claws in your back

Chaos in the aftermath of the explosion. Caitlyn looks down at Vi and feels an awful hammering in her heart. She is bleeding profusely from where she’d been slashed, her eyes hazy and unfocused. Each time they blink, it takes longer for them to reopen.

“Vi?” Caitlyn leans over her, waiting, wanting, needing those eyes to open again. Her head lulls to the side, as if it’s given up a hefty fight. She braces either hand on Vi’s shoulders and shakes her a bit. She shouldn’t do that. She knows she shouldn’t. It’s in poor medical form but Vi is not giving so much as an once of lucidity anymore. “Vi!”

Amongst the settling dust and the orange glow around them, she looks paler. Desperation curls around Caitlyn like a heavy smoke. While Ambessa and her army are of great concern, they push to the back of her mind. Her world zeroes in on the woman beneath her, near impractical in her fervent search for a pulse. 

Jayce is…alive, somehow, and much more level headed. Appearing behind her, worn and ragged, commanding with firm authority. “We have to get out of here.”

They have to move her. They have to be careful about moving her. They have to get back to the estate, Steb must run ahead and  inform her father, have him ready the moment they bring Vi in, and - and -

She’s forgetting something.

Hurriedly, deliriously, she picks Vi up. It won’t be easy to get her back without causing further harm, with just her supporting Vi’s weight while Jayce scouts a safe path for them further ahead. Caitlyn grits her teeth, jaw clenching as she tries to minimize the burden on Vi’s body. It has to be enough, determination and grit have to be enough to get her back alive.

Then, the weight of Vi is halved. Abrupt, but with gentle pressure. Fear zips up Caitlyn’s spine as she looks down. It cannot be. That change cannot be the fight leaving Vi’s body, delivering the cruelest and most-acute punishment Caitlyn deserves. Her breath catches as Vi’s head sways forward unconsciously, the product of someone adjusting her.

Not someone.

Jinx. Silent. Shocked, unblinking Jinx. Hauling the other half of Vi, supporting her weight. Caitlyn flounders for a moment, brain reeling in a wild bid to catch up with everything, the convenient holes in Vi’s plan — the plan that was meant to be theirs but now feels closer to Vi and Jinx’s. The chemweapon, Vander. The child, Isha.

“Come on,” Jinx’s voice is gravely. There is something so… so off with her eyes. The pinks of them dulled right before Caitlyn, a light extinguished. “We gotta get her out of here.”

Caitlyn finds herself paralyzed for a moment. This lapse sparks somewhat of an irritation within Jinx, her brow furrowing and jaw clenching as she makes a show of trudging further. In this light, she looks so much like her sister. 

“Arrest me or kill me or whatever you need to do,” Jinx tells her. Her voice would be hollow, if not for the frustration within it, “Just do it later. Unless you want her to die here.”

Of course not. Of course not. Of course not. Caitlyn can’t stand even the thought of it, how could Jinx even verbalize such a thing is beyond her, but suddenly they are both moving in unison. Getting Vi to safety.

They move in silence for the most part. Save for Jayce urging them forward and the occasional grunt of pain from Vi. Caitlyn spares as many glances as she can over to her, hoping she’ll look down to where Vi’s head rests on her shoulder and find those gray eyes piercing through her again. Each time she does, there is a moment— no less staggering for the brevity of it, where she sees Vi, pink-hair and all, with her eyes open. Suited in an Enforcer’s uniform, hunched over on her knees, tears streaming down her face. 

Then the scene changes. Against her will, Caitlyn feels herself pull away. Leaving Vi—black hair, leather jacket, deeply wounded Vi, to bleed out on the dirty ground beneath them. Surrendered to the Noxian forces. She screams at herself, but can’t seem to change the direction of her path. 

Jinx pulls Caitlyn out of her head, out of the living nightmare in her mind. Tethers her back to the present moment, where Caitlyn’s grip tightens on Vi’s side, earning her a grunt of pain, because she can’t seem to stop hurting her—

“Did a number on her,” She mutters under her breath. A quiet sound. Soft, haunting. Like the split second before a comforting dream unravels into a seething nightmare. “Didn’t we?”

We. Caitlyn scoffs before she can think better of it. Hardly ‘we’, she wants to say— would say,  if she could speak. 

She left Vi once. Once. Regrettably. She hoped Vi would come back despite being given no reason to do so. 

But Jinx…Jinx betrayed Vi. Jinx had Vi, all of her. Had an offer to run away with her and start over somewhere new. Instead, she squandered it. Pulled the trigger, caused all of this fallout. Killed her mother, councilors, countless citizens, left Vi unmoored and blaming herself. Jinx is not an idiot, she knows what she has done— how could she compare it to Caitlyn…

Leaving Vi. Unmoored and blaming herself.

Her brain scrambles for a higher ground, because she will not admit fault to Jinx of all people when she speaks again. 

“She wanted to stay there, you know. Tin-can Man’s Commune. Obvious culty shit going on. But she thought we could—it would be…good. For us.”

Stunned, Caitlyn nearly stops walking. Nearly. Jinx’ pace prompts her to keep going, adrenaline pushing her feet off the ground.

“Not my sister,” Jinx laughs, a bitter, deflated sound, “That’s not my sister. Vi’d have never done that. She’d laugh at those people. Call ‘em sheep ripe for slaughter.”

That is not Vi. 

They were husks. Viktor’s followers. Whatever Jayce had done to them left them listless shells of their former selves.

She looks ahead at Jayce, steadfast in his march ever onward. Recalls the rumblings of this…this healer on the outskirts of Zaun. It was low on Caitlyn’s—the Commander’s priority list, but it would’ve warranted investigation eventually. What Viktor was doing under the guise of ‘healing’…

On the surface they seemed content. Happy. But it was all far too uniform, like a cloak being donned. It appeared as though their ‘free-will’ was a chewed up, regurgitated thing.

Vi wouldn’t—Vi didn’t, couldn’t see through that? That’s not—

“No.” The word, throaty with emotion, is pulled from her.

“Yes,” Jinx insists, though it is dismal and without heat, “I wouldn’t have, we—Vander and I wouldn’t have let it happen. But she didn’t see it…for what it was. Maybe she couldn’t.”

“How? How is that possible?” Caitlyn chews on her lip, pushing resolutely forward.

Jinx scoffs. Tch. Caitlyn looks at her to find her shrugging. “Broke those fancy glasses of hers.”

Caitlyn narrows her eyes, her grip tightens on Vi’s wrist.

Jinx looks at her out of the corner of her eye. Shakes her head, like Caitlyn’s confusion is an undue burden. Then she elaborates, “Bottom of the bottle, every night. For months. That’s how.”

She…had suspicions. Fears. Worries. They had to be pushed to the back of her mind, sealed away with a resolution to locate Vi once-once she could. Once Jinx was brought to justice and peace was restored. Such assurances are hard-formed and bullshit to her own ears. Whatever attempts Caitlyn would make to seek her out…they wouldn’t be enough. 

A paradox of her own doing. Vi disarmed her, so she had to be removed. Caitlyn could only seek her out after doing what needed to be done. And yet, in completing that task, she’d make herself the very thing Vi could never stand to see again. 

“You think I’m crazy,” Jinx notes, almost offhandedly for how casual and emotionless it sounds. “But I know…I know what I did. I know why I found her…the way I did.”

A belabored pause. And then, Jinx asks,

“Do you?”

***

Her father takes one look at the state of Vi and calls for back up immediately. He calls upon Dr. Fischel first. An esteemed surgeon of whom the Kiramman’s have built a bond with predating Caitlyn’s birth. Her father and Dr. Fischel met in medical school and had become easy friends. They’d spent long nights chatting cordially over glasses of whiskey, debating which of them was the better surgeon of whatever anatomy was on their breath. 

Despite this, Dr. Fischel lasts only a moment longer than her father before turning away from Vi. Her look of quiet alarm commands for a third doctor. 

It is about that time that Caitlyn loses her sense. She moves from where she’s rooted to the ground to get closer to Vi, to help, to see her face and take it as evidence; to look at both of the doctors in the room and say here. Here she is. She is a fighter, and she is alive, and she will be okay.

The words die in her throat, perishing on her tongue. Vi looks worse here. Lain on her family’s couch, paler still even among the light blue fabric. It isn’t Vi. It’s this—this bloody fabric. Tinting her skin blue. It’s just-just making her skin look as though it’s losing color, as if she’s cold and dying as a result of it. 

“No. No. No,” Caitlyn shakes her head, eyes frantic as she scans Vi’s face again, and again and again. For a slight quirk of her lips, or a furrow in her brow or a twitch in her shut eyes. 

Nothing. Vi looks almost at peace like this. Her chest barely rising and falling with the movement of feeble breath. It has to be Caitlyn’s imagination, the way her breath slows, and the movement growing smaller and smaller. One final exhale until…

Stillness. Forever, unyielding stillness.

Like her mother.

“Violet, no,” Caitlyn reaches out her hand to grab at Vi’s face, begging the skin beneath it to feel warm to her touch. To urge it back to life, even if she must paint the flush of her face with her fingertips. “No, you wouldn’t dare—”

Her hand never makes the contact it seeks. Swatted away by her father’s hand. She looks up at him, his solemn stare turned to stone. “Caitlyn, stay back.”

“Stay back?” She spits back out at him, mind hardly registering the movement of someone grabbing her arms and pulling her back. “You want me to stay back and watch her die?”

He blinks his surprise at her, gaze flickering over her shoulder as a door opens and shuts behind her. Muted voices speaking in hushes tones. He ushers them over, “Dr. Theron, over here. Please.”

He ignores her. As if she is some petulant child, pulling at his arm while he reads a newspaper and offers half-hearted responses to her mother’s nagging. The grandfather clock chimes around them, signaling a new hour.

“Caitlyn,” It is Maddie’s voice in her ear, her hands holding her back. “Let them work, okay?”

“No,” She says the word, commands it. Everyone in the room freezes, and her father looks at her with confusion. Each word leaves her before she can give them proper consideration, but she speaks with perfect, angry diction. “You hate her. And I have watched you sit on that couch every day listlessly, since-since Mother—I have not seen you do so much as treat a single patient in months. Consumed by your grief, void of any sense of purpose, blaming her, and you expect- you expect me, to believe you’ll save her?”

Caitlyn, perfect daughter Caitlyn, does not talk to her father like this. Rigid, controlled Commander Caitlyn does not lose her composure like this. 

Vi pierces that composure. She always does. Leaving Caitlyn delirious with months of repressed anger flooding out of her. Dizzy, delusional, unable to discern reality. She contradicts herself, demanding more, expecting less, needing everything. Her father is slack jawed as he stares at her, stunned into stillness.

“Look at you! Staring at me now! Look at her. Stop staring at me and do something!” She orders him through gritted teeth. Hot tears are flowing down her face and she can feel an awful, ugly sob building its way through her chest. Dr. Fischel and Dr. Theron start moving immediately, as do the nurses and staff around them, spurred by the command. 

Her father stands and stares a moment longer. Day in and day out, the world has relentlessly and seismically shifted around him. Yet he is only now opening his eyes to it.

“If she dies I-,” Caitlyn’s breath chokes on the unthinkable. Impossible. It cannot be. “I will never forgive you. I will not look at you. Ever again.” 

A threat. A promise. A return on investment. She took her mother away from him and so it is only fitting he have the opportunity to take Vi from her now. 

She looks at him with complete distrust and total fury. He will be a man without a family if he does not pull himself together.

And if he is angry at her demonstration of blatant disrespect, he does not show it. He opens his mouth and shuts it with a deep exhale. He is taking too long to say or do anything, it fuels her ire. She rears herself up to yell at him again. 

But then with a gravity she has not heard from him in ages, since she was a little girl, maybe, he promises:

“She won’t.”

He turns away from her without another glance over his shoulder. With a large, heavy hand on her shoulder, Loris pushes Caitlyn away from the medical team as they begin working. She strains against it, desperate for a glimpse of Vi’s face. He doesn’t understand it’s her duty to watch. Should Violet die, she should be the one to bear witness to it. 

“You’re not helping her here,” Loris explains, “You’re just distracting them.”

He has no right—none, to speak to her that way. But he is persistent in his ushering of her, until it becomes impossible to fight back against him.

***

I know what I did. Do you?

Caitlyn rearranges her room. Pulls a chair up on to the side of her bed to sit in. Adjusts the pillows just so. When Vi is stable enough to be moved, she will be brought here. To rest and recover. 

Her fingers curl and uncurl at her sides. Walking from one edge at the bottom of her bed to the other. Moving the canopy, drawing the curtains. Looking for anything to keep her hands busied and her mind occupied with minutia. 

I know what I did. Do you?

Jinx’s words replay in her ears again. She falls to a seat on the very edge of her bed, jaw clenched and hands—unoccupied, unbusy hands ball into fists on her lap. Her eyes close and, unwillingly, she is brought back to her mother’s funeral. Drawing nearer to her casket, cold, unforgiving air biting at her skin. Immeasurable pain as she can just make out the top of her mother’s hair, the bridge of her nose.

By the time she is within arms reach of the funeral bed, it is no longer her mother lain cold before her. It is Jinx. Ashen face, covered in soot. This vision does not bring her closure or fill her veins with satisfaction. In this light, she sees just another dead body. One that does not ease the depths of sorrow that pools in her stomach or pull their cities back from the brink of war. 

Caitlyn feels nothing. Nothing, the same as before.

Until she blinks. And then it is Vi’s body. Hair stained black, skin pale, lips forever shut. Panic and bile rise in her throat. No, no, no. She wretches her hand from the casket, wills the nightmare out of her head, jolts herself back to reality. But she blinks, and it’s Vi in a box. Again, and again, and again.

It was supposed to be either Jinx or herself in that box. She’d said as much to Vi and yet…

She is alive in her room, and Jinx is elsewhere. Surrendered before Caitlyn could react. Maybe she could’ve prepared herself for the inevitably of Jinx being at the commune had Vi informed her. But she did not, so even if she lost her mind fully and could tell her guards not to seize her, she wouldn’t have had the opportunity.

Her words ring and ring in Caitlyn’s head. She knows. What she did. How she left Vi. The gash in her lower abdomen is a nasty, bleeding thing. One that Caitlyn prepped with the butt of her rifle. 

She needed Vi; Vi needed her. They could’ve done something else. Figured out a way to broker peace, together. Side by side. Vi didn’t make her weak. No. Vi kept her afloat in a sea of anguish—Vi was the pulse in her heart and the conviction in her breath. 

And she had Vi. Right here,  right where she’d needed her. They could’ve done something else. Figured out a new plan, together. A way to bring peace, side by side. 

Caitlyn hadn’t allowed it. Refused it. Destroyed any world where that would be possible for them. Let herself be manipulated, pulled apart on strings to be reassembled and puppeteered. 

Lost herself.

And now lost—

The door to her room opens. Her father appears looking haggard. Caitlyn straightens at the side of him, eyes wide with fear as she counts the hours that have passed since she’d been banished to her room. 

“She’s stable. We got the bleeding to stop.” 

His chest heaves with exertion, he must’ve run to tell her as soon as he was able.

“Oh.” Relief exhales from her. She refines her posture, reinstates a neutral composure. There is nothing preventing her from pulling herself together. “That’s—”

“The laceration ran deep,” He explains. “It took a while to stitch her up. It’ll take her some time to recover.”

She narrows her eyes, evaluating him. “What else then…?”

“A lot. Smaller cuts. Bruising across her body. Had to reset a rib. Dr. Fischel’s worried about a concussion.”

Caitlyn swallows, her hands curl around the fabric of her dirty uniform.

“I’m assuming…not all of them are fresh, are they?” She asks, caution keeping her voice thin.

“No, they’re not,” Her father sighs against the door frame before stepping inside and shutting it behind him. The golden light of the hallway goes along with it, leaving them with only with what little light peaks through the shut curtains. “Any idea what she’s been up to?”

“…I have my theories.” And direct confirmations that she’d rather not disclose to her father.

He approaches where she’s sat on the edge of the bed. Studying her for a moment before taking a seat next to her. 

“Bǎobèi.”

She crumples at the term of an endearment. Sprinkled heavily throughout her childhood, used only on the rarest of occasions once she got older. It used to feel like a thing to be earned. But now, despite what she’s accused him of, and the horrid tone she took with him, he gives it to her freely. Her head falls into her palms, sobs pushing out of her with enough force to leave her gasping for breath. 

He’d never do anything to hurt her. This is her father. And yet she regarded him with so little faith, a betrayal of her blood. He places a heavy, warm palm on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Caitlyn,” He tells her.

She nearly wishes he wouldn’t. She feels foolish now. Wrung out from the day, unwilling to hold this conversation.

“I…the loss of her. It’s so enormous, I haven’t been able to see beyond it. I have been putting too much on you. We all have. My sweet girl.”

She shakes her head. Too choked up to refuse with actual words. Not a child and far from sweet. She too lost herself to the enormity of the hole inside of her. But unlike her father, she had to be the one to hold it together, to keep them moving. 

Her hands are stained with red for it. Her knuckles dig into her skin at her temples. Foolish. She feels an impulse to knock them against her skull to berate herself, the way she had as a particularly frustrated child, but finds two hands covering hers and pulling them away from her face. Without much else to do, she looks up at him with tears streaming down her face, her chest heavy with the labor of breathing.

“I lost my wife, but you lost your mother. It pains me to recognize…you lost a father too. In the midst of it all,” His voice is hardly above a whisper. He’d talk to her like this when she was young, laying restless in bed as he relayed another bed time story to her in hushed tones. Lest they get caught by her mother, who had sent her to bed an hour prior. Now it is is less conspiring, less animated. But tender, all the same. “Not anymore, bǎobèi. I’m here now. And I’ll never do anything to hurt you. Do you understand me?”

She nods because she does. 

“Good. You’ve done enough on your own,” He nods in approval. “It’s time to get some rest. They’re getting ready to move her now.”

“Here?” 

He looks around, taking in the rearrangements she’s made. And when he sighs, it’s on the edge of a smile. “Where else?”

Wiping the tears off of her face, she nods. Clears her throat once, then again. “Right. Shall we—”

“Yes. Just one more thing,” The smile leaves his face then, suddenly a bit more grim. “Dr. Fischel wanted your help with something. Just…quick, before we bring her up.”

“Now?” Caitlyn asks, looking at the shut door in front of them. Impatiently she rises to her feet before cutting a look of frustration back at him. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“Needed a minute to make sure you were okay,” He tells her, unfazed by her irritation. It’d be senseless now to waste time by arguing, and the stern, unyielding look on his face tells her she wouldn’t get very far, anyway.

She runs to the door, opening it to hear voices speaking in hushed tones down the steps. Before she joins them, she takes one glance over her shoulder in silent appreciation. He points with his eyes, urging her on.

***

Vi looks better. Not great, but better. Her breath rises and falls much steadier. Her face twists every few beats with pain, but at least it is a reaction. Proof that she is alive. And they can get her something for the pain. 

Her lower abdomen is stitched up, bandaged. Caitlyn’s eyes linger on it, her mind replaying sound of her cry and the moment of finding her hunched over, cradling her side. At least she’d been there, this time. At least she hadn’t walked away. Hadn’t seen Vi hunched over with tears streaming down her face and turned her back. 

“Good, you’re back,” Dr. Fischel appears over her shoulder. 

A kindly woman, crows feet at her eyes while she offers Caitlyn a smile. Knowledgeable. Top of her craft. 

Her words of welcome lance through Caitlyn. Forcing her to consider a timeline where Caitlyn had come back to Vi before yesterday. Had turned around in the sewers. What would they have done? What would they become?

Distantly, Dr. Fischel’s words float into her ears. She gestures to the binding on Vi’s chest with her fingers. “…We need to remove them. They’ve been wrapped too tightly and it’s putting pressure onto her lungs.”

Ah. The request clicks into place. Vi can’t agree to anything, not in her current state. Caitlyn evaluates the wrappings, grey with grime. Rust with blood. They’d need to be taken off and changed anyway. Moreso if they’re hurting her. Her brow furrows when she notices the pressure between the skin and the edge of the wrapping, the way it digs into her skin. Hardly noticeable from afar but now that it’s been pointed, it’s impossible to ignore just how taut the binding is. She agrees with Fischel’s assessment. 

“I can’t imagine she’d want them removed,” Caitlyn relays to the best of her knowledge. She’s never spoken to Vi about this, and if she’d been doing it while staying in Piltover, she’d been rather discreet about it. 

If they are asking for Caitlyn’s permission, she is not qualified to provide it. 

“We have a more suitable change of clothing for her,” Dr. Fischel informs her, gesturing to a gray tank and a black pair of pants neatly folded on the chair next to her. “…They have to go, Cait. Being moved will be unpleasant for her as it is without her lungs overexerting themselves. Never mind the rest of her recovery.”

Caitlyn looks to her in understanding. She is not being asked for permission. But rather…

“I see. Could I…I think, given the option, she’d prefer if it were me.”

Surely that must be true. Despite everything between them, all that has gone sour, she must prefer the familiarity of Caitlyn’s hands and eyes.

The doctor nods, as this is what she’d been asking for all along, and hands over a pair of medical grade scissors. The metal is cool beneath her fingertips, heavy with the weight of the action. They must’ve already learned this from moving Vi to the emergency cot placed in the center of the room.

Caitlyn leans over her, an apologetic and unseen frown on her face. She takes the tip of the scissors into her closed fist to warm them. Just for a moment, just to lessen the sting. Then, with careful precision she is sliding one side of the scissor beneath the bandage, the neat sound of cloth cutting beneath the blade following after. A brief glance over her shoulder finds Dr. Fischel giving her an encouraging nod, with the rest of her staff politely busying themselves behind her.

Caitlyn dares to venture this afforded decency is not a typical medical practice. Rather something her namesake and title has commanded for her.

Once cut, the bandages lose their point of tension and relax against Violet’s skin. She places the scissors down, an uncomfortably loud, clattering sound, before peeling the fabric away. As she goes, she reveals angry, red lines beneath each row of bandages. The skin beneath swells with indentation, wicked with sweat. They fall off her back easily, Dr. Fischel offering a guiding hand to lift Vi’s side to pull them off.

A bowl of warm water is placed by Caitlyn’s head, a washcloth and soap left next to it. With dutiful hands she sets to washing Vi’s chest. Dust and grime gently washed away under her respectful ministrations. Indents left by the wrappings are slowly eased, blood flowing unobstructed to the skin again. 

On the front leftmost side of the room, a door opens and closes. Footsteps scurry over and usher whoever it is out in a demand of privacy. Though she knows they are far out of anyone’s line of site, with the position of the cot and Caitlyn over Vi’s body in this way, the interruption leaves a twinge of frustration in her brow. Acutely aware that there is no time to dawdle in this task and leave Vi exposed for longer than absolutely necessary. Though no less thorough or gentle, she makes quick work of it. Tenderly, she pats her skin dry with a towel—Caitlyn’s eyes lingering on Vi’s face before she finishes, taking note of the faint red streaks above and below her eyes.

A smart, medically necessary thing, the shirt provided snaps on with little fanfare. The pants are exchanged next, and then the task is done. The medical team files back around then, given the direction of Caitlyns room. She prepares to help them when Dr. Fischel’s hand on her shoulder holds her back.

“Let them handle it,” She instructs, quiet but no less firm for it. Once they move Vi out of the room, Caitlyn feels her heart pull to follow suit, but the doctor speaks to her again. “There are safer options for bind—”

“I know,” Caitlyn interrupts. It feels like a violation to discuss this personal thing, no matter how well intended. “I know. I’ll see to it that she has them.”

Dr. Fischel eyes her wearily, “It’s not safe. No matter her condition.”

“I understand, doctor.”

She accepts this with a sigh, then hands over a round, metal container. “She has light chemical burns above and below her eyes, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. They’ve already started to heal, but this should help.”

Caitlyn clutches it and utters her appreciation before bounding up the steps and into her bedroom.

***

Vi does not rouse. One hour, then two. Four bleeds into ten, and she starts sweating, groaning profusely. In her alarm, Caitlyn rises from her post on the chair and calls for her father. A check of her vitals and a closer look at the stitching of her wound tells them that this is her body working overtime to heal itself. A good sign, supposedly. 

Caitlyn does not take anything as a good sign anymore. The sun begins to set, as it has already risen since they’ve returned, reminding her of the time they do not have. 

A decision needs to be made about Jinx, one she had prepared for over months of sleepless nights—but now uncertainty has twisted around her ribs and she finds she cannot stomach it alone. Ambessa and her soldiers arrival is imminent. They are without strategy, and soon she will be called upon to provide one. 

She’ll be torn from this room come morning, from this chair where she documents the rise and fall of every breath. Scans for abnormalities, takes cautious note of them and monitors for improvement. Vi’s body will have to heal and push past it’s numerous and grave injuries without Caitlyn’s mindful eyes.

Though, she supposes, Vi has never had much need for them before. Vi survived much more without her than she ever did with her help. 

Help. She scoffs at herself, shaking her head as her father leaves the room.

The door clicks softly behind him.

I know what I did. Do you?

More harm than help, that much is indisputable. Self loathing curdles in her blood. She wonders how many nights they could’ve had in each other’s arms. Mornings, days. They cemented what had been building between them with a kiss and then Caitlyn pounded the foundation away with angry, closed fists.

She could not face the absence of Vi either, so she distracted herself in the embrace of another. An unfair and twisted move to all parties involved, unjust betrayal. 

Vi’s teeth chatter, another bead of sweat forming on her face, as if she’s in Caitlyn’s head and can see all of the blood on her hands.

Frowning, Caitlyn reaches out and blots the sweat away with her handkerchief. Even if Vi could look past Caitlyn leaving her that day, she surely cannot forgive every decisions she has made since then. Once Vi learns the full extend of Caitlyn’s actions, it’s unlikely she’ll even be able to look at her.

Nothing good can be safe with her, their story at an untimely end.

The handkerchief comes back stained black. Cautiously, Caitlyn reaches out with her bare fingers and touches the top of Vi’s forehead, right by her hairline. The sweating has caused the dye of her hair to loosen it’s grip, another bead of black sweat running down Vi’s forehead. 

Shit.

She moves to the bathroom, grabs some towels and a washcloth. The logistics of it feel skewed and impractical, the water could soak through or stain the sheets underneath. But whatever dye Vi had used is not safe, should not sit on her scalp or run down her skin, so Caitlyn overrides this part of her brain. 

Pulling the chair closer to Vi’s bedside, she finds herself once again positioned with a washcloth and a basin. When Vi lays unmoving, Caitlyn offers a soft smile and hopes it translates as yet another apology. With easy pressure, she lifts Vi’s head up and places the towel beneath it before soaking the wash cloth and setting to a small section of hair. 

Experimentally, she tests how much of the dye lifts with gentle coaxing of her fingers and finds it running fairly easily. A dime sized amount of shampoo pulls a great deal out of it, but there is so much dye packed into each strand. After minutes of focused effort just on one small section, it is near laughable how much of the darkness lingers. Only faint traces of pink weave through it; staring down her efforts, questioning the extent of her ability and her commitment to the task.  

Rinsing the wash cloth out, she finds her fingertips stained with black. Only the low setting sun illuminates the room, and for a moment Caitlyn stares at her hands, transfixed. The discoloration could be anything. Watered down on her hands, but the essence of it was once thick and permanent.

 The spell is only broken when Vi turns her head to Caitlyn with a pained groan. The corners of her eyes scrunch up, registering the pain her entire body must be in. Caitlyn feels her heart freeze in her chest. Vi could wake up right now, could very well may open her eyes—and for a second it truly seems as though she will.

She doesn’t. 

It is almost disappointing, how easily the dye washes off Caitlyn’s hands in the basin. It feels unearned, somehow. Tucking the feeling into the back of her mind, she returns to her ministrations with tender care. Lathering sections in a meticulous, precise fashion. Considering what it was like to put the dye on, if it was a tactical move to stay hidden underground. 

Leaving her undetectable by both Jinx and Caitlyn. Though it didn’t seem as though she had been undetected by Jinx for very long. Caitlyn’s jaw clenches, eyes narrowing in hollowed out resentment.

I know why I found her the way I did.

Nothing changed the tide in Vi; nothing warmed her to the idea of Jinx. At the very core of her, she’d never been truly against Jinx. She could never give up on her little sister nor allow the blow of death to be delivered to her. It was an impossible task handed down to her, Caitlyn realized as much on that day in the sewers. Vi’s unwavering loyalty, her inability to give up on those dear to her…

The washcloth rings out more black dye into the basin. Caitlyn fetches fresh water. Having stepped away from her task for a small period of time allows her to see the fruits of her labor more clearly on return. Vi’s hair is darker than it used to be, that is for certain, but it is more pink, more her.

She decides to do another pass through of shampoo. No longer in sections, working through her entire head of hair. Selfish, maybe, to soak in final moments of closeness between them. She considers what it would be like if she had returned to Vi before Jinx. If she’d approached with an apology in her eyes, they may have still been room for Caitlyn amongst Vi’s priorities. 

But she hadn’t. And, that brief, brief period of time after Jinx’s attack on the council and before that day in the sewers, when Caitlyn had all of Vi’s loyalty for her, no longer had to contend with the ghost of Powder, had almost been like a victory. Caitlyn didn’t have to share affections growing up, found the task of it to be insufferable, and win of it satisfying. 

Without it now, there is a hollowness in her chest and remorse reeling through her mind.Vi will wake up and she will choose Jinx, in whatever form that will take. Caitlyn will be bound to her own obligations, her own messes to clean, and they will be lost to time and hurt.

Vi makes another noise as Caitlyn finishes washing through her hair.. Less pained this time, something close to a sigh. Caitlyn figures in however many nights she has following this one, she will do herself the cruel mercy of pretending it could be a sigh of contentment. 

When she dries Vi’s hair, she feels a stray drop of water rolling down her own cheek. Pushing it with the back of her finger, she expects to find a black stain. It is clear though. Confused, she wipes under her eyes and finds more wetness. The realization that she’s been crying is belated and slow.

Immediately disregarded, too. She takes the ointment on the bedside table and applies it gently to the angry, red splotches on Vi’s face. Satisfied only when they leave a glistening sheen behind, taking their time to absorb into her skin. 

Unconsciously, Vi follows Caitlyn’s touch—leaning her face into the palm of her hand. Caitlyn takes the moment and rubs her thumb across Vi’s cheek, relishing in the warm, smooth expanse of her skin. Another sigh and Caitlyn nearly convinces herself that she’s helping in this way; that part of her penance might’ve eased some of the pain. 

Before the next day arrives and pulls them apart once more, Caitlyn falls asleep next to her.