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Part one: pretending to be myself
Jericho’s smells like old grease, sweat, and spice. Caitlyn wrinkles her nose and breathes through her mouth, hoping the distinct fish scent finds its way out of her nostrils.
Somehow, through the war for Piltover and the unspeakable things she had a heavy hand in, Jericho’s small, dingy fish stall is still standing. It wasn’t really an establishment to begin with, just an open tent with various fish and crustaceans on display. The oil bubbles and the fire snaps back as Jericho commands it with his hands, laughing at his patron's story, cooking the fish in golden sauce like a man taming a wild spirit.
Caitlyn swallows, looking over at Vi who has a smirk on her face and sauce dripping from her chin. Vi’s powder blue eyes remind Caitlyn of seafoam and a clear summer’s day. A safe pool to swim in.
Caitlyn reaches over, wiping a thumb over Vi’s chin with a grin. Her eyepatch slopes slightly, catching on her cheekbone. She reaches up to push it back into place, fingers lingering over the indigo patch with a hesitant realisation. She misses seeing Vi completely.
Before she can fall further into regrets and disdain, Vi points to the still-full bowl of slop in front of Caitlyn’s chest.
“Cupcake, at least try it.” Vi licks her fingers, a plea in her eyes that makes Caitlyn’s heart stop for a moment – just a moment. Soft sighs and Violet’s vulnerable, broken, and pleading eyes, begging to come. The sheets wrapped around their legs and she can’t help but burst out in laughter when Violet grunts with frustration and tosses the sheets off the bed entirely, their bodies slick with sweat.
She snaps herself out of it, her cheeks flushing only as much as she would allow. Vi’s eyes are still vast oceans of ice, and they pull her under the surface.
“Fine,” Caitlyn relents, begrudgingly using her hands to pick the smallest fried fish up to inspect it. It seems cooked, in a loose sense. The sauce drips down her hands into the bowl, some of it leaving a long trail down her wrist.
Vi wanted to come here. To reminisce. To wander around what was left of Zaun, thoughts about light blue hair and a toothy grin following her around. Caitlyn held her hand through it all, ripping the muscular woman out of her own spiral of self-deprecation and loss with small jokes and seemingly stupid Piltie questions. “What was your favourite thing to eat?” turns into sentiments about Powder, Mylo and Clagger digging through garbage cans, and then Vander cooking something with chicken and potatoes, then to Jericho’s where Vi discovered the pleasure of annoying Caitlyn Kiramman to no end.
That’s how they ended up at the fish vendor. For the memory of it all. For Violet.
Caitlyn carefully takes a bite of the fish, the sauce spilling down her chin and onto her pristine black shirt. She winces, feeling the fatty taste and spicy sauce hit her tongue in an unfamiliar way. She chews while Vi looks at her like she’s about to throw another quip her way.
Caitlyn swallows, both the fish and her true thoughts. “It’s… fish.”
Vi barks with laughter, and Caitlyn giggles, a childish sound that is afraid to take up too much space. Vi remarks that Caitlyn is too much of a topsider sometimes, that her tongue is used to fancy fish and a grade-A health and safety certificate, but her beaming smile settles the rattle of Caitlyn’s heart.
She loves her Zaunite. Her bruised knuckles, rippling muscles, raspy voice, sweet smile, and hearty laugh. She loves her so much she’d shovel the entire bowl of Jericho’s fish into her mouth all at once. She loves her. And that is enough.
Vi loves her enough to assure her, placing a calming strong hand on her knee to say she does not have to eat the entire bowl. Caitlyn briefly wonders if this is the same tone Vi used with Powder when they were younger.
Before the bile rises up in her throat, Caitlyn swallows and places her hand over Vi’s. This is enough.
—----------
Vi’s hands feel like burning coal on her back as she vomits into the toilet bowl. Sweat pools on the planes of her back and her night dress clings to her skin.
Caitlyn’s stomach revolts against her, scorching and spasming, and more burning liquid erupts from her throat and spills into the bowl.
Vi sweeps her hair to the side, cooing softly as she ties Caitlyn’s hair up. Caitlyn throws up more, some of the liquid getting stuck in her throat and she coughs through it. Tears fall down her face reflexively. Vi’s body is soft and grounding behind her, her voice a distant comfort.
“Perhaps it’s a good thing you didn’t eat the whole bowl,” Vi sympathises, rubbing her hand up and down Caitlyn’s arm.
Vi shudders as she looks at the Piltovian next to her, brought to her knees by Undercity fish. At the mercy of her body. She looks miserable and small. The patch over the left eye looks like it’s moist at the bottom. Food poisoning; the great equaliser.
“I’m not used to it, I suppose,” Caitlyn murmurs, more of an apology than an explanation. She retches again and nothing comes out. Vi’s face twists in sympathy as the blue-haired woman groans.
Caitlyn chases her away after a while, citing that she needs to clean herself up. Vi leaves to fetch some water and a bucket. Caitlyn washes her face and gurgles two rounds of mouthwash before she spits.
She shudders again as she looks at herself in the mirror. Her uncovered and still functional eye tenses with her mouth curled into a displeased frown. She’s sure if she ran a hand through her hair she’d feel the remainders of sweat at the nape of her neck.
She looks awful. The patch over her eye drives her mad. She grunts, ripping it off and throwing it into the sink.
She usually never lingers too long. Too evasive of herself to see the healing scar over her eye. She can open the lid slightly. She’s tried over and over, receiving encouragement from the best doctors Piltover has to offer and her father. Her eyelid trembles, twitches and she grunts softly as she gets a peak of her discoloured iris.
She gently places a clean hand on her cheek, taking a closer look and peering into the chasm on her face.
The sickness from earlier builds again, her stomach twists and she rests both of her hands on the edge of the sink. She breathes through it, praying to Janna not to throw up again, out through her mouth, in through her nostrils. She closes both eyes, shakily placing the patch over the abomination on her face, tucking it back into the abyss. If she can’t see it, she won’t remember it. If she can’t remember it, she won’t feel it. She won’t feel the aching darkness her mother’s death left her to wander in. She won’t feel pink, shimmer-filled eyes staring at her through the foggy mirror, she won’t feel the devastating sound of Vi’s cries after she pistol-whipped her in the stomach. She won’t feel the way her heart clenches from all the times Vi sobbed into her chest, bargaining with Janna to do it all again. To save Powder, to save Vander. To save her mother and father.
She emerges from the bathroom, holding onto the edge of her night dress. Vi is sitting on the bed, her eyes practically leaking with sympathy.
She lets Vi hold her close and lets her dote over her for the night. Vi needs to protect somebody, that is who she is. Caitlyn lets herself be that someone. She lets Vi stroke her calloused fingers through her hair and lets herself be loved in the warmth of murk.
—----------
Vi offers her some toast in the morning, placing a glass of water in front of her. As she kisses Caitlyn’s forehead, the taller woman closes her eyes and sighs in contentment. Vi feels warm and smells of sleep.
“No, I’m afraid to eat anything,” Caitlyn says. The vomiting did not end until the early morning, and she had to utilise the bucket Vi left by her bedside. As embarrassing as it was, Vi still held her hair.
Vi presses another kiss just shy of her eyepatch, she feels the muscles in her face clench against warm lips. “Toast usually helps with that. C’mon Cupcake, never heard of B.R.A.T.?”
Caitlyn feels Vi’s smile against her neck. She would kiss the woman if she wasn’t self-conscious of her unbrushed teeth.
“Later,” Caitlyn says, smiling as Vi presses pure love into the skin of her collarbone.
She doesn’t mention how the disgust in her stomach twirls and spirals into her throat. How her unsettled and empty stomach reminds her of the moment she found out Ambessa’s Noxian army instigated violence at the border between Zaun and Piltover. How her mind quickly flitters between her mother’s gaunt and dead face and Vi’s pained expression in the underground, rubble decorated in pink and blue. ‘Why are you the one acting like her?’ How Isha’s small body clung to Jinx’s neck. How her hands were not shaking when she was about to pull the trigger. She had the shot.
—----------
Whilst Vi is out, surveying the scene in Zaun and searching for Jinx’s body, Caitlyn pretends she doesn’t know Vi is doing the latter and crawls into their bed. She doesn’t bother to shower, she doesn’t bother to drink or eat anything else. The toast can wait until tomorrow. She feels her stomach under her fingertips.
She thinks of her mother, looping her earrings into her ear as she sits at the boudoir. Caitlyn is on the floor, peering up at her mother. Her dolls are between her legs, sticking out in front of her like gangly twigs. She is saying something about a council meeting to her father as she stands up and straightens her corset. She lays a hand over her stomach, squeezing tightly as she takes a deep breath in. Caitlyn watches.
Her mother smiles down at her, leaning down to stroke her chin. It’s always special when her mother does that. It’s always special whenever her mother looks at her like she’s capable of anything.
“Caitlyn, my darling,” her mother smiles, her thumb tapping the dip of Caitlyn’s chin. “One day you will do your duty as a Kiramman. One day, you will get up off that floor and make your father and I so proud.”
Caitlyn pays no attention to the red lines on her stomach from where her nails dug into her flesh. She thinks of the carpet beneath her 8-year-old feet, and her mother’s earrings. She’ll eat something tomorrow when every fibre of her being doesn’t disgust her.
Part Two: hum along ‘till the feeling’s gone forever
She genuinely tries to consume something. Her empty stomach has grown claws and has started to crawl its way down her back, digging a hole into her spine.
Vi makes her sandwich because she’s sure Caitlyn did not eat anything yesterday. It’s simple—bread, ham, and cheese. Vi’s already munching, halfway done when Caitlyn breaks off a piece of crust and nibbles on it. She feels like there is a fissure where her stomach used to be, like her left eye.
Vi looks at her in concern, licking her lips before she speaks, “Cait. You should eat.”
Caitlyn looks at her, unable to hide the crack in her face. “I can’t.”
Vi moves from the other side of the kitchen counter. Her father is still working in the Piltover hospital, still tending to the patients after the war. She was lucky. Three weeks ago she was able to be discharged with no serious life-threatening injury, just a useless eye socket she drags around behind her and stitches in her abdomen.
She thinks about how she’s glad her father is not here, because then she’d have two sets of sympathetic eyes on her instead of one lightning-blue pair. She doesn’t want to think about what her mother would say.
Vi’s arm drapes itself over her shoulders and Caitlyn pretends she doesn’t feel stretched bare.
“Are you still feeling sick?” Vi’s voice drips with compassion, her fingers find their way to Caitlyn’s shoulders.
She shrugs. “I just don’t have an appetite right now. I think it will settle soon enough.”
It’s been two days now. It has to.
Vi needs somebody to care for, somebody to dote over. So Caitlyn presses her back into Vi’s chest and breathes in and out, smelling the musk and the leather of Vi’s jacket.
“Maybe we should speak to your dad?” Vi offers, and Caitlyn can’t stop the repulsion that stiffens her body.
“No, he’s busy tending to patients. This is nothing, it’s just leftover symptoms from the food poisoning.”
She shakes herself out of it. Vi, despite it all, has managed to eat a sandwich. Has managed to help her repair her wrongs to Zaun. Has cried and fought her way through the countless losses of her family. Vi needs someone to protect, and that person needs to be herself. Not Caitlyn.
Caitlyn picks up the sandwich, taking a courageous bite that only makes her mouth salivate with revulsion. The bolus feels like swallowing a stone, she tastes nothing but dirt and the smell of cheese.
She pushes through and Vi uncurls from her, stepping back and taking a seat next to her. She asks Caitlyn what she thinks about setting up a proper hospital in Zaun, distracting Caitlyn as she eats. It works.
—------
It works until it doesn’t.
Caitlyn feels the sandwich rebel in her stomach. It sits and rots away, refusing to be digested. She feels acid spread throughout her entire body, and it makes her tremble.
It goes away once she stumbles to the bathroom, throwing up in the toilet. It takes some coaxing. A finger down her throat, a few moments of sputtering and gagging on nothing, until the sandwich comes back up. She puts in most of the work to purify herself, rather than the other way around.
Vi is somewhere, she doesn’t care. Caitlyn doesn’t need her for this. This shameful act. She wonders how the woman she loves would feel knowing she wasted food. Vi grew up in The Lanes, the promise of violence was more reliable than where her next meal would come from. She wouldn’t understand. Caitlyn doesn’t understand this herself.
“Please, Mother, I want to do this.” Caitlyn is standing in her Enforcers uniform, on her first day of training. It shines in the rays of sunlight bursting through the wide windows.
Her mother scrutinises her, fixing imperceivable flaws and dusting her collar. It’s motherly. It’s biting.
“Caitlyn, your father and I worry. We support you,” her mother’s voice is warm but her lips are pressed tight. “We just don’t want you to get hurt. Or worse. We want you to be safe.”
Just as her mother is about to fix her hair with saliva on her thumb, Caitlyn slaps her hand away.
“I have a gun, Mother.”
She finds herself blinking back into the present. Her hands have snuck themselves beneath her shirt and are clinging to her stomach once more, and more red scratches adorn her abdomen. She feels empty and she still feels disgusted. But at least her stomach feels neutral. This is enough.
—------
Vi feels the essence of Caitlyn floating around the room as the blue-haired woman lies next to her in bed. She sees the way her cerulean eyes never really focus on her, how she’s just one thought away from disappearing. Vi doesn’t budge, she doesn’t bulldoze her way in. She holds Caitlyn tighter, silently begging her to stay in one piece. If Caitlyn shatters in her arms she would cradle all of the shards together. But Caitlyn does not shatter, that’s not her style.
She remembers hearing about Commander Kiramman when she was deep into her own spiral. Shadows had begun to smile at her, midnight blue hair shone in the crowd as blood spilt from her lips. The taste of whisky and whatever booze she could find kept her mouth numb and sanitised her lips from the taste of the Piltovian woman. Caitlyn screamed in her dreams and the edges of her consciousness.
When she was ambushed by Caitlyn in the meadow, she called her a mongoose. Her face was more narrow, her eyes dredged in pain. The posters around Zaun made her seem like a feared commander, one who would slit someone’s throat for speaking out of turn. But that was Ambessa’s pet, the image on the posters draped in gold and blood. The real Caitlyn was still capable of real compassion. She was lost. Almost just as much as Jinx was. She was hurt. She was still her cupcake who stumbled and furrowed her brow every time Vi teased her.
She wishes Caitlyn would scream now, would fall to her knees and cry. Now… she does not know how much of Caitlyn she was able to scoop up from the destroyed Hexgates. She wonders if she left a few pieces there, amidst all the rubble and chaos. Vi would go back and scour the remains once more so that Caitlyn could finally feel whole again.
Tomorrow, she will make sure Caitlyn eats the toast. She will make sure that whatever Caitlyn is feeling goes away.
She nuzzles into Caitlyn’s neck, breathing in the scent of jasmine.
—---------
Part Three: drowning out the mo(u)rning birds
2 months later
Caitlyn throws herself into fast-tracking the financing and building of a memorial hospital in Zaun. The disgust that flows through her veins metastasises until it burrows a home for itself in her stomach.
She tries to eat and tries to stay hydrated. She swallows what little she can and buries herself in work. She dedicates every breath she takes to fix the damage she caused.
Vi worries. She feels the way Caitlyn’s skin stretches against her ribs, feels the way her hair is dry and brittle. She feels the way Caitlyn seems to snap at the smallest setback, how tears line her eyes only to be brushed off when she sleeps.
Vi tries. She tries to hold her, tries to keep her in one piece. But Caitlyn has turned to stone. The poster image of her Commanderhood must have nothing on the version of Caitlyn she sees now.
Part Four: whatever she wants
“Mother! MOTHER!” Caitlyn feels the moment her vocal cords snap.
There is a wound somewhere on her leg, but she finds new strength from the despair she feels to limp over to her mother’s crushed body.
She can’t grip her mother’s hand. The medics are moving her from the ground to the gurney. She sobs as she stands, frozen in the midst of the chaos.
The medics pronounce her mother dead.
She feels nothing. She feels empty. She feels disgusted.
Vi is somewhere. She doesn’t care where. She’s just near.
******
Vi is sobbing. Caitlyn nearly killed a child and Vi is breaking, hunched over on the floor.
She glances at the butt of her gun, then back at Vi. She doesn’t know who she is anymore. Vi is sobbing. And she doesn’t care. She’s just there.
Her mother deserves justice. She will get it. It will be enough.
******
Ambessa calls her name and she feels ringing in her ears. The people around her, fellow Enforcers, the Noxians, and what little council members are left are banging on their chests with their fists. The sound lulls her and coaxes her. The leaders of the Undercity are silent.
“Come child,” she hears Ambessa prod.
She steps forward, walking through the crowd. She hears her mother’s voice.
‘One day…’
Ambessa takes her hand, she believes in her. She is strong, she is a leader. Her Mother had respect for her.
‘... you will get up off that floor…”
She looks over Piltover from the destroyed Hexgates. She swallows her disgust. They are still pounding their closed fists against the chests, armour and weapons clanking on the floor. Her heartbeats match the rhythm. Ambessa places a long cape over her shoulders. It swallows her, she drowns and gasps for air in it.
“Your mother will have justice,” Ambessa says, and Caitlyn can feel the poison dripping from her lips to her shoulders. She stays rigid. This is the only way.
‘...and make your father and I so proud.’
She brings her fist to her chest, hitting it once. The pounding ceases around her.
‘Will this be enough, Mother?’ she thinks.
*****
The pounding starts again. Screeches of metal pierce her ears. Ambessa stands before her. Caitlyn is on her knees, a gun to her head. Maddie smiles and says something about warmth.
Vi is somewhere. She cares. She hopes Vi will survive because she won’t.
The bullet lodges itself in her head, she sputters. She thinks of powder blue eyes, of the Roman numeral number for six. She thinks of her mother and her earrings. Of the seafoam she basks she swam in. Is this enough?
Ambessa pulls her up by her ponytail, chuckling at her choking. Oblivion rings all around her. Caitlyn is not dead yet and she does not know why.
The last thing she sees is the knife in her eye. The last thing she feels is the knife to her abdomen.
An eye for an eye. An eye for a mother. An eye for the failure she has become.
Vi is shaking her, and she remembers how to breathe. She gasps for air. Her chest expands and she feels something wet against her face. She is sobbing. She is screaming. She is trembling.
It would never be enough.
“It’s alright, cupcake. I’m right here.” Vi holds her strong, her tattooed arms pressing into Caitlyn’s cheek. She keeps murmuring soft things, delicate things like Caitlyn would shatter into a million pieces if one word was misplaced.
Caitlyn lets Vi hold her. And she lets herself scream.
“Oh, Cait…” Vi soothes, rubbing her back. Her voice sounds choked up, sounds broken. Caitlyn feels the disgust rear its ugly head. Vi doesn’t need this.
And yet… she fractures further. She has no choice.
“I’m right here, baby. You’re safe. You’re with me.” Vi lulls her and coaxes her. She’s pressed so tightly against Vi’s chest that she follows the rhythm of her heartbeat.
Caitlyn finds the disgust in her stomach, in her chest, in her face, under her eyepatch and in her fingertips. She lets out a wail, a scream. She trembles in her Zaunite’s arms.
It will never be enough. Nothing will ever be enough.
She isn’t enough. Not for her mother, not for Vi, not for Piltover.
—----
Vi puts her back together in the morning, pulling her close and never letting go.
Caitlyn doesn’t want her to. She’s too fragmented, too empty. She is a boil of a human being. And Vi still whispers in her ear like she hung the moon.
“I’m worried about you, Cait,” Vi says, stroking Caitlyn’s fringe with the utmost care. Her skin is rough at her fingertips and her nails are blunt.
“Nothing will ever be enough… will it?” The blue-haired woman asks in a small wet voice, barely a whisper out of her mouth.
Vi sighs, in exhaustion or in speechlessness, Caitlyn isn’t sure. But for now, it feels like VI is breathing through the motions with her.
“I don’t know what to do anymore, Violet,” Caitlyn admits, like a deathbed confession, because right now it feels like another part of her is dying.
Caitlyn thinks that Vi would be silent, and would tell her to explain. What comes out of the brawler’s mouth is something unexpected.
“You don’t need to do anything anymore Cait.” Vi strokes her thumb down Caitlyn’s cheek. “You don’t need to be enough. You don’t need to rebuild Piltover or punish yourself anymore.”
Caitlyn sucks in a breath. Her left eye itches.
“Just be here… with me. If you spend your life chasing ghosts then you will never be free. Nothing will ever be enough. It’s just a fact. You need to let that go.”
For someone who grew up in Zaun, who grew up with permanent bloody knuckles, Vi’s words felt carefully stitched together like one of her mother’s dresses.
Nothing would ever be enough. No amount of disgust, or punishment. Nothing will ever undo all that has been done. If Vi could move on, so could she. If the world crumbles around them once more, she’d bury herself in Vi’s arms and wait out the storm.
—-----
Later, Caitlyn rests on Vi’s bare chest, tracing the numerous scars on her girlfriend’s chest.
She is still fractured, still piecing herself back together. The late afternoon twilight coats them both through Caitlyn’s windows. Vi smells of Caitlyn’s body lotion mixed with her musky deodorant.
“I think I’m going to talk to my father tomorrow.” The words are small, falling out of Caitlyn’s mouth like a stream.
Vi’s hand squeezes her bicep, lips touch the crown of her head.
“I’d like for you to be there.” The last trickle.
“Whatever you need, Cupcake. I’m the dirt under your nails.” An echo, a promise, a commitment.
Caitlyn chuckles, her smile growing as she feels the vibrations of Vi’s laugh under her head.
This is more than enough.
She tilts her head to stare at the seafoam in Vi’s eyes and dives in. She carefully removes her eyepatch, tossing it to the side.
Vi’s hand cups her cheek, and her scarred eyelid flutters.
The disgust boils in her stomach. Vi’s thumb ghosts the mottled skin. In these moments, Caitlyn removes all the quantifiable measures of her worth to the side. ‘Enoughs’ and punishments are silenced. This tenderness, this love, this hope.
This is all that matters. Even if Caitlyn Kiramman has to remind herself of it from time to time.
—----
The next day, Caitlyn eats two slices of toast. The disgust and guilt simmer in her belly. She does not succumb.
When she talks to her father he allows him to hug her. Allows him to refer her to a psychiatrist.
In the evening she lets Vi engulf her whole, her cries of pleasure echoing in the chamber between the two of them. She lets Vi tear off her eyepatch. She lets her see all that she has become. She lets herself feel loved.
The disgust lingers, swirling around behind her like a snake. The ghosts of the Kiramman mansion creak and groan in the floorboards wherever she walks. She lets them fester, lets them scald and burn. She lets them scream.
She holds them in her palms and lets them shatter, picking at the pieces and fusing them back together. They are her ghosts, her disgusting and revolting demons. She won’t ever be rid of them. She won’t ever be enough.
She breathes, and then she gets up off the floor. She accepts it. Her mother would be proud.