Chapter Text
“So you won’t be actually starting the story, just getting ready for it. That’s why they call it session zero, but obviously the rest of us already have our characters from the last campaign, so.”
Vi shovels the last bit of her chicken sandwich in her mouth as she tries to listen to Powder’s explanation, though she’s been talking pretty much nonstop for the whole drive from Vi’s studio apartment to this surprisingly wealthy neighborhood. “You sure we’re at the right place?” she asks through her mouthful, looking at the houses they’re passing.
“Uh, yeah, Vi, I’ve been driving here once a week for like, two years.” Powder gives her a sideways glance. “Don’t worry, Caitlyn’s not half bad for a Piltie. You’ll just have to get past her accent, mostly.”
Vi grunts and swallows her food, crumpling a napkin between her palms. She doesn’t really care that Powder’s friend and dungeon master is from Upper Piltover—unlike the two of them, who grew up in the lower half of Piltover in what used to be its own city of Zaun. Vi might not have any Piltie friends of her own, but she isn’t in the habit of assuming the worst about all of them. She’s just already worried about whether she can manage to fit in with Powder’s nerdy group of friends at all, so anything that further separates her from them just feels like another obstacle. “Can you remind me why I agreed to this again?” she asks, before exaggeratedly recalling, “Oh wait! I didn’t.”
“Hey, you had plenty of time to get out of it, sis!” Powder snarks. “Not my fault you couldn’t find friends or a hobby for six months.”
She slows the car down and pulls into the driveway of a two story house as Vi grumbles, “Excuse me for focusing on getting a job and a place. And—I do have a hobby, it’s called the gym.”
“Doesn’t count,” Powder chimes, turning off her car, “and doesn’t come with friends. C’mon.”
Vi sighs and clambers out of the car, leaving her fast food dinner trash for her sister to deal with. “Why does one person need a house this big?” She shoves her hands into her jacket pockets as they make their way to the front door.
“Oh, you’ll see.”
There’s a fancy doorbell camera next to the front door that Powder readily jams her thumb into three times in a row. Only five seconds later, the door swings open to reveal—
Okay, so maybe Vi was preemptively putting together in her mind a picture of this rich, nerdy Piltie that Powder met through the grad student whose lab she works in. And maybe Vi was stereotyping what nerds look like based on people she knew almost six years ago, the last time she was actually around any. And—that totally isn’t her fault, nerds aren’t exactly the type to end up sharing a bunk in a prison cell.
But whatever picture was in her head is immediately blown away by the woman answering the door. She’s wearing a sweater—despite it not being cold out—and fitted jeans that don’t do anything to hide the pronounced curve of her thighs. Her long, shiny, dark blue hair is pulled over one shoulder. But it’s her face that has Vi speechless for a moment, the angularity of her features, the sharpness of her striking blue eyes, the slight downturn of her lips in the neutral expression she’s making. Or curious, maybe, as she observes Vi’s appearance in turn. Her half buzzed haircut, scars on her face, the baggy clothes she threw on after the world’s fastest shower she took right after work. And Vi knows that she doesn’t look very similar to her little sister, aside from the color of their eyes, so she’s sure that Caitlyn is just as surprised by her appearance, too.
“Hey, Kiramman,” Powder greets casually. “This is my sister, Vi. Vi, this is Caitlyn, our DM.”
Vi gives a tentative, half smile that is, for a moment, only answered by Caitlyn’s analytic gaze. But after a second, she says, “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Powder talks about you often.”
And she does have a very Piltie accent, but it’s kinda cute, so Vi doesn’t think this session zero thing will be too bad. Even if all Vi can muster up in response right now is, “Yeah, ditto.”
Then Powder says, “Right, so, I’ve got plans. I can be back soonest in about two hours, but just text me if it’s going long.”
Right, Vi almost forgot that her sister can’t stay. Caitlyn, on the other hand, appears to have never been informed, judging by her eyebrows flying up. She looks at Powder with apprehension and asks, “Wait, you’re not staying?”
“Did I not mention that?” Powder asks back. “Sorry. It’s movie night, and Lux will kill me if I miss it. But don’t worry, my sister doesn’t bite.” Caitlyn doesn’t look any less concerned, and Vi barely keeps herself from audibly sighing. Of course this beautiful, rich Piltie wouldn’t want to be alone in her house with an ex-con, her friend’s sister or not.
Vi braces herself for Caitlyn to shut this whole thing down, but then those hesitant blue eyes are back on her and she just says, “Alright. Well, come on in, then. See you later, Powder.”
“Yep, see ya!” And Powder claps Vi on the back before spinning on her heel to head back to her car.
Vi isn’t even five feet into Caitlyn’s house before she realizes what she uses all this space for. Just past the front door begins the collection of some of the nerdiest shit that Vi has ever laid her eyes on. Framed prints of—games? Movies? Vi isn’t sure, but there are tons of them, along with shelves lined with what Vi can only assume is merch of Caitlyn’s interests—figurines, plushies, books, stuff that Vi isn’t even sure she recognizes. Caitlyn leads her down the short hallway and into the open space that comprises the kitchen, dining, and living rooms, and her collection only continues. More artwork is mounted over the huge sectional couch that sits across from a wide screen TV, and there are literal swords and a shield mounted above the huge wooden dining table. The kitchen looks normal enough, but compared to the rest of the space, it seems practically unlived in.
“Powder sent you the player handbook, right?”
Vi blinks, pulling her eyes away from the weaponry on the wall to look back at Caitlyn, who is moving to the far end of the table. There’s a partition blocking off the whole end directly under the swords, painted to look like castle walls. Standing, Vi can see that there’s a laptop and an assortment of other things—papers and some kinds of trinkets, maybe—behind it. Caitlyn sits down at that spot and looks back up at Vi with a raised eyebrow, reminding her that she’s forgotten to speak. “Oh—uh, I think so?”
“But you didn’t look at it,” Caitlyn extrapolates flatly, starting to look through a pile of papers in front of her. “That’s fine. You don’t know much about D&D, correct?”
“Yeah, that would be correct,” Vi confirms with an awkward chuckle.
“That’s alright,” Caitlyn reiterates, but her flat tone doesn’t exactly have Vi convinced that it is alright. Caitlyn produces a few pieces of paper from her stack and reaches over the partition to set them in front of a seat at the table, then looks up at Vi with another raised eyebrow. “Did you want to sit?”
“Oh—right,” Vi mutters awkwardly, finally jerking into motion and remembering how to be an actually social person. She’s pretty sure she hasn’t been alone in a room with anyone besides Powder or her parole officer in months.
“I was hoping you’d have looked at the player handbook so all of this wouldn’t be so foreign when we started,” Caitlyn’s saying, handing her a pencil as she sits down, “but I don’t mind explaining. It may just take a little longer, if that’s alright.”
“Yeah, that’s fine, I got time.” Vi takes the pencil and looks down at the paper, realizing it has a ton of blanks that need filling in. Suddenly her palms are sweaty. “Uh, this isn’t like, a test, right?”
A quiet puff of a laugh, so small that Vi almost isn’t sure it is a laugh, escapes Caitlyn before she assures her, “No, Vi, it’s not a test. That’s going to be your character sheet. We’ll fill it in as we make your character. Powder did tell you that, at least, right?”
Finally, Vi feels a little less clueless. “Yeah, she did.”
“Excellent,” Caitlyn says, her voice lilting up at the end. “Would you mind telling me what you do know about D&D, before I dive into explaining things?”
Vi grimaces as she admits that she couldn’t really explain anything about it—that she knows little things here and there from what Powder’s told her, but that she hasn’t really paid attention.
Caitlyn takes her lack of knowledge in stride and offers, “So Dungeons and Dragons is a TTRPG—that’s a table top roleplaying game. That should be pretty straightforward: players are roleplaying around the table as their characters. Characters have skills and abilities, and go through adventures together. I’m the Dungeon Master, which means that I’m curating the adventure and the world, and playing all of the other characters that the players come across. Are you with me so far?”
It doesn’t sound too complicated put like that, but Vi’s still thoroughly intimidated by the character sheet in front of her. “Yeah, I think so. Just—one thing that kinda confuses me. Pow said that everyone else already has characters from the last campaign you guys did?”
“Yes.”
“But if they already beat the last campaign, why not make new characters?”
When Caitlyn purses her lips, Vi thinks she must’ve asked a stupid question and braces herself to be scolded, but then the other woman sounds plenty patient when she explains, “Don’t think of it like they beat the campaign, they just finished it. D&D is a game, but it’s also collaborative storytelling. A campaign is just one main plot line. Our last one did end, but the group wanted to continue playing with those same characters, so I’ve been working on a follow-up campaign for them.”
“So, you come up with the whole story?”
“A lot of it, yes, but it’s all informed by what the players have their characters do, and what they want them to experience. Some of my players tell me exactly what kind of arc they want their character to have, and I’ll build their part of the story around that. Others like to keep it more vague and are open to me being a bit more creative with how I work it in. It’s—it can get quite complicated. I think it’ll start to make sense as we start making your character.”
Vi’s starting to think that she maybe isn’t smart enough for this.
“Do you want me to get a copy of the player handbook for you to reference as we go?”
“Um. I don’t always do well with reading a bunch of stuff at once, so…”
“That’s alright,” Caitlyn assures her, “I can talk you through it and just show you anything you’re not clear on as we go. First of all, let me tell you a little about the world we’re playing in. It’s a plane that’s mostly home-brewed, so you won’t be at too much of a loss for not being familiar with the Forgotten Realms.”
Vi’s fully prepared not to absorb any of what Caitlyn’s about to tell her, but then—maybe it’s something about the way she speaks, the way she describes things, that just paints a picture in Vi’s head. And suddenly she’s hanging onto every word, like a little kid sitting through story time.
Caitlyn tells her about a world called Hilang, once a paradise brimming with devout peoples living in comfort, now abandoned by the old gods after an archdevil infiltrated and corrupted the city known as Bakti, named for the most powerful god of old, whose domain was devotion and loyalty itself. The archdevil incited greed and violence, turned innocents into pawns in a ploy to weaken Bakti’s powers. In targeting the heart of devoutness itself, the archdevil enabled other malefactors to surface, to further shatter the peace and security of the world. Eventually, the gods themselves left Hilang behind to seek new followers elsewhere, dooming its people to disorder, chaos, and evil.
Vi doesn’t know what an archdevil is, has no idea what these other malefactors might’ve been, and is already unclear on the concept of these “old gods,” but the way Caitlyn’s eyes are alight, her voice abruptly full of movement, intonation, as she tells the story has her fully invested.
“The first campaign we did, and this next one,” Caitlyn continues, the passion in her explanation only subdued for a moment, “takes place two thousand years after the gods abandoned Hilang. By this point, cities have been razed time and time again. Governments have been reformed and shattered in an uncountable number of attempts to bring about safety and ordinance. All except the Archdevil’s Order, whose hypocritical laws themselves demand chaos. But—almost two centuries ago, the archdevil disappeared, and for the first time, the Order’s control of Hilang has been shaken. There are communities and cities and organizations across the land, now, that stand for principles other than wickedness and chaos. But the Order is still the most powerful force of them all, and its followers claim that the archdevil will rise again to resecure their power.”
Vi blinks, realizing that Caitlyn’s exposition has come to an end and that her own mouth is hanging open a little. She snaps it shut and clears her throat. “Damn, that’s… a lot. You came up with all that?”
For the first time this evening, an actual smile tugs onto Caitlyn’s lips. “That and a lot more. I always overdevelop a world, especially in this group. Your sister likes to keep me on my toes, so it helps to have things prepared. That said, there is a lot of improvisation required as well. But, basically, I’ve fleshed out quite a lot of details that the rest of the group may never even need to know.”
“Wow,” Vi murmurs, genuinely impressed, and once again feeling very out of her depth. “Okay, so…”
Caitlyn smiles again when she trails off, and Vi’s heart jumps. “So, we’ve had a party of four so far. They met in the latest version of the city I mentioned—Bakti. I won’t get into the story too much now, because you don’t really need to know all of the details. I don’t want to overwhelm you.”
Vi can’t help but huff an uneasy laugh, prompting another raised eyebrow from Caitlyn. “I’m, uh, kinda overwhelmed already, not gonna lie.”
“Oh,” Caitlyn says, her cheeks turning a little rosy. “Well—then, let’s do this. Do you have any idea of what kind of character you want to play?”
Vi rolls her pencil idly between her hands as she thinks about it—because, actually, she has thought about it a little. “I, uh, guess I wanna play someone… strong?” She winces at how dumb she’s sure she sounds, but Caitlyn only tilts her head, curiosity in her eyes barely not hiding the way gears are abruptly turning in her head.
“Like, physically strong?”
“Yeah. Well—emotionally, too, I guess. Like, she’s been through shit.” Vi shifts a little in her seat. “That’s, uh, kinda all I got, though.”
Caitlyn looks at her carefully for a moment, then suggests, “Let’s outline her backstory first, then. Here.” She produces from somewhere behind her partition a handful of dice and offers them to Vi before moving a plastic, painted tower, just over half a foot tall, in front of her. “This is my dice tower, it’s just for getting good rolls.”
Vi blinks. “What?”
“I mean, more random rolls,” Caitlyn clarifies, taking one of the dice back from Vi and dropping it into a hole at the top of the tower. It clanks around inside and then rolls out from the bottom, the number fourteen staring up at Vi. “See?”
Vi picks up the dice and turns it over in her hand. “This die has twenty sides?”
“Yes,” Caitlyn answers, clearly amused, “you may have heard it referred to as a d20.”
Caitlyn takes the liberty of explaining the rest of the dice, and then suddenly they’re getting ready to go through a questionnaire for which Vi is, apparently, allowed to make up whatever answer she wants.
“First on the list is your character’s race,” Caitlyn tells her, and now she moves to sit next to Vi instead of behind her partition, bringing her laptop with her. There’s a page open with pictures of a bunch of mythical humanoid creatures, and Vi just stares at them dumbly until Caitlyn starts to talk her through them. After giving a brief overview of each one, she says, “The big cities of Hilang, like Bakti, are populated by pretty much all of the races, but there are smaller communities for individual races throughout the world as well. So you can pick any of them, and we can make a story that works.”
Vi stares at the pictures for another second and then asks, “What’s Powder’s character?”
“Powder is playing a drow,” Caitlyn answers, pointing at the purple skinned elf on the screen.
“If I wanted my character to be her character’s sister, then should I play one, too?”
Caitlyn rests her chin on her hand as she gives Vi another one of those thoughtful, almost analytical, looks. “Have you asked Powder about that?” Vi shakes her head. “Well, the thing is that her character knew her parents and isn’t aware of having any siblings. If it’s alright with her, we could figure out some sort of long-lost sister type of thing, but we’d have to work with her for that.”
“Oh.”
“We can definitely ask her, but if there’s one thing I know about your sister’s girlfriend, it’s that she does not like interruptions to their movie nights.”
Vi snickers, having learned that herself these past six months. “Let’s just do something different,” she decides, “so it doesn’t mess with her stuff.”
“Alright. Then you can pick any race you want.”
Vi looks them over again, already forgetting the details that Caitlyn mentioned. In the end, it’s mostly because of the picture that she decides, “The, uh, tieflings look kinda cool.”
“They do,” Caitlyn agrees, “and this is just an example of one in this picture. They’re a very diverse looking race, so you can really do a lot with them. It is worth noting that, in our world, tieflings, being descended from devils, are often associated with high ranks in the Archdevil’s Order.”
Vi frowns. “So I’d have to be evil?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” Caitlyn quickly clarifies. “It would just impact the way people around the world interact with you. The party considers the Archdevil’s Order an enemy, so for your character to join, she likely wouldn’t be part of it. But people might see her and assume that she’s aligned with them anyway.”
Vi bites down on the inside of her lip, thinking it over. “That could be… cool? Right?” And she peeks over at Caitlyn, finding herself faced with another soft smile that takes her breath away.
“It could be,” she agrees. “There aren’t any tieflings in the party, so it would bring about a new dynamic at the very least.” Vi nods, and Caitlyn sits up a little straighter before pointing to a spot at the top of her character sheet. “You can write it there, if you’re decided. Then I’ll have you jot some notes down in the backstory section on the second page before we start filling out any of the stats.”
Vi tries not to be overwhelmed by the huge sections on the second page, instead just focusing in on the backstory part.
“So, we’ll go through these questions. If you can think of an answer yourself, we can go with that. Otherwise, you can roll dice and get a random answer. Of course, if you do that, we don’t have to stick to it, and we’ll have to make changes here and there anyway to fit things into the world.” Caitlyn looks back at Vi, seems to notice her wide eyes, and then quickly adds, “But don’t worry, I’m happy to iron out any of the details that you aren’t opinionated about. Alright, first question—whether or not your character knows who her parents are or were.”
Vi tries her hand at rolling some of the dice through Caitlyn’s little tower for the first few answers, and they determine that Vi’s currently unnamed character didn’t know her parents on account of them having died or disappeared when she was young.
“So your character won’t know,” Caitlyn tells her, “but do you want to know? You can come up with as much of it as you want, or I can. And if I do, I can either tell you or not.”
Between Vi’s overwhelm and how seriously Caitlyn takes all of this, it’s a simple answer. “Maybe you could do it, if that’s okay? But I’d like to know what you come up with.”
“Absolutely,” Caitlyn assures her, “I won’t necessarily have it all figured out by our first session, but once I come up with something, I’ll send it to you before we finalize anything. And—we can sort of always retcon things later.”
Vi’s eyebrows furrow. “Retcon?”
“Oh, it means retroactive continuity,” Caitlyn explains quickly, “basically we just say that something’s happened a certain way in the past to justify a change we want to make.”
Vi looks at the few notes she has written on her character sheet, glancing back at the first page where she knows numbers are going to end up getting written down. “This is all kinda complicated, huh? I know there’s math coming, and… I’m not sure I’m smart enough for all this. My sister kinda got all the brains in the family.”
Caitlyn tilts her head with a thoughtful frown. “Why do you think that?”
“Uh. Because she was a straight A student who graduated high school early and is now in engineering school, and I barely got my GED?”
“Hmm. Well, how about you give it a proper try before you decide whether you’re smart enough?”
“That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
Caitlyn gives her another smile, and actually, maybe that’s why Vi’s still here. “You said you want your character to have ‘been through shit,’ right? What kind of ‘shit’ were you envisioning?”
Vi wets her lips and casts her gaze back down, wondering if Caitlyn will stop smiling at her after she answers. “I, uh, was thinking she could be an ex-con.” Caitlyn’s quiet in response, but when Vi peeks back up, she doesn’t look judgmental or uncomfortable. Still just curious, like Vi is a puzzle she’s solving. “But… I dunno, if that doesn’t work, then—”
“Vi,” Caitlyn interrupts gently, “we can make anything work. At the risk of sounding conceited, I’ll tell you that I’m quite an experienced DM. I want to help you tell your character’s story however you want it to be told.” Vi swallows, not sure what to say to that. Caitlyn looks over at the computer screen, but gets a faraway look in her eye, deep in thought. Then, she fills the silence to ask, “Do you want her to be guilty? For whatever got her imprisoned?” And those sharp blue eyes bounce back to meet Vi’s.
“I, uh, hadn’t really thought about that part, but… maybe? But I don’t want her to be, like, evil. Does that… make sense?”
“Of course it does,” Caitlyn answers, like it’s easy to say that, to decouple those things. “Do you think she was a criminal by trade, or was this just one mistake that she made?” Vi doesn’t answer right away, and her silence prompts Caitlyn to navigate to a new page on her computer and say, “If it helps, these are the pre-determined backgrounds from the handbook. We can homebrew something more unique if you want, but this can give you an idea.”
Caitlyn starts to explain the backgrounds, and even though Vi is already leaning toward a decision, she lets Caitlyn tell her about them. It’s interesting, sure, but Vi is starting to realize that she really likes hearing this woman talk.
“Sorry, that was a lot,” Caitlyn apologizes afterward, cheeks pink.
“That’s okay. I think I like the idea that she was a criminal, but only because she had to be.”
Caitlyn nods, gears visibly turning in her mind again with the way her eyebrows scrunch together. “Maybe she grew up in a smaller city, one where the Order isn’t respected, and her being a tiefling resulted in her being discriminated against? She had to steal to survive, and eventually she stole from the wrong people at the wrong time?”
Vi leans forward a little. “Maybe she got roped into something out of her league, and didn’t know how to get out of it.”
“Like a gang?” Caitlyn asks, and Vi shrugs noncommittally even though that’s pretty much what she means. “That works. She was good at what she did to survive, and a local gang wanted to take advantage of that.”
“Yeah, like… they offered her a big payout, or… something life changing, I guess? But the job went to shit, and she took all the fall for it.”
“I like that,” Caitlyn says, and the way her voice is quiet, gentle, tells Vi that she’s not successfully hiding how personal this is to her. And… Vi thought she didn’t want to talk about it, because she hates talking about it, but when she meets those eyes, she can’t really help it.
“You, uh…. Powder’s told you, right? That I got out of prison about six months ago?”
Caitlyn does a remarkable job of keeping her expression completely neutral, not even seeming surprised that Vi’s suddenly not talking about her unnamed character. “Of course she did. She found out about your early release during one of our sessions, actually. I don’t think I’d ever seen her so happy.”
Emotion rises into Vi’s throat, but she swallows it down to ask, “Did she, uh… tell you guys how I ended up there?”
“She didn’t,” Caitlyn answers gently, “at least, not me. And you’re not obligated to share that with me, Vi.”
“Yeah, no—I know,” Vi says, shaking her head a little, trying to dismiss the mishmash of feelings suddenly swimming through her. “Sorry, yeah that’s too—I mean, we just met, so. I—I just—I’m not so great at this, uh, talking to people thing.”
When Caitlyn tells her, “Me neither,” Vi looks up at her with disbelief.
“Uh, this whole past hour definitely doesn’t support that, Caitlyn.”
Caitlyn bites down on her bottom lip and glances away bashfully. “This whole past hour was spent doing something that I’m, if you couldn’t tell, quite obsessed with. It’d be a different story had you met me any other way.” She looks back up at Vi and offers a reassuring smile. “Anyway, I don’t mind if you do want to tell me about it. How you ended up in prison, I mean. I just didn’t want you to think you had to on account of your character’s story relating in any way.”
They’re quiet for a second, Caitlyn waiting patiently for Vi to say something, and Vi trying to figure out if she wants to say anything. Vi hasn’t had a real friend since she was seventeen. Prison friends don’t count—time doesn’t make sense in there. You could know someone for two days and know their whole life story, or share a bunk with them for a year and not even know what they were in for—it just depended on the person. And where there are social rules, you learn them quick. Even the unspoken ones. There are always people around to make sure you know the moment you fuck up.
It's different out here, and Vi has already messed up a few potential friendships with people since getting out. A couple coworkers, a hot sorority girl she met at a bar, the older butch woman who’s always using the other punching bag at the gym. One way or another, Vi always manages to say the wrong thing at the wrong time—usually talking about prison too quickly, or not soon enough.
But… Caitlyn already knows her, kinda. Knows about her, at least, through Powder.
“I, uh, did it,” Vi finally says, picking up the d20 and turning it around with her fingers, using it to occupy her hands and her gaze as Caitlyn stays quiet, just listening. “What I was charged for. Except, there were some other people involved. Other kids I went to school with. Anyway, I got six years, but got out early for good behavior. I’m on parole, still, technically, but my parole officer’s pretty chill. I was real good with my curfew the last six months so she lifted it a couple weeks ago. Think she feels bad for me.”
Vi stops as soon as she realizes that she’s rambling, and that she still hasn’t told Caitlyn what she was actually put away for.
“Um, those kids I mentioned. They knew I needed money. My, uh… Vander, who raised us, he’d gotten laid off and I was looking for a job. Well—I got a job, but it was shit pay. These guys started talking to me like they knew what they were doing, said they were gonna rob this fancy convenience store that popped up at the edge of the city. They needed one more set of hands, they said, and that it’d be quick and easy and I’d walk away with months’ worth of pay. Well, things went to shit real fast—security stuff was supposed to be taken care of but the alarms went off anyway. Lots of shit got broken. Some cash definitely got stolen. We all made it home before the cops got there, but the next day, they show up at my door. Somehow, I was the only one they could ID with whatever security setup they had, or what was left working after whatever the other guys did—they conveniently couldn’t even prove how many people were there. One of the other guys paid me a visit after I was detained, got the point across that I was the fall guy. They were all already eighteen. I wasn’t yet, and he told me I’d get off easier because of it. So I pled guilty, told them it was my idea or whatever, but ended up getting tried as an adult anyway, so.”
Vi twists her lips as she recounts the story, trying to keep her fist from clenching around Caitlyn’s dice. They sit in quiet for a moment, Vi too scared to see the expression on the other woman’s face. Too scared to see if she’s fucked up another chance at making a friend, even one that Powder basically arranged for her. When Caitlyn finally starts to talk, Vi is already bracing herself, but what comes out is, “They took advantage of you struggling. They used you as the scapegoat. That’s awful, Vi, I’m so sorry.”
So she dares to look up, and Caitlyn isn’t even looking at her with pity, but instead with surprising tenderness. Vi’s throat feels scratchy as she says, “Yeah, it sucked. I really regret all of it, especially that it got me locked up for long enough to miss Pow graduating high school and starting college. She’s been taking care of me way more than a little sister should, ever since I got out. Helped me find a place and a bike and a job. And roping you and your group into it, trying to get me a hobby or whatever.”
Caitlyn hums softly. “We’re all a group of misfits, really,” she admits. “When you meet everyone else, see us all together, you’ll see. We don’t make sense as a group of friends, not at first glance, but we all love this game for some reason or another. We all put something of ourselves into these characters, these stories. It helps, and… with the right people, it can be a kind of bonding experience unlike any other, honestly.”
Vi searches Caitlyn’s face, but it’s largely unreadable. All except those eyes, which are suddenly boring into hers, making her realize that she isn’t sure Caitlyn has really made eye contact with her at all until this moment. “Well, what about you?” Vi hears herself ask. “You’re not playing a character, right?”
Caitlyn’s lips stretch into a smile as she secretively says, “Actually, I get to play so many characters. I get to help tell so many stories.”
“Guess that makes sense… but what makes you a misfit?” Vi asks, before blinking and glancing around her house, “I mean, besides being… uh, how’d you say it, quite obsessed with this game?”
Another pretty blush spreads across Caitlyn’s cheeks. “I’ve just always been a misfit. I didn’t fit in anywhere until I found D&D.”
“Oh come on, that can’t be true,” Vi argues, and maybe she’s being a little coquettish, but she must also sound sincere enough that Caitlyn doesn’t notice.
“It’s very true,” Caitlyn insists, “but I don’t think it’s a bad thing, necessarily. I joined my first D&D group when I was sixteen, and it changed my life. I tried being a dungeon master for the first time when I was eighteen. Then, to my parents’ disappointment, I dropped out of my pre-med program and got a creative writing degree that I use to run games for a living, so. I’m really as much of a misfit as they come.”
“Did you just say for a living?”
Caitlyn’s blush is much worse now, her face bright red. “Yes, but—I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t get all this from being a dungeon master,” she explains, gesturing around at her house. “My parents are quite wealthy. I had a trust fund that paid out when I finished my degree.”
Vi doesn’t really care about that part, honestly. “Okay, but… people pay you to run these games?”
“They do. It’s quite a unique skill, being a game master, and there are far fewer of them than there are players. I’m running five games right now—six once we kick this group off. Of course, I’m not paid for this one, this is just for fun with friends.” Caitlyn pushes some hair behind her ear. “I know it’s… odd, but… it’s what I love to do, so.”
“Shit, that’s kinda awesome,” Vi admits.
Caitlyn’s smile widens and quickens the beat of Vi’s heart, and they sit in a surprisingly comfortable silence for a moment before the other woman asks, “Shall we continue with your character? We’re almost done with the backstory bit—at least the stuff we need to decide now.”
Vi makes a disgruntled face. “Does that mean we’re getting close to the math part?”
Another one of those smiles, though, immediately wipes any negativity from VI’s expression. “I’ll make it easy for you, how about that?”
And honestly, Caitlyn does. There’s a lot of dice rolling and adding numbers together as they decide what class Vi’s character should be—Caitlyn offers a number of possible story reasons that her character might’ve ended up in any of the classes she explains, but Vi tells her that she doesn’t care about magic and just wants her character to hit things. That narrows the options down, and Vi settles for barbarian after Caitlyn explains the concept of rage in the game. Vi’s honestly surprised when dots start to connect themselves in her mind, building a deeper understanding of this character she’s just come up with today, who was nothing but a vague concept just a little while ago.
It's a process, though, to get her character sheet right. Caitlyn explains that the party levels up together, and since everyone in the party is currently level six, Vi’s character will start at level six as well. That means more decisions that Vi doesn’t fully understand, but Caitlyn is exceedingly patient with her, explaining everything that she needs to know, and shrugging off anything she can get to later.
She texts Powder when they start wrapping up, realizing that it’s been nearly three hours that she’s been sitting here with Caitlyn. Once her sister is on her way, Caitlyn asks, “Oh, do you have a Discord?”
Vi doesn’t—doesn’t even know what Caitlyn is talking about—and so the other woman downloads the app for her, helps her create an account, and adds her to the group server.
“I always ping everyone if there’s anything important, so just make sure to check for those at least. But there’s a lot of context in there from the first campaign, if you’re curious.”
“Cool, yeah, I’ll look.”
“It might be a bit confusing at first—everyone’s nickname in the server is their character name,” Caitlyn adds, before tilting her head a little. “Have you thought about a name for yours?”
“Oh, uh, not really. She needs like, a cool fantasy name, right?”
“Not necessarily. She can have whatever name you want her to have.”
Vi scratches at the back of her head. “Honestly, before we actually did all this stuff, I thought I’d just name her Violet. But now that she, like, exists… that doesn’t really feel right.”
Caitlyn searches her expression one last time tonight before asking, “That’s what Vi is short for?” Vi nods. “Are you open to suggestions?”
“Uh, yeah. Pretty sure anything you come up with is gonna be better than what I can.”
Not missing a beat to linger on Vi’s comment, Caitlyn offers, “What about Iris?” A short silence sits between them as Vi turns the name around in her mind, though she isn’t quite sure why Caitlyn is suggesting it. Much like with every other moment of silence from the past three hours, though, Caitlyn is quick to end it with an explanation. “It’s a purple flower, like a violet. It symbolizes courage, hope, valor. In Greek mythology, Iris is a messenger of the gods, and the goddess of the rainbow, which could—”
“Damn, what a way to say you clocked me,” Vi snarks before she can help herself, turning Caitlyn’s cheeks scarlet as she realizes what Vi means.
With an embarrassed puff of a laugh, Caitlyn insists, “That’s not what I meant. Rainbows are a symbol of new beginnings, good fortune, the hope after a storm. I think that makes a lot of sense with your character’s journey and where she’s at now, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Vi agrees, her voice coming out soft. “You really just had all that symbolism ready to go? You got an encyclopedia in your brain or something?”
Caitlyn’s blush is so pretty, along with the way she’s biting back a proud smile, and Vi is ecstatic to prolong it for even just a few more seconds. “You didn’t miss that I have a creative writing degree, did you? There are whole courses on symbolism. Anyway, I can try to come up with other ideas if you—”
“No, wait,” Vi cuts her off gently, “I like Iris. Let’s go with that.”
“Okay, but if you change your mind before our first session, just let me know. You can shoot me a message on Discord.”
Vi gives her an appreciative smile. “Sure. Hey, thanks, by the way, for all this session zero stuff. I’m still not convinced that I’m gonna be any good at this game, but it’s not at all like what I expected. And I had fun, too.”
It earns her the widest smile she’s gotten from Caitlyn yet, fully revealing a little gap between her front teeth, somehow turning her even cuter right before Vi’s eyes. “I’m so glad. I think you’ll be much better at it than you expect.” Vi shrugs, unconvinced, and Caitlyn doubles down. “Truly. I’ve met a lot of D&D players, all sorts of them. Brand new ones and veterans, players who are in it for the roleplay, players who minmax every detail of their character, players who are just there for a good time with friends. And a lot of players who bail after a session or two.”
“And you don’t think I’m gonna fall in that last category?”
“No, I don’t,” Caitlyn insists, “because the players who stick to their campaigns the longest are the ones who make their characters real, who connect to them. And you showed up today, not knowing anything about the game, and poured your heart into making this character—Iris. You don’t have to be good at math for this game, Vi. You just have to love your character enough to keep them alive, to follow them through their story.”
Vi isn’t sure why, but there’s a lump in her throat all of a sudden as she nods, and she can’t think of anything to say. Caitlyn just smiles and stands to start reorganizing her space, almost like she knows that Powder is about to text Vi, letting her know that she’s outside.
“Pow’s here,” Vi says a minute later when she does, “so I’ll get going.”
“Take these with you,” Caitlyn instructs, patting the pages of Vi’s character sheet, “but bring them to session.”
Vi collects the papers, tapping them against the table to straighten them out, and clears her throat. “Um. Thanks again, Caitlyn.”
For that, she gets one more smile for the road. “No problem. I’ll see you on Friday.”
The second Caitlyn’s front door closes behind her, Vi sucks in a deep breath and abruptly becomes aware of how hard her heart is beating. She keeps a tight grip on her character sheet to protect it from the late night breeze as she slips into Powder’s passenger seat, finding her fast food dinner trash exactly where she left it earlier.
“Look who survived session zero!” Powder teases. “I guess Caitlyn’s nerdy house and Piltie accent didn’t scare you away?”
“Nope,” Vi breathes out.
“It went okay?”
“Yeah, was good.” Powder’s looking at Vi with clear suspicion, though. “What?”
“Guess I just… expected you to be grouchy. Thought I was going to spend the drive back to your place convincing you not to bail before you even really start.”
“I’m not gonna bail,” Vi insists, thinking about what Caitlyn said. “I’m gonna give it a fair shot. And you were right. Caitlyn’s not bad for a Piltie. Anyway, how was movie night?”
That gets her sister talking as she pulls out of Caitlyn’s driveway, but Vi has trouble paying attention, her mind too full. And not just of thoughts and ideas about Iris, about her story. She’s just as occupied, if not more, by piercing blue eyes and a pretty gap-toothed smile.
And Vi can’t wait for Friday.