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Caitlyn looked for Vi first when she woke up, which in her mind was the only natural, polite thing to do when an enforcer and the criminal who has been escorting her find themselves prisoners of another, different group of criminals. Vi was there, as it turned out – sitting across her, all limbs still attached, awake and aware. That was good.
They were in a cell. That was bad.
Caitlyn pushed herself up, ignoring several bursts of pain from several points in her body. “Vi. Are you okay?”
Vi smiled, wide and plain, which seemed out of place given both the situation and her general personality. “You looked for me first. You woke up, and you looked for me.”
And Caitlyn wasn’t one to show emotion, not usually, but the look she gave Vi right then was nothing short of incredulous. “You wake up captive to gods-know who and that’s the first thing you think about?”
Vi raised her index. “It was not the first thing I thought about. But I’ve been up for several hours. Thinking many things. And only the thought of you made me less miserable.”
Caitlyn took a good second to process that, and when she did, she looked away. “Huh.”
“What? No sassy snappy comebacks?”
“No, that was a surprisingly reasonable answer.” Caitlyn opened and closed her fists, feeling the blood flow back to her fingertips. She stood and found herself wobbly, her vision dimming immediately.
She tripped. Vi caught her.
She would have enjoyed that way more than she should if not for the looming threat to her life. “Forgive me. I stood to fast.”
“Easy, easy.” Vi hooked her arm around Caitlyn’s waist to steady her. “It’s no problem. Though if you’re rushing to find a way out, I could have told you there was none.”
“Need to know my surroundings regardless. Just in case an opportunity presents itself.”
“All right.” Vi shrugged herself under Caitlyn’s arm and offered her support. “I’ll help you look.”
She did. Caitlyn looked, leaning partly on Vi, partly on the cell bars. The corridor in front of them was nondescript. The cells that surrounded them seemed empty. Vi tugged her back, and she leaned against a wall and slid down to the floor.
Vi sat next to her, shoulder-to-shoulder. “So, no way out.”
“Mmh.”
“And we’ll be here for who knows how long. No signs of life from our captors for the last three to five hours.”
“Mm-hm.”
Vi turned to face her and poked her shoulder. “Please talk to me. If you don’t talk to me, then it’s like I’m sitting alone in a cell, and if I find myself alone in a cell again, after the day I’ve had, then I’m going to go mad.”
“That’s. Fair.” Caitlyn breathed in, then out, then turned to Vi. “Okay. Any idea on who took us, what they want, a way out?”
“Nope.” Vi said, popping the p. She crossed her arms behind her head and stretched her legs. “They were masked, and fast. Probably well-funded. Could be anyone. Criminals, businessmen, politicians, even that council of yours. Could even be your parents, for all I know, you ever think about that?”
“I try not to.”
Vi looked at her, grinned, then laughed. “So you’re aware your family is horrible!”
Caitlyn scowled, unsure what to answer, and chose silence.
Vi saw her react and shook her head, raising her hands. “No, no, see, that’s a good thing! I kept wondering whether you’re naïve, hypocritical or just plain evil, but it turns out you might be a decent person. A rebel! A rebel cop. What do you know.”
“Pshh.” Caitlyn covered her face with her palms and laughed.
“Something is funny? What’s funny? Come on, I deserve a laugh, too.”
“Nothing. Nothing is funny.” She wiped the corner of her eyes with the back of her hand. “This is despair laughter.”
“Ah. Yes. I know the kind.” She bumped her shoulder on Caitlyn’s. “Look on the bright side.”
“What bright side?!”
“The good company?”
Caitlyn scoffed, but didn’t argue. Instead, she shifted to a reasonably comfortable position which just happened to be leaning against Vi. “All right. Looks like we’ll be here for a while. I might as well get to know you.”
“Yes!” Vi punched the air, then blinked, self-conscious, and adjusted her clothes, dusting herself. “I mean, of course. What would you like to know? I am overjoyed to contribute to your profiling.”
“I – “ Caitlyn hesitated, fiddled with her gloves, tapped her foot on the dirt floor. “I don’t know. What would you like to share?”
Vi blinked. “That’s an unexpectedly sweet question. Keep asking things like that, and I might start thinking you care.”
Caitlyn frowned. “I do care, and you know it.”
“Course I do. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
She raised her eyes to the ceiling and resisted the urge to express her frustration with a scream. Instead she offered silence. Silence was good. Silence was safe.
“ – and anyway I could tell you my whole childhood sob story, how enforces shot my family when I was a kid and left me to fend for myself and my little sister, who turned into a murderous, most-wanted criminal, as I have just learned.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to be, it wasn’t you who shot them dead. Couldn’t have been. You’re, like, my age.”
“Nonetheless the command must have been inked by my family’s pens, and regardless of the reasons behind it you were a child and not at fault, all you were offered after your loss was indifference. So, I’m sorry.”
Vi went quiet for a tense moment, and Caitlyn caught herself going over her own words, wondering if she might have slipped an accidental insult between them.
“You make it hard for me to dislike you.”
She smiled, just a little. “Then don’t. It’s no good to deny the things you feel.”
Vi tilted her head. “That… doesn’t sound right, coming from you.”
Caitlyn crossed her arms. “I’ll have you know that I am aware of and acknowledge every single emotion that crosses my mind.”
“Is that before or after you act directly against them?”
She smiled. “Before, after and during.”
Vi laughed. There was a cut on her cheek already healing that broke when she laughed, and Caitlyn wiped the blood from it with her thumb.
Vi blinked, cheeks turning red, but did not break eye contact. “What are you feeling when you do this?”
She had the urge to recoil, to pull her hand back, but actively refused to. “I wasn’t thinking. My thumb is all dirty. I might as well be making it worse.”
“Didn’t ask what you were thinking.”
Caitlyn smiled and pulled her hand back.
They were quiet, for a few moments.
“Can’t believe I’m one of those girls who can say she has friends in high places now.”
Caitlyn scoffed. “Don’t think I’ll be dragging you out of jail if you deserve it.”
“I would never!” Vi placed her hand over her heart in mocking drama. “You’re morally correct. A good cop! Not the kind who takes bribes to look away from the dirt. I wouldn’t expect corruption from you.” She paused, then grinned. “But you’d visit me in jail, wouldn’t you?”
“Fuck’s sake,” she mumbled, hugging her knees and hiding her face between them. “Yeah. Something like that.”
Vi laughed again and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Caitlyn allowed herself the brief respite of leaning into it.
“Come on. You can tell me you’re having a bit of fun. I know it.”
Caitlyn raised her head and arched an eyebrow. “Various threats to my life notwithstanding?”
“I’d hardly say you’re in too much danger. You might catch a stray bullet here or there, but you’re otherwise too important to kill. Me, on the other hand –“
“You’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.” She raised her chin and met Vi’s eyes. “I’m only ever certain of the things I set out to do myself. So, you’ll be fine. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Ah, gods.” This time Vi did break eye contact, pointedly looking at empty space. “Don’t say things like that to a girl if you don’t mean them.”
“I am not in the habit of saying things I don’t mean.”
“Then I’ll hold you to it.”
Caitlyn acquiesced with a nod.
Vi’s expression had turned serious, thoughtful, and Caitlyn let her eyes roam over bruised skin and old scars and eyes with deep rings under them.
“You’re staring.”
“I find you pretty.” She concluded and expressed out loud.
Vi’s eyes widened, and it was the first time Caitlyn had seen her like that – truly unprepared, truly vulnerable. “I – thank you. I think you’re hot. I’ve said that before.”
“Mmh.” Caitlyn stretched her legs. “When we get out of this and if fate allows it, I’d like to take you out.”
“Really? You’ll take me out? You? Me? At a fine dining restaurant?”
“I’m not eating that goop you like.”
“I would never. I’d rob a fancy place for you -” Vi blinked and shook her head. “ – but that’s not my point. You’ll go out with me? A criminal and a lowlife?”
“You have a charming smile. I can’t help it.”
“And you’re not worried about how that will look? The scandal?”
“I… you overestimate how much I value the gossips of Piltover’s high society, when most of the time I am, at best, vaguely aware that the nobles are people, rather than part of the scenery.”
“What about the other cops? Won’t it get you in trouble at work?”
“I was fired.”
“You were –“ Vi stirred, turning to face her in shock. “You were fired? You? How did you manage that?”
“Almost got killed. So naturally, my parents pulled the strings to get me out of my life’s passion in the hopes I could find a new reason for living in, hmm, bureaucracy and politics perhaps.”
Vi frowned. “I expected you to be acidic, but the bitterness surprised me.” She licked her lips. “I don’t know what to tell you. In my heart I believe that getting kicked out of the enforcers is the best thing that could have happened to you, but I doubt that’s what you want to hear. Wait.” She narrowed her eyes. “If you’re no longer an enforcer, then how did you get me out –“
“I handed in a release letter from a councilor, which I forged myself.”
“ – holy shit!” Vi nearly jumped, then burst out laughing. “Holy fucking shit!! You broke me out?!”
Caitlyn shrugged.
“You did! You broke me out of the highest security prison in Piltover with fake fucking papers! You absolute madwoman!” She giggled, delighted. “Oh, this is incredible. No one will believe me! No one will believe that the enforcer who is the daughter of a councilor broke me out in exchange for – for what?”
“A date?”
Vi crossed her arms. “Flattered, but that’s simply not true. If you’re no longer law enforcement, then what is it that makes you want Silco so bad? Did he cross you personally? Feud with your family?”
“Would you believe me if I said I am simply looking out for the common good?”
“I would believe you believe that.” She smiled, open and genuine. “It’s kinda sweet. You really are sweet, cupcake.”
“Mmh.”
“You’re not going to tell me to stop calling you that?”
“It’s growing on me.”
Vi grinned, and Caitlyn decided the nickname wasn’t the only thing growing on her. “You’re being too nice. It has me wary and hopeful at the same time.”
She turned away and went quiet for a long time before replying. “There’s nothing to it. I just like seeing you smile.”
“That’s not nothing. That’s everything.”
She looked at Vi from the corner of her eyes. “There’s no reason to be wary.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“As you wish.” She stretched her legs out. “I believe you’ll find I have very little energy to pretend, even less so to sustain a falsehood, unless I absolutely must.”
“Like when the goal is to break me out of jail?”
“Like when the goal makes the effort worth it, yes.”
“And why me? Charming good looks aside, there has to be a reason you chose me out of all the criminals in that prison.”
She faced Vi and smiled, just a little. “I had a hunch about you.”
“Really? You don’t strike me as the type to act on impulse.”
“Not impulse. Intuition.”
“What’s the difference?”
Caitlyn considered the question for a moment. “Intuition is a glimpse of a bigger picture that will reveal itself to me in time. A peek at a future which I predict based on things I have seen but not noticed. It’s logical. A logic I can’t pinpoint, but logical nonetheless.”
“Can’t say I get it.”
Caitlyn shifted her body so that she could face Vi properly. “Intuition is breaking you out of jail because there’s something in you which I can’t put my finger on that tells me you and I will make a good team.” She paused, searched Vi’s eyes, and hesitated, but just a little. “Impulse is this,” she said.
Then she closed the distance between them and kissed Vi, tentatively at first, then deeper and more intense when Vi kissed back, gripping her face and pulling her closer. She held it for almost a whole minute, her body reacting of its own volition to Vi’s touch, shiver down her spine, breath leaving her lungs.
Then she pulled back and rolled to the side.
Silence. Far more tense than before. She felt her heart drum hard against her chest, as caged between her ribs as she was behind those bars.
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I wanted to.”
“Why did you do that, Caitlyn?” Vi insisted, and her tone was demanding, and Caitlyn knew she’d take nothing but the truth.
“So that you know what you mean to me.” She turned. Faced her. Looked her in the eyes. “So that if there’s ever a time where my words and actions seem to tell you otherwise, you remember this. That I chose you. That I may scheme and I may lie to the world, but this is where I stand – on a stinky cell and bruised all over, with a person I know will have my back if I deserve it, and kick me on the shins if I don’t. With you. That’s where I stand.”
Vi opened her mouth to reply, closed it, and went quiet for an unsettling amount of time. When she finally spoke, her expression was almost somber. “I can see it in you. The councilwoman you’ll become someday.”
“I can see it in me, too.” She stared fixedly at a speck of dirt on the wall. “It’s why I joined the enforcers. I try to distance myself from that person, to keep things as black-and-white as possible, to follow every comma of the law. But I know it’s a farce. It’ll last however long it lasts. And after that, I can only hope…” She shrugged. “I hope when the time comes, I’ve learned enough to keep me a good person.”
Vi stared at her, eyes searching her face, body tense, and Caitlyn waited for her judgement as if it were a sentence. “I’ll keep your feet on the ground, if you keep me around.” Vi said, finally, and took Caitlyn’s hand. “And if you keep me close, I’ll…”
She didn’t finish the sentence, and Caitlyn didn’t ask her to. Instead, she interlaced their fingers and nodded. Vi squeezed her hand. She felt happy. Bizarrely enough, she felt happy. She took note of the feeling.
They held hands. Caitlyn did not move, so they held hands.
“I feel like I should warn you that me and my criminal, evil sister are a package deal.”
Caitlyn arched her eyebrows and nodded very slowly. “Acknowledged.”
“And I know it’s a lot to ask and – huh.” Vi blinked. “Wait. Really?”
“Mmh.” She rubbed her thumb on Vi’s knuckles. “She seemed unwell, and the council only ever needs one scapegoat. If I get my hands on Silco, I can get her an arrangement that involves medical attention and no life in jail. It helps that she’s an engineering genius, meaning she can be profitable to someone. That always makes things easier.” She shook her head and waved it off with the hand she was not using to hold Vi’s. “I’ll figure it out.”
“You really do like me,” Vi said in purest wonder, and stared at their interlaced fingers, and smiled, goofy. “Nice.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“But you like me. You like me!” Her grin widened. “I have no idea what I did to make this happen, but damn, I am so glad I did it.”
“You’re being held hostage by unknown captors. I feel like some things could have been chosen differently.”
“I stand by my words.”
Caitlyn laughed. She leaned her head on Vi’s shoulder. “My turn. You should know I always have a plan. And I know you’re hotheaded, but I’d appreciate it if you stuck to my plans, every now and then.”
“Always have a plan?”
“Always.”
“Always-always?”
“Yes, Vi.” She pressed her nose on Vi’s neck, and Vi shivered. “That’s all I do. I make plans. That’s why I’m quiet. I live inside my head, scheming.”
“Any plan to get us out of here now?”
“Several, which will start moving as soon as I figure out who has us -”
She was interrupted by the sound of a door being unlocked and the grating rasp of metal as it opened. Caitlyn straightened her back, immediately, and so did Vi, who pulled her closer.
Caitlyn smiled. It was sweet of her, though that casual display of affection did ruin nearly a third of her plans. She brought Vi’s hand to her lips and kissed it, then let go and gently pushed her off. “Might be better for us if we appear to be enemies. We’ll see. Follow my lead.” she whispered, and Vi nodded, and Caitlyn could tell right then that Vi would follow her anywhere.
And she was grateful for that, because she’d meant her words – it was no good for her to deny the things she felt, and she could only act against it so many times before she met a line she was simply unwilling to cross.
And then the boots were coming closer, and she tensed and waited for whatever would meet them, and Vi touched her hand again. And the people who caught them were close, so close, too close for this to be a reasonable risk, but Vi was very much a risk-taker.
Caitlyn smiled, and held her hand back.