Please Don't Leave (Arcane//CaitVi)

Part Nine- What to Do With a Sister

Trigger warnings in the description

Violet

I stared down at Jayce's dead body, my muscles unmoving and my arms hanging numbly at my sides. The bleeding had stopped, the smoke was gone, and the reek of death was starting to settle in, just a bit. It didn't bother me. I'd seen murder. I grew up in the Undercity, for crying out loud, almost half the time death these days was all you could smell. It wasn't his broken jaw that had me silent though, or the blood splattered over the wall, the street- it was the glittery pink powder that was dusted over his face. Like someone with the substance on their hands had closed his eyes after Caitlyn and I had left. And next to his head, in the same sparkly color, a message.

I'm sorry.

Powder's scrawled out handwriting hadn't changed. Not even in seven years.

The gauntlets were gone of course, but I had quickly noticed them embedded into another building several yards away, the Hextech long since drained from the heavy gloves. It didn't make sense that she hadn't taken them, but I guess I had bigger problems.

With tears choking my throat, I knelt next to Jayce and hurriedly wiped the words off of the wall, then the glitter from his face. I swallowed thickly. Guilt racked my spine. I couldn't tell them that I knew it was Jinx, I just-

I just want my baby sister back.

I settled my knees heavily into the ground, slumping slightly over my hands. Silent tears dripped into the dried blood coating the dirt. I let myself wallow in the weight of the state of my world, just for a moment.

"...V-Violet?"

My body's instinct was to whirl around and brace myself, but the young girl I had buried within myself -the one that was scared, and hurt, and lonely- just started sobbing at her little sister's voice. I missed Powder. I missed her so much.

My tears came faster and I turned my head, only slightly startled at how close she was to me. Powder's long braids dragged limply on the ground, the bright blue tips long since stained red with blood. Gashes and bruises and scrapes covered her pale skin, and I balked at how thin she looked, how deep the circles under her eyes were, how... utterly lost, how dead her expression was. Her tired gaze was fixed on the ground, and she toed the crimson stained dirt with her heavy, tattered combat boots.

I didn't know which name to use. She was Powder. She was my sister. But what if Jinx refused to be ignored?

"I'm sorry," she whispered roughly, shimmer tinted tears slipping down her too-sharp cheekbones. Her machine gun was nowhere in sight. "I'm not sorry for killing him. He was a dumb Piltie leader. But I- I never wanted this to happen in the first place." She seemed to sink even further into herself, her frail voice a guttural whisper. "It was a mistake. I just wanted to help." I could hear the unspoken message in her words. I'm a mistake.