Chapter Text
Flying through the air, Vi’s knee drives into the chest of an ugly motherfucker, pushing him back with reckless abandon. There’s a sickening crack as she impacts, and for a split second Vi worries it might be one of her bones finally giving out, but the pain promised by an injury like that isn’t present. The guy falls backwards like a domino, dropping his rifle, some big old assault type thing. Vi kicks it away and cracks her knuckles, eyeing the other two goons standing in front of her.
The two goons scramble to unholster their weapons— ugly #1 had been the only one with his weapon out— and Vi sets her eyes on the guy on the left. Vi recognizes him from her weeks fighting in the pit, but that doesn’t matter to her now. He’s got a stupid purple undercut, he just looks like he has butterfingers, and Vi’s dying to try out a new move on him. She raises her left arm at him and in one swift motion shoots out a line of thick white web from her wrist. Before he’s even got the gun raised at Vi, it’s snatched out of his hands into the air and swung right into the jaw of ugly #3. Bulls-fucking-eye, the guy drops his gun to the ground. Guess both of them have butterfingers.
Vi releases the web from her wrist and flings the gun away, across the street and sets her eyes back on Ugly #2. The guy takes a moment to look down at his now empty hands, and that’s his fatal flaw. Vi closes the distance and drives a fist right into his jaw and when he’s off balance, she kicks him down to the ground gracelessly. Vi doesn’t have to look to her right to know that #3 is barreling towards her, but he’s unarmed, and Vi can take the hit. In lieu of dodging Vi raises an arm once again and shoots webbing at #2, sticking his legs to the sidewalk, just as #3’s fist connects to Vi’s side. It hurts, she’ll give him that, but not enough to throw her off.
Vi shoots a grin at the fucker who just punched her— he can’t see it through her mask, but she does it anyway just because— and shoots her foot up and out towards his knee. He’s sprawling to the ground just a split second later with a loud thud as his thick skull hits the ground. Vi presses a foot to his chest, not putting weight on it, just enough for him to know his place.
“Where the fuck did these guns come from?” Vi demands.
The man coughs. No blood. Vi should’ve hit him harder. He looks up at Vi with a look of fear like she’s some sort of monster, which she supposes she is. She’d be lying if she says she doesn’t get some twisted feeling of satisfaction from seeing fear in the eyes of sad fucks who think robbing people at gunpoint is fucking okay.
The guy evades eye contact, but he finally croaks out, “Topside.”
Vi digs her foot into his chest. “Where? I know you’re not getting fucking assault weapons from just anyone.”
That’s the thing. It’d be one thing if these guys were waving pistols around trying to rob someone. Sure, Vi would take them out, it’d be the right thing to do. But what caught her eye was the assault rifle fucker #1 carried, waving it around like it was a toy. That set Vi off.
“Please don’t kill me,” the guy begs from beneath her. Vi would roll her eyes if he could see it. “All I know is that the boss—” he nods over at the first guy, the guy with the big gun that Vi had taken out first— “got ‘em from some place topside, think they’re set up in a restaurant or something. Swear, that’s all I—”
Vi kicks him across the point of his chin, hard. His eyes glaze over and he doesn’t— can’t— say another word. Vi shoots two webs, one for each of his wrists, to keep him down just in case. She takes a breath, rolls a shoulder, and looks to the unfortunate victim of this chance mugging, a woman, tall and blonde. She also looks like she’s seen a ghost, and Vi feels less good about that.
“You okay, miss?” Vi asks.
The lady nods. The ‘fight or flight’ within her had obviously left the building in favor of a ‘freeze’ reaction, but that’s why Vi does what she does. She’s gotta fight for those who can’t fight for themselves, because the gods above know that Enforcers won’t.
“Thanks, Spider… Spider-Woman?” the lady offers.
Vi shrugs. “No biggie.”
Vi picks the guns up off of the street; she has no idea where exactly to store them, but leaving them out here isn’t exactly an option. Pistols are commonplace in Zaun; hell, Vander even kept one for self defense. Semi-automatic weapons, though? Those shouldn’t be here, and until Vi’s got a good way to get rid of them, they’ll live with her in her apartment. It doesn’t take too long to get there either, though Vi carefully stays in the shadows, out of the sight of citizens on the street.
Eventually, Vi crawls through her window with three more guns in her possession than she wanted to ever own. She throws them into the corner of her room, a pretty cramped space that came with a small kitchen and a tiny bathroom in the upper levels of Zaun, and finally takes her mask off. The rest of her suit— a tight-fitting but comfortable and aerodynamic gray suit adorned with a darker web-like pattern and a bright red spider emblem in the middle of the chest— gets traded out for a plain oversized gray t-shirt and a pair of fluffy blue pajama pants with cartoon pastries littered across it.
Vi settles on her bed, kicking her feet out on it, and flicks on the TV hoping to catch some Seinfeld or Deep Space Nine reruns. She’s got a 19 incher sitting on her desk, the thing barely holding on for dear life, an old piece of shit that Vi bought at a yard sale a couple of months back but fixed up to working condition. Instead of being greeted by the faces of her favorite TV characters as expected, the television shows a photo of a dark masked figure. It’s more of a cowl, really, covering the wearer’s nose and everything above it besides two smaller holes for the eyes, but leaving the mouth and chin visible.
The news anchor, an older gentleman, speaks. “ — still investigating the vigilante colloquially known as the ‘Bat.’ It’s hard to say if they’ll get anywhere fast, though. Authorities have been chasing The Bat for years now.”
“Really, I say it’s better if they don’t catch her. The Bat did put the drug smuggler Chross behind bars,” the second anchor speaks.
“Don’t tell me you buy into that pro-Bat stuff! The drug smuggling, sure, that was alright. But that’s Zaun’s problem,” the first Piltie newscaster says. “This Bat figure shouldn’t be on the streets of Piltover now, when we’ve got perfectly capable enforcers—”
Vi changes the channel.
While Jayce’s request sounds simple in theory, a grappling gun with a strong, flexible, but thin wire that could launch far distances, it really isn’t. Vi always finds herself being tossed the fucking side projects at work, though she isn’t much in a position to complain; she’s getting paid handsomely for the overtime. Regardless, she always finds a way to get the job done, and this time should be no different. That’s why Jayce, an old acquaintance from college, had agreed to hire Vi as an engineer at Talis Labs anyhow. Vi’s good at her job, even when she’s got to work on these dumbass side projects, like improving cave-diving or mountain climbing equipment. Unfortunately, this specific grappling gun would likely benefit from a material that isn’t available at the lab. It’s going to have to be ordered, then tested to see if it’ll even support the amount of weight necessary for a tool like this.
That’s a later Vi problem, though. She’s here much too late anyway, so she decides to go ahead and start cleaning up her station to get ready to go home. Sketches, pencils, rulers all get thrown into Vi’s work bag, and other materials find their way to their rightful areas in the lab. As Vi’s shutting a cabinet, she feels a jolt in her senses.
Somebody’s here.
Just outside of the room Vi is working in, somebody is walking towards the door, footsteps almost imperceptible. Vi stiffens; no one else should be here after 8 PM on a Thursday, but it’s also nothing crazy, nothing to be too on edge about. Regardless, she slings her work bag over her shoulder and stands by the desk, waiting for the figure’s approach.
The mystery person stops just outside of the door, and Vi takes that as a cue to casually walk towards the door to meet them there. She’s about five feet out from the door when it finally opens, stopping her dead in her tracks.
Caitlyn Kiramman stands in the doorway, almost taller and somehow more regal than Vi remembers her ever being, dressed in a long black coat over a solid grey turtleneck and patterned black slacks. Her expression’s grim as she opens the door, but lightens up ever so subtly as she makes eye contact. There’s a scar on her chin that wasn’t there before. Her blue eyes are piercing now, but Vi remembers a time when they’d been soft and reassuring.
“I understand that you wished to talk with me,” Caitlyn— Cait— says, all business-like. Like Vi’s some random schmuck off the street, or just another employee whose work is funded by the Kiramman Foundation. Like she barely even knows Vi.
When Vi found out that Talis Labs was funded by the Kiramman Foundation, she had words with Jayce. For hiding it during the hiring process, and then for acting like it really didn’t matter all that much. Vi had always figured that Jayce kept close contact with Caitlyn. The two were close and had been for years, even before Vi entered the picture. That didn’t matter; Jayce can have his friends, that’s his business. What does matter is that her college ex-girlfriend is essentially her fucking boss, and that Vi had never been so much as made aware.
For years, Vi dreamed of this moment. Of finally seeing Caitlyn again, of pulling her into a tight hug, or kissing her, or crying on her shoulder about how she’d thought she was gone forever. Instead Vi says, “Yeah, guess Jayce just deigned to tell you after I badgered him weeks ago over this shit. Or, wait, that assistant of yours I talked to a year ago finally get around to passing my name and number up to you?”
“Vi, I’ve been busy—”
“Too busy to be here for Jayce when Viktor died? Too busy to be here for me when my dad died?” Vi scoffs and takes a step forward, her voice rising as she continues to speak. “We thought you were gone too, Cait. But oh man, the fucking icing on the cake is you coming back to town after five years acting like none of it happened. I gave you a pass for a while, ‘cause when you got back, I was sitting in Stillwater. But I’ve been out almost a year, don’t you think you could’ve returned my calls?”
Vi barely even registers her advance upon Caitlyn’s space as she speaks. With each sentence Vi finds herself a step closer and as Vi finishes speaking, she’s face to face with Caitlyn looking right up at her. Caityn’s height on Vi, once a source of comfort with long arms wrapped around her body now becomes a threat. Inches from her face, Vi has the urge to pull back. She stays put, unwilling to back off; Caitlyn does the same.
“Your father died?” Caitlyn asks. The hardness that had been on her face before melts away, giving way to a gentler expression as if a mask was crumbling away bit by bit. Vi pretends not to notice how Cait’s hands flinch, as if meaning to rise and meet Vi, but thinking twice and staying put.
“Yeah. Right after you,” Vi shrugs, trying to figure out the words, “left, or whatever happened that made you go away.”
“You know why I had to go,” Caitlyn says.
“No!” Vi erupts. She takes a step back from Caitlyn; can’t be so close to her for so long. It just feels wrong. She catches her breath and speaks once more, softer, trying to be understanding. “I get it. You were going through some shit after Glass got paroled; the guy ruined your family, shouldn’t have been let off like that. You could have told me what you were going through. You didn’t have to run off like that.”
“You wouldn’t have understood,” Caitlyn says. Like she’s some extra-dimensional god with all the wisdom of Runeterra shoved into her brain. Like Vi’s too small, too far below her to know what she knows.
“I wouldn’t have understood,” Vi repeats evenly and coldly. “Your parents’ killer got out early, you’re right. I wouldn’t understand. ‘Cause the fuckers who killed my parents wore a badge, and they didn’t even get a slap on the wrist. I guess you forgot. Get the fuck out.”
“Vi—”
“I don’t know you anymore. Fuck you and fuck off.”
Caitlyn looks broken, betrayed, and Vi wants nothing more than to close the distance to pick up the pieces and fix the mess she’s caused. But the sting of Caitlyn’s words boil her blood still, and the most Vi can stand to do is turn around, away from Cait, so that she doesn’t hurt her any further.
“Go,” Vi croaks. Leave, like you always do, she wants to say.
Caitlyn walks out the door without another word. Again.
Vi stands there in that position, looking down at the floor with her back to the door for entirely too long. Once she’s sure that Caitlyn has left the building, that she won’t come back to try her luck with Vi again, Vi walks up the stairs of Talis Labs up to the second floor, and then the third.
It would be an incredibly stupid idea to change into her suit, stash her work bag on the roof of the building, and then jump off to swing around the streets of Piltover, looking for any and all down on their luck criminals she can find to blow off some steam. Vi’s never done this in Piltover, but just one time can’t be too bad.
The unfortunate thing is, there’s no telling where to even start looking for crime in Piltover. Now suited up, Vi drops from the top of the Talis Labs building (not a tall one by any means, but enough to get the job done.) The cool night air rushes past her, almost clouds her senses for a moment, until she’s just about to hit the ground and she shoots a long, tensile web out at the building across the alley and pulls hard on it, flinging herself forward. Another web, shot out at the next building and Vi’s flying through the air, leaving a path of intermittent webbing around the city.
Even after years spent in Piltover for college and her recent time spent at Talis Labs, Vi doesn’t have the faintest idea where the dirt of Piltover lurks. Even at night, the streets of Piltover are lit by its tall lamps and regardless of Vi’s attempts to stay higher up, she’s spotted by the few Pilties in the city who are looking up rather than down. Maybe Cait is one of those types— it’s hard to be sure who she’s spotted by, just that she’s spotted as she swings, eyes always forward. Never back. She can’t look back.
Vi spots her prey before too long: a vehicle parked by an intersection, lights turned off, two Enforcers standing just outside of it idly chatting about something. At this distance, Vi can’t hear. Doesn’t matter though, as she perches on top a building just behind the two cops, and sends a well aimed web at a trash can about fifteen feet away from the pair. It shoots out and rattles the trash can, producing a loud clang.
There’s no time for second guessing once the first Enforcer’s got his back turned and he’s walking, five, ten feet away from his buddy. Vi sends two webs, one from each wrist, to the ground. One web sticks to the sidewalk on the left side of the Enforcer who stuck by the car, the other web on the right, and Vi pulls with all her strength, slingshotting herself from the top of the building down on top of the Enforcer for a rough impact across his back with both her feet. She kicks him back, sending him sprawling against his car, and lands on the ground.
At this point, the first Enforcer’s noticed the commotion and Vi can feel his eyes on her as he’s unholstering his gun. Unlike the guys Vi fought a few days ago, he’s actually trained with the damned thing. Doesn’t matter, though. Swiftly, Vi reaches to the belt of the Enforcer she kicked back and grabs her bounty. She’s got a web on the building ahead of her and she’s swinging off of it before she even hears an Enforcer yelling up at her.
She’s a few blocks away when she hears over the radio she just swiped, “10-33, officer injured on Brevyn Avenue. Suspect has fled eastbound, they are masked, wearing a gray and red suit of sorts and highly dangerous.”
///
Vi’s eyes were trained on the road ahead, the bustling streets of Piltover that would eventually give way to an open stretch of country road under an overcast sky. Vi’s beater truck occasionally made clicking sounds as it passed over bumps on the road; she made a mental note to check that out later. She’d put it off for too long. The only sounds in the truck were the clicking and the uncomfortable, too quiet hum of the engine.
So Vi broke the silence.
“You… uh. How are you doing?” Vi asked dumbly. She glanced over to the passenger seat where Cait was sitting, clearly lost in thought and then jolted out of her stupor by Vi’s words. Vi would’ve almost felt bad for disturbing Cait, if not for her opinion that Cait thought too much anyway. It’d do some good to offer a distraction, especially now.
“You know the answer to that, Vi,” Cait replied, raw. She brought her hand up to mess with the tie around her neck. That had been Vi’s idea when Cait was struggling to figure out what to wear for court today. Cait had said that none of her usual formal wear felt right for this. Suit and tie, Vi had suggested. Can’t go wrong with the classic. Cait owned a tailored suit but had to borrow the tie from Vi. Vi had almost suggested that Cait go pick out a tie from her father’s closet. She knew better.
“Yeah. You know, I bet your professors would understand if you miss class for a few days,” Vi said. Her eyes were back on the road now. She almost didn’t want to look at Cait, to see her reaction. “Probably do you some good to take a little bit of time off.”
“Wouldn’t do me any good to wallow alone.”
Almost immediately without thinking, Vi said, “I’ll stay with you for as long as you need.” I love you, Vi wanted to say. I’ll stay with you because I love you. Vi bites her tongue instead.
“Your professors aren’t going to excuse you because of a parole hearing that you weren’t a part of. Plus, you need to go to class. Don’t jeopardize your grades for me.”
“Babe, my grades can take the hit.” Vi had already skipped a class today to be with Cait. She wasn’t even sure if Cait knew that, but she wasn’t about to mention it.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“You can’t stop me from worrying about you,” Vi said with a reassuring half smile, looking back over at Cait. “But I’ll leave you alone, just… tell me you’ll be okay?”
“You don’t need to leave me alone. I’ll keep going to class. I’ll go crazy if I don’t,” Cait said. She finally tugged at the tie around her neck, pulling at the knot that Vi had tied for her earlier, and yanked the damned thing off haphazardly.
“We should visit Zaun this weekend,” Vi said idly, training her eyes back on the road. “Get you out of stuffy Piltover, finally introduce you to my family like we’ve been talking about.”
“Sure, Vi,” Cait said. She sunk into her seat, clutching the tie in her hands and saying nothing more about Vi’s suggestion. She looked out at the road in front of them before saying quietly, “You’re going to be turning left in a minute here.”
Vi nodded. She’d been to Cait’s childhood home once before, that very morning when Vi picked her up to go to court. And home was a light descriptor; the thing was like a goddamned castle. Vi had figured that her girlfriend might not be up for driving today, and pretty much demanded that she pick Cait up rather than let her drive herself. Vi made the turn onto Coltswood Road, a shoddily maintained country road offshooting the main road, surrounded by pines and the occasional home or farmstead. The Kiramman house was about five minutes down the road.
“You never did answer my question,” Vi said finally. “You gonna be okay?”
“Violet,” Cait said seriously. Vi usually loved it when Cait used her full name; this time, though… Cait continued. “I want to kill him for what he did.”
Vi tensed, gripping the steering wheel and wracking her brain for the words. The solemnity behind Cait’s statement was unsettling, but Cait wasn’t serious. She couldn’t be serious, she just had an old wound reopened, and it had delivered a stark reminder of her parent’s death as the perpetrator was freed like it was nothing. Of course Cait was upset.
Instead of chastising, instead of asking Cait what gives her the right to serve justice, Vi just said, “I get it.” Because Vi did understand where Cait was coming from. It was probably why the two got along like a house on fire, when after their chance meeting in a general education course, they learned that they had a shared trauma in being orphaned as teens.
The final few minutes of the drive were silent, save for the clicks when the car passed over the occasional divot or pot hole in the road. When Vi finally pulled into the large driveway of the estate, her hands firmly on the wheel to keep them from shaking, she put the car in park and leaned over to give her girlfriend a kiss on the cheek, a chaste goodbye. As much as she wanted to stay with Cait, Cait would probably need the space to process. Instead, Cait turned her head to kiss Vi’s lips. Their lips pressed together for maybe a few seconds, it was hard to tell, before Caitlyn pulled back and asked, “Stay here with me?”
Vi nodded. Of course she nodded. She would always stay with Cait if asked.
Vi woke up with a crick in her neck and a cold empty space beside her. The room was dark, but light peeked through the curtains. Cait and Vi had fallen asleep, intertwined here the night before; it was a sitting room, one of many in the house, but Cait said that this one had the nicest TV. No bed, but the couch pulled out. The two had laid here together watching bad movies that Vi wasn’t afraid to loudly comment on as she held Cait in her arms, doing anything in her power to summon a smile from her girlfriend. While Vi more often than not assumed the position of little spoon in their relationship, she was more than happy in her new position.
So where was Cait now?
Vi didn’t panic. Cait leaving in the middle of the night was nothing new, was something that Vi had come to accept as part of their relationship, but this morning it did leave Vi in an unfamiliar place. She got up, still clad in the pajamas Cait had lent her the night before, as she hadn’t exactly been planning on staying the night. It was hard to hear anyone moving around, though this was a big house.
First, Vi looked around the room for a note. Cait usually left one when she would leave early in the morning before Vi woke up alone in her college dorm. This room was empty of any and all signs of Cait though, save for the divot on the side of the pullout she’d slept on, pulled close to Vi as she fell asleep.
Okay. No note, maybe she was making breakfast. Cait really wasn’t the type to cook, Vi knew this much, but Vi also had never seen Cait at her family house. Maybe it was different here. Vi wandered the unfamiliar dark halls, opening doors and calling Cait’s name with no luck.
The seventh door that Vi opened wasn’t a bedroom, or a sitting room, or a closet. It was a kitchen. Or rather, it had the bare bones of the kitchen. Cait wasn’t in there making breakfast or anything, but what made Vi walk in was the various contraptions built around the room, test tubes placed on tables, torn out cabinets to make room for various appliances that Vi didn’t recognize. It looked like a makeshift lab.
A scientist, inventor-type did live at the estate, Vi knew him as a family friend of Cait. It was one of the better parts Caitlyn had shared about her childhood; her best friend Jayce and his mother moving in to take care of her and the estate. He was out though, having agreed to give Cait space after the trial. As much as Vi longed to find Cait, as much as she knew she shouldn’t have been snooping around other people’s belongings, her interest was piqued.
Vi flicked on the lights in the room, transforming it from some dank lab of unknown machinations into a space that felt a little bit more safe. Different jars sat in what once was the sink, and Vi walked over to pick one up. A nasty looking scorpion with a big stinger sat inside the jar, floating in foggy gray liquid. She put it down and picked up another one, another scorpion this time in a green liquid, suspended in the water. Vi gave it a little shake out of curiosity, and it didn’t move much. Dead for sure. Hopefully.
As much as it was freaking her out, Vi’s morbid curiosity got the better of her, and she grabbed a third jar towards the back of the sink. This one was a vile hairy looking spider with long legs and big bulging eyes that looked like they were staring into Vi. Deciding that to be enough creepy crawliness for an entire lifetime, Vi moved to place the jar back to its rightful place in the sink so that she could forget about this room and get the hell out of dodge.
Instead, Vi noticed that the jar to the right of the one she’d picked up had cracks littered about it, and a small hole close to the bottom. The liquid was drained for the most part, but there were still remnants of a translucent deep blue, glowing liquid in the jar. No signs of any abominable arachnids.
If ever there was a cue for Vi to get her ass moving and out of somewhere, this was it. Vi placed the jar she had in her hand down haphazardly on the counter and all but ran out of the room, shutting the door behind her with as much force as she could muster.
Now tense and on edge, Vi continued her search for her girlfriend, calling her name down the halls but being more careful now about opening odd doors. Eventually, Vi gave up and retreated to the room where she’d stayed the night. She started to shrug off the sleep shirt that Cait lent her, a white loose fitting linen shirt that made Vi feel like an 18th century housewife, but goddammit if it wasn’t comfy.
Vi messed with the buttons on the thing to get it off and trade it out for the t-shirt and jacket she’d worn the day previous, but stopped at the second button. The hair on her neck stood straight as it felt like something had brushed against it. Chalking it up to nerves from the freaky jar incident from earlier, Vi continued to unbutton the shirt, and when she started to shrug it off, she felt it make contact with her skin.
Legs. Hairy and slimy. It all happened in a split second, Vi startling and whipping the shirt off, hopefully taking the thing with it. It stayed put on her skin and at the sudden movement, sunk its teeth into Vi’s neck.
At the sudden pain, Vi reflexively slapped her hand at her neck. When Vi removed her hand, the spider fell to the floor. It was smaller than the one Vi saw in the jar and damn, its guts looked purple-ish, splattered across the floor. She’d stomp on the damn thing to make sure it was dead but she wasn’t wearing shoes. Usually, Vi had a capture and let go sort of mentality towards bugs, but this one… Yeah, Vi had to kill it.
With a book that Vi found in the room and a well placed slap, the deed was done. Vi finished getting dressed and left the Kiramman home hoping to hear from her girlfriend soon, with a crick in her neck and a rumbling in her stomach.
Eight years stood between Vi and Caitlyn meeting once again.
///
Vi enjoys working with Jayce. Most of the time, Jayce is in a specialized lab, working on Hextech with the other more magically inclined engineers under his employ. Not today: progress boy is in the lab with Vi, impressed with her ahead-of-schedule work. He usually knows when to keep his mouth shut, to let Vi focus on what she’s doing. It’s better for his business that he keep quiet, anyway.
Today, he doesn’t seem to understand that.
“So, I heard you talked to Cait last week,” Jayce offers, piercing the silence of the lab. In college, Jayce was one of the few people Caitlyn trusted with the news of their relationship. It happened about two months after Vi would’ve preferred they start telling close friends and family, but hey, her girlfriend was basically a billionaire, so Vi was willing to submit to her comfort level. When Vi talked to Vander on the phone back then, she only mentioned that she had a girlfriend she’d love for him to meet, not that the girlfriend was Caitlyn Kiramman. Vander never did find out.
Vi ignores Jayce and tries to focus on what she’s doing now to distract herself from her memories. Which should be easy. When Vi’s not working on the random little gadgets and doo-dads she gets assigned, she’s working on air filtration systems. And right now, her arm is half buried in an apparatus of polyester and mechanical fans.
“I’d like to know what happened, but if it’s still too raw, I won’t ask about it,” Jayce says. Vi sighs, knowing that despite his words, he’s never going to let this go. Not until Vi tells him what happened.
“No, it’s fine,” Vi replies. She removes her hand gently from the apparatus and wipes it on her pants. “She didn’t tell you what happened?”
Jayce shakes his head.
“I was pissed, Jayce. Her coming back at this point, it just felt like too little and too late, you know? I said some things I shouldn’t have said. She said worse things. Then I told her to fuck right off,” Vi admits. She pauses, silently rubbing her thumb across her forefinger. “I’m still pissed. Of course I am.”
Jayce doesn’t respond, he’s clearly thinking of how exactly to respond to that, he’s got his fucking thinking face on that he usually reserves for those times in the lab after something breaks and horribly explodes in their faces that he’s got to clean up. So, Vi barrels on. “I fuckin’ mourned her Jayce, we all did, after a few years we all knew she wasn’t coming back. So it’s an absolute miracle when I’m sitting in the Stillwater day room, they got the news on, and all they’re talking about is how Caitlyn Kiramman came back from the dead. So I get out of prison, I try to contact her, and she fucking ignores me. That hurt, but it wasn’t the nail in the coffin.”
Wordlessly, Jayce nods, keeping his mouth shut to allow Vi to continue talking.
Vi takes a breath and holds it for a moment before letting it out, imagining that like the air from her lungs, the distressing feelings she’s had for the past week or so are expelled from her body. She speaks softly. “She finally comes back, and I tell her she could’ve talked to me about what she was going through. She said I wouldn’t understand. Me. Probably one of the only people in Piltover who knew exactly what she was going through. I told her to fuck off, that I didn’t know her anymore. I… I shouldn’t have done that. She was going through some shit, too.”
After a terse silence, Jayce speaks. “I can talk to her, Vi. It doesn’t have to be what it was before, but we can fix this.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to see her again,” Vi says, trembling just a little bit. She thinks of the tabloids, the different women they’d show draped around famous Caitlyn Kiramman. Womanizer, they’d call her, but Vi knows better. Vi blinks back something— it’s not tears. Jayce doesn’t notice, at least not as far as Vi’s aware. She turns away from Jayce to get back to her work and Jayce doesn’t bother her about it again.
Two weeks after picking up a police radio, something interesting is finally transmitted over it. Vi is in her apartment tweaking the lenses on her mask when she hears it over the radio. “Code purple outside 312 Brantley Avenue. Keep an eye out, but don’t engage.”
That’s got her putting the lenses back together immediately: upgrades can wait. Code purple means gang activity, radio means it’s happening in Piltover, and that’s enough to get Vi into her suit and out the window. What would be a half hour walk to and across the bridge into Piltover is shortened to just under ten minutes as Vi flings herself through the cool night air. It’s dark, it’s cloudy, and Vi can barely make out the moon or the stars in the sky.
Brantley Avenue— that, Vi recognizes. She knows it to be about half a mile outside Pilt U’s campus, the convenience store on that street didn’t card when she was underage. Probably still doesn’t if she’s being completely honest with herself, but she’s not interested in that kind of crime. Vi perches on a streetlight to scope out the address mentioned on the radio.
312 Brantley Avenue is a post office. There’s no activity of any kind in or around that Vi can spot, not at this time of night. What does catch Vi’s eye is a building across the street, one that’s a fair bit away, but she can see the lights inside are on. It’s a bit run down, that’s hard to ignore, but it’s up and running. Vi remembers almost a decade ago, her college buddies joking about the Ionian restaurant on Brantley being a front. ‘A Taste of Ionia’ never got any business, the staff were gruff and a bit eerie to talk to. But that was just a joke college kids threw around because the food sucked.
Unable to settle the pit in her stomach, Vi carefully web zips to the top of a nearby building to gain a vantage point on the place. There are no cops around, not anymore. Now on the roof of a two story building, still half a block away from the old Ionian restaurant, Vi sprints across the roof and jumps over the ledge, shooting out a web and pulling herself to the external wall of the next building over. She climbs up to the top easily, her sticky fingers easily clinging to the brick wall of the structure.
Vi makes it over the edge of the building and stands, eyes shooting out to find the restaurant, and she’s got a clear vantage point from here, she notices that much but— there are eyes on Vi. Vi whips around to where she feels the source is, and doesn’t see anyone, just long dark shadows cast by generators on the roof or taller buildings. The feeling of piercing eyes boring straight through her persists, and she can’t help but shudder. She pushes the fear down within her, trying her very best to not show it.
“I know you’re there,” Vi calls out. “Come on out, and maybe we can settle this nicely.”
A dark shape emerges from the shadow, a tall and angular figure clad in black, and while Vi can’t exactly see the figure’s eyes through the dark shadows cast over their face, she knows they’re trained on her and taking in every detail they can. When Vi spots a cape falling from the shoulders of the figure, a high collar and a cowl, she knows.
“If I knew I’d be meeting a celebrity, I’d’ve dressed nicer,” Vi quips, trying to keep her voice light, the slight quiver to it imperceptible.
The Bat, Piltover’s dark symbol of ‘justice’ continues to look through her. She speaks with some semblance of an upper Piltie accent, but the voice itself is gruff. While it’s relatively high in pitch, it’s dark in timbre, like a cello playing high up on its neck on old and weathered strings. She says, “This isn’t your M.O.”
Vi chuckles in a vain attempt to let go of the tension that’s wracked her body. The unknown figure has stepped out of the shadows and spoken to her, she should be feeling some sort of relief, but the fear doesn’t go away. Vi steels her nerves and replies, “What, like I’m a common criminal or something?”
“You are,” The Bat says, defiant. “You beat people half to death and web them to the streets, you’re obviously not an upstanding citizen.”
“You do a lot of the same last I checked,” Vi replies, gritting her teeth. “I teach lessons to the saps who need ‘em— you teach lessons to the poor fucks, but you also hand them over to the cops. I don’t know how much I agree with that, but we’re a lot alike, you and I.”
The Bat scoffs. “You and I,” she repeats, mulling it over. “Pray tell, what is the Spider doing here?”
“She prefers Spidey or Spiderwoman,” Vi replies. “I really wouldn’t want to encroach on your brooding ‘The Bat’ thing by taking it and just replacing Bat with Spider. Feels disingenuous.”
“Answer the question,” The Bat says, taking a step towards Vi. “Spidey,” she adds, feigning sweetness.
“Well, if you put it that way,” Vi shrugs. She nods over at the Ionian restaurant down below, across the street. “I was planning on grabbing a bite. You in?”
The Bat clicks her tongue and pauses for a moment, eyes moving to fixate on the restaurant. As The Bat’s piercing eyes finally find another target, Vi’s uneasiness is tampered. Vi can see her a bit clearer now, though it’s still dark; her jawline’s sharp and she’s got piercing dark eyes, the visible skin around her eyes painted over with solid black paint. Something about her is achingly familiar, but Vi has never met anybody like this.
“If we’re to be… working together, we should probably collaborate on a plan,” The Bat says, surprisingly civil. “What information are you bringing to the table?”
Vi shrugs, finally taking her eyes off of the tall, angular Bat to look across the street at the restaurant. The sign above the door reads ‘Taste of Ionia.’ “Their soups are hit or miss, kebabs are bad, like really bad, and I haven’t tried anything else on the menu. Also, I think they’re a front for something? Gun running, maybe?” Her eyes travel back to The Bat to gauge the masked figure’s reaction; it’s hard, not only because of the mask and the darkness, but she keeps any visible reactions to Vi’s words concealed well. Or she just doesn’t care.
“And Sett?” The Bat asks.
“What?”
“Oh, you don’t— this is a mistake. What’d you come all the way out here for, a hunch?”
“Something like that,” Vi says. “So, what, are we working together or not? You need muscle, I got it, with the added bonus of getting these smuggled guns out of my city.”
The Bat hesitates. She looks Vi over, as if inspecting a tool, turning it over in her hand and ascertaining the imperfections. “Just this once,” she says.