Chapter Text

Viktor is well aware of how—what is the word one would use—creepy he comes across on first meeting. And perhaps on a second and third, too.

He’s too quiet. Tends to hold himself apart to observe people from a distance, assessing them with the cool, thorough, wary eye of the scientist he’s always been at heart. And of the little boy who learned early the casual cruelties of children and adults alike when confronted with a cripple, his crutch and the ever-present cough that could signal either a summer cold or something disastrously contagious like tuberculosis or pertussis. Most people never bothered to linger long enough to find out either way.

It’s served him well, though. No matter that his cousin, Pyotr, claims that he projects a disturbing serial murderer demeanour with all that skulking and staring. Pyotr has almost gotten himself killed on five separate occasions with his life as a thug-enforcer for one of the lesser chembarons, so perhaps he could do with a little of Viktor’s caution.

This same instinct to watch and learn is what allowed him—after weeks of careful tracking, perhaps others might call it stalking—to learn Professor Heimerdinger’s regular walking route and place himself most conveniently in his path, which then cracked open the door to a position as the professor’s assistant. Of course, it wasn’t ideal. He had no wealthy patron or parents to support his scientific ambitions, but it was all the opening he required to present some of his more impressive theories and machinery designs to the city’s founder, and then onward to follow his dreams. Far more than anyone of his station could ever hope for.  

It had brought him to Jayce. He had been suspicious of the young scientist on first meeting. Most of his ilk tended to be arrogant and severely lacking in intellect in Viktor’s experience, relying far too much on the benefice of patronage and good names and little else. The name had been familiar too, as Heimerdinger had spoken often of the wunderkind’s potential. Viktor, who was often tasked with grading research papers and proposals, could admit that the Talis boy’s grades were impressive for the most part. There had, however, been a notable decline in the weeks and months before the fateful robbery.

The subsequent explosion and discovery of a wealth of questionable, criminal materials strewn across the well-appointed if scruffy domicile near Bluewind Court, a district for some of the wealthiest families and their apprentas, changed everything.

But it was the boy’s research on the arcane that had truly caught Viktor’s interest. Amid the investigation, he’d stolen the leather-bound notebook, and spent hours thumbing his way through it, rolling his eyes at the showy initials etched into every page corner but impressed beyond measure by the actual content.

There was something there. Something truly remarkable, special, revolutionary.

He could admit, in the privacy of his own mind, that it wasn’t just the research that sparked something. Jayce, for all his outward rashness, had a fine mind. And the passion at his core burned bright, brighter than Viktor’s, for Jayce never hid it. He spoke with fervour before the council, pleading for his work and the potential it held, every part of his soul laid bare in front of the hundreds there at the court to witness a spectacle. The scandal of the star student who’d been dabbling in the arcane had been splashed all over the papers for days, it was a gossip-monger’s dream to see one of the academy’s own brought so low.

And when the council had refused him, Viktor knew—from trailing him halfway around the city—that he’d searched for alternate avenues before the heartbreak of having a dream so profound snatched from him had driven him to the ledge of his gouged-out apartment, ready to take his own life. There, his shirt drenched from the rain, clinging to slumped shoulders, the silhouette of his downcast head against the twinkling lights of Piltover’s most glittering district, he had seemed the loneliest man on the planet.

Viktor knew for a fact it wasn’t true, for who could surpass him at the practise of being alone?

He’d contemplated trying to run over to yank him back or yelling out some silliness to encourage him not to take such a drastic step.

Instead, knowing that anything more intrusive might’ve driven the near-broken man over the edge, he’d murmured, “Am I interrupting?”

“What the hell is your problem?”

The bronze eyes that turned to him in horror and not a little shame, stricken with misery and anger, cut right to the heart.

“Our Hextech dream,” Jayce says mere hours later in earnest, drawing him into his life’s work without a shred of conceit as though the notion that from this day forth, the two of them will journey into the unknown and discover the impossible together is a conclusion predetermined by Fate itself.

Viktor thinks perhaps it’s in that moment that he falls foolishly, irreparably in love.

But love is never one single phenomenon. It’s the labour of days upon weeks upon years of proximity.

Of watching a beautiful, kind, yes—occasionally brash and impossibly stubborn and reckless man from afar. Of sleepless nights staring owl-eyed at the latest sequence of experiments, fingers tapping impatient and nervous on the desk in front of him, watching each oscillation with hope, leaping up in extravagant joy to hug Jayce close, breathe in the clove-and-lemon scent of him, when the results were positive.

And, when they weren’t, sitting beside him, sharing a flagon of the worst whisky or wine they could filch from the Kirraman’s private stash, bemoaning their lot and pretending to each other that they weren’t frightened of the very real possibility of failure.

Of the endless fairs, seminars, conferences and competitions for young innovators at which they presented their latest research, garnering the respect of their peers and building their reputations in the scientific community. Of catching Jayce slumped in exhaustion at his desk and, with his gaze, tracing the ashen shadows under his eyes and the deeper stubble on his chin, the rumpled shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and wondering how it might feel to lean down and brush the ruffle of hair across his forehead or press his lips to his chin.

It’s all of that and learning, with each passing hour of the last seven years, that this intensity of feeling is impossible and immutable. And doomed to be unrequited.

†

Mel Medarda is something altogether different.

Viktor had observed her once or twice in his time as Heimerdinger’s assistant. There was no doubt she was beautiful. Almost absurdly so. Viktor did not like absurdities. Everything had a science. And yet from the start, Councillor Mel Medarda, the youngest to ever serve on Piltover’s most august body, seemed to defy that with the way she practically glowed with no detectable light upon her.

She’s the sort of person Viktor has learned to be triply leery of. Rich, alluring, apparently intelligent. Such persons see someone of his station, with his cane and his hunch, and his sickly mien and almost always immediately look down on him. So, he does as he always has with those of her ilk—he steers well clear.

It might’ve been an easy thing to do in the years of developing Hextech were it not for the fact that Jayce was very obviously enamoured with the woman. Of course, it had been apparent from that first night outside Heimerdinger’s office, when she’d covered for them with the affably incompetent guard and offered them an opportunity to prove themselves. Viktor had watched with an unsettled feeling in his gut as Jayce had watched her slink away from them with an expression of mingled awe and surprise, and a heated, honeyed want.

He’d rolled his eyes in annoyance and immediately turned away from the debacle to deal with Heimerdinger’s excessive locks, biting his tongue to keep from grumbling, ignoring the acidic flare in his gut that he recognised as envy.

Jayce didn’t grow any less transparent over the years.

Any time the councillor visited their labs to review their progress, often as part of a larger party of observers from the Council, Jayce would make an extra effort to direct all of his explanations to her, preening every time she oohed and aahed over their latest developments. After such visits, he would move about the lab in a half-daze, walking on air, pausing every few minutes to recount her every action and commentary as though Viktor hadn’t been there right beside him.

Oh, do you remember when Councillor Medarda said this? Wasn’t it just amazing that Mel noticed how we did that? Did you see how she laughed at my joke—that was a good one, wasn’t it?

Ridiculous. Viktor himself mostly managed not to betray any emotion whenever Councillor Medarda complimented or congratulated them. Unlike Jayce, he would listen, attentive but quiet, and merely nod, sure to keep his gaze trained on some spot near her feet and ignore the way the back of his neck heated and prickled with the praise.

He remembers one time in the second or third year, when they’d developed a strong prototype for the Hexgates, he’d left most of the detailed explanation to Jayce—he was much better at it and their audiences often seemed more inclined to listen to him. It was very hard to get upper crust Piltovans excited about the promise of tomorrow when you were nothing but a trencher with a penchant for leaning heavily on a cane, looking visibly drawn and often struggling with chronic ailments. 

Meanwhile he’d knelt down to focus on the oscillation readings, ensuring that everything was operating at optimum speed, ignoring the twinge in his right leg. He’d foregone his more elaborate brace that day, and he’d certainly paid for it later with palliatives and poultices.

It was her scent that wafted to him first. Delicate and floral yet spicy, reminding him of springtime with an underlay of something deeper, more mysterious, sultry even, that made him want to lean in and inhale. Then he felt the warmth of a body standing perhaps a bit too close on his left.

“Viktor, I just wanted to say, your work has been incredible. It must be truly wonderful to see it all come to fruition like this. And after the many sleepless nights you’ve both had.” Her voice had been dulcet and soft.

He’d had the equanimity not to turn towards her and babble something foolish and unnecessary. He’d also felt the urge to rub at his neck, which felt hot. His cheeks too.

Stiffly, drawing his shoulders forward and away from her, he’d simply muttered, “Thank you, Councillor Medarda.”

She had waited a few moments more, perhaps for him to fill the increasingly strained silence with some polite inanities. To ask how her day was. Or inquire as to the state of her latest consular efforts. To utter a charming witticism that might make her laugh. He had never been charming a day in his life.

His throat had burned, right in the back, a glottal stop, a sign of an incoming coughing fit or the desire to say something. Anything.

Once the moment had stretched too far, she had simply murmured , “Well, let me leave you to it then,” and she’d done just that. Leaving him to his own devices and a bereft heaviness in his stomach, the click of her heels growing fainter and fainter as she wandered off, likely to Jayce, who was probably a better conversational partner than he.

He wonders at why it took him so long to notice that Mel Medarda is very much like him in the way she navigates the world. Maybe he’d been too busy doing his best not to look at her at all.

But it’s at the official launch of the Hexgates, touted as the greatest scientific innovation in Piltover’s history, that he sees it.

It’s a cool evening, and the squall coming in from the sea brings a breeze brisk enough that Viktor’s still wearing his coat and tails, somewhat huddled in the first nook he could find. Jayce is at the centre of a small crowd of people, all hanging on his words, eager for a quotable bon mot from the Man of Tomorrow, as the city’s dubbed him. With the cut of his coat framing his broad shoulders just so, and the way the wind’s swept his hair across his forehead, there’s an effortless charisma to him that Viktor envies a little. He waves his hands in the air and spins some tale, has them all eating out of his palm with a self-deprecating charm.

Shaking his head, Viktor glances about the room, doing what Cousin Pyotr would call his sinister skulking. He makes sure to frown with just the right amount of austerity, the corners of his mouth turned down, so anyone who has an inkling to approach him to make smalltalk will immediately be deterred.

But he spots her, right near the edge of the terrace on which this celebratory gala’s taking place. The dancing light of the fire pit hits her bare back, making her skin glimmer like polished bronze, the glint of the gold at her swan-like neck and shoulder blades and other places that Viktor almost always makes a good deal of effort not to look at too closely. She’s petite even in her heeled shoes and yet carries herself like a much taller woman, statuesque and lovely in her moon-pale dress.

It’s the way she seems to hold herself slightly apart from the crowd, almost always navigating the periphery, watching everyone in the room with a studied perceptivity, an outsider of sorts. Plenty of people seem interested in engaging with her, and she allows it with a perfect grace, making sure to inquire about their health or some seemingly random fact of their lives. How is baby Rohan? I’d heard everything about your grandmother’s sudden illness, please do send her my regards. Never fear, I’m sure your latest investment will yield a great deal for your clan, I’d be happy to advise you. But as soon as they wander off, she turns back to gaze at the ocean’s waters lapping at the cliffs down below.

It’s the look of her, gazing into the distance, seemingly lost in reflection, while the party swings around her, an invisible parabola separating her from everyone and everything else, a poetry in her stillness, that makes him watch her and find it difficult to stop.

†

He’s not surprised when Jayce and Mel begin their affair.

It somewhat helps that he was collapsing onto the cold floor of the lab beneath the blue-gold glow of the Hexcore while they were in the midst of consummating their feelings for one another.

When he wakes, it’s to Jayce sitting by his bedside, his face painted in worry, his fists clenched, his eyes trained on Viktor with a singular burning intensity that leaves him feeling horribly exposed.

Viktor can see a tell-tale bruise blooming dark crimson on his best friend’s throat and the rumpled suit from yesterday he’s still wearing, and if he wasn’t struggling hard to breathe through his endotracheal attachment and the slurry of medication that makes him feel woozy, he might’ve said something befittingly congratulatory.

He doesn’t think about it overly much for the simple fact that the worst-case scenario—one he’s anticipated his entire life—is upon him, looming dreadful and terrifying in his very near future. At least that’s what Doctor Branagh declares, taking off his little round spectacles to look at him with a serious and sorrowful expression on his narrow face.

He’s dying.

And there’s nothing to be done about it. No cure to be located in some dusty medical journal or a magic spell book. Within a year, maybe two, three if he’s lucky, he’ll be no more. Nothing but a small, forgotten footnote in the annals of history.

He’s expected this reality all his life. So why it hurts as much as it does is a mystery. He can feel it inside him, ripping at his insides, the clawing desperation of a doomed mad, clinging to life as a ship-wrecked sailor does to the jagged cliffs, praying to the heavens and the darkest depths of the ocean for some sort of miracle, only to be washed away in the tide by morning.

He’s dying.

The ravine where he played as a child is grimmer than it was nearly thirty years ago, the brackish polluted water spilling out from Piltover’s drainage system and spewing up from the mining fissures is a miserable jaundiced colour. He comes here, even now, to think. Perhaps he could select a more aesthetically pleasing spot, one that smelled better at least. But it’s here where he’d found his calling, tinkering with the little boats he constructed with washed up rubble and rubbish on the shores, and then later, stumbling down to Singed’s amphibian laboratory where he learned the full breadth of scientific possibilities with a far better teacher than he’d have found in the undercity’s schools. And later still, when he’d run into Professor Heimerdinger just a block or two over, and, determined to achieve his dream, had finagled his way into the academy as his assistant.

It only makes sense that he should come back to this place each time when the very roots of himself are shaken, when despair and hopelessness have rusted and battered away at the will that he’s relied on to survive up to this point. Perhaps the reminder of who he was, who he’s been, and every painful step it’s taken to get to here, can proffer him the strength he needs to take one more.

“You should be proud of what you’ve accomplished Viktor.” It’s said with the placating tone of an adult speaking to a sulking child.

“Figments,” Viktor mumbles, his eyes stinging. “My contributions will be short-lived. Even in your memory.”

“I have seen many students. It’s a sad truth that those who shine brightest, often burn fastest.”

Heimerdinger’s last words prove to be salt to an already raw, festering wound. And Viktor wonders if the yordle scientist ever thinks of how brutal some of his most callous, casual remarks can be. Is it the benefits of immortality that grant such levels of indifference to the agony of the mortal condition? Viktor will never know because—

He’s dying.

After a long day of walking aimlessly along the Promenade, even down to the Entresol levels of the undercity where he grew up, where his parents lived until they passed, and where he’d scoured the augmentation parlours for the steel-enforced metallurgical brace that supports his spine, he finds he’s reached a certain state of acceptance.

This is his reality. There’s nothing he can do to change that.

What he can do is try his best to find a cure, some stopgap to grant him a little more time, even just a few years. For, despite it all, despite knowing his fate—

He wants to live. There’s still so much to do, so many dreams left to realise.

He’s fought impossible odds before; this can be no different.

Gathering the tatters of will power that he still has left; he makes his way back home.

Days later, he still hasn’t found a solution, but he’s close. He can feel it.

Having fended off one too many inquiries about his welfare from Miss Young—from Sky, he’d gallantly offered to walk her home, hinting that he’d make his way to his own domicile once he’d dropped her off.

It was a lie.

And he’s back here in the lab in less than an hour after he dropped her off. The lab has always provided him with much-needed sanctuary, a blessedly quiet oasis in which he can avoid the turmoil of the world outside for a time and lose himself in the magic and simplicity of science. He needs this time to figure out what to do next.

Of course, there’s nothing simple about the Hexcore. Which is what he’s calling the rune matrix before him. It’s changed, somehow. He knows it’s something to do with his blood, the droplets of it are a rusted red from where they’d spilled just before he collapsed. It seems to have taken on a life of its own since, like a dried-out anemone twitching at a mere droplet of water.

Its light has darkened, turning the lab into a roiling indigo ocean. He could very well be sitting at the blackest part of the Guardian Sea where the leviathans and eldritch monsters of the deep reside.

That’s when he hears it. A voluptuous moan and the slap of a hand against something. A desk, perhaps. Or a wall.

It’s coming from Jayce’s private office, which sits along the left corner of the lab. Viktor’s is on the right, but he rarely uses it except to store a change or two of clothes for long nights and some of his favoured snacks. Jayce has made a bit more use of his ever since he took up his position on the council, for obvious reasons.

Frowning, Viktor takes a step closer only to freeze in place at the manly grunt, followed by a decidedly feminine sigh.

What in Runeterra was going on?

He creeps a little closer until he can see through the crack of the quarter-way-open door. His eyes widen. The thump of his heart stutters and picks up at an alarming pace as his mind makes sense of exactly what he’s seeing.

Councillor Medarda—Mel is bent over Jayce’s desk, facing the doorway and thus him, completely nude, no sign of one of her elegant dresses. It must be draped across a chair or lying forgotten on the floor. The only thing she has left on is the gold at her shoulders and throat and arms—Viktor’s surprised how stable the jewellery is. And perhaps at another time, his more inquisitive mind would’ve wondered further.

But the perfect jut of her bosom, heavy and perfect, is a bit distracting. As is the looming form of Jayce behind her, all broad shoulders providing a striking backdrop to her lithe body. Hard, muscular arms against her lush softness, big hands reaching around to cup plush breasts, callused fingers playing with peaked nipples.

Viktor watches as Jayce ducks to press a kiss to her shoulder.

“I’ve been waiting to take you—just like this—against this desk, ever since we moved to this lab,” Jayce rasps.

“So, what are you waiting for, Councillor Talis,” she says, playfully. “Do your worst.” There’s a sweet liveliness, an openness, to her that Viktor’s never quite seen on her before, out in public where she wears a different kind of mask. It’s lovely.

He can tell the exact moment that Jayce enters her by the sharp half-shriek she lets out, and the way her body bows, her bountiful chest arching upward while her hips jut backward to take all of Jayce’s considerable girth.

He’s had glimpses of Jayce’s cock at rest a time or two. He’d taken great pains to not look like he’d been looking. But he’s seen it on some of their overnight trips to conferences and such when they shared a room or cabin. He’s not even a little bit surprised at the pleasured wince that flits across her face as Jayce bottoms out.

Viktor doesn’t even realise he’s achingly hard until Jayce starts ploughing into Mel in earnest, muttering expletives with each lunge, the slick-wet slap of his cock in Mel’s sheath echoing against the office walls. Mel’s head lolls back into Jayce’s shoulder, each pass makes her teats tremble, the dark cinnamon peaks of her nipples begging to be licked and suckled.

His mouth waters.

He presses the heel of his hand to the urgent erection in his breeches. He’s more aroused than he’s been in years—perhaps his entire life.

“You’re so wet, sweetheart. And tight. Built just for me,” Jayce mumbles into her hair, his voice threaded with want.

She groans as his hand cups her throat, gently but firm enough to keep her caged and close. The move seems to rouse her even more; a ragged cry spilling from her throat as she reaches down to touch herself, her fingers rubbing at her clit through the neatly trimmed thatch between her legs.

At this angle, Viktor can just see where they’re joined, the base of Jayce’s cock drenched in her juices, and the heavy globes of his balls swinging with each drive. He imagines what it might be like to put his mouth there, and taste the two of them like this, at their most elemental.

His own fingers are already wrapped around his throbbing erection. Viktor’s not even sure when he started tugging himself off, but he can do little else with this stimulating tableau. He fucks into his own hand, matching Jayce’s relentless rhythm, careful to keep himself quiet—although he doubts these two would hear him, caught up in each other as they are. A small mercy.

His cock’s already leaking, drops of come pearling at the blunt tip.

Mel’s cries escalate in volume and frequency as she approaches her zenith and then she goes still, a scream tearing out of her throat as her body half-collapses on the desk, shuddering.

Viktor tightens his hand on his length, staving off the moment of completion. Not. Yet.

Jayce’s thrusts grow more frantic. He’s ramming into her with a vigour that seems almost too harsh. Nonetheless, Mel pushes back to meet each one with languorous, increasingly breathy whines. She’ll come once more. Viktor wonders just how many times she can in one sitting, wishes he could perhaps test it out. He also wishes he could be at the receiving end of Jayce burrowing deep, rough and mean, flirting just on the edge of pain. Fuck.

He speeds up fisting on his cock, arching into the wall behind him, his brace forgotten.

It’s when Jayce frankly roars—apparently uncaring of anyone that might be lurking nearby—and bucks one last time, the tendons in his neck stretching taut as he spills his seed that Viktor comes. He bites on his arm hard enough to draw blood, muffling the yelp at the back of this throat before it comes out. His come streaks across his knuckles, a few stray drops landing on the floor. He’ll need to wipe them up. He will do—as soon as his brain stops ringing.

Minutes later, he spies them, lounging, roseate and spent in Jayce’s desk chair, Mel cuddled on his lap while Jayce runs his hand along her spine like she’s some luxurious, beautiful cat. She presses a kiss under his chin.

It’s intimate and easy, and private.

That’s what yanks Viktor out of his post orgasmic daze, a stifling, burning, bitter rush of longing coursing through him, almost choking him with it.

Here he is out here, watching. Always watching. Alone and apart. His semen is drying into tacky globs in his breeches and on his knuckles, his right knee is spasming enough that he’ll need to take a paregoric elixir later, while his partner and his lover bask in the glow of their mutual admiration.

The harsh reality of it flays him inside. So much so that he wouldn’t be surprised to see a bloodied puddle forming at his feet. It hurts.

Shamefully, he tucks himself back into his clothes. Uses his handkerchief to wipe at the evidence of his voyeurism on the floor. He takes one last greedy look at the two of them, nuzzled close as they are, wrapped in a halo of affection.

He leaves.

†

His old mentor’s words come back to him now as he looks askance at Mel—Councillor Medarda—and Jayce greeting each other at the door. They’re still trying to keep their affair something of a secret but anyone with eyes would be able to detect how Jayce’s hand lingers when he shakes hers and thanks her for coming, and the way they both seem to cant towards each other for a moment or two, perhaps to kiss, before they remember themselves and practically rear away.

Viktor bites the inside of his cheek and focuses on the garish grinning monkey face of the bomb he’s carefully dismantling; it almost seems to be laughing at him.

He can barely stand to look at Jayce either way after this morning where he’d spent two hours being treated like a criminal for the offence of being from the undercity. He’d watched as countless others like him who worked in Piltover were detained as well. None of them were so lucky as to be the best friend of the man who’d ordered the border shutdown.

His belly twists just thinking of the disgust on Jayce’s face when he’d asked why Viktor was consorting with people from the undercity. Viktor was not a man prone to violence but in that moment, if he could have, he would’ve punched Jayce, or perhaps beat him bloody with his cane. The same cane that held the vial Singed had given him, his one possible chance at hope. He’d been excited to at least tell his partner about the potential breakthrough but all of that had withered in the face of the ugly superiority and prejudice that made Jayce seem a stranger. He doesn’t have any desire to be honest with this stranger.

When Jayce tried to make amends and asked how the visit went, he’d lied and claimed there hadn’t been any breakthrough at all.

All things considered; he still has some doubts about whether he should use Singed’s vial. Shimmer’s always been something Viktor’s observed from afar, horrified at some of the monstrous effects of the substance in its earliest forms, at some of the stories he’s heard of its impact on families in the undercity.

Love and legacy are the sacrifices we make for progress.

And those ominous words still echo inside him. He’d been confident that Jayce would, indeed, understand the steps he’s considering in order to survive. To progress.

But this morning has destabilised some of that. And now he’s not so sure.

In all the time they’ve known one another, he’s never thought to see that attitude in his closest friend. It still makes his skin crawl.

Is this what Jayce thinks all the time and he’s just never said it out loud? When Viktor spoke about his dreams of helping the undercity heal and flourish, developing innovations that could finally allow those deemed lesser by the privileged few a chance at a better life, had Jayce just been humouring him? Laughing behind his back with Councillor Medarda and others of their advantaged ilk?

He could just envision it now as they attended their fancy parties and operas, tittering with glasses of expensive wine. Oh, look at that poor crippled fool, he thinks he can be one of us.

Shaking his head, forcing himself to focus on the tangible lest his thoughts completely overwhelm him, Viktor carefully unscrews the bomb.

The form is unpolished, to be sure, but he doubts he could craft a better weapon with limited resources. It’s impressive. He’s almost curious to meet its maker. He says as much.

“Well... the form is crude but, uh, the engineering is inspired."

“You think they could crack Hextech?”

Viktor’s aware that this symbol has appeared in several recent attacks including their vandalized lab from which one of the gemstones had been stolen. The authorities from what he’s overheard from the Sheriff’s zealous yet oddly inadequate reports to Jayce every morning since he became a councillor believe it’s the work of a nefarious undercity gang. But for all he knows, that could simply be a Piltovan conspiracy crafted to enact yet more oppressive rulings on those they deem lesser.

The bomb before him is brilliant in construction. Anyone who could make this from scrap metals, a careful cocktail of at least five highly explosive chemicals, and frankly innovative wiretapping, could very easily develop something using Hextech. But if he says so, who knows what fascist action Jayce and his council would take in the name of safeguarding Piltover?

So, he keeps his eyes trained on the bomb and says with patented nonchalance, “Mm, it's a leap.”

With both of them hovering at his shoulders, it’s a bit stifling but he maintains the lie.

“It’s—been suggested that they may have found a way to utilise the Gemstone. If we are to assume the worst, that would mean they’ve turned it into a weapon.”

Viktor stiffens.

“Well do we know this for certain?”

“We can’t afford to wait to find out.”

It’s the finality in Mel’s voice that has Viktor turning around to look at her, studying the carefully impassive mask of her face. This is pure Councillor Medarda.

“Wait. What are you suggesting?” He knows exactly what she’s suggesting. It’s everything he feared.

“We should prepare our own countermeasures,” she says, turning to face Jayce and avoids Viktor’s gaze with the same calm deliberation.

“You want us to build weapons?”

Viktor would be gratified at the audible dismay in Jayce’s voice but suddenly all of this is just too much. This morning, his failing body, and now this. It’s almost as if the entirety of the universe is conspiring to infuriate him and push him over the edge. He’s never been one to wear his emotions on his sleeve or allow them to get the best of him, but he can’t hold it back now.

“Absolutely not,” he practically spits, his voice laced with venom. “That is not why we invented Hextech!”

“We would shatter any attempt at peace,” Jayce utters, trying to placate them both. “Heimerdinger would never go for this….”

“Heimerdinger’s inaction is what brought us here—you said so yourself,” she says, focusing on Jayce and almost entirely cutting him out.

In any other conversation Viktor might even find her attempts to studiously ignore him funny because he’s often done the same in her presence. But he startles at the mention of Heimerdinger. He knows the professor had stepped down from the council, citing exhaustion and the need for fresh leadership, but it sounds like these two had something to do with it.

“The peace is already broken, Jayce.” There’s a troubled gravity lurking in her eyes, almost as though she’s pleading for much more than she’s saying in this room. Viktor turns back to the bomb, listening with increasing dread and disgust to her reasoning.

“I’m only asking you to prepare to defend your people. If we’re lucky, we’ll never need to use it.” A weighted pause in which Viktor can feel her looking at him. He gives her his back. “The decision is yours.”

As her footsteps fade, Jayce’s silence is heavy. Viktor outright scoffs, “Ridiculous. You cannot be seriously considering this.”

“What if she’s right? Are we just gonna stand by while they attack us?”

Viktor swivels in his chair, annoyed at the clear doubt in Jayce’s speculation, at the fact that his friend is clearly taking her side in this when they had an agreement, a shared vision. “We’re scientists, not soldiers.”

“We have the knowledge to defend ourselves.”

It hits him then that he and Jayce are fundamentally different in more ways than they’ve ever really been forced to contemplate. And now, with Jayce’s role as a councillor, the differences in their core motivations, obligations are that much starker. There might as well be a canyon separating them, the distance perhaps too far to keep a dream from unravelling, tearing down the middle.

Turning back to the bomb, with its mocking monkey smirk, he starts to fiddle with the exposed wires in its belly for something to do with his hands. “We agreed Hextech was to improve lives,” he reminds, poking at the bomb’s innards with his precision pliers. “Not to take them.”

“We may not have a choice.”

There’s little Viktor despises more than those who do harm and claim they had no choice. That it was beyond their control somehow as if they themselves did not take steps to do exactly what they’d done. It’s the kind of cowardice that gilds all sorts of atrocities. He doesn’t wish to be party to any of it.

When he yanks at one of the wires and the bomb comes to life, an ominous tick, the chemical explosives bubbling in preparation for detonation, he gasps and hears Jayce do the same. Shit, he curses inwardly as the ticking accelerates, a bright red light flashing, the bomb heating up in his hands.

He eyes the two intact wires, unsure which one will halt the explosion, knowing he has to pick one. And if it’s the wrong one he’ll be dead, and so will Jayce. Heart in his throat, he hovers his pliers over the orange one and then the lead-grey one, then the orange one again before picking the grey.

He almost flops in relief when the bomb goes quiet, the light stops flashing and the chemicals defuse and neutralise.

He glares at his partner, his best friend, he might even call him a brother if he didn’t feel the way he did. With barely banked rage, he says, “There is always a choice.”

“I n-need to think,” is all Jayce mumbles as he puts his head in his hands, his shoulders burdened by an invisible weight, and walks away.

It’s as he watches him walk away that Viktor realises, he’s made a choice of his own.

†

The first thing Viktor notices is the pain. Or lack thereof.

He remembers the first leg brace he was given as a child. He’d been bed-ridden for weeks after a bout of blight along with an especially bad case of meningitis that inflamed some of the joints in his right leg. The doctors hadn’t been sure he’d live let alone walk again. His father had made offerings and prayers to Janna in the evenings, his fingers still stained with the poisonous ore from the fissures where he spent each day eking out a pittance. Mama would stay home only when she could to care for him. Viktor recalls her humming softly, wiping his clammy brow and changing his soiled sheets, resolved to see him through it even when the situation seemed hopeless in the extreme.

Somehow, he’d survived.

His parents had used up nearly half a year’s pay to bring in an especially skilled augmenter to take a look at him and the result had been a bizarre contraption made of leather and steel harnesses, screws, bones and buckles. Even with it, the augmenter, a kind-faced old lady named Dagan, warned that he would likely require crutches for the rest of his life.

When Dagan began the arduous process of attaching the brace to him, which entailed screwing at least two metal sockets right into Viktor’s knee joint that would steady the brace well enough and grow as he grew, he’d screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

In cold months, the sockets ached unbearably so, and there were days in any season, where even getting out of bed was an exercise in prolonged agony, each step a torture. He managed it with sedatives and other treatments, but the burning ache was an old, familiar, perhaps even beloved friend. There were many nights and days he’d spent body cowed with only that pain for company.

Now, he feels the absence of it with a paradoxical keenness. Hesitantly, he nudges at his knee, which is now a silver-grey in colour, lit from within by indigo veins. Nothing. Not even a phantom ache. Viktor bites back a sob.

His old brace mostly disintegrated during the transformation, all that’s left are a couple of the nickel alloy buckles. He leaves them on the lab’s floor and stands. For the first time in over thirty years, even the act of standing is not a laborious, painstaking routine.

Put your left hand there, солнышко, the right one here … don’t move too quickly or you’ll hurt yourself. That’s right, you’re doing so well, лапочка. Remember, left foot on level ground. Careful, careful.

He stares down at his legs in awe, barely believing. It feels like a strange dream from which he’ll awaken any moment now to find it was all a figment of his overactive imagination.

He blinks.

It’s still there. The sinews and muscles of his leg now knit in steel and magic, far stronger than they ever were before.

He reaches out to touch it, poking at it. It feels like his. His touch relays a message to his brain along the usual synapses indicating that he’s touched his own leg. A ripple of blue static dances from his toes to his hip.

But also, it feels like something entirely other. There’s a shadow presence that he can’t quite make out, winking blue sparks at him in the runes now permanently carved along his thigh and shin, a susurration of something not entirely normal. He can’t explain it, but he doesn’t fear it. It feels like a friend.

Take a step, Viktor. Just one—

He takes one step. His right leg clanks on the lab’s tiles. It’s heavy and not. He can feel the heft of it in substance and form, but moving it feels natural. He limps only because he’s spent most of his life limping, listing heavily on his left and stronger leg to lift the burden off the right. His body’s yet unsure how to adjust itself to its new form.

Test it, the scientist within him urges. Another, more sibilant whisper, let us show you—

So, he makes his way down to the docks, sparsely populated at this time of night, marvelling at the ambulatory grace he suddenly possesses. He picked up his cane, out of habit rather than necessity, and hangs onto it as a toddler might cling to the walls while taking its first steps. But he doesn’t need it.

When he’s there, the yellow-lit windows of boats floating in the waters, some heading out for sea, he drops his cane, flexes his hands, terribly nervous that the punchline to the cosmic joke of his life will make itself known and he’ll clatter to the ground in a heap of weak, malformed limbs again.

He takes the first step. Then the next. Then another. And one more. Picking up speed until he feels it in the rush of the salt-breeze coming at him, whipping his hair off his face, dragging at the material of his shirt, his arms pumping with abandon, strong with an energy from where he knows not, the clatter-clop of his feet eating up the ground, leaving the ships far behind until he’s only racing the ocean, faster. Faster, still—

He’s running. For the first time in his life. He’s running.

His cheeks are wet with tears, but the sheer pace of his sprinting dries them in their tracks. He feels it inside him, building and building, ripping its way up through his gullet, his heart, his throat, the awful heaviness of a lifetime of melancholy and pain sloughing off so thoroughly he feels he could take flight, free of the burden of his body, a cage that has imprisoned him for so long.

He screams.

Do you want more—

†

It’s minutes, close to an hour, that he spends carefully gathering every speck of Sky’s ashes into the makeshift urn of one of Jayce’s old candied almond tins, his throat hoarse from all the useless weeping he did over her remains and the sheafs of research she’d evidently come to share with him.

He can hear the soft tinkle of her laughter, remembered from all those days spent by the watering hole in their childhood. She’d never precisely been his friend, but she hadn’t been like the other children—ever kind and gentle with him, even when he didn’t quite deserve it. On his arms, he still has the scratches of her fingers amidst the failed blistering runes, only his hand has turned to the same gunmetal grey as his leg. She’d been trying to save him even as he killed her.

She deserved it—

Viktor flinches.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the sickly throb of the Hexcore, its shape has changed again. It resembles mouths now, yawning and ravenous, the purple has become a noxious, nuclear shade and it writhes like a diseased wound.

He made it become this. He has to be the one to destroy it. He has to—

We didn’t kill her, you did. Murderer—

The stool isn’t even heavy as he lifts it above his head, but he staggers the way he used to. He’s ready to bash the monstrous thing before it does any more damage.

It convulses then, the chorus of eerie voices within it scream, and suddenly he can’t breathe, a wildfire of panic tears through him.

His arms buckle and the stool clangs to the floor. He can’t do it. He can’t—.

Coward—

†

“Am I interrupting?”

Viktor starts, his new foot almost skidding off the narrow platform before Jayce’s hand on his shoulder, warm and solid, steadies him.

Being in this spot with him feels like a return to home in a way nothing else could have. He’s been lost in the wilderness of his own mind, his greed, his need to survive for too long. He’d come to this spot in the frail hope that it’d work—just one last time and help him to remember himself and everything he stands for, to aid him to somehow summon the courage to take just one more step.

It hadn’t worked. And stepping off the ledge seemed like a very viable solution to escape all this.

But of course, it’s Jayce—whose cherished eyes are just as haunted as his own, whose shoulders are slumped with a despondency that’s all too familiar, who can still draw a smile from him even when it feels as though his world has entirely ruptured, cracked open, bleeding—who makes it so he can.

†

The only person he watches as he imparts the news of Jayce’s peace deal is Mel. There’s something to her this afternoon that’s different from most times he’s seen her in public, a fragility, a tremulous shimmer in her sloe eyes as though she may have been crying.

While the rest of the council explode in recriminations, Hoskel’s chair toppling to the floor as he spews all sorts of insults at him and Jayce, the foppish Salo ripping his copy of the draft peace agreement with his spindly hands, Mrs Kirraman red in the face as she reminds Jayce of consular procedures and all the ways he’s violated them, the droid, Bolbok, looks ready to flip the entire table over in his indignant rage, and even Councillor Shoola is on her feet—Mel doesn’t utter a word.

She doesn’t make any objections to the treaty announcement, in fact, there’s a subdued acceptance in her eyes, an understanding, and some pride as she looks at Jayce. But still, she emanates an aching sadness as she looks down to her right hand, her shoulders almost curved inward beneath the crimson glow of the lunar eclipse which’ll last for most of the night.

It’s not his place but if it was, Viktor would maybe reach out to clasp her fingers, maybe even press a kiss of comfort to her knuckles. It’s a foolish notion but he feels it all the same.

It takes hours—well into the night—of wrangling negotiations for the council to finally reach some level of agreement on the treaty, with a few revised and additional clauses, some of which will actually be far more beneficial to an independent undercity than he and Jayce had even thought about, thanks to Mel’s and Shoola’s thoughtful inputs. It’s enough that a vote is possible.

Mel is first, she slips a rose gold ring off her finger, places it on the table, and raises her hand, eyeing each councillor gravely. “I support Councillor Talis’ proposal for peace.”

Then Bolbok, Shoola. Hoskel followed by a waspish but resigned Salo, and finally, Mrs Kirraman.

The smile Mel aims at Jayce and at him is so bright it may as well be the noon-time sun. Viktor knows the last time they spoke, he’d been angry with her, but he understands a little better now and mostly, he wishes he could apologise for how sharp he’d been. He nods, lets his mouth curve upward, and her dimples deepen.

She’s easily the most beautiful person he’s ever seen just then, her moss-green eyes full of a genuine elation at the prospect of peace, an inner light radiating from her that might as well be magic for how captivating it is. It’s not his place, again, but if it was, Viktor would do something impetuous like kiss her.

Suddenly, the smile falls from her face and her eyes widen in fear, she turns to her right, and bizarrely, the jewellery she often wears—in fact, Viktor’s not sure he’s ever seen her without them—starts to glare bright gold, brighter until it’s almost blinding. Then almost too fast for the naked eye, she leaps from her seat to the floor towards him and Jayce, and shouts, “Everybody, get down!”

The shattering glass and the leering grin of a large projectile is the only thing Viktor sees before he, too, tumbles to the floor. He tosses his cane aside. He hadn’t needed it, to be honest, but he’d chosen to bid Sky farewell with it, needing to hold onto it, for some reason. Perhaps part of him had wanted to pretend that if he still required such things, the last few days would turn out to be nothing but a bad dream.

Shards of glass prickle against his face.

No, it’s all real.

Intellectually, he knows it’s been mere seconds. But it feels like an age has passed.

Because where the council table was, where Hoskel, Mrs Kirraman, Shoola and the rest were seated just now having placed votes for peace, is a blackened, smouldering pit and a hellish inferno blazing bright, setting everything in its path on fire, the heat of it so hot it sears even though none of it is touching him, bricks and shattered concrete crumble into the room—which is no longer a room given that three quarters of it is now exposed to the open air, tilting dangerously, unmoored from the explosion that rocked these hallowed council chambers to their very foundations.

Wait—none of it is touching him.

Viktor frowns. He’s completely unsinged, not even a rip or tear in his clothes, or anything. As is Jayce, who’s gripping his arm and half huddled by his side.

Peering up, Viktor sees the translucent gold dome covering them and Mel, her face strained, her arms thrown out wide as though about to embrace them both. But she’s not. She’s holding the dome above them, keeping the flames at bay. Protecting them.

What—and Viktor’s not a profane person by nature—in the bloody fuck?

“… Mel?” Jayce chokes out. He looks as shocked as Viktor feels.

“We don’t have much time,” she splutters, a cough wracking her body as her arms tremble with the weight of the—is it a shield? Is it magic?—she’s bearing to keep them safe. “The two of you—you need to leave, get out, f-find a way out.”

She’s crying, her face streaked with tears and ash. Viktor knows enough that he never wishes to see her do so again. Especially not for the likes of him.

“What about you?” Jayce asks, he’s frantic, panicking.

She offers them a twisted smile, a resigned one. “It’s all right—I just need you both to be all right. I can’t—I c-can’t hold this up m-much longer, Jayce, Viktor. You both need to go. Now—please!”

She’s begging to save them. To offer her own life in place of theirs.

No.

No—

Viktor can’t allow it. He can’t allow this sacrifice. He won’t.

“No,” he utters.

He’s not sure how he knows to do it, but he reaches out to hold Mel’s hand, grasping her fingers, allowing the arcane energies of his newly acquired hex-enforced limbs to push outward, a shield, deep midnight blue and writhing and wriggling like the tainted Hexcore, spirals out of him to reinforce hers.

“Viktor, what the—?” Jayce half-yells, his already-wide eyes growing bigger as he watches the blueish static emanating from Viktor’s fingers meld with Mel’s gold.

Viktor tightens his hold on Mel’s hand. “It’s all three of us, or none of us at all,” he says, his voice resolute even as he feels the gemstone-powered flames licking at their shield, searching for some entry, some weak point of vulnerability.

Mel doesn’t say anything but her eyes, luminous and lovely, even in the midst of this terror look to him with grateful hope. She links their fingers, draws him a bit closer to her. Her magic and his jolt as they meet, a shock of electricity before they allow this temporary union. They both serve the same purpose, after all, to preserve the lives of their hosts.

Jayce looks from one of them to the other, shock still slackening his jaw, before he clenches it. He eyes their surrounds and lights on the spot where his chair used to be. There’s his reinforced hammer, entirely unharmed, likely from the runes he’d etched into it, far beyond the more basic version they’d developed for mining purposes.

He picks it up, bearing its weight with confidence.

“All three of us, or none at all, right?” he murmurs.

Without waiting for an answer, he turns, and takes a swing at the rubble at his feet, battering it out of the way and blasting a path for them all. He turns to shoot them a cocky grin—one that should be utterly out of place and infuriating right now, but instead has Viktor smiling back, and he can see Mel’s cheeks curve too. The man is impossible.

“Let’s get outta here.”