Work Text:
There are wings to the building. It's not that Vi hadn't known that before, but there's a difference between knowing that there are wings and understanding what having wings means as she floats down yet another long hallway, large glass windows letting in as much of the early morning light as must be possible.
That is another thing she's not used to yet.
Sometimes she opens her eyes to the light. Sometimes it takes her a while to shake herself out of the feeling of the chill and the stone she had known for so long it felt like that would be all there ever was. Sometimes she has to wrap her fingers around the soft sheets, press her cheek in the warmth left by a hand, breathe in the sweet scent of their shared shampoo. Sometimes she feels like this is all a dream, a nightmare, unreality formed into the shape of what must be her desires.
The early morning blue is hers, the tips of the trees dark still, shaded into a distant blur.
She steps out the back door, wets the toes of her boots in the morning dew, stands there on the soft, muddy, bouncy ground. She breathes in the smell of green, the lingering honey of the night flowers, the sky so far away it is infinite. Her heart quiets, if just for a moment. She does not go any further.
When she heads back in, the kitchen is already warm with bread. A loaf cooling on a rack, a bread knife laid out next to it as the cook bustles about with the other half of breakfast prep. Vi has tried the porridge before and while she doesn't hate it, the flavor rich and savory, there is something very satisfying about sinking her teeth into a hunk of bread and feeling it tear.
That, and she likes sweets.
She likes her jams, the familiar ones, the preserves she remembers from her childhood, the new ones in colors she hadn't known existed. Today it's the brown one, a rich flavor she still doesn't know how to put into words. It tastes like some of the other sweets that Caitlyn gets sometimes from that shop that puts the coconut flakes on chewy rice, which still doesn't say all that much besides delicious.
Vi heads back upstairs to the sound of water running before it is shut off abruptly. The quiet tap of the cane on the tiled floor. It's a different stone, never dusty, smooth and cool, different in how she can always escape back to the carpet the moment she wants to.
Caitlyn's eye finds her from behind a fluffy face towel.
"Good morning."
"Hey."
The hard lines soften into a smile. A quick pass of blue.
"You went outside," Caitlyn says. "How was it?"
How was it? How was the earth beneath her feet, the sky stretching out above her as far as she can see, the birds already out and about? The grass soft and wet, the flowers asleep but fragrant? The early morning sun still hidden behind the trees, a stray ray peeking out from between the leaves?
"Nice," Vi says. "It's cool out."
Caitlyn's eye lingers on her today as it always does. She steps closer, the face towel tossed aside. For a moment Vi thinks Caitlyn might kiss her, but a thumb darts out instead to the corner of her mouth, brushing away a stray crumb she must have missed.
Today too, Caitlyn takes breakfast in her study, the bowl of porridge perched precariously close to the edge of the table, the curtains half drawn open the way they were last night, the lamp already lit. Vi stays just long enough for a few clinks of porcelain, a spoonful distractedly finding its way home punctuated by the rustle of paper from a stack that never seems to shrink.
It must eventually, but when that'll be, well, who the hell knows.
She leaves the study, the rest of the day unfolding before her as it has every other day for the last week. Yesterday she walked the corridors until the house took shape in her head. The day before she spent worrying that Caitlyn would not rest. She tries not to think about the days before that. She does not know what she will do with herself. She does not know what she can do with herself.
So she walks.
Today she walks the grounds, having already been outside. She walks down the trails that wind through the trimmed grass, that lead off into the woods. She walks under trees old and knobbly, shaded by leaves that rustle in the breeze. Dust coats her boots, pebbles bouncing quietly away with her footsteps. She kicks one and watches it shoot off into the grass.
The path goes on longer than she expects it to, but Vi doesn't mind. These boots were made for walking and she has nowhere else to go.
"Have you ever planted potatoes?"
The path spits her out at the south side of the grounds, the stone of the house tall even from this distance.
"No," Vi says.
The gardener eyes her from behind round glasses. "You want to try?"
Vi shrugs. "Sure."
"Good," says the gardener who has already turned away, trudging towards the shed. "Cos we've got loads to plant."
Her shoulder twinges. Her elbow still hurts, but her back is warm with a familiar soreness, her legs a little stiff from all the bending and the squatting. There is dirt under her nails, her skin dusted with soil and compost. The sun beats down from above, the wide-brimmed hat keeping her from toasting but not doing much for the salt of her sweat.
"Good work," Liqun says as she comes back, even more compost in the wheelbarrow. "Break for lunch?"
Vi nods.
"Did you pack anything?"
Vi shakes her head.
"What else do you grow?" Vi takes a bite of the sandwich. It is still cool from having sat in the shed. Cheese and a sliced, sweet ham she has never had before, some tomato, a sprinkle of baby greens, and bread that she has already had for breakfast but is no less tasty the second go around.
"Everything we can," Liqun says. "Whatever the family likes, whatever will grow. Potatoes, carrots, brassicas, leafy greens, the works. You name it, if it can be grown here, we'll probably try it. The chilies are my pet project." A wry smile. "The balance of flavor to spice can be challenging."
Vi nods, polishing off the last bit of her sandwich.
"Those too," Liqun looks at the sandwich wrapper, at the wax paper that Vi has crushed into a ball, then jerks her head towards the back. "We do those in the greenhouse."
"They're really good."
Liqun grins. "I know."
She has dirt all over her pants when she trudges into the kitchen at the end of the day. Heron watches her hawk-like until she washes her hands, which she was going to do anyway, before sliding a bowl of stew and a dinner roll in her direction. It's a tomato based stew, rich and fresh. She devours both the whole bowl and seconds too quickly to really think about the flavors and how they're familiar.
The light in the study is still on when she walks past. Their bed is still empty after her quick shower, but she thinks, as she drifts off, that she feels the light touch of fingers running through her hair.
It is raining when she wakes up. It is not her first rain, that would be stupid. She's been rained on before, been dripped on from the corners of eaves and pipes that pour out into the wrong sorts of spots. She has heard the plink tinkling of raindrops on glass before but today she lies in the midst of her soft sheets and closes her eyes.
There isn't much of a rhythm to them that she can pick out. There isn't anything out of the ordinary, just water on the windows and a familiar warmth right by her in the first grey light of the day. The air is heavy, thick with the stickiness of humidity but she thinks she could stay here forever.
Caitlyn wakes when her alarm goes, a musical chirping sound that is a far cry from every other alarm Vi has heard in her life, the rustle of water babbling in a brook, the round ringing tone of what she's been told is bamboo on stone.
It happens quickly.
One moment she is curled up, half buried under pillows, hair spread out like a puddle over the silk, soft and sometimes drooling. The next, her blue eye is wide open, staring at the ceiling, a crease now sat heavy between her brows. The fake chirping of the birds continues as her face scrunches up once, twice, then on the third Caitlyn turns.
In an instant the discomfort and dissatisfaction is gone, the light in her eye warm as the rising sun, the smile on her lips familiar.
"Good morning," she says today as she does every other day.
"Hey," Vi says when what she really wants to do instead is kiss her.
When was the last time they kissed? By the hospital bed, when Cait woke up, a frantic press of lips to know that not everything was lost. A groggy sleepy peck on a cheek before they tumbled into bed, aching in all the places wrapped in layers of gauze and bandages.
Caitlyn's smile grows. Her hand reaches out and today too it is a gentle squeeze of their fingers before she gets up from the bed and heads to the bathroom.
Outside, the raindrops fall.
Her plans for the day are busted the moment she goes to the kitchens and sees Liqun sitting in a corner, chowing down on a bowl of porridge. The disappointment must show on her face because the gardener puts the bowl down and snorts at her.
"It won't rain forever," Liqun says.
"Course not," Vi says. "Was looking forward to planting potatoes though."
Liqun studies her for a moment. "So you do know a thing or two."
Vi blinks a few times.
"Or you don't," Liqun says with a shrug. "Which is fine. You have time to learn." Another spoonful of porridge disappears down the hatch. "If you want to."
Vi shrugs. "Sure."
Another pass of brown eyes from behind metal-rimmed glasses but Liqun says nothing and goes back to eating her breakfast. Vi is about to shuffle over to the bread when a plate of hashbrowns and an egg scramble is placed before her. Heron shoots her that same look he does every single time he sees her, a brief furrow of his brow and a nod of his chin. She hasn't yet figured out what that means but the egg is soft and fluffy, the peppers sweet, flavorful, and spicy.
Liqun disappears while Vi is still making her way through her meal. It is kind of impressive because Vi's a fast eater, first by necessity, then by habit. Even so, Heron takes the finished plate from her before she can even think of lifting it. Vi would protest but he has a glare he shoots at her when she tries to approach the sink with the dirty dishes and, for someone shorter and less built than her, it's startlingly intimidating.
Vi tries not to think about what that means, about the ache in her shoulder and her elbows, about the softness that she knows is starting to grow on parts of her body that used only to be hard.
It has been less than a month and already she wonders who she looks at when she looks in the mirror. Raindrops fall on the stone just two steps down from where she sits looking out at the grass and the grey, splashing their tiny droplets back at her boots. She wonders too, if Jinx would have liked gardening. If they had ever had a chance. She doesn't even know if she likes gardening or if it is a thing for her to do that is all good, that she doesn't get to fuck up. Maybe Jinx would have liked that too.
She doesn't know, but not knowing that isn't new either, just one more another entry in a long, long list.
She could.
She hasn't seen him in a while, but she could make the journey over to see Ekko. It's not far. She knows where they are, in the midst of where everything else is. She knew all of it once. She did, back then. There wasn't a nook or cranny she hadn't been to, or at least known about. They'd been told not to go to some of the places, so what does a kid with too much time and not enough fear do?
Well, not all of them.
Some were off-limits. Off-limits for real. The places she knew they knew shit was wrong, but didn't have the power to do anything about. The stuff that pissed her off real bad too because all of it was bad. The blind eyes. The boots. The knowing and being unable to scream. All of it, all the way down.
And she's been all the way down.
She's seen what it looks like, on the bottom, on the inside, in the cold, in the dark, in the warmth, in the gold brass blue herself. She knows what it looks like and—
She swallows as she turns in the direction of the study. From this angle she cannot see the light in the study that she knows is on.
The sun is back by the evening, like she'd never gone anywhere, the sky wide and bright and beautifully blue melting into orange. Liqun is nowhere to be found. Vi figures the potatoes will have to wait til tomorrow because the ground is springy and squishy, the grass painting her pants damp as she walks through the field that leads to the woods.
From under the trees, the manor is smaller, imposing still but not impossible. She can see at least five routes she could take to the roof, two more if her shoulder wasn't a little too sore to take all of her weight. She can see how to get in and out of their bedroom window without being seen, knows which one leads to the room that Caitlyn has kept locked.
The kitchens, the laundry room, the study.
The sun sets.
When she opens her eyes to the sounds of flowing water, Caitlyn is already up. Vi blinks blearily at the shape that is not sat on their bed but stands by it, shirt hanging open to reveal the white of the dressing still taped to her skin.
"Are—" the words die in her throat when she sees the pants hanging off of the back of a chair.
Caitlyn has said nothing.
Caitlyn has said nothing this whole time. Not just today. Not just this week. Since the war, really. Since she woke up to Vi sitting by her bed, since that frantic bruising kiss, since they'd known the other had lived. Since they moved back here, since they have tumbled into the same bed, shared the same bathroom, walked the same halls.
So Vi says nothing too.
She sits up from the warmth of her cocoon and she stands, bare feet on the cool floor. She reaches and she helps with the buttons, one at a time, moving upwards until she looks back into that blue eye, into the depths that churn and roil but stay silent. Vi can see them, but she doesn't dare.
So she tugs Caitlyn down to her with fingers in that starched collar.
Today, Vi kisses her instead, soft but quick, pulling back before either of them are allowed to regret it. She does not. The part of Caitlyn's lips and the silvery sheen in her eye do not either.
Liqun doesn't let her plant potatoes today.
Something about the soil still being wet. Makes sense. Vi is sent out to trim the hedges. It requires both shoulders but hers only ache after she's been holding them up too long, which doesn't happen that much because Liqun is basically hovering around behind her tutting every other minute at her supposed abyssmal lack of technique and overreliance on brute strength. Vi is tempted to suggest Liqun shove the shears somewhere the sun don't shine because not all of them were born with gardening tools in their hands, but she doesn't because the tips are actually good and most annoyingly of all, Liqun is correct.
That and Liqun suggests she try making the next tree something other than a square so she gets free reign on a whole bush of her own.
A few misshapen lollipops later, Vi figures that branches will probably grow back. Then she scowls at the grass lions that Liqun has carved by the entranceway. It's annoying how she can clearly tell that they are lions.
Caitlyn is in the kitchen. A hunk of bread in her left hand, a bowl of a familiar looking soup by her, and those never ending sheets of paper spread out before her, all over Heron's marble kitchen counter. Heron himself is bustling about with a stone mill, grinding something down to a light flour while Caitlyn sits perched on one of the kitchen stools, frowns down at whatever it is that she is reading, and does a good job of making this her study.
Vi stares at her for a good moment.
She stares at the messy ponytail and the stray strands of hair that have escaped, at the collar unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up, at that ever present furrow in her brow.
"Hey," she says.
Caitlyn looks up. A smile spreads across her face. "You're back," she says, reaching to gather papers with her hands and looking disappointed that one of them is holding bread.
Vi chuckles and steals a bite to hide the warmth that grows in her chest.
Caitlyn is not there the next day.
When she looks up from the potato planting, Vi realizes with a jolt that runs cold down her spine that the light in the study is not on. Why isn't the light on in the study? Could Caitlyn just be in the kitchen again? She could, but she hasn't been. The light isn't on in the kitchen. She knows it doesn't have to be, that it gets plenty of natural light. But why would Caitlyn be in the kitchen?
Caitlyn would not be in the kitchen.
But if she is not in the kitchen and if she is not in the study then…
"I have to go," she says.
Liqun looks pointedly at the potatoes in front of Vi.
"I have to go," she says, ripping the gloves off of her hands. "I'm sorry. I'll be back. I—"
The light is still off.
It shouldn't bother her this much.
It shouldn't. It hasn't. The quiet has never bothered her like this since it was never quiet back where she once wished it would be fucking quiet. But now she stands in front of the empty study. She has drawn the curtains wide open, daylight streaming into the room. The desk is still half a mess. There is a pile by the right side with unopened envelopes. A stack on the left with a few familiar signatures scrawled onto them. The inkpot is right where it always is but the pen is not in its usual spot.
Nor is its owner.
Caitlyn is not here. She was not in the kitchen. She was not in their bedroom. She is not here.
She's gone, whispers the voice in the back of her head. She's gone. She didn't tell you and she's gone. Like everyone else—
No. No. No. Vi forces some of the still air into her lungs. No. Caitlyn isn't here but she's not gone. She's not. This is the Kiramman estate. This is the Kiramman manor. Caitlyn isn't here but she will be back. She would not have left without telling her. Caitlyn has many faults and many idiosyncracies. There are many things that Caitlyn does and says and does not say that Vi does not understand and cannot understand but she knows that Caitlyn would not go without a word.
"Oh," Caitlyn says with the setting sun behind her, surprise clear in each vowel to find Vi in the sitting room. "You're here."
Vi looks up from the fireplace. "Could say the same about you," she says.
A brief pause as Caitlyn sheds her boots, as she tugs those gloves off of her hands. A tilt of her head as she picks up the cane she had leant on a stand that Vi had not known was there just moments ago.
"I went to the office," she says. Thunk, thunk, thunk goes the cane as she approaches and eases herself onto the couch across from the one Vi had been perched nervously on. "I went yesterday too."
"I didn't know."
A heartbeat. "I see," says Caitlyn. A flicker of uncertainty across her face, what about, Vi doesn't know, but it sits and lingers even as she straightens. "There is a lot of work to do."
"Work."
Still that unease stays. "Yes," Caitlyn says. "I reached the limits of what I was able to do from a distance. It seemed prudent to continue my efforts in person."
"Prudent," Vi says, looking at the cane.
"Effective."
"You didn't tell me," says Vi.
Caitlyn swallows. "No," she says after a moment. "I did not."
The Vi from before might have snapped something, might have leapt feet first, might have given into the fire that has been bubbling in her since the moment she was born. Today, after waiting for her lover to come home, Vi takes a deep breath.
"Why?"
Caitlyn's eye scans her the same way it always does when she searches for something, when she is unsure of something, when she looks at Vi like she cannot believe Vi is still here, like Vi is real.
"I'm not mad," Vi says.
"I see."
"I just want to know why."
Caitlyn's shoulders tense. She takes a breath, and then she lets it out, long and slow. "I didn't think you'd like it," she says.
"Like you going back to work with a leg that isn't healed and a stab wound that only just closed? Yeah, probably not."
A tiny huff, the slightest ghost of a smile. "Not that part," Caitlyn says. "I was under no impression that you would like that, but I don't think that would drive you away." A shrug of her shoulder. "It might frustrate you, but that's not what I didn't want to talk about." Her fingers press together. Her whole being stills.
The air itself barely seems to move even though they must both be breathing.
"They offered me the position of Sheriff," she says, looking right back unwavering. "And I took it."
Vi opens her mouth, then realizes that she does not know what to say. The fire within her burns brighter still, bubbles and boils, stings her insides with its poison, with the hammer of metal on metal and the chill of stone and water far too deep.
"You took it," she says.
"Yes," Caitlyn says, quiet and steady.
Vi waits for more, but frustratingly none of the words that she can see swimming behind Caitlyn's gaze emerge. There are words that she could let loose but what good would that do when the answers she wants are right there?
"Why?"
Caitlyn looks away, looks down at her fingers, down to the floor. Her jaw works briefly and her fingertips press together harder now in that way Vi is not sure Caitlyn has ever been aware of. It is a motion she has seen many a time during those days that she tries not to think about. They'd ridden that high of being able to do something, of making progress, of hunting down those who had hurt others looking for Jinx and it had all felt like it would work before it went right to shit, all over again but worse.
The chill in her heart sits there in the little crevices of the valves that keep the blood from going the wrong way.
"I can do better." The words are so quiet they have to crawl their way out from the gaps in Caitlyn's teeth. "I know what better looks like." Her hands ball into fists. "I—" She swallows and when she looks up it is with her fingers grasped so tightly around the strings of her emotions that Vi could not look away if she wanted to. "I want to do better."
A slow breath, not long enough for Vi to gather her thoughts before the next few words. "But I'd understand," Caitlyn says, still not meeting her eyes.
"Understand what?" The retort comes out sharper than she intends it to because it is beginning to needle at her in a way she does not like. "What do you understand?"
Caitlyn's mouth falls open. "I" —her brow furrows, before her mouth shuts and her jaw tightens— "I shouldn't have presumed to understand."
"No," Vi says, more fire than thought. "You shouldn't have."
Caitlyn stills. Her gaze grows hard. In the shadows of the evening, in the echoes of her consonants Vi can see the armor bristling and the shields raising, the gears turning in all of the wrong directions. She has known Caitlyn before she knew the Enforcer, the woman before the house, through the worst and out on the other side. She doesn't know what this better is going to be but she has seen what better could look like.
Who decides who gets a second chance?
So no, it is none of those things that the fire in her reacts to. Not the audacity, nor the stubbornness, never the desire to try.
"You thought it might drive me away," Vi says.
The wave of confusion would be adorable in any other moment but right now Vi is frustrated and angry and upset over this one stupid thing and she doesn't want to find this look cute. "You thought, on your own, that being Sheriff would drive me away." She glares at Caitlyn. "So you didn't tell me and just went and did it?"
Caitlyn's mouth flaps almost like a fish's. "I—" Her brow furrows. "I love you," Caitlyn says. "But I would not change my mind on this for anyone."
"That's not the point," Vi says, heart so annoyingly full. "And that's not what I'm saying." She sighs and, because Caitlyn looks like she is about to beg for a clarification, she continues. "You presumed I wouldn't like it."
"Is that not fair?" Caitlyn's expression is still one of frustrated confusion. "What reason did I have to believe you would—"
Vi raises her eyebrows.
"Fine," Caitlyn grinds out in a mutter. "It was not right of me to hide it from you, having made the decision." She swallows again. "I was wrong." She takes a deep breath. "I was afraid," she says. "I didn't want to lose you but I didn't know how not to." She looks away. "Sometimes I don't know what to do," the words don't seem to stop. "I don't know what I can do for you. I know" —she shakes her head— "I don't know, I suppose. That's what you're telling me. I want to, but I don't know."
"I don't either," Vi says and all the words come tumbling out here too. "I don't know what you need. I don't know how to help. I didn't know you were thinking about this. I didn't know you worried."
Caitlyn blinks a few times and Vi watches the sounds settle in through that thick skull.
"What a pickle we find ourselves in," Caitlyn mutters.
"But this helps."
Caitlyn's eye flies to hers.
"Maybe we can start here," says Vi. "I'll ask. You'll talk to me. You'll ask. I'll talk to you." She can feel the heat rising in her cheeks. "I don't know your favorite color or your favorite food, but I know I don't want to go. I lo—"
"Purple," says Caitlyn.
Vi chokes on a chuckle.
"Dumplings," Caitlyn continues. "Small ones with really thin skins in a clear soup. Breakfast food. I've been meaning to teach Heron."
Vi snorts back her laugh. "Blue. And there's a mean seafood skewer place I hope still exists."
"We could go," Caitlyn says, eye open as the ocean. "If you want to."