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Caitlyn's mind is foggy as she slowly stirs awake, she feels weird, like her body is slightly detached from her mind. She tries to open her eyes, only to find that only one will budge. What fills her vision is a familiar sight, her room's ceiling in grey scale. But something is off, and she isn't awake enough to put it together.
She doesn't remember going to bed the previous night, in fact she struggles to clear head head enough to grasp into any real thoughts. Taking a breath and trying to sit up, a pain shoots through her entire body. She lets out a weak groan, and falls back down to her bed.
As the feeling hits her, fragmented memories do so too. She remembers the battle, Ambessa, the knife that went to her...
She takes a hand up to her face, feeling at the bandages she is only now realizing we're on her head covering her eye. Tears threaten to fall from the functioning eye, but she just manages to hold it together.
Pulling her hand away she tries to piece together what happened after, she remembers Mel fighting with her. Not much else comes to her from then, her mind unable or unwilling to remember the exact details of the event.
As she gets out of her own head she takes a look around her room, then it hits her. The familiar yet distant sight that she takes in, her room is grey. The lack of colour that has been absent from her life for months now, ever since.
Vi.
It hits her like a train. A feeling that flows so deeply through her very soul, one that is now absent. Ripped from her far sooner than anyone should expect.
She knows what it means, and yet she cannot believe it. It must be something else.
She tries to convince herself that it must be from the eye wound. That there are many reasons for the lack of colour surrounding her, many that don't involve her having lost...
At that moment the door to her room opens, but she is too engrossed in trying to convince herself of something she knows deep down isn't true that she doesn't really notice it. Not until her dad is sitting on her bed beside her, immediately pulling her into a hug that if she were to focus would probably hurt.
He's saying something, she knows he is, can see his mouth moving. But she doesn't know what, can't hear a thing for her own thoughts spiralling.
"Vi"
She whispers out under her breath, her voice quiet and hoarse from the unknown time spent in recovery. She looks at her father, his confused face at not having understood her. She takes a breath and tries to control her voice.
"Where is Vi?"
It is then that she has no other options but to concede to the truth she already knew. As she watches her father's face fall, apologies falling from his mouth as her pulls her back into a tight hug. It breaks her, she lifts her heavy arms around him and sobs into his shoulder.
She doesn't know how long she cries for, nor how long after she stops that she passed out from the exhaustion. Only that when she wakes she is wrapped up in her bedding again and her father is still by her side, asleep on a chair beside her bed grasping her hand.
She quickly falls back asleep.
-----
Caitlyn doesn't know how much time passed until she next woke up, it felt like days but for all she knew it was mere hours. This time though she wasn't confused or dazed, her mind was clear and she realized that one of her worst fears has been realized.
She has lost Vi. She tried asking her father the details of what had happened to her but he had been vague, telling her that she needed to rest first.
She didn't want to rest, not when every time she opened her eyes she was reminded of what she had lost by the grey world around her. At times she was almost thankful for the colours, she couldn't imagine seeing a vibrant red that would remind her of the hair she wished she could run her fingers through. Or the blue of the eyes she could stare into endlessly.
But in reality it was worse not seeing any at all, instead of specific colours reminding her of what she could get back, it was everything. Every flower that was a bleak grey too similar to distinguish, every bird a muted tone bringing a frown to her face no matter how cheerful their chirps.
It didn't get easier, not even when her father finally unwrapped the uncomfortable bandages from her head. Or when the army of doctors had cleared her to finally leave the bed she had been confined to for weeks, even if it was just to walk the empty halls of her mansion.
-----
As the weeks slowly went by it felt like the world around her was moving with it, but she was stuck in the same place. It didn't take long for her room to become a revolving door of guests, most people who showed up she had no interest in even pretending with. All the lessons on etiquette and manners her mother had put her through gone to waste.
Mel had been a frequent guest and one of the only ones she would do more than acknowledge, she had been one of the first to come and see her once she had been fit enough. Her father had even told her that Mel had been here a few times when she was still unconscious.
They didn't talk all that much, just relaxing in each other's presences. Caitlyn was okay with that, she didn't really have the energy to hold a lot of conversation. When they did talk Caitlyn had asked the questions she was burning to know, most involved Vi.
She didn't know too much but was willing to share all that she could. Caitlyn was eternally grateful to her and more than one of their conversations had ended in tears. And not just Caitlyn's as Mel had also passed on some of the things she had heard about Jayce. He had been found near Vi after the battle barely breathing, but still alive. The news had been a huge relief for Caitlyn, she was too busy in recovery and mourning over Vi that she had barely the time to notice his lack of presence around her.
Voicing her apologies to Mel for her lack of concern about her brother had ended in Mel scolding her for beating herself up about it, telling Caitlyn that she had more than enough on her plate.
-----
It wasn't many visits later that Mel had shown up to her with Jayce in tow, not in perfect condition but feeling a lot better than she still did. After heartfelt hugs and teary conversation they had both left her alone for the night. But minutes after they had left a knock on her window startled her to alertness.
Getting up from her bed, with a lot less struggle than her first few tries. She went over to the window to find Ekko on her balcony, carrying a large bag in his back. Opening it she ushered him in.
"Ekko, what are you doing here?"
"I came to give you something, I know you probably don't want to hear this but it came from Jinx."
Caitlyn was so far past the blind hatred for the girl, that she didn't even react to the name. She was just eyeing the bag in his grasp.
"I've also got some details about what happened if you are okay to hear them?"
Ekko said this as he pulled what was unmistakably Vi's gauntlet from his bag. It was a shock to her because she had been told that nothing had survived the explosion that had taken Vi from her.
"Where did you get this?"
Ekko handed her that gauntlet, slinging the bag back over him.
"It was all Jinx could save from, you know. She wanted me to tell you that Vi was protecting her. Vander, or whatever was puppeting his corpse, was overpowering the two of them. Vi sacrificed herself to stop him from getting to her sister."
Caitlyn was staring at the gauntlet in her hands, their weight comforting her in a way she didn't think possible with Vi here with her. She placed them carefully on her bed then stepped towards Ekko, wrapping her arms around his shoulders hugging him firmly.
"Thank you, Ekko. And please tell Jinx that I'm thankful too."
Ekko carefully wrapped his arms around her too, and they held eachother in silence for a couple of beats before retracting themselves. If Ekko saw her wipe a tear from her eye he never said a thing, just went to the window and climbed back out into the night.
-----
Things didn't get any easier, not the weight in her chest any lighter. Every time she looked at flowers she knew to be Violets, but notably devoid of their beautiful colour, her heart broke a little more. But the world was moving forward and she was unwilling to let it pass her by, Vi wouldn't have wanted her to waster her life away.
So she threw herself back into her work, now that Piltover no longer needed a Commander she had been appointed as sheriff. The Council had wanted her to take her mother's place but Caitlyn had insisted on giving up her seat, pushing for a Zaunite to have a voice in her stead. With help for Mel she was able to get the Council on board, and Zain had chosen the successor itself. While Caitlyn had thought Ekko would have been the one in the role he had apparently not wanted it, preferring to stay down in Zaun with his people. So Sevika was appointed.
Caitlyn had fully stepped back at that point so she was fully focussed on her work as Sheriff. A lot of reform was nessesary and she wanted it done as quickly as possible, the thought of more people, children, in position Vi had been in motivated her to enforce the change quickly.
While Caitlyn still felt nothing short of despair in her private moments, still sleeping with Vi's gauntlet in bed beside her. She was beginning to at least feel fulfilled in her work, and after some months then city was beginning to show signs of healing.
The small feeling of hope that had began to take hold inside, right beside that strain in her soul she still felt, was growing slightly by the day. But the world couldn't be too kind.
It happened one late night in her office, she was looking through reports from the previous weeks. There had been a string of gruesome killing throughout Piltover and Zaun, and they had no leads at all. Caitlyn's attention was pulled from the reports by a frantic knock on her door, the enforcer not waiting to be allowed in opened it and informed her of a new report.
She shot up and followed the enforcer out of her office as he informed her of the details, it was still in progress. So she got in a car with him as they sped to the scene.
Once they arrived at the warehouse the reports came from, officers were already there and more on the way, she raised her rifle and headed inside with a small team. As soon as the door opened it hit her, the metallic pang of blood in the air. They slowly made their way through clearing rooms as they went, she saw darkened splats on the walls of what could only be blood, she didn't need to see the colours to tell the smell was enough. Entering the last room she saw it and stopped dead, whatever it was was familiar to her.
It hit her that the beast was remarkably similar to Vander, but this one was smaller. Knowing from experience the damage that something like this posed she, signalled for her team to slowly back away. But as she did so it turned around.
And then it happened.
Caitlyn locked eyes with the beast and her mind was suddnely overwhelmed. The room filled with colour, red stains of blood all over the floor and walls, dripping from the hands and mouth if the beast.
But she was disgusted by it like she should have been, how could she. Because Caitlyn knew what the beast was, what she was.
It was her Violet.
Caitlyn continued to stare into the eyes of her lover, slowly moving towards her. She could faintly hear the confusion from the enforcers behind her, but she took no notice as her rifle dropped from her grasp.
As she stepped closer Violet turned around fully too, also moving towards her. But as Caitlyn stared into her eyes she noticed that there was nothing behind them, nothing of Violet left.
She should have realised what that meant, she had seen Vander turn feral, and maybe she did know. Maybe it was a choice that she had made, that she didn't care. So as Vi sped up towards her she held out her arms to her, accepting the embrace. And she barely felt the sharp teeth pierced into her neck, ripping flesh from her. Barely noticed the sound of gunfire from the enforcers behind her. All she could feel was the overwhelming live she still had for her Violet.
And as the bullets that had riddled through Vi finally took her down, all she could think was how lucky she was to be able to be held in the arms of the woman she loved once more. The vibrant blue of Violets eyes being the last thing she saw before she shut her own for the final time.