Chapter Text
“How does it fit?” Cait asked, after more than enough time had passed. “Vi?”
“It’s fine.”
“Show me. I want to see for myself.”
Vi walked into the office, eyes stormy, jaw set. She turned in a slow circle, letting Cait get a good look.
“I like it,” she said, jotting a quick note on the P&ID diagram spread out on the lacquered desktop. “What do you think?”
“Sleeves are kind of tight.” Vi flexed her arm forward, then to the side. “Feels like I might pop a seam if I raise my hands too high.”
“Those can be adjusted. What else?”
“Nothing else.”
“You’re sure?”
“I said it was fine.”
Cait set the diagram aside and waited, hands folded expectantly.
Finally, Vi sighed, acquiescing, turning away as if disgusted. “It’s—this whole thing is ridiculous. I feel like a little kid playing dress-up. You think they’re actually going to let me do this? And even if they do, then what?" She threw a hand out in a sharp, agitated gesture. "Us on patrol down there, after everything that just happened? I don’t think we’re going to make it three blocks before some pro-Zaun fanatic sees us and decides to do some curb painting.”
Cait was well aware of the fragile state of things. She was still waking up every morning to a mountain of condolence letters. “It’s a bit late to be having second thoughts, isn’t it?”
“Try third, or fourth—I don’t know, thirtieth.” Vi shook her head. “Seriously, how did I let you talk me into this?”
It might have stung, if Cait thought Vi meant anything she was saying. This had become a tired debate in just a few short weeks, a subject they had examined from every possible angle, until every last point had been picked apart and ultimately discarded. Vi wasn’t fishing for flattery, or reassurance. She wasn’t second-guessing her ability to set her feelings aside and do what was right. She wasn’t alluding to her deceased parents, or Marcus, or the scars on her body left by enforcers’ boots, fists, and batons. All of those topics had been discussed, start to finish, head to tail, and Vi was still here. She took the badge. She signed the contract. She put the uniform on. Even now, as Cait watched, Vi was brushing absently at the front of her shirt, like she was afraid she had dirtied it in the time it had taken to walk into the administrative office.
This was her putting in the effort. She wanted to do this, badly, or she wouldn’t have come when Cait called.
“This is the uniform you have to wear if you want to take her in with me,” Cait said, and that was all she needed to say. The rest was semantics.
“I know. I know it is.” The sullen expression on Vi’s face softened, became quiet and dispirited, the way it always did when her sister was the topic of discussion. She sighed again, resigned. “Don’t listen to me. I’m being stupid. I just… I want this to be over with.”
“I do, too,” Cait said. “Believe me, I do.”
Outside, cold rain spat down in fits and starts, sleet rattling off the windowpanes. The radiator kicked on, ticking softly.
“What do we do if we can’t find her?” Vi asked.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“If it does, though. What if this strike thing fizzles out after a few weeks, and we still haven’t found anything? What happens if you can’t get enough people to go down to the Undercity to bust heads?”
“Well, it’s not going to be just anyone on the strike team,” Cait said. This was an issue she had given no small amount of consideration. “It’ll be you, and me, and officers we’re pulling from a selective pool. People we trust. People who are going to know what needs to be done and exactly how I want them to do it. I don’t intend to let the department go back to the way it was before.”
“Corrupt?”
She frowned. “Disorganized.”
A scuffed mirror hung on the wood-paneled wall to Cait’s left. Vi had drifted over to it while they talked, now stood fidgeting with the collar of her jacket. “And you really think this is going to work? The council’s going to give your crazy plan the okay?”
“Of course they will,” Cait said. “It’s a good plan. You’ll see.”
In the mirror, Vi’s eyes flicked up to meet Cait’s, then away. She said nothing further.
Cait saw everything now as if laid out at a great distance, with ice-edged clarity. The police force had grown soft and complacent over the years, higher ups content to let the Undercity fester while they were busy lining their own pockets. Never again. If there was a way to bring Zaun to heel, Cait was going to make it happen. Sick dogs had to be put down before their sickness spread.
Vi understood this, too, even if she didn’t know all the details yet.
Cait rose from her chair and came to stand behind Vi, gently pushing down on her shoulders until her posture was straight. She made her own adjustments: brushing the hair out of Vi’s face, straightening her collar, tugging her jacket until the lapels were even. “I’ll have someone in to fix the sleeves before the end of the week.”
“Thanks.”
“It looks so good on you. Really.” Cait wrapped her arms around Vi’s waist, brought her head down to rest on her shoulder. She breathed in the mingled scents of new leather, soap, clean skin. “Officer Violet.”
Vi smiled absently. She reached back to place a hand on Cait’s neck, a firm, steady hold, and for a moment they were a single blue-clad unit, two halves of a greater whole. “Gotcha.”
Cait thought she had been prepared, after everything she’d seen and done in the Undercity, but the pipeworks were a world unto their own. The diagrams she had studied did nothing to capture the reality of the place, the scope and scale of a system built to funnel the industrial waste of an entire city.
There had been nothing dangerous in the maintenance tunnels, but they held little appeal. They were dark; they were dingy; sound traveled strangely, footsteps echoing until it sounded like Cait was leading a small army instead of a group of five. Condensation dripped from holes in the crown of the ceiling, oozing from spots where rust or corrosion had managed to chew through sixteen-plus inches of galvanized steel. The air itself, ostensibly safe to breathe, was filthy, a stagnant, body-temperature current swirling with fine particulate matter.
She'd set a single goal for the strike team on their first day out: locate a point of access in the uppermost maintenance levels that would get them into the main body of the ventilation system. Easy enough. Her second, secret goal, assessing the squad’s stress tolerance, would be much harder to realize. Understanding the limitations of each person under her command would take time and repeated exposure to the worst of what the Undercity could throw at them. At the first major intersection, they had come upon a thin shaft of sunlight arrowing down from a fist-sized hole in the ceiling, scalding with dustlight. A rat hunched at the far end of that unintended spotlight, gnawing at a colorless lump it clutched in its forepaws. It was easily the size of a small dog.
By Cait’s side, Maddie made a soft sound of disgust. Her hand crept down to her belt, feeling for the butt of her pistol, and Cait frowned, turning to reprimand her.
“Don’t waste ammo,” Vi said, before Cait had to, and kicked at the wall. Her boots were steel-toed, and the ensuing clamor sent the rat scampering. Its gray-pink tail made a soft slithering noise as it crested the lip of a soldered junction of pipe, the last thing Cait saw before it vanished into the gloom.
“Won’t people know we’re here now?” Maddie asked in a hushed voice. Her eyes were wide and darting, shoulders tensed. “The, ah, inhabitants?”
“Did you see how big that thing was? There’s no way anybody lives up here if the rats are getting that fat.”
“How do you figure that, sir?”
Vi grinned wolfishly. “You’ve eaten a kebab before, haven’t you?”
Behind her, Loris snickered.
That was the reality of the world Cait was leading her team into. The ventilation system was a masterwork of engineering, a decade-spanning project that had done little to boost public opinion of House Kiramman. A gift from Cassandra Kiramman to those in need, given freely, magnanimously, with the best of intentions. Now residents of the Fissures were squatting in the lower levels to barbecue vermin.
Disappointing, but not surprising. They wouldn’t be there much longer.
After their first foray into the pipeworks, Cait had showered twice: the first time in the police precinct, using the cheap liquid soap that smelled like cherries, the second time at home, after Vi swiped two fingers across her forehead and shown her how much gray, greasy dust had stubbornly clung to her skin despite her best efforts.
“Come on, dirty girl,” she’d said, taking Cait by the hand. “Before you sit down and ruin a priceless heirloom sofa or something. I’ll help you this time.”
There had been a black ring around the shower drain by the time they finished. It was an appropriate reminder. Any contamination they were exposed to would linger. Danger couldn’t be simply thought of as physical conflict: it would be all around them, in the air, the water, the gritty soil that was mostly solidified flakes of pollutants. Cait wanted to hold onto that idea, even though she was finally clean and changed and resting in bed, the comforter folded off to one side so she wouldn’t get too hot. She had to think ahead while she still could. It wouldn’t be long before quiet moments like this became a luxury, before they were so caught up in their mission that there wouldn’t be time to worry about chemical hazards. If she could get ahead of potential problems now—
A fat drop of water fell onto her leg, soaking the thin fabric of her pajamas. She shifted, raising her head off the pillow to look down the length of the bed. “Vi, are you sure you don’t want to use the hairdryer?”
“I’m alright.”
“You’re getting me wet.”
“I really doubt that. I told you, short hair doesn’t take that long to dry.”
“So you’re on top of me like this just for fun, then?”
“Maybe.”
Vi had begun the evening sitting at the foot of the bed, toweling her hair off. Eventually, she decided it was too much effort to stay upright and had lain down, head propped up in her hands to keep her hair away from the sheets. While Cait had been distracted, Vi had gradually begun to inch closer. She had come to rest between Cait’s legs, arms folded on Cait’s stomach, cheek resting lightly on the back of one hand. It wasn’t entirely comfortable—Cait’s hips were starting to ache from the strain—but she didn’t really want Vi to move, either. It was nice having her right there.
“Maybe you’re trying to tell me something?” Cait asked, reaching down to ruffle Vi’s hair. Still damp.
“Hm?” Vi said. Her eyes were half-lidded, drowsy.
“If someone walked in on us right now, what would they think?”
“Probably that you make a pretty good pillow. Isn’t the door locked?”
“Not yet.”
“That’s on you, then.” She yawned. “Look, you ran me ragged today. I’m not telling you anything except how tired I am.”
“I see.” Cait smiled down at her, feeling fond. “I do hope you’ll be ready for more tomorrow. This was just a test run.”
“Oh, sure thing.” Vi met her gaze with a languid smile of her own. “But don’t think I can’t see your real plan, Cupcake.”
“What do you mean?”
“Getting me a job, keeping me busy all the time, working me until I can barely see straight. Then, when we go to bed, you’re safe another night from my... debauched Zaunite perversions.” She pressed her mouth to the bare strip of stomach exposed as Cait’s nightshirt had ridden up, a touch so gentle it barely qualified as a kiss. The jolt it sent through Cait’s body made her legs draw up, thighs clenching briefly against Vi’s shoulders.
Vi didn’t seem to notice. “I read that line in a book somewhere. Probably that newsstand down the street from the precinct. Isn’t that great? What do you call it, anyways? That whole genre. I feel like I see a new one for sale every time I go back. You know, it’s got a hot lady on the cover, big, strong guy holding her, there’s a creepy mansion in the background…” She gestured to Cait.
“Bodice ripper,” Cait said automatically. Her brain was a million miles away, trapped in that microsecond space where she had felt the warmth of Vi’s breath on her belly.
“Wow. Pretty fancy.”
“What would you call it?”
“Just pornography, I guess.” Vi clicked her tongue. “Debauched Zaunite perversions. It’s got a nice ring to it. Feels good when you say it out loud.”
For some reason, Cait thought of the rat again, the hair-raising scrape of its teeth on the knob of gristle, or bone, whatever it had been eating. “Why are you even reading that trash, Vi?”
Vi shrugged. “Something to do, I guess. It’s fun to look, even if I don’t buy anything.”
“If you say so.”
“What, you don’t have any guilty pleasures?”
“Well...” Cait gave Vi a pointed look. “Maybe just one.”
“Oh,” Vi said, after a moment’s pause. “Ha, ha. Hilarious. I’m serious, though.”
“So am I. I can’t think of anything.”
“Uh-huh.”
Cait wanted to circle back to the kiss, the way Vi seemed to be hinting at something she wanted to do in her tactless, teasing way… but it was starting to get late. It wouldn’t do them any good to be worn out before the next day had begun. She had responsibilities.
Then again, she hadn’t seen Vi in this kind of mood for ages. She had kissed Cait in the shower for a long time, for seemingly no reason at all. Maybe she was eager to work with Cait. Maybe it felt good, finally getting to do something in response to the hell they’d been through. Maybe she was just the kind of person who was at her best when she was in motion, pushing brain and body to their limit.
Maybe it was something else entirely. It was never easy to tell with Vi.
There was a notch in her upper lip, just one scar of many, but it had healed poorly. When she talked, that part of her mouth pulled up a little, often exposing the tip of a tooth in an unwitting smirk. Her real smile had a distinct cant. For an embarrassingly long time, Cait had found Vi ingratiating and insincere, not realizing her poor impression hinged almost entirely on a facial cue Vi had no control over.
That was Vi, really. Words and gestures that should have been crystal clear, skewed just enough so Cait was never quite sure of their real intent. Everything Vi wanted had to be approached at an angle. Sometimes it was deeply frustrating. Sometimes, like right now, it was charming, and a bit debonair.
When Vi tentatively put her hand on Cait's waist, she let it happen. Surely they wouldn’t take long.
“I know it must be hard to believe,” Cait went on, as if they were making innocent conversation, “but unlike some people, I don’t need to waste my time reading cookie-cutter stories about Zaunites… doing whatever they do in pulps. Creeping into the houses of nice young women to ravish them senseless, I suppose.”
“Yeah? Hits too close to home?”
“I just don’t see the point." Cait shifted her weight, angling her hips up as Vi began to tug at the drawstring of her pants. “Not when I have the real thing right here.”
“So that’s it,” Vi said, then did something that made Cait’s stomach flutter. “I figured it out. You have a thing for trenchers.”
“Oh, of course. Excellent deduction. Ever since I was a little girl, I only ever wanted to be the swooning heroine in some tasteless smut n—“ She pulled up short, her smile fixed and stiff.
Smut was her mother’s word, a prim, prissy, old money word, used regarding anything deemed “low” art, often paired with words like tawdry, regressive, degenerate, dirty. Cait had been subjected to countless lectures on the topic, attempts to steer her towards more acceptable interests, to safe art and literature, concepts regurgitated so many times they had lost any true meaning. Her mother's lectures rarely had their intended effect. Mostly they just made Cait angry.
All those arguments, all the times she had railed against her mother’s narrow-minded view of things, and the word had still slipped out of her mouth, easy as breathing.
She didn’t want to think about her mother right now.
Vi was looking up at her, confused.
“I’m sorry,” Cait said quickly.
“Why?” Vi said, then: “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s—” she pinched the bridge of her nose, brow furrowing—“I shouldn’t have said that. Any of it. I don’t think of you that way at all. It wasn’t—”
“Hey. Hey, relax.” Vi squeezed her leg, a gentle, grounding pressure. “It’s no big deal. I’m not mad at you. We were just talking, right?”
Right. And Cait was going to find Jinx loitering outside the police precinct tomorrow, holding her hands out for cuffs.
There was no coming back after that. The conversation dwindled into uncertain silence, until Vi finally got up to lock the door and turn the lights off. She settled back in the bed in a spot that left a little distance between them. Cait didn’t want the night to end this way, but she didn’t know how to tell Vi without having to explain herself. She was so tired of explaining. Profoundly sick of it.
It truly wasn’t fair. For a while, the satisfaction of her work had kept Cait from the sharp-edged pit in her brain, off the path that began with some innocuous remark or gesture and ended in a screaming drop into crushing darkness, the cold comprehension that something had been taken from her that would never be returned. She would have given anything to stop, but like the proverbial dog to its vomit, she couldn’t help herself. She kept returning to the same images, the same impressions, now as rote as the gelid misery that crept up like hoarfrost.
There had been an autopsy, of course. It was standard investigative procedure: dotting every i, crossing every t. Three people had been killed with an experimental hextech weapon at their place of business, in a building that was supposed to be the safest in the city. When the question had been put to her, what else could she have said?
Cait had been escorted to the police station to be interviewed (requested, not demanded of her; even then the family name took precedence), then down to the medical examiner’s office to identify her mother’s body, get a voice on record laying claim to it. She didn’t remember much of that evening except where it ended: in a dingy, windowless room that reeked of formalin, with a body laid out on an examination table, a yellow-stained sheet pulled up to its chin for the sake of decency.
She had asked for the cause of death. Knowing it gave her no comfort.
Her father hadn’t seen the body until much later, after professionals had taken over the funeral preparations. Cait couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell him what it had been like, standing in that little room, looking down at her mother’s corpse. The coroner had made a paltry attempt to clean her up, make her look less like the victim of a violent terrorist attack. They had brushed the loose pieces of plaster out of her hair and wiped the soot from her face, but in doing so had smeared her makeup. Cait kept coming back to a smudgy streak of eyeshadow on her mother's cheek, fixating on it as an officer she didn’t know went through a list of questions.
Name. Birth date. Deceased’s name. Deceased’s birth date. Relation to the deceased. When did you last see or speak to the deceased party?
That can’t be right, Cait kept thinking, gripping herself with numb fingers. She would never let that happen to her. She cares so much about making a good first impression. And an idea began to form in her mind, that this thing on the table was not her mother, but a model, or a fake. A bad fake. One more cruel trick, in a day full of them.
In your own words, describe the events of the day leading up to the attack on the council chamber. Describe the perpetrator. Describe your relationship to the perpetrator. Describe how it felt to be assaulted in your home and abducted by the perpetrator. Describe what you would do to the perpetrator, knowing what you now know, if given the opportunity.
It wasn’t until long after she was home that she understood again, with hideous clarity, that Cassandra Kiramman—her mother—and that slab of unthinking meat with the smudged eyeshadow were one and the same. A transition had taken place, and she hadn’t been there to see it.
Describe what you were doing as the deceased succumbed to traumatic rhabdomyolysis. Describe how it felt to watch your mother die, knowing you were too far away to do anything about it. Describe the myopic selfishness that led you to think you could take on the Undercity by yourself.
That smear, spanning canthus to cheekbone, a sensible shade of gray. Slightly iridescent at the edges, blue-tinged. Weeks later, Cait could close her eyes and still see it perfectly, the line of it burned into her brain. What had been the last thing they said to each other? Even now, she wasn’t sure.
At times the grief was a physical pressure, like a pocket of air trapped in her chest, expanding until it threatened to burst the cage of her ribs in one massive, fatal rupture. Sometimes—like now—it was a single thought, no less painful for the number of times it had been repeated.
She had the shot.
She had it.
She had it, but hadn’t taken it, and now—
“Can’t sleep?” Vi said, making Cait start.
“No.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“No.”
“That’s alright.” Said in the kindest, gentlest, most deferential manner Vi could manage. Distant.
It rankled, that Vi of all people was treating Cait like that. After everything they’d been through. She reached out blindly, felt around until she touched Vi. Their hands meshed, fingers interlocking.
After some time, Vi spoke, hushed and hesitant. “Could I—?”
“Just get up here, would you?” Cait said impatiently, and then Vi was sliding into her arms, a warm, solid weight pressing her up against the headboard. Their mouths met with a clash that took Cait’s breath away.
How wonderful, to be together. To not have to speak, to understand each other so wholly that words became a hindrance. No past, no future: a fixed moment in time where all that mattered was what lay directly before them.
It would be like this forever one day, everything bedrock solid. Cait would wake up and there would be no sick moment of realization, no reacquainting herself with the gaping hole punched through her chest. The wound would heal, the infection would fade. She would look back on events without the feverish certainty that she could have done more, said more. Been more.
She didn’t believe it yet, not all the way, but she didn’t have to. Vi would help her. Vi was the only good thing that had come from below, a single speck of light atop an ocean of cloying, sucking filth.
Again, Vi was the first one to stop.
“What’s wrong?” Cait asked.
“Nothing, I just—we can come back to this tomorrow, if you’re tired.”
“I’m not.”
“You seem a little… I don’t know. Like your mind’s somewhere else.”
“Come here,” Cait said, trying to sound marginally less desperate than she felt. “You’re the one who keeps backing off. Don’t put that on me.”
“Sorry,” Vi murmured. “You’re right. Sorry.”
Stop talking, is what Cait wanted to tell her, but even Vi’s patience had limits.
She closed her hand around Vi’s wrist instead, pulling gently until she acquiesced. She pressed a kiss to the inside of Vi's arm, then began to slowly work her way up Vi’s body, touching, caressing, tasting. She felt the brush of Vi’s hair against her neck, the soft exhalation into her bare shoulder when she kissed under Vi's jaw. Finally she came to Vi’s face, and that tough seam of tissue where her lip had been split so many years ago. It was coarse to the touch, fibrous like wood grain.
Filth. Degenerate filth. Her mother’s voice again, as if the woman was standing right behind her, mouth pulled tight with disdain. Don’t you ever tire of exposing yourself to all the ugliness in this world, Caitlyn?
Cait pulled Vi in close. Laved her tongue over the scar, took Vi’s lower lip in her teeth. Held it there.
Bit down.
This was a conversation Cait had been putting off for days, but it was long past time to have it. Maddie had noticed, and if Maddie was noticing, it was safe to assume the others had, too.
A thin undercurrent of tension had been building between her and Vi, a slow upwelling of formless irritation as the hunt for Jinx entered its second week, then its third. Vi would be fine while they were working, completely focused on the task at hand, but when the respirators came off and the weapons were stowed, she made herself scarce, leaving Cait to knock around a house that was starting to feel far too large. Their conversations were short and pointed, when they happened. Increasingly, Cait felt like Vi was chewing something over and refusing to share.
And now they had come to a day where Cait hadn’t seen Vi until she got to the station, hadn’t talked to her since they left the day before. She wasn’t sleeping in Cait’s bed at night. Their last interaction outside of work had been a short, nasty squabble with no real resolution.
Cait should have expected something like this to happen. The work of an enforcer was frequently tedious, stressful, and challenging, and it was all new to Vi. She didn’t have training or experience to fall back on the way the others did. Furthermore, she was personally invested in their mission. She wanted things to go well just as badly as Cait did, if not more. A frayed temper under these circumstances was completely.
Still. Maddie.
“Vi’s leaving,” she’d announced cheerfully, walking into the locker room where Cait was showering. “Want me to grab her before she gets too far?”
“What? No, Maddie, it’s—” Cait snatched for a towel, trying to cover herself. “It’s fine. I’m not ready yet.”
“Oh, you’re not going home together?” Maddie asked, tilting her head. She seemed unperturbed seeing her supervisor au naturel. “I just thought that—“
Cait had made up an excuse about Vi not feeling well and decided this was as far as she was willing to let things slide. This wasn't the image she wanted to present to her junior officer.
If Vi was having issues, personal or otherwise, Cait would help her fix them. She would be kind, but firm. Diplomatic. Understanding. She wouldn’t let Vi pull her into a distracting argument over nothing. They would work everything out like adults. Even so, Cait had prepared for the possibility that they wouldn’t resolve much in a single conversation. She had brought a clean blanket from one of the linen closets with her, a peace offering if Vi still wanted space at the end of their talk.
Cait had spent the evening preparing herself. She was ready to talk. She was feeling downright… magnanimous.
But one look at Vi sprawled out on a white leather longue in the sitting room, feet propped up on a pleated arm, and all the words simply dropped out of Cait’s head. Everything she wanted to say felt trite, meaningless platitudes that would do nothing to bring them back to the effortless candor they once shared. Why was Vi bedding down here, like some vagrant? Was she that sick of Cait?
Cait stood in the doorway, waiting for a good moment to enter the room and announce herself. None came.
“What are you doing?” she finally asked.
Vi stirred, glancing briefly in Cait's direction. “What’s it look like? I’m genuinely curious.”
When Cait had been a fresh police recruit, sometimes she would walk into the breakroom and watch a lively conversation go dead silent. People would turn to look at her, their eyes hard, like she’d done something wrong by existing in the same space as them. Vi was very good at making her feel that way sometimes. Maybe better than she even knew herself.
“I don’t know,” Cait said, keeping her voice level. “That’s why I asked.”
“Sleeping. I was trying to sleep,” Vi said. She sounded very much awake. “Why don’t you let me get on with it?”
Cait decided to cut right to the chase. “Look, if you don’t want to… if you want to sleep somewhere else, there are guest rooms. You can take your pick. I talked to Father about it, and he—”
“It's fine. I don’t want to overstay my welcome. After all, you’ve been so generous, and I’ve put up with so much worse.”
“You don’t have to, that’s what I’m trying to tell you—”
“This is a pretty good spot, anyways. Nice room. Nice couch.” Vi ran her fingers down one side, making the leather ripple and squeak. “Comfy.”
“It isn’t a couch, Vi.”
“Okay.”
“It’s a chaise longue.”
“Thanks.” She rolled over, presenting her back.
A clock was ticking somewhere off in a distant corner. Cait watched the tension build in Vi’s body, shoulders hunched, muscles pulled tight against her shirt.
“Vi,” she said gently, stepping into the room. “Would you please just talk to me? I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I never asked you to leave.”
“You didn’t have to.” This was addressed to a point somewhere off to Vi’s left; her head was turned away, an arm thrown over her eyes like she was trying to ward Cait off. It struck her as profoundly childish. “I’m not stupid, Cupcake. I know when somebody’s telling me to get the fuck out of their face, even if they don’t say it in so many words.”
The sudden profanity made Cait flinch. It was nothing she hadn’t heard before, but in the sitting room, the clean, beautiful space that had hosted dinner parties and foreign dignitaries and countless family discussions, it felt as nakedly vulgar as if Vi had spat on one of the checker-tiled decorative panels lining the wall.
And that was exactly why she had done it: intentional provocation. A distraction. Dancing away from the real issue, whatever it was. Cait wouldn’t take the bait.
“Of course you aren’t stupid. I wasn’t saying that.” She hesitated, but decided to press on. “I wanted—I’m telling you that I would prefer to have you with me tonight, if that’s what you want. You don’t have to be down here by yourself.”
“Great.” Vi didn’t budge. “How about tomorrow?”
“What about it?”
“I’m not going to go upstairs tomorrow, see you on that big bed, see you make that face when I go to lay down?”
Lie down, Cait thought, but she managed to catch herself this time. “What face, Vi?”
“Like I’ve been outside rolling in something nasty, and the smell just hit you. Do you know how it feels to—” The hand over Vi’s face drew up into a fist, knuckles white and taut against chapped, bruise-spotted skin. She exhaled shakily. “We’re not even touching most of the time. There’s so much space. You don’t even have to look at me if you don’t feel like it.”
Where was this coming from? Cait wasn’t making faces. If she wanted Vi out of her room, she would say so—
The issue shifted into sudden clarity. Cait felt like she had stepped barefoot into a puddle of ice water. “Are you upset because I asked you the other day if you might want a room to yourself? Is that what this is about?”
She might as well have been talking to the wall, for all the reaction it elicited.
“Vi, we have real—this is ridiculous. You’ve been dragging this out and making me worry, all because... why? I’m hardly evicting you.”
“No, you wouldn’t do that,” Vi said slowly. “You’d never do that to me, would you? Not after all the work you put in to get my records squared.”
“Exactly,” Cait said. “So why are you acting like I’ve done something bad? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Nothing, really.” Vi’s tone was breezy, verging on sarcasm, but a dangerous edge had crept into her voice, a snarl of barbed wire glinting in a tangle of overgrown grass. “I just thought maybe you, you know, liked me a little.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cait snapped, stung. “How old are you?”
That was a step too far; they both knew it. Vi bristled, then slowly, finally, turned to face Cait. Her eyes were a deep, irritated red, crowded with broken blood vessels. A backhanded swing of a weapon had cracked an eyepiece on her respirator, leaving her exposed to lingering Grey and whatever else had been circulating in the Fissures. She’d brushed off any attempt at medical attention.
For a moment Cait considered leaving it there. They could try again later, when tempers weren’t running so hot. Find a better time to talk.
But there wouldn’t be a better time. This was all they had. They would be back in the Undercity in the morning, and Cait didn’t want to waste another moment tiptoeing around Vi when they had bigger things to worry about. It was juvenile to be put on the spot like this, goaded into proving how much she cared. Surely Vi knew her better than that.
“Look,” Cait said, making a sweeping motion. “I am sorry if I offended you, but…. it’s a big house. I thought you might like having some space to yourself. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“It’s your house.”
“And why does that matter?”
“Are you serious?” Vi said, staring at her. “If I actually have to explain this to you, sweetheart, you’re never going to get it.”
That incredulous look, like Vi had made a joke and Cait had missed the punchline, was what tipped her over from irritation to real anger, white-hot fire sluicing into her chest, her face, a livid flush spreading over her cheeks. She stalked forward until she was standing directly over Vi, looming over her, invading her space like she was an unruly perp backed against a wall. “Don’t do that. Don’t be such a—a fatalist. Honestly, Vi—”
“Aw, you don't have to hold back on my account, Cupcake. Call me a bitch if it makes you feel better.” She bared her teeth in a humorless grin. “Push me around a little. You’re the boss, right?”
It was the way Vi kept trying to twist everything into some high-handed ethical issue that needled most of all. As if this argument was anything more than window dressing for a bruised ego.
“I know exactly what you’re doing,” Cait bit out. “And I don’t appreciate it. You can sulk down here as long as you want, Vi. Pretend you have no agency in your life, if it helps you sleep. I know exactly where I’m going to find you tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah? You do?”
“Yes, I do. You wouldn’t even be here if you didn’t like being kept on a short leash.”
“You’re pretty stubborn, aren’t you?” Vi said, her eyes cold and blank, blotched with blood. “I’m starting to see why your parents have so much gray in their hair—sorry. Had.”
Everything seemed to stretch and soften, the ticking clock growing louder and louder until it pulsed in Cait’s ears like a second heartbeat. In that moment, Vi could have reached up, flicked Cait on the nose, and shattered her like a dropped champagne flute.
“I’m done with this,” Cait said slowly, deliberately, the words clipped and hard, her hands curled into fists so Vi wouldn’t see them tremble. “If you want to be mad at me for reasons you made up, fine. If you want to sleep on a couch all night, be my guest. But don’t make this about anything other than you being a—a child, because you aren’t getting exactly what you want from me. Don’t drag me down to that level.”
“Chaise longue,” Vi said, expressionless.
“What?”
“That’s what it’s called, isn’t it?”
Cait threw the blanket down and left.