Chapter Text
Wake up. It's either in the cot in her apartment or a street in an alley
Smear paint on her face, cover her identity, throw on something she can afford to lose and walk to the ring.
Daylight's barely broken, and she's already face down on the mat. Doesn't take her too long to get up, doesn't take her long to hook her fist into the corner of the guy's jaw. Something crunches, it feels good. He goes down crying, someone yells, and half the crowd cheers, while the others swear at their losses. Rounds go by, people who think they have the guts to go against her getting their daylights knocked out.
Daylight's barely fallen, and someone from outside the ring pulls her to the side. She can't make out what he's saying because the noise made her ears ring. Her eyes are dull as he speaks, and she barely registers a faint push away from the ring.
Ah, so he wants her to take a break. Tough luck.
She walks to the bar and takes someone's unfinished drink. Stands around, lurks behind bar-goers, snatches drinks from tables and bartops until the buzz turns into swaying, until sound turns into white noise, until lights turn into neon flashes.
Her paint is streaking down her face. It's the sweat that's making it smear.
She tries to ignore the voices she thinks she hears. But someone is behind her, and he sounds like Vander. She still can't make out what he's saying. She's too sleep-deprived to.
The pit is louder than the ring, it's hot and musty, full of filthy bodies pressing together to a song that sounds truly disgusting. She wants every second of it, shoving her way into the crowd and letting the lull of crashing music slam into her brain, and see whether common sense or the alcohol wins.
There's someone with blue eyes.
She stops, blinks hard, because someone just a few bodies away has bright blue eyes. People usually aren't that bright down in the Lanes.
They're wearing something gleaming, something sharp.
Her heart beats hard, breathing harder. It's like a magnet.
Her voice.
The crowd doesn't part easily, but she can't hear the complaints over the sound of the music.
Please.
By the time she's lured, the flickers in her peripheral are getting stronger. It beats with the strobe lights. It beats with her heart. Sweat is staining the paint down her jaw but she doesn't care because-
Caitlyn.
She's so beautiful, looking at her like she deserves the world.
I've missed you.
A flash, someone bumps into her from behind, and she has to refocus again. It's slow, her eyes not quite working in time with her brain, it takes several blinks to clear her vision, just to look at-
Some man. She doesn't remember his name.
Some man who is leaning in, trying to get closer to her. With half a brain, she almost thinks about being polite. When he gets closer, though, looking like he's about to fucking lick her-
She's lost count of how many times she's knocked someone on their ass with a hook to the jaw, but this one was just another tally on the list. He grunts out a swear, a complaint, some other useless words and whines while the other party-goers look at her like she's crazy. She might as well be. Times like now make her consider it. The only thing she cares about is spitting slurred words to him, watching him cradle his jaw while everyone else practically steps on him.
Gross.
Her mood's been soured. She feels like shit. The craving, longing feeling had been following her around like a stalker. Nothing seemed to get rid of it in it's entirety. It was a heavy ache, like a torn muscle or broken rib. Some days it was so heavy she couldn't get up. Some days it was so heavy that when she got knocked down in the ring, she simply just didn't get back up. She just endured the cheers and groans until someone dragged her out.
She pushes through the crowd, through the bar, and finds her only escape again, and the scrawny little rat at the entrance. He looks over at her, looks her up and down, and cocks his head to the side. It takes her a moment to try and remember his name. She fails.
"You back already?"
"Lemmie in." She mumbles, rolling her shoulder.
"Fuck's sake, you're wasted," The rat sounds surprised, he really shouldn't be. "You wanna make a damn fool out of yourself, make a fool. But what I'm thinking? You should get your ass some water and go home."
"I can fight." She ignores everything else he said. As long as there's blood pumping through her veins, she always can fight.
She'll fight a hundred times over for each time she couldn't protect those she cared about. She'll be fighting until she's in her grave.
I'm a fucking moron.
"You make me good money." The rat tries to put a hand on her shoulder. She jerks away. "I don't need you going out there and falling over before you even enter the ring."
Vander wouldn't like this.
"Don't care." She slurs. "Let me in."
He doesn't say another word, he knows better than to do this song and dance all over again, so he just steps out of the way, collects his wagers, and waits for the Brawler to fall on her ass.
It doesn't take long. One misjudged hit from the heavy man on the opposite side of the ring, and she goes down like a sack of bricks. Like when the Warden first used his club on her, the one made of brass and metal. She went down hard back then, skull bleeding and when he was done and bored of her, she threw up in the corner of her cell. She didn't vomit now, but feels like it.
Her world swims dangerously in fuzzed tones, voices are muffled and her face is numb where it is pressed into the mat. She tastes blood. It doesn't mix well with the last drink on her tongue. The crowd is cheering, she wants to disappear. Then, the figure of the man appears in the corner of her vision.
He has an orange glowing eye-
Adrenaline gave to fear, and she launches back up, pushing her back into the cage of the ring, the messily tied thread of memories unraveled and spilled through her.
He was standing over Powder, he was going to kill her, she just wanted to help and he was going to kill her- then waking up in a concrete box, the first thing she did was push her back to the wall and scream, until someone came down, until she asked where her sister was, until he opened her cage and launched a heavy-handed fist into her nose.
I should have been the one to kill you.
It's sweat that was making her paint smear down her face.
She launches. Doesn't remember connecting, doesn't remember the gratifying crack of bone, the tearing of her knuckles under her booze-soaked wraps. It was all noise and light. A disconnect. Someone yells, someone yanks her back by her tank top and she almost launches at them too before the static noise rushes back as cheers. She blinks hard, looking around, confused and dazed and one hundred other emotions that refuse to make themselves known at that moment. The only thing that was registering was a large red smear on the mat, dragging through the other side of the gate, the pounding of her head, her knuckles.
Someone urges her out of the ring, it takes her a solid minute to realize it was the rat who did it.
"Look at 'ya!" He's smiling. Why was he smiling? How could he take one look at her, and smile? "I thought you were gonna eat shit, I really did."
She doesn't care. Her knuckles hurt. Her hands hurt, scars throbbing under blood soaked skin.
"But you pulled through." He laughs, takes a portion of his winnings and places a bag into her palm. "Take this, buy yourself somethin' nice with it."
He puts his hand on her shoulder, she's too dazed to pull away.
"But no more fighting tonight. You're half dead."
Vander would hate me.
She only nods, pockets her winnings and stumbles out of the building, walking through the twisted alleys and pipeworks until she reaches bigger breaks in the roads, until she was in the Lanes.
'Vi.'
Fuck off.
She doesn't know who the voice belongs to. Can't quite get her brain to connect the dots, everything was all one sound, one color, one taste. People shared the same face and each step she took felt the same, like she was walking in place.
It took 7 seconds for him to actually appear. Vi stumbles, stops. Takes one glance and almost cowers in shame.
Vander.
Alone in the back alley, nobody can see her. Her world keeps flashing, her mouth is dry. There's something burning on her face and it's not tears, there's no way it can' be tears because she doesn't cry, will not cry, over ghosts and memories.
'Vi.'
In Stillwater Vi got her name tattooed on her face to remember, so nobody would make her forget who she was.
Somedays now, though, she has to remind herself that she has a name.
Most times, it's someone else who reminds her. Doesn't matter who it is, whether it is phantom memories or a real person. Some days, she was just her. A husk. A fighter in a filthy ring, a drop at the bottom of a bottle that she could never reach.
Vi walks closer, knows that if she tries to touch, then the scene will shift. But she just wants to see, see if he can be here, take care of her. Wants to collapse in his arms and unravel as the Hound holds her. All she does is want, and Vi hates herself for it.
Vander is the reason why she's here today, whether it's good or bad. He took her in and gave her a new life and without it, she'd probably have died on that bridge too.
Vander and Caitlyn are similar, like that. Giving her freedom, before she tosses it away.
Her heart hurts, like it's trying to tear itself apart. All she can do is tremble and not look in Vander's eyes. Her hands are shaking.
"Please don't be mad." Vi whispers.
Then he was gone.
There is something sour rolling through her, and for a moment she can't handle it. She almost goes back inside.
Before the rolling of her guts tells her otherwise. She spills the last 12 hours onto the pavement. Groans, slams her palm into the rough brick wall and drags until she feels skin tear. Breathes lighter at a habit she knows she needs to stop doing. One that used to make her forget, one that used to only make her focus on the pains in her hands. It only makes her remember now.
It's sweat that's making paint smear. Not tears.