Chapter Text
Once again, Caitlyn is pulled reluctantly out of her sleep at the insistence of her alarm. It had gone off two times before, and was ringing again, but not because she had procrastinated and set it back. Every morning, these three alarms went off in deliberate succession, one at five thirty, one at five forty five, and one at six.
Sleep was her haven. Even nightmares were easier and safer than anything the waking world had to offer, in her opinion. So she required a bit of coaxing on the part of a machine to be dragged out of it.
She stands in front of her grand, gilded vanity after leaving the comfort of her bed, and contemplates the dark circles under her eyes.
She got enough sleep, mostly. Sometimes too much, but had found exhaustion continued to plague her no matter how rested she was. She’d become adept at the art of brushing concealer over an exhausted face, twisting the art of makeup into a tool to hide her enervation. She thought about the alarm clock, whose lot in life was to sit on a bedside table, serve its repetitive everyday task, and was then left on the table until it rang again the next day.
Once she finishes dressing and readying for the day, she closes the door between the seclusion of her bedroom and the quiet daylit hallway of the Kiramman Manor.
Generations of her forebears had lived here, spent their lives within this collection of rooms and halls. There had always been Kirammans here, since the establishment of Piltover over two hundred years ago. The children of this house never grew up and moved out, rather staying within its embrace into their adulthood and growing back into the house like corpses being swallowed by the earth.
There were times, Caitlyn knew, in the Manor’s history, that four generations had lived within its walls. Now, though, and for almost all of her memory, there were only a small handful of occupants. It left many rooms empty and full of echoes, and a lonely feeling seeping out of the walls.
It might have been hard to navigate, had you not been born and raised within its walls. But Caitlyn could weave throughout most of the manor with her eyes closed and a hand tied behind her back.
Down the hall to the right, descend the staircase, through the foyer, and another right turn into the dining room. Breakfast was held at the same time every day, save for either interpersonal or national holidays, a buffet style spread prepared and presented by one of their three in-house chefs. There was never much variance in the offerings spread across the table, you weren’t expected to take a sample from everything, but choose what suited your palette on the day.
Her parents were already seated together at the table, a bowl of porridge going cold on the table in front of her father while he inspected the morning paper, and her mother spreading marmalade over a piece of buttered toast with a hunting knife that would have fit in better mounted in a shadow box on the wall. It’s a encapsulation of her parents really, and enough to bring a wry smile to her face.
No one else is present at the table.
Caitlyn finds her place at it, selecting a poached egg from a platter, situating it on a hearty piece of bread, and dousing it with a completely unneeded amount of hollandaise sauce.
“Good morning dear,” Tobias greets, looking up from his paper. “Sleep well?”
“Fine,” Caitlyn remarks, cutting into her meal distractedly. “Did Ember stop in?”
“Not today,” Cassandra comments, having finished misusing her knife and tucked it somewhere. “I think she left this morning before breakfast was out, she must have gotten something to eat in town.”
“I’m sure,”
“Always busy, the both of you.”
“Speaking of which,” Caitlyn’s father interjects. “How has the hiring process been going, Caity? Your mother mentioned that it was a much more intensive process than the council originally planned for.”
Caitlyn sighs and massages her temples dramatically. “I told the council when I made the request that it wasn’t going to be as easy a process as they thought. The Wardens have been chronically understaffed since I took over as Sheriff. People either don’t want to work under me and what I want the force to look like, or I have to fire them because they’re too stupid to realize that I won’t put up with the same tomfoolery as my predecessor. I only have a handful of officers left who worked under Markus. I’ve gotten a few good recruits, but they and anyone who’s left from the Enforcers are scraping the bottom of the barrel to keep shifts covered. And I face the same thing trying to bring people in as new hires that I have to deal with within my own ranks. Most of the people who interview for the position aren’t people I trust with the new vision of the Wardens.”
“I sincerely hope it gets easier for you, dear.” Tobias replies, his eyebrows tightening in concern and a light burst of comforting pheromones suddenly added to the air. “All of that extra work being thrust onto you is surely exhausting. Maybe today’s interviews will be different. ”
Caitlyn finishes her breakfast in silence, needing to move somewhat quickly to get to the station before the shift changes. Her parents move on to discussing a new hydraulic lift that they’re apparently building to make the trip between the twin cities easier. It sounds to Caitlyn like the increase in ease is going to be quite menial for all of the labor, hours and money being poured into the project, but she supposes that the intention of the project is in the right place. If it brings even a modicum more legitimate commerce to Zaun it will probably be worth it.
After wishing her parents a good day and exiting the grounds of the manor, Caitlyn begins her daily walk from the upper circles of Piltover that contain mostly the mansions of the great houses, parks, and in some areas tranquil art studios or inventing laboratories. It’s static up here, quiet. The residential nature of the area means that the quiet is intended, and the money of the people who live here makes sure that it stays that way.
There’s a fountain that she passes every day, an enormous, intricate thing, depicting a larger than life sized horse cast in bronze, prancing within the water well of the fountain. It’s surrounded by a haphazard frozen firework of metal, which the water spouted from the fountain drips onto languidly instead of falling and splashing back into the well. It’s a beautiful feat of art and engineering, but Caitlyn doesn’t like it. It was made to bring life to the street and its surroundings without introducing noise to the atmosphere. To her, it seems to make the silence it was designed to keep louder. The square could have done with the sound of water gurgling.
The Hall of Law is set into the commerce district like a jewel set into a ring, at its very heart and incapable of being removed without leaving a gap. The purpose of this is two fold; the station being in the commerce district makes it accessible, easy to access for anyone who might want to do so, and since the most crime does happen in the midst of the district, it’s often closer to where things the Wardens need to be involved in are occurring.
The walk there brought Caitlyn past flower shops and confectioneries, each fashioned into their craft’s own version of showcasing affluence and artistry. The two qualities that define Piltover, that it values above all else.
The Hall of Law is an imposing building, in a way. Jutting up to split a street and become its focal point. Polished, scalloped steps spill down from the entrance, and there’s brass inlaid into everything it is even somewhat tasteful to have it. There’s also what a native Piltovan might call ‘rustic charm’, in description of the building’s somewhat dated style and composition.
Any intimidation or beauty that Caitlyn had ever found in the building had long since faded, however. Now, any emotions elicited by the Hall were simply linked to any emotions she held for her work, spanning from excitement around the time of a big discovery or bust, to the exhausted disinterest she felt for it now, burnt out from the hiring process.
As the heavy door swings shut behind her, Caitlyn enters her workplace. She passes by the front desk, waving slightly at Officer Kepple who was manning it, and veering to the right and into the wing of the building, away from the more general and legal parts of it to where the Wardens made their home.
The second she's properly in her workplace and on the clock, she hears the patter of small, inhuman feet approaching her that give away their owner’s identity.
The deputy sheriff position had been glaringly vacant for the whole of Caitlyn’s time as Sheriff. She had been utterly unable to find anyone she trusted to fill the position, and the one person that she routinely offered it to was content to go rounds with her for turning it down.
That person, Officer James Statton Harknor, was now standing to her left, bushy ginger and white ears twitching in idle irritation. While the Yordle was determined to deny Caitlyn’s offers of the deputy position, until she found someone else to give it too, he had ended up basically fulfilling its duties anyway. He was one of the few holdouts left in the force from the Enforcers that Caitlyn trusted, and by far the most senior of those.
“Good morning Sheriff!” The Yordle greets from under his bushy mustache. “Busy with hire interviews again today?”
“Morning, Harknor. Yes, unfortunately. Maybe someday we’ll have enough bodies in here that I won’t have to constantly bother with this whole process.”
“I’m sure we’ll get some rookies to stick with it eventually,” He assures, though Caitlyn suspects he’s less certain than he sounds. He’s been here just as long as she has, fighting against the battering tides of the stigma against the Enforcers and the ones within them.
“I’ll go over the patrol schedules for this shift and the next before I go get started with the interviews, they’re liable to drag on for a while.”
Harknor lets out a mirthless little chuckle and shoots Caitlyn a nod and a sympathetic glance as they part. He knows how damn stressful that process is to her. Nobody wants to spend their day defending the institution that she’s trying to build from tools who couldn’t understand prejudice if it smacked them in the nose.
She quickly makes her way into the office to sort out the day’s schedules, hoping to give herself a little extra time to prepare a coffee before the interviews.
As expected, it doesn’t go well. It goes rather dismally, in fact. Most of her new potential recruits these days are young, brazen alphas from upper middle class Piltovan families who have exactly zero perspective, and even less respect for either authority or impotence.
Despite the coffees she’d spent the day nursing and the breathing exercises she’d forced herself to perform between interviews, there’s a killer tension headache pounding behind Caitlyn’s eyes. She hides a lot of tension in her neck, and it causes headaches of this nature often enough to be seriously aggravating. She has a schedule with a masseuse to get the tension relieved on a regular basis, but it’s looking like she needs to book an extra appointment.
When she first inherited the grand office at the back of the bullpen, Caitlyn had used to loathe the paperwork. Accident and ticket reports, officer accounts, patrol notes. All that needed to be read over, signatures added and in some cases edited and corrected. But now, with the weight of the interviews straining on her, it was a relief to be able to sink into the mind numbing thoughtlessness of the paperwork on her desk for the rest of the day.
There’s exhaustion behind her eyes as Caitlyn walks the path back to Upper Piltover and the Kiramman home. Some days this walk is difficult because of physical exhaustion, when she’s been doing field work or training exercises. But more often, it’s a more mental form of exhaustion, with the daily monotony and repetitiveness of the walk back and forth from the station, back to the manor, repeat. She once again thinks of the alarm clock that sits beside her bed, doomed to forever fulfill its one fated task and then be placed back upon her bedside table and be forgotten about until it performs the same exact task the next day.
Perhaps tomorrow morning, when the alarm clock rang, Caitlyn would throw it across the room and break it to bring silence instead of tapping the button to turn it off. Maybe it would be a sort of positive self fulfilling prophecy, that breaking the cycle of the clock that she had accidentally come to equate with herself would mean she found a way to break out of her own cycle of monotony.
She passes the fountain of the horse again, still menacing in its serenity, in its insistence.
Upon entering her home, Caitlyn unbuckles her boots and tucks them into the closet in the foyer. She'd always been in that habit, taking her shoes off when entering a home, even though her parents had never mandated it of her. She suspected that it was because she loathed the sound of the boots that had long been her preferred footwear clacking on the marble floors and echoing against the vaulted ceilings of her home. Most homes didn't have those things, Caitlyn was worldly enough to know that, but the habit remained even when the sensory experience didn't.
There's a section of the house that has been primarily dedicated to Caitlyn, along with the bedroom that she'd occupied her whole life. There was also a bathroom, a study, and a separate pair of offices that sat directly opposed from one another in the hall.
All of those rooms aside from one had simply been dedicated to Caitlyn's use as she had grown to have uses for them, there was enough space within the manor for her to have them, and no one else to need them. The other, the additional office, had been added after her mating, and belongs rather explicitly to someone else.
When Caitlyn enters that room, she finds her mate seated at the desk, back turned to her. Caitlyn can tell from the movements of her arm and the sounds of a pen scratching on paper that she's writing, likely some form of political notice or draft of a bill to take to the council.
How Caitlyn's mother had rejoiced when she had announced that she was being courted by a politician. Cassandra had always hoped for Caitlyn to take her place on the council, or take after her interest in politics, but had eventually grown to be content with her daughter's disinterest. It had, however, brightened her tremendously to be able to share it with her daughter's mate, if not Caitlyn herself.
"Ember," Caitlyn starts, hovering behind her mate, hoping to get her attention without starling her.
"Oh, afternoon, darling," The alpha responds to her name, glancing over her shoulder. "Are you home early today?"
"No, slightly late, actually," Caitlyn responds, glancing at the clock on the wall, leading her mate's eyes there as well.
"Oh, hm, I must have gotten caught up with this. I've been fighting with this proposal for quite some time. It's giving me hell."
"I'm sorry to hear that. I'd ask what about it is troubling you, but you know I willfully don't understand a word of political jargon."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Ember laughs, turning golden eyes full of mirth towards her mate. "You give the council trouble every time you clash with them. I agree with your mother that you would have been an excellent politician, had you the heart for it."
Caitlyn shrugs helplessly. "I'm not made to spend my days arguing. I suppose I can when it's needed, especially for a goal I'm passionate about, but I do hate it."
"I know. I'm so glad that you've been able to so staunchly resist pursuing things in your life that don't bring you joy."
Caitlyn smiles, raises her eyebrows to give the impression of mirth, and makes a conscious choice to change the subject. "I think dinner should be prepared at this hour, would you like to join us in the dining room tonight?"
"Ah, no, not tonight, love. I do really need to finish this proposal. Would you be able to save a portion for me and have your mother bring it up when you're finished? I'd like to review some of this with her."
She can't keep her eyebrows from falling from their arranged place, but Caitlyn maintains the smile as she responds, "Of course. I'll do that. I'll see you later."
Ember leans up for a moment, and Caitlyn cranes her neck to allow her to place a chaste kiss on her mate mark before tuning to descend back to the ground floor. Of course, she hadn't truly been expecting Ember to agree to attend dinner, especially not while she had something that she was working on, but a part of her had been hopeful.
No matter. This meant that the discussion over dinner would not revolve around politics and the latest musings of the council, which was a silver lining. Caitlyn had watched Ember and her mother spend hours chattering and gossiping about their work, and though she enjoyed seeing her loved ones passionate, the subject matter could become truly exhausting very quickly.
True to her timing, the evening meal is set out upon the table in the dining room. It's not a truly exorbitant amount of food, by Piltover's standards. There's a larger dining room, much fancier and further away from the kitchen than this one, for entertaining. But the meals served here, at this table with comfortable, personalized chairs and cozy lighting, are only ever enough portions for four people.
A large savory pie of ground venison and mushrooms is tonight's main course, supplemented by a light, leafy salad, bread, and a board with a variety of cheeses arranged on it. The smell of the mushroom sauce wafting from the pie is heavenly, and Caitlyn feels a pang of hunger creep up on her.
Her parents are already seated, though were apparently waiting for their daughter to arrive at the table before portioning out their meals.
"There you are, darling!" Tobias says, patting the chair next to him that they all think of as Caitlyn's seat. "We were beginning to think that we'd be missing you for dinner this evening."
"Oh, no. I would hate to miss a meal made with fresh venison," Caitlyn replies earnestly as she sits. A family of marksmen knew the value of fresh, wild meat. "I went to visit with Ember for a moment after I got home from the office. She sends her regards, apparently there's an important proposal that she's drafting that's keeping her from us tonight." She turns her gaze directly towards her mother. "She requested that I save her a portion and ask you to maybe visit her in her office later and deliver it, she thought that you might be able to assist her. "
"Oh, of course. That's something the two of you have always had in common, it's impossible to drag you out of your work when you're deeply invested in something. I'll head up there after dinner and see what I can do."
The meal is mostly peaceful after that, the urge to converse momentarily overcome by the quality of the food. True to Caitlyn's assumption, the venison is perfect. She'll have to make sure to find who among the culinary staff cooked this and complement them.
"How was everything at work today, Caitlyn?" Tobias asks at some point, breaking the quiet. "Have you made any progress on your understaffing situation?"
Caitlyn grimaces into her salad. "I had some more interviews for potential trainees today, actually. It's not going well, in all honesty. For every genuine recruit we get, there are ten more who just want a job that they think is going to be easy, or they want the job that they would have had under my predecessor and don't care that we've moved out of that barbaric system. It's exhausting to have to expend so much effort to come back with so few results. I wasn't impressed by a single person that I interviewed today. I'm not sure what to do."
"Well," Cassandra starts, leaning her head in her hand thoughtfully. "One of the problems that you're fighting is the endemic prejudice that Piltover harbors towards Zaun, no? That prejudice was fostered in the wardens for a long time."
"Yes, certainly. It's one of the things that bothers me most."
"Have you considered perhaps expanding your search for recruits outside of Piltover, then? Adding Zaunites to the force seems like a good way to both add bodies to it that aren't going to be affected by the prejudice that you're trying to outrun, and would send a message about the new goals and ethics of the Wardens."
Her mother has a real point, and Caitlyn bites her lip in contemplation as she thinks on it.
"You know, I hadn't really considered it because of the animosity that most native Zaunites still hold for the Wardens, but it does make a certain amount of sense. I suspect it will be harder than just asking Zaunites to start volunteering, though.”
"That does make it slightly more difficult, you're right. Perhaps you could endeavor to find a Zaun native who you could build a relationship with, someone who really believed in your cause who could handle relations down there as well as bring in more recruits."
Caitlyn nods, excited by the new prospect. "It certainly has promise in theory. I'll of course have to review the logistics and make time for the project, but it's a start in the right direction and that's more than I feel like I've had in forever."
"Well, I'm glad I brought it up," Cassandra says, gifting her daughter a small smile. "I had better bring this food up to your mate before it gets too cold. She could use a distraction, I think. Maybe we'll end the day with both of you having made potential breakthroughs in your work."
As her parents excuse themselves from the dinner table, Caitlyn also leaves it, wandering back upstairs and into her office. She drains a cup of tea while distractedly cleaning her rifle. She's been putting off going and having it truly serviced, the chamber has started clicking unnaturally when it's reloaded, but for now more frequent cleanings keeps her from having to deal with weapon mechanics. It takes longer than she means for it to, her brain still chasing its tail about the staffing situation.
Frustrated with her brain's inability to focus on the task at hand and hoping that a mix of the physical exhaustion and serotonin release will set her mind at ease, Caitlyn moves into her regular workout routine. For some reason it always surprises people how seriously Caitlyn takes her physical state, as if she could tote her rifle around or be comfortable doing field work at all if she didn't look after her physical condition.
She meditates for twenty minutes afterwards for good measure.
After feeling that she's sufficiently exercised her body and mind, slightly sweaty and craving hot water for her pleasantly burning muscles, she sets about drawing a bath for herself. Caitlyn is a fan of fruity bath salts and luxuriant shampoos. If she’s going to have the bedroom with a conjoined bathroom complete with a gilded claw foot tub, she might as well take advantage of it to soothe her sore muscles and tired mind.
Once finished bathing and wrapped in a silken robe, she reaches for a specific drawer in her bedside table as she reenters her bedroom from the conjoined bathroom, hair still wet and silky soft from the bath. The drawer had been specifically chosen because Caitlyn found it to be the least suspicious drawer contained within the four drawer apparatus of the bedside table. There was an identical one on Ember's side of the bed. The first drawer was way too conspicuous, would be the first one someone might open. And besides, Caitlyn used it to hold things like a vial of pills that made it easier to sleep when she was having nightmares, and a handgun. The second drawer was also disapproved, simply because it would be the second one opened if one started at the top of the stack searching for something. The fourth drawer had been eliminated because it was where it seemed like something you didn't want pulled out would go; as far from the top as possible. Which left the third drawer as the final option. Within that third drawer was a small collection (only ever what the drawer could comfortably hold) of pulpy romance paperbacks. She had new ones delivered by a courier and when she had run out of space and needed to select an old copy to donate, worked through one as well. They were her guilty pleasure and a weight on her conscience, but she never had the heart to attempt to curb the habit. Something about words on a page and her hand between her legs has always felt so much better than her mate's attention. It isn't that Ember isn’t an attentive lover, the two of them just operate on different wavelengths sexually. Which is fine. Their mating was one of mutual benefit, attraction and political pressure. They didn't need to be in love or have the kind of rough, eccentric entanglements that Caitlyn often guiltily imagined her and some stranger with wild eyes and a kind smile engaging in. That wasn't how things worked in Piltover, and Caitlyn had always known that. Even her parents in their quiet, happy camaraderie had never been in love in the way that Caitlyn imagined it truly felt. The way she imagined it for herself, when she indulged in her pulpy books that lived in the third drawer down on the nightstand.
But it appeared that tonight was one of the ones that her indulgences would find a way to remind her of her reality. There's the sound of soft footsteps in the hall, and Caitlyn had just enough time to drop her book into the drawer that was its home before her mate was walking through the door.
She looks happier, the weight on her shoulders lighter than she had when Caitlyn had seen her earlier.
"Did you finish your proposal, dear?" Caitlyn asks, hoping to steer the conversation away from herself and tap into Ember's happiness.
“Yes, I did. Your mother really is a wonder of statesmanship. I don’t know what I’d do without her, honestly.”
When Ember finishes speaking and actually looks at her mate, her eyebrows knit together and her expression changes infinitesimally as she inhales lightly.
Caitlyn realizes several things at once.
There was no way that the alpha couldn't smell her arousal. She should have masturbated while she was in the bath if she was going to, damn it all. And Ember didn't know about her book, about her traitorous actions and her uncultured desires. She couldn't ever know about that. Nobody could ever know about that.
"I'm sorry I couldn't make time to attend dinner tonight, love." Ember continues, still eyeing Caitlyn with the same changed gaze. There's a burst of a spicy, musky scent in the room, arousal and affection. Which would seem to all the world like a response to Caitlyn's own. "I know I need to remember my responsibilities to you as well as to Piltover. You're always so understanding about my passion for my work, but that doesn't mean I should take that as permission to be a lackluster mate."
Caitlyn adopts a faux suspicious expression. "Did my mother scold you about wanting grandpups again?"
Ember laughs, but there's no joy to it. "I wouldn't say it was a scolding, but she mentions it often."
The experience was not unique to the alpha, and had not been voiced only by Cassandra. Most of the time, a mated pair would have pups on the way within their first year together. Caitlyn and Ember had been mated for three years now, but the only heat Caitlyn had ever gone into had been the one in which they'd mated in the first place. Both of Caitlyn's parents had at various points expressed concern for Caitlyn's health over the situation, but she'd always written it off to them as stress from her work. That wasn't really true, but it wasn't truly a lie either.
The omega knew on some level that it bothered her mate that she'd never had a heat. Every once in a while it was the subject of a halfhearted joke or offhand comment, but they never had any bite to them. Omega's heats were induced by their partners, by feelings of security and sexual satisfaction. What the two of them had agreed was a mutual lack of alignment in what they wanted from sex made that a rather difficult hurdle. But so much of an alpha's pride and identity was tied to the care and service of their mates that Caitlyn couldn't begrudge Ember for the frustration.
Even still, it was easier to allow Ember to think that she'd been the cause of Caitlyn's arousal. It was so much easier to allow her alpha to pull her into her lap and a kiss. Caitlyn couldn't change the overbearing expectations of her society that led her to mate with an alpha she wasn't in love with. She couldn't force her body to alter its standards and just have a heat because she was supposed to and because it would make her family happy. She couldn't even keep staff in the Hall of Law. But she could do this. She could put her hands where her alpha wanted them, she could moan when she was expected to, she could play the part for a moment of a better mate, a better omega, and a better person.
She could lay in the bed silently next to Ember as she fell asleep, and pretend that the slickness between her thighs didn't fill her with a queasy feeling.
Ember's gone when the alarm pries Caitlyn from sleep, and she's instantly hit with a wave of relief of not having to discuss or address the night before. Then there's the guilt, because what kind of person feels like that.
Caitlyn can tell that Ember had tucked her in when she'd gotten up.
She's sore all over in a way that she can clearly trace back to falling asleep stiff and uncomfortable. She can almost hear her knees creaking as she pulls herself out of the warmth of the bed and stands to confront the day. In the bathroom, the mirror informs her that she looks the same as she always does upon waking. Same dark circles, same tired eyes. The circles she can address with concealer, the eyes are harder to deal with.
Yesterday had been hard in a way that things usually weren't. The fact that Caitlyn couldn't seem to make sense of either her work or her home life was driving her crazy. Maybe she could deal with the challenges of her position if she didn't end her day at work and come home to tiptoe on the shattered pieces of her relationship. Maybe she could stop being ungrateful and be satisfied with having a mate that was a good person and truly cared for her, even if that care would never translate into love, if she could find a way to make things at work calm down. Some people didn't have anybody or anything, Caitlyn reminded herself as she traveled down the grand hallway, witness to exactly how gilded her cage was. She had a family, a house, a job. Security. So why couldn't she make herself find the good parts of that.
When she steps through the threshold of the dining room, Caitlyn's taken aback for a moment to see three figures around the table. Ember almost never has time in her schedule for family meals, but especially breakfast. She likes to be at her desk, already working by the time most people of her station are expected to be in, apparently it helps her appear and feel more put together and on task. Truly, it hadn't occurred to Caitlyn that Ember would put enough energy into their resolution to have a better relationship to alter her schedule. It wasn't the first time that they'd made an agreement of that nature, and it always ended up falling away. Neither of their careers were very predictable, and something was bound to come up sooner or later.
Caitlyn feels a wave of revulsion towards herself at the thought that she wishes for it to be sooner. If Ember isn't here, there's no broken glass for her to weave her way through. Or at least the paths are clearer.
Her parents greet her as she sits down, and her mate gives a genuine smile. Apparently they'd already been in the midst of a discussion about some kind of foreign policy, and Caitlyn's all too happy to eat her small potion in silence and let them finish. There is an urgent need to escape thrumming under her skin, and she has to calm her breathing and focus on not bolting from the room; it doesn't leave much room in her brain for conversation. Ember finishes her meal just before Caitlyn, and offers to walk her mate out of the estate. Caitlyn almost screams, but forces a smile and words of agreement to come out from between her grit teeth. They hold hands as they walk, and Ember kisses Caitlyn’s cheek as they part for her to continue out into the city. There are unpleasant, conflicting emotions rolling in her gut, and she tries to stamp them down as she walks.
Ember’s fond of more light and impersonal forms of affection, holding of hands instead of an arm around the waist, a kiss on the cheek instead of the lips or a mating mark. Does that mean anything? Does it have anything to do with what she thinks of Caitlyn? Or could it be that it was just maybe a more comfortable way to show her affection?
Caitlyn passes the stupid bronze horse with its stupid silent water, and only spares it a momentary scathing glance before allowing herself to delve back into her thoughts.
They’ve never really talked about their personal feelings towards one another in a verbal, communicative manner. Caitlyn muses on that, too. The fact that conversation feels like a recipe for disaster is not helpful in the slightest.
She should eat something else, she barely touched her breakfast. She’s passing by the vendors in the promenade now, it would be easy to quickly pick something up and still be on time to the office. She really should eat something.
The heavy, dull thunks of the double doors to the main lobby of the Hall of Law closing behind her seem sort of final, like she is being both sheltered and unwillingly sequestered. She stands in the bullpen for a moment, tapping her foot nervously and trying to force herself to inhale deeply and slowly.
She’s just having a moment, it happens, 'your love life does not belong at work, Caitlyn Kiramman'. Find something productive to focus on and deal with it later. Take some more deep breaths, get a hold of yourself, and find something that you can actually fix.
Caitlyn has steel on her breath, and determination coating her nerves when she locks the door to her office. She’s been using the same methods for years to try to fix the Wardens. It’s time for her to resort to drastic measures and try something new. Her mother’s words from breakfast yesterday stick in her subconscious, and influence her idea for what exactly it is that she needs to change.
She opens a drawer in one of the file cabinets on the side of the room, and selects one of the twenty or so identical ruled notebooks within to pluck out. Then she goes about combing through every personal evidence file belonging to a Zaunite that has been created in the last thirty years. She sorts them into three piles first based on who was Sheriff at the time of the report, one for Greyson, one for Markus, and one for her. She attends to hers first, because it’s both the smallest, and she’s more familiar with those files.
The first pile of files dwindles down to a bare spot on the desk, having yielded very little, just as Caitlyn thought it would.
She decides to sort the Markus pile next, the largest of them, and also the one she expected to take the longest. The Sheriff and the officers that he had promoted had all had deep prejudices against Zaunites, so none of the information in here can be counted as reliable without being checked against more factual sources. This pile, while it does yield some results, takes her well into the afternoon and causes a tension headache to begin buzzing around her temples.
She has to take a break at that point to down some pain relievers and black coffee before tackling the last pile.
This pile is the one that she’s the most unsure about. She was still a child when Greyson’s premature death had placed Markus into the role that she now occupied. Caitlyn had fond memories of the woman, but looking back with an adult retrospective, she hadn’t really known much about her.
In the end, by the time that grand clock in the bullpen chimes loudly to announce the change of shift, Caitlyn has filled two notebooks with comments and thoughts, (the first one has not been nearly enough). Her task isn’t quite finished yet, but she has a neat little crop of folders containing profiles on people who might, potentially, be willing to work with her as liaisons between the Wardens and Zaun and as officers in their own right.
There’s a gentle optimism bubbling under Caitlyn’s skin after all that work. The idea that this might actually work, that she might be on her way to fixing two systemic problems in her career as Sheriff with this one act has her feeling satisfied and excited, despite everything.