Chapter Text
Caitlyn walked into the courthouse on a mission.
She knew Piltover's Hall of Justice as an old friend, its high-cut marble steps and mosaic floors familiar down to the last detail. Polished stone walls were accented by dark hardwood and windows of fine smoked glass, allowing the sun to filter through while obscuring the people and proceedings within from view. Large brass fans embedded in the ceiling perpetually spun, dispersing the myriad scents of barristers, officers, judges, jurors, witnesses, and suspects; any large crowd was bound to draw a bit of inter-role tension, but in a place where criminals might be inclined to cause a bit of pheromonal chaos, cutting edge ventilation was a necessity.
A necessity for anyone not on a lion’s share of suppressants like herself, anyway. Caitlyn filtered through the foyer at the top of the stairs, where the thickest snarls of passerby split into their various lanes, only to pause at the security checkpoint within. Behind the main desk hung a massive bronze mural, illustrating Progress as a machine that pushed Justice into the future as mores matured and laws evolved, with scattered and warring families transforming into inventors, traders, and a long, proud line of masked Enforcers. She knew it was an idealized future, but Caitlyn had to believe in such a thing to do her job, even if there was one unavoidable flaw in the piece of art before her.
Zaun, ever-below, was conspicuously absent.
It didn't take long to reach the front of the line. Caitlyn knew she could have simply placed herself there and no one would have dared to complain, especially since she was in full uniform today, a white beret and shining decorations of station standing out as much as the swath of her blue cape lined with purple silk and stamped with the golden sigil of the Kiramman family crest. Yet if there was one thing she had learned in the seven years since taking command, it was that wielding authority without utmost necessity doomed everyone to disaster.
“Good morning, Sheriff.” A woman with a thick ruff of ginger hair snapped a crisp salute in her direction, blue eyes bright. Caitlyn didn’t recognize her at first blush, but she was easily identifiable in the spotless uniform of the courthouse guard. They were an order serving separately from the Enforcers, and thus had no reason to show either malicious compliance or disdain. “How’s the day treating you?”
“Well enough so far.” Caitlyn didn’t have to show her badge here, so she slipped the pistol from its holster on her hip and offered it grip first instead. She was one of the only people in Piltover permitted to bear arms in the Hall of Justice, but every weapon present had to be logged for the record regardless. “And you?”
“I can’t complain. Same as always.” After a quick examination of the pistol, the guard returned it to Caitlyn, then jotted down a series of notes. “How much ammunition are you carrying?”
Caitlyn holstered the gun with the snap of a brass button and opened one side of her jacket, exposing the leather harness where the cartridges were buckled in place with a quick release. “Six shots. Three lethal, three non-lethal.”
The guard nodded, made another note, and gestured for her to continue through to the courthouse proper. She was looking for hall number seven, where a smuggler of illicit substances was halfway through his trial—and today was his time to testify. Caitlyn paid cursory attention to every criminal case under Piltover's purview, but any incident, even the smallest connection to this so-called Shimmer ring she had been trying to flush out for the last three months deserved a personal touch.
Another guard allowed her into the courtroom with a little bow of his head, and Caitlyn quietly passed the first few rows of benches to take her seat behind the prosecutor, who looked like yet another noble scion cutting his teeth. Studying law was a popular route for those who didn't have economic or scientific acumen as a way to leverage influence; many Piltover barristers became contract negotiators at the highest levels of trade and politics. Caitlyn didn't mind that, but no one liked a prosecutor who lost cases, and many of the younger candidates cared more about winning than upholding the spirit of the law.
At least she liked the man sitting on the witness stand. Professor Heimerdinger was gesticulating passionately to a chemical diagram draped beside him, extending the telescopic pointer in his hand to direct attention where he couldn't personally reach.
"While we have seen numerous attempts to develop role enhancement drugs in the past, none of them have had the potency of Shimmer." He used the pointer to flip to the next page in his presentation, revealing a charcoal illustration of an alpha with horrifically large fangs bared and every muscle bursting with veins, their normally blunt nails fused into harsh claws. "While only so much can be learned from autopsies, I would gauge from both my research and other witness statements that it can increase an alpha's strength, aggression, and endurance by up to five hundred percent. Adrenaline floods the body and pheromonal production overloads, resulting in an extreme enhancement of features while blocking out pain."
Heimerdinger himself was a beta, with the long-term view that many of them shared, seeking to keep the world balanced amidst extremes. He was also the foremost forensic scientist in the city, not only because he had lived long enough to observe the majority of criminal techniques as they were invented, but because he sat as the sole academic on the Council governing both Piltover and Zaun. Caitlyn shared a seat at that complicated table with him, although they only met once a season these days.
"What happens if Shimmer is used on a beta or omega?" the prosecutor asked.
"A very good question, my boy!" Heimerdinger brought his pointer straight up to mirror his emphasis. "No such cases have been discovered. It's hard to say if that means that Shimmer is ineffective on other phenotypes, or that the effects are so different we have yet to draw a connection between the two."
"But as a drug, Shimmer is extremely destructive, yes?"
The aged Yordle nodded enthusiastically. "Oh, yes. There is a reason our bodies have pain signals and regulate hormonal drives. Removing the limiters, as one might say, is inevitably lethal at a high enough dose of Shimmer."
It was one of the reasons Caitlyn had struggled to pinpoint whoever was creating the drug and letting it seep into the streets. A small cult of casual users supposedly hid in the darkest, most dangerous depths of Zaun, but all of those who surged up to the surface had done so in a relentless frenzy of violence, appearing completely out of control. She had instructed the Enforcers to use less lethal means of containment at first, but after one Enforcer had his head literally ripped off, orders became shoot to kill. While that extinguished the threat, it meant she had no one to question, no clues to trace.
Piltover's nobility was terrified. Caitlyn was getting letters by pneumatube almost daily now, demanding to know when the Shimmer kingpin would be caught and tried. She resisted their pleas to send a horde of Enforcers down into Zaun; they were seven mere years from the Second Bridge of Progress Riot—so annotated in the official state record—that had killed her predecessor as Sheriff, Marcus, and resulted in a sudden redrawing of power within the capital. Past mistakes couldn't be repeated.
Everyone knew different versions of the initial incident, but there was general agreement that a sect of Zaunite nationalists had conspired to assassinate as many members of the Council as they could in a single brutal night—a conspiracy only halted by a brawl that had broken out on the Bridge of Progress. When Enforcers had chased the inciting figures down into the fissures, they discovered a secret headquarters hidden deep in the mines, where plans and weapons were being stored in preparation.
Beyond that, views split. Many in Zaun said that the Enforcers on site had started executing every miner they could get their hands on as extrajudicial vengeance, while several surviving veterans insisted they had been trying to exfiltrate with Marcus when a massive explosion threw everything into chaos. Regardless, the violence had burst like a geyser to the surface until the bridge created a natural chokehold, locked down on Piltover's side to protect the gilded city above. When the dust finally cleared, the old Sheriff had a bullet in the back of his head—and it was never determined who fired the gun in question.
Only two people had been arrested that night, for their supposed ringleader, Vander, had been found dead from a knife to the heart inside the mine. With the heads of both warring factions lost, the Council had fumbled to restore order, and none of Piltover's high-ranking families had been pleased with the results. Caitlyn's mother, Cassandra, resigned from the Council when votes of no confidence were lodged, surrendering the Kiramman seat to her daughter. Yet that was not seen as penance enough, and amidst the power vacuum, the entire Council was weakened, with a portion of authority returned to the broader nobility, and the rest funneled into the Enforcers to honor Marcus’ sacrifice—as well as ensuring they continued to protect their superiors.
Despite the fine tower the Council met in, Caitlyn knew their quarterly meetings were mostly theater these days. She hadn't intended to end up with her hands on two levers of power simultaneously, but at thirty years of age, her storied career in the Enforcers while bearing a noble bloodline made for a sweeping endorsement as Sheriff. The trade families had even made a playful show of greater democracy to downplay their other power grabs—every Piltovan citizen was allowed to vote for who would take up the highest badge in the land.
They regretted that now, Caitlyn knew. While she had run on a platform of restoring peace and ameliorating generations of damage between Piltover and Zaun, enthusiasm among the wealthy waned at the realization that she actually meant it. Marcus, honored publicly as a hero, had in fact been the architect of incessant corruption and grift, which she discovered at length after gaining the keys to the Sheriff's office. His backroom dealing with the nobles and various mysterious power players in Zaun had turned the Enforcers into brutal mercenaries, guarding smuggled shipments as often as they confiscated them. There were secret records of beatings, favors traded for sex, and even murder for hire.
And Caitlyn couldn't utter a word about them. The Enforcers union, of which half her officers were members, had served as Marcus' personal guard dogs, and feasted as a result. While his private notes had been useful for concocting various excuses to root out the worst offenders and strip their badges, other attempts to clean house were stifled in a thousand subtle ways. It irked Caitlyn endlessly that so many officers exploited the protections granted to official unions; merchants and dockworkers and scientists had put Piltover on the map and were due support for their efforts—gangsters masquerading as peacekeepers, on the other hand, were not.
They allowed her some victories, mostly symbolic. No one in Piltover really cared if a Zaunite teenager accused of vandalism was assigned to community service instead of a prison sentence in Stillwater, and Caitlyn's quiet shuttering of the legendary undercover vice unit was accepted as a casualty of changing times. She was permitted to give speeches and rally the people to common ground, meeting with locals on both sides to cool sparks of conflict before they became a greater blaze.
Ironically, that was the only reason she had earned a second four year term. While her fellow nobles talked behind their hands about the slow fall of House Kiramman, her approval rating with the average Piltovan citizen hovered around seventy percent. The boss of the Enforcers union had moved to deny her the Hall of Law's purse for a reelection campaign, forcing Caitlyn to liquidate several family properties to remain competitive against the more traditional alpha they positioned to run against her, but there were far more shopkeeps and students in the City of Progress than there were Enforcers, and by some mercy, the people still liked her.
Three years into round two, though, and the trickles of equity that she'd managed to squeeze out had run dry. There was only nine months until another election was called, and for weeks, every paper in Piltover had been barking about the Shimmer incidents, highlighting the violence as a failure of her office—and more subtly, her failure as an omega in a position of power. As Heimerdinger had already testified to, every victim of the drug thus far was an alpha, and one of the union's favorite drums to bang was that no one with that role served in the top tiers of the Hall of Law.
That hadn't been purposeful in any way. In fact, Caitlyn had tried to retain several alphas among her lieutenant commanders, but to no avail. After failing to take her seat as Sheriff, the last among them had retired, leaving the entire second string of command to betas content in their positions. Caitlyn refused to fire a perfectly capable officer just to replace them with someone less experienced by virtue of their birth; such open discrimination was asking to be lashed in the public square. Yet it also provided more ammunition to her detractors, who thought she couldn't possibly understand concerns on the other end of the spectrum.
Her mother was an alpha, yes, but Cassandra had retired with Caitlyn's father Tobias to his homeland in Ionia after her resignation from the Council, and thus had no present influence in Piltover. Caitlyn was an only child, and as such, granted everything bound to the Kiramman name without even a whisper of competition.
She was also thirty-seven years old with no mate. Bitterly, Caitlyn knew that was considered the worst sin among them, that the alphas baying for her blood disliked that no one could assert control over her, even in private. There were no formal laws forbidding any role from any position in Piltover, but there weren't formal laws forbidding someone born in Zaun from a life full of peace and success either—society created those invisible pressures, and such opacity made them that harder to confront and tear down, papered over by notions like 'tradition' and 'coincidence.'
"That will be all, Professor Heimerdinger," the prosecutor said, jostling Caitlyn back to the present moment. Embarrassingly, she'd missed the rest of her fellow Councilor's testimony. "Judge, we'd like to call the defendant to the stand."
"As would I," the judge said, peering over her thick-lensed glasses. "Instruct the courthouse guard to retrieve him from Stillwater. I hope Mr. Deckard has learned that leveling threats at those presiding over his case is no way to empower his own defense."
That explained why the table opposite the prosecutor was half empty. Caitlyn couldn't help a bit of sympathy for the young Vastayan barrister sitting in the defense's seat; her case was near impossible to win. Deckard had been found with several vials of Shimmer on his person, and enough cogs clinking in his wallet to fund a hundred one way trips out of Zaun. He also slugged two Enforcers while they were attempting to arrest him, only to make the aforementioned threats against the judge while the charges were first being read.
The judge brought her gavel down. "We'll be in recess until then."
Professor Heimerdinger carefully made his way down from the witness stand and over to Caitlyn, greeting her with a fond bow. "Why, Sheriff, it's not often you actually get to set foot in a courtroom, is it?"
Rarely, if ever. She was too busy with administrative work on the best of days. "This case is very important. I wanted to hear the words straight from the horse's mouth, as it were."
"As do I, honestly! I wish he was the one brewing the damned stuff." When Caitlyn raised a brow, Heimerdinger vaguely gestured with his pointer, making it click and clack. "Despite its terrible effects, Shimmer is a biochemical marvel. A diluted version could enhance our capabilities in countless ways, if we could avoid the adrenal collapse after the fact..."
He immediately fell into a long muttering of six and seven syllable long words that Caitlyn couldn't pick apart; her formal education had been split between hunting, weapon design, politics, and etiquette. Hard sciences simply weren't a priority. That was Jayce's forte, and while she adored the man who may as well have been her older brother, he could be even harder to interpret when he started discussing the hybridization of modern medicine and evolutionary theory.
Eventually Heimerdinger wandered off to return to his lab, but an hour later, Deckard still hadn't appeared, and Caitlyn wasn't the only one getting concerned. The prosecutor kept pacing back and forth, and Deckard's own barrister was sneaking peeks at the doors of the courtroom.
When they suddenly swung open, there were multiple sighs of relief. Yet the narrow man Caitlyn expected wasn't standing there, just the red-haired court guard she had met at the security checkpoint that morning, a pneumatube gripped tight in her hand.
"This just came from Stillwater, Your Honor," the guard said, presenting the message up to the judge with both hands.
With a furrowed brow, the judge uncapped the tube and pried out the roll of parchment within. After a long moment of silence, she slammed her gavel once more. "This case is now moot. All charges have been dismissed and will be struck from the record."
Caitlyn was on her feet before she could stop herself. "Your Honor—"
"Mr. Deckard is dead," the judge interrupted sharply. "Warden Tearfin reported this morning that this young man committed suicide and left a note behind confessing to his crimes. While that may determine his guilt in spirit, we cannot convict a corpse."
Caitlyn's throat seized, caught between disbelief and anger. This was no coincidence; it was the third time in as many months that the Enforcers had made an arrest related to Shimmer distribution, only to have the suspect die under mysterious circumstances. There was inevitably a confession attached, but they were dead ends, too. She needed to know who was making the damn drug, and none of the notes ever elaborated on anything except for the very specific crimes they had been accused of. While the nobility didn't care if a criminal was killed or convicted, considering the streets safer either way, Caitlyn saw the pattern emerging—and its threat was growing by the day.
"Well, I guess that's over with, then," the prosecutor said, gathering up his files and shrugging off the sudden loss of his case. "Since you came out all the way over here, Sheriff, maybe you can go watch the circus next door instead."
The Hall of Law where she commanded her officers was but one wide street away from the Hall of Justice, but something about his tone made Caitlyn curious. "What circus?"
He tilted his head in surprise, then jolted to recover. "Oh, I guess the case was technically before your time, wasn't it? One of those Zaunite conspirators they convicted during the second Progress riot is getting her sentence reversed today. She forced a retrial, and wouldn't you know it, no one could find the evidence on hand from the first time."
Caitlyn blinked several times before recovering. She knew of the pair arrested in Vander's hideout, of course, but they were already in custody before she had been sworn in, and after that point, it was the judicial system's business. A life sentence for conspiracy to commit murder and terrorism was all but a given; the respective trials hadn't even lasted a week.
Having a conviction reversed was a nearly impossible task in Piltover's labyrinthine legal system; it wasn't as if Stillwater provided any resources to prisoners that would aid them in such a cause. The independently wealthy were extremely few and far between behind bars, and from what Caitlyn knew, neither convict possessed even the most meager means. Vander had raised them both out of his own thin pockets—radicalized them, the prosecution claimed. For one of his protégés to suddenly be free, when the city was already on a razor's edge over Shimmer, made Caitlyn's stomach do a hard flip.
"I think I will take a look, actually," she said, forcing a smile. "Thanks for the tip."
She exited the seventh chamber in haste and made her way to the sixth, which unlike Deckard's courtroom, had a pair of rifle-bearing guards outside. Yet only a look was needed before they both saluted and let her past the doors, locking them tight again the moment Caitlyn passed the threshold.
Two surprises hit her simultaneously: the first that the courtroom was entirely empty save for the defendant, barristers, and judge—unusual for such a high profile case, where journalists would sell their own arm for access—and the second was that the barrister on the defense's side was none other than her fellow Councilor Mel Medarda.
They were also very close friends, by virtue of both being the lone omega daughters of very influential alpha women. It was a running joke between the two of them that if either had manifested as an alpha, they probably would have been pushed into one of those old-fashioned arranged marriages. Mel's mother, Ambessa, was a retired commander from Noxus who had set her sights on Piltover a few years ago, and now was one of the only foreign trade barons permitted to deal freely in the city without restriction. She still kept a significant cohort of mercenaries to her name, but their underlying threat was perpetually ignored, as she provided a host of rare—and often barely legal—substances and services to the Piltovan elite.
Mel's relationship with Ambessa was strained, to put it mildly, and after Caitlyn's own falling out with her mother, their passing acquaintanceship had transformed into an ironclad sisterhood. She'd spent countless sleepless nights quizzing Mel on the intricacies of city law over pastries and Noxian iron tea until her fellow omega earned both the barrister and solicitor titles with distinction, but she couldn't remember the last time Mel had actually set foot in a courtroom. She usually served as a mediator to other families in the city, nowhere near criminal cases.
"What else is there to defend, Your Honor?" Mel said, gold jewelry flashing around her wrists and throat as she gestured to the prosecution's side. "There is no direct connection between my client and the riots, deaths, or any plans to attack the Council tower. She was a young woman in the wrong place and the wrong time, condemned wholly by association."
From her angle in the pews, Caitlyn saw the young woman in question sitting beside Mel was now well into her twenties. She had a shock of reddish pink hair shaved down on one side, while the rest was allowed to fall in a wild line toward her shoulders. Said shoulders were wide and sculpted, decorated with lines of heavy black ink that formed intricate machinery occasionally interspersed with pale clouds of steam, pushing up past the collar of her sleeveless prisoner's shirt to claim both nape and neck. Her arms were equally impressive and just as heavily tattooed, dappled with old scars and a few newer bruises.
"What Councilor Medara continues to leave out—" This prosecutor was far more senior than the one overseeing Deckard's case; if Caitlyn recalled correctly, he had been trying cases since Grayson's day, and she held tenure as Sheriff long before Marcus ever took the seat. "—is that this defendant, Violet—"
"Vi," the woman sitting suddenly snapped. Her prominent fangs betrayed her as an alpha; Caitlyn's own set were quite sharp, but smaller. "I told you to call me Vi."
"Order!" The judge brought his gavel down with a slam. "I will not tolerate outbursts in my courtroom. The defendant will be silent and the prosecution will refer to her as requested as not to delay this hearing any further."
Vi—Caitlyn wondered if that was the reason for the small tattoo on her cheek, or symbolic of something else—settled back into her seat with a huff. The prosecutor cleared his throat and continued, "while the defendant may be innocent of the initial charges brought against her, this office believes she conspired inside Stillwater to free her sister from the attached youth penitentiary, and that girl remains at large. Facilitating a prison break is also worthy of a life sentence."
True anger flared in the line of Vi's jaw, tendons standing out along her throat. Caitlyn suddenly tasted smoke on the back of her tongue, then shivered; it was rare that any alpha could pump out enough pheromones for her to notice their natural musk with how deeply her own senses and scent glands were suppressed.
She shook off the feeling, trying to put together what she recalled of the old case's timeline. Vi's sister must have been Powder, the second one arrested at the scene; Caitlyn remembered how the more yellow papers had crowed about Zaun's inherent barbarism causing the riot, highlighting that a thirteen year old girl had been caught with plans for grenades and complex missile weapons. She had been equally surprised at the time, and now felt a faint knot of guilt fold into her chest at believing the rumors; if the evidence for Vi's case had been shoddy, was the claim about Powder any more true?
Mel jumped back into the conversation with a leopard's severe grace. "Your Honor, the Hall of Justice has had seven years to levy such charges against my client, and they chose not to do so, because there is no proof for that claim either. Yes, her sister did escape from Stillwater, but as the prosecution just noted, it was from the youth cages. Vi was eighteen when she was sentenced, and housed with the adults. How could she have facilitated anything?"
The fact that they even had a youth penitentiary was its own issue, but one Caitlyn was unable to touch. She could control who was arrested, but not what happened to suspects once they were inside a courtroom, nor what happened to them in Stillwater if they were convicted. Warden Tearfin was notorious for his dictatorial policies inside the prison, but that was how most in Piltover preferred it; Stillwater was one of the biggest sticks held over Zaun's head, a promise that life could truly be worse.
It always showed in sentencing minimums. The same alpha charged with battery would suffer two years of probation if they came from Piltover, while a Zaunite was bound to see the inside of Stillwater for at least three, for it was assumed their behavior was more fiendish. Yet in her days as a detective, Caitlyn had lost count how many undercity omegas told her about being pressured into relationships—up to and including violent assault—by topside partners flaunting the disparity. Worse was the fact that it was often facilitated by wealthy or ambitious betas, who procured targets for alpha clients using their presumed neutrality to leverage trust.
Yet very, very few of them ever saw the inside of a cell.
The judge frowned, glancing between the two parties before his eyes settled on Vi. "Now you may speak. Do you swear under oath before this court that you had no part in the jailbreak that freed your sister?"
Vi cleared her throat and stood up, revealing that heavy shackles were locked around both of her wrists, the slack of the chain dropping below the table, surely joined to her ankles as well. "Yes, Your Honor, I swear. The day before it happened, before Powder got out, the warden told me he was putting me in the box for fighting... after a guard cracked me on the back of the head with a baton."
Caitlyn swallowed a grimace, but the judge squinted Vi's way. "What does 'in the box' mean in this case?"
"Solitary, sir." Her fangs scraped against the title, cutting against its authority. "I've been in solitary for seven years. Except for rut, medical, and exercise."
Janna's mercy. Seven years alone. Seven years as Sheriff had worn Caitlyn down to the bone, but she lived in the lap of luxury, wielding more authority than any other omega in the city. Imagining that time passing in a cold steel room below the earth, completely isolated, sent a twitching wave of nausea from Caitlyn's stomach straight to her throat. Even if Vi happened to be guilty, that seemed incessantly cruel.
Even the judge paused, his eyes averting for a split second. "I see. And you have not spoken with your sister since? She has not tried to contact you in any way?"
Gray eyes—Vi's eyes were sharp as folded steel and dark as a stormcloud—immediately fell to the floor. "No. I don't even know if she's alive."
The judge nodded and set his gavel aside. "Very well. While I know the Hall of Justice will see the reversal of this sentence as a bruise to its reputation, I have found nothing in the prosecution's appeal that stands in good faith. Witness testimonies were found to have occurred under coercion or could not be independently verified. The crate containing physical evidence from this case was either destroyed or lost. I have no choice but to declare that the original verdict was made in error."
"Your Honor!" The prosecutor got to his feet, spurred by outrage. "She and her sister were found in the room with the man who planned to murder the entire Council of Piltover! They had weapons. They were trying to save him from his wounds."
"Vander raised me after Enforcers killed my parents!" Vi snarled. "He didn't plan to murder anyone! It was all a fucking frame job and you Piltie bastards are lucky that—"
"Enough, Vi," Mel said, low but forceful. "Enough."
Even on suppressants, Caitlyn couldn't miss the soothing pheromones Mel was outputting in waves, joined with the serene scent of myrrh and honey. She knew it from the curve of Mel's neck on nights they sought comfort from each other, although Caitlyn had to admit she leaned on Mel more often these days, out of loneliness if nothing else.
Vi took in one deep breath, then another. Her body relaxed inch by inch until she looked like the picture of calm compared to the prosecutor, who was still red in the face with anger, canines piercing his bottom lip.
"However," the judge continued coolly, "that does not mean I cannot foresee the risk of allowing the daughter of a terrorist free without restriction. I am referring the defendant to the Office of Probation and ordering that she be kept under observation for the next two years."
The prosecutor's shoulders sank with relief, his bared teeth retreating to a smile.
"What?" Mel cleared her throat, then moved to clarify, "Your Honor, with the reversal of this conviction, my client is no longer a felon. How can someone guilty of no crime be forced to answer to a probation officer?"
"Because as a judge, I have full independence to determine appropriate remedies in matters of the law." The hard edge to his voice was pure ice now, rebuking any argument. "I will not have this court made a fool of, Councilor Medarda."
Caitlyn's gaze strayed to Vi, expecting her to react with well-justified anger, but the alpha's shoulders had hunched in a clear display of defeat, head bowed and eyes hidden. Both hands were clenched into tight fists, and even when Mel attempted to squeeze Vi's fingers in a show of comfort, the tension didn't relent by a centimeter.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't just. Caitlyn rose to her feet before she could think better of it, and asked, "Judge, may I have permission to speak?"
"Sheriff Kiramman." While he seemed surprised, there was genuine admiration in the judge's voice, something she could leverage. "Please, go ahead."
"This case is notorious," Caitlyn began. "It's literally in our history books. I don't believe it would be fair to either the defendant nor an assigned probation officer to handle such an assignment as the norm. That office is greatly overworked, and considering the attention her freedom might bring, I have grave concerns that pressure from journalists or other interested parties might cause trouble where there ought be none."
The judge's brow wrinkled in consideration. "Go on."
"Therefore I would like to offer my oversight instead. Rather than referring Vi to the Office of Probation, I will be responsible for ensuring her transition back to a peaceful life within our society. Surely, as Sheriff, I would have greater control of the optics. We wouldn't want Zaun to see our courts as overly punitive when tensions are already high."
Mel did a fair job of stifling her surprise at the offer, but Caitlyn still caught an alarmed glance from her friend. It was all she could do to keep her own expression and tone even, grateful her suppressants modulated any anxious flare of scent.
"Hm." The judge laced his fingers together, and after a long moment of silence, he nodded. "Very well. I have always valued your level judgment in such... complicated matters, Sheriff. The defendant is free, and referred to your custody."
"Your Honor," the prosecutor began, "I'm not sure if—"
"I am not altering my judgement a second time," he countered sharply and reached for his gavel before bringing it down. "We are dismissed. I'm going to lunch."
Caitlyn didn't miss the irritated look cast her way as the prosecutor exited the courtroom, but it was far from the first time a lawyer had found her ethics annoying. She watched as the courtroom guard opened Vi's shackles, and once the three of them were completely alone, Mel walked up and idly flicked the lapel of Caitlyn's cape.
"That was bold," her friend declared.
"Should I have let all your hard work be undone instead?" Caitlyn asked, wry but affectionate. "The judge overreached."
"Oh, so you two are buddies." Vi stood back at the defense table with her arms crossed, gray eyes narrowed and shoulders still rigid. "I should have known. Everyone in Piltover is in bed with everyone else."
"Vi, the Sheriff just did you a very substantial favor," Mel said.
"The leader of the Enforcers gets to have her boot on my neck for the next eternity, and that's a favor?" The alpha shook her head in open disbelief. "I trusted you, Mel. That you believed I was innocent."
Mel sighed and looked toward Caitlyn, who chimed in: "My boot will be nowhere near your neck, Vi, unless you decide to break the law in the future. Mel only takes cases she has full faith in, so I know she believes you're innocent. Therefore, so do I. The reason I intervened with the judge is because he respects my experience and authority."
Vi's nostrils flared. "Well, good for him. I don't."
Her fellow omega groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Vi, please."
"It's fine, Mel." In Caitlyn's youth, the abrasive comment might have scratched at her pride; now, the worst barbs came from those who should have been her allies. "That's her right, like everyone else. And it’s not like she voted for me.”
No one from Zaun had.
A hint of curiosity flickered through gray eyes as Vi raised a scarred brow. "Innocent, but in need of 'observation'. Can you see why I'm having trouble putting two and two together?"
"I told the judge I would oversee your transition back into society. How much oversight is necessary is up to my discretion as Sheriff. If you don't want my help, then the answer is very little." Caitlyn prayed that the alpha wouldn't make her regret such latitude, but it would be utterly hypocritical to draw some sort of restrictive boundary now. "Enjoy your freedom. You deserve it after seven years in that hellhole."
"Wait, you lied to him?" Vi was looking at her all of a sudden, really looking at her. Caitlyn tasted smoke again, and a hint of something else she couldn't quite identify. "For me?"
"I didn't lie," Caitlyn noted. "I let him hear what he wanted to hear."
"Yeah, that counts as a lie where I come from." The alpha chuckled; her laugh had a low rasp to it that made the hairs on the back of Caitlyn's neck stand up. "I guess a lot more has changed than I thought since going inside. That guy that came before you, Marcus? I think he'd have thrown every Zaunite convict into a pit, set it on fire, and sold tickets."
She couldn't argue that. Everything Caitlyn had seen in his private files proved Marcus thought anyone from Zaun was little better than chattel. "I have tried very hard to heal some of the damage between our two sides. Perhaps to no avail. But the law means nothing if someone loses her entire life just for being next to a man who made a mistake."
"Vander didn't—" Anger visibly flared through Vi's entire body again. She was a head shorter than Caitlyn but nearly twice as broad, and it was clear that strength wasn't for show. Yet after a second, the alpha hissed through her teeth and relaxed. "Whatever. You need your cackling villain, and he's the only one you can put a name to."
The name Caitlyn wanted belonged to whoever was poisoning their respective streets with Shimmer, but that wasn't any of Vi's concern. "I do mean it, you know. If you need help, come and find me at the Kiramman manor. Otherwise, I hope you can enjoy life on the outside again."
"Sure." Vi sounded far less angry now, and simply exhausted. "And thanks, Mel. We'll be in touch about paperwork and the other stuff later, yeah?"
Mel didn't bother hiding her relief at the break in tension, and smiled. "Of course. Let me escort you outside so the guard doesn't throw a fit, yes? And Caitlyn, I'll talk to you later. I'm in desperate need of one of our tea dates."
Caitlyn returned the smile, then stepped out of the aisle so Mel and Vi could make their way past. When she was the only one left inside the courtroom, a thousand pounds of tension dropped onto her shoulders, prompting a wince.
Hopefully, she hadn't just made the greatest mistake of her life. There were already too many other incidents in competition for her to start adding to the list.
—
The Kiramman estate stood apart even from the other sprawling properties belonging to Piltover's nobility. Her family was one of the oldest in the city, with associated privileges upon the land, and thus placed Caitlyn in isolation among acres and acres of property. After all, she lived completely alone.
It was a purposeful choice, in the beginning. Her mother offered to leave half the servants in Piltover before making their move to Ionia, but Caitlyn had always been vaguely ill at ease with having so many people at her beck and call—dressing her, cooking for her, even bathing her. Every Kiramman was raised to be confident and independent regardless of role, which felt inherently at odds with being waited on hand and foot. So she had told her parents to move the entire household, and been left to her own devices.
At first, it had been downright pleasant. No one was around to judge how many hours she worked, or if she brought home seafood curry from one of the dockside vendors instead of attending dinner. When detective assignments kept her away from home for weeks at a time, it was easy to slip in and out of the different routines without interruption. Her active case files took up one office, and then a second was dedicated entirely to archiving solved crimes and cold cases.
She was dating back then, too, or at least making the attempt. Mel did her damndest to find alphas Caitlyn might have chemistry with, but time and again the same issues emerged. They couldn't see past her being Sheriff, a Kiramman, or both. While many alphas didn't expect a partnered omega to abandon their career for the sake of rearing heirs, the attitude was endemic among the noble houses, who prized unbroken lines of inheritance. Even her father, a well-respected physician in Ionia, retired to private practice after moving to Piltover, and Caitlyn could count the number of patients he ever saw on one hand.
Eventually, Caitlyn had run out of patience, and quit seeking a partner. She asked Jayce to put her on the strongest dose of suppressants her body could bear, diverting all of her energies into trying to lance the poison from Piltover and Zaun's wounds instead. If she couldn't have love, have children, have a family that didn't want her to change, then every protective urge thrumming through her veins would be devoted to the city that made her.
But half a decade of such intense biochemical interference was starting to take its toll. Caitlyn saw it in the mirror even now, the long streak of gray through one side of her hair, mirroring her mother twenty years ahead of schedule. She personally didn't mind looking older, but it was yet another sign of her refusal to fall into line, standing out from the pack in a way doomed to draw more criticism.
With a sigh, she tightened the belt of her silken robe and drifted out of the bedroom. An afternoon's worth of administrative headaches and the long walk back to the manor hadn't done anything to ease the odd restlessness lingering under her skin, nor had a shower or dinner, even though she'd accompanied the meal with two glasses of wine. It was both too late and too dark for the gun range or the garden, but curling up with one of the mystery pulps stuffed onto her shelves would feel too much like sitting still. She needed movement, more intense focus.
Caitlyn kept her calligrapher's tools behind lock and key, as the set had originally belonged to her great-grandmother, and from what her father had said, the artisan who created them was long dead. Her ancestor had personally hunted the beast from whose carved horn made up the body of the brush, as well as the wolf whose fur comprised the head. Even with the wealth she possessed, trying to recreate such fine detailing in Piltover was doomed to fall short.
She unrolled a sheaf of paper across the living room table and set paired paperweights around its edges, ensuring nothing would move under harder strokes of the brush. After rubbing lampblack and water into her inkstone, Caitlyn drew the brush from its protective sheath and considered what she wanted to try illustrating tonight. Usually she stuck to classic poetry or legend, recreating famous lines while trying to manifest her own flourishes, following wherever the whim of the ink seemed to take her.
The only verse that came to mind belonged to an ancient Ionian poet, Wu Zao, who was notorious for seducing imperial courtesans under the nose of their ruler. Said poetry had been one of Caitlyn's earliest introductions to love between women, and after having her heart shattered by her first crush, her father spent an exceedingly large sum to have one of Zao's printed works delivered to the house as a surprise. It was still one of Caitlyn's most treasured possessions, held within a locked glass case rather than sharing space with the rest of her books.
Her first few strokes were slow, overly measured by virtue of the stiffness in her arm, but after a handful of characters, Caitlyn started to find a rhythm, keeping the tip of the brush pointed straight down to control the drag of ink. She was midway through another pass when a harsh bang came from the front door, startling her so much that her wrist twitched, transforming 心1 into 忌2. A poor transition, but one she couldn't linger on because someone was hammering on the front of her house.
Jaw set with alarm, Caitlyn put her brush down, grabbed the rifle sitting on her mantle, and approached the door. The more frantic noise had died off, but there was still a low scratching, like a hound pawing to be let in. Bracing the stock of the gun back against her shoulder, she carefully turned the lock with her other hand, then pulled on the latch to see what all of the fuss was about.
Red. Pink and red. Vi was half-collapsed on her front step, blood staining the mane of her hair, face twisted in agony. The collar of an unfamiliar crimson jacket only half-concealed the claw marks slashed across the alpha's chest and neck, but the worst injury seemed to be a gut wound, for both of Vi's hands were clutching at it, the wraps around each finger soaked through with sweat and gore.
"Sheriff," Vi managed to wheeze, "I think I might need your help."