Chapter Text
“We do not remember days, we remember moments.” – Cesare Pavese
You’re an enforcer.
You work with the Piltover Wardens.
You live at an apartment in West Piltover (address attached below).
You report directly to Caitlyn Kiramman.
*
Vi gave three abrupt knocks on the door marked Sheriff’s Office.
The office was nothing spectacular — a rectangular room filled with shelves of folders packed like sardines, various trinkets, a wooden table and two upholstered seats before it. What was spectacular was the woman seated behind the desk.
She was slender in figure, dressed in a blue and white ensemble most people in the station wore, a tight leather jacket that wrapped snugly on her arms. Vi heard that she was quite the looker and she could see why — alabaster skin, icy blue eyes, and a perfectly chiseled face. She wasn’t textbook pretty, no, Vi never liked those. There was an enigmatic character to her, like she was more than meets the eye, piquing her interest.
Vi had seen her photo plastered in every corner of the station, her name just as synonymous to the force, but it was the first time she was meeting her. Everyone in the station seemed to stay away from her, whether from her rank or because she simply was too good for everyone, Vi couldn’t tell.
“You called for me?” Vi was surprised how her voice didn’t sound like hers, prompting a quick clearing of her throat.
“Yes Vi, please take a seat.” Caitlyn spoke in a clipped voice, stuffy Piltovan accent and all, as she gestured in front of her with a gloved hand. Vi couldn’t lie, it was pleasing to the ears.
Her first time taking the seat, Vi found it to be softer than it looked, sinking under her weight.
Caitlyn clasped her hands before her. “So, how’s your first week back at the station?”
Of course, what else would the sheriff call her for? Since waking up from the hospital, Vi’s memory had been the most unreliable part of herself. A big part of the past few years had been lost to her, a kaleidoscope of fragments submerged in a murky pond, was how she had described it to anyone who asked.
But the doctors said that going back to her daily routines would be good for her to regain normalcy again. That was how she came to be at the station, after finding out from a note in her hospital bedside tucked neatly in a scented envelope.
“Well,” she rocked back in her seat, “people remember me here. Seems like we have a good work culture around here. Everyone’s just been helpful since.”
Caitlyn nodded, thin lips drawn in a line. “How much do you — remember?”
Vi thought for a bit, her eyes falling on the mug Caitlyn had on her desk, a pink cupcake in the center — a nice contrast to the uptight person before her.
“Not much. The doctors told me that it will come back eventually, but I just have to be patient, y’know? I know my childhood, the years I spent in prison but everything else…just not there yet.”
“I see.”
Her words seemed to have a profound effect on Caitlyn, or maybe it was a trick of her eyes because she had that calm mask she had when she entered the room.
“Well I hope you get settled then, Vi. I’m sure you know the people out there missed having you here. I'm really glad to have you back.”
Seconds of staring at Caitlyn’s mug led Vi to accidentally mixing them up, “Thanks cupcake.”
The reaction made Caitlyn’s mouth drop before she regained composure. It happened in a millisecond but Vi caught it. Whatever it meant. She must have crossed some invisible line about worker and boss relationships — a great way to start her first week back.
“I meant, thanks Caitlyn,” she said with a wince, as she pointed to the mug on her table. “I was looking at this thing. My bad.”
Caitlyn raised her hand. “No, it’s fine. This was given to me by someone — special to me. Not usually my sort of thing. Too on the nose, if you get what I mean.”
Vi chuckled. The remark flew past her.
“Well whoever they are, sure means a lot that you’re displaying it out here in your desk.” Vi got up, desperate to end the discussion so she could leave. “I guess I’ll be going then. See you around, Caitlyn.” She winced. “I mean, sheriff.”
“You can call me Caitlyn.” She offered.
“Oh. Right. So you see you around…Caitlyn,” Vi said, getting used to the way her name rolled off her tongue.
Not saying anything more, her lips parted to a smile — just enough to see the gap between her teeth which Vi decided she liked. “Thanks too, Vi.”
*
Iron bars stood resolute between us as we stood in opposition, one girl inside her cell, the other unshackled.
I still remember the way you turned around, back decorated in black ink, imaginative lines on the canvas of your skin; I met your eyes that held storms inside of them, then came the exhilarating desire to drown into them, find where the blues start and the grays end. We were strangers then, taught to hate everything the other believed in, derivative of the world we were born into.
To you, it was the day I freed you.
For me, that was the day you turned my life around.
It started with the color red.
The following weeks were a rollercoaster, working together, setting aside differences that preceded us many generations ago. I discovered that you were reckless, impetuous, unbounded by rules imposed on you, only following the rhythm of what you believed was right.
And that was where I found out that despite your rough exterior, worn by years of brawls that traced crescent scars all over your back, the teeth you had lost in a fist-fight you had blocked with your face, you had that innate goodness in your heart. An innate goodness that couldn’t be taught by even the most decorated private tutors in Piltover.
That was the beginning of me seeing you in a different light. Red hair may have been a presumption—against the backdrop of Piltover’s muted tones and bright golds and the prion’s drab grays, it may have worked. But under the faint light, it could look cherry pink.
*
Enforcers started filing out of the station as early as five p.m. and by the time the small hand of the clock pointed to seven, Caitlyn was one of, if not the last person in the station. With a dutiful eye, she made sure things were all in order—her files for the next day, the different cases neatly arranged in a separate pile at the rightmost side of her desk.
A knock at her open doorway broke her focus. Looking up, a tall figure filled the frame in his white-gold suit. Jayce smiled his toothy grin, “So how’s everything?”
If it were anyone else, Caitlyn knew of the curt smile she would flash, almost on instinct, and the best way to position her hands. But nothing could get past Jayce.
Cailtyn exhaled a sigh, one that had been building up for the greater part of the day. “Other than the fact that my own wife doesn’t remember me, I’m doing great.”
In two long strides, Jayce was sitting atop one of the chairs in front, his leg crossed. “Just give her time, Cait. You’ve been writing the notes haven’t you?”
“Yeah, the doctors said to just take it easy. I don’t want to overwhelm her with everything. She couldn’t believe she’s working with the Wardens as it is. A person can only handle one surprise at a time. The last thing she remembered was…prison.”
Jayce looked serious like he was sitting at a council hearing and not listening to her, but Caitlyn appreciated his empathy. “Well you said so yourself, one at a time. Maybe you can sneak bits of your life with her, see if it rings a bell you know.”
After she wrapped up the rest of her files, she followed Jayce to his car for the promised company of dinner he proposed before. He had been doing a good job of keeping her occupied now that the apartment she shared with Vi ached with the indentation that she once filled. He also had been Caitlyn’s pillar since Vi’s injury, not thinking twice to lend his spare apartment in West Piltover for Vi to stay in. In many ways, she could tell him everything.
The one thing she couldn’t bring up to Jayce was the fear that struck her right before she fell asleep — the thought that Vi wouldn’t love her back this time around.
*
You had shown me your life—Zaun with its worn and twisted cobbled streets, and buildings leaning on each other yet held with the same rigidity as those up above. Bleak with its bold strokes of neon incandescence. Wretched with strikes of brilliance, as you once said.
How a hardened place was able to produce such a good heart as yours, I would never understand.
In turn, I had shown you mine.
All the rules and customs perplexed you as much as they did me at a young age. You saw things for what they were , pointing out the archaic, the senseless ones. That was one of the things I would soon discover I loved about you.
I didn’t love you then, but somehow in the interiors of my heart, buried in the far-reaching depths of my gut, I knew.
I wish I could say our first kiss was spectacular, the way all first-kisses have been exalted.
But that didn’t make me love it any less.
We were in the middle of a chase — the clumsy Piltovan in me couldn’t handle eavesdropping the way you knew, your bones set and ready for a fight, gravity always centered. My legs were burning, my chest fighting for air, I thought I wasn’t going to make it. But you — you with your smirk, that twinkle in your eye that never went away whether you listened to my stories or stared someone down, took my hand and dragged me sideways into an alley.
Our pursuers had scurried past, blending into the pulsating Zaun crowd.
Gasping for air, I had my back to the wall, you had one arm plastered against the wall. And you kissed me.
I tasted it all, the salt of the sweat from the skin in your upper lip, the aftertaste of the lunch hurriedly stuffed in our stomachs that afternoon. But when you pulled back, smirk in your face—one I didn’t know if I wanted to wipe off with a kiss or a slap, I realized that it was impossible to delay the inevitable.
Caitlyn Kiramman utterly besotted, to some beguiled by a Zaunite ruffian. But they were wrong. She didn’t steal my heart, I had freed it from its cage–hers to take.
And she did.
*
A few more weeks and Vi got the hang of her routine without having to ask anyone at the station. Her day mostly consisted of patrols where she did most of the enforcing, making sure the streets are orderly. She wasn’t exempt from paperwork, which she usually did in the late afternoons, sitting on her desk, scrawling with a pen before filing her report to Sheriff Kiramman.
When the day expired, she would retire to her one-bedroom apartment, which looked more like a hotel room than her own apartment, devoid of any memorabilia that might have tied Vi to her past.
Sometimes she wondered about her past, that is the part where she decided to become an enforcer and relocate to Piltover. It just never added up for her, a big chunk of life changing decisions gone from her because of a brawl that had gone wrong.
She got her answer one day when a tall man pulled her aside as soon as she got back to the station. Tanned skin, shiny black hair, toned physique, he looked more like an action star than someone of dignified position in Piltover.
“Hey, Vi. How are you?” His smile faded as he stood up straighter. “Wait – you do remember me, right?”
Where had she seen him? The countless posters across the street and at the station came back to her in a flash, of course.
“Piltover’s Golden Boy.”
He displayed a toothy grin. “Please, it’s Jayce. So, how have you been since y’know, hitting your head?”
“Well I can’t wear the gauntlets yet, I can’t get into fights or anything rough the doctors say. Just patrolling for now, and filing reports.” She raised the sheets of paper in one hand, trying to sound more excited about it but Jayce wasn’t there to keep her in check, just offering a chuckle.
“And how’s — your boss?” He was careful with his words.
“The Sheriff? Well, she’s okay. She’s nicer than I expected, she’s been really supportive since, just helping me get back on my feet.” As soon as Vi spoke, an image of Caitlyn smiling at her came to the forefront, leading Vi to quickly dispel the thought.
“That’s good, you know after all that you two have been through together–”
“Been through together?”
Jayce caught himself like something unwanted had slipped through, but was quick to compose himself, flashing his smile. “I mean, of course you’ve worked with Sheriff Kiramman before. That’s what I meant to say.”
Vi nodded, still trying to figure out what he meant. “Well, I better be going. See you around Jayce.”
“Hey, don’t mention it. Happy you’re back.” He pointed at her with a finger gun before he darted out of the station.
He was a strange guy, even stranger that it seemed like he and Vi shared a past. She had a past, that was for sure, but whether she wanted to know everything at once remained a matter left unanswered.
*
“I don’t get a goodbye kiss?”
Caitlyn’s words prompt her partner to spin on her heels as if attracted by a magnet, with a look that said ‘oh right how could I forget’ plastered on her face.
Vi pushed back the door to Caitlyn’s private office, scooping her up to hoist her up the table, positioning between her thighs as she planted a kiss on her lips.
Caitlyn fixed the hair falling on her partner’s face. “Take care of yourself, okay, hmm?”
“I’m always careful,” she shrugged, not meeting her eyes.
“You know what I mean,” Caitlyn raised her chin to look at her, realizing how much she sounded like her own mother just then.
“Yes, I’ll be careful.”
“We have a dinner reservation tomorrow. Don’t forget. Hope this time you won’t show up late to the restaurant with a black eye.” Gripping her shoulders, she smoothened out her wife’s uniform.
“Of course, the anniversary. How could I forget?” A grin spread on her face, the scar on her upper lip curling. Another kiss was planted on Caitlyn’s forehead, Vi squeezing her hand tight. “Might be home late, don’t wait for me.”
Caitlyn watched her wife leave her office, a wicked glint in her eye, not knowing it was the last time she would remember her.
*
Caitlyn’s finger coiled around the telephone wire, the brassy rings sounding from the receiver.
“Hello?” asked a female voice.
“Hi, it’s me,” she said, biting her lip. “So how is she? Anything you could tell me?”
The concierge in Jayce’s apartment hummed. “Well she usually gets home before six. She gets out of here by eight on most weekdays. She called me for help because she couldn’t figure out how to work the shower heater, she said something about there being no heaters in Stillwater. She was really amazed by the mechanism, it was kind of endearing.”
Caitlyn chuckled, one hand over her mouth as tears lined in her eyes. It plucked a distant memory, only this time she wasn’t there to experience it with her.
“She also asked about you.”
She froze, her finger turning blue from the wound up cord she had to uncoil. “What—what did she say?”
“She asked if you also lived here, because the apartment was very fancy.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said no. I don’t know where you live, sheriff.”
She nodded, thanking the concierge for cooperating with her favor thanks to Jayce’s reputation in the apartment complex.
With no phone conversation or heap of folders to distract her from her thoughts, it hit her how cold her bedroom was. The bedside lamps glowed a warm yellow, the silence occupied by the faint hum of the room’s heater, but when she sat herself in the white sheets she almost shivered.
She lay spread out on her back, trying to occupy the whole queen-sized bed for the life of her that she could never do. The pillows still carried Vi’s smell that if she closed her eyes for a second, she could pretend everything was as it was — any second now Vi would crawl her way in bed, dig her arms underneath the pillow, cherry pink hair falling all over her face that Caitlyn had to part with her fingers.
But that night nobody would come. Caitlyn was certain of that now.
No matter how she rationalized that Vi would remember in time, it didn't mean it hurt any less.
So she let the tears fall, drowning it out with her pillow, letting her tiredness engulf all of her into a dreamless sleep, confident she’ll forget it by morning.