Work Text:
Not only had everyone in her life changed, but everyone had gone. Jinx. Vander. Loris. The losses compounded but losing Jinx, her sister, made everything unbearable.
Vi lay sobbing. She was beside herself with grief. The low light of the room cast a gloomy shadow of herself on her bed sheets. Her battle armor lay discarded on the bedroom floor below.
The one thing that had always been consistent in her life was her love for her sister, her need to protect her. One of her first memories was pulling her away from the precipice of a jagged rock face down in the fissures. She remembers her panic. Her guilt as she had turned her back to draw something on the rock behind her, Jinx crawling away out of sight. She had almost failed. Her role was to protect her, Vander’s words.
Their losses throughout their childhood had deeply hurt, but Vi’s love of her sister helped get her through. That punch would always be her life’s biggest regret.
Throughout Stillwater, it was agony. Vander, Claggor and Mylo gone. The one thing that kept her alive was the chance of seeing her sister again. She remembered tallying days on her wall, etching slug monsters in the stone with a sharp rock. She relived her moments with her Jinx in her mind so often that she questioned if they were even real anymore. Punching things was something she had always loved. But it soon became something to forget how painful it was to lose someone she loved. Scraps with other prisoners, her misery etched on her knuckles. Tears into punches.
Deep down her love for Jinx never ever went away, in her very subconscious. Even if she took a new name. Even after they both sparred to the death in the vents. Even after everything she had done or could ever do. Any saying otherwise would be a complete lie. This hypocritical loyalty often played on Vi’s mind. It clashed with her feelings for Caitlyn, and what Jinx, her own flesh and blood, had done to Cait and her family. It was often too uncomfortable to bear.
Vi lay in a fetal position in bed. She had not eaten in over a day. She rocked back and forth, trying desperately to fight the self-destruction. But she was not strong enough to fight her lapse back into her old ways.
The whiskey burned her throat. She sat up on the edge of the bed, drinking hurriedly. The alcohol soothed her mind and assuaged her guilt by a meagre but meaningful amount. It allowed her to finally focus on the only, barely, positive thing.
Cait was still alive.
She was still battling for her life. Her abdomen wound had been hastily sewn shut. A nurse told a distraught Vi further tragic news. There was an extremely high amount of blood loss upon removing the blade. She was likely to remain unconscious for a while. If she even made it at all.
Vi rolled in her bed, tipsy. She felt a slight tinge jealously towards Cait’s lack of consciousness, her lack of emotional pain. This gave her a sickening pang of guilt.
The doctors were going to remove her eyeball tonight. It had been completely pierced, the nurse said. An irreversible injury. The whole thought filled Vi with a deep, gut-wrenching malaise.
Vi buried her face into her silk of her pillow. It sponged up her steady stream of tears. She rocked, cradling her sore arm. After a while, she turned over. She remembered yesterday.
She had only got a glimpse of Caitlyn that day. After she lost her sister, she lay screaming for hours, wishing that the ledge had collapsed, and that her worries would disappear instantly. Her voice became hoarse after a while, but any letting up felt like a betrayal to her grief. She knew within a two hundred feet vicinity, two of the people she loved the most lay dead forever.
It was Ekko who found her, after many hours. He rode her back down to safety. Vi confirmed his suspicions about what happened to Jinx. She could barely even choke the words out. They hugged each other tightly. After the hug, they faced each other. Vi noticed Ekko’s tears smudging his face paint. Ekko told her that he heard that Caitlyn was badly injured.
Vi ran to the hospital. Many of the lesser injured sat around in the foyer, volunteers tending to them. The bandaged and bruised flanked the main corridor, nurses and doctors rushing by. Vi charged past, glancing in every window of every ward for Cait. The frosted glass made the task difficult. She finally reached the ward for the critically injured, reading the red sign above the door. She was abruptly stopped by a guard. He forbode her from entering. She rushed past him, bursting into a room bustling with doctors and nurses working on knife edge to cheat death.
“Cait!” she cried out. She sprinted past rows and rows of beds. She stopped at the foot of Caitlyn’s bed, tearing up.
Her efforts were futile as she noticed that Caitlyn was completely unconscious. She was covered in blood as the staff heaved to save her. Her eye, although stanched by folded bandage by a nurse, was profusely bleeding. It ran down her neck, onto her enforcer uniform. Lower down a surgeon worked tirelessly, sweating balling on her forehead as she stitched at the deep cut on the abdomen. Blood pooled at Caitlyn’s left side. A teal hospital blanket covered the lower half of her body, soaked with red splotches. There was a nauseating stench of fresh wounds.
Vi felt nauseous and panicked looking at Cait in that state. It was too much. She started sobbing but it was jarringly cut short. She felt two pairs of hands grasp her shoulders and yank her away.
That mental image was still seared into her mind, as guards hauled her out of the room.
Taken aback in that moment, her focus adjusted. In front of her there was a Yordle doctor face down on the floor, knocked over accidentally in her rush to see Cait. She looked at the rest of the room. The young soldier who had lost both his legs, a lake of blood pooling at his pelvis. The Chirean woman with an ear missing, and a deep gash across her stomach. Its contents spilled across her. Many more, who didn’t have doctors or nurses beside them. Their entire bodies were covered by a blanket, their faces obscured. The blanket was the same light teal as the one that bunched around Cait’s legs.
Ever more aware of the gravity of the situation, she searched for a nurse outside, asking, pleading, if she knew what would happen to Cait.
Vi felt dried out, spent from her tears. She didn’t have the strength to try and see Cait again today. She poured more into her glass.
She had spoken briefly with Tobias, the temporary head of the House, last evening. He gave her reluctant permission to stay at Kiramman’s mansion, in a spare bedroom. It’s what Cait would have wanted. The use of past tense startled Vi. Tobias’ tone was harried and cold towards her.
Vi felt uncomfortable with the idea of using Cait’s room anyway. It felt entitled, wrong for some reason. She felt, even knew, that Caitlyn wouldn’t mind. But there were also the constant reminders of Cait in her room preventing her too. The window that she and Cait snuck through that day. The four-poster bed with the violet curtains. The ornate folding screen. Contant reminders. It would all be too much for her.
She could not lose Caitlyn, under any circumstances. The bloodied image of her reiterated in her mind. If she did go, Vi would never put the bottle down.
Vi cried even more as she rocked herself with her eyes shut. The alcohol eventually soothed her to sleep.
---------------------
“Vi?”
A woman in blue hair stood over her. As Vi awoke her eyes focused. Jinx. She was hovering over Vi at her bedside, shaking her shoulder. But there was something wrong. Vi realized that the voice sounded off, distorted.
“Vi!”
The fleeting image faded. The servant lightly shook her shoulder awake with a face of expectant good news.
Vi looked up, disorientated. She was distraught. She had hoped that she was finally with her sister again, and that it was just her nightmares. She had hoped that she had never woken up at all. These heavy emotions and her pounding headache caused her to scowl.
“What?!” she snapped.
The servant stood back. Her mousy brown hair glowed in the morning light.
“I apologize, but I have important news to tell you.”
The words drew Vi back into her mind, her body. She suddenly felt guilty.
The servant updated Vi on Caitlyn’s condition. What was hoped to be Cait’s final surgery was successful. She was now stable, but she had still made no improvement from unconsciousness. Caitlyn was now wheeled into a spare room of the house, with the Kiramman family doctor to treat her. Vi was finally allowed to see her. To talk to her. The servant turned and left the room.
Vi glanced over to her side cabinet. Distilled spirits, whiskey and absinthe. They were taken from the kitchen. She started to pour herself a glass. The discomfort and nerves of seeing Cait in an injured state shattered her.
She left her bedroom and stumbled downstairs. Vi reached the door, tripping as she stopped to meet the nurse outside. She lumbered in cautiously.
In the room Vi suddenly seemed to sober up. Her face was taut and clenched from consternation. She walked slowly as if not to rouse Cait, which felt ridiculous. The glaring light from the window above Cait’s bed pained Vi’s vision, causing her to squint. The new smell of the room surprised her too. It smelled sterile, the foul metallic smell of the hospital faint now. Her heartbeat pounded more with every step closer to her.
Cait.
Her head was wrapped up in a bandage. It completely covered her left eye. Tubes burrowed into her body. She was tucked into a new teal blanket, no longer bloodstained. It hid the wound below.
Her eyes darted around. Another nurse at the bedside met her eyes, nodded and left the room. They were finally alone together for the first time since the battle.
Before the war they had held each other in Caitlyn’s room. It was only brief as they had little time left. But before they put on their armor, they hugged. They held each other’s faces, touching foreheads. They were both tearing up as they said their possible final words.
“Cait?”
“Yes, Vi?”
“I’m scared of dying.” Vi gulped back tears, pausing. “But I’m more scared of losing you, Cupcake.”
Vi could see that Caitlyn couldn’t think of anything that would reassure her as much as she wanted to. Word seemed to fail her then. So, Cait used the closest thing to words she could muster. She smoothed her thumb over Vi’s cheek, sighing. A comforting lull. Their eyes met before Cait pulled her into an even tighter embrace.
Vi couldn’t hold her right now- it just dawned on her. She didn’t know what to do. It felt like even breathing next to Cait would cause intolerable pain. She looked so fragile then and there. There was a contrast of colors. The blue of her hair peeking out of the fraying fabric of bandage. The purpled mottled bruise on her face. The teal blanket tucked to just below her shoulders. The caked blood. Vi stood two feet away from Cait, giving her space.
All Vi could do was burst into tears. She heaved, holding herself in her own arms- a futile replacement for Caitlyn. She looked at the floor, the image of Cait was too much for her. She stood bend double, collapsing into herself in her sobbing.
She could manage only a few words in her emotional state.
“Cait.”
The only reply was a strained breathing.
“You look like you’re in so much pain.”
Vi started sobbing through her teeth, her face held in a grimace. Her salty tears stung the scar on her cheek.
She looked back up at Cait with an aching pit in her stomach. Many more thoughts overwhelmed her as she stood over her for a while. The despair. She dreaded a final, future loss, the last person in her life passing. She couldn’t lose Cait. It was impossible to conceptualize. But sometimes people never wake. Her headache pounded in her head, aggravated by her crying.
After an hour she was told to leave for the doctors to tend to her. Vi now knew better than to argue.
She leaned on the wall outside the room, slid down and sat. Two or twenty feet away, she wasn’t going to leave Cait’s side. She was the only person in her life left. Except Ekko, but Vi knew deep down that he was not going to see her again any time soon. He had too many responsibilities with the Firelights. She retrieved her hip flask from her pocket and drank. She stumbled up the main staircase to the upper east wing, towards her bedroom.
Back in her room she poured herself many more drinks. Her mind focused again on those she lost. Her sister came to mind first and foremost. She thought of little Isha, her sacrifice. The final form of Vander. She remembers Loris, her friend, the only Topsider there for her when she was a cage fighter in the pits.
“May need to put the bottle down sometimes.” Loris would often say.
This one’s for you Loris, Vi thought darkly to herself, as she raised her liquor. She chugged it desperately. She collapsed back into bed and cradled herself.
She thought of her and Cait in the bed that day. They had both snuck in through her bedroom window. Cait staring at her, how taken aback Vi was at her touch. Vi’s vision started to unfocus. She reached out to touch Cait’s absence.
Her eyes began to lose the fight against sleep. As they struggled to open one more time, Vi had a vision of Caitlyn. Cait’s unclothed body was mangled and bloodstained in the hospital, a leg missing, organs spilling out. There was a slow creep of a teal blanket over Cait’s head. This image lingered for a few seconds. Vi then fell into a restless sleep.
---------------------
A deafening knock ratted on Vi’s door. The servant. Vi jolted up, her nightmares leaving her body in her cold sweat. Headache pounding again. She reached for a long swig. Time to see Cait.
Vi sat at Cait’s bedside at the chair to her right. She couldn’t fight the urge not to hold Cait now. She glanced down at her right hand. As she slowly reached to pick it up, she stared at Cait’s other hand, still intubated. Be careful, Vi instructed herself. She held Cait’s hand, only by the fingers, brushing her thumb soothingly over her knuckles. Their first physical contact in three days. It was not enough.
Vi recalled when she held the dying woman’s hand the day of the battle. The limpness of the hands felt worryingly similar.
“Cait?” Vi cried out, her voice hoarse.
Cait’s strained, quiet breathing was the only answer. Vi had naively expected a response.
“My sister, she is truly gone now.” her words slurred slightly.
No response.
“It’s been too hard, Cait.”
No response.
“I’ve lost nearly everyone, and now I might even lose you too.”
Vi felt hopeless. It all began to flow out a bit now. She could talk more than yesterday, but it was still hard.
“That day. I think about it all the time. The deaths around me.” She paused, not being able to put most of that day into words. “I worried about you the entire time, but I guess it was necessary that we fought apart. I think the worry might have killed us both if we were together.”
Vi swallowed her tears. She thought about Jinx, a casualty of the war.
“My sister died. I can’t even fathom it. I still don’t believe it’s real, somehow. I know that sounds stupid.”
Vi’s scar started stinging again.
“I know how you feel about her. I find that painful to think about. But she is gone now, and it hurts me every second of every day.”
Her eyes glazed over as she became lost in her thoughts. How would Cait react to the news if she did wake up? Vi agonized over possibilities. Would she even care? Maybe even feel relief? These thoughts startled her.
More anxiety came. Cait could still never wake. The thought only aggravated the ache in her stomach.
It was hard to articulate but she wanted to tell Cait many things. She had deep regret, of not saying it in the final moments before the battle. How much Cait meant to her.
Vi paused, struggling to get the words out, “There were things, Cait, that I didn’t tell you that day. When we were in your room, before the war. It wanted to but it felt stupid. I wished I had, Cupcake. It seems so weird to say now.” She sighed, shaking doubts away with the slight flick of the head. “But I know that if I don’t say it before you die, I’ll regret it.”
Then and there, she said those important words to Caitlyn. Vi felt immediate relief. But she still felt delusional. Saying those words to a person perhaps days away from dying. Vi felt idiotic. She was almost glad that Cait couldn’t hear her.
The door opened behind her. A tall lady with shiny grey hair and a thin doctor’s coat walked in. The Kiramman doctor. Vi took it as her signal to leave. She wiped away her tears as she retreated to her bedroom.
More grief hit her in the back in her room, as it always did. It lurked in the dark, the solitude, the low light. Vi poured herself some fingers of whiskey, hurriedly drinking it.
That was the thing about her grief. It drew her into herself and out of herself simultaneously.
It drew Vi into herself, separating her from others. Even from Cait. She felt sometimes absent from her bedside. She often felt too swarmed by her own thoughts and emotions to even conceptualize that she was sitting next to her. It was only today that she managed to properly talk to her, still struggling to get the speech out.
She often felt only her pain. At certain moments of the day, it was so unbearable that she could only hold still and endure it.
Her grief also drew Vi out of herself too. She felt separated from her own body sometimes. She forgot to eat, to sleep. Vi paused and heard the running of a faucet, left on all night. She didn’t really care. She felt out of space, separate from time.
Vi thought of the stupidity her situation. Getting through prison. Taking another chance on being in her sister’s life, taking her new name. It was all for fucking nothing. All for Jinx just to end up as fragments. Her life’s purpose blew up with that bomb.
Vi started tearing up. She thought of Vander, Cait, and everyone else.
She opened a new bottle and drank.
Her thoughts plagued her. She had to get out of her head, out of her room, where the grief always hit worst.
Vi tripped about the house, drunk, trying to free herself from her isolation. She walked out her bedroom and staggered down the main staircase. Her heavy head weighed down towards the floor. Her eyes were glassy, the room began to darken. She looked up. Cait. She sat on a settee below the Kiramman family portrait. She was reading a book, its title illegible to Vi. Vi stumbled down towards her, hopeful. Cait looked up at her with a furrowed brow.
Cait stood up. She gave Vi an intense look as if trying to discern her. Cait suddenly ran towards Vi with a pained look on her face. The two-eyed Caitlyn held her arms out and Vi fell into her hug.
Tobias caught Vi, struggling against her weight. He muttered away sternly. Vi, in her stupor, only caught a couple words.
“Kitchen…many bottles…gone…concerning.”
A sharp shout then pierced Vi’s ears.
“STEB!”
“Put…bed.”
Vi was pushed over, her heft falling into the dark blue fabric of an enforcer uniform. Her eyes were closed, she was drifting in and out of consciousness. She felt the motion of her being hauled up the stairs, scaly skin on her shoulders. The cold metallic trim of the uniform rubbed against her skin. The last thing she felt was the soft cushioning of her mattress beneath her.
Vi woke up. She propped herself up on her elbows. It was still night. She was back in her room, still alone. No Cait, no Jinx, no one.
She felt distraught at the fruitless effort not to isolate herself, at how it had gone so wrong. She had made a fool of herself in front of Tobias. Vi felt angry for the first time. She was deeply frustrated. She did everything wrong, all the time.
Vi felt a sudden rush of energy. She finally had the strength to carry out what she had wanted to do for days.
She looked downwards, focusing on her bare mattress. She rolled her right shoulder and began to punch the mattress, trying to get her frustration out of her head. She punched repeatedly, but then ceased. It failed to take her mind out of her body.
Her eyes darted around her room. Everything looked too lavish. Too precious. The rich wooden closets, the tall standing mirrors. Artisanal craft, expense. One thing she was sure of was that she needed to stay here, for Cait. Best not to ruin furniture. She looked over to the door of her adjoining bathroom, where she had crawled to the toilet before. She remembered the flooring.
She inched to the bathroom, stooping towards the marble floor. She knelt in the shower and breathed heavily. She was heaving tears. She traced her fingers along the grout of the tile arrangement. She then moved her fingers over the granular marble, her breath quickening. Her heart was racing with adrenaline. Her bottom lip trembled but she knew she had to do it.
She rolled her right shoulder higher. Her crying paused. She took a deep breath.
Tears into punches.
She pounded the rough marble floor with alternating fists. Hard punches. Skin peeling. She shouted out with every collision. The adrenaline flowed until the pain hit.
She whimpered. Sharp pain. Fuck.
After only a couple of punches, Vi was already spent. She collapsed into herself, head hanging downwards. She cradled her sore left arm. She breathed shakily through her teeth, wincing from her pain. She paused for a moment. Body still, mind still. She then studied her knuckles with a sense of perverse achievement.
She looked down at the blood beneath her. The image was vivid. She suddenly remembered Caitlyn bleeding out in the hospital. It startled Vi into a complete panic. She then felt guilty. Caitlyn had been harmed not out of choice. Vi had done this to herself. It was her own stupidity. She immediately wanted to cleanse that away. Clean it all out. She turned on the shower and watched the blood mixing with the water as it flowed down the drain.
The thoughts came back anyway.
Vi stumbled back into her room and opened another bottle.
She lay in bed weeping and listening to the shower running. She began to list everyone that she lost. She repeated it in her head many times over. Felicia. Connel. Benzo. Claggor. Mylo. Vander. Loris. Cassandra and Isha, people who she never got to truly know but were loved by those she’d lost. Caitlyn was a possibility she didn’t even want to think about. Ekko was alive, but he was busy, likely at his firelight base. She missed him, quite a bit. Most of all though, she missed and grieved Jinx. Her sister.
As Vi’s eyelids grew heavy, she thought about her life. Her love for her sister was not the only consistent thing. There was one other thing that stayed with her. It plagued her like a disease. It infected Cait and her family, infected all of Piltover, all of Zaun. It could be described in one simple word. It was only ever going to get worse. Cait was not waking up anytime soon. Her mind spoke the word just as she fell asleep.
Loss.