Her hands are bandaged again. Caitlyn ran her fingers against the white gauze where small red stains bloomed.
“Something’s wrong with my sight,” Caitlyn whispered, more to herself than to Vi.
“What?” Vi exclaimed.
Before she could explain further, her father swept in with a team of doctors. The doctors huddle around the beeping equipment, muttering about her O2 levels and blood pressure. Tobias Kiramman, however, forgetting all his decades of medical training and professionalism in a moment of weakness, clasps her hands tightly and looks into her eyes. Eye. She’d have to get used to that.
Vi moved to the right before she could get jostled out of the way. “How are you feeling?” he asked, voice fraught with worry.
“I’m fine, dad,” she said. “Though there is a problem with my eyesight”
“What?” Her father dropped her hands and brushed the hair out of her face, peering inquisitively at her bandaged eye.
“No, not that one. I can’t see out of that one.”
Her father gave her a berating look.
“I can’t see any colours,” Caitlyn said. “That’s the problem.” She can’t help but feel she’s being too calm about this.
Out of the corner of her eye, Vi visibly jolts.
The doctors beside her looked up, concerned. “Get the colour diagram in here for Miss Kiramman, please.” A nurse nodded and darted out the door.
“Cait,” Vi says, retaking her spot at the head of her bed when her father politely moved over. “What do you mean you can’t see any colours?”
“Everything’s black and gray and white.” Caitlyn blinked hard and reopened her eye, as if giving it a factory reset. Around her, the doctors are a gradient of light to dark grays, their white coats a blinding contrast. There is a faded red scar on Vi’s nose, presumably from when it had been broken, a light pinkish red so insignificant she couldn’t see it before when the colour of Vi’s skin had still been flesh. On a gray face, the faint line was sharp and obvious. “What happened to your nose?” she asked.
“What?” Vi said.
“I can see red,” Caitlyn realized. “I can see red too.” She grabbed Vi’s hand in excitement. This was a good sign. Maybe this meant that over time, the other colours would return to her world. Vi squeezed her hand back in equal fervour.
The nurse returned then with a wheel of colours in her hands. In a varying assortment of blacks and grays, the red sector bled into Caitlyn’s vision. The doctor pointed to a darkish sector. “Can you identify this colour for me, Miss Kiramman?”
She really did try, even though she thought there was no point in trying. “Green?” she guessed.
Above the colour wheel, the doctors and her father exchanged a look. Vi’s steely eyes were fixed on her, brows locked in worry.
“Brown, actually,” the doctor said gently. He pointed to another sector of the circle. “Try this.”
Caitlyn promptly proceeded to fail her way through identifying any of the colours. The doctors looked increasingly confused and Vi’s brows only twisted closer to each other. Panic set in, its arrival long delayed, gnawing in Caitlyn’s stomach like a rat attempting to claw its way out of her.
Finally, the doctor’s finger landed on the bright red piece. “Red,” Caitlyn blurted. “Crimson.”
Around her bed, the painted confusion on the doctors’ faces reached a peak. Beside her, she felt Vi’s grip relax slightly. Caitlyn doesn’t. Instead, she thinks of a world of monotones and blood.
It was some sort of brain damage. Vi didn’t understand all of the complicated medical jargon. But she did understand how Caitlyn’s face seemed to fall, her blank stare getting darker and darker as the doctor continued to speak.
“I don’t suppose you remember, but a week before, when the Anomaly happened, that is what the Academy is calling it, apparently, there was a moment when something seemed to have…consumed us. I was in my office at the time, and I remember seeing a silver line—“
“—A web of interconnections,” Caitlyn interrupts. Her face is unreadable. “I was beginning to believe I had hallucinated that in my dreams as well. The Arcane.”
Everyone in the room looked equally as confused as Vi.
The doctor cleared his throat. “We believe it may have something to do with that. The Arcane, as you call it. Other than that, we can find no plausible explanation. It is not uncommon for patients to go completely colour blind if certain areas of their brain and optic nerve have been damaged enough. It is rarer, but not unheard of, for patients to lose the ability to see some colours. But your case, Miss Kiramman, where you have lost the ability to see all but one colour…I must say it is a first.”
Caitlyn let out a hollow laugh. “So that’s it, then? Some sort of temporary, magical side effect?”
Another doctor spoke. Gently, like handling a fragile vase. “We don’t believe it’s temporary, Miss Kiramman.”
The unspoken word hovered above them like the blade of a guillotine.
Caitlyn’s hand had gone cold. Vi looked at the white cloaked men in desperation. “There must be something you can do.”
The doctors shared an uneasy look. “We can try, but the Arcane is still so unknown to us. Even the Academy knows nothing about it. And as we’ve seen, the previous attempt to harness it was…”
Vi thinks of her gauntlets and the paint splattered hand holding the other end of long metallic fingers. She thinks of a blue orb glowing inside a gun, in the hands of a smiling child. She thinks of Jayce and the hammer they had failed to use, the hammer that split a child’s head. She thinks of rough blue crystals in the clasp of toy cymbals, inching along a narrow ledge.
“Disastrous,” she finished for the doctor.
Caitlyn was silent.
“Can I still shoot?” she asked finally.
“You have lost an eye, Miss Kiramman. Your perception and field of vision will be different than before.”
“I have not lost the eye I aim with,” Caitlyn declared. It was the same tone of voice she had used when they had their final meeting before the battle, four figures huddled around a marble model of the city. It commanded attention, laced in steel, but as she had the previous time, Vi heard the fear underneath her sharp tone. “I will be able to do what I’ve always been able to do.” Tobias Kiramman smiled gingerly at his daughter’s words. Next to him, the doctor appeared to want to say something, but then decided against it.
“You may go,” Caitlyn said, not giving them a chance to reconsider if they should speak. “I would like some rest, I think.”
The doctors gave her a nod and filed out of the room. Tobias gave his daughter a reproachful look and then looked at Vi questioningly.
“She’s staying,” Caitlyn said when Vi made to move away. “Dad, can we have the room to ourselves for a little while?”
Tobias looked at the two of them, worried dark eyes flitting between them. Steeling himself, he nodded and walked briskly out the door, shutting it on his way out.
Caitlyn sat in her bed, back straight against propped white pillows. Her hand was still, almost slackened. It struck a slow, foreboding fear in Vi, like the agonising drip of the fluids into Caitlyn’s vessels. Caitlyn liked to run her fingers gently along Vi’s calluses, trace the ridges of her knuckles, her innate curiosity for exploration shining through an action as simple as holding her hand. She watched Caitlyn stare at the blankets, stagnant.
What happened next was immediate, as if someone had wound Caitlyn up and released the chain. Her back snapped forwards, curling, crumbling, shoulders shaking. A hand clawed up to her hair, scraping on navy roots, accompanied by hard, laboured breaths. “Caitlyn!” Vi nearly screamed. She gripped her shoulders. “Caitlyn, look at me! Look at me!”
She pulled her up by the collar of her hospital gown. As Caitlyn lifted her head to meet her gaze, there was a red, dripping line seeping from underneath her bandage. Vi realized they were tears mixed in blood. There was a broken, hollow look in Caitlyn’s other eye, bearing a haunting resemblance to another pair of blue eyes Vi was far too familiar with.
“Just…” Caitlyn began, her voice breaking, “just hold me for a while.”
Vi took her into her arms, burying her face into the crook of Caitlyn’s neck. After a few minutes the skin felt wet against her cheeks, and Vi only then realized that she was crying too.
It was an unspoken agreement that Vi would stay with Caitlyn at the Kiramman mansion. Tobias had asked the servants to prepare a guest room for Vi, and it remained as pristine and tidy as ever, not a dent in the pillows.
Vi slept in Caitlyn’s bed. It was like the first time, bodies curled towards each other, a respectable distance between their bodies. The only difference was that back then, Caitlyn had closed that distance, brushing her fingers lightly against Vi’s cheek. Now it was as if there was an endless chasm between their hands, none of them daring to venture across. She tried to convince herself that this was for the best. That they weren’t ready for that level of intimacy yet. Not when they were still chasing off their respective demons and pretending to be fine with each other and Caitlyn being this…corrupted, damaged version of her previous self. In the early hours of the morning, she would watch the other woman, so close yet so far, fearing that one day Vi would wake up and realize, “My God, you’re not the woman I fell in love with,” and then leave her for good. She knew that her fear had already been realized. Vi was always smarter than anyone gave her credit for.
They had removed the bandage when she left the hospital. Before they brought her the eyepatch, Caitlyn had stood in the bathroom staring at herself in the mirror. There was a dark red slash lying vertically from underneath her eyebrow to her cheekbone, where the blood had congealed. Her right eye was permanently closed. She considered lifting her eyelid to see what was left underneath, if there was anything, but then decided she didn’t want to look at her empty eye socket. Her skin was a few shades lighter than the rest of her face where the bandage had rested for the past few weeks. She looked like a half of a spectre. Caitlyn hated it. It made her look so fucking weak. She accepted the dark eyepatch gratefully and vowed never to take it off. Vi had tried to make her feel better. “It’s a very nice shade of dark blue. Very regal,” she had said, “just like you, cupcake.”
Regal. Like a withering royal on a throne too large for them and a crown too heavy for their neck. Caitlyn had smiled.
Over the past few days, she’d gotten used to waking up to the gray world around her. Caitlyn slept with her body curled towards Vi, so the first thing she could see in the morning was red hair fanned against gray pillows, to remind herself there were other things to look forward to seeing. She lived with the fear that one day the red would fade from her world as well, and so she cherished every waking moment with Vi. Red had never been her favourite colour, but here she was, overdosing and addicted to its warmth like a moth to a flame.
Her father had been adamant about Caitlyn staying in bed for at least a week after the hospital discharged her. The first three days, Vi stayed with her while she drifted in and out of consciousness, fussing over her wounds and glaring at her until she finished all her meals. It should have made her feel good, and it would have, but those were simpler times. Today, she had persuaded her father to take Vi out. Tobias was scheduled for a shift at the hospital, and Caitlyn knew Vi would appreciate the opportunity to assist him. Vi always wanted to care for others, and it was one of the things Caitlyn loved most about her.
So Caitlyn stared up at the ceiling, remembering the flash of hurt in Vi’s eyes when she had turned her away that morning. She hated herself, and she clung onto that hatred like a suffocating blanket, burning the once colourful drawings and curlicues of her canopy into her mind until she fell asleep.
Tobias was a bit of an enigma, if Vi was being entirely honest. For the past year, she felt her entire world was shadowed by the presence of Cassandra Kiramman, with eyes that looked too much like Caitlyn’s and a bronze statue towering over the chaos at the memorial. Alive, Cassandra was far easier to read than her husband. She was the typical uptight Piltover citizen who looked down her aquiline nose at people like her. Her husband, however? Vi wasn’t sure how to get a good read of him.
When Vi had first woken up at the hospital, having fainted once she hoisted herself out of that chasm, Tobias was sitting next to her. “A nice young man dropped you off,” he said. “It’s good to see that you’re awake.” He took in her battered form, nearly all her limbs wrapped in bandages. “I’ll get the doctors.”
“Cait?” she croaked, throat dry and blistering. She was the last thing on her mind before Vi lost consciousness, the image of her tousled navy hair fanned out on Vi’s bare shoulder the final thing she saw. Tobias dropped his gaze and poured her a glass of water. Vi had nearly dropped the glass as quickly as the grief flashing across Tobias’ face.
“She came in shortly after you did. She’s currently in a coma, and she’s lost a lot of blood, but we–well, I–have faith in her.”
“Why are you here with me then?” Vi had asked.
“Because I’ve seen my daughter waste away without you, and I’m not going to live through seeing her do that to herself a second time. I’m here to make sure you’re alive and well, and that you are going to be there when Caitlyn wakes up,” he had replied resolutely.
Tobias had indeed kept his word. When he wasn’t working shifts, he spent his time alternating between Vi and Caitlyn’s room. He made sure Vi ate every day and had a sufficient amount of fluids. He tapped on the limp fingers peeking out of her cast and tested her reflexes. Occasionally, with unknown painkillers coursing through her veins, he almost looked like Vander.
Now, walking along the corridors in the hospital, there was a much lighter rhythm in Tobias’ steps, almost a skip. There was no doubting how Caitlyn’s slow but sure recovery had rejuvenated him.
“So, what can I do?” Vi asked.
“I was thinking today we could divide and conquer,” Tobias said. “I’m assigned to work in these 2 wards for today. If you could go to Ward 30 while I head into Ward 29, just make some notes on what each individual patient needs, record their vitals and everything, then report back to me? That would make my job a lot smoother when I come by to give them a proper check up. The chief nurse will show you the ropes.” He gestured at a skinny dark skinned woman, who was fiddling with a patient’s IV drip. Her name tag read Mindy .
Vi peeked into the ward. Beds were lined up against the walls, the occasional blue curtain drawn around them. Lying on the cots were people wrapped in an array of bandages, IV lines hooked to various coloured liquids, Piltovans and Zaunites alike. In the aisle between the beds in the middle of the room, nurses bustled to and fro, exchanging notes and quick words, pushing trolleys with blue packages, presumably holding sanitised equipment. A child was crying somewhere from behind a curtain, earning disgruntled and irritated glares from the patients beside them.
“Can you take care of that for a second while I finish up here?” Mindy asked, not looking up from her work.
“Oh. Um,” Vi looked back at Tobias, who gave her an encouraging nod. “Yeah. Sure.” She weaved her way gingerly through the machines and people towards the end of the corridor, hearing the child’s cries grow louder as she drew closer. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the curtain back.
“Vi?” Ekko was sitting on the bed, holding a box of tissues in one hand and the other cradling a child. Upon her arrival, the boy ceased his crying and stared up at her with tear-filled eyes.
“Ekko!” She surged forward, opening her arms midway before realizing it probably wasn’t the most convenient time to crush him into a hug with the boy practically clinging onto Ekko. “How are you? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Nah,” he dismissed her worries with a lopsided smile. “Just this little one here. Got caught in a fallen building with some of the other Firelights. They’re in other wards. I’m just checking in on Chester here.”
Vi’s gaze fell onto Chester’s leg cast, a white cylinder supported by a loop of cloth underneath, which hung to the ceiling on two metal rings. “It hurts,” he whimpered.
“I assume they set the bone back into place?” Vi asked. “I don’t know if that comes before or after the cast.” They didn’t have plaster casts in Zaun, and certainly not in Stillwater.
“Before, I’m led to believe,” Ekko replied, gently ruffling Chester’s hair.
She looked at the spotless white cast, an idea forming in her mind. “You got any pens, Ekko?”
“Just some…paints. No pens, though.” He reached into his pocket and opened his hand to reveal 2 scrunched up paint tubes, pink and blue paint already forming a waxy seal around the black screw-on cap. Vi looked at them in surprise. “You just carry art supplies around with you now?”
“No, not me,” Ekko said quietly, and Vi immediately understood.
It was a funny thing, grief. It made people’s souls manifest in the form of inanimate objects. It dredged up old memories in unfamiliar things. It connected the dots between random snippets of time. The remnants of dried paint on her gauntlet. The untidy black scrawl on Jinx’s cheek, mirroring her own tattoo. Colourful marker drawings scribbled onto the board underneath her top bunk.
Vi swallowed. “Don’t suppose you have a brush too?” Ekko shook his head.
She focused her attention back to Chester. “Hey, kid,” she said, crouching down so she was level with his teary, blinking eyes. “You like to paint?”
Chester looked at Ekko shyly, then back at her. “Yeah,” he said. “Ekko taught me. But we don’t have any paper here.”
“Well,” Vi tapped the hard cast softly. “We’ve got a wonderful blank canvas right here.” Unscrewing the cap, she squeezed two blobs of pink paint onto her index finger. “Gimme something, kid. What’s your favourite animal?”
Chester considered. “Dolphins,” he decreed.
Well. Vi was stumped. She looked at Ekko, asking for help.
“They’re mammals that live in the sea,” he explained. “They look like fish.”
She made a crude drawing with her fingers, a triangle for a tail and a fat oval for its body. Her sister had gotten all the artistic genes. “You’ve gotta add the dorsal fin and pectoral fins!” Chester piped up, evidently very knowledgeable on this topic.
Vi drew another mental blank. Instead, she offered the paint tube to Chester, who mimicked her, squeezing pink paint on his finger and added a curved fin to the top of the oval and two more to the bottom of it. At the tip of the oval, he drew another smaller, elongated oval and a curve inside it. “That’s its mouth,” he explained to her.
“It looks like it's smiling,” she remarked.
“Dolphins are always smiling!” Chester said. “That’s how they always look in the books.”
“We have a little section for marine animals in our library, back in our hideout,” Ekko said in a hushed tone.
“I love those,” Chester said, smiling for the first time since Vi came in. A wide, gap toothed smile, much like the crescent on the dolphin’s elongated mouth. Warmth spread in Vi’s chest.
“You gotta sign your name, Chester,” Vi urged. “It’s your first masterpiece with this cast.” The boy looked up at her, curious. To show him what she meant, Vi painted her name in pink next to the dolphin, the v and i slightly squished together. “That way no one can steal your work. Always sign your pieces,” she declared.
As Chester painstakingly wrote his name on his cast, the curtain drew open behind Vi. It was Mindy, looking extremely frazzled. “Hey, could you get us some more supplies from the storage closet just across the corridor? We’re running a bit low right now.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure,” Vi stood up, wiping her fingers on her trousers, which left behind multiple pink fingerprints and two neon lines on the dark cloth. “Bye, Chester,” she said. The child waved back, pink staining his small hand.
“I’ll get them with you,” Ekko said. Mindy nodded absentmindedly, her attention already captured by a groaning patient.
As they made their way out of the ward, clutching two metal trays, Vi spoke. “I never did say thank you for dropping me off at the hospital back then.”
Ekko laughed. “Don’t mention it. How’d you know it was me, though?”
“Tobias–Mr Kiramman–may have mentioned a nice boy dropping me off.”
She pulled the door to the closet open. It was around the size of her childhood bedroom, metal shelves stacked with gauze and bandages and silver instruments in transparent blue packages.
“He did, now did he?” Ekko mused. “Could say the same for him. A lot nicer than most Pilties. But if he’s anything like his daughter then I suppose I’ll have to take that back.”
Vi stilled at the sudden hostile tone, then continued dumping rolls of gauze into the tray. “I’m as much to blame for everything as she is,” she muttered.
Ekko’s face twisted, eyebrows locked so hard the centre of his forehead scrunched up, the same furious look he had when he was a child. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it. You should never have put on that uniform, Vi. But the damage I hear Kiramman has caused in the time I was gone–the things she’s done–they’re things I know you would never have allowed.”
She remained silent, but something inside her felt lighter, like a knot finally unravelled. Watching Ekko continue his rant, holding her accountable, she felt a sudden sense of pride. He wasn’t that mischievous little boy in Benzo’s shop and giving them bad stealing tips anymore. This was a man with a strong moral compass and cared so much about their people. In her mind’s eye, Vi remembered a wall painting of Jinx rising in blue smoke, but now she saw Ekko in the mist, fist raised high in the air, a beacon people could rally behind.
“We’ve never talked about it,” Vi said when Ekko was done. “What happened in our time apart. What we fucked up without each other. It’s too soon. I think a part of me will always think it’s too soon to talk about it.”
He looked at her, brown eyes softening. “I would tell you to leave her.”
“But?”
He sighed. “But then I’d be a hypocrite, because I came back for Jinx. And even though she’s…” Ekko averted his gaze, probably because he knew that if he met Vi’s eyes they’d both break down in tears, and now was not the right time and place for it. Not when there were people hurting, dying out there who needed them. “...We’re still here, aren’t we? Zaun survived. We have a future. That’s what she’s given us. Hope. A second chance to set things right.”
Vi’s eyes clouded with tears. “More than I deserve.”
“Vi,” Ekko said, the hand on her shoulder firm, “it’s the least you deserve. It’s the least we all deserve. I think she knew that.”
They stood in the storage room in silence as Vi wiped her tears with the back of her hand.
“I’m sorry too, Ekko.” She left the apology up to his interpretation. There were a million things Vi was sorry for, a thousand she had to atone for.
Ekko sniffed and turned away from her, putting his hand on the doorknob. “I saw the good version of her in our final moments together. For those few hours, I remembered what it was like to love her again, and I didn’t care if she was Powder or Jinx. I hope that Caitlyn’s strong enough to face her mistakes. For both your sakes. In the end, you realize the people you love are never really gone, you know? You just have to dig deep to see the light. Just…don’t wait as long as I did.”
Vi set the tray on the floor with a clang and tackled Ekko in a fierce hug, feeling his muscles loosen and arms go slack. Then he turned and embraced her equally fiercely, tears finally staining her shoulders.
They left the storage closet, drawing many confused looks from the nurses on the ward, which told Vi they’d been in there for much longer than they’d thought. It was probably equally strange for them to see them emerge with eyes red rimmed and puffy, clothes rumpled and items arranged haphazardly on the trays they were holding.
“I’ll see you soon, Vi,” Ekko said as he headed in the opposite direction. “We need people like you with the rebuilding efforts. Ya better be there.”
For what felt like the first time in months, a genuine smile cracked across Vi’s face. “I will,” she promised. “See you around, little man.”
When she returned with Tobias, Caitlyn was asleep in bed. Vi was tired, but in a way that felt fruitful, her aching shoulders evidence of her efforts. It felt good, doing something with her hands that didn’t involve curling fingers into a fist, repairing instead of breaking. She stepped lightly into Caitlyn’s room, the last beams of sunlight painting the room pink. Caitlyn’s eyes were closed, facing the window.
As Vi made to close the curtains, there was a rustling of blankets behind her. “Leave them open.”
“Hey, cupcake.” Vi crouched next to the bed. “Sorry, I thought you were sleeping.”
“No, don’t apologise,” Caitlyn said. “It’s just…the only time of the day the sky’s a colour I can see.”
“Oh,” Vi whispered. Caitlyn didn’t look sad. More melancholic, rather. She wondered what Caitlyn’s world looked like. Grainy, black, the occasional spots of white, like the rare photographs they had hanging up on the fridge in her childhood home. And red. A colour Vi was all too familiar with appearing on her body. Or rather, leaking from it.
“It could be worse,” Caitlyn mused. “I could have been stuck with only being able to see this really specific shade of red. I get to see a gradient.”
Vi nodded silently, and moved to sit on the bed. “I never did ask what your favourite colour was.”
Caitlyn laughed. At least that was what Vi assumed she was doing. A strange sound that escaped while her lips quirked slightly at the corners. “I suppose we did skip that whole getting-to-know-each-other phase.”
She supposed they had. Their relationship wasn’t exactly rooted in normalcy. 5 hours after Caitlyn released her from Stillwater, Vi had pressed her up against a wall in a brothel, then proceeded to abandon her there. An hour later Caitlyn had shot Sevika in her metal monstrosity of an arm to save her life. Things had spiralled out of control from there. She had come to realize that they’d been apart for much longer than they’d been together, and yet if someone asked her who she could see herself spending the rest of her existence loving, Caitlyn was the first person to come to mind. It was the realization that killed her, that drove her to reach for the next bottle, to drink until it pulverised her guts and she found herself throwing up wetly in a grimy bathroom or in a dark alleyway.
“I like blue,” Vi said instead.
Caitlyn startled, not expecting Vi to answer her own question. “Any specific shade?”
“I didn’t get painting lessons when I was a kid, so I can’t name those funny numbers Piltover has to code your colours. But I like the colour of the sky, the days when the clouds are gone and it’s just miles and miles of blue. I like the colour of the sea. Used to spend hours looking at the waves at the docks with my friends when we stole up here from the undercity. I like…” She stole a look behind her to see Caitlyn staring at her intently, her own silhouette reflected in cerulean eyes. “I like your eyes,” she mumbled. “I like how dark your hair is. Almost black, but still blue.”
Caitlyn brought her arm up to her forehead, obscuring the top half of her face. “Eye,” she corrected, but from the faint blush on her face, Vi knew she appreciated the compliment.
“Your turn now, cupcake.” Vi gave her shoulder a playful nudge. Caitlyn froze, then relaxed so quickly Vi thought she was imagining things. “You okay?” she asked, concerned.
“I like purple,” Caitlyn blurted, sidestepping the question. “Violet, specifically. Whatever.”
“Is that just a very roundabout way of saying you like me?” Vi teased.
There was a poignant pause. “It’s true though.”
“Does it…bother you that you can’t see that colour anymore?” Vi said, this time quieter and more serious.
Caitlyn removed her hand from her face, throwing it down absentmindedly on the covers, her singular blue eye glinting gold in the setting sun. “I remember how it looks. Sometimes memories are enough. Red’s not so bad. It can be beautiful, in the velvety, lethal way of a rose.”
“And when you can’t…see red?”
“It’s boring,” Caitlyn said. “Dark. Makes me wish I had more light coloured furniture in here.” She bit her bottom lip, suddenly trembling. “It’s strange. It makes me feel good, but it shouldn’t. This is my divine comeuppance. I think about it sometimes. Maybe this is what the people saw when I used the gas on them.”
Vi’s heart clenched.
“I haven’t been to my mother’s monument since it was erected a year ago. I haven’t even been able to bring myself to the docks, because that’s where my father scattered her ashes. She’s watching me, all the time, and I just hide away because I don’t know what else to do. She was the one who fixed the pipes and removed the Grey from Zaun, and here I am, her daughter–just fucking flooding the streets with it again. I’ve failed her so terribly, Vi.” Tears streaked down Caitlyn’s face, pearly on the left side and rusty on the right. Vi wiped them away, blood printed on the pads of her fingers and Caitlyn’s cheeks.
“Cupcake, please,” she said hoarsely. “Don’t cry. Your eye–”
“--Why are you even here with me?” Caitlyn interrupted. The question pierced through Vi like an icy stake to the heart. Her single blue eye darted wildly around her, as if taking in her surroundings for the first time, resting on Vi with a hollow, accusatory glare. Then she sat up and grabbed Vi by her shoulders and brought her lips to hers in a bruising kiss. Caitlyn’s front teeth crashed against Vi’s upper lip, cutting the skin. She tasted like hopelessness, like salt and iron.
When Vi didn’t reciprocate, she drew back. “I’m sorry,” Caitlyn said, dropping her hands from Vi’s shoulders to the bed, fingers curled into claws, palm facing the ceiling. “I’m sorry I ever asked that question. I’m so sorry, Vi.” She brought her hands to her face, still frozen like talons.
Vi pulled her hands away before Caitlyn could drag bleeding trails down her face, gripping her wrists firmly. “Caitlyn,” she said.
“Can we just forget about this whole debacle?” Caitlyn asked softly. She sounded incredibly small, like a guilty child.
“No,” Vi said. It came out harsher than she intended. She was so tired of forgetting, of pretending to forget, of running from their demons. “We’re going to remember that you asked me this question. Today. On the second Wednesday of January, at sunset. And you are going to remember the question you asked, because I intend on showing you the answer for the rest of our time together, and you are going to remember it every time you feel like asking that question again.”
Caitlyn stared at her with wet eyes, not understanding.
And Vi pulled Caitlyn on top of her, and then kissed her.