Welcome to your life
There's no turning back

Even while we sleep

We will find you

A chiasmus is a rhetorical figure, Caitlyn remembers from her studies in literature; when things, words and constructions - repeated in a reverse order -, bodies and corpses, lay around and create a perfect "x".

She wonders why is she thinking that. On her bed, sprawled and innocent, Vi. Opening up her heart. Fiery, uncertain eyes, calloused hands, labored face. Vi speaking her truth. How to resist the urge to touch her, she wonders.
Caitlyn feels something surging in her chest, so different from when her and Jayce used to lay around, barefoot, young and then not so young, on that same bed, and the air was not vibrating with what instead it's pressing into her chest now. Eyes fixated on Vi.

She holds her breath. Wants Vi to speak freely, to think that this is a safe space. Wants herself to resist the urge to touch that face, to annihilate the bare distance that separates them.

"And I just ran away. I left her."

It's impossible now. Like an unexplicable force dragging her. Caitlyn only touches her face, intertwining their hands. Wanting to say that it's okay. That she has a friend.

She wonders, how can I do that. A full night. The chiasmus is still there. The itching in her fingers is stronger now. It was just a light touch on her cheek.

Caitlyn tells herself that it's okay. She can do that. Even if she loses herself in those pink hair and that defined jaw, the tattoo on her face that she misspelled as a six instead of her name. She can resist. She can do that, and be a good friend for Vi.

(She couldn't be more wrong.)

When asleep, Vi looks like a different creature altogether. Angelic and serene. Even when she is muttering something and Caitlyn is sure it's from a bad nightmare that's making her frowning. But still, resting her limbs on the biggest bed she probably ever saw, mumbling nonsense and smiling too, pressing closer and closer to Caitlyn's touch; she looks like a miracle on earth.

More, a meteorite on earth. Ready to destroy every false pretense of normalcy Caitlyn could ever had.

Watching her turning away and suddenly grasping for hair, waking up from that nightmare she is now sure was regarding her sister, is when Caitlyn realizes: her mind was made up long before tonight.

When she watched her jumping from floors to roofs. When Vi dragged both of them to a brothel and looked almost pleased to find that Caitlyn would go and look for girls.

She thinks, it's okay.

If you are here to shatter my world, so be it.

You're the meteorite and the sun, and the darkness, and the key to that staggering obsession that dragged me to Stillwater in the first place.

Wreck my world, so be it. Let me wreck yours too.

Help me to decide

Help me make the most

Of freedom and of pleasure

Vi wakes up with a high note and a gasp. Caitlyn is there, ready to take her in her comforting arms. Come here, sweet girl. I'm here to take you home.

Vi is sweating, the force of the nightmare reverberating into her eyelids. Every false pretense of the force, of the sureness, of her strong will, shattered away. Caitlyn thinks that in her arms she looks like the most precious thing in the world. A thing to cherish, a thing to protect. Her meteorite to guard down.

She remembers the chiasmus, how it is meant to be used as a device in literature to exacerbate the differences between parts of a text, parts of a body, the oil and the water of a painting, the precise and crafted skills that in opposite ways are attracted to one another.

In the course of the night they shifted away and now Vi's face is on her breast, still gasping and looking for hair. She thinks, this is still a chiasmus to me.

There is still different parts of each other, even if they are laying face to face. Even when she slides her thumb on her face, collecting the solitary tears that Vi doesn't want her to see. But Caitlyn wants to see that too.

The thumb that was sliding across Vi's face should retract. Caitlyn thinks, I should just put my hand around her jaw and leave it. And so, be it.

But her mind and her body and her hands are doing opposite things. A chiasmus in herself too.

Her mind is saying leave it be, screaming at her, while her hands are now cupping Vi's face with intent. Her body shifting imperceptibly towards the other. Shifting again.

Still, as Caitlyn fixes her eyes on Vi's, she wants to say, this is okay. Take your pain and give it to me. I don't mind.

I'm an excellent shot, she had said earlier in the day. It was true, she is. Precise, calculated, the seconds before the impact never taken for granted.

"I'm an excellent shot." She says it again, disrupting the quiet of the room.

"You said it already." Vi answers with a shrug, not entirely meeting her eyes. It's like in the safety of her bedroom, Cailtyn can have the upper hand. It's like saying, it's okay. I'm here now.

"I'm excellent at other things too."

She doesn't wait to hear the response of that bold statement. She bathes in the sight of Vi' surprised eyelids, the imperceptible tension on her body, the relaxation that comes right after.

She slides her thumb again on her face, on the tattoo she had misread. She tastes her lips; salty, hot, comforting.

A quiet nod, all that Caitlyn needed.

"Let me take care of you" is what she eventually says.

++

Nothing ever lasts forever

Bliss and fortitude come right in hand.

The water is scrolling into her hair, Caitlyn thinks she wants to drown. Erase Vi's memory, and then go and find her, and create a new one anyway.

"It's been real, cupcake."

Caitlyn knows it was. Drowing out moans, whispering pleas, sharing the heat of that body that was arching under her fingers.

Caitlyn knows it's real. She doesn't want to let go.

"Oil and water, wasn't meant to be."

But it can, she wanted to say. Nothing came to her mind. Only the rain pouring down on their faces. Only the faint memory of their brief adventure, of the touch of their fingers, of that whispered promise. Caitlyn can take care of her, she can. Vi won't allow.

++

A conversation, held when they were at their most vulnerable. Pressed against one another, sweat and moans and body fluids all into the other.

Caitlyn presses a light kiss on Vi's forehead.

"It's not the bed, you know. It's the air. And the light. Up here, it seems like the whole world is within your hand's reach."

It's probably the most talkative Vi has been on something that's not strictly mission-related. Caitlyn bathes in the sound of her voice, thrilled and joyful and free.

"It's like... I can see an endless road, sunrise on the horizon. A path to take."

She goes quiet again.

A moment later, Caitlyn says: "Things can change. We can go on that road together. Enjoy the sunrise."

Vi doesn't answer.

++

A few hours later, hand in hand, watching as things change. The worst possible outcome realizing itself against the quiet night ahead.

But they're together, hands in hands. Watching an endless horizon dipanating in front of them.

"We are."

Everything is terrifying. Piltover has started collapsing on itself. The world as they had both come to know has reached its end. A new era downs on them.

"What?" Vi turns to her, bewilderment on her face. But still, hands in hands. Close to one another. Pressed, to each other. Oil and water. A chiasmus.

"Meant to be."

It becomes their mantra. Pressed against sheets, and shelters, and bleeding legs and after a rough fight.

Can you remember? Because I always do.

We are meant to be.