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The first time Vi saw her this life, she was standing under a flickering streetlight, getting rained on and pretending it didn’t bother her.
Same tilt of the chin. Same stubborn line of her mouth. Different hair – shorter, darker at the roots and fading to lighter at the tips – but the way she pushed it back with the heel of her hand made Vi’s heart stop.
Not again, Vi thought, but of course it was.
The rain came down in the narrow alley. Neon bled into the puddles, pinks and blues smeared under Vi’s boots as she watched the girl fish inside her coat for something.
Gun? Badge? Keys?
The girl produced a cigarette instead, cursed softly when she realized the rain had soaked it.
“Rough night?” Vi heard herself say.
The girl turned, and there they were. Those eyes. A little different shade of blue every time – once storm-cloud, once summer-sky blue. Tonight they were the color of a deep ocean.
Vi forgot how to breathe.
“Depends,” the girl said, scanning her quickly, efficiently. Her stance screamed cop, even without a uniform. “You planning to make it rougher?”
Vi’s laugh came out cracked. “Not unless you want me to.”
A faint smile ghosted across the girl’s lips. “People usually just offer a lighter.”
“They’re missing an opportunity.”
She huffed, half a laugh, half a sigh, and moved under the awning where Vi leaned against the brick wall. Up close, rain dotted her lashes.
“Got a light?” she asked.
Vi rolled the cheap lighter across her knuckles, then flicked it open. The flame shivered between them. The girl leaned in, cigarette at her lips, eyes on Vi’s face like they’d done this in a thousand alleys.
Because they had.
The first time had been under a lantern, not a streetlight, and there’d been horse shit instead of oil and ozone in the air.
***
The first time Vi remembered loving her, Caitlyn wore a corset she hated and a badge she loved.
Piltover’s streets had been cobblestones and sharp corners then, all shining brass and smug, narrow minds. Vi had been fresh out of Stillwater, knuckles wrapped in tape and scars, convinced she was going to punch the whole world into something better.
They’d met because of a robbery. Or, depending on who you asked, because Vi had been an idiot.
“Drop the bag,” the enforcer with the too-perfect hair yelled.
“Make me,” Vi had yelled back, blood singing, boots pounding over the bridge rail as she ran.
It had been a simple gig: distract the topside patrol while the kids below hit the shipment. Punch a few rich boys, break a few windows, punch few strangers. Easy. Except Vi had underestimated how fast Piltover’s shiny new sheriff’s department could mobilize when rich people got nervous.
Alarms wailed. Bridges sealed. Her way out vanished in a blur of shimmering hextech.
Crap.
She dove into the nearest alley, skidding on the slick stones. The bag of stolen crystals jarred her shoulder.
Then she slammed straight into somebody.
They went down in a tangle of limbs and swearing. Vi rolled, keeping the bag pinned, already cocking a fist to throw a punch—
…and froze.
The woman beneath her had blue eyes like polished glass and a hat that had no business surviving the fall as neatly as it did. Her hair had come partially loose from its knot, a dark blue wave spilling across the alley. Her pistol laid just out of reach, but the other hand held Vi’s wrist in a grip that said she’d been training since she could walk.
“Good afternoon,” the woman said, too calm for someone with criminal elbow in her ribs. “Would you mind getting off me?”
Vi’s brain stalled. It wasn’t the accent, though that helped. It wasn’t even the poise, or the grip, or the way the woman didn’t look afraid.
It was… everything.
Like the world had been slightly out of focus her whole life and had just snapped sharp.
Vi scrambled up, hauling the other woman with her on instinct. “You’re welcome.”
The woman dusted off her coat with prim, fussy little motions that didn’t match the way she’d nearly broken Vi’s wrist. “You’re the one who knocked me over.”
“You’re the one who got in the way.”
“You were fleeing the scene of a crime.”
“Alleged crime.”
“You’re holding the evidence,” she said mildly, nodding at the bag with some fancy crest on it.
Vi looked down at it. Then back up at her. “You didn’t see anything.”
A dark brow arched. “Is that a threat?”
“No.” Vi hesitated. “A… polite request?”
The corner of the woman’s mouth twitched. Something warm and dangerous flickered in her eyes.
“Then I’m afraid I must decline,” she said. “I’m Caitlyn Kiramman, Sheriff’s assistant. You’re under arrest.”
She reached for the pistol.
Vi could have run. Should have. She knew every alley in the district better than the girl in front of her. One punch, one shove, and she’d be gone.
Instead, with a sigh that felt like surrender, she dropped the bag into the woman’s hands.
“Name’s Vi,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Cupcake.”
Caitlyn’s fingers tightened around the bag. She looked at Vi like she was a puzzle and a problem and something she wanted to solve herself, personally.
Years later – decades, centuries – Vi would wonder if, in that moment, Caitlyn had felt it too. That click. That gravity.
She’d never get to ask.
Because mortals forgot. That was the rule.
***
“Vi,” the girl in the alley said now, tasting the name like she was trying it on. “That short for something?”
“Nah.” Vi swallowed. “Just Vi.”
“You don’t look like a ‘just’ anything.” The faintest smile. “I’m Caitlyn.”
Of course you are, Vi thought, and felt something tight and aching loosen in her chest. “Caitlyn,” she echoed. “Nice to meet you.”
Again.
They shared the doorway and the inadequate shelter while rain hissed off the city like steam. Hover-cars hummed by overhead. Drones blinked red in the mist. Vi watched Cait out of the corner of her eye, cataloguing every detail she’d learn all over again – the way Cait’s thumb tapped against her thigh in a rhythm when she was thinking, the tiny furrow between her brows when something bothered her.
“How long have you been watching me?” Cait asked suddenly.
Vi blinked. “What?”
“You’re not subtle,” Cait said. “You noticed my night was rough before I had time to complain about it, which means you saw the whole thing at the club.”
Vi’s shoulders tensed. She hadn’t realized Cait had clocked her there.
“Oh, that.” Vi shrugged. “You were throwing out a guy twice your size. Hard to miss.”
Cait took a drag, exhaled a thin stream of smoke that vanished in the rain. “He was groping the bartender. My sympathy is limited.”
“Fair.” Vi hesitated. “You… did good.”
“High praise from a stranger.”
We’re not strangers, Vi wanted to say. I know how you take your tea and how you hate getting up before dawn. I know the face you make when someone uses a word wrong, the way you talk to victims and how you aim when you’re pissed off. I’ve watched you die six times.
Instead, she said, “Maybe I just have taste.”
Cait’s smile sharpened. “Flirting with officers on duty is a risky habit.”
Vi glanced at the plain clothes. “You all don’t wear uniforms anymore. Harder to tell who’s going to arrest me for buying them a drink.”
“Are you planning to buy me one?”
The question hung between them, simple and loaded all at once.
Every life, there was a choice.
Walk away. Let Caitlyn live this one without an immortal ex-con with too many ghosts.
Or step forward, like she always did, into the light of Cait’s eyes and the pull of a story she already knew the ending to.
Vi thought of lifetimes: a healed wound and then ripped open again, over and over. Piltover’s cobblestones and gunpowder smoke. A sea captain’s cabin that smelled like salt and gun oil. A cramped flat above a bookstore in a city that no longer existed on any map. A hospital bed under harsh white light, Caitlyn’s hand weak and warm in hers.
“Yeah,” Vi said softly. “I’m planning to buy you one.”
Cait studied her for a long beat, then flicked the cigarette into a puddle. “There’s a 24-hour diner on the corner. They have terrible coffee and excellent pie.”
“Lead the way, sheriff.”
Cait snorted. “I really hope that wasn’t a lucky guess.”
“Just a feeling,” Vi said.
***
Between lives, there was only the river.
Vi had never seen it with her eyes. She only knew it from the dreams that came on the worst nights: dark water stretching forever, stars caught on the surface like scattered coins. The current sang, and its song was forgetting.
For mortals, the river was a mercy. It took the sharp edges and softened them, took the memories and pain away, turned jagged grief into something bearable. It returned souls lighter, clean as fresh snow.
For Vi, the river had been an accident.
She’d fallen into it once, long ago, trying to drag someone out. The details were gone—ironically, the river’s price was itself a blur—but the consequences remained.
She hadn’t died. She’d just… stopped aging.
The first time her reflection refused to change while everyone else’s did, she thought it was a trick. The second time, she thought it was punishment. Eventually, she realized it was worse.
It was a promise.
You will live, the river had told her. And you will remember.
Everyone else would forget. That was the only way the world could keep spinning.
Except Caitlyn.
Or rather, Caitlyn’s soul. She’d had different names, once. Katerine, Catriona, Kay, Lin. The syllables shifted with languages and centuries, but the pattern at the center of her remained.
And every time, somehow, impossibly, she found Vi.
Sometimes it took years. Once, in the 860 BN, Vi had gone half-mad wandering from city to city, following rumors of a woman with a particular way of speaking, an odd certainty with a rifle. She’d found Caitlyn on the front lines of a stupid war, coat muddied, hair hacked off, shouting orders like she’d been born to command.
Sometimes they crashed into each other within days, as if fate was impatient.
This time, Vi had lasted three months.
She’d tried to avoid the river’s favorite symmetry. Different city, different job, no breaking into enforcer headquarters “just to check what toys they’ve got now, Vi, honestly,” as a version of Caitlyn had once scolded.
It hadn’t worked. Fate had a type, apparently: stubborn women with badges and idiots who loved them.
***
The diner was exactly as advertised: bad coffee, great pie, fluorescent lighting that made everyone look a little bit haunted.
Cait took a booth with her back to the wall. Vi slid in opposite, feeling like she’d stepped into an echo. The wallpaper was new, the city outside louder, but the way Cait wrapped her hands around the chipped mug was the same.
“So,” Cait said, after the waitress had left them with coffee and plates. “Vi who’s not ‘just’ Vi. Why were you watching me?”
Vi stirred sugar into her coffee she didn’t need. “Maybe I’m a creep.”
“You’re not,” Cait said, without hesitation.
That startled a laugh out of her. “You don’t know that.”
“I’ve been a detective for seven years. I know what creeps look like.”
“Congrats on the promotion, by the way,” Vi said before she could stop herself.
Cait went very still. “How do you know about that?”
Vi cursed internally. “Lucky guess?” she tried.
Cait’s eyes narrowed. “Wrong answer.”
She should lie. She should. It always started with a lie, anyway: about how old she was, about why she knew the city’s bones like she’d watched it grow.
But Caitlyn had truth etched into her bones. Every time, no matter what world they landed in, she was chasing it, up alleys and through corridors and into rooms full of liars. And every time Vi had found herself wanting to be the one person who didn’t add to the pile.
She took a breath.
“My timing’s weird,” she said. “I know things I shouldn’t. About people. Patterns. Places. It freaks folks out if I lead with that.”
“You’re still avoiding the question.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“And what is your occupation? ‘Mysterious woman in alleys’ isn’t very lucrative.”
“Depends on your definition of lucrative,” Vi muttered, then shook her head. “I do… freelance problem-solving.”
“Legally?”
“Mostly.”
Cait’s look said they’d be circling back to that. “So you just happened to ‘freelance problem-solve’ outside a club where I was working a case, and you just happened to know about my promotion that went through yesterday but hasn’t been announced publicly.”
Vi met her gaze. Let herself fall into those eyes like stepping off a ledge she knew well.
“You’re going to think I’m insane,” she said quietly.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“We’ve met before,” Vi said. “A lot. Hundreds of years’ worth of ‘before.’ Every time, you don’t remember, and I do.”
Silence dropped over the table like a curtain. The clatter of dishes, the murmur of conversations in other booths, the rain against the window: all suddenly far away.
Cait’s expression didn’t change at first. She just kept looking at Vi, searching, analyzing, cataloguing. Vi watched her run through the usual mental checklist: delusion, con, misdirection. She waited for the scoff, the skeptic’s smile.
Instead, Cait asked, “What’s my favorite drink?”
Vi blinked. “Tea. Strong. No sugar. You say it hides the flavor.”
“And my… favorite season?”
“Autumn.” It came out too fast. “You like the way the air smells before it rains. You make nervous sketches of lightning storms in your notebooks when you’re stuck behind a desk too long.”
Cait’s fingers tightened around her mug.
“First time we met,” Cait said, voice low, “what did I say to you?”
Vi’s throat constricted. “You told me,” she said, “that I was under arrest. I’d just knocked you over in an alley. You had this ridiculous hat, and you—”
She stopped, because Cait’s face had changed.
Not dramatically. No cinematic gasp, no clutching at her head with screams. Just a tiny, involuntary flinch. A blink that lasted a fraction too long.
“I… dreamed that,” Cait murmured.
Heat pricked at the back of Vi’s eyes. “Yeah?”
“Last year. It was raining. There was a… bag? I remember a hat. I don’t wear hats.”
“You hate them,” Vi said, a little hoarsely. “They mess up your perfect hair. But you wore that one like—”
“Like I was born with it,” Cait finished, voice barely above a whisper.
Their eyes met again, something fragile and weird stretched between them.
“It doesn’t usually… bleed through,” Vi said softly. “Little things, sometimes. Déjà vu. But you’re not supposed to remember. That’s the… deal.”
“With whom?” Cait asked.
Vi shrugged. “The universe. The river. Whatever keeps score.”
“You’re immortal,” Cait said slowly. “And I… reincarnate.”
“That’s the working theory.”
“How long?”
“Since… before Piltover,” Vi said. “Since before topside and the Lanes were even drawn on the same map. I fell into something I shouldn’t have. It changed me. You… were there. I think. I’m not sure.” She frowned. “You pulled me out. Or tried to. It’s fuzzy. River wipes out the memory.”
“And ever since then… we keep finding each other.”
“Or you keep finding me,” Vi said. “I try to keep my head down, sometimes. Doesn’t stick.”
“Why didn’t you tell me,” Cait asked, “in the… other lives?”
“I did,” Vi said. “Once. A long time ago. You wanted proof. I gave you everything I could. Dates, names, secrets no one else knew. You believed me.” She swallowed. “You were furious.”
Cait’s brow furrowed. “With you?”
“With the universe. With the idea that your life might be… mapped out. That you didn’t get to choose me, you were just… bound to. You said it cheapened everything you felt.”
“That sounds like me,” Cait murmured.
“Yeah,” Vi said, a sad smile twitching at her mouth. “We had a big fight. You left. We still fell in love anyway, a few years later. You didn’t remember the argument. I never told you again.”
“And now?” Cait’s gaze sharpened. “Why tell me now?”
Because I’ve watched you die in every way a person can, Vi thought. Because I’m tired. Because I don’t know how many more times I can do this without breaking. Because this time your eyes did that little flinch and I thought, maybe, just maybe—
“I don’t know,” she said instead. “Maybe I wanted to see if… if it’s really just fate, or if you’d still choose me knowing the… context.”
Cait studied her for a long, measured moment.
“You know,” she said, “if anyone else told me this story, I’d have them scheduled for a psych evaluation before they finished their coffee.”
“Ouch.”
“But you know my drink, my habits, my promotion. You know things you should not know.”
“I’m a good stalker,” Vi tried.
Cait ignored that. “And I’ve had dreams my entire life that never felt like dreams. They felt like… memories that happened to someone else. Someone with my hands.”
Vi nodded. “You called them ‘ghost shadows’ in one life. Wrote a whole paper on it.”
“Did I publish?”
“No.” Vi smiled. “You decided they were yours, not anybody else’s.”
“That also sounds like me.” Cait wrapped her hands more tightly around the mug. “If I accept this as true for a moment: why me?”
Vi blinked. “What?”
“Of all the souls in the world. You’re immortal. You could have… anyone. Why keep… finding me?”
Vi stared at her, briefly, and then laughed. It came out incredulous, aching. “You think I have some kind of… menu?”
“You act like you do.”
“Cait,” Vi said, and her voice cracked on the name. “You’re not… a consolation prize. You’re not some cosmic assignment I’m just dutifully clocking in for. I keep finding you because I keep… looking.”
“Do I… always fall in love with you?” she asked, very quietly.
“Yes,” Vi said. She didn’t dress it up. “Eventually. Sometimes faster. Sometimes slower. Once you hated me for three years first. That was… memorable.”
“And you?” Cait’s gaze was steady, sharp as any interrogator’s light. “Do you always love me?”
Vi thought of smoke and cobblestones. Of salt spray on Caitlyn’s face as she leaned over a ship’s rail, laughing at a joke Vi would make in ten seconds. Of ink-stained fingers in a bookstore, brushing hers as they reached for the same volume. Of shaking hands in ICU white, Caitlyn whispering her last word: “It’s all right, Vi. It’s just a different kind of goodbye.”
She could have lied. Said something easy. Made it less heavy.
She was so damn tired of lies.
“Yes,” she said simply. “Every time. Every version of you. Even the ones who shoot me first.”
“I’ve shot you?!”
“Occupational hazard,” Vi said again, and Cait actually laughed this time, sharp and unwilling.
The sound loosened something in Vi’s chest.
“So,” Cait said, after a moment. “Let us assume I believe you, or at least, I’m willing to entertain it. What now?”
“Now?” Vi shrugged. “Now we eat pie. You go back to your murder case. I go back to… not breaking anything I don’t have to. We see if you still like me after I help you solve it.”
“You’re going to help me with my case.”
“Hey, if you’re getting free reincarnations, I’m getting free consulting gigs.”
“That’s not how that works.”
“Detective, I promise you, you want my help on this one. The guy you kicked out tonight? Wrong suspect. But the bartender? She saw more than she’s telling you.”
Cait’s eyes widened. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Because,” Vi said, leaning forward, grinning for real now, “this is the part where I prove I’m good for something besides dramatic existential confessions.”
Cait held her gaze for a long moment. Then she sighed, that particular brand of fond exasperation that Vi would recognize in a crowd of thousands.
“Fine,” she said. “You get one chance. You help me crack this case, and we’ll… discuss the metaphysics of our alleged eternal romance later.”
“Eternal romance,” Vi repeated, savoring it. “Sounds serious.”
“Don’t push it.”
Vi picked up her fork. “So what’s the case?”
Caitlyn told her.
As she spoke—precise, thorough—Vi watched the way her hands moved, the way she emphasized certain words. The same as it had always been, and entirely new. This Cait had different scars, eyes, different fears. She’d grown up under neon instead of sunlight, learned to shoot on a range with holographic targets instead of tin cans on a fence.
But the core was the same: an iron sense of justice wrapped in silk, a mind that loved puzzles, a heart that broke for the broken and the bruised.
Vi listened. Asked questions. Made a few leaps no normal person could’ve justified, the way she always did. Caitlyn caught her on some, narrowed her eyes, demanded explanations. On others, she simply frowned at the table, then slowly nodded, admitting the logic.
This was how it started, every time: not with fireworks or declarations, but with work. With the slow, careful building of trust, brick by brick, case by case.
You’re my partner, Caitlyn had said once, hand slipping into hers as they walked a dark street. Not my shadow. Not my superior. My partner.
Vi had been a little in love with her before that. Afterwards, she’d been helpless.
Now, in the harsh diner light, Cait pushed her empty plate away and met Vi’s gaze.
“You’re wrong about the bartender,” she said. “She didn’t see the shooter. But she did see the missing coat in the back hallway.”
Vi grinned. “Knew I liked you.”
“You liked me before you even met me.”
“Yeah,” Vi said softly. “I did.”
Cait’s face softened, just a fraction. “Don’t make me regret indulging you.”
“Not planning on it, Cupcake.”
“What did you call me?”
Vi froze. “Uh.”
“Cupcake,” Cait repeated, mouth twitching. “Do I want to know why?”
The first time Caitlyn had hated the nickname. The second had rolled her eyes and pretended to, but secretly smiled when she thought Vi wasn’t looking. One version had insisted on a different pastry entirely. Cait often had opinions about baked goods.
“You’re sweet but dangerous,” Vi said. “And you once threatened to shoot me over a pastry.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah. You denied it later, but I had witnesses.”
“I’m sure you do.” Cait leaned back, studying her. “All right, then. ‘Cupcake.’”
She tested the word like she was trying on a coat from a previous life. It fit better than it had any right to.
“We should go,” Cait said.
“Where to? Your place?” Vi waggled her eyebrows.
“Back to the scene.” Cait stood, gathering her coat. “If you’re going to be my unofficial consultant, you might as well start now.”
Vi’s froze. “I thought I only got one chance.”
“Yes,” Cait said, and there was something in her eyes now: curiosity, caution, a flicker of something warmer. “Don’t waste it.”
They stepped out into the rain together. The neon had softened to a misty glow, the city humming its endless, restless song.
Vi walked half a step behind, watching the line of Cait’s shoulders under her coat, the confident set of her stride. It was both familiar and new, like hearing an old song remixed.
She knew how this could go. There would be fights. There would be laughter. There would be nights where Cait fell asleep over case files, pen smudges on her fingers, and Vi would carry her to bed. There would be mornings where Cait paced their kitchen, ranting about bureaucrats, and Vi would lean in the doorway, grinning, memorizing every word.
There would, someday, be another goodbye. The immortality math was cruel like that.
But here, now, in this wet street with the smell of rain in the air and Caitlyn Kiramman at her side, Vi made a choice.
Not fate’s. Not the river’s. Hers.
She reached out and let her knuckles brush the back of Cait’s hand.
Cait glanced down, then up. Her eyes met Vi’s, questioning.
Vi didn’t say anything. She just held her gaze, letting everything she’d been too cowardly to name in other lives sit, naked and quiet, between them.
After a moment that stretched like a bridge between centuries, Caitlyn’s fingers turned. Twined with hers.
“Careful, Vi,” she said, voice low. “I’m mortal, remember. You’ll have to put up with losing me again.”
“Yeah,” Vi said, squeezing her hand. It hurt, but it was a familiar hurt, one she accepted like old scar tissue. “Worth it.”
Caitlyn exhaled, a soft huff that could have been a laugh or a sigh. “We’ll see,” she said. “Come on. We have a case to solve.”
They walked on, hand in hand, into the rain-soaked night. The city watched, indifferent. Somewhere, deep in the dark, the river sang.
Vi ignored it.
She’d cross it when she had to. She always did.
For now, she had a new life to live, and Caitlyn Kiramman was falling in love with her all over again.
That was more than enough.