Chapter Text
“Hunger, Red—to sate a hunger or to stoke it, to feel hunger as a furnace, to trace its edges like teeth—is this a thing you, singly, know? Have you ever had a hunger that whetted itself on what you fed it, sharpened so keen and bright that it might split you open, break a new thing out? Sometimes I think that’s what I have instead of friends.”
- This Is How You Lose The Time War
YEAR 962 || PILTOVER - KIRAMMAN MANSION
There’s a cavern where Caitlyn’s heart should be—teasing in its encompassing darkness, beckoning, greedy for touches of light. In the honeyglow of her vanity mirror, she sees the obsidian grow until it coats her collarbones, burrows into her lungs.
She can’t breathe, even her reflection, an eerie twin, challenges her. The reflection’s eyes bore into her own, heedy, daring, watching the fretful rise of her chest, as though at any moment, it may cave in. Perhaps that is what scares her so, that she may give in to the night, fall victim to the cave she created. She wants so desperately to relinquish, to fall into strong arms with an even stronger hold.
That is why her reflection smiles, cruel and scathing. That is why its hand wraps around her neck in warning, and that is why it squeezes. Because Caitlyn cannot love, should not love, when there is war. Because she should know better than to waste her time when time is of the utmost concern.
The crystal orb is gone. In the hands of her mistress, Piltover may very well fall under siege of the Zaunites.
Caitlyn chokes, her reflection’s hand still tight on her neck, because she should feel demised, angry, vengeful. Because she is stone and crystal, but all her heart conjures is dust.
She lost the battle, and she may lose the war, but her heart? She wants that back.
Her shadowed twin releases her throat in the opalescent glare of the mirror. It smiles, and Caitlyn has enough humor to offer it an amicably wry chuckle. She thought her shadow might kill her, after all, it is easier this way. Clean, efficient. A death without blood, without the soul in every cell splayed upon your hands. Some piece of her conscience wished it had, but finally, her reflection grew bright, scintillating, as it offered her a knowing grin.
I need not vengeance, it tells her. I need truth.
“This is treason.” She tells herself.
But then, she speaks again, steading and revoltingly sure, Caitlyn and her shadow, one in the same.
“This is you.” She tells herself.
***
Caitlyn will lose, this she knows, but at least now, she will not be the only one to bear such a loss.
Something will be taken.
It starts today.
***
YEAR 962 || ZAUN - THE SUMP
Zaun has no moon, which is to say, it has no sun. Vi thinks this egregious. There is no sun without the moon’s worship, no stars without the sun’s supplication, and so, when Vi’s next mission leads her to the streets of Zaun, she knows her love will follow.
There is no sun without the moon.
When Vi walks the streets of Zaun, it is with purpose, with the zeal of knowing what is hers and what will come to be hers. The steps are domineering, loud, no more than the trotting of passerby, no more than the Zaunites who’ve come to know loss.
Her lips tug upwards, wolfish and utterly defying. She has stolen something of her own, too, and selfishly, she wants to bare it to the world. To parade what she has rightfully taken, partly in retribution, partly in loathing, all in an attempt to curse how wholly her mistress has overcome her thoughts.
This madness will not end, this Vi knows, but should she die, she will not go in vain. She will perish, knowing that this is her land, this is her heart, and that woman is Vi’s.
It ends today.
“Treason,” she whispers into the crowds of Zaun, straightening her gait, chuckling low, a righteous growl, “It’s almost too easy.”
***
YEAR 962 || PILTOVER - TIME ENFORCER STATION
The sun hasn’t yet risen when Caitlyn finds the letter, bathed in midnight blues and shy shadows, burrowed under papers at her station. Her desk is messy when she enters her office, the cleaners haven’t yet reached this part of the Time Enforcer Department. She is a dead girl, and Caitlyn hums, amused, for she can’t confirm if she’d ever been alive before then. In a bout of blind courage, she rips open the letter, veins hot and skin cold.
Caitlyn expects words. She expects blood and viscera and red splattered across parchment, the time thief's favorite signature.
She gets none of what she wants, such is fate, such is her cruel, cruel mistress.
In the envelope sits a picture, contorted with rough lines and round curves. In the swooping peaks of graphite are breasts, nipples stiff against the white paper, and in the sharp juts of pencil lie a chiseled torso, shadows deep, every line of muscle delicately traced.
Caitlyn gasps as her eyes draw lower, her heart hammers, her mind reels. What thin cord had steeled her wavered at what she saw: tufts of hair trailing down her thief's torso like a mocking constellation. She followed that constellation, trailed the freckles that dotted her hip bones like stars, taking note of each fine shape. Searing it into her mind for later.
The constellations led to a pretty pink nebula of slick folds, highlighted beautifully in glossy white ink. Something within Caitlyn lurches, her thumb follows smooth lines until they land on Vi’s cl*t. Wicked heat seeps into the pit of her gut, pools at Caitlyn c*nt, while she’s too busy rubbing the graphite of Vi’s to oblivion. She aches with the incessant need to be filled. Sweat glistens her brow, she gulps as she peers at the image, hoping that each blink will burn the lines into her retinas.
Treason, she thinks sardonically, scoffing as she closes the door to her office. She almost laughs. She was stupid to think the worst her mistress could do was commit treason. Vi had always been too creative for her own good, or Caitlyn’s health. The woman clicks the lock, recedes onto her chair, and prys her trousers off with one hand, the other on the picture. Its easy, unbuckling her belt, letting the garment drop with a clank. Like clockwork. Like its familiar.
She takes the others out, too.
There have always been others, from the year 957, and the one from 951, and the other from 942. There’s more, of course, always more, but Caitlyn only takes out the letters where Vi’s penmanship is frayed, chaotic and disheveled in a way that lets her know she was rushing. She was desperate. That’s what makes Caitlyn’s c*nt clench, drenched wet, how wholly empty she feels without her time thief to steal one last thing from her.
She wonders, in terribly debauchery, what mess Vi would make of her. She doesn’t think for long, thumb at epicenter of Vi’s heat, rubbing so hard she smudges the graphite of the paper, Caitlyn comes. She comes on Vi’s picture, sweet slick painting her love’s smudged c*nt so prettily. Caitlyn wonders what would Vi think of the mess she’d made, of the cavernous hole in her heart and her need for it to fill.
In morbid curiosity, she flips the picture over.
The groan that rips from her throat is not one of pleasure, but anticipation.
It read, in plum lipstick:
To My Midnight Mistress,
Come when you get this. You know where to find me.
From,
The Time Thief Who Stole Your Heart
Caitlyn would have smiled had her lips not been sore, stretched in the shape of ecstasy mere moments before.
This, she thinks sweetly,is how you lose the time war…
