Archive of Our Own ^beta

Caitlyn Kiramman had not been born with a sense of loss.

No, instead, somewhere along the way, she had acquired it, felt it, deep in her soul at some point. She could never be sure when that point was. She only knew that this- this loss, there was no other way to put it, was not something that had been born with her.

It did not take a genius to know that Caitlyn had lost something, but try as she might, she could not, for the life of her, remember what it was.

Somewhere along the way, she had started to stare out a window and look at the burning dredges of a setting sun and think of a red she had never seen, never known. She had started to think of a face she had never seen, never met. She had started to- yearn for something, someone, she wasn't sure existed.

"You're zoning out again," Jayce informed her easily, unoffended, sketching mindlessly on a sheet of paper. "You've been doing that a lot lately."

"So it would seem," Caitlyn said, and it was agreement enough. "What are you working on?"

Jayce leaned back, sighing heavily. "I don't know. I keep feeling as if- I don't know. There's something…"

"Missing," Caitlyn finished for him, soft. "Yes. I feel it too." She frowned down at her shoes, kicking absently. There was the echo of someone's voice in her head, one she knew, had known her entire life, had never heard. "It's… a strange feeling."

"It is," Jayce agreed, solemn. He fiddled with his hands, locking his fingers together, tapping his thumbs.

Caitlyn watched his hands play, her own suddenly itching for her gun. "Maybe you could make a pair of gauntlets."

Jayce's hands stilled. "Gauntlets." Jayce mulled it over. "What for? We don't need any new weaponry."

"I don't know," Caitlyn admitted, looking away. The water was clear, rippling, the lily pads green and bright. "Maybe it doesn't have to be a weapon."

Jayce arched his eyebrows. "Huh," he said, picking his sheet of paper back up. "Huh. I'd have to run it by Viktor first, of course."

"Of course," Caitlyn said, nodding, hearing his next words before they even left his mouth. She didn't mind. Being alone would do her some good right about now, she thought.

"I'm gonna-"

"Mhm," Caitlyn said, smiling softly. "Go on, genius. Invent your inventions." She did not turn to watch Jayce, not even as he left, but she imagined he left with a smile on his face, brain whirring.

Caitlyn leaned back, looking above her, a lavender blossom tumbling down from the tree above her. She watched its slow descent, watched as it floated gently down beside her, its petals falling apart, bleeding away, as it did so, leaving nothing but a skeletal husk of the original flower behind. Something about it made Caitlyn's heart hurt.

She looked away, back at the sky. Her mind had been wandering off more and more often these days, and once, she had caught hold of someone with red hair and blue eyes, stopped them with a hand on their shoulder, and they had turned, raised eyebrows and confused eyes.

"Um," they had said, glancing at Caitlyn's hand. "Yes?"

Caitlyn had taken a second to respond, disoriented and confused and- hurt. It wasn't right, no, it wasn't right, the hair a vivid red, cut even and symmetrical, the eyes a vibrant blue, smooth, unmarked eyebrows, and they wore no piercings except for the one on their nose, and something about it all, the image, the picture they painted, was- was inexplicably wrong. "Oh," Caitlyn had said, apologies tumbling over each other, tangling on her tongue. The person had smiled forgiveness, an easy smile with no teeth, and left.

It had, of course, been humiliating, but more than that, she had been left with a hollow ache in her throat and her chest and her head, an interminable sense of discomfiture.

It did not get any better from there.

Sometimes, Caitlyn would look at a fire, stare into it deep, too deep, until it left an imprint when she looked away, when she closed her eyes, until she couldn't escape it. Sometimes, Caitlyn could swear something about the licking, flickering flames was familiar, something quite familiar, something unbearably familiar. She relished the stinging of her eyes.

"You will damage them like that," she had been told once as she was doing this, and she'd turned to look at Viktor, the purple imprint of the fire in Caitlyn's eyes colouring his face.

"I know," Caitlyn had said, feeling oddly helpless. "But I can't help it."

Viktor had given her a long look, a slow look, then a small hmph. "Fire is mesmerising," he had said, as though it were an admission, a confession of sorts. "But it is also destructive."

"Not necessarily," Caitlyn had argued, protested, she supposed, but it had held no heat. Her eyes had wandered back to the fire. "Forgery. Cooking. Warmth. Baking."

Viktor had smiled wryly. "I suppose you are right." He'd heaved himself up with his cane then, looking back down at Caitlyn. "Speaking of baking, Jayce said he wanted to try his hand. He is making cupcakes. Do come by later, even if only to keep the kitchen from exploding."

Except Caitlyn hadn't been listening anymore, her mind having gotten caught on cupcakes, latched onto it, speared, and the words thereafter had blurred together into one. Just one. "Of course," she'd heard herself say and then when she was alone again, she'd stared at her shaking fingers and touched them to her wet cheeks and felt her stomach heave.

She'd doused the fire out and sat in silence. If she'd cried, that was no one's business but her own.

Now, as Caitlyn gazed up at the darkening red sky, she allowed herself to breathe in, slowly. Her room had become oppressive in the past few days, some kind of heavy weight weighing down on her if she lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for too long, a chill passing over her, her fingers curling into empty space. This was, it seemed, her only safe space now.

The sky was a red that unsettled her heart, the fading blue arresting her. It was pale, soft, consumed by the ever-darkening red. Caitlyn shut her eyes against it.

No, Caitlyn Kiramman may have not been born with this loss, but she had grown into it quite well. Too well. It threaded, now, through every fibre of her being, every existing fibre, every future fibre.

Caitlyn breathed out, slowly. She stood up, stretched her arms above her, and looked back up at the sky.

The fading vestiges of pale blue stared back down at her.