Chapter Text
The clinking of the wine glasses in the ambient noise of murmured conversations and background music of the dark restaurant is annoyingly distracting. Vi hates restaurants like this, where everything’s quieter and muted with soft piano or violin. Give her bars, noisy and rowdy, sports or college or even fucking arcade themed. That level of noise she could handle.
This, when everything’s said just quietly enough it doesn’t blend together and it’s possible to make out the words, when she can’t help but keep catching conversation and getting interested, this fucking sucks.
At least the payoff should be worth it.
The payoff, right now, is sitting in front of her with moony eyes and an impressively half empty plate of pasta considering he hadn’t stopped talking the moment he sat down. He says something she wasn’t quite listening to involving ‘those LA dorks’ and laughs loudly, so she smiles and titters and pretends to sip her wine, absently running her finger along the silver chain that rests over her black turtleneck dress.
“So how about you?” He leans over, shoving more pasta into his mouth and dabbing at his chin with the napkin. “What do you do for a living?”
Vi looks at him, his grin enthusiastic and eyes a bit glassy from the liquor, and back down to her plate. She’s mostly finished her meal and has a very strong internal debate if she wants the guy to pay for dessert too.
She looks up again; he winks and Vi decides to try and speed this up.
“Oh,” she says, keeping her voice high and flirty and purposefully touching at one of her dangling earrings with a shy avoidance. “It’s nothing big. Most people haven’t heard of the job.”
“Oh, mysterious,” the guy grins while he chews. “Government? Girl that looks like you, either got a cushy office job or self employed, right?”
Vi raises an eyebrow - her scarred one from when an eyebrow piercing got caught in someone else’s ring - and the guy coughs and raises a hand to clarify.
“I just mean, the hair is a bit unconventional for more places, even these days right? Not a lot of lawyers or doctors that look punk rock, you know?”
It’s always the hair, the short, messy red bangs and side shave, when guys talk about how she’s so damned ‘unique’. Tattoos if they can see them, which is why she usually covers up the black ink of gears and smoke that cover her back and upper arms because bullshitting around that was more trouble than it’s worth. Vi really needs to come up with a different tactic for targets than the wine and dine. Sure it’s easy, and she gets a free meal, but one of these days she’s gonna break a nose.
Maybe she should get a wig.
“Aw, come on I’m sure whatever you do, it’s interesting,” the guy continues to goad her. He reaches over the table and puts his hand on the one she has resting there as she eats. Vi almost laughs, can’t believe her luck, and turns her hand to weave her fingers through his, holding it with a shy, flirting squeeze and his smile widens.
“Well,” she starts slowly, other hand settling her fork on her plate. “Most of what I do is a lot of boring paperwork. Filing, back dating, keeping track of people and deadlines and finances and… stuff.”
“So, like, a secretary?” He asks. She smiles tightly and squeezes her hand holding his again. “Hey,” he says in a way that he likely thinks is soothing but comes off condescending, “nothing wrong with being a secretary. Or administrative whatever we’re supposed to call that job now.”
Vi keeps the smile on her face. “Kinda. But that’s only half the job. The other half is more… on commission. Y’see,” she puts the fork down entirely and rests her chin on her free hand, smiling as coyly as she can. “Sometimes people loan money for things, like say… bail for someone who put a mom in the hospital after drunk driving on an already suspended license; and when that someone never repays the loan, they ask me to help get that money back.”
The smile on his face drops in an instant. “Fuck.”
Vi just keeps her wide smile, but her eyes narrow. “Yep.”
There’s a second’s pause, a very familiar second where neither of them move but Vi can sense every muscle in the guy’s tensing to run. It’s how it always goes, the pleading or the running. Once or twice they throw punches, but usually they’re smart enough to take a look at Vi’s daily-gym body and not try that. It’s one thing Vi does like about the dresses at least, they make her arms stand out.
This guy tries the running option.
Too bad for him, he completely forgot he made a move to hold Vi’s hand just a minute earlier and so, the second he leaves his chair all she has to do is tighten her grip and he’s jerked back by his arm. He falls against the side of the table, with a loud clatter of utensils and wine glasses getting knocked about, cursing. Vi raises her other hand in apology to the surrounding diners looking at them in surprise, mouthing ‘sorry’s as she kneels down to help her mark up.
“Let’s not make this embarrassing, for either of us, k?” she says quietly as she grips his arm while helping him stand and guiding him back to his seat. He sits down, looking a little stunned and Vi just casually slides back into her seat to fix up everything that fell. “We can talk about it after dinner,” she says with a cool expression as she continues her meal. “Which you’re paying for, by the way.”
He blinks a couple of times, glancing to the door of the restaurant, but Vi just says “Don’t,” in a low voice and he sits still and quiet.
Once their plates are cleared away, the bill is settled with the guy meekly paying, they’re standing to leave. Vi’s grateful he’s participating, but once they’re exiting the restaurant and out onto the sidewalk he gives her that quick backward glance and starts running. He gets maybe six steps away before she grabs the back of his jacket and he fumbles down again. Thank god this one’s a lush, she cannot run in these stupid heels.
“Oh honey, you had too much to drink again,” she tuts loudly for the onlookers, patting him on the shoulder as she helps him up. With a tight squeeze she begins to march him to her car, holding his arm with a solid grip. He tries to jerk away a couple of times but otherwise doesn’t resist. Not until she has her car keys out and the headlights flash when the doors unlock and it seems to kick in for him to try and pull away again. He manages to break her hold and instantly spins to try and land a blow.
Vi blocks it and just pushes him back around into the car with the momentum, holding him down with a bent arm. She’s not supposed to use force to grab a bounty but that mostly just means force that leaves evidence. It’s been a busy year of learning ways to keep bruises and broken bones to a minimum when stopping a dumbass from trying to get a kick in.
“Hey, hey, c’mon baby why don’t we talk this out?” he asks with his face still squished up against the car. Bargaining time. “We had a nice date, right? I think we really had a connection, we could still make this work. C’mon, my place for drinks and we can talk?”
“Yeah, sorry buddy,” Vi says with a sigh and pitying expression. “A, I think you’ve had enough and B? You’re not really my type.”
“What, you gay or something?” He struggles against the hold uselessly, letting out an annoyed grumble. “Dammit, I should have guessed.”
Vi just shakes her head and rolls her eyes as she opened the car door. “It’s the hair, right? Always gives me away. Maybe I should start wearing wigs.” She looks at the guy, “what you think, would I look good in a wig?” She unceremoniously shoves him into the back seat, still looking more like she’s in thought than focused on the current situation. “Maybe as a blonde?”
“Fuck you.”
“Again, buddy, not my type.” Giving him another pitying look, Vi pats the roof of the car before slamming the door closed. Getting into the driver’s seat, she tilts the mirror to look through the plexiglass barrier she has in the car to the irate man. “Seatbelt up, you don’t want to add a ticket to those charges.”
He gives her a murderous look, but buckles in.
A few hours later, after dropping off the mark and collecting her fee, Vi’s slumped barefoot in the elevator with her heels dangling from one hand and a little brown paper bag gripped in the other. When the elevator dings to her floor, she tiredly walks out, wincing slightly at the pain in the knee she banged earlier when her ‘date’ tried to run and her leg hit the tables. She gets to her apartment door and holds the brown bag in her teeth, fumbling first getting her keys out of the small purse and then with the lock. After a frustrating second she finally opens the door and exhales a sigh of relief into her apartment.
Tossing her shoes near the shoe rack, she slams the door behind her and starts to make her way down the short hall when the sound of metal on ceramic catches her attention.
Someone’s in the apartment.
Someone’s in the apartment that Vi lives in, alone.
“What the fu…” she starts to mutter to herself, flexing a hand ready to fight while still holding onto the brown bag. “Hey!” She says louder. “Who’s there?”
Another scrape of utensil against dish sounds, but no one answers. Frowning, Vi inches around the dividing wall to look at the small kitchen.
Sitting there at the little bistro table Vi managed to fit in the space, reading one of Vi’s sports magazines, is a kid that looks… ten? Eleven? Vi has no idea how to tell ages. But definetely a kid. Here in her kitchen, eating Vi’s cereal out of Vi’s bowl with Vi’s spoon. She’s a scrawny little thing, pale, hair that looks like it was dyed blue with that messy look of once cut shorter and now growing out at awkward lengths past her ears. Beside her is a large blue backpack that’s seen better days and is ungracefully overstuffed.
Confused, but grateful that it’s at least not another fight she has to deal with, Vi relaxes and knocks against the wall to try and get the kid’s attention. Mouth full of cereal, the kid only glances up through her bangs, chewing slower.
“Uh kid?” Vi says, unsettled a bit by the eye contact and looking around her kitchen instead. “I think you’re in the wrong apartment.”
“Oh boy, I hope not,” the kid’s talking around full cereal cheeks, but her voice is squeaky and confident in that sarcastic preteen manner. “That would be em-bar-ass-ing.”
“How did you even…” Vi puts the brown bag and purse down on the little side table at the end of the hall beside her, looking at her window by the fire escape. It’s still jammed closed.
“Bobby pins,” the kid replies smartly, scooping more cereal with her, with Vi’s, spoon. “Learned how to do it in like third grade.”
“And how long ago was that?”
“I’m eleven, if that’s what you’re wondering.” The kid swallows, now staring at Vi with bright, wide blue eyes in the same way that makes Vi think about a predatory bird scoping out prey. “And you’re… twenty eight right?”
“What?” Who the fuck is this kid?
“You are Violet Lane, right?” The kid asks, now looking a little unsure, glancing around the apartment. Vi almost lies, denies it, but the kid got this far and honestly, Vi’s curious.
So “Yeah,” is her reply, crossing her arms in a way she hopes is adult and authoritative enough to get answers. The kid nods, eyes darting back to hold the gaze between them.
“And today’s your birthday.”
Giving the kid an even more suspicious look, Vi answers slowly. “Yeah…”
The kid beams, looking smug and relieved and excited. “Twenty eight years ago,” she says in a way that sounds almost recited, “two teenagers gave up a baby for adoption, a baby that was born today. That was you. Eleven years ago your parents were grown up and married and had another baby. That’s me.” She points at herself so hard she jabs herself right in the breastbone. She’s grinning like it’s Christmas morning, as if knowing Vi’s personal history and dropping a bomb like this is as exciting as opening shiny wrapping paper. “I’m your— you’re my- we’re sisters!”
She’s looking at Vi with those great big blue eyes like an excited and hopefully little puppy dog and all Vi can feel is empty dread turning her stomach and making her skin buzz. She stares at the kid and the kid stares back with a nervous grin, Vi’s spoon and bowl in her hands and her feet tapping against the legs of the chair because she’s too short to reach the floor and this can’t be true. She doesn’t look anything like Vi with her scrawny limbs and big eyes full of—
“Nope.”
Vi grabs her purse and turns to walk to her bedroom without another word.
She hears the scramble of the chair being pushed back and little feet running up behind her as the kid shouts “Hey wait! Wait!”
“Look kid, I had a long day,” Vi says without looking behind her. She goes into her bedroom, and tossed the purse on her dresser and quickly scopes around. “Did you go in here?” she asks with a slight growl.
“No!” The kid denies, standing in the doorway, “well kinda, but only to look to see if you were asleep or something.”
Vi doesn’t entirely trust that answer but at a quick glance it doesn’t look like anything’s out of place. She turns back to glare a little suspiciously at the kid, and sits down on her bed with a sigh, beginning the process of taking her earrings off.
“You have a lot of piercings,” comments the kid and Vi lets out a little huff of a laugh to that.
“Yeah, guess I do,” she shrugs as the two dangling earrings are removed but the helix piercings in the top of her ear remain. She unconsciously wrinkles her nose where she normally has a ring in as well. She’ll have to remember to put that back in so it doesn’t close up again.
“Look kid,” Vi sighs, “I wanna get out of this dress and then have a drink. Is there somewhere else you can go?”
The huge bambi eyes blink and the kid nods. “Oh, yeah, sorry! I’ll go wait in the kitchen.” She almost leaves before slamming her hand on the doorframe and sticking her messy head back into view. “Oh and my name’s not Kid, it’s Powder.”
Speechless at the two points stunning Vi at once - the kid mishearing ‘somewhere else’ as ‘in the apartment’ and the kid’s name being Powder - Vi only sits there a second before letting out an exasperated sigh and standing to shut the bedroom door.
She comes out of the bedroom in a much more comfortable tank and sweatpants combo, detours to wash the makeup off her face, and finds the kid lying sprawled out on the couch reading one of Vi’s crime novels. “You have the same taste in books Caitlyn does,” Powder says casually, not looking up as Vi approaches. “I’m like 90% sure she has this book.”
“Wow, very cool,” Vi deadpans with zero interest in who reads what. “Time to go home.”
Powder sits up, book folded on her lap and looks surprised and sad. Like a kicked puppy. “Can’t I stay here?”
“What? No.”
“But I— I was hoping we could get to know each other, like a sister night and—“
Vi struggles to keep herself from shouting. But the anger is still there, sharp in her tone. “You can’t just show up at some random stranger’s door, break in, tell some insane story and expect to couch surf. C’mon up.” She jerks her thumb over the shoulder to the door. “Fun’s over.”
“But, I…”
“Look kid, I’m sure you had this big adventure planned in your head, but this is the real world. Call your folks to come pick you up.”
Powder’s face turns stony, voice suddenly incredibly quiet. “Mom and Dad are dead.”
“Oh.” Vi pauses, processing. “Oh, I’m… shit, sorry kid. Today? Do we need to call someone?”
“It happened four years ago,” Powder shrugs. “Car accident.”
“Shit,” Vi says again. “So where do you live now? Relatives or…”
“Foster home.”
“Right.”
And now it starts to make sense. It’s something Vi’s all too familiar with, the shitty system and shitty homes it bounces kids around in. She’s run away more than once at Powder’s age to try and escape, knows exactly how the kid’s feeling.
She also knows it doesn’t help.
“Look ki... Powder.” With slow breath in and out she sits down on the coffee table and rubs at the bridge of her nose. “I get it, really. But you can’t run away and expect to disappear, not in anyway that’s gonna end up good for you. Okay?”
Powder’s eyes get wide again. “I know!” She shifts in the couch, nodding eagerly and babbling. “I’m not running away, just… okay it’s a little running away but it was to find you. And I found you! Which is great! You’re my sister, so you can be my legal guardian, we can be a family!”
She looks so hopeful, but with that expectation that she’s not gonna get it. “I don’t have any money to go back,” she fires out as a final attempt. “So you can’t kick me out.”
Vi looks back at Powder for a second and for just that second she can begrudgingly see a similarity in stubbornness. Without replying she heads to the front hall to grab her favourite red jacket, slips it on to return to the main room and pick up her keys and the brown bag she still hasn’t managed to open. She looks at the kid with exasperated finality, refusing to let her win, and jerks her head to the door.
“Alright, then I’ll drive. Where do you live?”
The drive is quiet for the first ten minutes or so, at least after five minutes of Powder sitting in the back and asking too many questions about the plexiglass barrier (are you a taxi? An Uber driver? That’s cool do you meet a lot of weirdos? Has anyone horked up back here? Why can’t I roll down the window? Have you ever been shot? Is that why you wear your hair like that? Did you have brain surgery after being shot? It looks like that, with the way one side is short, but also kinda cool.)
Vi gritted out a careful “could you shut up for five minutes?” and finally the ride had been blessedly quiet for her to focus on remembering which way to drive out of the city in the right direction.
After a short standoff where Powder refused to give her town name and Vi drove the car past the police station to successfully scare it out of her, Vi’s now on the interstate at 9 on a fucking Thursday.
The kid lives in Maine. Fucking Maine, in a a town called Piltover that’s so small Vi had to zoom in five times just to see it on the map. How she managed to get from Port Fucking Nowhere to Boston on her own Vi has no idea.
“How did you even find me?” Vi asks to break the silence once they’re finally on the highway and she doesn’t have to be concerned with concentrating as hard. Powder lets out a thoughtful hum before responding.
“I have my ways.”
“Uh huh,” Vi replies, not really sure how to goad more information out.
“You have a lot of tattoos,” Powder continues, either to change the subject or because this rapid firing is just how her brain works. “Are you in a gang?”
Vi actually barks a laugh aloud then. “No kid, I just like tattoos.”
“Caitlyn always says only criminals have lots of tattoos, because you can’t get jobs if you have them so you have to resort to crime.” The expression on the kid’s face is one of smug disbelief. “You have a tattoo on your face, but you have a job though? Right?”
“Yeah, I have a job.”
“Heh,” the smile on the kid’s face can only be described as ‘shit eating grin’, like she just won a long argument. “Cool.”
She sits back against the seat and stares out the window for a bit. Vi glances at the screen on her dash to see the estimated time to town Nowhere is still forty minutes.
Fuck.
Vi clears her throat, and against her better judgement decides to start a new conversation. “So, uh, is your foster house garbage? That why you ran?”
A quiet scoff comes from the back seat. “Yeah, sure. She’s… awful.“
Vi gives a knowing snort. “Pocketing the cheques?”
“No she…” Powder trails off and when the silence hangs Vi glances in the rearview to see the kid making a face like she’s trying to chew dry steak. “She just sucks.”
Well that could go either way. Vi chews the inside of her cheek thoughtfully.
She’s not comfortable dropping a kid off at a foster home that’s like some of the ones she remembers. But Vi sure as hell doesn’t want to be responsible for a runaway and a potential kidnapping charge. She’s not keen to drop Powder off with authorities either, just for the kid to get “runaway” on her record and potentially put in a group home just for being a preteen overreacting to her guardian putting a time limit on the PlayStation.
But Powder doesn’t want to seem to elaborate more on the situation, and Vi doesn’t push it.
She turns the radio on instead.
They finally pull off the highway to smaller roads, and after another long drag of driving arrive to the road signs announcing Piltover, Maine, a quaint town of apparently population 2600. The weathered sign board boasts a quaint but classic clock tower by a harbour, sailboats painted on the horizon.
The few sparse homes on the border look at least well cared for as they drive past, farming equipment and country decor laid out.
Vi glances in the rearview to see the kid still awake, quietly staring out the window and chewing her bottom lip.
They drive on, the street lamps getting closer together until they’re bunched along a main street of a quaint small town that looks like it belongs to a postcard. Vi stops at the four way and glances around empty streets that all seem to lead to housing, before driving a bit further in.
In less than a minute to reach the centre of the town, with the streets a bit wider, the street lamps more decorative and storefronts things like a post office that looks as old as the concept of mail, a novelty bakery shop, a bookstore, flower shop and a store that seems to sell anything blue and kitschy making up some of the low, close buildings surrounding the roundabout that curls around a decorative fountain. The previously advertised clock tower sits at the opposite end from where Vi drove in, hovering over the town square with spotlights illuminating it.
Vi slows the car, pulling to the side and parking. She turns to look at her passenger that’s already looking back at her. “So,” Vi says. “Where do you live?”
“Caitlyn’s house is on Mills Street,” Powder replies. She’s said the name a few times, Vi realizes absently as she hits the map on her phone. This Caitlyn must be her guardian.
She’s about to ask a house number when the satellite map shows that Mills is a short street with only one house. Well, isn’t that fancy.
“Cool.” Vi shifts the car back into drive.
Mills Street is fancy. A nice, smoothly paved road of new dark asphalt just past a few other residential streets and a park, surrounded by forest, that curves to loop back onto the street it branches off. Almost hidden in the surrounding wood, the only house on it is at the top of the arc.
The house, as Vi can see as they drive up, is huge; a mansion of finely trimmed hedges, fir trees and what looks like a large apple tree to one side on the well manicured lawn. The front door is bordered by columns, the house paint is crisp and white with black trim and a low black fence surrounds the property. It screams old money; certainly not the type of neglectful foster house Vi was dreading.
Vi can’t help her whistle. “This is your house?” The porch lights are off, but there’s lights on inside, so this Caitlyn’s awake then. Which is a relief.
“This is where I live,” Powder confirms and corrects her in one go. “Not my home.”
Vi holds back from rolling her eyes, instead rolling the wheel to turn the car up the laneway. She pulls to a stop and kills the engine, turning to look at the skinny kid in the back of her car. Powder’s slumped, arms crossed, a mix between exhausted and angry. Vi sighs.
“Alright, end of the line,” she grunts slightly as she gets out her side, stretching her neck while circling the car and opening Powder’s door. “C’mon,” she jerks a thumb to the big house. With her face pinched and nose wrinkled up in a grimace, Powder looks ready to argue back but instead just huffs and undoes her seatbelt, slowly climbing out of the car like she’s trying to drag this out as long as possible.
Vi begins to walk up the laneway, Powder dragging her feet behind her. They make it a couple of steps before the porch lights suddenly flick on, and the front door opens.
“Powder!”
The woman that runs out of the house isn’t what Vi expected. She’s younger, first of all, looking barely older than Vi. She’s dressed in a lavender tanktop and dark blue fleece pyjama bottoms with paw prints on them. Her hair is up in a bun that’s two streets past ‘messy’ and is verging on ‘falling apart’. She does have that slender, cheekbone featuring shape to her face, but even that catches Vi off guard when the woman gets closer and she’s making such a wide-eyed expression that any harshness to her face is erased by the ridiculousness of it.
She’s also, Vi realizes, alarmingly tall.
The woman seems to not even notice Vi’s there, running past and instead nearly throwing herself at Powder; sliding to her knees and taking the kid in a tight hug.
Powder looks… less enthused.
“God,” the woman says (and the British accent is the only thing about her that matches the house she just walked out of) into the kid’s messy hair, hugging her like the world is ending. “I was so worried about you. Are you alright? What were you thinking?” She pulls back, hands to Powder’s cheeks, looking her over for any bruises or marks or scuffs, pushing back Powder’s bangs. Powder continues to look exasperated, staring up at Vi with an expression that plainly says “See? I told you not to bring me back here.”
The woman finally seems to catch on that there’s a third person on this laneway. She follows Powder’s gaze up to Vi and blinks at her.
Her eyes are… wow. Blue.
The woman checks Powder’s face again before standing up, holding Vi’s gaze. She looks down for a second to adjust her pants, wiping the bits of loose gravel off the fleece, before clearing her throat and standing up straight, nearly a full head higher than Vi. She holds out her hand, smiling politely.
“Caitlyn Kiramman,” she says, more calmly. Vi reaches forward and takes her hand in a shake. It’s firm, the type of handshake you’d expect from high profile lawyers or CEO’s or—
“Mayor of Piltover.”
Ah.
“This is Vi,” Powder speaks up before Vi gets a chance. The kid’s moved up beside the two of them, standing a bit more closer to Vi and looking up at the other woman, at Caitlyn. “She’s my sister.”
“You think I’m your sister,” Vi corrects her. Powder rolls her eyes. Caitlyn looks almost like she’s frowning as her eyes dart between them, brow furrowed but her mouth is still very slightly curved upward. Definitely a politician.
“Well, that’s certainly a development.” She looks Vi up and down with a quick flick of her eyes, looking a little bit like she just smelled something unpleasant.
“She just showed up at my place.” Shoving her hands in her pockets, Vi tries not to return the mayor’s sour expression. She’s used to getting looked down on like this and it makes her skin crawl every damn time, just like she hates how she feels she needs to explain herself. “I don’t know how she found me, but I didn’t feel right putting her back on a bus so I drove her.”
She can hear Powder snort beside her, but ignores it. Caitlyn just continues to smile that fake diplomatic expression.
“Please then, Vi was it? Thank you for keeping Powder safe and bringing her home. Would you like to have a cup of tea before you return? If not, I understand, it’s late and I’m sure you have a journey ahead of you.”
The firm tone in her voice and coldness of her eyes, says ‘leave’.
Which Vi was planning on doing. She was just going to drop the kid off and get the hell outta dodge. But something about this Caitlyn Kiramman irritates Vi, in a way that makes her want to irritate right back.
So she smiles wide and pleasant, reaches out to ruffle Powder’s hair like they’d really bonded on the impromptu road trip, and nods to Ms Mayor. “Tea sounds great.”
Caitlyn looks like she just swallowed a bug, and nods politely. “Come along, Powder,” she says, hand outstretched to the tween who shoots narrow glances (that could be glares) between the two women before stalking past her foster guardian up to the house.
The woman lets out just the slightest sigh and follows, indicating to Vi to do so as well.
The house, the fucking mansion, looks about what Vi expected on the inside based on the exterior. Marble and hardwood floors, ornate banisters going up the winding staircase to the second floor, a colour scheme that’s primarily monochrome neutrals except for dark green accents. It’s sparsely decorated with mostly paintings of flowers and the occasional bird or horse type of gallery art piece.
Well at least she isn’t ‘giant painted self portrait’ rich.
“Powder, why don’t you go and wash up and unpack your things?” Caitlyn’s voice echoes slightly in the large foyer, her back to both of them. Vi hears a small, soft snort beside her from the kid, but Powder shoulders her backpack and trudges over to the staircase. She pauses at the bottom on and turns to look at Vi, who just gives her a nod.
Looking like she’d been asked to eat worms, Powder sags her shoulders a little and stomps upstairs.
Caitlyn hasn’t stopped walking and is halfway though the house now to the kitchen, Vi following after.
The kitchen looks about as Pinterest Perfect as the rest of the house, minimal and steel and impossibly clean. There’s a couple of papers with childish artwork of colourful animal characters stuck to the fridge with fruit-shaped magnets, but they look drawn by a younger hand. Vi pauses to look then over while Caitlyn’s busying herself with the kettle and sees that yeah, they’re dated from a couple years earlier.
“What did Powder tell you?”
Vi looks up, and Caitlyn’s not looking at her while she takes out a wide tin full of tea bags.
“Not much,” Vi replies, standing and turning to face the other woman with as much casual indifference as she can muster. “Her parents died a few years back, she lives with you now, this town has a really good ice cream stand, 7th grade can suck it.”
Caitlyn laughs slightly at that, an exhale of air through her nose. She places two teabags into a plain white teapot and finally turns to look at Vi, blue eyes darting to take her in again.
There’s something about the woman that Vi can’t place. Caitlyn had taken out her messy bun and her hair was now hanging loose, falling just past her shoulders, and despite the suburban-mom getup nothing about Caitlyn screams motherly. She’s stiff, expression stern, everything about her cold and sharp and intentionally distant. When she pours the hot water into the teapot Vi can seen the tenseness in her shoulders; usually a tell when a mark is about to run.
But Caitlyn doesn’t run, just swirls the teapot a couple of times before pouring it out into two cups and handing one to Vi.
“Do you believe she’s your sister?”
Vi chews her cheek as she adds some sugar cubes from the offered bowl, and a bit of milk, into her cup. She can’t help the shrug. “It’s not impossible. I was given up as a baby, so us having at least the same birth mother is… there’s a chance.”
“I see,” Caitlyn says a bit airily. She doesn’t ask a follow up question, and Vi fidgets with her cup for a minute.
“Is it just you two?” She asks, glancing around again for any other signs of life. “No husband?”
Something flits over Caitlyn’s expression before she blinks it off. She frowns and shakes her head.
“No, I… lived alone before I took Powder in.”
“Big house to be alone in.”
“It is,” Caitlyn’s frown softens into just the slightest smile as she nods. “I had a few rooms just shut off entirely. Powder’s left her mark and brought more life into the place, which has been wonderful.”
They lapse into silence again, both sipping from their cups. Maybe it’s the exhaustion or the stress or this whole weird situation but Vi can’t help herself from poking the bear. Just a little. “Big fancy house, you’re clearly doing good for yourself, no other kids to cause problems. Nice looking little town. Why would a kid want to run away from all this?”
Another expression passes over Caitlyn’s too quick for Vi to define. She looks ready to reply, staring intently down at her tea to avoid Vi’s eyes, mouth a thin, hard line.
“Can Vi stay?”
Both women look up to see Powder coming down the stairs, in blue pyjamas with little scribbles all over them. The girl is looking at Caitlyn like she’s expecting the worst, eyes darting to Vi and back. Caitlyn places her tea down and straightens herself to look at her ward sternly.
“I’m sure Vi has her own life to get back to.” With the accent and the way she says the words, Caitlyn almost sounds like a stereotypical villain from a kids movie. And Powder, with her big, watery eyes, looks like the pitiful protagonist of one. Vi almost laughs, if it weren’t for Powder sounding like she’s about to cry with her protest.
“But she’s here now! And I wanna ask her a bunch of stuff and I want to-“
“Powder,” Caitlyn says slowly, “I think it’s time we say thank you goodbye to… Vi,” she says Vi’s name like it’s a curse word she’s being forced to read aloud and the hairs on the back of Vi’s neck raise, “and get to bed.”
“But I—“
“It’s late and you have school tomorrow. Bed. Now.”
Powder snaps her mouth shut, glares at Caitlyn, shoots a look to Vi and turns to stomp up the stairs.
“You should head out,” she says with a sigh, hand reaching for Vi’s still mostly full cup. “The longer you linger the worse it’ll be for her.”
Vi hands the cup over and Caitlyn takes it gingerly, like she’s loathe to accidentally touch the other woman during the pass. Watching her set the cup down by the sink, Vi glances up at the stairs where Powder had vanished and back.
“Actually is there like a motel or something around here?” she asks casually, leaning back against the counter. Caitlyn’s jaw moves, but she doesn’t say anything for a moment. Just looks over Vi as if trying to figure her out.
“There’s a small inn by the water, I can give you the address and directions.” Setting her cup on the coaster, Caitlyn stands up and walks over to the little buffet table against the wall. She pulls a pad of paper and pen out of a drawer and writes something down.
“Thanks,” Vi says with a casual tone as Caitlyn writes the information down. “I’m pretty beat, safer to sleep it off than drive, y’know?”
The mayor doesn’t reply, only walking over to hand the paper with written directions towards Vi. She takes it from those long fingers and glances down, nodding at the address written there. “Cool.”
“Thank you for bringing her home,” Caitlyn says with finality. “Safe drive tomorrow.”
Vi just nods and begins to walk to the door. “Yeah,” she says, giving the cold empty house another glance. “Anyway. Night.”
“Goodnight,” Caitlyn follows after her, voice curt. She stands in the doorway and watches Vi walk back to her car. When Vi turns to look back at the house, Caitlyn’s eyes are narrow and shrewd, and she straightens herself before shutting the door.
Looking up, Vi sees in one top corner window some pulled back curtains suddenly drop back into place, a messy mop of faded blue hair quickly ducking out of sight.
The motel is right where Caitlyn said it would be, which Vi is mildly surprised at. She was half expecting the road to lead her right into the water, the pinch-faced mayor smiling into her tea cup back home. It’s an old, colonial style building with the entire lower half a pub and rooms upstairs, which is quaint at least.
“Visiting long?” The large man at the bar asks with a gruff smile as he rings up a room for her. Vi gives a nonchalant shrug.
“Just need the sleep,” she replies. He nods and rubs a hand through his graying beard. Handing her a key with a large metal fish keychain hanging off it, he says “201. Nice view of the water.”
“Thanks,” Vi says, feeling the weight of the key in her hand.
Shouldering the overnight bag she always kept in her car for emergencies, and the small brown bag from earlier she still hasn’t gotten around to opening, Vi follows the barkeep’s instructions upstairs to her room, opening up to a simple cottage-y looking place with nautical decor and wood panelling everywhere. Vi drops her bag and walks over to the window, looking out to the rocky beach with some small wizened trees out to the ocean.
It is a nice view.
She kicks off her shoes and splashes some water from the bathroom in her face to clean up. There’s a little armchair in the room, and she drops herself down into it with a tired groan. Her legs are killing her, her knee’s still sore, shoulders aching from the job earlier and now she’s up too late with the remnants of an adrenaline rush from whatever that was with the kid and the blue, piercing eyes of a mayor Vi’s pretty sure hates her. It’s been too long of a day, and now getting the chance to relax is a sweet relief.
Vi, finally, opens her crumpled, little brown paper bag. Inside is a small plastic clamshell that did it’s best to keep the pink cupcake inside it intact.
With an effort not to sigh, Vi takes the plastic container out and sets it on her lap to open up. Gingerly, she takes the treat, it’s icing a smeared mess with half of it left behind in the plastic when she lifts the cupcake out. She holds it in front of her, looking at the treat she had been looking forward to since she bought it five hours ago.
She glances at the bedside digital clock to see the 11:59 flashing red.
“Happy Birthday to me,” she holds it up in a ‘cheers’ fashion, in a soft singsong voice to the empty room.
The clock switches to 12:00 and Vi takes a bite.