TIME LOOP CLOSED.

     sarah’s a firm believer that it’s always nice to enter a bar and not have most patrons present immediately gawk at you, hence making the economical choice of buying out a prime location- all under wraps, of course.   if there’s no need to plaster her name over the signage, she wasn’t about to enforce it out of vanity.   nobody in bilgewater is stupid enough to challenge her in her own territory.   patrons of this tavern are generally old acquaintances or simply tired people who don’t give a damn about anything besides getting through each day and certainly not enough to try and stab her in the back.

      just how she likes it.   a location for both business and pleasure.   glancing towards her companion, she takes a drink of the spiced liqueur in her hand before setting it down.   the drinks are on the house, of course.   she hasn’t quite figured out which of the two tonight shall end up being, perhaps both.   “ you’re interested in a discussion of trade, hmm? ”   piercing green eyes regards the other woman, probing in her tone and still speaking with a tinge of flirtation as per her usual.   “ darling- as flattered as i am at you gunning for my attention, i can’t help but wonder what’s a question regarding this tedious matter that i can answer better than…   say, any simple merchant on these docks. ”

     —   @citywatcher 

     “Well,” Caitlyn mutters, a sleeve of her jacket hanging off an arm draped around her chair, “‘s not that simple when you really look into it.”

     Any merchant worth her salt could navigate around a Bilgewater open market, it’s true. Even contraband that changed hands around the black market, which would normally be covered under wraps in Piltover, was more or less common knowledge in Bilgewater. But Caitlyn wasn’t just looking beneath the surface; she was probing deep, looking into patterns, and figuring out just how much Fortune had things under control.

     That led to her donning a Noxian sharpshooter’s faded regiment slacks and sailing across the sea to come face to face with her mark. Ur-Nox accent could use some work, though, she thinks.

the ascent seems the least troublesome aspect of their trip. there’s a sense of relief that washes over him to be out of the undercity’s grasp. piltover is familiar, he can cherish that much. whatever weariness he felt seems to diminish sensibly when he reaches familiar streets. if anything, he can understand why caitlyn seems intent on checking their backs: he does the same, in regular intervals, until they reach the door of the precinct.  

jayce accepts the canteen, offers her a polite smile as he takes it in his hands and uncorks it to sip from it. he had barely noticed how parched all of the events had gotten him, but that much seems typical from him. self-care is hardly among his priorities, though not out of conscious effort. 

the forensic lab has him lifting an eyebrow. he’s used to work on far better furnished places, but he can make do with about anything in his opinion. if he couldn’t, there’d be no point on boasting about his excellence. he puts the canteen away on the entrance, over one of the workbenches. 

now they’re somewhere safe and far from the grasp of any of their pursuers, he finally takes his time to lean over the blueprints, read them first before taking to the pieces of hextech found. none of this feels particularly akin to viktor’s work, which was their initial suspicion. surely the years gone by could have changed his signature, but jayce himself doubts it. letting a small sound of acknowledgement for the sheriff’s words, he turns to the material recovered, walking over to one of the instruments. 

“it seems strange, yes.” he’s far too absorbed in what he’s doing then to offer more than four words. the energy he feels emanating from one of the crystal pieces is humble, at best, and he needs nothing but his own sensibility to assess that. nothing compared to one of finer grade. he knows it, he has a very physical comparison to make in the core of his hammercannon. still, he takes to analysing it through one of the equipments, only to be proven right by the results. those were synthetic hextech crystals, also known as one of the best fuels to zaun’s grey.

he frowns, then looks over to caitlyn herself. “i’d say this could be decoy to something, but there’s not much to back that hypothesis up aside how poor the quality of… everything we acquired is. the blueprints are sloppy and look like they were made by an academy student in their first semester, the crystals are synthetic and low quality. it doesn’t seem to fit any grander plan. unless we didn’t reach the real goods, this isn’t worth half of that security.”

he doesn’t like how out of place all of this seems, all of the pieces of the puzzle they had assembled seemingly unfit to their roles.

     Caitlyn paces over to the opposite end of the table, hands placed on the surface as she also takes a look at their extracted evidence.

     “Then why the trouble guarding such frivolous designs?”

     She reaches for one of the sheets of paper Jayce isn’t examining at the moment, her eyes scanning the designs and hastily scribbled notes. It’s as he said - amateur, cheap, of decidedly little value. So why would something one could find in the waste bins of even the most rudimentary laboratories need that level of protection?

     There had to be something else.

     Caitlyn reaches into her coat pocket and fishes out a few pieces of metal. They’re oval in shape, she could tell from her first glance. But as her fingers run over them she realizes from the ridges that they are designed in the loose shape of hexagons. Raising one of them up to the table, where a hex-lamp dangles above them, she looks at it more closely.

     “Looks like some hex nuts,” she tells him, placing them on the table. Such pieces of metal were commonly found as part of larger metal devices, but the nuts themselves didn’t mean anything. “You’re right - this isn’t the technology we were looking for, or that they were trying to protect. So this means we either missed it, or...”

     Caitlyn comes to a realization. She looks Jayce in the face, her gaze heavy and harsh.

These kinds of confessions don’t typically come from an expatriate of Noxus. These are the type of words high school students sputter out during applications for internships at the precinct, when asked what interests them about a career in law enforcement.

Caitlyn imagines Riven sitting in during a council meeting in City Hall, watching the assembly jockey around legislation in a constant tug-of-war between the clans of the city.

“Is that what you’re up to these days?”

Caitlyn (and Vi) will be some of the first to admit it: Piltover is scummy. Piltover literally looks down upon Zaun, and the conditions of the two cities makes it easy for people to take advantage of Zaunites. This has been a thing since the opening of the Sun Gates (the canal in Janna’s lore), and won’t stop any time soon.

What Caitlyn will refuse to accept is that the authorities have done nothing to ameliorate these circumstances. Every time there is a situation in Zaun, the police make sure to handle it with care and ensure that Zaunites aren’t harmed (especially because a bunch of crime that trickles down there is instigated by Piltovans who probably exploit Zaun). This kind of social upheaval is difficult:  Piltover in my headcanon is a parliamentary republic with a semi-presidential system. What that means is that there is both a president and a prime minister + cabinet. The president is the head of government, and the prime minister is the head of the cabinet. But although it looks like a democratic system, most of the seats in parliament and the cabinet are occupied by conservatives who are backed by the various Piltover clans, and often the president and prime minister are elected because they are popular with the aristocracy.

This means that although Piltover is dominated by the middle class, the clans still control much of the politics. Still, it’s nowhere as authoritarian as Noxus, or even Demacia, where the nobility is even more prominent.

The clans are invested in getting a leg up on each other, moreso than advancing their policies to help the lower class and funding projects to help Zaun. While there are plenty of people within the clans that would like to do that, especially as public awareness for Zaun’s poor living conditions grows, it’s difficult to actually push the clan leaders to do so.

I think some of the clans are turning liberal, however. This would include Jayce’s clan, Clan Giopara.

I do want to try reducing perceived elitism and be more open with people, but at the same time I’ve been around long enough to know what I want and know that if someone’s blog doesn’t fit my interests, then I won’t try to force interactions or anything of the sort.

Santa Claus is based on the story of Saint Nicholas which is a real thing from Christian tradition so there wouldn’t be an equivalent in Runeterra since there’s no Catholic Church and such. Though there could be a Saint Nicholas, it’s unlikely that the tradition came about to be in the same way our Christmas tradition is.

I figured she had heard reports of some Noxian in a Santa costume causing mayhem in Piltover and was prepared in case she received a visit. I was not wrong.

There wouldn’t have been much of a discussion at the precinct.

     Situated on a crowded avenue in Piltover, Caitlyn’s second-story apartment receives no shortage of solicitors. It can’t be helped - in a busy city, people inevitably notice when one of the wardens arrives at her home. After all, even a sheriff’s got to sleep, right?

     Caitlyn makes sure to stay on guard even in the privacy of her home, so she holds her rifle close to her even when she enters the door. But out of all the places for someone to barge in, the chimney is one of the last places she thinks of.

     Her rifle rises to point directly at the intruder, but Caitlyn looks up once she realizes that he has arrived at her house in a costume reminiscent of Saint Nicholas. Although the disguise might fool some people, that ridiculous mustache has no chance of a convincing alibi.

     “Spreading some Snowdown cheer, are we, Mister Draven?”

     The rifle lowers, and Caitlyn wonders if she should just keep it up so that he might understand her message. As she listens to him babble, however, Caitlyn develops another idea. Smirking, she stows her rifle behind her back, relaxing her shoulders and slipping out of her shoes.

     “How could you say I’ve been naughty?” Caitlyn pouts, sauntering over to him with a toss of her hair over her shoulder. “If anything, I should be rewarded for helping catch so many criminals in the city,” she says, pressing a hand on his chest, “—after all, I’ve been such a nice girl.”

     While Draven musters up a reply, Caitlyn presses a button on her rifle that releases a claw-like mechanism. It extends behind Draven, tugging at one of the loops in the outfit. Caitlyn pulls her rifle up as she would a fishing pole, dragging the executioner to the ground, and heads towards her open door.

     “Hm,” Caitlyn muses, a finger on her lip. “I suppose I haven’t been that good.” She lifts her rifle, dangling Draven above the stairs of her apartment.

name :  Caitlyn Farleigh nickname : Sheriff, Cupcake gender : female romantic orientation :  grey-asexual/aromantic preferred pet names :   Cupcake is only a thing Vi calls her. I feel like Cait wouldn’t really be into pet names and Cupcake is a special case because she and Vi work together. Cait might throw in a ‘dear’ towards her partner every now and then, but that’s also part of particular Piltover districts’ speech. relationship status : Single favorite canon ship :  N/A favorite non-canon ship :  In main verse I can probably see Caitlyn/Miss Fortune and Caitlyn/Jayce as this low-key casual thing. The only other AU I’ve thought about is Pulsefire, where I thought about Caitlyn/Ezreal and Caitlyn/Ashe. opinion on true love :  It’s a thing for some people, and isn’t for others. Caitlyn has coworkers with spouses who seem truly in love and other coworkers whose relationships are a mess. She doesn’t consider herself available to have something as idealistic as ‘true love,’ but if she undergoes drastic changes in her outlook on life she might experience it in the future. It’s a possibility Caitlyn hasn’t ruled out but thinks very unlikely. opinion on love at first sight : lol how ‘romantic’ are they? : Caitlyn’s relationships have been short-term hookups, so not very. Some of her partners have given her gifts and she’s keen enough on social etiquette to be able to reciprocate, but it’s not something she really enjoys; she doesn’t really feel attachment to others that way. Giving gifts is something she gives her ‘family’ at the precinct, and her actual family.  ideal physical traits : Caitlyn actually has pretty high standards. While people don’t have to be models or absolutely gorgeous, she finds most of her initial appeal in a person’s presentation. And even that can be misleading, given how easy it is for people in Piltover to conceal their bodies with augments. While Cailtyn won’t rule out a partner just because they have augments, fake augments are also a thing and she wants to know if someone has a reasonable explanation for having them, or if they’re vain enough to pretend to have them. ideal personality traits : People that can give her a challenge and can keep up with her wit. It’s not necessarily about being clever, but about being put together and charismatic. And Caitlyn would want a partner that is mature about their situation and understands that there’s a distance that has to exist between people in her sort of situation and any person she might be intimate with. I’d say Caitlyn gravitates towards intelligence a lot though. unattractive physical traits : I guess people that present themselves as slobs? Caitlyn’s both not particular about physical traits and very particular about them because she might balk at someone just for having one loose button in their dress shirt (which is admittedly, a fashion crime in Piltover). unattractive personality traits : Weak personalities. You don’t have to always stand out from the crowd, but you do have to stand on your own. People who are disrespectful of authority don’t appeal to Caitlyn, but those who suck up to them are just as bad. She actually doesn’t mind people who can toe the line between danger and the law... ideal date : Caitlyn’s fond of nighttime entertainment, which is common in Piltover. The theater, the club, nighttime festivals, etc. Or escapades into the woods, particularly if her partner can also hunt like her. Then they’d have quite a time. do they have a type? :  No? average relationship length :  They’re usually friends with benefits cases, where Caitlyn might go months without seeing someone, due to schedule conflicts, and then only just meet up for the one night. When Caitlyn was younger she considered a woman she was seeing as her girlfriend, but after a week they realized that they both preferred their relationship to be more casual, and never made it very serious. preferred non-sexual intimacy :  Not a lot - Caitlyn’s not a very touchy person outside sexual encounters. It’d probably be more of symbolic intimacy, something as simple as sitting in a room together working on separate things. Caitlyn likes her space. commitment level :  Pretty much no commitment. Caitlyn makes sure to prioritize her work and her professional relationships over her partners. opinion of public affection : As long as it doesn’t interfere with her work environment, Caitlyn doesn’t care. She’s not a very affectionate person herself, though. past relationships? : She’s had a few. I originally wrote that Caitlyn was once involved with a wealthy aristocrat but I think I’ll drop that and only keep her short term relationships.