Day Off (Off Day)
Vi throws herself onto the couch, loudly, with her boots on, because Cait isn’t around to grouch at her. Because one of Caitlyn’s stupid coworkers is sick and they had to call her in and because of Caitlyn’s stupid sense of duty she had to say of course and not piss off . If Cait was here she’d tell Vi to take her boots off before she got the furniture all dirty, and Vi would shoot back that her boots weren’t dirty, actually. She isn’t sure if it’s magic or sheer disgusting pretentiousness that repels the dirt, but Piltover’s streets are always spotless.
They didn’t even get to eat breakfast . Vi woke up early to cook because ordinarily Cait is allergic to sleeping in and she deserved it. There’s a pile of waffles drizzled in strawberry sauce still steaming on the counter, and it’s a delicacy Vi would’ve killed for, actually killed for, a few years ago, but she can’t make herself eat a bite. She’s still sort of foolishly holding out hope that Cait will come back any minute, that it was just a mistake.
This sucks. Vi had plans. And now they’re all ruined.
Someone knocks on the door and Vi glares at it. Cait never knocks, and neither does Jinx, and she’s in no mood to entertain anyone. She debates the merits of pretending not to be home.
The knock comes again, more insistent. Vi groans, loudly, so whoever it is knows how obnoxious they’re being. Maybe it’s Jayce or Viktor, at least, and she can whine at them about her girlfriend being out all day when she’s supposed to be off. Vi works herself up into a truly magnificent scowl and yanks the door open.
And it’s not Jayce.
And it’s not Viktor.
And Vi’s heart drops to the center of the earth.
It’s an enforcer—just a kid, really, Jinx’s age—and his hands and the front of his aggressively fancy uniform are covered in blood. There’s a smudge of it on the door where he knocked.
“Miss, um, Vi—Violet,” the enforcer stammers. “There’s been an, uh, an inci-ident.”
“Caitlyn,” Vi chokes out. Her voice sounds like dust. The entire city is collapsing. “Caitlyn, is she…is she…”
“Medical. She asked for you, there was-“
Vi doesn’t wait to hear the rest, just grabs her jacket from the hook next to her and sprints down the hall. People stare at her, a few shouting as she shoves out of the way, but she doesn’t see them. What she sees is Vander, Mylo, Claggor, her parents, all the people she’s failed to save. The enforcers on the bridge, killed by undercity engineering. All the people she’s killed without a thought to who was waiting at home for them, if it meant she got back to her people. With Zaun a free state now, there’s been fewer attacks, but freedom and amnesty didn’t automatically make all the poverty and resentment and spite just vanish. There’s plenty of fodder for Stillwater’s prisons yet. There’s plenty of chances for Caitlyn to get hurt.
Vi stops, stomach roiling, fetching up against the brick of some random shop. She’s on the streets now, but she has no memory of leaving her apartment building or what path she took to get here. She just knows she needs to get to the hospital, to Cait. As soon as she stops feeling like she’s going to throw up.
All that blood. Was all of it Cait’s? After everything, was Vi going to lose her to some stranger with a grudge, to some sterile room with a crowd of masked faces?
She asked for you.
Vi can’t stay here and find out. She runs again. The walk to the closest hospital is about ten minutes, on foot. Even including her brief meltdown, she makes it in four and a half.
“Caitlyn Kiramman,” she gasps to an unimpressed woman behind the front desk. “She was brought in…I don’t…she asked for me.”
“The enforcer?” the woman asks. Something behind the high counter clicks madly, and she frowns. “She’s in critical condition. Family only.”
“I am her family,” Vi snaps. She grips the counter so her hands stop shaking. Her vision is graying at the edges. They can’t keep her from seeing Cait. They can’t . “Her parents aren’t—she asked for me .”
“What’s your name, hon?” the woman asks, not gently.
She swallows. “Vi.”
“Vi…?” There’s supposed to be more. Vi doesn’t have more. She’s never needed it. No one’s ever needed to know anything except those two tiny letters to come to all their conclusions about who and what she is.
What the hell. She’s got nothing left to lose but Jinx and Cait, and one of them is on the line. “Kiramman. Violet Kiramman. I’m her cousin.”
The woman looks skeptical. “Close-knit family?”
Vi levels her meanest, steeliest glare at her. “Like peas in a pod, ma’am.”
The receptionist lets her through.
/ / / / / /
The first time Caitlyn wakes up, the first thing she registers is the pain. It’s like someone cracked open her ribcage and scooped out all her organs with a rusty spoon. Then filled in the hole with razor blades. Damn , it’s the worst she’s felt…probably ever. Yeah. Ever is a good bet.
She cracks open her eyes, but the room is dim. Medical, for certain, but the blinding white lights aren’t trying to claw out her retinas like usual. Caitlyn lets her eyes adjust and notices several layers of fabric, what looks like extra shirts and a curtain, have been wrapped around as many of the lights as possible. She looks around the room as best she can without moving her head. There’s a door to the left, and it takes her a second to work out why it looks slightly off; it’s off its hinges. She’s been sat up a little, too, just enough of an angle to survey the room like this. There are three chairs on the right, by the foot of the bed; two so close together they’re practically on top of each other, and a third a little closer, within reach of her hand. All three are empty, save for a familiar Councilor’s jacket slung over the back of the farthest one. Jayce and Viktor, then, which puts her father closer to her. Caitlyn doesn’t need to look to know there’s someone on her left, but she turns her head the tiniest bit anyway. Striped pants, hands perpetually wrapped in tape even all this time later, a flop of pink hair from a hanging head.
“Three bullets,” Vi says lowly, without turning to look at her. “Two with exit wounds. Eleven pieces of shrapnel.”
Caitlyn tries to say something, maybe Vi’s name, but all that comes out is a raspy croak. Vi holds out a cup of ice chips, or what was ice chips. It’s half water now, melted from being clutched in her hand. Caitlyn tries to take the cup, but her hands are tangled in wires and blankets and pain, so instead she lets Vi hold her chin with more tenderness than most would think her capable of and tip water into her mouth. When her insides feel less like a desert, she tries words again.
“Vi.” Barely a whisper, but it’s there.
Her girlfriend smooths a few stray hairs back from her face, but her eyes are faraway. “You’ve been out about a whole day. They said you were stable at around three in the morning, so Jayce and Viktor could come visit this morning. They took your dad down for breakfast not that long ago.”
“Not you?” Caitlyn rasps. Vi doesn’t seem to hear her.
“You lost two liters of blood, so it was pretty touch and go for a while. Even after I got back here they didn’t let me see you for two hours .” Vi’s voice cracks, the first sign of real emotion so far. Her eyes are red. “One of—“ her voice wavers and she clamps her jaw shut, swallowing hard, before she continues. “One of your little enforcer buddies came in late last night with the report. They got the bastards that did it; they’re in Stillwater.”
Cait can barely comprehend any of this. Least of all when Vi won’t look at her . She manages to untangle her left hand from some wires, and Vi catches it in each of hers. Her gray eyes fix on Caitlyn’s face, full of nothing but pure, unadulterated malice.
“Tell me,” she says, voice shaking, “to find them in Stillwater. Tell me you want them dead, and it’s done. I’ll let them out of their cells, let them think they’re free, and I’ll hunt them like dogs in their own streets-“
“Vi!” Caitlyn hisses, with all the force she can muster. She grips Vi’s fingers in her hand. “You won’t. You can’t. Promise me you won’t go after them.”
Vi trembles. “They hurt you. They hurt you and I couldn’t stop it, and all I could think about was…was everybody else that’s dead. I can’t…I don’t want to know who I’d become if they took you from me.”
“I’m right here,” Caitlyn whispers. “I’m okay. They’re going to face justice. You’re not responsible for anything.”
“I know that. Hell, I know that. But I keep thinking…you didn’t grow up in the trenches, Cait. You don’t know what it’s like. I think about the jobs I’ve done, the…” her voice wobbles and breaks wide open, and she hides her face in the crook of her arm. “The people I’ve k-killed, on both sides, people like you who had families and friends and…and lovers, and-“
“Stop, Vi, you’re torturing yourself-“
“-and I didn’t give a fuck about any of them, not at all, as long as I got to go home at the end of the day. And the people that did this have all of that too, but I don’t even care. I’d take them in a heartbeat if you asked.”
“That’s because you’re human,” Caitlyn says firmly. “And you love people. We’ve all got blood on our hands, Vi, all in the name of keeping our own people safe.”
“I scare myself, sometimes,” Vi admits. “With all the things I’d do for you.”
Caitlyn cups her cheek. “So do I, love. Let’s not talk about it anymore. We’re in no state for it.”
Quickly she pulls away. “Right. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-“
“I said we , you idiot, that means you too. You’ve done more than enough for me already.”
“I sat by your bedside and cried for five hours,” Vi grumbles, and it’s like a tiny knife to the heart, the idea of her strong, stoic girlfriend breaking down so publicly. “And ate. And terrorized the nurses. And made small talk with your dad and the guys.”
“Terrorized the nurses?” Caitlyn asks, raising an eyebrow.
“They’ll only come in in pairs now.”
She laughs, even though it hurts. “I’m not surprised. At least let them do their jobs and keep me alive, won’t you?”
Vi smirks but it doesn’t reach her eyes. Her gaze flickers around the room like she’s scanning for threats. It’s a look Caitlyn knows intimately.
“I know you did more than that, too,” she says softly.
Vi freezes and very deliberately doesn’t look at her. “Yeah?”
“I’m not oblivious; you sat me up so I’d be able to see the whole room when I woke up. You dimmed the lights. The door’s off its hinges so we can’t be locked in, and you put yourself between it and me. If there’s a window in here you probably cracked it open, too. And you kept the others farther away, which was totally unnecessary, but I appreciate the thought.”
“I may have terrorized the rest of them too. Just a little.”
Caitlyn pulls her hand forward and brushes a kiss over her knuckles. “My knight in shining armor.”
“Your street thug in a ratty jacket,” Vi corrects.
“There’s a difference?”
They don’t get to say any more before someone gently swings the door open. Jayce holds it carefully in place while Viktor and Caitlyn’s father come in, then closes it softly.
“Hey, guys,” she says.
Her father rushes to sit and take her other hand. “Caitlyn! You’re awake.”
“And you didn’t even have to pick the shrapnel out this time,” she jokes weakly, thinking of the explosion on the bridge. He doesn’t smile, exactly, but his eyes crinkle at the corners.
Jayce sits and rests a hand on her ankle; she can feel the warmth through the flimsy hospital sheets. “Good to have you back, Cait.”
She smiles, ignoring the tears trying to pinprick the corners of her eyes. “It’s good to be back, Jayce.”
/ / / / / /
The second time Caitlyn wakes up, the first thing she registers is suffocating. Not literally, she doesn’t think; she can breathe (mostly) just fine. But the air feels close and stale and there are things brushing against her, hovering over her. Absurdly, she thinks, hostage situation , and a beat later doesn’t know why she thought it was absurd. She falls back on what she was taught if she was ever taken: Don’t give away more than you have to until you know what’s going on. She has to be still, and calm, and quiet. She has to listen.
She holds her breath. Her whole body aches; what happened to her? She can hear voices, but they’re very soft. Her lungs start to burn and protest in her chest, but all she can hear are machines, no words, she can’t breathe yet or they’ll know she’s alive. If she breathes she can’t hear what they’re saying.
Something starts beeping louder, dammit , how is she supposed to hear now? She wants so, so much to open her eyes and see but she has to be hidden. Play dead. Perhaps they think she’s dead? There was….she remembers a fight. Are they checking bodies? She definitely shouldn’t breathe then, even though it hurts .
“—oxygen’s dropping, is she—”
“—Miss Kiramman? Miss Kiramman, can you hear—”
“Caitlyn? Caitlyn!”
“Mr. Kiramman, I need you to—“
“What’s wrong? What the fuck are you doing to her?”
That voice sounds familiar, but angry. Everything sounds angry and afraid. Caitlyn doesn’t know what to do. She feels dizzy, like she could fall—wait, she’s already lying down, so what—
“Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to-“
“She’s holding her breath! Hang on, just, fuck, get out of my fucking way , Cait, Caitlyn, hey. Cait, listen to me, it’s Vi, we need you to breathe, okay? Whatever you’re thinking, stop thinking it. You’re safe. I’ve got you. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”
Vi? Vi is here. Vi is here and what does that mean , Vi was with her when she got kidnapped before, too, but she’s saying that it’s okay…
Caitlyn breathes, a tiny thing, testing the waters. She hears several different sighs of relief, and Vi leans their foreheads together, carding a hand through her hair.
“Thank fuck,” she whispers, right into Caitlyn’s ear.
She breathes in and out shakily and manages, “What’s going on?”
“Do you know where you are, cupcake? Don’t, don’t look, tell me.”
Caitlyn thinks, but it’s so fuzzy , why doesn’t she know? She whines, softly, a horribly embarrassing noise.
“Hey, shh, it’s okay. They’ve got you hopped up on a shitload of painkillers and sedatives and shit right now because they’ve gotta do some ugly work, I’m not surprised you don’t remember. We’re in the hospital, Cait. Day two. You got pretty banged up in a fight, you remember that?”
Vaguely she does. There’s something else, too, off-key humming and warmth and strawberry-scented air. “It was our day off.”
Vi laughs breathlessly. “Yeah, sweetheart, it was. They called you in. Now, the nurses are giving me some pretty ugly looks at the moment, can I let them get back to their jobs?”
“Wait. Don’t…don’t go.”
“Not going far, I just gotta move out of their way, okay?”
“What…” Caitlyn swallows, unsure she wants to know. “What are they doing?”
She can practically feel Vi’s grimace. “Changing the bandages. Trust me, cupcake, you don’t want to see.”
“Okay,” she whispers. “Don’t go far.”
Vi presses a kiss to her temple, tangles their fingers together. “I’m right here. Squeeze as hard as you need to.”
Caitlyn nods and Vi pulls away. Instantly the crowd of people—nurses, she guesses, maybe only two, less than it seemed at first—returns, and now she tries to focus on what they’re doing. It’s strange, being half-numb all over where their fingers are brushing. She knows why Vi told her not to look when the first long strip comes up. She can’t feel anything except the horrible wrongness of pulling out the hard-won scabs, peeling up caked-on blood. It might be worse without the pain she knows should be there. She doesn’t realize she’s wound tight enough to snap, jaw clenched, squeezing the life out of Vi’s hand, until someone lays a hand on her shoulder and her father’s voice tells her to relax, Caitlyn. She shudders and forces some of the tension to bleed away.
After what feels like hours but is probably only a few moments, the nurses move away.
“Do you have her?” Vi asks over her head.
Caitlyn doesn’t hear the response, but it must’ve come, because Vi drops her hand. She risks opening her eyes—safe, the sheets have been pulled up to cover most of her wounds—and finds her girlfriend launching to her feet to catch the nurses before they leave.
“What the hell was that?” she demands. “You said she would be fine! You said she was fucking sedated !”
“We assured you Miss Kiramman would not feel any pain,” one of the nurses tries. She’s taller than Vi, but Vi is a hurricane and she will not be cowed.
“She had a fucking panic attack!” she shouts. Caitlyn cringes away.
The other nurse timidly puts in, “We had no way of knowing there would be that kind of reaction-“
“Maybe you shouldn’t try to do shit with people who are going to wake up and not know where they are or what’s happening to them! Especially an enforcer. Instead of just assuming they’ll stay happily asleep the whole goddamn time.”
“Miss Kiramman, please calm down.”
Vi drops the menacing act immediately, but her voice is all danger, dark and quiet. “Fine. I am calm. Just don’t pull that shit again.”
She stalks back over, throwing herself into her chair. “I’m sorry, Cait,” she whispers. “They promised me you were going to stay asleep until they were done.”
“You shouldn’t have yelled at them,” Viktor says. “They could kick you out.”
“They could try,” Vi counters.
“They’re doing their best, Vi,” Caitlyn murmurs. “It’s done now.”
“They’re gonna have to do it again.”
“Well, we know what to expect this time, don’t we?”
Vi grumbles wordlessly. “I guess.”
“Also, did that nurse call you Miss Kiramman, or was I hallucinating?”
Vi manages to blush and scowl at the same time. “I may have pretended to be your cousin so they would let me in.”
“You couldn’t say girlfriend?”
“Didn’t want to take the risk; we still wouldn’t technically be family.”
“Not wife?” Caitlyn asks, only half teasing.
Vi swallows and looks away. “I didn’t want to presume.”
Caitlyn squeezes her hand. “You can presume all you want, love.”
The room falls deathly silent, except for the beeping of machines. Everyone stares at her.
“What?”
“Caitlyn,” Viktor says carefully, “that sounded like a proposal.”
“It did not .”
Jayce shrugs, grinning. “It kind of did.”
She can feel her face burning. She closes her eyes and thuds her head against the pillows. “I am full of drugs and my girlfriend has threatened to murder many people in my honor in the last forty-eight hours. I cannot be held responsible for anything I say right now.”
Everyone laughs except Vi, who just watches her with an unreadable expression on her face.
/ / / / / /
On the seventh day of Cait’s being in the hospital, Vi goes for a walk. Not for any particular reason. Just because she can. Because she wants to, because she’s tired of being cooped up in the same small room, even if it’s a room that keeps Cait safe. Most of the nurses know her by name now, and most of them know she isn’t actually Caitlyn’s cousin. Vi woke up on the third morning to an older nurse smiling softly at her while he fiddled with Cait’s IV.
“Little too close for cousins, there,” he told her with a conspiratorial wink. “But not too close for lovers.”
Vi had been ready to threaten him when he abruptly turned to leave, pausing a second to rest a hand on her shoulder and whisper, “Your secret’s safe with me.”
Apparently it was safe with a lot of people. By now, no one calls her Miss Kiramman anymore, just Miss Violet or sometimes only Vi. A few of the nurses say hi as they pass, and Vi musters a hello in return. She finds a door into the courtyard; nearly empty, since it’s dusk, not that that matters to Vi. Her sleep schedule is fucked to hell and back after this week. She’s probably not supposed to be out here, but she can’t bring herself to care. If they lock her out she’ll simply break back in.
It’s perfectly pleasant weather, early autumn, but Vi pretends that it’s cold to excuse the fact that she’s shaking. She finds a nice bench, facing a nice fountain, and listens to the water burble while the birds start to roost for the night. It’s all perfectly goddamn pleasant.
If she doesn’t close her eyes she doesn’t have to think about the dream. Doesn’t have to see Caitlyn lying in a pool of her own blood, red slowly swallowing the deep indigo of her hair. Doesn’t have to acknowledge the fact that she’s afraid.
“I almost thought you went home,” Viktor says behind her. Vi is too tired to be startled.
“Can’t leave Cait.”
He circles the bench, gestures at the space beside her with his cane. “May I?”
Vi very, very briefly considers lying flat out on the bench just to be an ass. Then she shrugs and waves vaguely for him to sit. “You and Jayce heading out?”
“Soon. Visiting hours end in twenty minutes. You should go home, too. Sleep. Shower.”
“I sleep fine.”
He just looks at her. “Ah, yes, that’s why you woke up looking like you’d seen a ghost and all but ran out of the room.”
Vi cracks her knuckles pointedly and stares at the fountain. “I’m fine.”
“Your girlfriend is in the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds. I’d be more concerned if you actually were fine,” Viktor says wryly.
“I am fine. It’s nothing I haven’t handled before.”
“What?” His voice is more serious now. “Nightmares?”
She swallows thickly. “Yeah. ’Specially the ’people you care about are in mortal danger’ variety. Comes with the territory when most of the people you care about actually are in mortal danger on the regular.”
Viktor hums. “And you think Caitlyn doesn’t know how to handle that?”
She huffs, dragging a hand through her short pink hair. “Don’t tell her about this, please? She’s got more than enough to worry about.”
“Don’t tell who about what?”
Viktor smirks and Vi realizes he was just the bait. “Go back inside, Cait. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Nobody shot me in the leg, I can walk just fine now. I’m getting discharged tomorrow, aren’t I?”
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Actually,” Cait says, “I do. Especially seeing as you just admitted you’re not okay to Viktor, which is exactly what I was hoping you’d do. Thanks, Vik.”
He salutes her and stands up. “Happy to help a fully grown woman get over her repressed emotions any day.”
“You are a horrible little man,” Vi hisses as he leaves. It’s a joke. Probably. Mostly. He smiles over his shoulder at her and waves once before disappearing back into the hospital.
Caitlyn takes his place. “I do hope you were planning to tell me eventually. Like, you know, when you got back to the room.”
“I would’ve told you,” Vi protests. “...Eventually.”
“Right, and I’m sure this is the first time, too, and you haven’t been hiding nightmares exactly like this from me for ages.”
Vi has absolutely nothing to say to that. Cait makes a soft, sympathetic sound and tugs her closer until they slot together the way they always do. She starts toying with Vi’s hair in a way she will never admit to loving. She’s pretty sure Caitlyn knows anyway.
“Sometimes I dream about you dying, too,” Caitlyn says softly, and Vi closes her eyes because this isn’t fair, it’s not Cait’s job to take care of her right now, except she can’t really make herself stop it.
“Cait,” she mumbles, half a whine. Caitlyn, being Caitlyn, ignores her.
“I think about that first day we met, when Sevika stabbed you. I almost lost you before I even knew what losing you would do to me. And when the Firelights had us, it was Ekko and it was fine, but what if it hadn’t been? And that fight on the bridge, and that tea party, and every little scrap and scrape since then. A thousand ones before I knew you, that might’ve ruined the chance for me to meet you at all. You think you’re dangerous, Vi? You think you’re a monster because you’d tear out the throat of anyone who tried to hurt me?”
Caitlyn looks at her, her eyes like blades made of sapphire. “If it was you bleeding on the operating table, I can’t promise I would even have the self-control to wait for you to wake up before I hunted down every last person responsible.”
Vi can’t speak for a long, long moment. Finally she manages, “What a pair are we, huh?”
Cait laughs softly and leans her head on her shoulder. “A pair that needs therapy, probably.”
“Why is that your answer to everything?” Vi groans.
“Not everything can be solved by shoving it down until you almost forget it’s there and gratuitous violence, Violet .”
“Not everything can be solved by sitting in a fancy chair and talking about how your daddy didn’t hug you enough, either, Kiramman .”
Caitlyn hums, carding her fingers gently through Vi’s hair. “Do you feel better now, though?”
And Vi has to admit she does.
“It’s almost like talking about feelings is a good solution to your problems instead of the repression thing.”
“Shut up or I’m leaving the hospital without you tomorrow,” Vi grumbles.
Caitlyn wraps her arms around her. “You wouldn’t. You can’t get rid of me that easily. Or ever.”
Vi bickers with her some more for the principle of the thing, but by the time they slip back into the hospital they both know the truth forwards and back: Caitlyn’s right. Vi couldn’t leave her behind if she tried. Not for the world.