Chapter Text
732 brings the new inmate to her attention. The man always runs his mouth in the cafeteria as though he’s been there longer than two years, three months, and five days.
Vi pushes her dinner around the chipped tray it was ladled onto. It didn’t take long to realise she could tell the day by it; it’s cooked in a vat big enough to bury bodies in, made in bulk to last the week. What starts out light and soft, a near-mockery of oatmeal, slowly turns throughout the week, until it’s grey-green and cracks between her teeth.
Not that the days have names, anymore. This is day five, judging by the gradient. Three more days and the protein-carb-fat-free-for-all gruel will trick her into thinking it’s easy to stomach.
Hell. It’s something to look forward to, at least.
“Knew Stillwater houses the worst of the worst, but I didn’t know it was a nuthouse, too,” 732 says. “The fresh meat over there—they tossed her in solitary for a solid month and she came out blubbering about being a Councillor’s daughter.”
429, a woman with none of her original teeth, laughs and says, “A Councillor’s daughter in here? Shit, those Pilties could steer a blimp full of kids into the river and get away with a fine.”
“Wouldn’t even get a slap on the wrist,” 732 agrees. “Think she really thought it would work? Some people just ain’t made for solitary. Remember old Spin Eye? Came out and couldn’t look at the colour orange no more. Still. Might try that line myself. What do you reckon? Noxian royalty?”
“Reel it in. Go for a noble.”
They speak loudly enough for the inmate to hear. Vi swallows down her flour/grain/meat/meal/mush and follows the line of 732’s wild gesticulating.
Vi’s the only one not already staring.
The new inmate sits in the corner, head down. Her dark hair hangs loose, covering her face. She’s thin, thinner than she likely was when they brought her in. A lot of people get that way, before they learn to stomach what they’re given.
Vi squints, searching out the number stitched into her stained uniform.
Huh. 108.
Vi remembers the old 108. She’d been there for the better part of a decade when Vi arrived in Stillwater. She’d knocked her clean off her feet with a single blow to the jaw, made a lesson of it, and taught her how to watch her back in prison.
108 was around for another six months. Inmates are forever arriving in Stillwater, forever leaving, too, though none see the sky. There’s talk of a chute in an undisclosed part of the prison, a direct descent into the deep waters below, and Vi gives it a 50-50 chance of being true.
That’s strange, though. She hadn’t considered the numbers recyclable; the small, hopeful part of her that hadn’t been beaten out started to think the numbers were akin to identities, were part of them.
She wonders about the first 516.
She wonders about the next.
Anything to avoid the present.
108 looks up, blue eyes dark and hazy. Vi holds her gaze.
The woman will have to learn not to blink.
*
The next time she comes across 108, they’re in the queue for the shower. No one’s mentioned the girl who thinks screaming about being a Councillor’s daughter will get her out of Stillwater, so Vi assumes she’s wised up and kept her mouth shut.
She’s behind Vi in the queue. Showering is an orderly process: three times a week, when the wardens are feeling generous, inmates broken down into groups, each given four minutes under the freezing/scaling water.
Vi leans against the wall, towel draped over her arms.
Something clatters to the floor. Everyone’s eyes dart towards the source of the sound. Vi turns her head enough to catch 108 in her peripheral vision, scrambling to recover her toothbrush.
“Sorry. So sorry. I didn’t mean to—sorry,” the woman mumbles to Vi, not meeting her gaze.
She’s got the voice of a Councillor’s daughter, that’s for sure. Or maybe all topsiders sound the same, mouths full of shit and venom.
“Don’t do that,” Vi says, not looking at her.
“It won’t happen again. I truly am sorry. My hand slipped, and—”
“Not that. Don’t apologise,” Vi grunts. “They’ll eat you alive if you’re tripping over yourself to say you’re sorry. You drop something and someone gives you grief for it? Tell them to fuck off.”
108 doesn’t respond. Vi glances back to find white knuckles gripping the toothbrush.
“Don’t tell them you’re a Councillor’s daughter, either,” Vi grunts.
The line moves. Only four people stand ahead of her, now.
“You heard about that? Well. That’s wholly humiliating, for whatever humiliation means in a place like this,” 108 says, croaking a laugh.
Vi presses her back to the wall, meeting her gaze. 108 has the look of someone on the cusp of forgetting how human connection works. Vi’s been there. She isn’t sure if she’s left there.
“Solitary will do that. Heard you were inside for a month,” Vi says. “That’s impressive. Lean into that. There’s nothing scarier out here than there is that box.”
108 cocks her head. Her eyes are still glazed. Vi doubts she’s comfortable sleeping in her cell, yet, opting to lie awake and strain her ears to take in every footstep, every staggered breath around her.
“Thank you for the advice,” 108 says tentatively.
“Sure,” Vi says, pulling her shirt over her head.
She doesn’t think anything of the motion until 108 murmurs a little oh! and averts her gaze. There are only two people ahead of them and Vi doesn’t want to waste shower time stripping.
“Another piece of advice? Never skip showers. You never know when the pipes are gonna play up, and you need routine in this place. You need something to look forward to,” Vi says, stepping out of her pants.
“Ah,” 108 says, still looking away.
Councillor’s daughter or not, she’s a Piltie through and through, used to marble baths and three-headed showers that never run cold. Stillwater boasts a tiled room, floors slick with mildew and whatever’s growing around the plugs, and five showers with no controls beyond on/off. The dividers between them are barely a foot deep.
Vi heads to the next open shower. She hasn’t got her hands on soap in months, but she knows how to scrub, knows how to use her nails until her body is red raw and the grime is gone.
Vi doesn’t look when 108 steps into the stall next to her, wasting precious seconds as she peels off her clothing. Vi doesn’t look. She wishes she felt the urge to, wishes nudity meant anything but conformity, necessity, surrender.
She doesn’t look.
She doesn’t say anything when 108 uses those few fleeting moments to stare into the stream of water and sob, either.
*
446 twists her fingers in Vi’s hair and smashes her face into the tabletop. Vi sets her jaw, puts her fork down, and slowly sits up. She inhales through her mouth, blood trickling from her nose and dripping on the scuffed, dented metal surface.
Vi can see something like her reflection in its surface.
Vi wipes her nose on the shoulder of her shirt before returning to her lunch. It’s painful, sure, but it’s more embarrassing than anything else, and 446 isn’t worth giving the time of day to.
“Can I help you?” Vi asks when 446 doesn’t move from her position, foot rested on the bench next to her, arm propped against her thigh.
“Just curious. Heard you know how to take a beating,” 446 says.
“Know how to dole them out, too.”
446 laughs. She gestures to a table in the far corner where half a dozen people sit and sneer, calling out encouragement to 446.
“That’s your problem, kid. You keep to yourself,” 446 says, though she can’t be more than a year or two older than Vi. “Me? I know how to keep my friends.”
Vi has no idea what 446 is trying to prove. Knocking Vi out might earn her a few more lackeys, but only if Vi acquiesces and makes a spectacle of it.
“Hey, listen,” Vi says, urging her closer. “You can hit me again. You can keep on hitting me, but I’m not in the mood to fight back. Go ahead. Break something. See how loyal your friends are when you get out of solitary.”
446 sneers. She knocks her fists against Vi’s temple and saunters over to table, barking something about 516 being a fucking coward.
Vi returns to her lunch. It’s day three and the gruel is still edible, if not blood-splattered.
Shrugging, Vi shovels it into her mouth. She tastes copper on her tongue, but hey: variety.
She presses her fingers to her nose once 446’s table grows tired of watching her and finds that nothing’s broken. All that bleeding is a bit of an overreaction.
A tray presses softly to the space opposite Vi. Vi’s gaze snaps up, and she isn’t certain she’ll have the self-control to turn down a second fight.
108 slides onto the bench in front of her, face twisted in sympathy. It won’t be long until she loses the will to dole it out so freely. Vi does her best not to bristle. 108’s learnt to eat what she’s given, if nothing else: her face no longer has that haunted, sunken look.
“Are you alright?” 108 asks, voice dropping to a whisper. “I knew better than to intervene, but felt awful watching it happen. Is there anything I can… You’re still bleeding.”
Vi sniffs sharply, drawing the blood into the back of her throat.
“You really are a Piltie, huh?”
108 straightens. Vi can’t tell if she’s uncomfortable, or if this is how topsiders are taught to sit at the table: back straight, shoulders squared, elbows at their side, hands hovering over the cutlery.
Or the splintered wooden fork, in this case.
“I’m from Piltover, yes. I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do to disguise the fact, at this point.”
“You could start talking normally,” Vi suggests through a mouthful of food. “So. How’s it feel?”
“How does what feel?” 108 asks, gesturing to the space between them.
Prison is a careful balance of feeling and not feeling; of taking beatings bone deep, skin lacerated and bruised, and holding that all inside, because it’s nothing, nothing, a mere promise of what tomorrow holds.
“Finally getting a taste of your own medicine,” Vi says. “Us fissure-folk get tossed in here for looking at an enforcer the wrong way and you lot nod your heads, sip your tea, and congratulate yourselves on keeping the streets safe. Not used to having someone as articulate as you around, topside.”
Something like a sneer crosses 108’s face. Oh, she’s never been talked down to in her life.
“Excuse me? By your reasoning, being from Piltover alone means I deserve to be here, does it? That’s your idea of justice, is it? An eye for an eye?”
108’s eyes are finally clear. There’s some bite to her and it might just see her through.
“Less eye for eye and more… a tooth for every hundred corpses dropped down the chute,” Vi says, shrugging. Before 108 can ask what that’s supposed to mean, Vi adds, “And we don’t talk about justice down here. Doesn’t go over well with most of the inmates.”
108 folds her arms over her chest. Shit, that’s a bad move; it makes her look defensive, gives her less chance of blocking.
“And you’ll only be happy once every cell is occupied by a topsider, I suppose,” 108 says. “I’ve been here fifty-eight days and I already know I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
“That’s funny,” Vi says, using her fingers to pick the last of the gruel from the corners of her tray. “I know plenty of people I’d toss in a stone box in a heartbeat. Want me to give you a list? That way you can fill your worst enemy quota, too.”
108’s hands wrap around her tray.
“Unbelievable,” she mutters, getting to her feet. “I see I greatly misjudged the situation and wasted both of our time. That’s another rule, I suppose: never apologise, never enquire into another’s well-being.”
“You’re a fast learner,” Vi says.
108’s nostrils flare as she turns her back, returning to her table across the cafeteria.
Vi wipes her nose on the back of her hand, smearing blood across her knuckles and face, and downs the last of her water.
*
Vi’s twenty-nine seconds into her first shower in eleven days when someone starts getting the shit beaten out of them two stalls down. Vi had paid the three people strolling into the bathroom fully dressed no heed, versed in minding her own business, but now it is her business. She can hear the jeering, the cries, the thrum in the air as everyone in the immediate vicinity does their best to ignore what’s happening while trying to get an eyeful.
Vi tilts her head, water rushing into her ears to block out as much of it as she can. It doesn’t work; the water pressure’s never been strong enough for that. Vi hears the word Piltie tossed around and realises she recognises the cries, the yelps, the pleading.
Sighing, she slaps the water off.
446 is at the heart of the disturbance. Two of her lackeys are trying to crowd into the stall with her. Their prey is curled up on the floor, arms wrapped around her head, and Vi really wanted that shower.
She grabs one of the grunts by the back of her shirt and jerks her back, letting her slip on the slick floor and crack her head against one of the sinks. The other two don’t even notice. Fucking amateurs, Vi thinks; three-against-one in the shower, of all places. What are they trying to prove? Who do they think this is impressing?
Vi takes the unconscious lackey’s place, leaning against the divider. She grabs 446’s wrist as she pulls back, and the woman turns, eyes flashing at the mere suggestion of subordination, before realising who’s next to her.
“Hey,” Vi says, grabbing her by the jaw. “We didn’t get to finish our chat over lunch.”
446 opens her mouth. Vi doesn’t give her the chance to say anything. She pummels her face, knuckles bare from her shower, and makes sure her nose is broken. 446’s lackey flees. 446 stumbles back, eyes full of the fear that says she regrets every second of her life that’s led to this moment. Vi would take her by the throat and throw her to the floor, if not for the whimper 108 lets out.
Vi fans out her fingers, catching her breath. 446 bolts, not caring about her fallen lackey.
108 is curled up on the mould-ridden floor, knees pulled to her chest, hands wrapped around her head. The spray of water misses her. Vi kneels in front of her, takes her hands, and moves slowly when 108 whimpers please.
108 looks up, wet hair plastered to her face. Her lip is split, her eye already shining, and she trembles so hard her teeth chatter in the sudden silence that fills the bathroom. Vi takes her by her elbows and helps her stand. One arm falls to wrap around her ribs.
It’s nothing. Vi’s seen so much worse. 108 was lucky; 446 had no grudge against her, no point to prove beyond the satiation of boredom.
“Didn’t get stabbed, did you, topside?” Vi asks.
108 shakes her head, racked with sobs that refuse to make room for tears.
She got really lucky.
“Here,” Vi says. She tugs 108 a step closer, so she’s under the spluttering stream of water. “Might as well shower, since you’re here.”
108 screws her eyes shut, letting out a strained gasp of gratitude. The water runs cold over her shoulders and the shivering stops. 108’s had more than her allotted four minutes, but with Vi there, with the body crumpled on the floor and a queue of witness who watched 446 rush out, no one comments on it.
Vi remembers the old 108. The woman who taught her all the Lanes hadn’t.
She wouldn’t have survived those first few years alone. She’d have ended up with more than broken fingers and cracked ribs.
*
They’re let into the rec room for fifty-five minutes a day. There’s more room to it than recreation: it’s a large, concrete box, big enough for dozens of them to mill around. There are a few chairs. Flimsy, brittle things that shatter to dust if you try swinging them against someone’s back.
A few inmates skulk around dark corners, talking in whispers to the wardens. Vi knows what this time is really for. There’s profit to be made, even in Stillwater, product to move in and out for those with deep-pocketed family on the outside.
Vi spots 108 across the room, sitting in the corner, reading a book. Vi never bothered with them herself; the slowly dwindling supply boasts missing pages and generous stains, and they reek of stale urine.
Not that much doesn’t, in Stillwater.
Vi heads over, sitting cross-legged in front of her. 108 starts, pulls the book to her chest, but her eyes settle into dull recognition at the sight of Vi.
Her black eye is one for the ages. The cut on her mouth has barely started to scab over, and she has that gaunt look to her face again.
“That’s hot,” Vi says, tapping her own eye. “Looks good on you.”
“Excuse me?” 108 asks.
Vi shrugs.
“People were starting to talk. Starting to get suspicious. Here’s a Piltie, completely out of her depth, but the wardens haven’t laid a single finger on her. Much less a baton. It’s a good thing. Getting jumped in the shower—it’s a rite of passage,” Vi explains. “Now you’ve taken a beaten, you’re one of us.”
108 lifts her brow. She winces, as though it sends a jolt of pain through her battered face.
“I see,” she says. “Well. That’s a privilege I never expected to be afforded. I suppose I ought to consider myself lucky that nobody shanked me while I was raving about my supposed status.”
Vi cracks a grin. She didn’t expect a topsider to know what shanking was, and the rasp in 108’s voice makes her accent more tolerable. It’s grating, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing; Vi’s life is severely lacking in the novelty department.
“About that,” Vi says. “How’d you end up here? What did a girl like you do to get tossed into this two-star shithole?”
108’s nose crinkles. A wave of pain follows.
“Really? That’s how you ask? No subtlety in it?”
“Uh, yeah? I saved you from getting shanked in the shower, so fair’s fair. What’s your deal, topside?”
“Caitlyn,” 108 says. That isn’t right. That wasn’t the answer Vi was after. Names are easily given away but so seldomly remembered in Stillwater, but it echoes in Vi’s head. She almost doesn’t hear the actual answer. “And though I have no doubt a thousand people have given this answer before, I did nothing. I was doing my job, and then I was here. No trial. No sentencing. No crime to speak of.”
Everyone in Stillwater is innocent. Everyone laughs as they say it. And there’s truth to it, beyond the bravado; whatever wrongs they’ve done with their broken lives have been beaten out of them and splattered across the stone floors.
Vi’s mouth twitches at the corner. She’s met plenty who claimed the same, but 108 – Caitlyn – isn’t clued up enough on prison life to lie. No crime, no trial, no sentence. No hope, no release to count down to; only the incarceration date, always one more day behind her, and then another.
“Funny. Me too,” Vi says. One-oh-Caitlyn rolls her eyes, expecting to be mocked. “Hey. Don’t go thinking you’re special, Cupcake. You’re not unique, you’re not the only one with a blank file; no one’s gonna notice the misjustice and break you out of here.”
Caitlyn’s breath stutters out of her nose. Vi wishes she’d kept her damn mouth shut, because she didn’t expect Caitlyn to be so naïve as to believe someone would come and rescue her.
“How long have you been here?” Caitlyn asks, eyes falling to the ground.
“Five years, one month, twenty-eight days,” Vi drones.
Caitlyn’s gaze shoots back up.
“How old were you?”
The horror in her voice makes Vi’s tongue stick to the roof of her mouth. It’s only a number. It’s all only a number; that’s all life is here. None of it has to mean anything.
“Few weeks shy of seventeen,” Vi says.
“You were a child,” Caitlyn murmurs. She puts her book down, shuffles closer, but Vi doesn’t move a muscle. “And there’s nothing on your file? You’ve been here all this time without—without a single shred of evidence, without the hope of a trial?”
Vi sneers. She takes it back: the lilt in her voice is jarring.
“Five years, one month, twenty-eight days,” Vi repeats. “Better get comfortable here.”
Vi gets to her feet, turns her back on Caitlyn. They’re not due back in their cells for another twenty-three minutes and the rec room allows her the space to shadow-box. She rolls her right shoulder back, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“Wait,” Caitlyn calls, on her feet now. “Might I—Would you tell me your name? I don’t wish to keep thinking of you as Five-One-Six.”
Vi taps the tattoo on her cheek, sparing Caitlyn one last glance.
“Oh. So it’s just Six, is it?”
Vi laughs, shaking her head, and pummels the air.
*
Vi gets backed into a corner, reacts, and ends up in solitary for thirteen days. Easy. She’s been itching for a break, lately, and needs to work on not thinking. She takes her meals on the floor. Takes her beatings there, too.
When the door slides open and Vi’s tossed back into gen-pop, she’s beaten her record for consecutive sit-ups by fifteen.
She heads for the cafeteria, eager for a serving of day-two sludge, and is met by a wall of sound. Her ears ring with three-hundred and twelve hours of solitude, and the rabble of conversation washes uneasily over her.
An arm wraps around her shoulders. Vi tenses, but not for long.
“Hey, killer. Back from the dead again, eh?” 515 says, grinning.
Vi wraps an arm around their waist, not needing the warmth, not needing to feel another human against her, solid, real, but—she’s got a reputation to uphold. She can’t flinch, can’t shuffle off to hide in the corner. She’s prisoner 516, Stillwater’s solitary confinement record holder: eighteen-thousand, seven-hundred and twenty minutes aren’t going to break her.
She ruffles 515’s hair, half-wrestling, half-embracing on the spot.
“Miss me, baby?” she asks.
“Nah,” they say, shrugging. “Hard to get a decent arm-wrestle without you around, though.”
They sit across from one another, eating. 515 catches her up on all that’s happened in her absence, failed power-struggles and overwrought prison break-ups alike, and then rests their elbow on the table. Vi accepts, palm pressed against palm, and people swivel in their seats. 515’s bigger than Vi, but they’ve never perfected their technique. The other inmates begin placing bets, gambling away all the things they don’t have, and a roar of cheers and groans fill the cafeteria as Vi pins 515’s hand to the table.
The wardens don’t stand for it. They scream for silence, beat their batons against the tables, and have everyone sit straight-backed, perfectly still. The moment they catch someone so much as blink, they shove their dinner trays on the floor, slop going everywhere.
515 grins when the wardens’ backs are turned. Some things are worth the trouble; for a few moments, there was a real sense of excitement, of camaraderie in the cafeteria.
They’re marched back to their cells, rec room off limits until further notice. Vi spots Caitlyn in the crowd – Caitlyn, Caitlyn, not 108 – and maps a litany of new bruises down her arms. There’s no way she was going to make it thirteen days without getting jumped, but Vi’s stomach sinks into her soles. Her face, though, there’s colour in that. It looks as though she’s been eating, if nothing else.
That’s—that’s good. It’s something.
Not enough, Vi thinks, lying on her bunk.
Bars surround her, not stone walls. She can see into the dark corridor, into other cells. 322 in the cell opposite sits with his back against the wall, using a splintered fork to pick food from his teeth. He’s always been a good neighbour: he’s quiet, as wide as a door, and has spent long enough in Stillwater that his reputation allows him solitude.
660 in the adjacent cell is a different matter. She talks late into the night, every night, even when no one responds.
It’s enough to make a girl miss solitude.
Hell. Vi’s sure she could stand another stint in there.
*
She catches 801 in the queue for the showers. She breaks both her wrists and gets in a nasty concussion before the wardens pull her off the woman. Vi earns another seven days in solitary. The moment she’s out, Vi goes after 599. He’s harder to find and harder to take down, but Vi’s confident she’s broken enough ribs to put him out of action for months. She gets twenty days, this time. That’s a nice, even number. Twenty days are doable. Twenty days give her all the time she needs to figure out how best to break 400 apart.
“Six,” Caitlyn hisses, when Vi sits slumped in the rec room after her second self-imposed stint in solitary. Vi stares up at her, a little light-headed; there wasn’t much on the menu, this time. “What do you think you’re doing? Are you trying to get yourself thrown in solitary confinement? Look at your cheek—that cut looks infected. Here.”
Caitlyn kneels in front of her. Her black eye’s all but faded.
“Got a secret stash of medical supplies, Cupcake?” Vi asks.
She brings two fingers to her face and winces. She was sure that cut had stopped oozing days ago.
“As if I’d reveal my hiding place so easily,” Caitlyn says. She tilts Vi’s jaw up and brings something cool and soft to her face. “What I do have is a wet cloth, which fits firmly into the category of better than nothing. I would suggest being escorted to the infirmary, but I believe they rather have their hands full at the moment.”
Vi huffs a laugh through her nose. She was wrong; Caitlyn’s voice isn’t all that bad. It’s a nice change. It’s a nice—it’s nice.
“I’ll be good for a few days. Promise,” Vi mumbles.
“I sincerely doubt that, Six.”
*
Vi waits five days to corner 400. She gives them time to think they’re safe, gives herself time to get the wardens off her back. It isn’t graceful by any means: she slams a tray over their head and pummels them while they’re dazed. She doesn’t need to be exact. She only needs to be thorough, to make sure they’re out of action for the foreseeable future.
400’s lackeys jump her before the wardens can. She’s dragged off to box hell for thirty days, this time. The cut on her face oozes and leaks. Meals come sporadically. She uses what little water she gets to clean out the cut, even considers making a poultice from gruel. She gets a fever, at some point. The days lapse into one another.
The door groans open. A baton jabs the small of her back, pushing her back to her cell.
Vi stays there through dinner, arms folded over her face. With all the other inmates gone, there’s no one to witness what happens next. The door swings open, slams closed. Someone crouches at her side. She peers out from under one arm: ah.
This isn’t just any warden. They’ve brought in the big guns.
“What do you think you’re playing at, 516?” he asks.
“Can’t help it—anger issues. Bad upbringing,” Vi grunts.
“You’re up to something. You’re doing this on purpose, causing problems for me and mine.”
“Yeah? Wonder what that’s like,” Vi says. When the man doesn’t strike her, Vi knows she’s on the right track. A track laid over a chasm, rusted, about to bend, but a track none the less. “Sounds like you’re paranoid, big guy. I’m just blowing off steam. It’s not like having those inmates stuck in the infirmary bothers you, right? Why would you care? It’s not like you have half a dozen chembarons breathing down your neck to move product to their people on the inside, not like you’ve lost three of your middle-men. I’m sure you have plenty more, right? 503, 229, 937...”
The warden rises to his feet, looming over her. Vi drops her arms, staring at him. That might’ve intimidated her half a decade ago, but she doesn’t flinch.
“I could make you disappear,” he says.
“Sure, sure. No one’s doubting that,” Vi hums. “But plenty of people owe me favours, and the moment I vanish, I cash those favours in. They carry on my work for me.”
Gritting his teeth, the warden says, “What do you want, 516?”
“A favour.”
*
Two wardens drag Caitlyn away in the middle of dinner. Vi drops her gaze to her tray, biting the inside of her cheek as Caitlyn kicks out, futilely trying to struggle out of their grasp. She’s learnt plenty over the last months, though: she grits her teeth, huffs, but doesn’t demand to be let go. She doesn’t bark orders that won’t be obeyed.
A ruckus breaks out on the other side of the cafeteria. 660 is pulled away from her dinner, yelling, “Hey, hey, what the fuck, let a girl finish eating!”
Vi finishes her meal. Pulls Caitlyn’s tray over and finishes that, too.
When she returns to her cell, Caitlyn’s stood on the other side of the bars, arms folded over her chest. Vi raises a hand in greeting and falls against her bunk, feeling the wood groan beneath her.
“Well?” Caitlyn demands. “It would have been nice to have some warning, Six. I thought I was going to end up halfway down the body chute.”
Vi rolls onto her side, grinning. She props herself up on an elbow and watches Caitlyn’s shoulders drop, her fingers wrap around the bars dividing them.
“C’mon. Surely you don’t believe the rumours,” Vi says. “Why would they need a body chute? They can just toss us out into the water.”
“How did you manage this?” Caitlyn demands.
“Manage what? I don’t make the prison seating plan, Cupcake.”
Caitlyn continues to glower at her. Even in the low-lights of their cells, her eyes are so bright, so clear. She isn’t the woman Vi met one-hundred and eighty-seven days ago, and it’s not all down to the bruises, the callouses that have formed on her fingers.
Vi relents. She sits up, knees tucked to her chest, and tells her the bare facts: how she picked off the wardens’ middle-men one by one, leaving them with chembarons’ boots pressed to their throats, biding her time in solitary until she could take down her next target. Caitlyn’s mouth hangs open, lips parted somewhere between horror and admiration.
“You’re absurd, Six. I can’t believe you’d put yourself in danger like that. You spent months in solitary confinement, I didn’t even know if you were still alive, and you barely were, considering all the beatings you were given!” Caitlyn lectures. “Surely there was a better way to go about this. I don’t understand why you’d do any of this, why you’d want—why I’d be…”
Caitlyn trails off. She rests her forehead against one of the bars.
“Oh, you know. Matilda cancelled our vacation, my schedule cleared up, and I needed something to keep me occupied,” Vi says, rolling her eyes. “Look. It was going to happen, anyway. You know I’m number-one when it comes to getting locked up, right? It was nice to feel like there was a purpose behind it. To have a plan and see it through.”
“Still,” is Caitlyn’s only argument.
“You’re not gonna make it another six months on your own, Cupcake. I can help toughen you up, show you how to throw a punch.”
Caitlyn drifts back into her cell. She sits on her bunk, mirroring Vi, and doesn’t speak for a long moment.
“Part of me thinks I wouldn’t have survived that incident in the shower without you,” Caitlyn murmurs.
“Nah. You would’ve been just fine. A few more bruises, maybe a broken bone or two, but you’d still be hobbling around,” Vi says. “You’re tough. I can tell that. You’ve just never had to act it.”
Caitlyn looks at her hand, palm up, and slowly curls her fingers towards her palm.
“I wielded a rifle, in my past life,” Caitlyn murmurs. “I never missed.”
“Too bad we don’t have any guns lying around. Other than these, obviously,” Vi says, slapping one of her arms.
Caitlyn laughs. It’s a strange, strangled sound, one Vi’s never heard before.
Fuck. Probably because she doesn’t remember the last time she made a joke.
“I see. I’ll be winning arm-wrestles against you, will I?”
Vi lets herself laugh, this time.
“Hey, Cupcake?” she says. “Didn’t want to embarrass you, but this has been going on a while, now. My name’s Vi, not Six.”
Vi brushes her fingers over the tattoo as she speaks. Caitlyn repeats the name and the ink trails off her skin, drifting into the air between them.
*
Vi awakens the next night to a hand splayed across the back of her head, pressing her face into the bunk. Metal binds her wrists behind her back before she can lash out. She’s thrown to the floor, three wardens cramped into her tiny cell.
“Got what you wanted, eh,” one of them says. “Doesn’t mean we have to be happy about it.”
It’s not like one of her usual beatings. She betrays herself with every kick to the ribs, every blow to the back of her head; her cuffed wrists jerk as if she could possibly defend herself, if not for the irons.
They don’t stay for long. Don’t need to. Vi’s left face down on the floor, wrists still bound, in a puddle of her own blood and drool. This time they’ve done it. This time they’ve pushed too far, sunk their claws too deep. This time the bleeding’s on the inside, her body’s poisoning itself, and there’s nothing to do but wait for the convulsions to start, pink foam pouring from her mouth.
Hah.
She should be so lucky.
In time, her breathing softens. Her vision clears. Caitlyn’s fingers wrap tight around the bars separating them, and her voice replaces the ringing in her ears. Vi, Vi, Vi, Vi. That’s her, isn’t it? That’s her name, not a number, not a fragment of time, a technicality of space: that’s who she’s always been beneath the ink and sweat, the bruises left behind by the months and years and decades and the rest of her sorry life, sprawled out on the stone floor.
“Caitlyn,” Vi rasps, tasting the name, tasting vomit. “Sorry I’m a shit roommate.”
Caitlyn falls to her knees, reaching between the bars. Vi curls her toes, digs her knees in, and inches across the floor. Practicality meets her, not tenderness: Caitlyn’s fingers hook inside her mouth, scooping the blood and vomit out, making sure she doesn’t choke. Vi stares up at her, vision hazy, and all she can think is: yeah.
This is something.
This is enough.
“Broke my rib,” Vi mumbles.
“I expect you have,” Caitlyn says.
“Think my shoulder’s—” Vi, like an idiot, rolls her shoulder with the word, and the blinding pain brings bile to her throat. “Dislocated. Again. Happens sometimes. No big deal, just.”
“I could set it,” Caitlyn offers.
Vi looks up, grey eyes hazy, trying to determine how serious Caitlyn is. She can’t tell, can’t tell anything about her, but knows her body is in shock, that her fingertips are buzzing. Now’s as good a time as any to have her shoulder yanked into place.
“You know how?”
Vi doesn’t care what the answer is. She just likes it when Caitlyn talks.
“I do, actually. My father is a doctor and I was insistent on learning all the tricks of the trade,” Caitlyn says, adjusting herself so she can better reach through the bars. “Not that I’ve had much opportunity to try most of it out, but I’ve been told that my stitches are impeccable, and my—”
“Fuck.” It comes without warning. Vi struggles against the cuffs that do nothing to make the process easier. “Shit. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Caitlyn says, trailing her fingers through Vi’s short hair. “I thought it would be worse if you were expecting it.”
“Oh, yeah,” Vi murmurs, spitting bile on the floor. She curls up, keeping her head close to Caitlyn’s fingers, close to a touch made to do something other than hurt. “This is just peachy.”