Someone through Twitter asked a really good question about a detail from Free Treasure and I thought I would share it here because I will never shut up about this world ever 😂
So! When Vi finds the little clockwork beetle at Claiborne’s shop, she notices the emerald eyes and makes reference to them many times afterward. Of course, she doesn’t immediately recognize the parts of the clockwork beetle that are made of the bolts and gears she left for Jinx at Vander’s statue, BUT you’ll notice that once she does, the emerald eyes are still not listed as something she recognizes.
These emerald eyes are a direct reference to this:
A bracelet that Vander seems to give to Vi and then isn’t seen again until Ekko’s alternate universe where Powder is wearing it. For some reason, this little green jewel in a gold setting connects the three of them across timelines. But in the canon word, it doesn’t seem to exist anymore. The emerald green eyes was a way for Jinx to offer that connection to her niece.
Anyway, I love when people find little things like this to pick apart—I plan my extended metaphors meticulously and I LOVE symbolism lol. The curtains are never just blue to me! If anyone ever wants to ask something about the series or offer an interpretation of some of the symbolism, I would love to know!!
Uhhhh, hi, been a long time since I posted anything. Hope everyone is doing well! I’m posting some pictures to tumblr so I can embed them in the final chapter of glad you’re here. It’ll be live shortly, so if you see this reblogged in a few minutes it should have the chapter link attached. ❤️
Uhhhh, hi, been a long time since I posted anything. Hope everyone is doing well! I’m posting some pictures to tumblr so I can embed them in the final chapter of glad you’re here. It’ll be live shortly, so if you see this reblogged in a few minutes it should have the chapter link attached. ❤️
gentle reminder that they have passionate sex at least thrice a week and warm meals every day here. they're deeply in love, safe and healing together here.
i notice, and perhaps this a trick of the narrative or it is on purpose — that i do take vi’s goodness for granted. like, it is heartbreaking to me, but it makes sense to me as an archetype, the physically strong but soft and sensitive fighter. i've seen it mentioned that she is just much easier to identify with in general due to class and identify stuff but i’ve also mentioned before i much more easily identify with her in gender presentation, class, physique, role in her family -- and like also a tattooed soft butch is completely my type. whoops!
but caitlyn’s goodness is so unexpected, so intentional, so deliberate, so unnecessary, that it continues to astonish me. i went into arcane thinking — oh, vi arcane, a butch designed to my tastes in a lab! this cop seems prissy! and yet since finishing the show it is caitlyn kiramman i have thought about literally every single day since, her face i go to first in a scene, her micro-reactions i fixate on. and it is her goodness that makes her hardness so heartbreaking.
I don't have a 24-hour sneak peak for y'all yet, and I think it might be several weeks before I do. Turns out it's pretty hard to write about new parents loving on their sweet baby when you and your spouse want to be parents very badly but aren't yet, AND when your relationship with your own mother started disintegrating three days after posting the last chapter 😅
Anyway, we're also in the process of moving (into a nicer house with the hope of celebrating a first birthday there one day!) so it's been just really hectic and emotional, but I wanted to share with you Camellia's first bath from chapter 10! I hope to be able to share more with you soon :)
Vi raises her clenched fists to guard her face.
She shakes them out with a huff, her brow drawn and her teeth grit tight behind her lips. Half-moon divots bruise her palms at the sound of Camellia’s distress as it reaches fever pitch.
She throws a punch.
“See how I—hnh—see how I move my shoulder and my foot at the same time? Like that, that’s the movement she’s used to, that’s how I was moving when she was in my belly. You gotta really bounce her around. Try like that. But hold her head.”
Cait cradles the fussy baby against her chest, little bare feet kicking against her stomach as she cries tearlessly in a damp bath towel.
“Like this?” Cait bounces on the balls of her feet. Left, right, left, right. Tossing her shoulders as hard as she can with Cammie’s little purple head secure between her breast and hand. The bathroom tile is skin-warm beneath Vi’s feet as she shuffles them, demonstrating the footwork patterns she had kept up all throughout her pregnancy.
The baby’s cries, just a minute ago too quick a tempo to even allow a breath between, begin to settle into something more like confused breathing.
“Yeah, that’s perfect.”
Cait jerks her shoulder again in perfect shadowboxing form and the confused breathing quiets even further. To her credit, Cait doesn’t stop. She just tucks her chin down to place a smiling kiss against Camellia’s head, rubs her back over the towel, and keeps jumping like a featherweight champion. Vi’s heart swells up into her throat watching Cammie nestle her face into Cait’s chest for comfort. She can’t imagine watching her wife become a mother will ever grow old.
“Good job,” Vi says with a subtle cough to clear her throat. “I’m gonna dump the water out and refill it. We’ll see if she pees again.”
“I think she managed to get it all out. She peed on me a little after.”
Vi sloshes the dirty water from the baby’s tub into the shower to drain, then fills it back up just this side of lukewarm. Camellia had met her first bath with all the kittenish bravery of a four-day-old milksop—skittering away and shrieking, peeing the instant her little tummy touched warm water and making her displeasure well known.
“Poor little blossom,” Cait croons as Vi brings the new bathwater over to the marble counter. “Everything is so new and scary, isn’t it? Here, we’ll try again and we’ll all be very brave together.”
Vi plops a squeaky rubber bath toy into the water first, a purple waverider that splashes its tail if the water gets too hot. It floats serenely across the surface, so Vi holds her hands out for Cammie.
“Sorry for peeing on you, Mummy,” Vi says in her nasally little voice. “I’ll be really, really brave this time and pee on Mama instead.”
Cait laughs and slows her shadowboxing down to a gentle sway. She lets Vi reach into the towel and pluck out the naked, previously-furious baby. Cammie grunts and waves her fists as Vi lays her back against her forearm, one hand cupping the baby’s little head and the other holding her tummy. Vi holds the baby an inch above the plastic bathtub. In the reflection of the mirror, she sees Cait take her soiled shirt off and toss it into the laundry bin. Her short, smooth torso is exposed above her waistband, bare breasts as full as they always are without the ache that accompanies Vi’s new size.
Logically, it makes sense that Cait’s body hasn’t changed at all. She hadn’t carried the baby or given birth to her, she wasn’t nursing or recovering from her entire pelvic floor becoming an open wound. Perhaps her tummy was the slightest bit softer with some sympathy weight, but for the most part, it was only Caitlyn’s mind and her heart that were different. Her soul. Her hair, Vi thinks fondly.
Vi’s body, on the other hand, was so alien in the mirror. In the days since Camellia’s birth, her stomach had deflated to about the size of her four-month bump. Loose skin was already beginning to pull away from her navel, the stretch marks at the bottom of her belly softening with the rest of her skin. What was once tight and firm, whether from constant exercise or from an eight-pound-three-ounce baby taking up all the space in her abdomen, was now soft and squishy.
She wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it. All of her physical changes in pregnancy had seemed so gradual. She watched her belly grow a little bigger every week, watched the gentle first-time transition from Violet to That Pregnant Lady Over There with patience and appreciation. Now she just felt like a motorcar wreck with leaking nipples, abrupt and irreversible.
Cammie gurgles in Vi’s arm. Her aimless little hands swing. Vi smiles down at her. The air feels warmer all around her to see that little mouth working noisily, blue eyes open and direct on Vi, as if she was trying very hard to tell Mama all about these scary new things.
“What is it, bud? You didn’t like the water? You were swimming around in Magic juice for nine months, and all the sudden ultrafiltered city water’s not good enough for you? Piltie princess just like your mummy.”
Maybe she was a motorcar wreck right now. Maybe she would feel like one for a little while yet. But then Cait’s unchanged body returns to her side and she rolls her eye with a scrunched nose. But then Cait’s unchanged hands cup the warm water and gently pour it over Cammie’s hair, careful to shield her face and rub her scalp. But then Cait’s unchanged face beams down at the sweet baby in Vi’s hands—the baby Vi made with her still-changing body. And Vi couldn’t be more grateful for all the ways she had softened.
Satisfied that Cammie has warmed up to the idea of bathwater, Vi lays her down against the sloped back of the tub. Both moms hold their breaths in anticipation of another meltdown, but the baby just bares her pink gums in a grimace and kicks the waverider to a squeaky death.
“That’s a brave girl,” Cait praises. She slides her hand down to the Runic scar on Cammie’s round tummy and the baby splashes again. “Is that really how hard she kicked in your belly?”
Vi scoffs. “You felt her all the way up to the end, cupcake. She didn’t get that much stronger in four days. Kick him again, Slugger!”
She wets a thin cloth and starts to wipe behind Camellia’s ears while Cait finishes washing her hair. Her fussy little moue softens into something blissful at the soft scratch of Cait’s fingers, just the way she looks with milk dribbling down the side of her slack mouth after a long feed. The lilac color had darkened in the bath and Vi wonders how much darker it would get as she got older. Despite the deep red-toned magenta of her hair now, Vi had started life nearly bald and only gotten candyfloss-colored wisps shortly before her first birthday. Maybe Camellia’s would do the same, darkening into a cool twilight like Vi’s mom.
Vi keeps up the gentle swipes under the baby’s chin and around her neck for a few more moments before switching to her hands. Her heart felt too big for her chest every time those hands held Vi as tight as they could, every time she grunted and stretched those arms out for the simple pleasure of actually having the room to do so. Four days really hadn’t made much difference to Cammie’s size or development, but it was still so hard to imagine that all of this had been trapped inside Vi less than a week ago, unseen and unheard.
Cammie’s fat little feet are next when Vi finishes cleaning up her hands.
“Don’t you just wanna pop one in your mouth?”
Cait stands with her eyepatch to Vi and so she has to grin up at her in the mirror with a glint in her other eye. “Like one of those little pastries you were always eating.”
“Just a nibble. Just a toe.” Vi lifts the baby’s foot and kisses each toe with a loud smack. She makes a show of gobbling up the soles of Camellia’s feet and smiles when those wobbly legs kick her right in the teeth. Vi swears she feels it in her stomach. “Stinker. I’m gonna eat your tummy next.”
A flashbulb reflects off the mirror and blinds Vi twice.
“Where the fuck did you even hide that? Your hands are still wet, you’re gonna ruin the film. Give me that.” Cait holds the camera out of Vi’s reach with a cheeky smile and soapy hands. “Cait, I mean it. I have milk stains on my bra and you’re half-naked, come on.”
“This is a very important moment,” Cait argues. “The first photograph I have of her is the first time she kicked you, it only makes sense that I have a photograph of her kicking you again during her first bath.”
Vi dries her hands on her pants and reaches for the camera again. This time, she hipchecks Cait as she grabs it and yanks. Cait squawks indignantly.
“You know what I think?” Vi asks as she cranks the film to the next cell. “I think Cammie and Mummy need their first picture together. Go on, lean in close, act like you know each other.”
For all her sneaky picture-taking, Cait seems somewhat flustered to be on the receiving end of the lens. She takes in her shirtless torso, her soft pajama pants with spit up on the thigh from a rough burp, the strap of her eyepatch matting down her messy hair. But one look down at their girl, wiggling around in her bathwater, pink and clean and sweet, has Cait laying a towel over her chest and lifting Camellia out of the tub to cuddle.
Vi clicks the trigger. What develops in the dark room later that month will become of Vi’s favorite memories ever captured on film. Caitlyn, disheveled and tired, holding their scrunchy newborn against her chest once more and cupping her little body like the most precious thing she has ever held.
It won’t even be her favorite because it’s the first, nor will it be her favorite because of how sweet Cammie looks tucked up underneath her Mummy’s cheek. It will be her favorite because when Caitlyn looks up at the camera, Vi will understand exactly what Cait felt to see her satisfaction, her peace, knowing their daughter was moving beneath her hand.
Streetkid Vi who grew up around her dad's bar in Haywood. Powder as a baby netrunner who pushes things way too far and brings the wrath of Netwatch and one of the big Corps down on the family. Vi gets swept up in it, thrown into prison on trumped up charges while Powder is disappeared. Gets out after years and gets into boxing to make ends meet and ends up having to take on merc jobs because earnings from the fights aren't covering it. She needs money if she ever hopes to find out what happened to Powder when Netwatch snagged her in the raid that killed the rest of her family.
(Not strictly opposed to putting some kind of bomb in Vi's head, but I don't want to fuck with the relic, I don't need this to be a Johnny Silverhand story)
Caitlyn comes from a Corpo family, for a company that specializes in implants and bio-technology. She was being groomed for Succession before rebelling and enrolling in the NCPD instead, in an extremely naive bid to do good in the city. Unfortunately since "good cop" is an oxymoron, it goes sideways - she ends up in a scandal that involves losing her eye and having a target put on her back. Cassandra intervenes, meaning Caitlyn gets to resign instead of being fired, but it comes with strings - she's forced back into the corporate structure. Humiliated, but not fully broken, Caitlyn turns her efforts to an unauthorized side project, using her position and influence (and a tide of company funds) to conduct research on cyberpsychosis (especially as it relates to her family's implants and the worrying spike of a new street drug that purports to allow users to add more implants with less risk). Eventually she reaches out to an up and coming merc that all her contacts say is both hungry and effective, some pink-haired Streetkid with a face tattoo.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
@ myyaltariah on X with this gorgeous, gorgeous, stunning work of art inspired by chapter 9 of glad you're here, up now. This was actually made and posted for ArcaneFanKid week, so you may have seen it before!
Would y’all rather I up the chapter count of glad you’re here by one and post like 7k rn or wait one approx one more week for the full 12k? I feel bad bc I try to post at the three week mark 😭
It’s ArcaneFanKidWeek over on Twitter! I initially I wasn’t going to participate bc it feels weird knowing that my fic isn’t complete so there’s, like, not a fankid to write about? At least, not in the ways the prompts are set up. BUT! I couldn’t resist. This is for the prompt, “new sibling.”
I don’t consider it a spoiler for anything (except for maybe Slugger’s name if you haven’t figured it out yet), but it is set about three years after the final chapter of glad you’re here. I hope you enjoy a little fluff about actual CaitVi moms!
“Mama?” Caitlyn calls softly from the doorway, her voice high and lilting. “Mama, may we come in?”
“Who’s ‘we,’ Mummy? Is that my Cammie?” Vi answers.
Vi hears Cammie’s sweet giggle before she sees her, muffled behind Caitlyn’s thigh where she clings tighter than a secret. That giggle, so unlike the baby’s powerful cries not even an hour before, has Vi’s chest hitching with nostalgia as she looks down at her new daughter’s sleeping face. It wasn’t so very long ago that Cammie was small enough to be swaddled this way. It wouldn’t be so very long before the new baby giggled that sweetly. Today was the day her daughters became sisters, giggling and sleeping and too little to remember it.
Vi wants to remember every second.
The double doors open wider to reveal Caitlyn and Cammie, peeking around Mummy’s leg and gasping when her wide blue eyes land on Vi.
“Hi, bud,” Vi smiles at her. She had already had a bath and been dressed in her little nightgown, damp lilac hair slicked back from her rosy face. “I missed you. C’mere, I wanna hold you.”
Vi lifts the baby off her legs and settles her into the crook of her elbow. Her little mouth grunts in displeasure, but Vi is quick to offer her a kiss and a soothing, “Oh, it’s okay. Big sister’s here to see you.”
Cammie doesn’t trip forward on bare feet, she doesn’t run for Vi’s unoccupied lap. She just watches from behind Caitlyn’s leg until Mummy bends down to pick her up and cuddle her close.
“Your baby sister wants to meet you so badly, blossom. She can’t wait, she was talking all about you.” Caitlyn says, kissing her cheek.
Cammie lets herself be kissed—for which Vi is grateful, she had recently taken to wiping her kisses off as a ploy to get more—but she doesn’t look away from Vi. Caitlyn had helped Vi clean up as best she could and brushed her hair, but she must still look worryingly subdued to Cammie.
“You okay, Mama?”
Oh, her sweet girl.
“I’m okay, bud. I’m just sleepy.”
Cammie flexes her little bicep with a grunt. “Bein’ so tough?”
“I was bein’ so tough—just ask Mummy.”
“So, so tough,” Caitlyn assures her, squeezing Cammie’s bicep. “Do you want to go show Mama what you made for her?”
“Come show me, Camellia,” says Vi. “Come here, baby.”
Caitlyn walks her over to the bed and sits gingerly down next to Vi, giving her a quick kiss over their daughters’—their daughters’—heads. Vi can still taste Caitlyn’s earlier smile, the salt of her tears and the shape of her teeth, unable to stay hidden in her joy. Camellia shifts around in Caitlyn’s lap until she is leaning all the way on Vi’s arm to peer down at the baby.
She catches Caitlyn’s eye and can’t help but laugh at the way they both mist over at the sight of those two purple heads, sweetly close. Caitlyn cups her hand behind the baby’s head. Vi watches her. She rubs her thumb against the edge of the knitted cap and traces the shell of the baby’s ear in wonder.
That nostalgia overtakes her again. The remembrance of holding Camellia like this nearly three years ago, the same wonder guiding Caitlyn’s every touch against petal-soft skin. And now Cammie follows Caitlyn’s example. She traces her finger right behind Mummy’s, eager to touch her baby sister.
“Where’s her…nose?” Caitlyn asks softly. “Where’s her…ears? Where’s her…big sister? Very good. Where’s her…well, not her eyes. Um, where’s her…chin? Good.”
Vi is overwhelmed by it. By her new baby girl’s sleeping face. By her big girl’s growing confidence. By her wife’s tender hand as she guides them along together. Tears gather in the corner of her eyes and her face begins to crumple with the force of it all, but she sniffs it back and asks Cammie, “What do you think, bud?”
Camellia looks back up at Vi with her Mummy’s curious eyes. “How come your tummy getted big but she just getted so tiny?”
Vi laughs despite the ache it causes and Caitlyn brushes Cammie’s damp hair back to kiss her temple better.
“Well, babies have to grow inside a tummy before they can come out and meet their families, remember?” Caitlyn asks. “It feels like she grew for a very long time, but she’s still just tiny, isn’t she? She’ll get a little bigger every week until she’s big enough to play with you.”
“Yeah, ‘member when I was a baby when it was lasterday, and I was so, so teeny tiny too?”
“You were so teeny tiny,” Vi all but chokes. “And now you’re a big girl, huh? Got all your teeth and everything. You’re a big sister.”
Cammie shows all of her teeth and then turns her attention to the baby again, continuing her soft tracing.
“Show Mama what you made for her,” Caitlyn prompts. “Do you have your drawing?” Cammie offers up the crumpled piece of paper in her hand. One of the drawings Meggie and Heddy kept her occupied with while both of her moms and her Yèye were busy bringing her baby sister into the world.
Cammie points out the little blobs of color one by one. “That’s me, and Mama and Mummy, and baby sister. That’s Yéye, and Meggie, and Addie.”
“Are those your arms? They look so strong,” says Vi.
“Yeah, so strong so I can hug all of everybody in our whole family!”
The baby’s bleary eyes open at Cammie’s exclamation and she begins making unhappy little noises. Vi and Caitlyn each pat a hand against the baby’s back and bum as Vi rocks her. It’s surreal to be a team in this way again. Not that they aren’t a team in raising their toddler, partners in all things, but to soothe their new baby with the shared confidence they lacked with the first is a bittersweet blessing.
“You need a hug, baby?” Cammie asks. She looks down at her little sister’s scrunched up, wrinkly face, smiles sweetly, and lays her head down on the baby’s chest. Confused but comforted, the baby quiets back down.
It won’t last long, she’ll need to eat very soon and she’ll make quite a ruckus if Vi takes too much longer, but for now, Vi just holds her family. She holds them and lets them hold her. Tomorrow will be the first full day of their family of four, but today is the first minute, the first memory, the first moment.
