Chapter Text
pride
Heimerdinger tells him to wait. His proposal isn’t robust enough, still has cracks and flaws and isn’t strong enough to withstand the full weight of true academia, apparently.
“There is no rush, my boy!” Heimerdinger says cheerfully. “It is a wonderful idea you have cooking up, and I do believe that to do it justice , you should take more time to explore it in its entirety! Stay as my assistant for another year, work on this at a steady pace, and we’ll see what the proposal looks like next summer, how does that sound?”
Viktor stares at Heimerdinger. He has deep, genuine respect for the professor, and owes Heimerdinger much for his support of Viktor throughout his years in Piltover. “Of course, professor,” he says, and he wants to scream.
Heimerdinger waddles away, smiling and cooing loudly at his poro sleeping in the corner of the office, and Viktor takes that as his sign to leave. He walks out of the office, closes the door behind him gently, and just. Stares. Not even processing anything in front of him.
Another year. Another year ? He’s been the professor’s assistant for two years already, has made leaps and bounds in his research, and he has to wait one more year ? He clawed his way into the academy with nothing but the clothes on his back and his cane in hand, dominating his classes and establishing his reputation as one of the academy’s top students, and where is he now? Other students who graduated the same time as him are already years into their own, independent work, mooching off their parents’ money and flying abroad to expand their minds and give their speeches and churn out more profit for their fucking elite, rich Piltie mommies and daddies who have known nothing more bitter than the silver spoon in their mouths.
And where is Viktor? Standing outside Heimerdinger’s office in silence because he cannot afford to stay in Piltover unless he has the professor’s favor.
He stalks his way through the academy, aimless other than a general desire to get out of the building. It’s noontime, so most students are out and about with friends, meandering about in search of a meal, and the bustle of the crowd comforts him, in a way. Lets his thoughts slip into the back of his mind, unheard.
There are two enforcers, obviously sticking out of the crowd like ugly blemishes on paper, fumbling through the crowd and looking very lost indeed. Viktor could care less, and moves to walk the other way so he doesn’t have to risk the chance of interacting with them, but he hears one enforcer say, “Where is Professor Heimerdinger’s office? There’s been an explosion, a student’s lab, it appears.”
What stupid fucking Piltie exploded a lab?
Viktor walks over to the enforcers, straightens himself and tries to lean less on his cane. “I am Professor Heimerdinger’s assistant,” he says. “The professor is busy at the moment, he has left me to handle things.”
One of the enforcers eyes him and his cane with very obvious disdain, and Viktor sneers. The enforcer is shorter than him with a rather ugly shade of orange hair. “This is rather important, we were told to inform the Professor and ask for his assistance–”
“And, as his assistant, it is my duty to do just that,” Viktor bites. He eyes the enforcer, not bothering to hide his judgement. “The professor is dean to the academy and head of the Council, he is a very busy man. It is my responsibility to see to the more frivolous things that come up.”
“There was an explosion ,” the other enforcer says. “I wouldn’t call it frivolous.”
“Call it what you will,” Viktor says. “As a scientist myself, trusted by the professor, I will see to this explosion and the student who was involved.” He glances at the shorter enforcer. “I assume there was a student involved?”
They both nod, and then they’re off.
He’s younger than Viktor. Tall, broad, hunched over in the small chair with his head in his hands. He’s fidgeting, legs bouncing and fingers twitching. Viktor had been told that the boy – because what else could he be, but just a boy – was sponsored by the Kirammans, but still from a respectable House. He saw the boy arguing with the enforcers earlier, and he thought, how spoiled . Another thought had followed immediately after. How passionate. The boy fights against Viktor with the same passion, firmly believing he’s in the right, but he doesn’t sneer at his cane or loom over Viktor. He argues with Viktor as if Viktor was responsible for his entire fate, like a student and his professor about to finalize grades.
The boy is taken away, labelled dangerous , and Viktor watches him from the corner of his eye as they escort him out of the apartment. He’s freakishly tall. Viktor thinks that the boy was probably never denied an extra meal in the warmth of his home.
Viktor stays behind to collect the materials, and he stares at the blackboard, mostly unharmed by the explosion. There is something there he cannot fully grasp, but he sees the patterns, sees something on the verge of making sense. The blackboard is a mess of ideas, but if Talis is a sponsored student, he must have kept somewhat organised notes, even if it was for a personal project. Viktor looks around the room, enforcers stripping the room bare of anything related to this project, and plucks a notebook out of a box. He opens it to the first page and finds that Jayce Talis does, in fact, take very detailed, well-labelled notes. He even signed them.
greed
The audacity of this boy. The fucking audacity . Viktor can’t stop thinking about him, about the trial. The boy yelled at the Council, in front of a rather impressive audience as he was tried for crimes against their precious ethos. He said he was trying to make magic. Viktor had glanced through his notes, grasping enough to understand that this was related to the arcane to some extent, but he had thought this was about identifying the arcane and using runes to communicate. No, Jayce Talis wanted to make magic. Create it in machines and control it on his own terms. The audacity.
Viktor has duties to attend to, mostly managing Heimerdinger’s schedule with the sudden call for a trial and overseeing several projects Heimerdinger couldn’t attend himself. These days, he feels more like a secretary than a scientist. Heimerdinger was generous with his money, but only for projects he felt were safe, or entertaining. Viktor’s morbid humor and eagerness to avoid safety measures often got in the way of earning Heimerdinger’s approval for independent projects.
Viktor has heard of Jayce Talis, of course. Snippets from Heimerdinger. A promising student. Bold, but eager to please. Sometimes Heimerdinger talked about Jayce as if he was a son, or a pet. Fond. Distant.
With the notebook in hand, Viktor returns to the apartment. Now, after reading Jayce’s notes in stolen, sporadic moments throughout the day and all throughout the previous night, he understands more, and he needs to see the blackboard again. He can feel something there, in the back of his head. The problem Jayce is trying to solve is almost resolved, nearly resolved, and he knows he can solve it. Perhaps, if he can prove the research is not too dangerous, he can convince Heimerdinger to give him funding for the project and give Jayce Talis another chance. Maybe he wouldn’t be stuck with another year of being nothing more than his assistant.
He approaches the doorway to the apartment and finds it open, the evening breeze and moonlight floating through the hole in the wall. Jayce is standing there, facing the obliterated wall, silhouette outlined by moonlight and distant city lights. He isn’t moving, clearly deep in thought. Viktor shuffles into the room quietly, and he sees how close Jayce is standing to the ledge, less than a foot away, almost swallowed by the maw of the destroyed wall. There’s a note on the table, a bracelet beside it.
He looks back at Jayce, and understands. This independent study which drove him to yell at the Council and defy the ethos was borne of something deeply personal. Without it, what would even be the point in living? Part of him thinks that surely there’s no need for this drama, there are much better things to die for, but it’s not as if Viktor hasn’t contemplated the ledge before.
You can’t die, not here , he thinks to himself. I need to understand.
Jayce shuffles towards the ledge, arms lifting at his sides, like a bird about to take flight, and honestly, he’s being so fucking dramatic.
“Am I interrupting?”
Jayce startles so violently Viktor is worried he’ll fall anyways, but he catches himself and stares at Viktor, pissed as hell and mildly terrified. “The hell’s your problem?” He clearly recognises Viktor and he scoffs, turning his body away and almost shrinking. “What’s that, another list with my name on it?”
Well, yes , but that’s besides the point. Jayce is here, likely not about to throw himself off the ledge now that Viktor is here talking to him, and Viktor needs to talk to him. He’s snippy, looking at Viktor with derision, but they’re here in this room and the blackboard is mere feet away. They can solve this problem, together.
“You’re onto something,” Viktor tells him, and he sees Jayce ignoring it, but Viktor presses on. “I want to help you complete your research.”
The tension is Jayce shifts into something lonesome. “No one believed in me.”
So? “No one believed in me,” he says, and Viktor finds himself talking about his own experiences. He had to crawl out of the pits of the undercity by the skin of his teeth. “I believed in myself.”
Jayce looks younger in the moonlight, even younger with those wide eyes and the desperate way he’s looking at Viktor. He looks lost and Viktor holds out the bracelet. He doesn’t know what this means to Jayce, cannot fully understand the significance of the stone embedded in the leather, but Jayce looks at it like it’s a lifeline.
“I don’t even know your name,” Jayce says.
“It’s Viktor,” he says. It sounds like a vow, pushed out of his mouth like a breath into a kiss.
wrath
A hand touches his shoulder, large and warm. “Viktor?”
Viktor grunts and blinks his eyes open frantically, looking around in confusion and sucking in a sharp breath. Fuck, his leg hurts.
Jayce is kneeling in front of him, eyes wide and worried, his hand still holding Viktor’s shoulder. “Did you sleep here?”
Viktor glances around, and realizes he’s in the lab, curled up on the couch, half wrapped in the blanket Jayce keeps here for this exact scenario. Judging by the amount of light streaming into the windows, it’s early morning. Fuck, he hadn’t meant to sleep through the night.
“No, Jayce, I simply laid here unmoving for several hours,” he mutters, batting Jayce’s hand away and sitting up. His body screams at him as he does so, and his lungs start protesting, and he coughs into his hand, then coughs again, and then his body is shaking as he coughs, and coughs, and coughs.
When he’s finally done, vision blurry from tears and sleep, and sees Jayce holding tissues and a cup of water. He takes the tissues, wipes the snot and drool from his face, and takes the cup of water.
“I’m gonna go grab some breakfast from the cafeteria, what do you want to eat?” Jayce asks.
“I’m not hungry,” Viktor says. If he eats now, he has a feeling he’ll just throw it back up.
Jayce sighs a little. “Viktor, you need to eat something.”
“And I said I’m not fucking hungry, Jayce,” Viktor snaps, glaring at Jayce.
Jayce shrinks back, feet rooted in place but his torso curling in on itself, like a kicked dog. He looks away from Viktor, looks at the ground between them. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “Maybe something to drink, then? Coffee?”
Viktor grunts and looks away, grabbing a fistful of the blanket. “Coffee.”
Jayce nods, or at least Viktor assumes that he does, and then he walks away. Viktor doesn’t look at him as he does, doesn’t move until he hears the doors to the lab close with a loud thud.
Viktor wants to cry. His body hurts and his lungs feel like they’re on fire. He hadn’t meant to sleep in the lab, although this is hardly the first time he’s done it. He had stayed too late, ignored the twitching in his leg, and long after Jayce had left to return to his own apartment for the evening, Viktor tried walking home, and made it as far as the hallway outside the lab before his leg gave out and he fell. His cane had broken, as well, the handle snapping off, and despite being an engineer, he couldn’t fix the cane with the tools they had in the lab. The metal itself had snapped, and if Viktor wanted to walk safely, he had to replace it completely.
He planned to sleep for a few hours, give his body a chance to rest, then head back to his apartment. He doesn’t have an extra cane in the lab, but there are plenty of long metal things he could use in a pinch. The walk was twenty minutes. He could have made it, he’s done it before in the years he’s spent as Jayce’s partner, had he not fucking slept until morning.
He wipes his face with his hands. His hair is oily, he smells, and he’s sure he looks horrendous, but he’s fine. He’ll drink coffee, wake up, make Jayce grab him a substitute for his cane, and then walk back to his apartment before anything else can happen. He’ll be fine. The cane makes his life easier, but he can walk around without it, just within the lab. He’ll be fine.
He stands up and walks to the main table where he left his book bag the night before. He doesn’t even make it halfway before his leg gives out.
The floor is cold, smooth stone, and it’s unforgiving as his knees and elbows collide into it, and he doesn’t manage to brace himself well enough, his head slamming against the floor with a loud thud. Blood rushes into his head, pounding alongside the pain, and he thinks he’s crying.
He feels warm hands again, hears Jayce’s voice. Warm hands touch his shoulder, move to cradle his neck like he’s dying, wrap around his throat like a lover.
He comes to in a hospital bed. He knows it before he opens his eyes. The smell of it is too familiar.
Jayce is sat on the edge of the bed, one thigh hiked up and his hand on Viktor’s hand. His thumb moves back and forth over the skin of Viktor’s wrist, and he looks lost in thought.
Viktor stares at him. He can feel the anger bubbling inside of him, slipping into his bloodstream like a drug, but for a moment, he lets himself look at Jayce.
Jayce glances up and startles when he meets Viktor’s gaze, but he doesn’t shrink away, doesn’t tug his hand back and pretend. Instead, he lurches forward, grabs Viktor’s face with both hands and leans over him. “Viktor! You’re awake,” he gasps. His face is so close to Viktor’s, warm breath passing over Viktor’s mouth. “How are you feeling? Are you in pain?”
“Of course I’m in pain,” Viktor mutters. He doesn’t move away from Jayce’s touch. “I’m always in pain.”
Jayce frowns a little. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left the lab, I should have realized your cane broke, it was right there in front of me.”
“It’s not your fault,” Viktor says, looking away. “The cane was shit, anyways.”
Jayce hums, distracted, guilt-ridden, and Viktor can tell there’s something he’s waiting to say. He sighs, pressing his head back against the pillow, trying to alleviate the headache he seems to be constantly living with these days.
“I talked to the doctors,” Jayce says quietly. One hand retreats, but the other stays, thumb moving in circles over Viktor’s cheek. “They said you probably will need a leg brace, and a crutch, if not a wheelchair.”
“I’m not using a fucking wheelchair,” Viktor snaps. “I’m fine.”
“Viktor, you fell in the middle of the lab and knocked yourself out, I don’t think you’re fine.”
“And you think you know my body better than I do?” Viktor asks. He shoves Jayce’s hand away, the movement weaker than he’d like, but Jayce moves his hand away like he’s been burned. It comes back, a second later, though, to rest against Viktor’s hip. “I don’t need a wheelchair, and I don’t need a fucking crutch. I just need to fix my cane, and I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll make you a new cane,” Jayce says. “I’ve been drafting the design while waiting for you, but the doctor said that a crutch may offer you better support, and I was thinking–”
Viktor shoves at him again, this time placing his hands on Jayce’s chest and pushing him away with what little energy he has. Jayce’s body moves easily under Viktor’s hands. “I don’t fucking care what you think,” he snaps. “I’m not some precious little creature you need to hook to life support to keep alive.”
“You’re not, Viktor, I know that–”
“I don’t need a crutch,” Viktor says. He glares at Jayce. He wants to hit him. Make him hurt. Wants to shout, scream, grab Jayce by the neck and strangle him. He doesn’t need a crutch. He’s fine, it’s just a bad day, he isn’t fucking decaying like Rio.
“I’m sorry,” Jayce says quietly. His hand reaches back out, slowly, and while Viktor eyes it with as much fucking venom as he can manage, he lets it fall against his thigh, hand warm even through the hospital blankets. “Do you want me to go?”
“No,” Viktor says. I want you here. “Go fetch the doctor. I need to tell them where they can stick their medical opinions.”