Chapter Text
Vi’s anguished cries echoed through the hollow dome of the hexgate tower. Hot tears streamed down her face as she lay on her back, howling at the cavernous pit of loss that had been torn open within her.
Her family was gone. She had finally accepted how Powder had changed, how she had become Jinx. She had fought her, and fought alongside her. She had finally gotten her sister back, only to lose her again.
Why does everyone I love die?
“Vi!”
She didn’t even notice Ekko, until he was standing over her. He pulled her to a sitting position.
“She’s gone,” Vi heard herself saying. “Jinx is gone.”
Ekko’s face fell. He suddenly looked winded, like he’d been punched in the gut. He gasped a shuddering breath, pulling Vi into a hug.
“Vi—I’m so, so sorry,” he croaked.
Vi’s breath hitched.
“Why couldn’t I save my family?” she whimpered.
“Vi, you did everything you could. Believed in her when no one else would. Some people just don’t want to be saved.”
Even if part of her knew it to be true, Vi had always hoped there was a way, if she could only find it. She had gotten so close. Close enough to see those hopes shattered in front of her. Jinx had slipped through her fingers.
“And besides, you know family isn’t just blood. You still have family. I’m your family too, Vi,” Ekko said, giving her a weak smile.
“Thanks, little man,” Vi sniffed.
She supposed she did still have people she cared about—
Cait.
Her chest tightened. She needed to check on Caitlyn.
“Ekko, can you give me a ride?” she asked, suddenly frantic.
Ekko flew them out of the dome, and straight down to the base of the tower. Vi could see the remaining Noxian soldiers still standing to attention. She didn’t know what that was about but, frankly, she didn’t care. All that mattered was finding Caitlyn. As they approached, she could make out patches of crimson staining the pale sandstone pavement and bodies littering the ground. They were still several storeys up when her eyes zeroed in on what she had been searching for.
“Caitlyn!” Vi’s voice came out in a broken shriek.
She wasn’t moving. Mel was crouched over her, obscuring her face, but Vi knew it was her.
“Vi—stop, you’ll make us crash,” Ekko yelled.
She had been pulling at him without realising.
“Caitlyn?” she called, her voice desperate.
Vi jumped off several feet from the ground, ignoring the jolt of pain as she landed. Mel saw her coming, just managing to shuffle back before Vi could barrel her over. She landed heavily on her knees, her chest heaving.
“Cait?” she pleaded hoarsely.
Her sightline went straight to Caitlyn’s face, aching to see her blue eyes. She was bruised and bloody; bright red tear lines streaking across deathly pale skin.
Vi’s body heaved.
Her eye.
A sob escaped her, as she brought her trembling fingers to cup Caitlyn’s cheek, smearing the fresh blood that trickled from her wounded eye.
“No, no, no,” she whimpered, a new wave of panic erupting in her chest.
You can’t die. I just got you back.
Vi’s trembling hands clumsily pawed at her neck, searching for a pulse. She tried to ignore the thrumming in her own head long enough to feel any flutter of movement.
You’re all I have left.
“Vi,” Mel called, tugging on her arm.
She couldn’t feel a pulse.
“Vi, she’s alive,”
She’s alive.
The words cut through the ringing in her ears. Vi’s head snapped up to look at Mel.
“I’ll find a medic,” Mel said with a determined composure.
Vi’s eyes darted back to Caitlyn. She lifted her shoulders, cradling her limp head. She could feel the slight swell of her chest now, her breaths shallow.
“Cait,” she begged, rocking her back and forth on her haunches, “please, wake up.”
Her own voice sounded foreign to her. Desperate. Childlike. She tried to calm her breaths. She needed to hear Caitlyn.
Vi swept Caitlyn’s hair away from her face. She looked younger now, the hard line of her tensed jaw gone. She was so beautiful. Vi hadn’t gotten to tell her. There were so many things she hadn’t gotten to tell her.
“Cait—” she said, her voice breaking.
Caitlyn’s cheeks twitched, and she sucked a ragged, pained breath.
“Cait?”
Caitlyn’s eye fluttered open. She blinked, sunlight catching her iris—sparkling blue. Her face softened, her gaze landing on Vi.
“Hey, beautiful,” Vi whispered, tears pricking at her eyes.
“Vi—” Caitlyn croaked.
Vi released a tearful laugh, unable to contain the joy that bubbled up within her at the sound of Caitlyn’s voice.
Caitlyn reached for Vi’s cheek. Vi held her hand there for a moment, then turned to kiss it.
Before Vi could say anything else, she was interrupted by a field medic dropping his kit beside them. He held out an arm to indicate to Vi to move back.
“Some space, please.”
Vi bit back the urge to shove him over, suddenly territorial.
“It’s okay, Vi,” Caitlyn rasped, sensing her hesitation.
Vi gently laid her down and moved back to give the medic space, but refused to let go of Caitlyn’s hand. She wasn’t sure if she was holding it to reassure Caitlyn or herself.
Mel stood behind Vi, placing a hand on her shoulder, while they watched the medic work.
Caitlyn flinched and gasped when he prodded at her stab wound. Vi’s body squared up slightly, her free hand balling into a white-knuckled fist. Mel squeezed her shoulder a little tighter.
“Her blood pressure’s too low,” the medic said, before remembering that he should be addressing his superior officer.
“Commander, we need to get you inside to the medical station, to put a line in—”
“I’ve got her,” Vi interrupted. She looked at Caitlyn for permission, who then squeezed Vi’s hand in response.
Vi moved forward, lacing her arms under Caitlyn and hoisting her up in one fluid movement. She had to suppress the urge to kiss Caitlyn’s head, now that it was resting against her shoulder. Vi knew her body was tired, knew her arms should be strained to the point of exhaustion, but she felt as though she could hold Caitlyn forever.
“Lead the way.”
***
When they got to the medical station, someone shouted that commander Kiramman needed medical assistance and, suddenly, they were surrounded by medical staff.
Vi had just laid Caitlyn on a cot when a Piltovan man in about his early fifties told Vi to stay out of the way. Caitlyn’s hand flew up to grab Vi’s leg, apparently having sensed her urge to rip the obnoxious moustache off his arrogant piltie face.
“Vi, I’ll be fine,” Caitlyn said, her voice sounding so small and quiet in the frantic atmosphere of the medical bay.
Vi huffed, directing a glare at the doctor. She looked back at Caitlyn and softened.
“I’ll be right over there, okay?”
***
Once Caitlyn was stabilised, she was transported to a medical tent for surgery. Vi wanted to go with her, but was gently convinced by Mel to wait outside. Vi had the suspicion that Mel had stayed to wait with her just to make sure that she wasn’t going to try charging into the tent.
Now that she was no longer directly occupied by Caitlyn’s injuries, Vi began to wonder who had caused them. Worry shifted to anger.
“You were with Caitlyn,” Vi grunted, turning to Mel. “What the hell happened? Whoever did that to her better be dead.”
“They are ,” Mel replied, curtly.
“ Good,” Vi huffed.
Mel’s jaw clenched.
“What? What is it?” Vi asked, confused.
“It was Ambessa. Caitlyn and I fought her.”
“Oh,” Vi said, realising the implication. “I’m sorry.”
“She didn’t give us a choice,” Mel replied, sounding distant.
Vi wasn’t sure what to say. She knew what it was like to have to fight someone she cared about.
“I’m sorry you had to do that. She was still your mom,” she mumbled, finally.
“Thanks Vi, you’re a dear.” Mel gave her a sad smile. “Sorry to leave, but I have to—”
“It’s alright, I get it,” Vi said, more abruptly than she’d meant to. “You’re important, you have things you gotta do.”
Mel nodded. “I’ll be back soon. Try to get some rest.”
Vi sat there with her head in her hands, trying not to think of Jinx and Vander. For a moment, she hoped that maybe she’d run into her buddy Loris. Her stomach dropped when she remembered he was dead. He’d been shot in the back and neck. She hadn’t even seen it happen. She’d been fighting, caught up in the chaos of everything. She’d only noticed him when she’d been momentarily pinned by a shimmer-fueled Noxian brute.
Vi scrubbed her face with her hands, trying to erase the image of Loris limply hanging out of the seat of the turret. Instead, her mind pulled her to the wounded soldier she’d carried to cover at the start of the battle. She was a Zaunite with blue hair—someone inspired by her sister. Vi had held her hand. The girl had squeezed back with such determination at first, but then her grip slackened. Vi remembered staring at her face and seeing emptiness. It was a vacancy she’d recognised, not that she’d ever gotten used to seeing it. Vi had been searching her eyes for that absent spark when someone pulled her away. Only then had she let go of the girl’s hand.
“Oh, hey Vi.”
Vi snapped out of her reverie and looked up. It was Ekko.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, rather bluntly. “Sorry, I mean—you know what I mean.”
“The pilties offered to patch up some of the injured firelights,” he said, his own incredulity evident in his voice. “I was just checking in with them.”
“I bet that’s a first,” Vi half-laughed.
“Yeah, no shit,” Ekko replied, plopping himself down on the bench beside her. “Speaking of—you look like shit.”
“Shut up,” she scoffed, her lips quirking into a lopsided grin. “Even like this, I still look better than you.”
He gave her shoulder a playful punch.
“By the way, sorry for almost knocking you off your hoverboard earlier,” Vi mumbled, glancing over at him.
He waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. How’s Caitlyn?”
Vi sighed. “She’s in there,” she said, nodding towards the tent. “In surgery.”
“She’s really important to you, huh?”
What could she say? She had fallen for the supreme leader of Piltover. Caitlyn now commanded the faction responsible for orphaning her and Ekko. She couldn’t expect anything close to approval from him.
“I—uh, yeah,” she managed.
“Vi, I’m not blind. Remember the day I captured you? The mutual gay pining between you two wasn’t exactly subtle,” he teased.
That had been months ago. A lifetime ago. And, even then, she had been that obvious? Vi couldn’t help but think of that day.
Hugging Caitlyn on the bridge, trying to be okay with the fact that she’d probably never see her again.
Laying on Caitlyn’s bed together. Sharing a look, a non-verbal acknowledgement of what had formed between them. Too scared to voice it, or define it, yet. Painfully aware of the countless reasons for them not to be together. But maybe, for just a few minutes, they’d forget that. Let everything else fade away, leaving just the two of them, watching each other in the early morning light.
When Vi returned to the present, she noticed Ekko’s smirk at the lovesick expression her face had doubtlessly been set in.
“Wow, it’s even worse that I thought,” he laughed.
“Mention gay pining again and I will put you through that wall,” Vi growled, though there was no venom behind it. She huffed for a moment before softening again. “I—I didn’t expect you to be so... okay with it.”
“There was a time where I probably wouldn’t have been, but I’ve had an interesting few weeks, so I get it. Feelings are messy. People are messy,” Ekko replied. “Before, when you were so sure that you could still reach your sister, I told you she was gone. I had given up on her... I was wrong, Vi.”
Vi was a little taken aback by Ekko’s maturity. “It’s fine, Ekko; it’s understandable, really. I was surprised to see that you’d teamed up, actually. Considering what she’s done to some of your people.”
As far as Vi was concerned, Ekko had plenty of reasons to hate both Jinx and Caitlyn. The last time she’d seen him, he and Jinx were enemies. What had changed?
Ekko seemed to understand her quizzical look. “I have a long story to tell you.”
He filled Vi in on everything that had happened to him in the past few months: becoming Heimerdinger’s student, meeting Jayce, finding the hex anomaly, getting trapped in an alternate timeline, Powder helping him build a time manipulation device to come back again.
Vi might not have believed Ekko, if she hadn’t just spent her day fighting in a war against the forces of a godlike hex-being, which, it should be mentioned, also happened to include the twice-resurrected husk of her adoptive father.
Actually, now that she’d thought about it, what the hell had happened? Last she saw, Jayce—and the thing she assumed must be Viktor—had shot past her as she fought Vander while floating through the fucking air.
“Actually... do you happen to know what happened to Jayce and Viktor?” Vi asked, hoping Ekko might be able to fill her in.
“I—I don’t,” he admitted. “Viktor had his hand on Jayce’s head. I threw my z-drive—the device I made—at him. I was knocked unconscious by the resulting explosion.”
“Explosion?”
Ekko bit his lip, thinking. “Well… maybe it was an implosion, rather than an explosion… I’m not sure, but I think when the z-drive collided with Viktor, it caused the singularity to collapse. I don’t know what happened to Viktor and Jayce. They must have been pulled in.”
What the fuck was a singularity? Vi didn’t even bother to ask. She was too tired to even begin trying to wrap her head around everything that had happened. All she wanted to know was that it was over.
“So... are they dead or something?”
“Or something,” Ekko parroted. “I don’t know if they’re dead. I just know that, wherever they are, they aren’t here.”
Vi sighed. Viktor was gone. That would have to be enough.
“Caitlyn will probably want to hear all of this from you,” she admitted.
Ekko scoffed. “If I say no, will she try to arrest me?”
After the loss of her mother, Vi had seen Caitlyn become obsessive enough to become capable of actually doing something like that. Caitlyn was remorseful now, but she’d have to prove it.
“I doubt it,” Vi answered, “but she will badger the fuck outta me until you do. So I’d appreciate it if you humoured her.”
Ekko snorted a laugh at the comment.
“Besides,” Vi added, “it sounds like you’re now Runeterra’s leading expert in hextech stuff, gods help us. She’ll probably end up bargaining with you for your help.”