Violet

EPILOGUE/BONUS

Caitlyn's POV
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I didn't know what happened, but I was confused. I was shocked, I was hurt. I was lucky that I hadn't died that day, though many thought I did. I didn't bother to change their minds.

In a few days, the whole world flipped upside down. I lost too many friends, too much of my family. I didn't know how to function, how to breathe. I begged the air to fill my lungs at a steady pace while my heart beat erratically.

I was standing next to her. I was right there. Where did she go? What did she do?

I blinked, and I saw Vi and Jinx in a heap on the floor, and y/n was nowhere to be seen.

And the world just moved on. Labeled her as a revolutionary, and didn't utter another word about what happened that day. It was almost too simple, too easy. Did we really struggle so long for this?

How does one exist in the aftermath of a war? How does one cope with the thick stillness that chokes up the throat and leaves a fog in the mind?

I missed her. I missed my best friend. I missed her telling me to be patient, to hold on. She kept me a steady mind and a calm heart, and now I didn't know where she was.

But she saved us. She saved the city.

In the days after, Vi was admitted to a hospital. If I couldn't cope, she was worse.

It took many decades before she moved on. Before she healed. Her whole world had shattered in a few moments. Only she knew what had happened, and she told no one. But most of us could connect the dots.

That, the action that had freed the Undercity once and for all, was a cruel one. An uncomfortable one, a horrible one.

Somewhere deep inside, I felt her alive still. Watching over us. Using her magic for good, unlike the hundreds that came before us.

She knew, that the monster that coursed within her was the same that had caused the demise of her city. So in the end, she knew she had to be rid of it. There was no other solution.

But it was so cruel. I didn't know a single person who deserved peace and happiness more than her and Vi. And like many heroes, she wouldn't get it. Or else the world may have been too perfect, no?

From that day forward, I vowed to continue her mission in her absence. In her disappearing, she lit a fire within the people of her city. We all had a duty, and that was to keep each other safe. Keep the city thriving. No one would suffer like she and Vi did, ever again. I swore on it.

Against my own desires, but according to my duty, I joined by Heimerdinger's side for almost fifteen years.

And when I was nearing grayness and defeat, I laid my crown down to the next generation of warriors and took a seat. I kept my mother and father in mind, I remembered Jayce and Victor, I remembered Ekko, I remembered from whence we came and I remembered the mission.

Y/n's life was just that. One mission with an end goal she was so desperate to achieve that any means to an end was acceptable.

But I felt a sense of incompleteness, a restlessness. Seeing Vi like this, on the brink of insanity, almost drove me to my own.

After all, who did we have now? No one but each other. No one else cares about us. To them, we we were but a speck in history that no one would bother to truly learn about.

"What do we do now, Caitlyn?" Vi asked me the next day, still covered in Jinx's blood and tears. I shrugged, liquor bottle in hand. I didn't know what to do.

And then I didn't see Vi again for almost eight years after that night. I was truly and indefinitely alone. Why was everyone leaving? I felt like I was constantly watching the lives around me through a sheet of glass, from a short but great distance.

Vi searched and searched before she finally gave up. I remember the day. I was drinking a cuppa in the kitchen, at five in the morning, when I was ripped away from my newspaper by a violent rapping on my door.

I rose, tentatively grabbing my shotgun and pointing it at me door. I looked like my mother, and acted like her as well.

I opened the door to a drenched and broken Vi, if it was possible for her to be even more broken than before.

"I can't find her. I can't find her, Caitlyn. Why did she leave me? She just... left." She muttered on and on in my arms, a shell of herself. A pure carcass of the brave young woman she used to be.

Then again, weren't we all? Y/n brought peace, but what did she give away to do so? I'll tell you. Our sanity.

We were stuck in this constant pain, not being able to anything but keep going.

The next time I saw y/n was on the brink of death. I told myself it was just a hallucination, a delusional image my brain forced me to see in my last moments.

But I knew it was her. After I recovered from that horrible fall, I cried in joy. She was still out there. I didn't tell a single soul what I had seen and I never looked over the side of a building ever again.

I kept going in her spirit, kept powering through.

"You're not done yet, Caitlyn. I still have something I want you to do. Take care of Vi for me, will you? Find her someone to love. Tell her to live on. Make sure she knows that she is loved, always. Can you do that for me? Get up, Caitlyn. Get up. You still have life to live." She whispered in my ear, the faint sound was music to me. But I lay there, a heap of broken bones at the foot of the Piltover Theatre. For some time, I didn't feel any pain.

But after two, three hours, I could feel the bones in my back and their fractures, I could feel the way my legs were irregularly bent. I felt the sharp pain at the base of my skull, the flow of blood from it.

And I heard her words, urging me to stay alive, to call for help, to scream.

When someone finally found me, I had been screaming for an hour and twenty seven minutes. The grand clock tower across the square haunted me, forcing me to keep count.

I made a full recovery, and swore to never waste the precious life her sacrifice had given me, Vi's pain had given me.

And I still looked for her. I begged her to see me one more time, talk to me once more.

She didn't.

And when my life was lived and her voice was heard no more, when Vi was finally happy and I decided to rest, when the city was at peace and I was done, I didn't see her.

And I was okay with that.