POV - Azra'il
There is a certain ironic beauty in routine. A beauty that, for millennia of chaotic existences, I had refused to admit. The repetition of the days, the predictability of the tasks… in other lives, I saw them as the rusty shackles of mortality, the antithesis of true and glorious anarchy. But here, on this precarious bridge suspended between golden order and greenish chaos, routine had become… something different. It was almost comforting. It was the silent proof that we had built something functional that, against all statistical probability, had not yet collapsed, exploded, or been turned into a portal to a dimension of pain. It was the constant, predictable heartbeat of our small and absurdly dysfunctional family.
Mid-week afternoons at 'The Last Cup' now had this familiar cadence, like a song repeated to exhaustion. The salon was almost always full, an unlikely mixture of Zaunite labourers trying to wash away the day's soot and the bitter taste of their lives with strong mint tea, and curious Piltovans on an anthropological expedition, seeking a safe dose of 'authenticity' to recount at their bland dinner parties. The smell of strong tea and Eddie's cinnamon rolls, which were becoming dangerously popular, permeated the air. And Vander's children, to everyone's surprise—especially mine—had transformed into a functional, noisy part of our little machine. Honest work, as Vander liked to say, with a paternal pride that was as genuine as it was naive.
The machine worked, more or less. Vi, now nearly fourteen and with a surprising new gravity about her, would patrol the tables like a little sergeant major. The training had left its mark. Where before there had been the explosive, telegraphed urgency of a street brawler, there was now a calm, rooted posture. When a Zaunite customer grumbled that his tea was too weak to dissolve nails, the old Vi would have flipped the table and used his head as a saucer. The new Vi just took a deep breath, her shoulders relaxed, and replied with a disarming simplicity that was far more frightening: "I'll ask Azra'il to make a stronger one. No problem." And she did. No drama. No broken teeth. It was a contained miracle of self-control.
Powder was our resident controlled chaos, a force of nature we had wisely confined to my cellar most of the time. From there, she would invent 'shortcuts' for the kitchen that left Eddie sweating and me with a hand preventively on the chemical fire extinguisher. Ekko was her counterpart, the order to her chaos, organising the orders in a notebook with the seriousness of a general planning the logistics of a full-scale invasion. Mylo still tried to shirk his work with the dexterity of a politician dodging a direct question, but a single sharp look from me, promising horrific tasks like cleaning the grease traps, was enough to make him get a move on. And Claggor? Well, Claggor was happy in the kitchen, helping Eddie and, based on my stock calculations, eating about 15% of all the raw ingredients that passed through his hands.
I would observe all of this from my throne behind the counter, with a feeling that could only be described as cynical pride.
And it was in the middle of this almost nauseatingly normal scene that the door opened, and the delicate balance of my best student's heart was shattered with the precision of a hammer blow to a pane of glass.
Caitlyn Kiramman entered. The contrast was, as always, immediate and brutally comical. Her posture was as straight as Piltover's towers, her Academy uniform an immaculate white, her dark blue hair perfectly coiffed. She was a patrician amidst the heat and chaos, a rare and genetically modified orchid in a garden of stubborn, resilient weeds. The salon fell silent for an instant, as it always did, a collective reflex to appraise the anomaly. Zaunites grew wary, Piltovans sat up straighter.
But this time, it was not the room's reaction that interested me. It was the complete and total collapse of Vi's nervous system.
I saw her first. She was on her way to the kitchen with a tray laden with a precarious castle of dirty cups. Her eyes widened. A violent blush, the colour of a Shuriman sunset, crept up her neck, staining the very tips of her ears. The balance we had spent months building? The centre? The breathing? All of it evaporated in a cloud of teenage panic. She stumbled over her own foot, and the entire tray rocked like a ship in a storm. With a panicked grunt, she managed to steady herself, the muscles she used for fighting now working desperately not to create a porcelain disaster.
The old Vi would have been furious with her own weakness. Would have punched a wall in frustration to prove she was still in control. The new Vi just stood there, paralysed, her face ablaze, mortified.
From the kitchen, I heard Powder's malicious giggle. Morgana, who was sitting on a stool at my side of the counter, sipping tea and reading a book, smiled that smile of someone who knows everything without needing to look.
"Just look…" she whispered, her voice close enough for only me to hear, full of a tender amusement. "Vi is blushing. It's… sweet. This kind of young love is like an unfinished song. Shy, pure… it does the heart good to see it bloom."
I arched an eyebrow, taking a sip of my own tea with an air of utter derision. "Sweet? Morgana, that is a bottled hormonal disaster about to explode. If she gets any redder, she'll boil the water in her own kettle through sheer spontaneous combustion. We are witnessing a catastrophic system failure in real-time, and it is glorious."
"Always so cynical," she replied, rolling her eyes, but still smiling. "Can you truly find no joy in innocence?"
"Of course I find joy in it," I said with a crooked smile. "I've been laughing internally ever since Bubblegum nearly disintegrated at the sight of her. Innocence is hilarious. It's the premise of every good comedy of errors. And we are about to have a front-row seat."
Caitlyn found a table, and Vi, after a long, torturous internal battle that was visible from ten paces away, made a point of serving her. It was like watching a documentary about a clumsy penguin migrating across a minefield. She walked with a forced rigidity, the now-empty tray in her hands, and when she reached the table, her hand, which could remain steady in the middle of a bar brawl, was trembling slightly as she placed the cup on the table.
"Thank you," Caitlyn said, polite and, I suspect, quite amused by the reaction.
Vi, in a heroic attempt to sound casual and indifferent, answered too quickly, averting her gaze, her face still on fire. "You're welcome… it's… tea. I mean… obviously it's tea."
I almost choked on my laughter, disguising it with a cough. I looked at Morgana, who was shaking her head fondly.
"'It's tea. Obviously it's tea'," I repeated in a whisper, savouring the perfection of the phrase. "Brilliant! All that training, all the philosophy about finding one's centre, about channelling the universe's energy… and at the moment of confrontation with the true enemy. A pretty girl. She sums it all up with… tea. That, my dear Morgana, is not nervousness. It is modern poetry. The quintessence of the absurd."
Morgana tried to hold back a laugh. "You forget what it's like to be in front of someone who stirs the heart."
I leaned over the counter, my eyes glinting with malice. "I forget? Please, Morgana. Nerves are one thing. Turning into a malfunctioning automaton that can only repeat the name of the object it's holding is another. It's a level of collapse that borders on art." I gave a crooked smile. "But you're right, perhaps I'm being unfair. It must be hard to remember something as trivial as young love when your memory must be full of more important things, like… the invention of the wheel, or the last time it snowed in Shurima."
She closed the book she was reading with a sharp snap, shooting me an icy glare. Adorable.
"You are insufferable."
"And you're a historical artifact," I retorted, toasting her with my teacup. "Come on, admit it. It's been so long you probably don't even remember his or her name. Who was the poor sod? A tragic Targonian warrior? A strapping Freljordian bear-hunter? Or, by the gods, don't tell me you fell for some out-of-tune Ionian bard who sang you songs about the beauty of peach blossoms."
She took a deep breath, forcing a dignified composure. "I do not have to respond to childish provocations."
"Childish? I am the height of maturity! It's purely academic interest. The archaeology of ancient romances. After all," I said with a wink, "every ruin has its hidden story."
Out in the salon, the romantic tension continued. A Zaunite customer grumbled loudly about "poncy Piltovans". The room expected Vi to explode. Instead, she took a deep breath. She turned to the man, her voice calm but with a thread of steel. "Inside here, everyone has a place. Come for tea? Sit down. If not, the door is right there." The man fell silent. Her self-control was, in itself, an act of showing off for the one-person audience she most wanted to impress. And the look of genuine admiration on Caitlyn's face was her reward.
When Caitlyn finally left, after a shy smile and a "This was a pleasant afternoon, Vi," that left my apprentice frozen to the spot, Powder exploded in a fit of giggles. "SHE SMILED AT YOU! AND SHE CALLED YOU BY YOUR NAME! YOU'RE GETTING MARRIED!"
"SHUT UP, POWDER," Vi yelled, desperation warring with her shame, "BEFORE I MAKE YOU WASH EVERY CUP IN THE SHOP. ALONE. FOR A MONTH!"
Morgana watched the scene with an almost motherly gaze. "It's beautiful," she whispered. "To see her heart open up like this. As if, for the first time, she believes she deserves something good."
I arched an eyebrow. "Beautiful? It's a romantic disaster waiting to happen. The girl from Piltover and the brawler from Zaun. This has 'tragedy' written all over it. With notes of teenage angst and likely city-sanctioned violence."
"You're terribly pessimistic."
"I am an experienced realist. It's different." I gave a crooked smile, my tone ambiguous. "And speaking of experience… you know nothing about mine, Mother Raven. I have more experience with relationships than this entire gaggle of noisy children combined."
The shock on Morgana's face was priceless. Her calm shattered. "What?... What do you mean? But… I've never seen you with anyone."
I propped my chin on my hand, delighting in her maternal panic. "That's because I don't need to parade my conquests in the middle of the tea room. There's a whole world out there after the shop closes."
"You…" she whispered, horrified. "You've been sneaking out?"
I laughed, savouring every second. "Who knows? Maybe I'm just going to the kitchen for a bun. Or maybe I meet someone interesting on the way. Life's mysteries."
She covered her face with her hands, exasperated and shocked. My night was officially made.
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Author's Note
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Before anything else: yes, I wrote an entire chapter just to watch Vi have an emotional meltdown over a pretty girl. And no, I do not regret it for a single second. ☕😌
This chapter was largely born from that somewhat chaotic pleasure of writing everyday life in Runeterra. Just tea, emotionally unprepared teenagers, and a millennial entity making fun of everyone, as it should be.
'The Last Cup' has become, without me quite realising it, a strange microcosm of a makeshift family. Zaun, Piltover, traumatised children, an ancient sorceress, and a protagonist who feigns maturity while mentally noting every disaster someone else has so she can laugh about it later. And honestly? I love it. I love writing these moments where things just work, even knowing that in Runeterra, that's always a temporary and suspicious state of affairs.
Vi and Caitlyn… well. There's not much to say. If you didn't smile (or laugh out loud) at Vi being reduced to "it's… tea… obviously it's tea," then you might need more rest or a cup from The Last Cup yourself. This is puppy love in its purest state: awkward, intense, a little bit pathetic, and absolutely adorable. Morgana sees poetry. Azra'il sees a systemic collapse. They're both right.
And yes, I made a point of showing that Vi's growth doesn't just disappear because her heart has decided to beat out of rhythm. She still breathes. She still chooses not to break anyone. That matters. A lot.
As for Azra'il… let's just say that teasing her Mother Raven and love-struck teenagers remains one of her favourite sports. And mine, too.