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Vi hates crying. The pressure of a splitting headache and a painful, weighty ache in her throat only make the grief feel heavier. She'd rather settle for bruised knuckles and blackened eyes. At least those deter people. Tears draw spectators, questions of whether she's alright or opportunists with a sharp eye for weakness.
At least she's alone here at the top of the air shaft, lying on the platform that groans under her weight. It could fall at any moment, throw her into the same free fall that just swallowed her sister and the twisted remains of her father. The idea of plummeting into the dark belly of the place feels like relief. She doesn't move.
“Vi?”
She recognizes Ekko’s voice from far above her. She doesn’t respond, hoping he gives up and moves on.
“Powd-,” he stops himself. “Jinx?”
A fresh wave of tears surges forward at the mention of her name, and Vi can't silence the quiet breath of her sobs. It reverberates in the empty space around her, and now the buzzing sound of Ekko’s board is coming closer. The platform whines again.
“Vi! Where's-”
“They're gone,” she rasps, cutting him off before he can say her name again. Ekko’s eyes go wide and watery before he screws them shut and shakes his head. He hovers closer, holding out his hand.
“You better get on, or we'll lose you, too. This thing doesn't look stable.”
Ekko stares, determination fading into horror as the seconds tick by, and Vi remains motionless.
“Come on,” he urges, trying to cover the panic in his tone with a veneer of calm like he's trying to coax a scared animal out of hiding. “Just get on, we'll figure the rest out later-
Vi laughs bitterly, the sound thick and nasal through her tears.
“There's nothing to figure out. I don't have anyone left-”
“What about Cait?”
Ekko seems to realize that was the wrong thing to say as Vi curls in on herself and covers her face.
After they fell, Vi tried to get to Caitlyn the moment she could breathe well enough to stand. She was scrabbling her way up to the shelf above when she saw her lying on the ground far below. She looked so small and so pale from up there. Vi waited for her to move, stomach dropping with each second she lay still. She stopped breathing herself when she saw them draw a sheet around her, how quickly blood blossomed on it as it soaked in. She turned away then and couldn't watch them draw it over her face.
After that, all of her strength left her, leaching out like the puddle of blood Cait was lying in, and she dropped back down.
“I'm sorry,” he tells her, voice somber. He really means it but it's not much comfort now.
“Yeah, me too.”
“I'm still not leaving you here, though.”
“Fuck off, Ekko,” she mutters, weak and muffled from under her hands.
Ekko throws up his hands, frustrated and frantic.
“No, I'm not doing this again,” he grits his teeth before taking a deep breath. He's trying to use that soothing tone again, the one that makes her feel cornered.
“Listen, I've been to a universe that you weren't in-”
She has no idea what he's talking about but that urge in her to push back, defend herself against anything and anyone who gets too close while she's wounded, is powerful and she snaps at him before she can stop herself.
“Bet everyone was glad, huh?”
“No! No one was glad that you weren't there,” he insists, raising his voice just a little. “You're both the same-”
“What?”
Now, she's genuinely confused.
“It took me about fifteen tries to get your sister to stay alive long enough to hear me out and help us today. If she hadn't listened none of us would be here. We needed her here just like we need you-”
“The fight’s over now. You don't need me anymore.”
It's so quiet she almost misses it.
“Yeah, I do.”
Vi can't help but look at him even as she continues arguing.
“Bullshit, you have a small city of Firelights around you.”
“One that I'm running! They need me to be strong. The kids we take in? They're scared, they're suffering. I can't add to that.”
Vi knows the feeling, the urge to smother her own fears to put on a braver face for them.
“You're the only one I’ve got left who doesn't need that from me. You're the only one who remembers where we came from, everyone we lost-”
His voice cracks at the same time Vi’s resolve does. She digs the heels of her hands into her eyes and sighs. The effort of picking herself up is agony, but the idea of leaving him alone, suspended in midair, is just devastating enough to win out. The platform squeals and dips as she stands and grabs his hand. He yanks her forward, and the board teeters for a moment under her new weight before it steadies. He wraps his arms around her, vice-like, and she returns it even as her injured shoulder throbs at the movement.
“Okay, little man,” she concedes, and he buries his face in her shoulder at his old nickname. “Since you want me to stick around that bad.”
He nods against her jacket before he turns, pointing the board down.
“I’m getting you on solid ground before you change your mind and do something stupid,” he bites, but the trembling in his voice cushions it.
“You know me too well.”
Something isn’t right when they land, something more than the obvious heaps of rubble and limp figures scattered around the streets. She’s headed straight for where she last saw Caitlyn, even as she’s sure she won’t be able to take seeing her. Ekko quirks a brow at her.
“You gonna be okay? We don’t have to-”
Vi hunches her shoulders in answer and keeps walking. She can smell the blood before she turns the corner and she has to swallow the wave of nausea spinning in her gut. But when they arrive, the only thing there is the puddle of blood itself. Caitlyn is gone. Vi missed them take her away and she can’t decide if she’s grateful for it or heartbroken by it.
“Vi, I’m going to need you to listen to me without losing your shit. Can you do that?” Ekko asks. Vi looks at him and a cold wave of panic numbs her. She doesn’t think she can handle anything else. Who else did they lose that’s going to send her spiraling?
“Spit it out,” she demands, unable to handle any kind of suspense. Ekko holds her shoulders with a strength she didn’t know he had in him as if bracing himself.
“It looks like they haven’t moved the dead. So she might-”
When the realization hits her Vi wrenches out of his grasp, and blindly takes off running. She feels sorry for him for an instant. She’s always out-muscled him; he didn’t stand a chance. She can hear his frustrated muttering behind her.
“What did I just say?”
The hum of his board catches up with her, and he blocks her. She’s an instant from knocking him out of the way when he turns and offers his hand again.
“Are you gonna get on the board and let me help you, or do you want to exhaust yourself before you even find her?”
She growls under her breath but takes his hand and lets him pull her onto the board for the second time today.
In hindsight, Ekko was right, as much as Vi is loath to admit it. He takes them up above the tops of the buildings, high enough that they can see a stream of soldiers running between medical tents and what survived of the closest hospital, assisting the wounded who can walk and carrying those who can’t. She doesn’t see her, but at least they have a starting point.
Ekko tries the tents first. The moment they’re close enough to the ground, Vi barrels forward, straight for an enforcer who pales the closer she gets.
“Where-”
He just points and stutters, “H-hospital.”
Their destination is close enough this time that she actually can outrun Ekko long enough to get in the doors, tearing past staff and their pleas with her to stop. Ekko is behind her, muttering apologies in her wake. All she can do is run and call for her.
Someone finally answers, but it’s Mel instead, half-melancholy and half-disapproving when she finds her.
“Vi, slow down,” she commands but Vi continues forward.
“Is she in there?”
Mel follows her eyes to a door behind them.
“Yes, but you can’t-”
Vi only ignores Mel for a few steps before she hits a nearly invisible barrier. When she notices a slight golden shimmer to it, one that matches a glow that’s beaming gently in Mel’s eyes, she pushes against it.
“Let me in,” she growls.
“I will not. She’s in surgery,” Mel answers, calm but stony.
“So what?!”
“So if you want her to stay alive, you’ll let them work.”
Fatigue is starting to overtake her just like Ekko said it would but she still leans stubbornly against Mel’s shield. It’s Ekko’s voice that starts to make its way through the blind panic buzzing in her.
“That’s Piltie for she’s alive but she’s not going to stay that way if you don’t get your shit together,” he tells her. The honesty and irreverence of it outweighs her desperation long enough for her exhaustion to take her down. She slumps in a chair behind them and Mel relaxes. Ekko settles next to her with a huff.
“I told you not to lose your shit,” he tells her, but he leans his shoulder against hers. The weight is welcome and grounding.
“Starting to regret saving me?” she quips, panting. He laughs quietly and shakes his head.
“No.”
“Give it time,” she winks as she settles in for a long wait.
Mel takes her leave once she’s satisfied that Vi isn’t going to charge into an operating room. Ekko is still here, quiet and constant.
“You can go if you need to,” she tells him after an hour but he shakes his head.
“Gotta make sure you don’t do something stupid, so I’m stuck here until we know if she’s okay.”
Vi doesn’t need to say that she’s grateful for the company.
Tobias drifts in at some point. He gives them both a curious, if guarded, look before settling across from them.
“So that time thing doesn’t go forward, does it?” Vi breaks this silence after a while when the quiet becomes too thick. Ekko smirks, tipping his head to rest against the wall behind them.
“Probably not. Not really worth finding out.”
Vi gives him a curious look.
“Let’s just say Heimerdinger found out the hard way what going back too far does,” he answers before miming an explosion with his hands. Vi stares open-mouthed. “Don’t worry, we went back again to fix it.”
Vi can’t help but laugh a little and Ekko joins her. Spurred by their laughter, Tobias reaches into his jacket pocket, setting a deck of cards on the table between them, a silent question. Vi shrugs and moves to sit on the floor. Tobias opens the box and shuffles them as Ekko moves his chair closer, turning it so he can sit on it with his arms draped on the backrest.
Ekko has wiped the floor with both of them twice by the time a weary doctor approaches them. Vi is so relieved to hear that Cait made it through that she almost misses it.
“We weren’t able to save her eye, but-”
Vi loses the rest of what she tells them. It must be the first Tobias has heard of it, too, the way he pales as she speaks.
Vi lets Tobias visit her first, only because she doesn’t want to come apart in front of him. His eyes are pink and swollen when he leaves, but he stands with his hand on the doorknob for a moment.
“You’ll stay with her?”
Vi tries to answer jokingly.
“Like my life depends on it,” she answers, but she already knows that the tremor in her voice gives her away.
At first, Vi can hardly pick her out among the swathes of bandages and sterile, white sheets. She still looks smaller than she should, and too still. But as Vi moves closer, she can see the rise and fall of her chest. She reaches out, delicately strokes her cheek with the back of her fingers and sighs, relieved, to find it still warm. Her relief is short-lived as she realizes how close she was to losing her. Bruising peeks out from the edges of the bandage covering her eye. Her breath is shallow, favors her right side, and a feather-light brush of Vi’s fingers over her hospital gown meets the tell-tale resistance of gauze. One of the lines taped to her arm is crimson and Vi realizes it’s slowly feeding blood to a vein.
“They did a number on you, huh?” she asks, so quiet even Caitlyn might not hear it if she were awake.
“I still don’t get what you see in her,” Ekko tells her from the doorway, and Vi looks at him incredulously. She knows he doesn’t mean because of the way Caitlyn currently looks, but the timing is spectacularly awful. Ekko stutters when he realizes how it sounds.
“Wait, I didn’t mean-”
She lets him squirm for a moment before she laughs weakly, the feeling strange in her belly.
“Who knew you were so shallow?”
He rolls his eyes.
“I just meant I’m glad she’s okay. For your sake.”
He leans in the doorframe, staying with her for a few minutes before straightening.
“I’ll probably-” he points a thumb behind them.
“Yeah,” she nods. He turns to leave at the same time she moves to look at Caitlyn again. Even with their backs to each other she can’t let him go without a word.
“Hey, Ekko?”
The squeak of his shoes on the tile floor as he pauses.
“Thanks for staying with me.”
“Yeah. You, too.”
Vi remembers Mel coming in to sit with them but doesn’t realize she’s fallen asleep until the quiet murmur of conversation starts to wake her. She’s about to let sleep overtake her again when she realizes that one of the voices is Cait’s – quiet and hoarse and the only thing she’s wanted to hear all day.
Mel takes her leave quickly, and as soon as she’s gone, Vi can’t hold her tears any longer. Caitlyn cradles her cheek with a trembling hand, murmuring reassurances, comforting shushes.
“I thought you were dead,” Vi manages between gasps.
“I thought I was, too,” she nods, solemn.
“I saw you just lying there after my sister fell. I thought I’d lost all of you-”
Caitlyn searches her face before she realizes what Vi can’t sputter into words. She tips her forehead to rest on Vi’s, holds her as close as she can with what little strength she has.
“I almost let myself fall, too.”
The only way she can tell that Cait heard is a tightening of her fingers that are laced in her hair.
“Thank goodness you didn’t,” she whispers, more breath than voice.
“Thank Ekko. He wouldn’t leave without me.”
“I’m in debt to him too, then,” she murmurs. Vi pulls back, questioning, and Cait smiles sadly. “I told you I owe Mel my life. It sounds like I owe Ekko yours.”
Vi can only put her ear to her chest and listen to her heart mingle with the quiet sound of her breath.
***
Vi goes to visit Ekko at least a few times a week. At first, it was difficult for Caitlyn to convince her that she wouldn’t perish without her for a few hours, and their goodbyes were full of reassurances. Now that she’s feeling closer to her normal self, it’s slightly easier. Slightly.
What might’ve been more difficult today was convincing Vi to let her come along. She doesn’t intend to stay long, just long enough to say her piece.
Ekko’s familiar nod to Vi darkens into a guarded stillness when he sees her. She can hardly blame him. He levels an exasperated look at Vi who shrugs, disarming.
“I don’t know what you want, but-”
“I’m not here to ask anything of you,” she assures him. He doesn’t believe her yet; that much is clear in the set of his shoulders. “I just wanted to thank you in person.”
“You didn’t need to do that,” he answers but it sounds more like a rebuff than acceptance.
“I owe you her life and my happiness. That’s not something I take lightly.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
“I know. I’m aware that I haven’t earned it. But I’m still grateful, and I’m here if you ever need anything,” she tells him, her resolve faltering around the end of her sentence. “N-not that you would, just-”
Ekko tilts his head, considering her with a combination of interest and disdain.
“If you wanna put your money where your mouth is-”
He nearly spits the word money but Caitlyn doesn’t flinch. He has every right to distrust her, and she isn’t going to try to beg for forgiveness that isn’t earned.
“-we could use supplies. Medicine, rations, water.”
“It’s done.”
He sucks his teeth.
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
She nods.
“I’ll just need specifics. Quantities, what medications you’re in need of-”
Ekko jerks his head towards the massive tree that shields them from the midday sun and starts walking before she can finish. Caitlyn looks between him and Vi, confused.
“Sh-should I leave, or?”
Vi laughs quietly and hooks her arm with Cait’s.
“He’s inviting you in. Probably to give you a shopping list.”
She wordlessly follows them into something of an office. It’s a cluttered room that looks like chaos to Caitlyn, but Ekko seems to know where everything is. Once they get talking strategy, the conversation flows more easily. They pore over the papers scattered across the small table he uses as a desk.
“These are no problem, but there is a broader spectrum antibiotic powder that might be more efficient. You’d just have to reconstitute it-”
“And put it where? No refrigeration down here.”
“Ah, yes, I hadn’t thought about that. Oh, may I make a suggestion here?”
Ekko says nothing, just waits for her to continue.
“Your first aid is wonderful for scrapes, blood, that sort of thing. But you’re lacking orthopedics. I can get you splints, tape, stronger bandages, braces-”
He snorts, amused.
“If you’re buying.”
Vi walks in, having left them to their conversation in favor of crashing a training session. She has the beginnings of a black eye. Caitlyn sighs and wordlessly reaches up to touch the reddened cheekbone under it, a combination of sympathy and disapproval. Vi shrugs while Ekko rolls his eyes.
“You deserve each other.”
Caitlyn gives him a puzzled look, unsure whether to take it as a compliment. Ekko smirks and taps a finger to his left eye and then points to the patch Cait wears and Vi’s bruised cheek in turn.
“You both block with your face.”
She’s not sure, but she thinks the way Vi shoves him playfully means it was a compliment.