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She should have never let Jayce talk her into this.
Come on out tonight, sprout. It’ll be fun. I’ll be there!
Be there. Be there. Well, wherever it is that he is supposed to be, it’s most certainly not here. Caitlyn glances down at the mostly empty glass in her hand. Should she get more? Should she go look for Jayce? It had been his idea to come out, and, at least fifteen minutes ago, he had been the one to offer to get them more drinks. That said, any reasonable amount of waiting time has since elapsed; she has seen neither hide nor hair of that mountain of a man and he is, most assuredly, not difficult to spot in the slightest.
Fifteen whole minutes.
She resists the urge to check the watch on her wrist. She checked it not two minutes ago. She knows this. She’s also not sure what this says about the party if it’s taking him fifteen minutes to get two fresh drinks. She tries her very best to not sigh into the glass. It would be unbecoming, she can hear the words threaded through with laughter. Even if we are having an absolutely horrid time, Caitlyn, we mustn’t let random strangers know.
She takes a long, slow breath, takes stock of her situation, alone again, and remembers now why she never quite liked parties before Mel.
Caitlyn doesn’t know what to say to make small talk. To be precise, it is not that she does not have a script, but rather that it is eight years outdated and missing a key component.
The weather has been the same as it always is, sunny in the mornings, clouds rolling in in the afternoons, their numbers just enough to make the Piltovan sky interesting. She has no idea what the latest food trend is nowadays, granted she had never particularly cared to keep a pulse on such matters, and she most certainly does not know where anyone is getting any gossip from, or what has been designated the latest topic of the month.
That was always Mel’s job.
Mel, who once found her standing in a corner, perhaps not quite so unlike this one, and decided then and there that she was someone worth talking to.
Caitlyn places her glass down on the serving platter, nods briefly at the attendant who takes it away, and wonders if she should consider leaving. Jayce is clearly otherwise occupied, she suspects with a paramour or two. Maybe three. She would not put it past him.
A quiet clearing of someone’s throat breaks through her thoughts.
It is a lady, slighter than she is, glitter on her cheekbones visible if one were to pay attention, a swoop of eyeliner thicker than Caitlyn personally prefers on herself, full lips tinted lightly pink—that much she is familiar with from her time in Ionia.
“You’re new.”
Caitlyn briefly considers correcting her, then decides that the full explanation might be a little too cumbersome and potentially embarrassing, for her counterpart, at least.
“In a way,” she settles on.
“Lady Medarda likes new,” the lady says.
Caitlyn stills. Lady Medarda? Is— It is with every bit of control that she still possesses that she does not immediately start looking around the room for Mel. She had not known Mel would be here. If she had, she would—Well, what would she have done? She’s not sure. She wants to see Mel. She does, she does, but like this? Here? Now? Is she ready?
It has been eight years and all it has taken is one mention of Mel’s name. One mention and her thoughts have broken free from their leashes and are chasing a conclusion she fears they will find. It is convenient, then, that Caitlyn can still feel the lady’s eyes on her.
“Is that so?”
The lady leans in, hand soft on the wool of Caitlyn’s elbow, fingers curling gently. “Mmhm,” she says as she squeezes. “I could take you to her if you’d like.”
The image blinks through her mind. Mel, seated amongst a group of friends Caitlyn has never met, laughing and talking about things she has never heard of, discussing concepts she has no context for. Mel would be kind and gentle about it, might wave her down and introduce her to the group like she has on many other occasions. The topic would shift to her and then, in front of all of these people whose opinions on her and her family she has no grasp of, Caitlyn will have to figure out how to explain her story. There will be no hiding behind the gravity of Mel’s charisma, no place to run to now that Jayce has abandoned her.
Caitlyn remembers why she does not like parties.
“That’s very kind,” she says to the fluttering lashes of the waiting lady and the hand on her arm. “But I shan’t trouble you this evening.” She smiles ruefully. “Perhaps next time.”
The lady arches an eyebrow. The warmth draws back and away. “You’re an interesting one,” she says and the vowels sting.
Caitlyn watches her disappear back into the crowd, lets the light bitterness of the woman’s tone linger and drip down her throat. The attendant has materialized next to her with a tray full of glasses of water so she takes one, takes a sip from the glass, and starts her search for fresh air.
"A little bird told me you were back in town." The chill of the night air and the clack of her heels on the stone fill the space. "But I didn't realize I would be seeing you here this evening."
She knows she surprises her quarry when she sees those shoulders stiffen, can feel the prick of apprehension shimmer across the air towards her before it melts into recognition.
"Mel," Caitlyn breaks into a slight smile, straightening up from where she had been leant against the railing. Caitlyn is far taller than Mel remembers her to have been when they first met as teens and seems now, finally, to carry herself with the ease Mel has always known would come to her. The cut of her blazer is distinctly different, the neckline swooping where the girl she had known would have once tucked a high-collared shirt.
But they are not quite girls anymore, are they? Eight years is a long time.
Caitlyn shifts, ostensibly to make space. Thoughtful but unneeded; they are the only two out here on this balcony and it seems unlikely, given the stage of the party they have both left behind them, that anyone else will venture out this far. In fact, had it not been for a tip from Jayce, it is not likely that Mel would have stumbled upon the Kiramman heir out here on her own.
Mel settles in next to Caitlyn, close enough for warmth. “So,” she says. “Tell me. Which part of this party displeased you today?”
Caitlyn blinks a few times before her lip twitches, a familiar sight Mel had not realized she missed so much, before she looks away, looks out at the city lights of Piltover and, in the distance, the darkness of the water that has brought them all fortune and misfortune alike.
“Jayce ditched me,” Caitlyn says after a moment. “Then someone came up to me and I bungled that conversation.”
“You did not,” Mel says.
Caitlyn arches an eyebrow. In the low light the silver stitching on her eyepatch shimmers like stars. “Unless she was doing your exact bidding, I find it difficult to believe you would know the exact contents of our conversation.”
Mel hums. “I wouldn’t say she was doing my bidding.” She smiles at the tension that is threaded through Caitlyn’s shoulders, reaches a hand up to rest on warm wool that melts further under her touch. “But I did hear that you did not wish to see me.”
“That’s not true,” the words spill out immediately.
It is Mel’s turn to arch an eyebrow.
Caitlyn’s eye glints. “I always want to see you,” she says, drawn tall and straight the way she used to do when she had been the smaller of the two of them, lit by her determination to be precisely understood. “It was more the circumstances.”
“And what circumstances could there possibly be, darling?”
Caitlyn swallows. Mel watches that blue eye stray from her own, trip down, and tumble to the rivers of gold that drip their molten ways down her skin.
“Caitlyn?”
“These are beautiful,” Caitlyn murmurs, fingers reaching for the soft of her inner arm, each brush delicate and aggravatingly tender. Her hand too, is taken and gently turned so those same fingertips can complete their path down, drawing close to hers. Mel feels her pulse take a little leap, the ba-dump of her heart tickled teal in the night.
Caitlyn’s eye meets hers.
“You’re beautiful,” she says. A rueful smile, then like she always has, she moves right on after having dispensed a truth of such magnitude, as if she is unaware of her actions. “I fear I would have embarrassed myself before all the others.”
Others? What others? There would not have been others.
“I wouldn’t care.”
The smile widens. “You wouldn’t.” A twinkle in that one eye where there were once two. “You’d give all those people something else to remember you by. But unlike you, I would probably replay that scene in my head til the heat death of the universe.” She pauses. “These must have taken a long time.”
“All day,” Mel says.
Almost impossibly so, Caitlyn’s touch grows softer.
“I see,” she says. “Gold has always been made more brilliant on you.”
“You went to Ionia and came back a charmer,” Mel says giving the warmth a squeeze instead. “Looks like I needn’t have worried.”
“I—” the word cuts off. The rest of the words sit and simmer there, in the pink that has come to her cheeks. “I had a good teacher.”
Mel laughs.
Then although she already knows the answer, she leans in. “Are you accusing me of something, Lady Kiramman?”
“I would not dare be so forward, Lady Medarda.”
“And yet you have me held captive,” Mel says, making no move to pull her hand from Caitlyn’s.
Caitlyn stills. That endearing utter incapability to hide her emotions rears its head once more. Mel watches with a familiar growing calm in her chest at the click click click of the gears turning in Caitlyn’s head.
“What would you have me do?”
It is Mel who pulls their hands closer, who smiles at the settling of the stars in the night sky.
“What would you like to do?”