Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Vi didn’t know how long she knelt there in the rubble, doubled over, cradling her ribs, heaving sobs until she was entirely bereft of tears. She didn’t remember picking herself up, abandoning the gauntlets where they lay, or climbing the long ladder out of the ventilation shaft. She didn’t remember how she ended up in a seedy bar somewhere in the lanes, face pressed to the grimy counter, surrounded by six glasses now empty of liquor, but coated in the same layer of grease as everything else in this place.

Vi did remember the way Cait had looked at her before turning away. Hatred, grief, and betrayal swirling together in one sharp, blue-eyed glare. She remembered the pain radiating out from her abdomen where the rifle had hit her. Where Cait had hit her. And she remembered Jinx. The detachment in her eyes as Vi held her down, brandishing her gauntlets. “I’m glad it’s you… had to be you.” Vi ordered a seventh drink.

She wondered where her enforcer jacket had ended up, foggily recalling having torn it from her body and flung it somewhere. Not that she particularly needed a jacket with this much alcohol in her system to keep her warm. And they’d have eaten her alive in this part of town for wearing it besides. They’d be right to. Vi felt a wave of revulsion wash over her. How could she have put that fucking uniform on? Suddenly she was ten years old again, clutching Powder’s tiny hand in hers, and catching the last glimpse of her mother she would ever have, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, unseeing grey eyes reflecting the red of the smoke on the bridge, dissipating to reveal the glint of an enforcer’s gas mask. She was fifteen and pounding desperately on the basement door at Benzo’s as they hauled Vander away. She was sixteen and being pinned against the concrete wall by gloved hands, pain exploding across her body as the batons came down again and again and again across her ribs, arms, legs, and jaw until she fell limp and bleeding to the cell floor, watching the gleaming black boot heels, pristine save for tiny flecks of her blood, as they finally turned to leave the cell. Boots like hers, now. Vi downed the rest of her drink and hurled the glass at the floor with an animal scream. Then in a fit of drunken fury, she swept the remaining six glasses off the bar after it. They all shattered in a satisfying cacophony. Cait was willing to shoot a fucking kid. She really was no different after all.

She was dimly aware of indignant voices surrounding her, hands half-dragging, half-shoving her towards the door. She spun to meet a pair of angry blue eyes, impressions of a white and navy uniform swimming in the periphery of her blurring vision. Her fist had connected to a nose before she even knew what she was doing, sending a body toppling aside. As the remaining hands managed to finish tossing her unceremoniously out of the bar, she caught a glimpse of the bartender out cold on the floor, nose off centre and streaming blood, stained navy-blue apron askew, before the door slammed in her face. Not Cait. Vi fell to her knees, retching.

***

Commander Caitlyn Kiramman had begun the meticulous task of transferring all her painstakingly assembled investigation notes, photographs, and maps from her bedroom floor to a proper, upright evidence board in the Kiramman library some hours ago. Mouth full of tacks, arms full of paper, she pinned each puzzle piece to the map with precision. A photo of distinctive neon graffiti here, a list of arrests made in the Rapturewalk there, and at the centre of it all, Jinx. Caitlyn drove the brass tacks into each of the four corners of the wanted poster and stepped back to take in her work. The painting of Jinx stared back. Caitlyn couldn’t help but feel that the artist had failed to capture the unsettling glint in her shimmer-crazed eyes.

She pictured those eyes, glowing menacingly through the steam in her bathroom, flashing with danger as she knocked Caitlyn senseless with her gatling gun, squeezing shut as she pulled the trigger on the rocket that had killed Caitlyn’s mother. As she perched absently on the arm of one of the stately green chairs in front of the fireplace, lost in the painted eyes of her enemy, another image rose unbidden to the surface of Caitlyn’s mind: violet eyes, magnified in the crosshairs of her rifle. They hadn’t been malevolent, then. They had been afraid, not for herself, but for the child clinging desperately to her neck…

“Commander Kiramman.”  The rich, deep voice startled Caitlyn out of her thoughts.

“General Medarda,” acknowledged Caitlyn, rising to her feet as the older Noxian woman rounded the corner into the library.

“I thought I might find you celebrating your new promotion, but I see you’re hard at work already.”

“There’s no time to celebrate. Not when despite all my efforts, I’m still no closer to taking her down.” Caitlyn paced restlessly before her board, fiddling with one of the little brass tacks in her hand. “I almost had her.”

She clenched her jaw, unaware that she was squeezing the tack so tightly between her fingers that blood began to bead up from where it had partially embedded in the pad of her thumb. The tack clattered quietly to the floor as Caitlyn brought the puncture to her lips. She returned to staring at the wanted poster.

“You’re driven, child, I’ll give you that. You and I, we have a hunger in us,” said Ambessa. She sunk into an armchair and began prodding at the dying embers of the hearth with a poker, coaxing the flame back to life. “Jinx cannot evade us for long. I recommend that we increase patrols to the undercity. Put up roadblocks. Arrest any suspected of collaboration with her. But the final decisions fall to you, Commander.”

Caitlyn said nothing, nursing her punctured thumb, lost in thought. Ambessa abandoned her poker and turned to watch Caitlyn. The reignited flames danced off her gold jewelry.

“Tell me what happened down there.” It was an order, not a request.

Vi happened, thought Caitlyn. Vi, who had placed herself in the way of the shot. Vi, who had looked at her with such incredulous disbelief. Vi, whom she left bent double in the dust, betrayal etched on her face.

“There was a child,” Caitlyn said simply. “Clinging to her. And Vi wouldn’t let me take the shot.” She fell silent a moment, then added “And… perhaps she was right. I could have missed. Hit the child. I was wrong to leave her there… she was only trying to—"

“Remember, child. A wolf shows no mercy,” interjected Ambessa. “All the innocent lives lost because of Jinx—your mother’s life. What is the life of one Zaunite child in the face of all the suffering she has caused? We can’t afford unnecessary distractions like this again. You did well to leave her.”

Caitlyn returned to looking at her board, a line forming between her brows. Something hardened in her, then.

“Increase patrols in Zaun,” she said. “And arrest anyone suspected to have connections with Jinx. She cannot hide forever.”

The hint of a smile played at the corners of Ambessa’s lips. She stood and thumped her chest in salute. “It will be done, Commander.”

***

Dusk had fallen in the lanes. Vi stumbled along unsteadily, realization slowly sinking in through her drink-addled mind that for the first time in her life, she had absolutely nowhere in the world to go. No one left. She looked up to find that her unthinking feet had carried her straight to the doorstep of The Last Drop. Now empty. The neon sign unlit. The windows dark. Vi stood, looking up at the place she and Powder and Mylo and Claggor had once called home.

The door was easy enough to kick in. The place had changed since Silco took it over, and changed again in his absence. But the bar, grimier than in Vander’s day, and dusty after weeks of abandonment, was still made of the same worn-out wood. Vi trailed her fingers through the dust as she slipped behind the bar. Her feet, in their enforcer boots, found the warped divots in the floorboards where Vander had once stood, polishing glasses. The liquor shelf was empty, but her eyes caught upon a lone bottle tucked away under the bar. She uncorked the vile smelling stuff and took a long drink. She was still thinking too much.

She wandered over to the jukebox and had just begun flicking idly through the records when she heard the hiss of a respirator behind her. The cock of a weapon. Caught off guard, her reaction time slowed, Vi found herself knocked off her feet by the butt of an enforcer’s rifle for the second time today, before she could so much as throw a single punch. A knee dug into her spine as handcuffs were cinched over her wrists.

“Violet Lane, you are under arrest for obstruction of justice and for aiding and abetting the fugitive Jinx,” came a heavily filtered voice. But not even the gas mask could disguise the familiar eager brogue.

“Great work, Officer Nolan,” came a second voice.

That fucking bitch, thought Vi, as the hood was pulled over her head.

Chapter Text

Vi paced the cell like a caged tiger, scarred upper lip raised in a snarl. Four paces, turn, another four, turn. She rolled her shoulder back, fists balled up at her sides. She was back in her fucking box again. Another four paces, turn. They’d taken her wraps and boots away, but hadn’t given her a uniform. Her arms felt disconcertingly bare. Four paces, turn. How stupid had she been, thinking that Caitlyn Kiramman would be any fucking different from the rest of them. She hadn’t even had the decency to make the arrest herself. Sent one of her new little bootlicker cronies to do her dirty work. Ginger bitch. Fucking coward. Vi threw a punch into the unyielding concrete wall of the cell. Fists unbound, she felt oddly untethered. The force of the punch dispersed through the bones of her arm like a shockwave. She punched again, with a resounding thump, dislodging a puff of dust from the concrete. It hurt, yes, but it was better than letting her reality sink in.

Thump, thump, thump. The smell of mold and stale air filled her nostrils, and she was 15 again, shivering through her first night because they hadn’t given her a blanket. Thump, thump, thump. The memory of the maddening darkness and solitude of her old cell rose up like bile. They’d buried her even deeper this time. She stopped counting after the elevator passed subfloor 40. She hadn’t even known this hellhole went any deeper than that. This cell didn’t even have a number. Thump, thump, thump. She drew back her shaking fist. A dark, sticky blotch of blood remained stamped into the concrete. Vi crumpled. She slid down the wall, burying her head in her knees. Her breathing quickened. She was back. It had only been a few short weeks, but already her memories of seven years of Stillwater were starting to feel fuzzy around the edges. But here it was, larger than life, imposing on her every sense, threatening to chew, swallow, and digest her whole. Vi felt suddenly certain she would die here. She curled in tighter on herself, heart racing, rapid breaths hitching in her throat. She squeezed her trembling forearms over her ears as hard as she could. As if it could somehow shut out the disembodied chorus of enforcers’ laughter echoing around in her mind. As if it could muffle Cait’s musical giggle rising to join the refrain.

It was the rhythmic clanking of the elevator and the sickeningly familiar metallic tapping of a cane that finally snapped Vi back to herself some indeterminate time later. She was on her feet in an instant. The cane tapped its way toward the cell, steadily increasing in volume for what felt like an eternity. At last, the hulking outline of the warden stepped into view beyond the bars, flanked by four enforcers silhouetted in the dim glow of the corridor lights. He barked out a laugh.

“We were taking bets on how long it would take you to land yourself back in here, Pinkie,” he sneered. “I gotta say, you surprised me. Lasted two weeks longer than I thought. I lost 30 cogs on you.” The warden banged his cane against the bars. Vi hated herself for flinching.

“You know, I tried to stay away, but I guess I missed the aroma of your rotten fish breath too much,” Vi spat, beginning to pace again. It was a weak comeback, but it was the best she could do when she felt like she was fraying at the edges. The warden’s mouth twisted indistinctly.

“As much as I’d love to stay and chat, you’re wanted upstairs.” Then to the guards, “Get her cuffed.”

In the end, it took all three of them (minus the fourth, who ended up on the ground out cold thanks to a well-timed haymaker) to wrangle her into the restraints. They hauled her to her feet, still twisting, bucking, feral. She knew they’d win out in the end. They always did. But she’d be damned if she made it easy. Vi risked spitting a mouthful of bloody saliva at the warden as they dragged her past him. It earned her a cane driven into her stomach with so much ferocity that they were nearly to the elevator before she could draw in a full breath again. The doors slid shut with a whunk and the elevator began the long ascent to wherever the fuck they were taking her.

***

Rapid-fire mechanical clicking filled the Kiramman study as Caitlyn enlarged the set of mining ventilation shaft schematics to fill the screen of her microfilm reader, zeroing in on the maintenance tunnels. The glow of the projection reflected onto the sharp angles of her face—the only light in the otherwise darkened room. She narrowed her eyes and deftly tapped a series of keys that advanced, enlarged, and reoriented the next projection—a decades old map of the fissures denoting the locations of dozens of defunct mining colonies. And suddenly she was thinking about Vi again. How it must have been to grow up down there, air thick with toxic gasses. She was probably down there now. An unwelcome vision of Vi passed out in some dingy alleyway down in the lanes materialized in her imagination. Nope. Ambessa was right. Caitlyn could not afford distraction right now. She furiously tapped away as if striking the brass keys harder would banish her unwelcome thoughts alongside the projection. She was examining a second, more recent map when a soft knock at the door startled her back to the present.

The unexpected visitor turned out to be Maddie, hovering a little awkwardly in the doorway.

“Commander Kiramman! I was hoping this wouldn’t be a bad time. Seems like it’s another late night for you as well.” She nodded to the microfilm reader, still lit up.

“Junior Officer Nolan. Is there something I can help you with?” Asked Caitlyn, knitting her brows.

“That’s just the thing, actually. I’ve come to let you know that Ambessa has had me promoted from Junior Officer and assigned me permanently to your investigation. I wasn’t sure if you’d still be working, but I just got off my shift and thought it best to tell you straight away in case there was anything you could use a hand with.”

“Oh! That’s very… dedicated of you, Officer Nolan,” said Caitlyn. “I’m just finishing up some research for the investigation. You should go home and get some sleep. I’m sure all the briefing can wait for tomorrow…” Caitlyn had begun unconsciously to edge the door shut as she spoke, little by little.

Maddie drew forward, leaning against the door frame. “I’m glad it’s you that’s leading the charge, Caitlyn. You know, I always looked up to you at the academy. And you’re a great leader. I’m proud to call you my commander.” She saluted, then. Noxian style. A casual little tap of her fist over the breast of her enforcer’s uniform as she met Caitlyn’s eyes.

“You know, I might have a task for you after all,” said Caitlyn, breaking eye contact. “I need someone on the ground doing some fact-finding, and— and I need you to find out where Vi ended up after our mission failed. Do you think you can handle that?”

“Of course, Commander.” Maddie straightened. Something unreadable flashing briefly in her eyes.

“Thank you, Maddie. I think you’ll be…  an asset to this investigation.”

***

“Vi, you’ve gained quite some notoriety in recent weeks—trencher sump-rat turned hardened criminal turned enforcer.”

The intense overhead light in the interrogation room threw the severe features of Ambessa Medarda into sharp relief, putting one in mind of a military statue, either of veined, dark marble or cracked, crumbling limestone, Vi couldn’t decide which. The guards had cuffed her to a metal chair, wrists and ankles both, and left. Now, the windowless stone room contained only Vi in her chair, a sturdy stone table before her, Ambessa with one of her hulking Noxian thugs, and fucking Maddie, sitting calmly on a stool in the corner with a notepad as if this were nothing more than a business meeting.

“I read your file,” Ambessa continued, beginning to pace the room slowly, menacingly, wolflike. “Imprisoned here seven years, in and out of solitary confinement the whole time. I must say, I do admire your ferocity. What you did to prisoner #227’s eye… well, that sort of ruthlessness would have served you well in the Noxian military. Unfortunately, we do not offer positions to traitors and turncoats.” She enunciated the last word with disdain. “It was quite unwise of Caitlyn to recommend your release, given your history. And even more unwise of Councillor Talus to have approved it. It seems Commander Kiramman has learned her lesson now, seeing as you have jeopardized our whole operation. She understands now that there is no more room for distractions.”

Vi glared at the general with as much venom as she could muster, but kept her mouth shut. Ambessa stopped pacing and leaned imposingly over the table, face to face with Vi. “I hope your misplaced loyalty to that terrorist sister of yours has served you well. But if you choose not to tell us where she is hiding, we are prepared to make what little remains of your short life quite difficult for you. If your file is to be believed, you’re resilient, to be sure, but you know as well as I that the human body and mind can only take so much.”

Vi’s heart pounded as she lifted her chin and snarled back at Ambessa, voice braver than she felt.

“Drink bleach, fascist warpig.”

The first blow sent the chair careening to the floor, and Vi along with it. Her head hit the stone tiles. Her vision went black around the edges and then shattered into a million stars. She had taken a great many punches to the head in her life, but this. The absolute muscled bulk of the Noxian combined with Vi’s total immobility thanks to the cuffs. She hadn’t even seen him advancing upon her. She lay there dazed and unmoving for a long moment. In the split second after her mind had cleared enough to form thoughts again but before they tipped her back upright, she noticed with sickening clarity that the room had a drain in the floor.

The beating was brutal and passionless. Ambessa stood back, arms crossed, watching as her henchman wordlessly painted Vi over in bruises with clinical efficiency. Maddie sat in her corner, scribbling notes on her stupid little notepad. Vi set her jaw and took it, twisting and bracing to minimize the impact as best she could with her wrists and ankles clamped in place. It was of little use. When it finally let up and the adrenaline subsided, the pain finally came crashing down on her. Her head lolled uselessly, blood filling her mouth. Her left eye had already begun to swell shut. She breathed hard, raggedly, spluttering. The hulk of a man twisted a meaty fist into her hair and wrenched her head back, eliciting a sharp, involuntary cry. Vi found herself eye-to-eye with Ambessa once again.  

“I’ll give you one more chance. Where is Jinx?”

Vi said nothing. Only kept breathing raggedly, glaring at the general with her good eye. And then she was on the floor again, a boot being driven into her ribs over and over. She felt something break. Ambessa knelt, getting as close to eye level as she could.

“I won’t ask again, child.”

Vi let out something resembling a laugh. Weak, mirthless, laboured. Indistinguishable from an agonized wheeze, really. She bared her blood-soaked teeth at the woman.

“Fuck. You.”

Ambessa stood and nodded to her cronies. Vi was hauled upright again and dragged back to the stone table in the centre of the room. Maddie produced a ring of keys from somewhere in her uniform and helpfully handed it over to the man, who unlocked the cuff securing Vi’s right wrist to the chair. She fought hard, but with her left hand still shackled she had little recourse. He had her open hand pinned flat to the table, immobile, in moments. Ambessa advanced, sliding a cruel looking knife from a sheath at her hip. Vi’s stomach twisted. The shining blade hovered inches above her hand now, the eyes of its wielder sparkling with danger.

“You can stop this, Vi,” she said. “Think very carefully about what you want the coming months to look like for you.”

Vi dropped her head in defeat, letting out a choked sob. She muttered something indistinct under her breath in a small, broken voice. Ambessa raised an eyebrow.

“What was that?” she leaned in closer.

Vi headbutted Ambessa in the nose with every ounce of her remaining strength. Ambessa recoiled in surprise. Her fingers flew to her nose, which now sported a fine trickle of blood.

“I said, eat shit and die,” Vi rasped, triumphant.

Ambessa plunged the knife into Vi’s hand and twisted.

Vi screamed in earnest.

Chapter Text

The months had passed in a whirlwind of painstaking investigation, fruitless ground missions, and long sleepless nights of maddening pursuit. Something had hardened in Caitlyn and she was single-minded in her focus. There was only Jinx. No room for her grief. No room for her father. No room for Vi.

And yet she still saw her every time she closed her eyes. Soft pink hair. Grey-blue eyes that once looked at her with so much warmth. The way that little scar of hers pulled on the edge of her lips. Soft, yielding lips. She had replayed the kiss they’d shared in the undercity thousands of times in her mind. Clinging to the memory like a child to the rags of a security blanket.

On worse days, those soft, warm, loving grey-blue eyes were instead brimming with tears, looking up at her in naked, childlike betrayal. Following her with accusing, bitter reproach no matter how hard she tried to blink away the image. Vi probably hated her now. Hated her Piltie guts. She had moved on easily enough. Maddie had found her working in a bar somewhere in the undercity. And seeing someone new. One of the servers, Maddie had said. A Zaunite, like Vi. I hope they make each other very happy, she thought bitterly.

Caitlyn shuffled through the never-ending pile of documents she’d sent for from Stillwater. She had approved the roadblocks, the peacekeeping occupation, but not the mass arrests. Those were Ambessa’s doing. No matter how many times Caitlyn had repeated that “arrests require cause.” She would deal with the general later. For now, the best she could do was comb through the arrest records to see if any of these people had divulged anything remotely useful under interrogation, or if this had all been a dangerous waste of manpower and a betrayal of what little remaining goodwill any of the Zaunites still held for the enforcers.

Caitlyn reached for her notebook, nearly upending the cup of tea Maddie had brought her in the process. It wobbled to a halt in its saucer, untouched and completely cold by now. She felt a twinge of guilt. Maddie was always so sweet and affectionate with her. So patient. Checking in on her during long nights in the study. Rubbing the unyielding tension from her shoulders. Brushing her fingers over Caitlyn’s skin with such tenderness on those rare nights she made it to bed before Maddie was asleep. Had Caitlyn ever reciprocated the gestures? Maddie was kind and supportive and loyal. She deserved to be with someone just as affectionate. Caitlyn was hard and bitter and reticent. She had no room in her for softness and affection. Not right now. Not for Maddie.

She returned to her papers. Leafing through page after page of mugshots, descriptions, interrogation records. Nothing, nothing, nothing. These people revered Jinx. It was written in their dyed-blue hair, their edgy clothing, their painted murals. But they didn’t have any more clue where the girl was than Caitlyn did. Jinx was a symbol to them, but not a leader. Caitlyn’s stomach dropped as she flipped to the next page. The wide, terrified, tear-streaked eyes of a child looked at her from the black and white mugshot on the document. Prisoner 1328. They’d put a goddamn baby in prison. Caitlyn felt sick. There was something familiar in those eyes… it came to her in an instant. The kid wrapped around Jinx’s neck that day in the underground… She flipped the page with shaking hands to look at the “interrogation” section. It contained one word, “nonverbal”. Caitlyn’s mind flooded with several thoughts all at once.

But surely she must know something—

She must have been to Jinx’s hideout, maybe—

There has to be a way to—

She shook herself. What the fuck was wrong with her. Here she was, Commander Fucking Kiramman, leader of the hunt for Jinx, and they had put a baby in prison under her watch and in her name. And all Caitlyn could think about was how she could use the kid to further her own goals. Why is peace always the justification for violence? She had asked herself this again and again through the passing months. Disgust rose up in her. She pushed ahead, page after page of fruitless arrests flashing in front of her eyes.

The pile gradually shifted to older arrests. People caught spray-painting murals, or assaulting officers near the beginning of it all. And then her eye caught on a file. An incomplete record. Odd. Maddie, as Caitlyn’s feet on the ground, did most of the recordkeeping for the arrests made in connection with the investigation, and she was usually quite detail-oriented. Caitlyn examined the first page more closely. No mugshot. No physical description. No ID number. No cell assignment. Just “Pink” by way of identifier. Charges listed as “obstruction of justice”, and “treason” with no further elaboration. Caitlyn’s brow furrowed. She flipped the page to look at the interrogation notes. Thirty-nine pages. All redacted in their entirety by careful strokes of black ink.

Redacted. Caitlyn seethed. This was her investigation. The only person with higher security clearance than herself was Ambessa. What was she hiding? Caitlyn stood, snatching up the incomplete file, and after a moment’s hesitation, the file for the kid, too. It was time she paid a visit to Stillwater Hold.

***

The days blurred together after a while. In the windowless gloom, Vi had no way to count the days. Meals were not consistent enough to make for reliable timekeeping. She guessed that she was at least ten levels deeper than any other inmate, and the guards assigned to meal detail for those inmates housed in solitary were either too lazy to make the extra trip down, or otherwise they had simply forgotten her. They had never put their best and brightest on meal duty. She was pretty sure they got around to sliding her a tray of the colourless sludge that seemed to be in abundant supply in the Stillwater kitchens about once per day at best, most days. But she couldn’t be sure. She was hungry often.

Instead, Vi mentally divided her time by activity. Sleep. Dread. Pain.

Sleep was her only respite from the dread and the pain. Her cell had no bed or blankets, but exhaustion always won out in the end. Vi tried to spend as much time as she could asleep. One advantage to being buried so deep under the prison was the silence. Maddening at times, yes, but an improvement over the noise that constantly surrounds you in the regular cellblock. Easier to sleep. Another was the fact that she was simply too inconveniently out-of-the-way for the guards to bother making special visits to kick her around like they used to. She was sure they’d found another favourite punching bag for now, more conveniently located. The guards who made the infrequent trips down to feed her had given her a hard time on a few occasions but had lost interest after coming to the conclusion that she wasn’t much fun to beat on anymore. They’d started keeping her chained to the wall after the escape attempt, and she was always too stiff with injury to fight back much. It made her less of a challenge, and so they left her alone.

The escape attempt hadn’t been very well conceived. They’d made a mistake, once, sending her food down with a rookie who still wore his keys out in the open on his belt. Even with her fucked up hand, she’d been able to snag his shirt through the bars, bash his head against them, and steal the keys. She made it all the way up to subfloor 3 before they re-apprehended her. Ambessa had not been happy. Vi hadn’t been able to escape into Sleep for at least a day or two after what they had done to her legs.

Then, there was the Dread. When she was awake, in her cell, that was Dread. Ears constantly pricked for the sound of the elevator. Would it be a single guard with a meal, or would it be a whole squad of them here to haul her off for Pain? She tried to stave off the Dread. She thought of Powder. Of Vander. Of Mylo and Claggor. Of little man. Even of her mother, sometimes, though those memories were becoming foggier. She remembered a lively laugh, a warm bosom, a gentle ruffle of fingers through her pink hair. But whenever she tried to picture her mother’s face, all she could see was the glassy eyes, the blood trickling from her mouth in death. She couldn’t quite picture what that face had looked like in life anymore. The Dread always returned for her in the end. The boys’ bodies, unmoving under the rubble. Vander, ravaged by shimmer in the burning warehouse. Powder’s face morphing into Jinx, blue eyes flashing violet.

And Cait. Even as Vi tried to push them away, the fragmented images and memories enveloped her. That little gap between Cait’s front teeth. The subtle, clean scent of lavender and spring rain that always clung to her skin. Blue eyes. Penetrating eyes that saw her, saw into her in a way that no one else could. That look of empathetic understanding contorted into passionless, cold cruelty in Vi’s imagination during the long hours of Dread. Cait hadn’t sat in on Vi’s interrogations even once. She clearly knew Vi was here. Commander Kiramman, she’d heard. Spearheading the investigation. These were her attack dogs. And she didn’t even have the decency to come witness them rip her to shreds. Fucking coward. She wished Cait had just left her to rot here in the first place and saved everyone the trouble.

And then came Pain. In the stone room with the drain in the floor—all evidence of her misery rinsed away down that drain before the next Pain. It was nearly always at the thick hands of the massive Noxian man. Rictus, she’d heard them call him. Square faced and impenetrable. An unthinking machine that transformed Ambessa’s little nods into hurt. Dutiful to the end, and totally, infuriatingly stoic. Vi wished he would betray something, anything. Any hint he was human. Enjoyment, pity, anything. But he delivered what was ordered and gave nothing more. Vi found it difficult to hate him. Why hate a weapon more than its wielder?

Ambessa always stood at arm’s length. Watching. Rarely involving herself directly in the administration of the Pain. Merely orchestrating it. Passing sentence with efficient little gestures and single word orders. She only stepped in personally when Vi had particularly pissed her off. Vi had learned quickly that insulting Ambessa’s family was a very easy way to get backhanded across the mouth, and learned even more quickly that despite the momentary satisfaction, it was not worth it in the long run.

True to her word, Ambessa asked no more questions. Vi knew what she wanted. And Ambessa wasn’t one for needless repetition. She had such an array of torments in her arsenal, all available to her at the flick of a wrist or the inclination of a head, delivered neatly and without drama to her helplessly exposed prey. Beating, with fists, or batons. Burning. A small brazier brought into the room. A metal poker heated until it glowed red, the tip held against Vi’s skin. Some hextech-powered device that administered a blinding electric shock. A barrel of harbour water, and her head forced below the surface until she passed out. On one particularly bad occasion, they left her alone, hanging from the ceiling by her wrists all night, feet barely brushing the floor. Vi was lucky she knew how to fix a dislocated shoulder, but that didn’t stop it from hurting. God, she fucking hurt.

And then there was Maddie, in her corner, with her smug, freckled face and her fuckass ginger bob and her extensive notes, presumably detailing every impact of truncheon against ribcage, every hopeless sob, every desperate plea in clinical detail. Reducing the long hours of raw, primal anguish to indifferent pen strokes on a page. Vi couldn’t imagine what else of interest there possibly was to record in these sessions. Vi writhed, cursed, wept, bit, begged, spat, and screamed, but a wellspring of useful tactical data she was not. Vi imagined Maddie’s dispassionate accounts collecting dust in the drawer of some bureaucrat, somewhere. She hated them all.

Did Cait read the reports? Did Maddie deliver her a stack of papers every day and say, “no luck yet, but I’m sure we’ll break her soon enough”? Did any part of Cait feel ashamed? Vi recalled the naïve, exceptionally empathetic woman who had traded her gun for medicine for Vi, and tried to offer herself up to their firelight captors in Vi’s stead. Did that version of Cait still exist somewhere, or had the woman she loved been completely consumed by vengeance and cruelty? Everyone in Vi’s life had changed. Cait had promised not to change. But she had anyway, and Vi had no one left in the world.

When they were finished with her for the day, it was Maddie who was tasked with overseeing Vi’s return to her cell. In close quarters, on days when they hadn’t fucked with her nose enough to close off her nasal passages, Vi began to notice the traces of lavender and fresh rain that hung on the girl’s skin. The revelation hurt worse than anything Ambessa could do to her.

“You should really just give Ambessa what she wants,” advised Maddie, without a drop of sympathy in her voice. She looked down over Vi from above. They had used electricity that day, and Vi lay on her cell floor now, crying quietly, wracked by residual muscle spasms from the shocks.

“She’s quite persistent,” continued Maddie. “And despite what you might think, I don’t take any pleasure in watching them hurt you. You're really not making things easy on yourself. You should think about it.” And Vi was alone in the cell again. She knew Maddie was lying. Vi saw the way her mouth twisted into a smirk as she watched from her corner when she thought no one was looking. She saw how the girl rose to the task with uncharacteristic glee whenever called upon to assist. Ambessa and Rictus were impersonal and methodical. Maddie was sadistic.

Then suddenly, everything stopped. For several cycles of Sleep and Dread, no one came for her. Not for Pain, and not to bring her meals. After some time, the hunger began to gnaw at Vi, hollowing her out. Thoughts of food began to occupy every part of her unfocused mind—the greasy seafood at Jericho’s, the slightly burnt grilled cheese Vander used to make. She longed even for the colourless, oddly sulfurous-tasting Stillwater gruel. But the starvation stretched on and on. When Vi had finally concluded that they were simply going to let her die down here, she looked up from where she lay immobile on the concrete to find Maddie outlined in the cell door, tray in hand. Vi, who would have done anything in the world in exchange for a single morsel of anything edible at this point, looked at the tray with naked longing.

Maddie said nothing, only set down the tray and nudged it through the slot with the tip of her boot until it was just barely inside the cell.

On it, was a single, perfect, pink-iced cupcake.

“Cait sends her regards,” said Maddie. And she was gone.

Vi had never felt such a raw hatred before. Not when enforcers had killed her parents. Not even when Silco had taken her sister away and fed into her fucked up delusions until she was irrevocably changed. But even the hatred could not outcompete the desperate hunger.

Vi pulled herself up from where she lay with great difficulty, feeling her heart rate spike dramatically with the barest minimum of activity. On trembling limbs, she dragged herself towards the tray. She felt the chain at her wrist pull taut where it tethered her to the wall. She reached out her opposite fingers and found that no matter how she stretched and pulled and reoriented her wasting body, the tray was exactly out of her reach.

The gruel and the beatings returned the next day, but by then, something inside Vi had shifted.

The demarcations between Sleep, Dread, and Pain began to blur. As her injuries went untreated, Pain invaded Dread. Vi lay alone in her cell, nursing her wounds and hurting. There was little room for fear when Pain occupied so much of her mental faculties. Dread invaded Sleep. Recurring dreams of Cait, caressing her face, kissing her softly at first, then suddenly warping into something sinister and monstrous, plunging a blade into Vi’s body again and again until she woke up screaming. Sleep invaded Pain. She couldn’t take the hits like she used to, slipping instead into blissful unconsciousness in half the time. A brief reprieve from her torment. She felt them begin to get bored.

Strangely, as time went on, the Dread came less and less frequently. There was less and less of anything at all, in fact. The anger and fear that had driven Vi all her life dwindled and gave way to nothingness. She found she no longer hated Ambessa or Rictus or Maddie. She found she no longer cared what they did to her. In the cold, damp cell, Vi had developed a chronic cough she couldn’t shake. Her wounds healed ever slower, weeping blood instead of scabbing over. Her once muscular body wasting away to nothing. She had hit her limit. And each Pain brought her closer to the end. And so, instead of Dreading, Vi waited to die.

***

Caitlyn slammed the sheaf of papers onto the warden’s desk.

“There is a prisoner, held here without due process. They have not been offered a trial, nor have they been assigned proper identification or permanent housing. Your records are incomplete, warden. That is unacceptable.”

“Hell, Commander, you’ll have to cut us a little slack here. We’re understaffed as is, and what with the mass arrests— well, there are plenty who haven’t been tried or assigned permanent cell blocks yet. It’ll take us a few weeks to work through the backlog—”

“This prisoner was taken into custody months ago.” Caitlyn pushed the file across the desk with force, knocking over the warden’s own stack of papers. He picked it up and leafed through.

“Hm,” he grunted noncommittally, “must have been an oversight. We’ll take care of it.” He neatened up his collapsed pile of papers, shuffling the incomplete file into the mix.

“Wait. That’s it? You’ll ‘take care of it?’ How did this happen in the first place, warden? You are responsible for the inmates’ safety and security. How can you be sure this inmate has been provided for if you don’t even know where they’re housed?” The warden was nearly two feet taller than Caitlyn, but in this moment she met his eyes with such righteous animosity that he seemed to shrink a little.

“I’ll make it a priority,” he offered, clearly unused to being upbraided so viciously by someone so much smaller than him.

“And why are the interrogation records redacted?” Caitlyn continued, ignoring him. “I am the commanding officer charged with overseeing this case. I have a right to any and all information regarding this investigation. It is unacceptable that an inmate charged in connection with this case has been interrogated, seemingly quite extensively judging by the page count, and the records are made unavailable to me.”

The warden let out a long sigh.

“Now that, you’ll have to take up with General Medarda directly.”

“What? So you do have information about this!” Caitlyn fumed. “As your commanding officer, I demand you allow me access to this inmate at once, if you have any desire at all to keep your job.”

“Fine, but the general will not be happy about it,” the warden conceded. “Subfloor 45.”

Subfloor 45. Well into the subset of deep, solitary cells whose usage Caitlyn had expressly forbidden. Anger flared. She turned on her heel and stalked toward the elevators, but pulled up short. Caitlyn turned back to face the warden.

“And you’ll personally ensure the release of prisoner 1328, and… actually, on second thought, you will release all Zaunite prisoners who have been arrested and held under charges of disorderly conduct and similar in connection with this case.”

“But—”

“That’s an order, warden. See to it.”

The descent to subfloor 45 was seemingly infinite. Caitlyn waited impatiently, mind whirring with possibilities. She had never quite trusted Ambessa, but to hide evidence from her on her own investigation? Thirty-nine pages of interrogation notes. Ambessa must have spent a lot of time with this mystery inmate. Caitlyn shuddered. She watched the floors tick past, twenty-nine, thirty. “Pink”. An odd codename. Thirty-four, thirty-five. It tickled at something familiar in her mind. She couldn’t quite place it. Forty, forty-one, forty-two. It must have been something she read long ago, in some other record once. Forty-three, forty-four. Surely, it couldn’t be…

The elevator rolled to a halt at subfloor 45. The doors slid open. There was an oppressive chill, down here. An all-encompassing dampness. It must be deep underground, maybe even below the harbour, or at least near the bottom of it. It was completely silent apart from the elevator doors clacking their way shut. The hallway was very dimly lit, but she could see a row of unlabeled cells stretching before her.

Caitlyn moved down the row of cells, peering inside each. The vast majority seemed totally unused, or at least not touched in a very long time. Empty, empty, empty. She made a cursory search of each before moving along. Inhumanity aside, why would they choose to house a prisoner in such a deeply inconvenient location? It must be an enormous hassle to even bring meals all the way down here thrice daily. Empty, empty, another one empty. No wonder they hadn’t listed the cell assignment on the paperwork. These cells weren’t even numbered.

Caitlyn neared the end of the row of cells, scanning yet another empt—no. No, this cell wasn’t empty. She squinted through the bars. A dark, unmoving shape was slumped in a corner, face shrouded in deep shadow and unkempt hair. The left arm cradled the abdomen, the right arm hung limp to the ground. A dark coil of heavy chain snaked out from a cuff around the right wrist, padlocked to a loop in the wall. The torso was bare save for the bandages wrapped tightly around it, dark with blood. The figure wore dark pants that were shredded nearly to rags. Why hadn’t they issued a uniform? The left leg stuck out at an odd angle. Broken, probably. Why hadn’t they put a cast on it? The skin on the slim arm draped over the stomach was dark with filth and blood and… oh. Ink, too. She could just make out a curl of smoke. A gear. Caitlyn’s heart jumped into her throat.

Oh.

Oh, Vi.

Chapter Text

Caitlyn fumbled for the key, jamming it into the lock with shaking hands. Vi didn’t look up. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t acknowledge. Her downcast eyes were open, but they were blank. Was she too late? She slid open the cell door and was inside at last. The smell hit her like a wave—blood, sweat, waste, rot. Caitlyn rushed to Vi’s side, throwing herself down at the feet of the broken shape of a woman before her.

“Vi?” she breathed, the name hitching in her throat. Tears sprang to her eyes. She extended a trembling hand to cup Vi’s bruised face, stretching out a thumb to gently brush over her cheek tattoo, now struck through with a half-healed cut.

The moment Caitlyn’s hand brushed skin, Vi flinched. Her once-indifferent eyes blazed suddenly with fear and rage.

“Get the fuck away from me,” rasped Vi, recoiling from the other woman’s touch.

“I—” Caitlyn withdrew her hand sharply, as if burnt. “How—why are you here? I thought—”

“Finally got up the nerve, huh?” Vi’s voice was filled with utter loathing.

“I don’t—”

“Don’t play fucking dumb, cupcake,” spat Vi. Caitlyn flinched at the venom in the pet name, tears threatening to spill over.

Vi winced as she readjusted herself against the wall, sending herself into a wet, hacking, coughing fit. The chain rattled. Caitlyn noticed with horror that there was something very wrong with Vi’s right hand. Permanently curled up like a dead spider, half-healed wound, still red and angry, bisecting the palm.

“What, you have me arrested and then you come here after months just to act like a kicked puppy? Like this wasn’t on your fucking orders, Commander?” Vi bared her teeth.

“Take a good fucking look. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Vi gestured down at herself.

Caitlyn did take a good fucking look. Her eyes had adjusted to the semidarkness, now, and she took stock. Bruises, everywhere. Some yellowed with age, some fresh. Cuts, abrasions. Deep, unhealed lacerations ringing her wrists and ankles. A row of little triangular burns just below her clavicle. Vi was… noticeably smaller, now—her muscles diminished, her bare stomach purple with welts and hollowed with hunger. Caitlyn discovered with horror that the little silver hoops Vi wore in her nostril and left ear had been torn out, the unhealed ridges of cartilage notched and bloodied. And her leg… visibly swollen, even through the ragged pants, and jutting out at a wrong angle. Caitlyn felt bile rising in her throat.

“Vi, I—” Caitlyn’s voice shook. “I didn’t know,” she said, emphatically, “about any of this.”

Vi narrowed her eyes.

“So you didn’t sic your little ginger dog on me?”

“No, I—” she cut off, “did Maddie make this arrest?” Caitlyn’s eyes flashed with cold fury.

“They really didn’t tell you.” Vi’s expression softened almost imperceptibly. “She brought me in less than a day after you left.”

“I—I’m so sorry, Vi,” Caitlyn’s voice broke. “This is all my fault. I never should have left you. I was just… I was so angry, and Jinx was… I shouldn’t have trusted Maddie. She told me that you—” She broke off.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” said Caitlyn, setting her jaw. Her eyes flicked down to Vi’s leg.

“How old is this?”

Vi hesitated, brows drawing together.

“Few days, I think.” Her voice sounded small. “Landed on it funny when they tossed me back in here. Made it worse.”

Caitlyn tried to gently ease the pantleg up over the knee to get a better look, but stopped when she heard the sound Vi was making. Okay, better idea. She pulled out her little pocketknife and began to hack away at the remaining fabric. She peeled it open and took a proper look at the leg. Her heart dropped. At the very least, the break, though swollen and bruised to all hell, hadn’t punctured the skin. She could work with this. But the leg was also crossed with angry, half-healed welts. Not recent. They were long, vicious, intersecting. A few looked infected. Caitlyn guessed they had been inflicted by a whip. A quick glance at Vi's other leg revealed it to be in a similar state. Nothing short of barbaric.

“Did Ambessa do this?” asked Caitlyn quietly, not meeting Vi’s eyes.

“Her and her goddamn hunk of man meat.” Vi hissed sharply as Caitlyn probed the break. “Maddie too, sometimes. When she wasn’t in her little corner taking her little notes.”

Thirty-nine pages. There was murder in Caitlyn’s eyes.

“I have to set this. I’m sorry. Here, bite.” Caitlyn offered up one of the three-fingered leather shooting gloves that had been tucked into her belt. Vi bit down.

A real doctor would do a better job, but Caitlyn didn’t want to risk further damage on the journey out. She drew upon the field medicine training from her academy days. Placing her hands on either side of the break, she took a deep breath and pushed. Vi screamed, a feral, animal noise that tore from her throat. The bone made a nauseating crunch as it snapped into place. Vi spat out the glove, tears streaming from her eyes. Caitlyn rummaged around on her keyring looking for a key to unlock the shackle on Vi’s wrist. She knitted her brow. This wasn’t a standard handcuff lock. She picked up Vi’s wrist to examine it more closely, trying her best not to think about how she could now see that the awful, puckered wound in Vi’s palm passed all the way through, between broken and malunited metacarpals and out through the back.

“Come on, we have to get this off of you, before Ambe—”

Vi had gone completely rigid and wide-eyed with such abruptness that Caitlyn cut off mid-sentence. And then she heard it too. The elevator. Distant, but sure. Only a few floors away now by the volume.

“You have to go,” Vi urged.

Caitlyn met her eyes with determined ferocity.

“Stay strong. I won’t let them hurt you again.”

Caitlyn barely had time to relock Vi’s cell and duck into the next one over before she heard the elevator doors slam open. Bootsteps down the long hallway. Caitlyn’s heart pounded. The boots came to a halt before Vi’s cell. She heard them slide it open.

“Go on then, get her cuffed.” Maddie’s voice. A rattle of chain. And then an anguished yelp. Bootsteps fading back down the hallway. The whunk of the elevator doors shutting.

Caitlyn fought to control her breathing. She found she had dug her nails so deeply into her palms that they had broken skin.

I’m coming, Vi.

***

It was no different from any of the other times they hauled her from her cell to that room on the upper floors. Cuffs on her wrists that chafed against the wounds that never quite healed, an enforcer at each arm. They had long since abandoned the expectation that she could walk herself up there, and so she was dragged—into the elevator, then out, then down the hall past the guard station and the rows of holding cells towards the perpendicular hallway with the interrogation rooms. Vi lifted her head as they passed the holding cells. They were much fuller than the last time they’d dragged her through here—something must have gone down in the undercity. She had barely caught a good glimpse of the cells’ numerous puzzlingly blue-haired occupants when she felt a firm hand at the base of her skull as Maddie roughly pushed her head back down.

Nothing was different. This was routine. By this point, Vi’s mind should have been totally checked out—retreated in on itself to numb the pain. But somehow, everything was different. Instead of withdrawing behind the nothingness, her mind buzzed with a thousand thoughts at once. Cait was here. She wasn’t behind everything after all. She hadn’t even known—about the arrest, about them hurting her, about any of it. She wasn’t lost to her after all. And she was going to get Vi out of this.

For the first time in weeks, the void of thought and feeling that had dammed up all Vi's fear and anger and love and care began to falter, giving way to something Vi hesitantly recognized as hope. Against her better judgment, despite knowing she’d betrayed her, Vi had never quite been able to stop believing in Cait. Just like she’d never given up on Powder. It was this capacity for stupid, irrational hope in the face of unforgiving odds that had lost Vi almost everything and everyone she held dear. But not Cait. Not yet, at least. Cait had promised not to change. And maybe she hadn’t after all.

As they rounded the corner and approached the now-familiar metal door, the hope gave way to a dread so potent, she couldn’t breathe. The nothingness had been protective, but now, the dam had given way and Vi felt everything all at once. Her mind flooded. What if something happened to Cait? What if Ambessa hurt her? Ambessa had lied to Cait. What else was she willing to do to her? Could a foreign general get away with the murder of a Piltovan elite?

Vi longed for her gauntlets. Or even just her wraps back. She knew she couldn’t do much in the state she was in, but she would never forgive herself if Cait got hurt while trying to save her. Cait was a good shot. An excellent shot. But alone? In close quarters? Vi’s last hope was clutched tightly in her good fist—a handcuff key. Cait had slipped it to her just before the guards had come. If she could only time things right, maybe they could both get out of this. Or at the very least, Vi would do anything in her power to ensure that Cait would.

The guards threw her to the floor of the room. Vi let out an involuntary yelp as she landed on her broken leg again. Rictus rolled her onto her back with his boot on her chest. Everyone settled into their positions. Routine. Ambessa in one corner with her arms crossed over her chest. Maddie in the other corner by the door, notepad and pen in hand. Rictus standing over Vi. He drew a knife and held its blade against Vi’s upper arm. Ambessa gave the little nod, which meant, “begin”. And Rictus begun.

***

The elevator ride up felt like double the duration of her earlier descent. Caitlyn gripped her rifle with shaking hands, her fury threatening to boil over at any moment. She’d never totally trusted Ambessa, but fucking Maddie. All along. A bar in the undercity, she’d said. And a new girlfriend. How could she have been so stupid. She’d been blinded by grief and rage, and Maddie had played her for a fool. How many times had Maddie taken “extra shifts” at odd hours? How many times had she “stayed late to finish up some paperwork”? And Caitlyn had confided in her. About Vi, even. About their brief time together. About the stupid nickname. Caitlyn cringed. Maddie was supposed to be the safe choice. A girl her mother would have approved of. A girl who followed the rules and blended in at parties, who brought her tea and rubbed her shoulders. And she had spent the past several months sneaking around behind Caitlyn’s back, directly complicit in Vi’s torture. Torture.

Caitlyn couldn’t think about Vi’s months of captivity without wanting to throw up. Vi. Sweet, protective, loving Vi. Vi, who put up a tough front, but who was incredibly sensitive below the surface. Alone, in pain, back in the place she’d rotted in for seven years of her adolescence. A place that had already left deep wounds in her psyche. And now this. The punitive beatings—the chats, as the warden called them—were one thing. What Ambessa and Rictus and Maddie had done to Vi was calculated. Intentional. Unspeakably cruel. And Caitlyn would make them pay for it.

The elevator came to a stop at last. Caitlyn gripped her rifle. The door opened to reveal a couple of guards playing cards at a table by the lockers. Caitlyn realized suddenly that she had been so single minded that she had forgotten to consider the guards. She wasn’t so sure that her status as Commander Kiramman would protect her if she was found standing over the body of a Noxian general. She had been staring at the guards in silence for long enough that they were now looking up at her questioningly. Just as she was considering knocking them out and dealing with the consequences later, another pair rounded the corner into the row of holding cells, pulling a Zaunite man along by his cropped blue hair. They tossed him into a cell. Too many. She would have to think of something else. But Vi needed her now. The thought of what they might already be doing to her pushed Caitlyn forward, guards be damned.

She slipped past the second pair of guards and hurried along the row of holding cells and around the corner. They’d have taken Vi to the interrogation rooms. But which one?

Just then, as if she’d brought it into being simply by hoping for it, she heard shouts from the direction of the guard station. Sounds of a scuffle. A distraction.

What little relief she felt from the disturbance around the corner evaporated in an instant when she heard the screams from the opposite direction. Vi. Caitlyn broke into a run. She banged on the door of the room at the end of the hallway. The screams stopped. She stood back, rifle drawn and aimed at where she expected a head to be when the door opened. Caitlyn’s heart pounded, the edges of her vision flashing white.

The door cracked open. Caitlyn barely registered the cropped ginger hair under the beret before she felt her aim shifting downwards from the neat headshot she had lined up. She put a bullet in Maddie’s chest, then almost unconsciously chambered another round and put a second in her gut. For a moment, time seemed to slow. Maddie stood, mouth agape, reeling back from the shots. Caitlyn’s eyes sparkled with naked rage as Maddie met them. Then rage shifted to something crueller. Caitlyn kicked her hard, square in the stomach, sending her toppling to the ground, and banged open the door.

Vi lay pinned, tears of pain streaming from her eyes, several new bleeding cuts on her arms and shoulders. Rictus held her down, brandishing a bloody blade, poised as if to inflict another cut. Caitlyn raised her rifle and squeezed the trigger, aiming for the back of Rictus’ head. But the second, self-indulgent bullet she’d put in Maddie’s stomach had cost her precious time and the element of surprise. Ambessa grabbed the barrel and yanked. The bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the floor and into the wall. Caitlyn was thrown off balance, forced to choose between releasing her weapon or being knocked to the ground. She let go. Ambessa sent her to the ground anyway, slamming the butt of the rifle into her shoulder.

Vi saw her chance. With a click lost amidst the chaos, she loosed her good hand from its cuff and made a desperate grab for the knife. Rictus wasn’t expecting it. He turned back to Vi, too late. She had broken his distracted grip with ease. Vi plunged the knife up to its hilt into his throat, then yanked it out. It was quick and effective. Rictus fell forward, leaving her utterly trapped under his motionless body. Vi looked helplessly on as Ambessa and Caitlyn grappled.

They were hardly a match in close quarters. Caitlyn tried to rise, but Ambessa visciously kicked her down again. Caitlyn rolled, scrambling to her feet and fumbling for her knife, but Ambessa was quicker. She drove her own short blade into Caitlyn’s gut with brutal efficiency. As Caitlyn staggered, blood welling up around the knife, Ambessa grabbed her by the collar of her uniform and threw her bodily out the door. Caitlyn’s head cracked against the stone of the opposite wall. She felt dazed. Dizzy. She lay there for a moment, unable to get back up. Ambessa advanced, drawing twin swords.

“Cait!” cried Vi, helplessly.

“Bold little one,” proclaimed Ambessa. She lifted Caitlyn’s chin with the point of one of her swords. “I’m impressed. I didn’t think you had the nerve.”

“You went behind my back,” snarled Caitlyn. “You had a— a member of my team arrested and tortured!”

“You’ve always been too soft on the Zaunites.” Ambessa pressed the sword tip deeper into Caitlyn’s skin, beginning to draw blood. “Vi has been quite the distraction for you, and for that—”

Before she could finish, something huge and incomprehensible came careening down the hallway and slammed into Ambessa.

***

"Powder." No one had called her that in a while. Not since Vi. Not since their little family dinner party at the warehouse. That had been months ago, and the next time they’d seen each other, Vi had called her Jinx. Which was… well, it was who she was… what she was, after all. But it still felt a bit like an ending. A chapter coming to a close. Jinx, Powder (whoever she was) hadn’t seen Vi since that day in Janna's temple. She figured she’d turn up eventually. Vi didn’t go down easy. It had been months, though, which was enough to be worrying. 

But he had called her “Powder”. Vander, or whatever that thing was. One minute he was seconds away from clawing her abdomen to shreds. The next, he was suddenly overcome by clarity, recognition in his eyes. “Powder.”  She didn’t know why. She didn’t know how. But that thing was her fucking dad. And before she had time to process this further, he was off, tearing past her, past the corpses of dead enforcers, deeper into the prison. And Jinx was alone again.

Maybe being a Big Fat Hero wasn’t so bad. She’d done it. Infiltrated the prison, busted everyone loose, gotten Sevika and Isha out of harm’s way, decided to be all heroic and self-sacrificing by taking on the huge-ass wolf-thing all alone. And it had all worked out in the end. No one got hurt. She hadn’t fucked everything up like she always did. Was this the first time it had all worked out? She wished she knew where Vi was. Vi would know what to do about Vander. Vi always knew what to do. Jinx shook herself. Vi was an enforcer now—the enemy. But something didn't feel right about it all. The way she'd looked at her when Isha had gotten in the way... Vi was still in there. 

She looked over her shoulder, in the direction the wolf-Vander thing had gone. Deeper into the prison… What was he looking for?

“He seems to have a unique response to you. Interesting,” croaked a voice from the darkness.

Jinx spun, aiming her gun into what she had thought was an empty cell. Her eyes fell upon a spindly figure huddled in a dark corner. Just as deathly thin and bandaged and frankly, creepy as all hell, as he’d been when he strapped her down and pumped her full of shimmer.

“You,” she snarled, not lowering her gun. “What did you do to him?”

“I had thought his mind was lost forever within the beast, but perhaps I there is a catalyst I had not yet considered…”

“What are you talking about? You turned him into— into that thing?” Jinx’s eyes blazed violet.

“He responds to blood, of course. Mine in particular,” continued the doctor, as if Jinx had never spoken, “but it seems he responds to memory, too. Or perhaps love. I wonder if he’s gone after the other one...”

Jinx fired into the wall above his head, showering him in dust.

“Start making sense or the next one goes between your eyes.”

The doctor remained infuriatingly calm.

“They dragged her through here not long ago. The pink haired one. She must be bleeding if he—“

“Vi?” Her head spun. Whispers echoing. Chaotic flashing scribbles. Twisted hallucinatory figures crowding the fringes of her vision. Jinx pressed her hands over her ears, but the voices came anyway.

He’s lying

He’s lying to you.

Vi doesn’t love you

Vi isn’t here.

She left you.

Because you’re a jinx.

He’s lying.

Liar.

“Shut up! You’re lying!” She pointed the gun back at the doctor.

And then she heard the screams. Distant. From the direction Vander had gone: “Cait!”

Vi.

And then, yet again, she was running toward the chaos.

***

The thing had Ambessa pinned, but not for long. Caitlyn drew ragged breaths as her shaking hands flew to the knife lodged in her lower stomach. Her dark uniform was stained darker with blood. Leave the knife in. She was getting so much use from her field medicine class today. Her throat was bleeding too. She probed the shallow cut—a result of Ambessa and her sword being knocked from her throat. It was bleeding, but not heavily. By some quirk of fortune, it had not nicked her jugular.

Still a bit disoriented, she dragged herself to her feet, wincing as her insides shifted around the blade. Ambessa had freed herself and the two beasts were locked in combat further along the hall, tearing into each other savagely with no eyes for anyone else. The thing was huge. Wolflike, but monstrous. Implanted with vials of bright fluid, belching smoke, glowing scarlet. Ambessa was bleeding, but somehow holding her own. For now.

“Cait!” Vi cried again, voice desperate. Caitlyn tore her eyes away from the melee and looked back into the room. Vi was pinned under Rictus’ lifeless body, unable to shift him. Caitlyn rushed to Vi, throwing her full weight into pulling the body off her. They both cried out in pain and effort. At last, he rolled free, glassy eyes facing up at the ceiling. Vi supported herself on her elbows, handcuffs hanging from one wrist, chest bindings soaked in Rictus’ blood.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Caitlyn wheezed. With effort, she dragged Vi’s arm over her shoulder and hoisted her to her upright. Vi hissed as her broken leg was jostled. Caitlyn gritted her teeth as the physical effort pulled at her stab wound. Vi leaned heavily on Caitlyn, her weight distributed between her and her good leg. They began laboriously to make their way to the door.

As they drew closer, Ambessa came flying into view. Bloodied, muscles rippling, she got to her feet with a war cry and threw herself on the beast yet again. Sounds of battle echoed off the stone walls—snarls of wolf and woman alike, clang of blade on claw. It edged further into the distance. Then came a metallic clank and a sound of something slamming into place—one of Stillwater Hold’s many barred gates sliding shut. And then a bang that rattled the very foundations. Something slamming against bars again and again.

Before the two injured women could hobble their way any further, Ambessa filled the doorframe. She was bloodied and panting. Long claw marks shredded her face and arms, but she advanced on Caitlyn and Vi, eyes alight with fury. Blood and fluids dripped from her twin swords as she knocked the pair of them to the ground with the flat of a blade in a single swing, as if they weighed nothing at all. She pinned Vi down with a wolf-clawed boot to her chest and held her sword-tip to Caitlyn’s throat once again, towering above them, triumphant.

“You have spirit, little one. I wish it did not have to end like this.” Ambessa’s chest rose and fell with exertion, but her sword arm remained steady. “You were a good student. Strong-willed, but misguided. I take no pleasure in this, but a wolf shows no mercy.”

Caitlyn and Vi clutched desperately at each other’s hands. This was it.

And then the room lit up in blue. Ambessa’s eyes went wide as azure lightning arced over her body. The swords clattered uselessly to the ground. The boot on Vi’s chest eased. Ambessa staggered, then fell.

A girl with long, blue braids and violet eyes stood silhouetted in the doorway, smoking pistol in hand.

“Always with ya, sis.”

Caitlyn and Vi barely had time to look up in awe before the shriek of tearing metal filled the air and suddenly, the wolf was upon the girl, pinning her to the ground. He swiped at her raised arm, and drew back massive claws to strike again. Her eyes went wide and fearful.

“Vander, no!” She cried.

“Powder!” Screamed Vi.

Something changed in the eyes of the beast. He hesitated, claws still raised to strike. His glowing scarlet eyes locked instead upon Vi’s, and something strange happened. The eyes flashed suddenly green and blue. His brow furrowed. In his moment of clarity, he looked at the girl pinned beneath him, then back at Vi. His eyes filled with an oddly human expression of fear and pain and remorse as he withdrew his claws and scrambled back. For a moment, the scarlet returned. He roared, gnashing his teeth, but whatever part of him was driven by bloodlust seemed to lose some internal battle, and before it could return, he had torn himself away, bounding off from whence he came.

And then all was silent. All except a horrible, laboured sucking sound coming from the corner. Maddie. Not yet dead.

As the two sisters rushed to embrace, Caitlyn pulled herself to her feet, retrieving her gun from where Ambessa had thrown it. She stood above the girl. The traitor. Her once-lover and confidant. Maddie looked up with wide, terrified eyes as she struggled to inhale. Her hands pressed in vain over the wound in her stomach, as if applying pressure would stop the blood from filling up her abdominal cavity or the contents of her intestines from spilling out inside of her and poisoning her blood. Caitlyn was an excellent shot. She knew the bullets had found their homes exactly where she’d meant them to. Right lung and lower abdomen. It could take another hour or so for the perforated lung or the internal bleeding to finally kill her. And it would hurt the whole time. Caitlyn didn’t know whether it was mercy that drove her to put one final bullet neatly between Maddie’s eyes, or simply a desire to be done with the whole thing and move on, but her practiced fingers found the trigger and it was over in an instant. She left the girl where she lay, now silent and motionless, returned her rifle to its holster at her back, and turned back to Vi.

“Let’s get you home,” said Caitlyn, draping the injured woman’s arm over her shoulder with as much gentleness as she could muster. Vi’s sister took her other arm. Together, the two blue-haired women supported their loved one’s weight between them and began at last to carry her to safety.