Chapter Text
It's a quiet night. Viktor sighs and pushes back from the desk, papers from the day already shoved to the side in untidy stacks. The end of another long week filled with administrative duties and poring over the university's libraries for... inspiration. Though he'd been able to improve the air filtration systems of the Kiramann pump stations, and the water purifiers along the Entresol level in the Undercity, he knows there's still so much more he could do—with the resources at his fingertips, there's no excuse for a moment's lapse in invention or progress.
And therein lies the issue; Viktor doesn't know where to start.
Should he develop a proper waste removal system for the Sump? Focusing on clearing the lower levels of toxic waste would improve conditions for everyone living there as well as the upper levels, but would take years of building new infrastructure whole-cloth; something he would need permit after permit for, and collaboration with expensive Piltover companies who would never freely deign to waste their time on the Undercity.
Then there's the issue of its residents—unsurprisingly, they've never reacted well to sudden insurgences of Pilties breaching their territory with blueprints of mysterious new buildings. Attempting to use his Piltover resources in any major, intrusive way on the Undercity, especially in its lower layers, has never gone well. Not only does every one of his projects down there become Council-mandated to be supervised by Enforcers which inevitably draw suspicion, but any accident or theft or interference by residents is met with immediate, brutal backlash—and there is always a body count when Enforcers are involved.
The people of Piltover, especially its rich citizens and particularly the Council, have no idea what the Undercity is like. To them, it's a cesspit of criminals and toxic waste. Their very own sewer. Even Heimerdinger has little understanding that the levels beneath the city are filled with people, innocent people, ravaged by poverty and pollution and doomed to struggle for a short, painful existence before dying in the dark for Piltover's benefit. Viktor wishes, not for the first time, that anyone up here understood it like he did. That any of them cared enough to want to.
Viktor's last attempt at a large-scale project had been a relatively humble water purification station at the border of the Sump and Entresol levels. Despite his attempts to impress upon Heimerdinger the need for discretion and distinct lack of need for obvious Enforcer presence, the Council had ended up sending nearly a hundred of them—for the construction of a building barely larger than a two-story house. Three deaths of Undercity residents had been recorded following an alleged attempted theft early into the project. Viktor knows those were only the deaths for which the Enforcers had bothered to process the paperwork—he doesn't know how many more innocent people died because of him.
Despite his origins, despite his intent, despite finally having the resources and position to do what he's always wanted, Viktor's attempts to improve the lives of those he left behind will always be mitigated through bureaucratic Piltover bullshit. He could always try to do things himself, on smaller scales, maybe work with locals somehow—but people and networking have never been his strong suits. Even if they're trying to be discreet he can feel the judgement in the eyes that fall on him, like weights on his skin. Whether it's polite pity or obvious contempt at his cane and Undercity origins from Pilties it all feels the same. Intrusive. Vile. Like the sudden grip of a stranger in the street about to shove him out of their way.
He has attempted in the past to reach out to local leaders in the Undercity, few as they are. He had expected, perhaps naively, to be received slightly better than Piltover delegates. Viktor had then been rudely reminded that despite his Undercity past that Upper City citizens seem to be able to smell on him like rot, his research, his funding, his clothes—even the paper on which he sent out letters—is all Piltover. More often than not, any responses he received went along the lines of accusing him of abandoning his roots, his people. In a way, they were right. He had left them behind for the clean air and water and Academy of the city whose relentless pursuit of progress filled the fissures with poverty and toxic pollutants. The very same that leeched into his own body as an unborn child.
He can’t disagree with them. Not entirely.
Not only do crowds and new faces fill him with at best tired dread and at worst, a bone-deep panic, but he has a marked disinterest in interacting too directly with other people; one he learned from a young age to mirror from those around him. Even in the Undercity, where disability and physical differences were common, weakness was still that. Weakness. Down there, as up here, you can't afford to be weak, or friends with those who are. He couldn't prove himself physically useful in the ways that people with expensive augments or prosthetics could. So he'd had to make do with learning, quietly, privately, moving through the world alone at his own pace. Never would he ask others to slow theirs for him. No one down there, or up here, would have said yes. Viktor educated himself and fed his intellect with all he could until he finally made it to Piltover and eventually caught Heimerdinger's eye.
And now, here he is. More powerful than he's been in his life—and more useless than ever before. He has access to food, money, supplies, clean air and water, all while people just like him are starving and choking and dying beneath his feet.
What can he do? What should he focus on? Who should he help first? Who can he help first?
Viktor leans back in his chair and rubs at the pinch between his brows. This line of questioning has become all too common recently. If he could only find something new, something big, something somehow beyond the control of the Council that could actually change things, then—
There's a sound behind him that cracks against his skull, and the room floods with blinding light.
He startles, hand going instinctively to his cane as he rises abruptly and turns towards the source of what sounded like the very air splitting apart, like a glass ball cracking under pressure and the string of some metal instrument being plucked and a droning, humming vibration beneath it all that sets his teeth on edge.
He stares.
A crackling sphere of opalescent, arcing light, its edges almost organic as they splinter like veins from a bruise to leap from its centre and spark along the walls and floor, begins to grow and pulse in the centre of the room. The papers on the desk behind him and taped to the chalkboard flutter in the breeze that builds around the sphere, until it grows strong enough that Viktor has to brace against the desk and raise an arm to protect himself from the books and tools that begin to fly around the room in a whirlwind. The sound grows in intensity—but oddly, he notes, some part of his mind dedicated to quietly cataloguing every detail while the rest of him watches in fear and awe and fascination—not volume. The very air vibrates, the humming and crackling reverberating through the walls and the metal of his cane, but his ears don't hurt.
And then something large—someone large—tumbles through the centre of the sphere and collapses in a heap on the floor, and it all stops. The wind, the light, the crackling orb, all ends suddenly, collapsing in on themselves like they were never there at all.
Viktor's ears ring in the silence that follows, teeth still vibrating with aftershocks, but he's distracted by the broad man kneeling in the middle of Heimerdinger's lab. His head is bowed, large hands white-knuckling the handle of a—a what, a huge... hammer? Weapon? A massive blocky thing of gleaming metal and blue crystal that he grips like a lifeline with its heavy head resting on the floor between his knees. His hair is dark, long, messy. His clothes, drawn tight across his muscular frame, may have once been ostentatious—but are now, like the rest of the man, filthy and ragged. The man is breathing heavily, shoulders shaking with deep, shuddering gasps. His grip on the tool slips for a moment before he loosens it, shifting his hands back up its handle to white-knuckle there once more.
Viktor risks moving, slowly straightening from his defensive posture against the desk. He does so quietly, hoping not to startle the huge stranger who just teleported into the Dean’s office, but he must make some kind of noise as he stands—because the man looks up with all the sharp fear of a cornered beast.
Even as the handle of his weapon cuts the man’s face in two from this angle, Viktor can see how painfully expressive it is. An entangled mess of shock, denial, and anguish rush across his expression as he locks gazes with Viktor, eyes widening and lips quivering and, for a moment, Viktor could swear he sees the glimmer of tears begin to well.
“Viktor?” the man chokes out after a few long moments, like the name takes up all the air in his lungs just to say. His voice is rough, deep. Agonised. The way his mouth curls around Viktor’s name sparks with familiarity—but he doesn’t recognise him.
A thousand questions spring to Viktor’s tongue. What was that sphere? Who is he? A mage? Why is he here? How is he here? What sort of spell was that?
Viktor watches the stranger’s expression settle on something inscrutable, wide-eyed and heavy and leaving him feeling like a butterfly pinned to a board as his gaze jumps across Viktor’s body. It takes in his hair, his cane, his leg, the slant of his shoulders and dip of his waist—but always, always comes back to drink in every detail of his face. The man doesn’t move to stand, but his arms begin to shake with the strength of his grip on the hammer’s handle. It’s… intriguing, being looked at like that. Like he’s a puzzle this stranger knows exactly how to solve, but doesn’t know where to begin.
Jayce can do nothing but stare. Viktor. This Viktor, looking just as he did when they first met. Young. Alive. The strongest, healthiest he will ever be—in his real body. His hair is dark and short and flicks out just as Jayce remembers, not a strand of that ashy blond in sight. The bags under his eyes are there, of course, but they have yet to deepen and darken with the weight of years of fatigue. His eyes are bright. So bright. Jayce had forgotten just how sharp his gaze can get when he’s faced with a mystery. That laser-focused spark of intrigue and curiosity in his partner’s eyes makes Jayce’s heart clench painfully in his chest.
Jayce never realised just how much he missed that look.
“How do you know me?” Viktor settles on, after a long, silent moment. A question that could potentially address several others at once. A deliberately worded one—not ‘how do you know my name?’ nor ‘how do you know who I am?’ That burning look of pure familiarity in the man’s eyes begs an explanation.
The stranger is silent a moment. Then, a sharp bark of humourless laughter escapes him—from his expression, the sound seems to have surprised him as much as Viktor.
How does Jayce know Viktor?
As my partner. As my friend. As the monster who doomed the world. As the man who saved my life—twice. I know you. I know you. I always have. Longer than I ever realised.
It would be easier to list all the ways he doesn’t know Viktor.
Jayce looks down, trying to slow his racing thoughts. That future version of his partner, alone in the ruins of the world he destroyed in pursuit of perfection—Jayce thought he would send him back to his universe to stop him, not back in time. His eyes widen with the sudden fear that Viktor sent him back in time to kill him now, while he’s defenseless. Before they catch the attention of the Arcane through their Hextech meddling. Surely, surely that’s not why he’s here?
No. It can’t be. Even that Viktor—especially that Viktor—wouldn’t ask that of him.
Jayce chances another glance at this version of him, meaning to only look for a moment but being caught once more in the magnetic pull of his partner’s level gaze. He’s… fierce. Focused. There’s a hunger in his eyes—hunger that Jayce realises must have curdled to desperation over the years. Again he mourns the parts of Viktor he’d never even realised he lost.
Whatever Viktor finds in Jayce’s expression makes him soften slightly. His voice is gentler as he amends, “A different question, perhaps…”
The pure helplessness written across the man’s face as clearly as if by Viktor’s own hand makes him feel an unexpected lance of pity. He's only said one word—his name—but already Viktor's view of him has shifted from potential threat to him into potential threat to himself. While he’s armed with that giant weapon, Viktor would like to keep it that way.
"Why are you here?" he suggests instead. That question makes the stranger's gaze waver, drifting down to the hammer's head between his knees. He huffs a small sound, like surprise or disdain, before bringing his unbraced leg up and leaning heavily on the hammer's handle to stand.
Viktor takes a reflexive step back without thinking, stopped by the desk once more, because the man is huge. Not only broad, but tall. The hammer is similarly large, head oversized and design unlike anything Viktor's ever seen, but this man clearly has the strength to wield it.
At this hour, Viktor's one of the few still at the academy. It's likely no one would even hear the impact of the hammer swing. Heimerdinger would find his body in the morning, already long cold, if this stranger chose to use that strength against him.
The sound of Viktor bumping back against the desk drags Jayce's focus back to him, and the sudden caution in his eyes makes him freeze. Gods. Yes, of course he'd be concerned. Jayce can't imagine what he looks like right now, having only seen his reflection in the cave's lake for months. Sometimes, during his moments of lucidity amidst the garbled mess of surviving in that desolate hole, the look in his eyes would scare him. He'd search those waters looking for the man he used to be and see a rabid animal staring back.
Jayce sighs, deflating slightly, and moves his hands from the handle of the hammer—not the Anomaly-infected hammer he'd taken from that dead version of himself, but somehow the Hextech one he'd taken apart to make his brace, now gone cold and empty without a gem to power it—to settle atop its end, and slows his ascent. He has to remind himself to hunch his shoulders to appear smaller than he is, shorter; his size has always intimidated people if he wasn't careful to minimise it. Taking up less space so he appeared more approachable, more dog than wolf, was just one of many habits he'd lost in that other world.
He wonders how much more of himself he left behind there.
"Sorry," he whispers as he straightens, surprising himself. It just... falls from his mouth. He takes a moment to process just how deeply he means it—how much weight one word holds despite how utterly meaningless it is in the face of everything he's done. He’s sorry for scaring this young, innocent Viktor. Sorry for being sent back in time with no idea of his purpose. Sorry for looking like he was dragged for months through an apocalyptic wasteland another version of himself had failed to stop his Viktor from creating. Sorry for failing on that front, too.
Sorry for abandoning Viktor when he needed him. Sorry for ever forgetting that his place was by Viktor's side. Sorry for being seduced by fame and power instead of pursuing the dream that Viktor had reignited for him. Sorry for letting the two of them be used as investments, pawns, rather than inventors, scientists—the men they were.
Sorry for letting him die.
Sorry for... well.
No.
He's not sorry for saving Viktor. He isn't. Even though using the Hexcore to heal him had ruined everything, led to this, there isn't a universe in which Jayce could do anything else when faced with Viktor's dying body. He realises now that the panic and fear he'd been wracked by while clawing desperately at the walls of that cave for days on end had been familiar—he'd felt it before. On that day, when he'd seen Viktor's unmoving body, small and broken in the wreckage. He'd felt it then. He can't remember going to him, picking him up, carrying him to the lab. There are flashes of sensation, of Viktor's far too slight weight in his arms, the limpness of his limbs, his cold hands and motionless chest, while his own heart pounded so loud that the rush of blood was all he could hear.
He does remember looking over Viktor's body, his leg, his hand, watching the Hexcore reach out to him. His choice after that had been one borne of the stunning clarity of knowing there was never any other option.
Though he now knows the cost, he also knows he'd do it over and over again. The thought of losing Viktor had broken something inside him—a twisted length of metal, catching on the surrounding mechanism and ticking back and forth into the same position, warped into the same result. No, he couldn't change that moment even if he wanted to.
The man's eyes are distant. Viktor isn't sure what he thinks he's apologising for, but he doesn't entirely believe its source traces back solely to his actions in this room.
"Should we try another line of inquiry, then," Viktor suggests, keeping his tone level. He suddenly feels a little sheepish about his moment of fear, especially now that the man has all but folded in on himself like a cowed dog. Still, using magic, or whatever that was, to enter the office of the Dean at night with a weapon while Viktor is here alone and recognising him on sight—the possibility that this man is here to attack him was a reasonable one to consider.
"I..." the man starts, voice hoarse and ragged. "Don't know if there's any question I can answer for you, Viktor." He leans heavily on the hammer like it's the only thing in the world keeping him on his feet. "None that will... make sense to you. Nothing you'll believe."
Viktor's head tilts, a smooth little motion like the second hand of a clock ticking over. Indignation wells quietly—clearly this man doesn't know him as well as he thinks. Even here, even now, no one understands Viktor's willingness to consider ideas others deem impossible. He himself has achieved the impossible, several times over, like climbing up into Piltover alone and unaided as a crippled orphan to work directly under its surviving founder, driven by nothing more than his own determination to improve the world.
"Try."
Viktor's voice carries an undertone of indignation, but he's not angry. No, Jayce recognises this for what it is: a challenge. An opportunity for Jayce to prove himself—for both of them to prove themselves. It was a tone of voice Viktor would use on him when the pressure of their work became too much, when prototypes failed and experiments went wrong and he began to feel like that young man standing on the ledge of a destroyed workshop once again.
All it would ever take to pull him back from that despair was, as it had been on that day so long ago, a single conversation with Viktor.
Even when Viktor was tired too, exhausted by their repeated failures or his own deteriorating health and pain, the sheer belief he had in Jayce and their work was contagious, depthless, burning. Viktor had always been a lighthouse to guide Jayce away from the lure of jagged shores.
Until he wasn’t.
But here he was again. Alive. Whole. Untouched by the Arcane, filled with the hope and determination that fanned Jayce's flames through their partnership—until Jayce turned away from him. Turned away from everything they'd built together, from the dreams that had started it all.
Jayce doesn't remember the galas, now. He doesn't remember the names of the investors he'd wooed over the years with Mel's... help, can't recall any of the speeches he'd made nor the hours spent writing them, can't pick apart the memories of one fundraiser meeting from another.
What he can recall now, with stunning clarity, is Viktor.
Viktor, hunched over their work in the lab, the yellow light of the lamp beside him turning the tips of his hair gold and throwing his face into shadow—until Viktor turned, and looked at Jayce with a tired smile, eyes shining a gold all their own.
Viktor, sneakily stealing a sweet fruit pastry from Jayce's plate from across the table while Jayce pretended not to notice. Viktor's teasing smirk marred on one side by crumbs that he brushed away with a thumb before absentmindedly licking it clean. He'd then immediately distracted Jayce from processing how that visual made him feel by launching back into their work with that drive Jayce always found impossible to resist.
Viktor, face twisted in pain even in his sleep, collapsed on the couch in their lab. His hair soft and messy and falling across his forehead—Jayce remembers the first time he'd dared to reach out to him, just to brush those errant strands away and check that Viktor wasn't feverish. Jayce cannot, if he tried, forget how often a gentle touch to his partner's sleeping face would assuage the deeper wrinkles there, relax his expression, if only by a degree. Occasionally, very occasionally, Viktor would even lean into the touch. And just once, a mortifying event Jayce would fear repeating thereafter, Viktor had leaned so far into it that his head had fallen off the cushion and rested fully in Jayce's hand. Jayce had stared, frozen, taken aback by the sight of his partner's relaxed expression, by the softness of his hair, by the way Jayce's hand was large enough to comfortably cup Viktor's head as he slept. Viktor had looked—vulnerable. Not weak, never weak, not to Jayce, but he'd looked... like... something. Something Jayce hadn't had the words for, back then. Something tender and fragile that Jayce had folded unconsciously into the all-consuming, professional and personal but always platonic admiration he felt for Viktor. His assumption that it was purely platonic had been so innate that he’d never questioned the closeness of their relationship; why he cared more about Viktor than any male friend before him.
He feels stupid, now. Looking back, it all seems so stupid. So small. His affection for Viktor had been so complete, so all-encompassing and depthless—and yet Jayce never examined it. Never considered that any piece of it might be romantic. Viktor had felt like an intrinsic piece of his life, one that would always be there no matter what he did. Had to be there, for Jayce’s life to feel right at all.
Until he wasn’t.
Jayce doesn't remember the names of the companies they sub-contracted for building the Hexgates, can't recall the faces of the different heads of Piltover houses he'd attended endless galas for, has long forgotten the countless meetings with his fellow councillors which had amounted to nothing, in the end.
But Jayce remembers the way Viktor liked his coffee—a spiced Undercity blend with far too much sugar. He remembers the bergamot smell of the shampoo he'd borrow when the two of them ended up back at Viktor's apartment overnight, catching the scent of it in the other man’s hair after a shower. He remembers the way his fingers had almost overlapped around Viktor's thigh when he was fitting him for his leg brace—the slight tremble in the muscle there he'd assumed was from pain. Jayce remembers the months spent developing and testing prototypes for that brace—Jayce had taken pains to be sure it was perfect with countless minor adjustments, despite Viktor's insistence that he didn't need perfect, he just needed functional. Jayce had persevered even as Viktor, exasperated, complained that he was wasting time with this endeavour—that he could handle an imperfect aid. And finally, after a lengthy debate that lit Viktor's eyes with a bright spark of anger—so rarely directed at Jayce—he had told Jayce outright, bluntly, that there was no aid he could make that would fix him. Nothing that Jayce could do to take his pain away.
"You could waste the rest of your life trying to fix me—and how many thousands of people would suffer while you try and fail to help one?" Jayce had tried to protest, to argue, but Viktor always had the final word in these arguments. "Your dream is changing the world for the better, Jayce. You and I, we have a duty to keep building, keep improving. This? My body?" he says, waving a dismissive hand at himself, "is not important. I will handle it, as I always have, so that we can continue our work." He shakes his head at Jayce. "What is one man's comfort compared to a world's worth of lives?"
After days of revisiting that argument between lengthy sessions of working on Hextech, neither of them willing to cede ground, Jayce had simply arrived at the lab one morning with the final version of Viktor’s brace, metal gleaming and joints oiled and measurements accurate to the nearest micrometer. He’d compiled a list of every piece of feedback Viktor had given him back when he was still willing to offer it, used his extensive collection of measurements of Viktor’s limbs and gait and weight, read every paper and patent on industry-level joint brace designs in the city—and now, he was almost certain that this was his best possible work.
The only way it could have been better was if Viktor had been there to help him.
As was the case with everything he made.
He’d wordlessly set the brace down in front of Viktor, ripped off its protective fabric covering, and staggered over to the couch to collapse. Later, Viktor told him that he’d slept for ten straight hours—unsurprising given he’d been awake for over two full days to finish the brace. So he wouldn’t have to keep seeing Viktor’s frame slanting painfully against the ill-fitting brace he’d sourced from somewhere. So they could stop arguing over it. So Jayce could stop having to defend and explain his desire to care for Viktor—so Viktor would, in turn, stop claiming that his suffering was meaningless in the face of what Jayce’s life-long dream would accomplish for the world. It hurt Jayce, a small sharp physical stab of pain every single time, to hear Viktor talk about himself like he didn’t matter. Like his condition was hopeless, helpless. Like he was willing to burn himself out, bright and fast, to see Jayce’s plans come to fruition.
What is one man’s comfort compared to a world’s worth of lives?
To Jayce, if he’s honest—and, after everything, why not be honest?—the answer is: it depends. If that one man is Viktor…
But he’s already lived this hypothetical.
He also remembers the relief he felt that day after waking, when Viktor had wordlessly stood up and walked, leaning less heavily on his crutch than before and gait more balanced, around the desk to cross the room, revealing for the first time that he was wearing Jayce’s brace.
They didn’t talk about it. Viktor never thanked him. He hadn’t needed to, of course—Jayce was just glad Viktor could move around a little easier, and that their days of heated debate about autonomy and worth were over. Or so he thought. His youthful pride had, naturally, rankled at the apparent slight, even as logically he knew it was Viktor’s body. His choice, his disability, his life. Viktor wanted to leave behind a world better than the one into which he’d been born, and every day he failed to make progress on that front was a torment worse than anything his body could do to him. Jayce understood that, to a point—but could never accept Viktor’s refusal to spend just a little more time caring for himself.
He realised later—too late—that his understanding was curbed by his lived experience as a man who thought he could measure his own remaining lifespan in decades. Viktor, at that point, already knew his life was limited to a mere handful of years.
When Jayce had reached out and taken the hammer from his own corpse, he’d already steeled himself to the idea that he would use it to kill Viktor.
But—his Viktor, the Hexcore-warped creature he’d created, whose chosen path led to an empty world and dreamless solitude. His Viktor, who had once been the man who stands before him now, but was unrecognisable in comparison. A monster who would devour the world in his pursuit of perfection.
He could kill that Viktor. It would take everything he had, break what little was left of his heart and his mind, but he would.
But not this one.
This Viktor is innocent. This Viktor can be saved. It was Jayce’s failure to be there when he needed him, the distance between them that led to Viktor cutting runes into his own skin alone in their lab in a desperate attempt to save himself—and then Jayce’s failure to keep his promise, his failure as a partner, his failure to convince Viktor to stay after he’d stepped out of the Hexcore frame, that led to the future he’d seen.
This Viktor isn’t doomed.
He can’t be.
Jayce is, as always, utterly unable to give up on Viktor. Especially when Viktor looks at him like that.
The way he used to.
“What… what’s the date?” Jayce asks, voice rough. Viktor shifts in place, considering Jayce with a careful eye, before telling him.
It’s the day they invented Hextech. The day after his arrest, the workshop explosion. So—
“You don’t… know me?” Jayce asks, though he already knows the answer. Even through the grime and overgrown beard, if Viktor met him yesterday he would have recognised him by now. “Yesterday—was there an explosion? The Kiramann workshop uptown.”
Viktor blinks at him slowly. “Yes, there was.”
Jayce leans forward, over the hammer, fingers numb and heartbeat growing louder in his ears. “And… the student who worked there?”
Viktor’s eyes flicker down to the man’s strained grip on the weapon before returning to his face. An all-consuming expression of desperate hunger for answers mixes with an almost tired, grim acceptance, like oil on water.
“He was killed in the explosion,” Viktor says. The man’s eyes slide closed. He doesn’t appear to breathe. He goes so still before Viktor that he could almost be convinced that he turned to stone where he stands, a statue giving up the pretence of humanity, retiring from some terrible, unfulfilled obligation to rest once more.
“And his name?” the stranger forces the words out in a breath like a forge’s bellows, hot and thick and rasping. His eyes stay closed. “Viktor, what was his name?”
“Jayce,” Viktor says, after thinking a moment. “Jayce Talis.” Jayce almost breaks at the sound of his name ringing in Viktor’s voice, his accent, with no corrupting edge of metallic echo—nor some flatly serene intonation. But the relief he feels at the sound of his partner addressing him is stolen, he knows, from this world’s version of himself. The dead one.
Killed by his own research, before he got the chance to meet Viktor.
By the research that Viktor, future Viktor, mage Viktor, had sparked in him when he saved his life as a child.
Okay.
Now Jayce understands why that Viktor sent him here.
To clean up his fucking mess.
Jayce’s eyes snap open to pin Viktor with another desperate glare. “And his research? His notes, his equipment? Have they all been destroyed?”
Viktor seems taken aback, cautious now. He takes a careful step away from the desk, looking Jayce up and down in detail, taking in the hammer, the faint blue glow beneath the bandages on his wrist, and begins to walk slowly around him. Viktor’s footsteps in staccato with the tapping of the cane he broke barricading the door in Jayce’s timeline makes his heart ache. He’d spent hours listening to that sound in the lab, in those early days. Those good days. Before things got… complicated. When it was still just him and Viktor, cracking Hextech.
Convinced they were going to change the world.
And, of course, they had been right.
“Most was destroyed in the explosion,” Viktor admits, curious what the man will do with this information.
“Most of it? Viktor,” he says, almost pleads, taking a sudden step towards him, away from the hammer, hands free to curl into fists, “tell me the Enforcers confiscated the rest of it—all of it needs to be destroyed, now.”
Viktor eyes him. That violent, wild fear has risen to the man’s surface once again, burning in eyes that keep shifting from olive green to a predatory yellow under the office lights. Having now slowly moved to position himself between the door and the man, Viktor takes a calculated risk.
“We have reached the part where you must answer my questions,” he says. His tone is patient, but severe. When the stranger starts to violently shake his head and opens his mouth to protest, Viktor interrupts. “I’ve answered several of yours. You clearly have me at a disadvantage—it’s only fair that we exchange information.” He narrows molten amber eyes at the man. “If you want my cooperation, you’ll have to earn it.” Viktor is very good at appearing calm—concealing the storm of emotions behind a sharply blank face. Never has he been so thankful for the ability to hide the fear climbing up his throat.
The man clenches his fists, his jaw, swallowing hard and glaring at the floor, the walls, clearly working through some internal argument.
“Fine, Viktor,” he grits out. “Fuck. Fine.” Viktor does not sigh in relief. The man takes a deep breath, visibly trying and failing to relax. His eyes focus at last and he looks around suddenly, actually taking in his surroundings with a start. “Heimerdinger’s office,” he breathes. He spins to face Viktor. “Heimerdinger’s lab—that’s where they—shit, that’s where they’d store it.” His eyes fall to Viktor’s waistcoat pocket. The exact one where he keeps his ring of keys. Fascinating. Viktor’s eyes dart down to the hidden keys, his interest in this man’s knowledge betraying him—although, not really. From the certainty in his expression, he hardly needed confirmation.
When Viktor looks back up at the man, those yellow eyes are locked on his.
“Viktor,” he growls, taking another step towards him, bandaged hand reaching out. “Give me the keys.”
Viktor takes a careful step back. “No,” he tests, evenly. For all the violence that wells under this man’s skin, for all the sickening need in his eyes and the trembling of his hands, Viktor isn’t scared of him.
A strange thought that is tested immediately by the man suddenly advancing on him, hands clenching into fists once again and teeth bared. Viktor barely has time to stumble back, hand reaching behind him for the door, before his shoulders are captured in a bruising grip and he's shoved roughly against it. He can't help the shocked exclamation of pain that escapes him as the impact shakes down his spine and crushes the breath from his lungs, the force of the man's outburst knocking the cane from his hand.
The loud clattering of its impact with the floor is the only thing that fills the silence of the room. When it fades, the man's shaky breaths replace it.
He towers over Viktor, eyes alight behind his unkempt hair. He's broad enough, tall enough, that he blocks the light entirely, filling Viktor's view with heaving shoulders and gritted teeth and an expression of barely-contained fury that turns Viktor's blood cold.
That expression falters after only a moment of burning into him.
The man’s grip on his shoulders flutters away, hovering almost anxiously as his gaze flicks between his hands. That look of pure anguish, regret and pain and fear, is back, and he closes his eyes and caves in on himself again.
“No—Viktor, I’m sorry,” he says, voice pained. One hand fists in his own hair with a strength that looks painful. “I’m so sorry,” he says again, opening his eyes and bending down to retrieve Viktor’s cane. He offers it to him as he takes an unsteady step back. “I don’t—I didn’t mean…” He sighs, a shaky thing. “I don’t want to hurt you, Viktor. I’m just—this is… bigger, than you and me.” His voice is broken, crushed, a twisted body under rubble. “That… that research, it could ruin everything. Change the world—for the worse.” He meets Viktor’s gaze, and it almost looks like it hurts him. “It kills everything. I was—Jayce, was wrong. His theories—they’re dangerous, too dangerous to exist. Please, Viktor, you—” His eyes squeeze shut again and he turns away like he’s trying to hide. “You don’t have to help me. You don’t… owe me that, you don’t owe me—anything. But please, you can’t get in my way.” His voice goes hard again. “No one can.”
Viktor studies him intensely through his tirade. He’s genuinely remorseful, to the point of self-flagellation, and lethally passionate about destroying this research. The certainty of his mission holds itself in every hard line of his body, the firm set of his jaw.
He makes a decision—one simplified by the autographed journal and single blue crystal he has hidden securely in the bottom drawer of his desk.
“Alright.”