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The undercity is a latticework of smoke and steam.
Viktor scoffs to mask the cough bubbling beneath his lungs. He takes slow, familiar steps down even more familiar alleys, descending further, pushing garbage aside with his crutch along the way. It’s a fruitless endeavor—the more he pushes it away from him, the more covers his path. Fitting , he supposes. In his youth, even before it became the filthy, gritty, dark kingdom that is Zaun, the undercity choked hard on the weight of its own ambition as much as on the pollution that covered it. Piltover has always been the City of Progress, even before Hextech, and Zaun is its dark counterpart that stood beneath its sister’s polished brass and shimmering hex crystals; a place of shadows and desperation, where dreams withered like flowers without sunlight.
There was a saying: the more that topside changed, the more the undercity stayed the same. And Viktor, who walks with a crutch and a brace in the Talis house colors and wears a uniform made from cloth that costs more than what a hundred workers in the mines could ever make in a year, has never been able to mask what he knows everyone sees everyday—a Zaunite. He always belonged to the place that kills the flowers. It doesn't matter that he’s stayed in Piltover longer than he has ever lived in the undercity. He was Viktor from Zaun then, and he remains Viktor from Zaun now, looking up at the last traces of light spilling from the skies that kissed Piltover.
Jayce stands beside him, silent. Not for the first time since they made their descent, he pulls Viktor back by the shoulder, his hand tender yet wary. There used to be a time where Jayce would give away his touches freely. But then again, Viktor himself used to be able to walk a considerable distance without feeling like his body is going to give out. The passage of time, he supposes, changes things. He feels more like a bomb than a person these days, primed to explode at any given moment to leave Jayce to pick up the pieces in a life after and without him.
“Are you sure about this, Viktor?” Jayce asks, quiet but insistent.
Viktor frowns, tilting his head. “How many times do I have to tell you I’ll be fine? Jayce, just go. This is the lowest you can go in the undercity without alerting half of the population that one of Piltover’s most beloved councilors is… well.”
Jayce sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Viktor, you look like you’re from Piltover. You’re—”
“But I belong here,” Viktor reminds him, matter of factly. He tries to ignore the fact that Jayce has given voice to his passing thought just mere moments before. “You don’t. Even if they don’t recognize you as Jayce Talis, they’re going to take one look at you and know you’re from Piltover right away.”
“Even if I disguise myself?” Jayce asks, but Viktor can tell the fight has left him. He shakes his head, taking one step back. Jayce doesn’t follow him.
“You can’t change who you are, Jayce,” Viktor says, retreating further into the shadows. He doesn’t even know what he means by it, whether he’s still talking about the moment or if he’s talking about something else entirely. Another thing that’s changed in the slow decline of their partnership: the way he can no longer fully tell Jayce things as they are. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Viktor turns his head before he can see what Jayce’s face crumples into.
even with our dreams and yearnings, these feelings of loneliness hang over like a thirst
When Viktor was a child he dreamt of waking up one day and being able to run. As he got older, his dreams became more and more demanding. To be able to fake his way into the Academy, then to be able to actually graduate once he has snatched the opportunity to actually belong there. Then he dreamt of all the possibilities he and Jayce could achieve with Hextech.
Now, Viktor just dreams of one more day to breathe, exhaling heavily with gratitude in the morning whenever his eyes open.
No one bothers him as he makes his way further down into the Fissures. He didn’t tell Jayce that he couldn’t change out of cruelty, and he didn’t entirely say that he could never mask the stench of the undercity in him to pity himself. It was all a matter of fact ; no one has bothered Viktor ever since he descended from Piltover, despite the very glaring fact that he could easily be robbed without even a considerable amount of effort. As cruel as life is down below, there’s always been an unspoken rule to leave fellow Zaunites alone as much as possible. A shaky alliance between shakier people. It’s a system that works when you can’t trust anyone else except for the devil you know.
It’s when Viktor takes the last turn that would lead him to his childhood home when he realizes that he recognized none of the faces he saw on the way down. The shock of it leaves him just as quickly as it came, replaced instantly by a blanket of bitterness. This too, of course, would be taken from him. The memories of his youth had all been wiped out in terms of people, even if everything else has virtually stayed the same. There is no mother and father to welcome him and ask him about the Academy. No friends to clap him on the back and ask him if it’s true that Pilties threw parties even if they had no reason to. Even the person running the bakery where he got his first job is a stranger to Viktor.
No one alive in Zaun knows who he is. When he dies, everything will die with him.
And yet, you don’t honestly believe that, the traitorous voice inside his head goads him. Jayce would mourn you. You’ll be the ghost he looks for in the crowd for the rest of his life.
Viktor shakes the thought away as he walks up to the front door of his house. The steps on the porch crumble lightly at the tap of his crutch, fragile from disrepair and disuse. If his father were alive, this would never be the case. They were poor, sure, but they kept the house tidy and fixed. His mother used to always tell him that they didn’t have to make life even more difficult than it already was. But then his mother died, and then his father—the selfish creature that he was—took one look at Viktor, decided he was okay, and then followed his wife to the grave right after. Viktor was an orphan in just a few blinks, and he hasn’t been back home since.
“Forgive me, tàta,” Viktor whispers as he unlocks the door and pushes it open. “I suppose I haven’t been a very good son.”
It’s drafty inside the house, the air heavy and stale from years of neglect and absence. His crutch is a steady tap-tap-tap against the warped wooden floorboards, the sound echoing through the remains of what had been his home. His fingers trace lightly against the markings on the walls; chalk doodles of a young Viktor who dreamed big despite having so little. Dust motes float lazily in the dim, green light streaming through the shutters. Every time Viktor blinks, he swears he could see his mother looking at him fondly from the kitchen doorway.
He stands at the threshold of it now, gaze sweeping across the room. The small dining table where his mother taught him to bake was still there, though now it leans precariously, one leg broken. Viktor glances at his own leg and then snorts at the irony. The scent of Sunday mornings linger in his mind—warm, despite the harsh cold reality of the present. He leans forward, and he could almost hear his father telling him to go outside and play while he pulls his wife in for a dance and a kiss.
“Are you and mama at least together, wherever you are?” Viktor asks his father’s ghost, shuffling further inside the house. His steps are slow and deliberate, afraid that if he gets any louder he’d wake their spirits up for real. He doesn’t know yet what he’d do when he finally sees them again. What kind of son leaves home and never looks back? A good son, of course . His eyes land on the fireplace, now a charred, blackened husk filled with ash and cobwebs. His father used to sit him on his lap while the fire crackled in front of them. Not for the first time, Viktor wishes he never left the undercity.
“You don’t really mean that,” he says, mimicking the way his mother would sound if she was there to scold him.
Viktor enters his parents’ bedroom and sees his mother’s sewing chair in the corner, draped in a tattered blanket. Upon closer inspection, he realizes it's the blanket she had stitched for him. The one he used to never part with; a brief phase in his childhood where he thought hiding beneath the blanket would keep him safe from everything in the outside world. He reaches out with trembling fingers, brushing against the fabric gingerly. The first touch of the cloth brings forth a flood of memories, as if it is his mother’s ghost leading him forward. “Viki, my darling boy,” she used to tell him, bundled up in her lap. “One day you will fly, and the winds of Janna will carry you far, far away from here to some better place. My strong little boy.”
He did fly, in the end. But it hadn’t been enough.
A glint of something metallic catches his eye. His gaze falls to the floor, where a small toy lays partially buried beneath the debris. Viktor bends down, wincing as his leg protests, and picks it up—a tiny mechanical bird he had built as a child.
“Oh, mama,” Viktor whispers, remorseful and chastised. He doesn’t dare look up. I don’t want you to see me like this. “I’m sorry,” he says to the bird, to the room, to his parents’ ghosts. “I couldn’t save you. I could barely save myself.”
The silence answers him with nothing, unyielding and unkind. He wishes the whole house would just collapse on him and take him for good.
“Is it bad that I don’t want to see you yet,” he says late, into the day-night—they could never really tell what time it was in the Fissures based on the light alone—sitting on his father’s chair that looks into their yard. The wooden boards of the back porch creak every time he makes a move. Their garden, once lush and alive, was overrun with weeds and the decay of years gone by. Wild yarrows and crabgrass had claimed what was left of the rows where his mother had grown vegetables; food that sustained them when the mines were shut down after a collapse and his father would be without work for long periods of time that would frequently stretch for months. The unruly blooms sway gently in the air. Viktor closes his eyes and tries to imagine a different, happier time. It’s all still the same when he eventually opens his eyes.
Viktor leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasped tightly together. His eyes scan the tangled mess of what had once been his mother’s pride and joy aside from her son, and a faint smile tugs on his lips. “The garden still fights, mama,” he murmurs, as if she is beside him. “You would like that. Life finds its way, you always used to say. Stubborn, like you were. Like I was—is.”
He pauses, the silence of the porch pressing against his head. “I suppose you’re both still here, aren’t you?” His voice is soft, uncertain. Viktor glances over his shoulder at the empty doorway, half-expecting them to be standing there the way they always are, watching him like they used to. But there was no one. There never would be again. Piltover had made sure of that when they killed his mother.
“I know you wanted me to leave. You said I had to. That I couldn’t stay here and waste away like everyone else,” he says, letting out a bitter chuckle. He thinks about his Academy uniform and how his parents saved for months, taking odd jobs here and there so that he could go topside and find a way to make it. His mother’s chemically scarred hands; his father’s own limp. Their glassy eyes when they handed it to him, already filled with pride for a son who has yet to accomplish anything. “I’ve done what you asked. I left. I ran. I didn’t look back, not even when it felt like I should have. And it always, always feels like I should have. You cannot blame me for that.”
The wind rustles in the overgrowth, but no other response comes. Viktor’s gaze drops to his hands. “I didn’t come back, because the last time I did, tàta told me to run and never look back. So I didn’t. I listened. I always listened. Because I’m a good son, remember?”
My good boy, the best boy, he hears in his head. A broken record of some of his last memories with his mother. She had been sick. So sick that Viktor was afraid she would waste away every time he would come and visit. He had been dreadfully wrong. In the end, it wasn’t even the disease that took her from them. It had been a rowdy enforcer. A stray bullet. Shuffling, panicked footsteps and the clanging of armor fading into the night as his mother bled out in the hidden alleys of the Entresol. His mother at the wrong place at the wrong time. All Piltover had to say about it was that they were sorry.
Viktor’s composure wavers, and he draws in a shuddering breath. “Do you hate me, mama? Are you disappointed?” He pauses, giving their ghosts the time to breathe. “I hope you’re proud,” he continues quietly. “I have tried so hard to make something of myself. I’ve made progress—real progress. Jayce, my partner, and I… we have built something extraordinary. Hextech.” Viktor’s lips curve into a thin smile, pride seeping through his voice. “It’s—well, it’s changing the world. It has changed the world.” His words hang in the air, as if waiting for approval.
“It’s incredible, tàta. Science and magic. Something I never thought possible, even when I was a boy with a hyperactive imagination and tinkering with scraps. Forget the world. It has changed everything .” Viktor hesitates, his voice dropping. “But only for Piltover.”
The garden remains silent. Viktor’s grip on his crutch tightens. “Zaun has not seen any of it. Not the prosperity. Not the innovation. Nothing. I thought… I always thought that it would trickle down, eventually. That it would reach the people who need it most. Jayce and I—we—I… It hasn’t, mama. Piltover keeps it for itself, just like everything else. It took, and it continues to take.”
Viktor leans back, letting his head rest against the chair. His eyes drift upwards, watching the murky grey above. Zaun thrums beneath him, machine-like. “I’m proud of what I’ve done. Of what Jayce and I have built. But over the years it has felt… hollow. Pointless. My people are suffering. Piltover continues to rise upward, and I fear everyday that the shadow it casts over the undercity will eventually become inescapable.” He closes his eyes, voice growing quieter but even more frustrated. “And the way they—how they look at me. No matter what I do, no matter how much I contribute, I’ll always be the Zaunite. Heimerdinger’s assistant, even though I have not been his assistant for years. I’m out of place. I don’t belong. I—”
He sighs, thinking about Jayce. It always leads back to Jayce. “My partner tries. He does. He makes sure my name is on the plaques, and that I’m there for the speeches and the ceremonies and—and everything. But he’s been stretched thin, lately. I don’t know how long he could keep this up; all this nonsense that takes him from our work. And how long until he grows tired of me entirely, mama? Do I sit around and wait for that to happen?”
You think so lowly of yourself, my little wonder, he hears his mother say. But what would she know? She did not live long enough to see what has become of her son. “Even if, by some miracle, Jayce does not grow tired, it doesn’t really matter. I would never be his equal. A weed placed among flowers does not become a flower. It remains a weed.”
The ghosts of his parents offer no further wisdom. Viktor leans back again, staring at the swaying wind chime. “Professor Heimerdinger is centuries old. He was there when Piltover was born. He was there when Hextech was created. He will be here long after I am gone. I—”
The words get stuck in his throat, fighting against him. “I am afraid. Afraid that I’ll be forgotten. That Hextech would become Jayce’s legacy, and I’ll be nothing but a footnote in history. A name that people will only glance over, if they even bothered to look at all. I have given everything for this. What little that remains of my life. All my years. I’m afraid that in the end, it won’t even matter.” Out of his mouth, the words now hang heavy in the air, unanswered and unacknowledged. Viktor’s shoulders slump with the weight of all his regret, and he lets out a long, slow breath. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. Maybe because you’re the only ones who would ever understand. You both knew what it was like to fight so hard for so little.”
The wood is noisy when Viktor gets to his feet. Zaun is home, but he knows when he’s overstayed his welcome. His fingers draw patterns on the doorway as he steps back slowly into the house. Neither his mother nor his father’s ghosts stop him from leaving. “I miss you,” he admits, smile sharp and sad. “But I am not ready to see you again. Not yet. I am still… making deals with the Gods. One more shot at the life you dreamt of for me.”
Viktor blinks back tears and sniffles as he walks. “Stupid dust,” he mutters under his breath, like the child he still is inside. He closes the door behind him before staring up. Just like he always did back then, he wishes that he could see the stars from Zaun. Viktor wonders if there will ever be a time like that—if not for him, then for the future children of the undercity.
“Stupid dream,” he eventually says. He turns back and presses his forehead against the wood of the front door, imagining two pairs of warm hands wrapping themselves around him. “Not yet, mama, tàta. I hope when we meet again, it won’t be for a very long time. Until then, take care of each other. Wherever you are.”
There is no answer. Viktor takes steady steps back into the belly of Zaun, each one taking him further and further away from the house. He wonders when he’ll next be back, or if he will return at all. The subject of where he would go when he finally dies is something he has not yet approached either Jayce or Sky with—the closest he has at this point to a family. He’s not so sure with the professor. Viktor hasn’t seen him in a long time. It would be nice if he could be returned to Zaun, or scattered in the wind like his mother and father were. Whatever happens, Viktor just hopes that—in the end—he could rest somewhere free, with a view of the endless sky.
At the corner, he turns, his crutch catching on a loose pebble. Viktor takes one last look at his house. Lovely, still, despite it all. “Goodbye,” he says again, and then he leaves the past where it belongs.
only the desperate ever make it to the exit, only the brave and the pure
The lift rattles and groans as it ascends, carrying Viktor from the depths of Zaun back to Piltover. He’d take the long, miserable walk back, but he doesn’t hate himself at all despite proof to the contrary and he doesn’t think his leg and his… everything would appreciate him the morning after. The air grows thinner, cleaner, as the city above comes into view. When the lift doors finally clang open, Viktor is welcomed by the biting chill of the Piltover night. It was cold in a way that it never was in Zaun; nicer, compared to the harsh winds that bite in the undercity. The sky above Viktor is indigo, covered in a blanket of stars.
The streets stretched out before him, quiet and empty save for the occasional clatter of distant carriages or the soft hum of streetlights. Viktor pulls his coat tighter against the cold, his crutch and the metal of his brace tapping rhythmically against the cobblestones. He glances up at the gilded towers, shining brightly against the backdrop of the sky. His gaze flits momentarily to the Hexgates—a scientific, magical wonder. Viktor wonders if the faint booms and rumbles he heard on the way up were the Hexgates transporting ships for tonight's banquet.
Piltover often felt desolate in its grandeur. It was beautiful, this much Viktor will admit, but the spires and gleaming facades often seemed devoid of life to Viktor, even when he was still a wide-eyed student who was wet behind the ears and eager to take in as much of Piltover as the city would give to him—which was never much, in hindsight. Viktor wanders aimlessly like his eyes do. Piltover’s gilded glory. A true testament to the wealth and power of Piltover’s elite. It’s a sight that fills Viktor with a muted fury.
He thinks of the undercity’s own towers. Zaun’s leaning, rusted structures put together from scraps and tainted with blood, sweat, tears, and layers of grime that wouldn’t wipe clean no matter how hard one scrubs. There was a time, long ago, or so the stories say, when both cities had been one, connected by purpose and dreams. They said Zaun came before Piltover, but Piltover got greedy and left her sister behind in its climb up. But Zaun and Piltover are divided now. By wealth, by opportunity, by ambition. When had it gone so wrong?
Viktor’s thoughts lead him back to the banquet at the Council. Jayce is likely to be there, shaking hands and smiling for the cameras. Who am I kidding. Jayce is there. He wonders, with a pang of something he doesn’t want to name, if Jayce has even thought about him once throughout the night.
“Stupid,” he whispers, shaking his head, willing away the red that he knows has bloomed on his cheeks. The lights of his favorite diner come into view, a small beacon of warmth against the increasingly chilly night. It’ll be winter soon. He makes a note in his head to thank Janna by way of prayers at the temple if he makes it to the end of the year.
Viktor pauses at the door of the diner, considering stopping in for a moment, when he catches the sharp gaze of two Enforcers patrolling nearby. He stills as they approach him, boots echoing against the quiet night. One of them steps forward. “You just come up from Zaun?” The woman asks, tone clipped. Viktor straightens his posture, his hand tightening on the handle of his crutch. “I did,” he replies evenly, meeting her gaze and refusing to break it.
The second enforcer, a man with a heavyset build that makes Viktor nervous, frowns. “What’s your business in Piltover this late at night?”
Viktor’s jaw tightens, but he reaches into his coat and pulls out his identification, handing it over. He does not miss the way their hands twitch toward their waists, where their guns are located. He almost scoffs. As if Viktor, with a crutch, could ever be a threat to any of them. “I live here,” he explains, keeping his voice even. “I work here, too. I run and supervise a lab at the Academy. I work with—”
The enforcer, the first one, who was studying his ID, furrows her brows as she looks up. “Oh, you’re… Jayce Talis’ partner. The Hextech guy.”
The words hit Viktor like a slap, though his expression does not betray it. He nods stiffly, biting back the sharp retort that threatens to spill through his teeth. Not Viktor, the inventor. Not Viktor, the scientist. He’s Jayce’s partner, existing and remembered only in relation to a man whose steps have long outpaced Viktor’s. “It’s Councilor Talis,” he settles on saying instead.
The enforcers exchange wary glances, and after a few more awkward moments the woman offers him an awkward smile and pushes open the door of the diner for him, handing his ID back. “Our apologies,” she whispers, as if she’s letting him in on a little secret. “Just doing our job. It has been… hectic, lately. We have been tightening security ever since the recent raids at the port.”
“Silco’s work,” the man supplies, unhelpful and entirely unaware of Viktor’s brewing irritation. “As you would know.”
“I don’t know, actually,” Viktor murmurs, less snarky than he normally is. Truthfully, he’s been aware of the recent attacks against Piltover. Small bombings and barricades here and there. Never truly at the city proper but not so far that it would slip past everyone’s radar. He knows that there’s a curfew, which was lifted only for tonight to accommodate those attending the banquet. It is, of course, the reason why Viktor picked tonight of all nights to visit home. Still, the sting of being stopped by enforcers while he’s on a casual stroll, presenting no threat whatsoever, just because he looked like he came up from Zaun—whatever the fuck that meant— rests heavy in his heart.
“Goodnight, officers,” he says, and then he watches them fade into the dark of the night before he closes the diner’s door behind him.
The diner smelled of coffee and grease inside, reminding Viktor of late Academy nights and all the sleepless weeks he and Jayce spent when they were first designing and formulating the Hexgates. The few patrons scattered throughout the room paid him little mind, and he was just about to sit down at his usual spot by the counter when a voice calls out his name.
Sky smiles warmly when Viktor finally sees her, gesturing to the empty seat in her booth. “Would you like to join me for coffee?”
Viktor hesitates, glancing toward the counter. He thought of his empty apartment and the emptier lab, how the crushing weight of solitude is all that awaits him. With a quiet sigh, he nods, and then makes his way over to her table.
“You look like you’ve had a long day,” Sky remarks as he sits down.
“You could say that,” Viktor replies. The warm hum of the diner buzzes softly in Viktor’s ears as he settles himself across from Sky, who was already nursing what seems to be her third cup of coffee. He raises one brow.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she rolls her eyes. “I have it on record that you are much, much worse when it comes to coffee. At least I don’t take mine with six teaspoons of sugar.”
“That’s a perfectly normal amount of sugar, thank you very much,” he snorts, pulling his own coffee close. As if to prove a point, he only dumps four teaspoons instead of his usual six. He tries very hard not to grimace when he finally takes a sip.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you out of the lab,” Sky eventually says, only mildly hesitant. Her fingers tap idly against the ceramic of her mug. “What brings you out tonight?”
Viktor looks down into his coffee, the dark liquid rippling into tiny whirlpools with every turn of the spoon. “I went to the undercity,” he says quietly, his accent thickening as he says the words. “To visit… mama and tàta. My—our home.”
Sky’s expression softens immediately, eyebrows knitting together in quiet sympathy. “Oh, Viktor,” she murmurs, reaching across the table to lightly touch his hand. “That must have been difficult. It’s been so long since…” she trails off, her voice faltering.
“Yes,” Viktor replies, sparing her the need to finish. “It’s been a long time.”
He knows that Sky understands all too well. They were never truly friends in their youth. She tried her best to include Viktor when they were children, growing from staring at him and the toys he built in interest to eager calls to join their games ringing out in the narrow, soot-stained alleys of the upper levels of Zaun, right where Piltover’s waste water falls into the undercity. Sky would run back and forth between her friends and Viktor, urging him to join with her bright smile, but Viktor—older by a few years and slowed down considerably by his limp—could never keep up.
The other kids, lost in their youthful frenzy and able bodies that could climb heights faster than Viktor could even get to his knees, quickly grew impatient, leaving him watching their backs as they ran off. Sky always lingered longer than most, her efforts persistent and kind, but eventually, Viktor too had to watch as the practicality of youth won out. She stopped asking, not out of malice, but because it became clear that Viktor and the rest of the world was just one of those gaps that she could not bridge. His world of careful steps and theirs of boundless sprints. Viktor knew of the guilt she felt, reflected in her eyes every time she looked back and saw him alone and watching from the sidelines. Viktor never begrudged her for it. He never held any resentment. Like most things in his life, all he had was the room for quiet acceptance and the understanding that, perhaps, there is truly no place in the world for him.
But life has a cruel way of weaving people together through the shared threads of tragedy, and Viktor and Sky inevitably found themselves drawn closer after the loss of their mothers within a year of each other. Sky, too, had been a victim of Piltover’s callous hand. There was a raid at one of the factories near the Fissures—a suspected production of Shimmer on the side. Her mother was crushed by a collapsing scaffold, along with five other women. They never did find out if the factory truly made Shimmer. They did, however, learn that enforcers don’t report dead Zaunites as actual casualties.
Sky and Viktor were left to shoulder their grief alone in a city that never really learned to pause for mourning. A hundred or so years ago, when they ran out of space in the old cemeteries, some Zaunites developed the practice of burning their dead and scattering the ashes somewhere, anywhere. Others would do river funerals, letting bodies sink beneath the River Pilt. Sky had scattered her mother’s ashes by the Wharf, the closest that Zaun could ever get to a proper ocean. Viktor kept his mother’s ashes in a jar beneath his bed that he, eventually, scattered from the top of the Hexgates during a routine inspection he and Jayce went to. No ceremony, no word uttered at all.
For a time, the loss became a shared lifeline. Sky and Viktor would meet by one of the bridges that led to the sewer grates and they would just talk, speaking to each other in quiet moments about the mothers they loved and the future that Piltover had stolen from them. Their conversations always circled back to the injustice of it all—the bitter knowledge that the city above their heads seemed to thrive at the expense of their own lives below. The pain only grew worse whenever they are both reminded of the fact that, in truth, Piltover was their only way out. Viktor at that point was already a student at the Academy. Sky was barely out of her teens, scrambling for work to support her ailing father. In the end, none of their hard work mattered. They became orphans within two years. Viktor’s father had taken his own life barely a year after his mother died, mind and spirit too broken to withstand the grief. He could barely stand to look at Viktor in his last weeks. Sky’s father followed not long after, a foul run-in with a Chem Baron’s lackey claiming his life in a way that almost felt inevitable in Zaun.
Viktor had written a letter to Sky when he heard of her father’s passing. Pavel had been nice to him and was a frequent visitor in their home back when Viktor’s mother was still alive, carrying cakes and fruit and the spices they used to make sweetmilk. Viktor wasn’t sure if the letter ever reached her—the undercity had a way of swallowing things whole, letters and lives alike, and if she ever received or read it she made no indication that she did. By then, Viktor was assistant to Professor Heimerdinger, fully immersed in the hustle and bustle of academic life. Sky, he presumed, was left to claw her way out through the ruins of her own life, searching for stability in a city that offered none and in a manner not so different from hundreds of others like her who dreamed too big.
It wasn’t until years later that their paths crossed again. Sky had told him privately, months after the fact, that she had been desperate and fully running out of options. She saw the advertisement the Academy posted at a bulletin board located at the Entresol and saw his name attached to the project. They had been looking for an assistant to help out with the sudden influx of work from Hextech. She told him that she had been hesitant at first, unsure if her application would even make it to Jayce and Viktor’s desks. But she remembered his quiet kindness and the embers of his anger. She remembered the moments of grief and solitude. She remembered the boy with the ship who once told her that she would someday find her way out there just like he did.
In the end, it had taken Jayce very little convincing to approve of Sky, and once again her life was tied to his.
The silence continues to stretch between them, the clatter of dishes and muted conversations filling the gaps where his thoughts could not. Sky’s hand continues to linger for a few more moments before she pulls it back, folding it with her other. “They were good people,” she says after a moment, voice almost a whisper. Viktor has no doubt that she is thinking of her own parents, gone just as quickly as Viktor’s were. “You parents. We—everyone knew that. I knew.”
Viktor just nods, his throat tightening with emotion. “They did what they could. For me. For the undercity. Even when it was never enough.”
They continue drinking, the past hanging between them. When Sky eventually pulls out her notes, Viktor entertains himself by staring out the window. The city lights refract in the glass, splintering into colorful patterns that remind him of gemstones, and, inevitably— ultimately, of Jayce.
Viktor closes his eyes for a moment and pictures the grand ballroom at the Council, the chandeliers casting gold light over polished floors and the elegantly dressed guests. Jayce, surrounded by dignitaries and scholars from foreign nations, all eager to see, touch, taste Piltover’s golden boy, whose smile would have already charmed the entire room without even any effort. I wonder if he has mentioned me, Viktor muses, sighing with an emotion he does not want to acknowledge. As he introduces himself. As he talks about Hextech. Does he say my name? Does my face even flash in his thoughts? Or am I just another part of the machinery now—functional, but unseen?
The thoughts linger, unpleasant. He imagines Jayce standing tall, proud, beautiful, his name on everyone’s lips while Viktor’s faded into obscurity. The bitterness he has been feeling all night returns, sharper and cutting swiftly through the fragile peace that has only just begun to settle in his heart.
“Viktor?” Sky’s voice breaks through his thoughts, pulling him out of his delusion. He turns back to her, surfacing back to the present. “How have you been?” She asks, tone cautious as if afraid of the answer.
“I am well,” he says, an automatic response. The words feel hollow, and he’s sure Sky knows. She gives him a pointed look. “I am managing, Miss Young, no need to worry.”
She tilts her head. “We’ve known each other for years. I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”
“Get to the point.”
“You’ve been to the hospital more recently, haven’t you?”
Viktor hesitates, fingers curling around the edge of the table. “Yes,” he admits, resisting the urge to bolt. “There are… complications,” he exhales slowly, pushing his mug around with his other hand. “It is… unlikely that I will have much time left. But it is enough.” For what, he does not exactly know.
Sky’s eyes widen in shock. She leans forward, voice harsh and low. “Viktor, you can’t just say that like it’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. It’s the truth,” he shrugs, lifting his mug to his lips. “I don’t say it to be mean. There’s truly nothing else to say. I have been given a limit. I am trying to make the most of it.”
The lie slips through his teeth like water. I am trying to make the most of it. It’s what he tells Jayce nowadays, every time he would ask. He doesn’t tell Sky that whenever she turns in for the night and leaves the lab, he continues his research on the Hexcore and the possibility of magic curing his disease and extending his life. He doesn’t tell Sky that there are hundreds of papers in his locked desk drawer containing notes on wild runes and how the mages of Mount Targon discovered them. He doesn’t tell Sky about how he and Jayce, in fits of desperation, had broken into forbidden sections of the Academy’s library in the dark of the night, hoping to finally find an answer.
He doesn’t tell her that he’s already a walking dead man. She’d know, soon enough, if he and Jayce fail before the looming deadline that is his sickness consumes him.
“Sky,” Viktor finally says after a while, voice almost drowned out by a passing tram. “Have you… ever thought about what you want to leave behind? What you want your… legacy to be?”
Sky tilts her head, clearly not anticipating the question. “My legacy?” She echoes. “I don’t… know. I guess I never really thought about it.”
“That makes sense,” Viktor nods. “But have you never thought about it because you are unsure or because you were—how do I say this… think about it this way. Not many of us make it out of Zaun, and those who do barely make it in Piltover. Did you not think about it because you never thought you would succeed here?”
“More the former, I think. I don’t know. I’m not even thirty yet,” she laughs. “It kind of feels like I’m getting ahead of myself, already thinking about what I want to leave behind. I haven’t even really done anything yet.”
“That’s understandable. But it could also just be… a small thing. Something that might seem insignificant to others but you have been working towards.”
She purses her lips. “I suppose, for now, I just want to help people. Help you and Jayce, I guess. Beyond that… I don’t think much about it.”
Viktor lets out a faint hum of approval, gaze still downcast. He traces the rim of his mug with his nail, watching the coffee ripple inside. “And if you have given everything to that. To helping people. But the world barely notices, and you feel like you haven’t made a difference where it matters. What then?”
Sky frowns, closing her notes and pushing them aside. “Is this about Hextech?”
He nods, exhaling slowly. When is it not about Hextech? Viktor wants to say, but he holds his tongue. “I have given so much, Sky. My time, my body, my health. And yet, what has it truly accomplished? All this greatness that Piltover thrives in. Zaun remains forgotten. Our home, our people, they see no benefit from my work. It feels as though I poured myself into a machine that serves only Piltover while grinding everyone else down.”
Viktor looks up and watches Sky, her brows furrowed as she struggles to search for the right words. Before she could speak, Viktor continues. “You already know that I met Professor Heimerdinger when I was not even a real student at the Academy, sneaking into lectures and stealing pieces of knowledge whenever the opportunity presented itself. He caught me scribbling at the back of his class. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. There was another class I wanted to attend, but I figured I might as well try for the Professor’s. I mean,” he chuckles fondly at the memory. “To be able to learn from one of the founders of Piltover? Who would want to pass up the chance? I was greedy. I wanted more.”
“And you didn’t expect him to catch you.”
Viktor shakes his head. “I didn’t. It was a big class. A hundred and fifty or so students. I sat all the way at the back. I tried my very best not to get noticed. He did, anyway. He led me to his office once the class was dismissed and I thought, this is it, all the work my parents put into this and it all ends here. This is how I repay them. I thought he would report me. Instead, he asked me what I was working on. So I told him about a prototype I had been sketching. A mechanical third arm for disabled workers in the factories by the Fissures.”
“Like the one my mom worked in,” Sky murmurs, a sad smile on her face. “Sorry. Go on.”
“He didn’t laugh. He made no mention of the fact that I hadn’t actually been taking notes while he was delivering his lecture. All he said was ‘keep it up’, and then he dismissed me. I walked out of his office fully believing that I had gotten away with it.”
“But you didn’t.”
Viktor snorts, “Of course I didn’t. Did you know that he personally interviews every student who enters the university before the semester starts? He likes to get to know the students: their dreams, aspirations, what their plans are after they graduate. That’s how he chooses his assistants. Eventually, that is how he makes his friends. Professor Heimerdinger is undeniably blind to plenty of things, but his memory is nothing to joke about.”
He doesn’t truly consider that moment in his office as his first proper meeting with Professor Heimerdinger. It had been what happened later that both he and the Yordle consider as their first meeting. Viktor had been perched in his usual spot inside the clocktower, at an opening overlooking both Zaun and Piltover. The sun was dipping below the horizon, and the Entresol below has begun to stir with the hum of evening life, Zaun waking up just as Piltover prepares to go to sleep. The clocktower had become his sanctuary of sorts, a place where he could think without interruption and sleep when the night stretched too late to risk the dangerous descent back to his home in Zaun.
If Viktor was not writing, then he was sleeping. If he was not sleeping then he was dreaming. If he was doing nothing at all then he would marvel at how Piltover seemed to transform at dusk—its grand towers and shimmering bridges lighting up like a dream. Viktor envied its beauty, and then he resented it, and then he wanted it all for himself. Perched up high like he was, he often thought about what would happen if he could just take it all from Piltover and hand everything to Zaun on a silver platter. It was in the middle of one of his voiceless tirades that he was jolted from his thoughts by a soft cough.
In certain moments—and whenever he would recall the story to anyone who would ask which, so far, had only ever been Jayce and Sky and his parents when he told them the news—Viktor would swear that he could still remember how his heart tasted that night, leaping to his throat when he saw Professor Heimerdinger standing only a few steps away from him. The Yordle’s eyes had been bright and knowing, his expression one of amused curiosity. Viktor’s initial fear of discovery turned into a deeper anxiety and dread as the professor casually remarked that of course Viktor slept in the clocktower. That it had made sense for someone who was not officially a student and had no access to the dormitories.
Viktor’s initial response had been to let his mind race. How had Professor Heimerdinger known? What was it about him that gave him away? Before his mind could bring up the familiar bitterness over never being able to hide the undercity in him, the professor explained calmly that he knew every enrolled student at the Academy and that Viktor was simply not one he knows. He had braced himself for expulsion and other worse things, but none came. Instead, the professor had extended an unexpected offer: an official invitation to enrol at the Academy the following year. When Viktor asked, Professor Heimerdinger’s explanation had been simple: it was unfair for such a sharp mind to go to waste simply because of a lack of opportunity.
He looks up at Sky, now, eyes glazed over with wonder and nostalgia. “It was easy, then. My disease had not yet consumed me, and it felt like I could do anything. Everything. It felt almost like fate. That I was meant to be here after all. But now…”
“Now you’re wondering if it was all for nothing,” Sky finishes for him, sympathetic.
Viktor nods, shoulders slumping with exhaustion. In those early years, Viktor witnessed the Academy at its finest—a hub of innovation and collaboration, where ideas flowed as freely as water. But Viktor did not remain that idealistic kid for long. Time passed, and Piltover grew wealthier: expanding trade routes, the invention of things and tools that made the easy life even easier. Zaun stood still with every step that Piltover took towards the future, and it was not for a lack of trying. Every promise of progress, every one of Viktor’s attempts at appealing to everyone and anyone for change fell through the cracks. Even Heimerdinger, for all his wisdom, seemed oblivious to all the happenings beneath the surface of the city he loved. There were days where Viktor would look at the professor and hate him for leaving Zaun behind.
“Perhaps my legacy will be… nothing. Forget a footnote, try a figment. Maybe the world will only remember Jayce. And Jayce…”
And Jayce.
The truth, Viktor will admit, was that his deepest fear is not necessarily just being forgotten by history. Yes, the thought of his contributions fading into obscurity gnawed at him incessantly, but the problem was never with Jayce. He wasn’t jealous. At least, not truly. He bears no true envy for Jayce, even as the man stood in the spotlight, his name heralded across the city as a symbol of progress. Jealousy implied the desire to take something away from Jayce, to claim it for himself, but even at his worst Viktor could not bring himself to feel that way. Because the more he tried to dissect his feelings, the more he realized something that terrified him far more than being forgotten: he couldn’t be mad at Jayce.
And this, too, is not for a lack of trying. Viktor excelled very much in trying. Countless seconds, minutes, hours spent stewing on his own, trying to summon anger at how they were treated differently; how Jayce always seemed to navigate the world with a certain mastery and deftness that eluded Viktor. But the anger just would not come—at least, not for Jayce. He’s been mad at Piltover enough for a lifetime and more.
Instead, there was only an ache, and the painful realization that if he wasn’t mad at Jayce, then the only other conclusion would be that he was in love with him.
It was an admission that Viktor resisted— tried to resist for as long as he could, because to love Jayce was to surrender a piece of himself to something he could neither comprehend nor control. Viktor prided himself on logic, reason, and the one-track clarity of his thoughts. This? Love? Love had no logic. No rhyme or reason. It was maddening in its intensity; a pull from an unseen force he could not identify. It clouded all rational thought, twisting him into something unrecognizable. Viktor does not look at Jayce and wish he was him—he looks at Jayce and wonders what it would be like to stand beside him and hold his hand. To have all the love he gave so freely to the world be directed at him. He wanted to be chosen, again and again and again. He wanted the gravitational force that tethered him to Jayce to be something that the other man felt too.
Love was inexplicable, and that frightened Viktor more than anything else. How it defied the carefully constructed walls he had built to protect himself, slipping through every imperfection like water through stone. It takes and it takes, and Viktor is wholly pathetic in his inability and unwillingness to even fight it. Because the truth—the undeniable, all-encompassing truth—was that his love for Jayce would always outweigh even his ambition. A monster holding him captive within its palms. He’s a sailor standing in the sea of an emotion he did not know how to navigate. Jayce has reshaped his life in ways he could not undo, and Viktor thinks he doesn’t have it in him to even try and reverse the damage.
“I don’t blame Jayce,” he chuckles, burying his face between his hands. “I don’t—I can’t even be mad at him. I mean, I pushed him, didn’t I? I was the one who never wanted the spotlight. I still don’t. But just because I don’t want to be out there, then it must be that I don’t want any credit. I do. I want to be remembered. I want them to look at Hextech, experience the magic that we have brought into this world, and think of my name. Of my face. Of me as I am, not just Jayce.”
Sky leans back, studying him thoughtfully. “I don’t know how to console you,” she begins honestly, pushing her glasses further up on the bridge of her nose. “But I—well, I suppose I want you to know that out of all of us back in Zaun, you were always something different. You had… a spark. A certain drive. Even back then, I knew you were destined for something else. For something greater. Something more.”
Viktor looks up at her, brows knitted in doubt. “And if you think your work is just a footnote, or a figment, or a mere passing thought in people,” she continues, her tone growing firmer, “then maybe that just means you’re not done yet, Viktor. Maybe the Gods, or fate, or whatever greater thing exists out there, still have plans for you. Bigger than anything you have done so far.”
“Sky, I—”
“Because have you ever thought that maybe you aren’t done yet?” Sky asks, shaking her head. “I get the fear, believe me when I say that I do. But you have made it so far, Viktor. Perhaps there are more to things than this. Maybe Hextech isn’t where you stop.”
Viktor lets out a sigh. “I wish I could believe that,” he mumbles. “But I am not so sure anymore. I have never been so uncertain in my life.”
Viktor looks up and sees Sky searching his face, trying to find something to say that might ease his burden. It hurts that he can pinpoint when exactly she realizes that there’s not much she can do for him anymore.
“You’re allowed to feel this way, Viktor,” she tells him gently after a moment. “But I will always believe in you. I always have. If not one topsider would remember you, then I will.”
Viktor smiles, though it does not meet his eyes. They sit in comfortable silence for a while, Sky resuming her writing and Viktor drinking his coffee. He stares out the window, the city lights blurring in his vision as his mind raced. He eventually glances at the clock and is only mildly startled that it has been hours since he entered the diner, his conversation with Sky dragging him into the deep hours of the evening. Viktor sets his drink down and slides out of the booth, gripping the handle of his crutch tightly as he stands. “Thank you, Sky,” he murmurs, voice quiet but sincere.
“For what? I’m your friend, it’s my job to lend an ear or two.”
“For listening. For… everything,” he says, and he knows that she knows he’s not just talking about the past couple of hours.
Sky smiles up at him, her eyes warm with understanding. “Anytime, Viktor. But you already know that.”
Viktor nods, lingering for a moment before saying goodbye again, turning towards the door. The chill of the night hits him as he steps outside. It’s cold enough that his breath mists in the air. As he walks, Sky’s words linger in his mind, mingling with all the other emotions that have been putting him through the wringer since he started his journey back to the undercity. Maybe I’m not done yet, he thinks, mildly hopeful and entirely afraid. He takes a deep breath and looks up at the sky, the stars reflecting in his eyes like a mirror. For now, he says to himself, walking now with the tiniest sense of purpose, I shall work.
as much afraid as it is haunted
When Viktor turns the key to the lab and pushes the door open, the familiar hum of their machines and the faint crackling of the Hexcore greeting him, he had already prepared himself for the usual scene: the empty expanse of space, papers scattered across tables, and rows of chalkboards filled with half-solved equations.
He does not expect Jayce.
A clean lab would not surprise him, courtesy of Marilka, the diligent night cleaner who had somehow acquired a spare key. A break-in would not surprise him either, considering the lab has been broken into several times over the years, all from desperate attempts to steal the secrets of their work. Jayce, hunched over their desk, muttering under his breath and furiously erasing whatever it was he had written, was unexpected. His coat was strewn carelessly over a nearby chair, the tails touching their admittedly unclean floor. His sleeves have been rolled to his elbows, his usually pristine appearance disheveled. The sight was jarring to Viktor, almost surreal, as though he had stumbled into a memory from their earlier days—before the fame, the accolades, the distance. For a while, Viktor just stands there, the door half-closed behind him, unable to reconcile the unexpected presence with the loneliness he had grown accustomed to.
Jayce finally looks up after a while, his pen pausing in mid-air as he registers Viktor’s presence in the doorway. Viktor has the pleasure of seeing his face shift from intense focus to annoyance, for being disturbed, and then finally to something softer—relief, or something close to it—when he recognizes Viktor. It makes something in Viktor’s chest flutter.
“Viktor,” he says, his voice low but carrying a note of guilt, as though he didn’t expect to be caught in the act. He straightens, running a hand through his already tousled hair in an attempt to compose himself. “Hi.”
His greeting lingers awkwardly in the space between them. Jayce brings his hand down to his ear, scratching behind it. Viktor dislikes the motion. It’s Jayce’s fault that they are distant, but Viktor never wanted Jayce to feel off around him; to feel as though he had to justify his presence in the lab where their dreams were made. Viktor steps further into the room, closing the door with a quiet click, his gaze never leaving Jayce. He doesn’t respond immediately, his mind trying to make sense of this fragile moment.
He doesn’t look like Jayce, his mind supplies. Viktor is inclined to agree. Perhaps he really did stumble into a different time. Or perhaps he died on the way to the lab and this is all a dream. Jayce looks less like the put-together councilor and more like the man Viktor was familiar with. The one who had to be coaxed out of the lab with something no less than the formidable and frankly terrifying force that is Ximena Talis demanding he visit home for once.
“Why are you here?” Viktor finally asks, his voice measured. He makes sure the question carries more curiosity than accusation.
Jayce shrugs, the tension leaving his body. “You said, earlier, that you’ll see me tomorrow.”
“It’s two in the morning.”
“Well, it is tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Viktor replies noncommittally, because there really isn’t much to say. He gives Jayce a small smile before shrugging off his coat, folding it neatly and placing it beside Jayce’s discarded one. He moves to where his usual seat is, but instead of sitting, he hoists himself up onto the edge of the table, mindful of his brace. His eyes fall on the notes that Jayce had been working on, lines of equations and drawings of the Hexcore and its segments sprawled across the pages in chaotic fervor. The symbols were familiar but disjointed, their logic scattered in a way that felt more like desperate grasping than deliberate attempts to come up with a viable formula. Viktor gathers his own notes, squinting at his own equations and trying to piece together their intent.
It takes only a few minutes before Viktor gives up on his facade, betrayed by his thoughts. The possibilities of the Hexcore should have been enough to command his full attention. Normally, it is. A complex puzzle that could entertain and thrill Viktor for hours if left on his own. But that’s precisely the problem in the current scenario he finds himself in. Usually, he is alone. Now, Jayce is a presence a mere three feet away, his head bowed over their desk. Viktor is helpless. Of course he has to look at Jayce and study the tension in his shoulders. The way his fingers always grips his pen a little too tightly. The faint smudges of ink on his forearm.
Before Jayce could catch him looking, Viktor’s gaze drifts to the room itself and he lets an ache settle in his chest. How long has it been since we were together like this, just the two of us, the silence not heavy but purposeful? He could barely recall the last time they sat side by side, lost in their work, driven by the same dream rather than divided by the expectations of a city and a people that seemed to want to pit them against each other. The weight of Jayce’s prolonged absences press down on him, sharper now that he is actually here to remind Viktor of it.
“But really, Jayce,” he asks again, “why are you here?”
“This is my lab too, V,” he says, the familiar nickname finding its way from Jayce’s mouth directly to Viktor’s heart. He kills the stirring in his chest before it could take root.
“But the banquet—”
“I didn’t want to be there anyway,” Jayce cuts him off, not even lifting his eyes from his notes. “I’ve been here for hours. Where have you been?”
“Zaun. You know this. You were there to see me off.”
“Past midnight? I highly doubt that,” Jayce murmurs, turning to a cleaner page. “No one is that stupid, least of all you.” There’s a slight slur to his words that Viktor shakes his head at.
“Have you been drinking?”
Jayce snorts, finally turning to look at Viktor and rolling his eyes. “It’s a banquet. Of course I’ve been drinking.”
“You should go home.”
It’s Jayce’s turn to shake his head. Viktor can almost physically see his stubbornness settling over him like a cloak. “I’m barely drunk. Why aren’t you home? Like you said, it’s two in the morning.”
“I—we—I get here early, anyway. It’s only a few hours until I’m back here. Why waste that time at home?”
“Well, then I feel the same way,” Jayce replies, tone clipped. Viktor has to bite down the retort at the tip of his tongue that wants to remind him that for the past couple or so months, Jayce has not been in the lab at all.
“How was the banquet?” Viktor settles on saying, changing the topic. Jayce leans back on his chair. “Good,” he replies simply, though his words carry none of the enthusiasm that Viktor expects. “Exhausting,” he adds after a moment, rubbing his eyes.
Viktor lets his head fall to the side, observing Jayce’s weariness. “Good and exhausting? Hmm. Seems contradictory,” he says with a light tone, though he makes sure to seep in a little bit of genuine interest. He didn’t particularly care for Piltover’s banquets or the mechanisms of its social politics—this Jayce knows without a doubt—but he was curious. “Who was in attendance?”
Jayce shrugs, gesturing vaguely. “The usual suspects. The Council. Representatives from Ionia and Noxus. Some merchants and investors from one of the major cities in Shurima. You know the kind.”
“The ones who want to talk about Hextech but really just want their share of the pie?” Viktor teases, the corner of his lip upturned. Jayce rolls his eyes, poking him with his pen.
“Yeah,” he says, leaning his head against the back of his chair and staring up at the ceiling. “I gave a speech. Walked around. Answered questions. Smiled too much.”
“Such heavy burdens.”
“Laugh it up. It was horrible. I think my cheeks still hurt.”
Viktor does laugh, his eyes fixed on Jayce as he speaks and trying to imagine the scene in his head. He pictures Jayce standing confidently beneath the glow of the chandelier lights, shaking hands and making connections with ease. “And… this speech? Did it go well?”
Jayce’s lips finally twitch into a smile. “I think so. They clapped. That’s usually a good sign, right?” He doesn’t wait for a response from Viktor before waving his hand dismissively. “But I don’t really want to talk about it,” he says. “I didn’t even want to go.”
The abrupt dismissal catches Viktor off guard, and for a moment he hesitates before responding. “You didn’t have to go if you didn’t want to,” he says carefully. “Surely the Council would not have demanded it.”
His partner looks at him then, exhaustion giving way to something sharper, more vulnerable. Viktor squirms under his gaze, feeling like he’s been flayed open at the snap of a finger. “I would have gone with you, you know?” Jayce says quietly. “To Zaun. To your home.” Viktor feels the weight of Jayce’s emotions settle on him like a tangible thing. Heavy. It’s not something he can just push away. “I only went to the banquet because you said no. Because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Viktor blinks, surprised by the raw honesty in Jayce’s words. He searches for a response in his brain, something that might untangle the knot of emotions forming between them, but nothing comes. For once, his mind fails him, leaving only a thread of tension that is unraveling faster than Viktor’s attempt to properly settle it.
Jayce leans forward, propping his elbows on the table and resting his chin on his hand. His voice softens, reluctant but steady. “If you really must know, the banquet was about opening new trade routes. The Hexgates will be used to reach the mountain regions of Ionia, connecting them from Ionia to Piltover and then to Shurima. ‘ Expanding commerce by making the world smaller ,’ they said. A merchant’s journey would normally take a month. With this, it would be cut down to at most a week,” he shrugs. “The Council pledged to support the cause. And then we all toasted to progress and innovation and everyone was happy.”
Viktor smiles, though not with joy. He crosses his arms. “Congratulations are in order, I suppose?”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“What else is left to say?”
Jayce’s hands fidget slightly, fingers weaving together as he speaks. “Well, the truth, I guess.” He hesitates, voice dropping to a whisper. “The whole time, my thoughts just keep… drifting back to you. I kept wondering if you were okay. If you were safe down there. If you were feeling… anything at all that you might want to share with me. And… well.”
“And what?”
“And if you were thinking about me too,” he exhales, hands falling sharply back to his sides as he leans back and looks at Viktor. “If you were down there thinking about me the same way I was thinking about you. About this. About—about us.”
Viktor feels a jolt of weakness course through his veins, initiating a landslide of emotions he worked so hard to bury beneath cold detachment. Not for the first time that night he wonders if he really died on the way back to the lab. Jayce’s admission scrambles his mind, which is already racing to find the right response. Every possibility seemed inadequate. Of course he was thinking about Jayce. Jayce has not left his mind since the day they met. The vulnerability of being seen so clearly, of having his own shameful thoughts and feelings mirrored back at him leaves him unsteady, cracking his composure. He reaches for his crutch and grips tightly at the handle.
Jayce spares him the indignity of having to respond by laughing, waving his hand around as if to physically clear the weight between them. “I didn’t mean to make this all… intense,” he says, attempting to lighten the mood. Viktor wants to tell him he’s failing, but he doesn’t know how well that response would be received. “It’s just, sometimes, you can’t help but let your mouth run faster than your brain, right?” His tone shifts, a little more casual. Viktor resists the urge to shake him by the shoulders.
“I had the chance to talk to Mel,” Jayce continues, oblivious to Viktor’s internal plight. “It was nice. We’ve barely had the time to catch up these past few weeks—between the banquet preparations and all the other Council stuff, and then, well, this,” he gestures to their notes, “it’s been… a lot.”
Viktor listens, his fingers unconsciously tapping a rhythm against the metal of his crutch, though his mind is still tangled in Jayce’s earlier outburst. The tension feels too much like a thread pulled tightly, and Viktor doesn't know if he should move to sever it or leave it be. His thoughts churn in silence as Jayce continues to talk about the evening, and for a moment he thinks he might find his footing again. But then there’d be something in Jayce’s voice—a trace of something with the possibility to be so profound and life-changing—that would bring him back to the verge of a drop again. He didn’t feel ready to respond. Didn’t know how to, if he was being honest.
“Was there dancing?” Viktor finds himself asking out of nowhere, the question slipping from his mouth before he could stop himself. It’s a stupid question. Jayce wordlessly informs him so by the bemused look on his face.
“Well, yeah, there was.”
“Did you… dance?” Viktor continues to ask, committing himself to the bit he landed in. The confused look on Jayce’s face does not leave.
“I didn’t get the chance to,” he finally replies, resuming his writing. “I spent most of the night beside Mel.”
Viktor’s breath catches in his throat, a strange, almost burning sensation settling where his heart is. Jealousy. An inane emotion. Entirely unreasonable. Over the years he has forbidden himself from indulging in jealousy. If love was irrational then more so is this. It’s ugly, nasty, and tastes like rust in his mouth.
And yet here it is, he thinks, raw and heavy and unsettling. The image of Jayce and Mel, standing together, talking quietly while the others danced around them, form an uninvited picture in Viktor’s mind. Jayce, so effortlessly charming, so effortlessly at ease, while Viktor remained in the shadows, watching from afar.
He hated the feeling, but it lingered anyway, the perimeter of the pain spreading further the longer he thought about it. Oh, and he thought about it hard. What had Mel said to him? How captivated was Jayce by her presence? To an extent where he did not even think about dancing with anyone else? It wasn’t like their relationship was news to Viktor. He’s fully aware of the steps that Jayce and Mel have been dancing through for years. Their ‘will they, won’t they’ push and pull that Viktor has been a witness to ever since his first collapse at the lab. But the thoughts chewed at Viktor anyway, eating at him in a way he can’t just ignore.
“And how is Mel?” Viktor asks instead, digging the nails of his left hand into its palm.
Jayce hums, staring up at Viktor and rubbing his temple with his fingers. “Fine, I guess. But there’s been a lot on her plate. There’s a disagreement in the Council. Shoola, Cassandra, and Salo are all at odds about how to handle the unrest in the undercity. Jinx and Silco remain a problem. Jinx, especially. The explosion at the pier last week was her work. Mel’s caught in the middle. She doesn’t want the violence to escalate—she’s at least clear about that—but at the same time, she knows that Piltover can’t just turn the other way to what’s happening. There’s too much tension. Too many people taking advantage of the situation to spark something dangerous.”
Viktor nods slowly, though his jaw tightens. “And what does she think should be done?”
“She’s unsure,” Jayce admits. “She’s… trying. Trying to find a solution that doesn’t involve unnecessary force but still gives Piltover some way to protect itself if things get worse. Trying to make sure that the councilors don’t kill each other in the process. There’s a lot of distrust right now, and… I personally have not enjoyed it. Honestly, the mere thought of her exhaustion exhausts me too.”
Viktor’s gaze sharpens. “Well, if she’s looking to you for advice then it would serve you well to remember that Hextech won’t be used to manufacture weapons.”
Jayce sighs, shaking his head. “No, no, I—I get it. I know. And I agree with you, V, you know that. I won’t let it come to that. But you also have to know that it’s not just about weapons. People are scared, and scared people want assurances. They need to know that the Council is doing everything it can to protect them.”
Viktor scoffs, rolling his eyes. He moves to stand, but Jayce’s hand on his knee prevents him. “The Council thinks that showing strength is the only way to keep the peace,” Jayce tells him.
“That ‘strength’ you speak of risks putting innocent lives in danger,” Viktor counters, his voice firm but not raised. “Not to mention the fact that the undercity—I mean, Jayce, come on. It’s not just the people of Piltover that need protection. There are thousands of people down there who are also caught in the crossfire. Workers, families, children. You must know, deep in your heart, that arming enforcers would only disproportionately affect my people.”
“I know. God, Viktor, of course I know.”
“I’ve already tolerated the fact that you’ve designed and built weapons,” Viktor says, eyes flitting towards the hammer resting innocuously at the back of the room. “For purposes of theory, you told me once. If Hextech becomes the backbone of offense, both our cities would suffer, but it will be Zaun who would bear that weight by a long difference.”
Jayce looks up at him with an expression that borders on guilt. His hand, still resting on Viktor’s knee, squeezes. “You’re right. And I promise you, I’m thinking about other options. So is Mel. But this… it’s all so complicated, Viktor. I hear you. I’ll keep pushing for solutions that won’t compromise what we’ve built.”
Viktor eases slightly, and then he nods. “That’s good enough for me, Jayce.”
“You know, Mel actually asked about you,” Jayce says after a while. “She wanted to know how you were doing and why you didn’t attend. She was sure that the Hexgates being used to make travel easier was a topic that interested you.”
Not as much as our work being used to benefit people who are much nearer, the voice in his head says. Viktor merely offers a dry smirk. “Councilor Medarda? Asking about me? I did not know that she cared about me like that.”
Jayce just stares at him, Viktor’s joke completely flying over his head and landing so far it doesn’t even register. “Why?”
“What?”
“Why does that surprise you?”
“I don’t get it.”
“Is it really so hard to believe that other people care about you, Viktor?”
Viktor’s smirk falters, heart skipping a beat at the sincerity in Jayce’s tone. The question makes him pause. “I don’t know,” he replies. Viktor has always recoiled at the idea of being truly cared for. People’s attempts at sincerity often rolled off his body like water. It’s a smaller part of why he kept Sky and her affection at an arm’s length when they were younger. The idea of being understood. It’s daunting. But here Jayce sits—unwavering, insistent Jayce, always seeing that part of him, no matter how hard Viktor tries to keep it hidden.
“I don’t spend much time considering it,” he finally says. He looks away as he speaks, fixing his gaze on the pulsing of the Hexcore in the corner. The swirling patterns of light mirror the turmoil inside him, and Viktor is once again painfully reminded of how little time he has left. “The idea of being cared for… is a luxury I rarely indulge in. And I have been too focused on greater things my whole life to even take notice.”
He doesn’t see Jayce frown, but he knows him so well that he can already picture it on his face. “Well, you shouldn’t have to notice it. It just happens. You matter to people. To me.”
Viktor’s fingers twitch as he resists the urge to rebut. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Jayce; it was more like he didn’t know how to accept what he was saying. All his life has been a series of solitary pursuits, of fights fought in silence and dreams realized with sacrifices that were too heavy to set aside. His walls were built not because he wanted to keep others out, but because he wasn’t sure how to let them in. He can count on one hand the number of people he has been vulnerable to over the years, with the numbers steadily dwindling the older he grew and the more closed off to the world he got.
Jayce, seemingly sensing Viktor’s spiral, lifts the hand that was holding Viktor’s knee and places it on top of Viktor’s own hand resting on the table. “I mean it,” he says. “I care about you. Even if you don’t always see it. And if you ever need proof… well, I think tonight’s a pretty good example.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Perhaps,” he says, a small, sad smile on his lips. In a fit of boldness, he tangles his fingers with Jayce, ignoring the pause in the other man’s breathing as he does so. “But you’re an unusually persistent man, Jayce. Not everyone is so… determined.”
Jayce laughs, shaky. He does not pull his hand away from Viktor’s. “Someone has to do the job.”
“You haven’t been, lately,” Viktor replies. “Not much.”
His hand lingers over the back of Jayce's, fingers weaving together. His touch is hesitant, testing the boundary of their connection and how far he could push before the moment snaps. He doesn’t look at Jayce, fixing his eyes instead on the dim glow of the lamp casting soft shadows across the room. Jayce’s skin is warm beneath his fingers. The lab, for all its vastness, feels impossibly small at that moment. All space and time has narrowed down to the faint pressure of skin against skin.
“You haven’t been around,” Viktor says again, each word deliberately measured. “It’s gotten very lonely, without you.”
“I know,” Jayce replies. Viktor finally turns to look at him, tilting his head and watching as Jayce runs his fingers through his hair. “I know. I’m sorry. I never meant for it to be like this,” he sighs. “It’s just… I feel like I’m being pulled in so many directions. Everyone expects me to be something. Councilor, inventor, a figurehead for peace and progress. It’s exhausting. I try to be all of those things and I still feel like I’m not doing any of them right.”
Viktor’s fingers curl slightly, his grip on Jayce tightening just enough to let him know he hears him. “You don’t have to apologize,” he says after a long pause, tone tinged with a bittersweet edge. “I understand.”
The lie falls easily, but the aftertaste settles like stones in his gut. He didn’t understand. Not really, and not in the way that Jayce needs to hear. Deep inside, in the corners of his mind where his worst thoughts linger, Viktor aches with words he couldn’t bring himself to say. He wants to hold Jayce’s face between his palms and tell him that it wasn’t okay, and nothing was ever enough. He wants to tell him that this is the first time in a long time that the lab didn’t feel so lifeless. Viktor wants to tell Jayce that the longer he stays away, the more he feels like he is being unraveled.
You don’t have to perform anymore, Jayce, his traitorous voice whispers. None of it matters as much as this. As our work. As us. Piltover could wait. The rest of the world could fall tomorrow. Every expectation and obligation could fall to ashes now and it won’t matter as long as you choose to stay here, with me.
He doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he swallows his words and locks them away where they couldn’t escape. Viktor presses his lips into a thin line, hoping the displeasure does not show on his face. He’s almost proud of how steady his voice is when he finally speaks. “You’re doing your best, Jayce. I suppose that’s all anyone can ask of you.”
Jayce holds his gaze then, searching. For a moment, Viktor is afraid that Jayce might see right through him anyway and notice the quiet plea buried beneath his calm exterior. But if he does, he doesn’t show it. He gives Viktor a faint, tired smile, his thumb still brushing comforting circles over Viktor’s knuckles.
“I just don’t want to let anyone down,” he opens, quiet and unsure. A phantom hand grips Viktor by the heart.
“You’re trying,” Viktor replies, and it was the only truth he could give without betraying either of them. “That’s what matters.” Another enormous falsity; Viktor cared very little for Piltover or for the Council or all the other expectations that had been thrust upon Jayce. His partner never needed to play all those roles. In the end, Viktor only wanted him to play one: the one that stayed by his side.
But this, holding Jayce’s hand and consoling him, sharing the rare moment of togetherness; Viktor convinces himself that this would have to be enough for now.
A moment passes. And then another. Viktor clears his throat, coughs, then disentangles his fingers from Jayce’s. He tries not to miss their warm weight against his, and he just stares as Jayce shakes his head as if snapping himself out of the moment.
“We should probably get to work,” Viktor says after a while, pushing himself off the table to sit on his chair. “It’s close to four in the morning. Who knows when you’ll get called for the Council again.”
Jayce hesitates, lips parting as though he wants to say something. No sound emerges, however. His hand hovers for a moment, caught between reaching out again and retreating. Viktor doesn’t give him the chance, afraid that he’s been vulnerable enough for one day. He turns away sharply, movements brisk and precise as he grabs his notes, skimming the equations and diagrams that covered the pages in tightly packed scrawls.
Viktor forces his mind to focus on the work, the familiarity of it anchoring him as the numbers find their footing. He ignores the way his and Jayce’s handwritings are blended together on the page. He ignores even harder the pleased feeling he gets when he can no longer tell where Jayce’s ends and where his begins.
Focus, his mind says. The runes weren’t quite right yet. If they could just refine the pattern, then perhaps the Hexcore would finally stabilize. He reads over the annotations he made the day before. Their results, so far, had been wildly inconsistent, the magic reacting unpredictably with the plant material. Or perhaps it’s actually predictable now, watching the delicate stems bloom to life and then shrivel up within seconds, reduced to ash. Viktor couldn’t shake the sense that they were missing something fundamental.
He groans and throws his head back in frustration, staring up at the looming ceiling. It’s both literal and metaphorical. They were close to a breakthrough. He can feel it in the restless hum of his thoughts, the relentless pull of magic. And yet, at the same time, it was as if they were trapped in an invisible cage, their progress constrained by the limits of the Hexcore itself. Could it really be holding the key to everything Viktor envisioned? Or was it destined to fail, over and over again until it hammers down the point.
His pen scratches against the paper as he jots down another series of runes. Viktor is so consumed with his thoughts that he doesn’t hear Jayce calling his name. It wasn’t until the third attempt—his name spoken louder, more insistent—that he finally looks up, startled.
“Yes?” He asks, distracted. Jayce is standing just a few feet away, arms crossed loosely over his chest, his expression a mix of hesitance and something Viktor can’t quite place.
“Have you ever danced in your life?”
Viktor blinks, momentarily stunned into silence. Of all the things Jayce could have said, this was the last thing he expected. “What?” He manages, no other word in his mind.
Jayce doesn’t answer him immediately. Instead, he uncrosses his arms and steps closer. Viktor’s mind races, the incongruity of the moment throwing him off balance. Jayce was serious—or at least, he wasn’t joking in the way Viktor expects him to be.
“Dancing?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Why aren’t you answering the question?”
Viktor exhales, running his hands through his face. “You are out of your mind. You should go home. I should probably go home.”
“It’s a simple question.”
“When I was a child, sure,” Viktor replies, recounting childhood memories of dancing in the kitchen with his mother.
Jayce’s face lights up a little, a smile spreading across his lips. “Perfect,” he says, oddly earnest. “Then you already know the basics. Come on. Dance with me.”
Viktor blinks, incredulous. “Have you lost your mind, Talis?”
“I’m serious,” Jayce replies, stepping closer and offering his hand to Viktor. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
Viktor lets out a sharp, exasperated breath. He waves his hand towards their table, their incomprehensible notes and the work they still have left to do. “We have things to finish, in case you have forgotten. We’re on the verge of something, Jayce—at the very least, we are possibly going to hit a wall we can’t climb over. And you want to dance?”
Jayce just shrugs, utterly unbothered. Viktor wants to hit him in the face. “The work will still be here later, waiting for us.”
Viktor scoffs, irritation breaking through before he could help himself. “And will you be here later?” He snaps, the words slipping out. The way Jayce frowns almost makes him feel guilty.
The moment grows heavy again, the bravado in Jayce fading slightly. But like the optimist he frustratingly is, he just shakes his head without anger and holds his hand out even further to Viktor. “Just one dance, please.”
For a moment, Viktor could only stare, gripping his crutch steadily as though it could ground him in this absurd, surreal moment. There was something in Jayce’s eyes—an insistent plea for something, anything from Viktor that he can’t ignore. Against his better judgment—and to the delight of the small part inside of him that has always imagined what it’s like to pull Jayce close—he nods, though he mutters under his breath the entire time as he stands.
“This is ridiculous. Utterly stupid,” he grumbles as Jayce pulls his body towards him. “I don’t even know how I’d manage it with this,” he says, gesturing to his crutch and his brace, his voice sharp with a pressing self-consciousness.
Jayce shakes his head, expression softening. “I’ll hold you,” he says, simply, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I won’t let you fall.”
Too late, Viktor wants to say. He glares at Jayce, sure that his cheeks are flushing faintly. “Jayce, I don’t really know how to dance. At least, not properly.”
“I’m not asking for a proper dance. We’ll just sway,” Jayce assures him. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
Then, in one last effort to deter him, “we don’t even have any music.”
Jayce's smile returns in full, wide and unrelenting. Viktor gets another urge to hit him and then kiss it better. “We’ll pretend there is. We’ll find a beat together.”
Viktor just sighs, all the protest leaving his body. “Jayce. You are the most insufferable man in the city.”
“You have told me that dozens of times. I have not believed you once,” he laughs, pulling Viktor flush against him. Jayce steadies him, slipping an arm around his waist, careful and gentle as if Viktor were something so unbelievably fragile. Viktor grumbles a few choice words for Jayce, but the man is already beginning to sway them together, leading him into a slow, rhythmic movement. Viktor allows himself to relax, to make himself easier for Jayce to hold.
They sway beneath the light of the lab, the quiet only broken by Jayce’s soft humming; a nameless tune that carries them both across the floor in tiny steps. Viktor, his weight partially leaning on the crutch but mostly on Jayce, finds himself resting slightly against Jayce’s chest, just below his chin. It was absurd, all of it, but the absurdity only makes Viktor laugh under his breath, a rare sound in the otherwise somber confines of the lab.
Jayce turns them slightly, a movement more confident that it had any right to be, and Viktor’s brace-clad leg stumbles. He laughs despite it. “Slow down, you brute,” he mutters, though his voice lacks any real bite. Jayce laughs in response, but he tightens his grip more around Viktor’s waist, finding the proper rhythm again. Viktor tries not to think too much about their proximity; the warmth radiating from Jayce, how solid he feels beneath Viktor’s touch. But it was hard not to notice, and it’s even harder not to feel the rush of emotions in his body—dangerous, exhilarating, and wholly unwelcome.
Viktor lets Jayce sway them for a while. Then he tilts his head back to look up at Jayce. The remark on his lip fades, replaced by a quiet thoughtfulness as he takes in the way Jayce’s eyes are half-lidded, focused entirely on him. He takes in their closeness—startling, as if they were a single person moving in unison. The thought makes Viktor’s chest ache with longing.
“What is this?” Viktor finally asks. Jayce’s humming stops.
“It’s nothing,” Jayce replies, and Viktor can tell the words are empty, as if Jayce himself didn’t believe what he was saying.
“What are we doing, Jayce? Don’t lie to me. Whatever it is you’re thinking—whatever it is that’s making you act like this, tell me. I’ll help.”
Jayce merely grips Viktor’s waist tightly in lieu of answering. He steps back slightly, creating a space between them that feels colder than it should have. His gaze shifts, looking past Viktor to stare at the pulsing of the Hexcore. “Jayce,” Viktor presses, lifting his hand to hold Jayce’s face. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s just words,” Viktor urges. “When have you ever kept secrets from me?”
Jayce shakes his head, offering Viktor a weary smile. “When they involve you.”
Viktor’s heart almost gives up on him. His breath hitches. “So it’s me?”
“When is it not you? It’s always—God, Viktor. It’s always you.”
“Then tell me,” Viktor insists. “How can I help you if you won’t tell me?”
“Do you really want to know?” Jayce asks, voice restrained, muted. Something inside Viktor breaks a little more. “You’re my problem, V. I’ve never been this afraid in my life.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid of failing,” Jayce confesses, voice cracking as he speaks. “I’m afraid of running out of time before we find the answers we’re looking for. And then I think about us figuring the Hexcore out, but then it’d already be too late. You’ll,” Jayce swallows, exhaling shakily. Viktor can almost feel his pain pierce through his bones. “And you’ll be gone. What would I even do then?”
The words hit Viktor like Jayce’s hammer, but he stays silent, allowing his partner to speak his mind.”
“I feel like I’m always running out of time, V,” he whispers, nuzzling Viktor’s hair. They both inhale sharply. “Every second we spend chasing this feels like sand slipping through my fingers. And I’m terrified, because if we fail—if we—if I don’t find the answer in time then…”
Viktor pulls his head back further, searching Jayce’s face. For what, he doesn’t know. At least something that would put the situation under control again. Viktor feels like he’s drowning in a sea of static, every thought and decision he has ever made in his life that led him to this moment crashing down on him like waves. His heart feels like it’s on a noose, slowly tightening itself and robbing him of air. The world outside the space he shares with Jayce blurs around him, but every detail, at the same time, feels too sharp and too prickly. It’s too much and too little at the same time. Viktor feels like a spectator in the moment, watching himself watching Jayce and watching the moment unfold, like he no longer knows where anything is going.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Viktor finally asks, desperate. “Why didn’t—I was only waiting—why didn’t you tell me, Jayce? Why didn’t you come to me for help? For consolation? Jayce, anything.”
Jayce swallows hard, his gaze dropping to the floor as if in shame. When he finally lifts his head his eyes are sad, filled with guilt and helplessness. “Because I don’t want to be a burden to you. I didn’t want to remind you that your days are—that they’re numbered.”
“Jayce, I have always been running out of time. Death has chased me my whole life. There is nothing in this world that I am more aware of than my own mortality.”
“Okay, then it’s more for me, I guess,” he replies calmly. “I can’t even look at you sometimes. When I do, all I see is what I stand to lose. And I can’t—I don’t want to lose you, Viktor,” he says, shaking his head as if it would dispel the thought. “I don’t know if I’ll survive it.”
Viktor’s breath snags between his ribs, refusing to part with his body. He doesn’t know what to say or how to even respond. Jayce’s words hang in between them, a fragile bridge of truth that could either bring them closer or shatter them both completely. It’s all too overwhelming. It’s the kind of honesty that Viktor had never dared to hope for. That he never actually wanted to hear.
The room feels impossibly smaller. Jayce continues to shuffle them across the floor—as if he hadn’t just revealed something so earth-shattering.
“Jayce,” Viktor tries to whisper. Jayce just pulls him closer, shushing him. “Not yet,” he tells Viktor. “Not yet. Let me have this.”
They keep swaying, only in the silence now that Jayce has stopped his humming. Viktor lets his mind wander elsewhere. Somewhere further, more impossible. In his mind, they weren’t in the cold, cluttered lab with its sterile machines and desperate equations. Instead, he and Jayce are standing beneath the glow of a million stars, at some grand balcony, undefinable in their closeness. He pictures himself standing taller, unburdened by his crutch and his leg, his body free of the weight of illness and his impending death. In this imagined world, Jayce pulls him into a dance without hesitation. He closes his eyes tighter and lets his imagination run free—Jayce smiling at him, eyes a warm brown and filled with so much love it would choke Viktor, looking at him as though Viktor is the only person in the room.
No urgency. No fear of time running out. No waiting to see what would disappear when the clock strikes midnight.
Viktor wonders if Jayce would have danced with him at the banquet. If Jayce would have held him close in front of everyone. Viktor allows himself to be selfish, imagining what it’s like to live a life where they weren’t tangled in unspoken truths. A life where his body didn’t betray him, and he could be with Jayce without the looming shadow of everything that could go wrong. A life where everything is perfect, and beautiful, and nothing hurts.
It’s a fragile fantasy. It splinters into a thousand pieces at his feet the moment he opens his eyes. The truth is simply that, maybe, this is all that Jayce could give him. One night of holding him steady in a world that offered neither perfection nor permanence.
“You make me feel like I’m standing in the middle of a wreck,” Jayce begins without prompting. His voice trembles. Viktor doesn’t look up. Doesn’t dare meet Jayce’s eyes. “All my life I’ve been told how good I am with my hands. The Talis legacy. I could fix everything. And yet none of it means anything if I can’t find a way to keep you with me.”
Viktor’s hold on Jayce stalls for a moment. “What if you can’t, Jayce?” he asks, confronting Jayce with the reality that, possibly, all he has left to offer is never going to be enough for the other. “What if the best thing we can do now is to let me go?”
“Don’t—don’t say that. Don’t ask that of me,” Jayce says, voice thick with emotion. He stills. “You can ask me for anything, but not this. Never this, V.”
Viktor swallows against the lump forming in his throat. “Jayce,” he says carefully. “I don’t want you to have any regrets.”
“My biggest regret would be if I could have done something and I didn’t. Viktor, I wouldn’t give up on saving your life for anything, not even for you.”
His words carve themselves into Viktor’s chest like a brand. Viktor’s knees feel weak beneath him, his trembling fingers pressing against the fabric of Jayce’s shirt the only thing keeping him upright. He tries to summon the strength to steady himself, to push back against the enormity of Jayce’s resolve, but all Viktor could manage is a soft, brittle reply. “You’ve done enough,” he murmurs, barely holding it together. “You have defended our research from the professor. Jayce, you have gone so far as to have him removed from the Council. You bought me time, Jayce. Time I didn’t have until you came along.”
Jayce shakes his head violently, refusing Viktor’s words. “It’s not enough,” he says, his voice rough with an anguish that feels like a blade cutting straight through Viktor’s heart. “You and I both know it’s not enough. Not yet.”
The silence that follows his words is suffocating, stealing whatever breath is left in Viktor’s lungs. Viktor’s eyes eventually drift downward, to the gleaming metal of his brace. He shakes his head. “You scare me, sometimes,” he reveals to Jayce, words gliding from his tongue like an oil slick. “All these things you say. You terrify me.”
Jayce’s grip shifts, unimaginably tender despite its urgency. In the need to hold Viktor closer, as if all will be okay if Jayce just keeps him between his arms. It’s a farce Viktor himself wants to believe.
“What is fear,” Jayce says, his voice faint and aching, “if not the spark that drives love forward?”
It all strikes Viktor like a chord played too loudly, resonating in a place inside him that ached and longed to have Jayce for himself. The words linger; painful, vulnerable, unrelenting, hacking at him in a way that threatens to destroy Viktor’s shaky acceptance that all that would ever be between him and Jayce was a partnership of colleagues. He tries to smother the unwanted feeling—a shaky laugh in a futile attempt to to deflect such unbearable intimacy. It’s an attempt that dies pathetically, fizzling into nothing beneath the strain of emotions he can no longer contain.
“You don’t mean that,” Viktor insists, his voice paper thin and uneven. “You’ve had drinks, and it’s late, and you don’t mean that.”
It’s all drivel. The words are more for himself than for Jayce. Silly little attempts at anchoring himself against the tide of something he’s not sure he could survive.
“If that’s what you want to believe,” Jayce replies easily, as if he had anticipated this refusal from Viktor. Not for the first time, he envies Jayce’s ability to navigate his emotions like he’s just wading through shallow waters.
Choice words tumble out of Viktor with a force that startles even himself, harsh and rapid, each syllable lined with barbed anguish. “You are stupid,” he says, slipping into the Old Zaunite tongue, a language as rough and jagged as the emotions clawing their way out of his throat, his teeth, his lips. The language of his childhood, one Jayce has never heard from him. It was what his father used when he told his wife he loved her. It was the language of the old legends of Zaun before everything was taken from it. A language his mother barely spoke, and one that is likely to die with Viktor. He buries his head against Jayce’s chest, voice trembling with fury and grief.
“ You are stupid, and you are selfish, and I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” Viktor yells, hands trembling as they fist through Jayce’s clothes.
The man stiffens, arms half-raised in an instinctive attempt to push Viktor away, but they remain hovering in the air, unsure. “Viktor,” Jayce says, voice tinged with alarm. “I don’t understand. Please, just—what—what are you saying?”
Viktor’s chest heaves against him, words spilling even faster, indecipherable now even to him. “And you’re a horrible person,” he continues in the old tongue, voice rising in anger. “You say things you don’t mean, and you make me believe that you love me and we’ll make it. But I won’t. And you don’t. I know you don’t. If there is one truth here it’s that you don’t mean this.”
Jayce’s face twitches at the tone, even if the words are incomprehensible to him. Viktor hates them both so much. Jayce tries to console him, hands finally settling on Viktor’s shaking shoulders. “Viktor. Talk to me, please. What are you saying?”
Viktor pulls back slightly, staring Jayce directly in the eyes as he says his piece. “I love you,” he speaks, trembling as his lips struggle to form the words. “Is that what you want to hear, Jayce? I love you, and I am afraid of dying because I don’t want to leave you behind. I don’t want to be your ghost. I want to stand beside you, and hold you, and be with you until everything else falls apart. But I can’t Jayce, I can’t. My body is giving up on me. I’m running out of time. We can’t solve the Hexcore and it’s—” he chokes, raising his hand to wipe at his cheeks. He takes back his crutch from Jayce’s hand, pulling away from him and keeping his distance. “Jayce, I can’t be with you. You are not mine.”
The silence between them is almost deafening after Viktor’s torrent of words. He’s gone quiet now, his chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven breaths. Neither of them move. Neither of them speak.
And then, without warning, Jayce pulls him close again.
Viktor stiffens at first, unsure of what to do or how to respond. The embrace wasn’t forceful; it was steady, grounding. He lets his body relax, leaning into Jayce’s solid frame as though it was the only thing tethering him to the earth. He closes his eyes and lets the rhythm of Jayce’s heart fill the ensuing silence.
The storm inside him calms, though it doesn’t disappear entirely. The tears drying on his cheeks suddenly feel tacky, and he senses the initial stirrings of embarrassment brewing in his gut. But for a moment, he just lets himself be held—lets himself forget the pinpricks of his own thoughts and the relentless ticking of time in his veins. Jayce’s touch is a strange comfort, and it unnerves him once again, how much he wants to cling to it.
“When I go,” he eventually finds himself saying, his voice barely audible. “I hope it feels as weightless as the night we flew.”
He doesn’t need to explain which night he meant. Viktor knows that Jayce knows, the memory vivid in both their minds as if it just happened moments ago: the crystal stabilizing after a brief explosion and the blinding flash of light, the sudden rush of air—the impossible exhilaration of the universe suddenly expanding in such a small room, all so suddenly vast and full of possibility. He could still imagine Jayce’s face in perfect recall, the unrestrained laughter and the look on his face that says ‘we did it, this is ours.’
Jayce doesn’t say anything, recognizing when to let it be. His hand remains on Viktor’s shoulder. Viktor, too, lets it be.
Later, they will drift apart, as if by some unspoken agreement, each returning to their respective sides of the table where their notes would be waiting for them. The silence between them will not be the easy kind born of understanding, but neither will it weigh them down with tension. Later, Jayce will murmur a quiet goodnight, his voice catching just slightly as he steps towards the door, only to linger there, one hand resting on the frame as though waiting for Viktor, who would not turn his head. He won’t call Jayce back, and Jayce will leave. Later, Viktor will gather his own things and head home, and he will sleep with the night’s events replaying in his mind like a broken record—a dream slipping through his memory. It will be different every time he returns to it. The ache in his chest will settle into something duller; no less persistent, but it would get him through to the next morning.
And then, much further into the morning, Viktor will return to an empty lab, and he will try to act surprised as he busies himself with the work. Jayce will, miles away and with a radiant smile, bid farewell to the representatives from Ionia. His laughter will echo in hallways that Viktor would never walk through.
Viktor will be alone, just like he predicted—and he will be the day after that, and the one after that, and then the one after that. He will keep to his quiet corner of the lab, as he always has, and Jayce will be everywhere and nowhere at once.
Neither of them will speak of this night—of the way their bodies had fit together like two perfect puzzle pieces, as if they themselves had carved the path that will lead them to each other. They will bury it beneath unspoken words and stolen glances, a tacit agreement that they would let it all rest in a fragile, sacred silence. They would come together, and then they would drift apart again, like two ships passing in the night. Jayce will be Jayce, and Viktor will be Viktor, and all things will be as they always will be. They will not speak of it for a long, long time.
But for now—just for now—the sun remains tucked beneath the horizon, and the world is still covered in the dark, fleeting peace. For now, Jayce’s arms are heavy around Viktor’s frame, and Viktor, for all his brittle pride and stubborn resolve, allows himself to be weak. He leans into the warmth of Jayce—his wonderful, impossible, beautiful man.
Then he breathes, and lets it go.