Chapter Text
The air was musty and dust-filled, only made worse by the boards Vi kicked away. She coughed a little before huffing some air out to get the cloud to blow away from her face. This place was still in shambles years after the war ended, but then who’s fault was that?
Vi looked around the bar. Most of the glassware and old bottles of alcohol had shattered and scattered all over the floor, crunching beneath her feet. There was only one table still upright in the main room, as the rest were all toppled over or broken from the last fights that happened here. Shreds of chairs and furniture and God only knew what else littered the room. The Last Drop was undoubtedly past its glory days, not that it didn’t have the opportunity to be something more.
It was only a few weeks after the war ended that Vi scraped together all her money to ensure the deed was in her name with no intention of making improvements or turning it into anything of her own. She bought it even in this state of decay and neglect. Caitlyn even gave her the last bit of money to make the whole deal possible. If there had been any doubt about how she factored into Cait’s life before then, it all dropped to the wayside after that gesture.
Caitlyn had never been particularly fond of Vi’s previous life, but seeing that she was willing to put her own money on the line to help her preserve this piece of it meant more than she could ever repay in kind. It was a piece of trust rebuilt and a sign of how much Cait cared. Hell, she offered to pay for the whole thing, but Vi didn’t want to take advantage like that. This was her past and her memories, and ideally, she would have taken it over on her own, but Cait had simply been the last piece to make it possible, which meant everything to her.
In the years that followed, more peace passed between Zaun and Piltover than she’d ever seen in her life thanks to shared voices taking equal part on the Council. It was something she heard pieces of here and there often as Caitlyn had recently been elected to a position on said Council months ago. Progress recovering from everything was taking its time, but outside of these walls, the Lanes were already unrecognizable from the place she grew up.
Plenty of land developers had approached her with deals to buy the plot and demolish the bar. They had visions of building this place up into something grand, but she rejected them all, keeping it as it was. She never bought the property for the investment, not that she ever knew it could be one, being the dump it was now. In the last year, as Zaun was built up around it, the Last Drop had even been deemed hazardous, slated to be demolished, and this is where Vi’s rarely seen lack of ethics popped up, using her place in the Enforcers to keep getting that date pushed further back. Cait even helped her out the last time, but she knew it couldn’t go on forever. It was finally time to address this mess.
She let out a sigh, dropping her gauntlets, and immediately she knew that was a mistake as an even larger dust cloud wafted out. Closing her eyes, she coughed, walking past it, and there she was, met with that dark stairwell she walked throughout her childhood. When she looked down, Powder stood there as a little girl, meeting her with her bright, curious gaze. Vi clamped her eyes shut as a breath caught in her chest, and when she opened them again, it was just that dark and empty stairwell again.
Every fiber of her being was telling her to run. This was exactly why she didn’t want to be here. It was too hard to confront what happened with Powder. She lost so much time with her sister, only to get her back right at the very end. How many things she still wanted to fix with her? How many things she still wanted to say? Even now, after years, sometimes she played out the conversations in her head, desperately trying to fix the past. What a beautiful tragedy it was to have gotten her back, only to have had her for such a short time.
Vi wasn’t lacking for courage in anything but this. She took a breath, mustering what she could, finally descending the stairs. Maybe those safety inspectors had a point because, with every step taken, there was a rattling in the supports, making dust fall from the ceiling. That wasn’t the part that concerned her in any of this, though, so she continued down, making her way to the room she and Powder shared as girls.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this area was nowhere near as damaged as the bar upstairs, but it was still just as musty. Looking around, she realized just how little they had growing up. Her life in Piltover now was quite different in contrast, making it feel that much more stark, but it had never mattered. They always had enough in each other and Vander, but right this second, it made her sad to think there wasn’t much of anything to confront other than these barren, dirty walls.
She searched around the room, not wanting to leave any corner untouched, but it wasn’t until she finally looked under their bunk that she caught a glimpse of something glinting in the dim light. Vi reached for it desperately until she finally gave up and moved the bed to the side.
Vi staggered with a breath caught in her chest when she finally saw it. Powder’s old stuffed rabbit, dirty like the rest of this place and worse for wear, but that image of Powder as a girl was back. Even though Vi had her own bed, she was in Powder’s anyway, holding her in her arms as she slept with this rabbit between them. It was so easy to remember the warmth and the tiny, shallow breaths. What she wouldn’t give to hold her sister in her arms again.
She didn’t know how much time passed staring at it, but eventually she reached down and took it in her hands, slumping down on the bed afterward. The glint in the button eyes stared back up at her as she wiped the dust off its face. That’s when she heard the mild and unmistakable footsteps coming down the stairs, characteristically Caitlyn’s.
By the time Vi looked up from the rabbit, Caitlyn was already standing there in her professional suit, which would undoubtedly get dirty down here if it somehow wasn’t already. Vi was expecting a scolding look for not having given word of where she went, but she was only met with sympathy.
“How’d you find me?” she asked with a weak smile, trying to play it all cool.
Caitlyn leaned against the wall, clearly not caring for the dirt. “Have I ever told you that you talk in your sleep?”
Vi sat up, her back straight and rigid, curious now. “No.”
Caitlyn nodded, letting out a sigh. “It’s usually rare, but you’ve been speaking more and more about Powder as the demolition date has been approaching. When you weren’t home after your shift, I had a feeling I’d find you here.”
Vi looked down at the rabbit again. “Sorry. I would have told you, but I wasn’t exactly planning this. I had a case nearby and figured it was time.”
Cait was slow in her walk over to the bed, sitting carefully beside her. Her hand was soft on her back, looking at her with nothing but a soft warmth. “It’s okay. I know what it took for you to come here.” She looked down at the rabbit in Vi’s hands. “Are you okay?”
“Not really.” Vi stared into those glinting button eyes for probably longer than what was warranted. If it still hurt this much after two years, she wasn’t sure if she ever would be, but then Cait understood that, too. They both wore their losses between the good moments. Vi saw it in the way Cait would stare at things throughout the house, gripped by long-held memories of Cassandra, and sometimes she thought it was a blessing she didn’t have those reminders around her everywhere to see. After the war, she’d offered plenty of times for them to find a new place of their own, but it was Caitlyn who had rejected. Vi could barely stand to see the sadness of it at times, but at a certain point, she had to give in to the fact that Cait might find something out of it she didn’t understand.
Caitlyn leaned against her. “Was this Powder’s?”
Vi’s thumb rubbed against the rabbit’s cheek, smudging the dirt into it further. “Yeah.”
“I hope you’ll take it with you.”
She imagined herself being gripped by the memories of this rabbit, like how Caitlyn got in their home, and part of her wanted to leave it here to be destroyed. Maybe then she’d have to move on and finally put all of this behind her. But then she thought of Caitlyn’s insistence on staying and how she wouldn’t change a thing. Maybe she didn’t understand it now, but what if she would, eventually? The last thing she wanted was to regret something she could never get back.
“I will.”
Soft lips were on her cheek, followed by Cait’s forehead resting against hers gently, and here in her safe hold, Vi could feel the dam being chipped away at, ready to burst, and maybe it was time for that, too. Maybe that was how she could get past this.
“I still see her, you know. As a little girl. I see all the mistakes I made. Every turn that went wrong. All the heartache I had the power to prevent if only things had gone a little differently.”
“You were a little girl yourself, Violet.”
There was a rational part of herself somewhere deep down that knew Cait was right. She often told her to be kinder to herself, but that was so hard to do when all she did was relive how everything could have been different.
“I failed her,“ Vi said, barely a whisper for fear her voice might break if she put more effort into it. “What does it mean that the moment I finally gave up is when she finally started to heal?”
Cait sat up, looking at her more directly, still gentle and caring. “It means you were both broken people, Violet. Bad things happened to both of you and most of it was out of your control. You can’t hold yourself responsible for all of it.”
At Vi’s silence, Cait continued. “I don’t think it was about you giving up. Jinx needed space and time to come to terms with herself. She needed to find that within herself. The timing was coincidental, or maybe she needed to be on her own to learn who she truly was inside, but it wasn’t for your lack of caring or pursuit. It’s just something she needed for herself.”
Again, deep down, she knew Cait was right. Maybe here, in this torment, was when she should finally start to accept it. She nodded weakly. “I miss it, you know. Powder, but also Vander. My mom. Family.“ She quickly turned to Cait, wanting to correct herself. “Not that I don’t see you that way.”
“It’s okay, Violet. I understand what you meant. You’re my family, too, but we both had families before us. There was history there. Love. We have that, too, of course, and I hope you know I wouldn’t exchange that for anything.”
“Me neither,“ Vi said, still in her quiet and weak voice, on the verge of trembling.
“But there was still something just a little different about what you meant, and I get that too. Something bigger than ourselves.”
Vi nodded, because that’s exactly what she meant. She stared down at the rabbit again, barely even noticing the long stretch of silence between them afterward, not entirely at her own behest. With that realization, she finally turned to Caitlyn, who was now searching for something in her mind.
“Perhaps now’s not the time to discuss this,“ Cait said carefully. “But there are other ways of having that family.”
Vi was struck with the insinuation. Neither of them had even come close to broaching such a subject. She wasn’t sure if Cait was the type to even want something like that. Their lives were so busy. Between work and finding their purpose after war and learning how to live again after everything, it wasn’t something she ever had the time to even consider.
“Is that something you want?“ Vi finally asked, feeling a little lighter with this abrupt change in direction.
Cait shrugged, looking more vulnerable than she’d seen in a while. “It’s been on my mind a bit, I suppose. I was at the fountain the other day, and I had this memory of when I was small. I was trying to reach over the ledge to play in the water, but I was too short. There was a distinct look in my mother’s eyes like she was about to protest, and I was ready for a scolding, but she surprised me, sitting at the edge, holding me up. She even splashed me a little in the face.”
Cait turned toward her with a weak smile as she recounted it. “I’m never going to get my mother back, but… that doesn’t mean I have to miss that kind of relationship forever.”
“You want to have a baby.“ There was a time she wasn’t sure she’d ever utter those words, but now it wasn’t even a question.
Cait turned away again, the subject clearly too raw and new. “I think I do. It doesn’t have to be now, but I suppose the way you were speaking made me wonder if you might want that, too. Someday.”
Vi stared at Cait, who was finally turning back to her. Maybe the things she had been feeling with all of this were something like Cait described, too. She missed that relationship with Vander, having that role model to look up to. She missed being that to Powder. But while Cait was hoping to recreate that bond, Vi could only think about how she wanted to correct her wrongs, and part of her feared she’d always be living up to that with a new child who didn’t deserve the generational trauma.
“Can I think about it?”
“Of course,“ Cait said, her brow ever so slightly furrowed to emphasize how serious she was. “This is a topic that deserves a lot of thought. Especially some thought unclouded by all of this.” She gestured out to the room and the stairs and the bar beyond to articulate what she meant: without the burden of the past lingering so heavily on her.
Vi smiled, and the wisdom Cait had picked up through the years and the support she provided so unconditionally now made her believe someday she would be okay with the thought of a child.
“Besides, I think I’d prefer it if you made an honest woman out of me before we confronted that,“ Cait said, more joking and prodding than anything else, and Vi appreciated the mood shift even more.
“What about me?”
Cait leaned in, waiting with her lips near Vi’s. “We can make honest women out of each other, then.”
Cait closed the distance, brushing their lips together, and for the first time since entering this God-forsaken building, Vi felt safe and emboldened enough to confront the memories. And just maybe, confront the idea of making new ones.