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I.
Viktor is twelve years old when he first realizes that time is against him.
His body - bent and misshapen, unreliable and malfunctioning – makes him prone to wheezing and coughing fits, but these are small maladies. He does not get truly sick until he is twelve.
He spends ten days in a state of delirium in his mother’s bed, sweating through her only set of sheets. His lungs feel heavy, full, and he coughs until he has no more energy to do so. His body is hot, yet he shivers as if freezing, and he shakes so strongly that his muscles cramp and lock up. He comes in and out of sleep to see his mother’s face over him. It’s the first time in his life he has seen his mother cry, and the image of her eyes wide with fear and desperation remains imprinted in his mind forever.
Even at twelve, Viktor has been acquainted with death. He grows up in the small apartment rooms above his mother’s clinic, grows up around the acrid smells of medicine and illness intertwined. When he’s old enough, he begins to help his mother while she works. He learns very quickly that he cares little for the messiness of the human body. His mother once tells him that the body is not so different from a machine: a set of parts that can malfunction, and can sometimes be repaired. But Viktor disagrees with a wrinkle of his nose: machines don’t have quite so many smells, nor quite so many strange liquids to discharge.
He sees his first death when he is nine. His mother has a knee on the cot and is pressing her whole weight onto a man’s thrashing body where she holds him by the shoulders. Viktor, the syringe – yes, 20 mL, you’ve got it, darling, you’re doing fine – but his hands are shaking too badly to properly fill the syringe. The plunger keeps slipping loose from his fingers, the bottle is slippery from his sweat and too large for his small hands, and the man is screaming and screaming and screaming – until suddenly he is not.
That is the great mystery, his mother tells him, when he asks what happens after death, and No, when he asks if not knowing bothers her. I’m more interested in the mysteries of the living, I suppose, she says. And I’m more concerned about the needs of the living.
It’s not the last death he sees. People come to his mother’s clinic poisoned by bad water, coughing with plague, stabbed or shot by thieves. She helps those that she can, but Viktor learns early that not everyone can be saved. For some, the poison has gone too deep, the plague has spread too far, the wounds have hit some critical part – and the biological machine fails.
Yet, despite these exposures, despite his experiences in his mother’s clinic, despite the fragility of his own body, death is something that happens to someone else. It is not until he is twelve and he is too weak to cough, too weak to even shiver, laying in sweat-soaked sheets with the taste of iron in his mouth, that his mother leans over him with fear in her eyes and Viktor realizes:
I might die.
He has been trusting in his mother’s skill, safe in the assumption that he would recover from this illness just like any other. But the truth is in his mother’s eyes, in the weight of the liquid in his lungs: he might not recover from this.
He doesn’t want to leave his mother alone. He doesn’t want to miss turning thirteen, when he will finally be a teenager. He doesn’t want to miss the opportunity to become an adult and help his mother, somehow. To make life for his mother easier, somehow.
He doesn’t want to die.
He doesn’t die.
But the illness changes something in him, something fundamental. He is changed physically, yes – he heals, but the illness leaves his body and lungs even weaker than they were before. But it is the alternation of his mind that is most striking: he has learned an inevitable truth that shakes him loose. He has survived, but he will not survive forever. The next illnesses will weaken him even further, weaken him until he will no longer have the strength to fight them. Like everyone else, he is on a time limit. But because of his body, he is on a shorter time limit than others.
He never speaks of it to his mother, but the illness has altered her too. When she looks at Viktor after, she looks at him with a certain desperation. The fear never quite leaves her eyes, not entirely, as if she, too, can see the clock ticking on Viktor’s time.
Years later, when she’s sitting hunched over the counterfeit Academy uniform draped over her knees, a sewing needle tight in her fingers as she stiches, Viktor watches as her foot jitters as she works. The movement is incessant: a frenetic up-down movement as if she’s impatient. Impatient to finish the uniform. Impatient to see Viktor off to higher education – to an opportunity, even a stolen one.
It’s not the way Viktor would have wanted to enter the Academy. But it may put him in a place where he can help his mother someday. The clock is ticking. He doesn’t have time to wait for the world to change for him. Time will not wait for him.
*
II.
One year after the founding of Hextech, Viktor wakes with a rattling cough.
He is not surprised. A minor cold has been spreading through the members of the Academy, and Viktor had a feeling, watching a lab assistant sneeze near the coffee station three days ago, that it was only a matter of time before his weak immune system betrayed him.
He blinks at himself wearily in his bathroom mirror, his face pale and eyes red-rimmed. His throat burns when he drinks water from the tap. His reflection’s lip gives a displeased curl.
He has had a year to establish his reputation with his partner, and surely by now Jayce has seen his dedication and would not accuse Viktor of shirking his responsibilities. Regardless. Viktor sends a messenger off with a note to Jayce – Feeling unwell, will work from home.
He reclines on his couch under three blankets and shivers and coughs and thinks of his mother – her remedies and calm voice, her cool hands against his brow. He hasn’t seen her in over a year.
Though his illness is only a minor cold for now, he knows that he is susceptible to pneumonia. He can’t risk his condition worsening. He needs to rest.
Most of his notes and work materials are at the lab, but he has a few journal articles he’s been carrying around – ones that may spark ideas related to Hextech. He gets through four of the articles, jotting notes in the margins as necessary, before sleep overtakes him – unexpectedly. He jerks awake a few hours later with his hand still holding his pen between the pages of the journal; a knock at the door has awoken him.
He’s expecting to see a messenger at the door. On the other side, surprisingly, is Jayce.
For a moment, they blink at each other. Viktor fights against his own urge to feel self-conscious. He is hardly looking even marginally presentable: unshaven in a too-worn sweater without his leg brace. He clenches his jaw and ignores the foolish shame. Instead, he raises his chin.
“Hey,” Jayce says.
“Hello,” Viktor returns, slightly hesitant.
Jayce shifts his weight. “Sorry to just show up like this. How are you feeling?” His gaze never quite lands on Viktor’s face, as if he’s embarrassed. “I probably should have brought something, come to think of it, like food or something.”
“Why?” Viktor asks, baffled by this disjointed series of sentences. “Are you hungry?”
Jayce blinks, finally making eye contact in his surprise. “What? No. Isn’t that what you do for people when they’re sick? Like bring them soup or something?”
Viktor rubs at his eyebrow with his free hand. His head hurts, his throat hurts. He’s cold. He feels his lungs rattling and represses the need to cough.
“Is this why you are at my door, Jayce? To tell me that you should have brought soup?”
“No,” Jayce says. “I came to check up on you. Are you feeling all right?”
Jayce’s sociability and loyalty have, in their year of acquaintance, never ceased to amaze Viktor. Those two qualities – the latter especially – are exceptionally rare in the undercity. Yet from the first day of their partnership Jayce has been unencumbered by ego or self-importance, at least when it comes to Viktor. He shares ideas, lab space, journal space. They sign papers as equal co-authors even when Jayce does the majority of the writing. He immediately called for profits from Hextech to be shared equally, and would not accept even a 51% cut of the profits when it was offered to him behind Viktor’s back.
Even outside of the work environment, Jayce seems always to insist on including Viktor. Jayce has even recently gotten into the habit of accepting invitations on Viktor’s behalf, without Viktor’s knowledge or consent. Do you guys want to check out the new powered lathe? – Yes, we’ll be there!
All of this is to say: Viktor perhaps should not have been surprised that Jayce has shown up at his door. His desire to make Viktor feel included extends, evidently, even to sick days.
Viktor adjusts his grip on his cane, settling it more firmly beneath him. “It’s nothing serious,” he says, answering Jayce’s question. “Just caught a cold.”
Jayce’s eyebrows lower. “I bet it was because Will sneezed on our coffee machine.”
Viktor shrugs a shoulder and doesn’t bother to hide his amused smile. “It’s our fault for not sanitizing it better,” he says, barely finishing the sentence before he shakes into a coughing fit.
When it clears, Jayce is watching him with open concern – he always wears his emotions so openly.
“Do you need anything?” Jayce asks.
Viktor squints an eye up at him. “Like soup?”
Jayce’s shoulders drop, some of the tension easing from his back. “Very funny.” He looks as if he’s about to say more, but they are interrupted by a sound down the hall – another door opening, the murmuring of voices.
It suddenly seems awkward to hold a conversation with his partner in his hallway. Viktor steps back and opens the door wider. “Would you like to come in, then? I can give you the journals I’ve been annotating. You can tell me what you think of my notes.”
Jayce is walking in before Viktor can finish speaking. He takes in the apartment with a quick once-over and no comment.
“I warn you,” Viktor adds, “I’m probably contagious.”
Jayce waves a hand dismissively. “I don’t get sick easily. Are these the journals?” He sits on Viktor’s couch, right beside the small pile of blankets, and grabs the first journal.
Viktor shifts awkwardly, watching him thumb through the pages. When he had invited Jayce in, he hadn’t meant for him to stay. Regardless. Perhaps they can discuss the articles. Viktor has worked through worse than headaches before. He lowers himself carefully into the armchair closest to the couch and leans his cane against the inside of his knee.
They make it through about five minutes of discussion before Viktor begins shaking. Despite his sweater, he is cold – cold in his bones. Jayce notices in the middle of a sentence.
“I’m sorry, I should have-“ Jayce stutters. He looks around himself and sees the blankets beside him. He holds them out in one large hand. “Here, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to take them.”
But Viktor can’t bring himself to accept them. He can’t stand the conjured image of himself, wrapping himself in blankets like a child, like an invalid, in front of Jayce. Jayce, whose body stands tall and straight and broad-shouldered, who doesn’t get sick easily.
“I’m fine,” Viktor says, feeling shame spread cold in his chest. He should have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a ridiculous feeling. And yet.
“Well, you’re sick,” Jayce points out. His tone is so matter-of-fact that it borders on condescending. He shakes the blankets at Viktor.
“I’m an adult,” Viktor reminds him, perhaps with more sharpness than necessary. “I don’t need you to take care of me. If you came here out of some misguided sense of pity, then please spare me.”
Jayce blinks. He retracts his hand, lets the blankets rest on his lap. “Pity?” he repeats, incredulous.
Is it not possible, Viktor’s mind supplies, that Jayce is so intent on including Viktor out of a sense of pity? That Jayce believes that Viktor is incapable of his own social experiences, his own professional successes, without the aid of someone else?
His head hurts. His throat hurts.
Jayce says, “Why would I pity you? Because you’re sick?”
An obtuse question. Surely Jayce can now see what Viktor realized when he was twelve, what his mother saw at the same time: that Viktor is weak, growing weaker, and that his weakness limits him. It limits him physically. Worse, it limits his time.
He grits his teeth and looks away.
“To be honest,” Jayce says, idly rearranging the folds of the blankets in his lap, “I was bored at the lab and wanted to see if you were well enough to…” He shrugs. “Get some work done, I guess.”
Viktor watches him. “You were bored?” he asks flatly.
Jayce shrugs again. “Yeah. And I did want to check up on you. Also. But the work thing too. And it wasn’t easy to get work done in the lab today. They’re doing some maintenance on the lighting system. It’s distracting.”
Jayce, generally, is honest to a fault, and when he does lie, he tends to do it poorly. Here, Viktor can’t detect any deception.
His anger disappears like a candle flickering out.
Awkwardly, Viktor says, “I thought perhaps…” His words fail him.
Jayce hears his thoughts regardless. “Why would I pity you?” he asks, as if he finds the idea absurd.
Viktor cannot explain. He frowns, gestures to himself broadly, then even more broadly - as if to encompass everything.
Jayce watches this display, his eyes following the jerking movement of Viktor’s gestures. Suddenly, he tosses his head back and laughs.
“Honestly,” Jayce says around a grin, when he is finished laughing, “I thought all this time that you pitied me.”
It launches Viktor into another coughing fit. Of all the crazy things that Jayce has said, this might be the craziest.
When he gets his breath back, he wheezes, “Why?”
Jayce’s cheeks are coloring. “Because I’m – you know.” His hands flop helplessly. “I’m not as good with people as you are.”
Insanity. Jayce, who draws every eye effortlessly when he enters a room. Jayce, whose body is shaped like it was made with purpose, who smiles rarely but infectiously, who leaves a trail of unrequited loves, whose occasional awkwardness only adds to his boyish charm, says he is not as good with people as Viktor is.
Viktor puts a hand to his own forehead. “I think I’m having a fever dream,” he says. “Jayce, have you met me?”
Jayce’s flush darkens further. “Yeah! You don’t like to talk to people, but that doesn’t mean you’re bad with them. You always say exactly what you mean! Like you aren’t ever embarrassed or worried about saying the wrong thing. And you always know exactly what people are thinking. Remember Dr. Yaven? How you knew right away that he was lying? If you hadn’t been there… I don’t know. I trusted the guy and I shouldn’t have!”
Viktor presses at his temple with two fingers, trying to will the headache away. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
Jayce slumps into the back of the couch. “I meant it as an example of my poor social skills compared to yours. I can give you more.” His gaze slides away, down. “People don’t tend to spend much time with me, Viktor. I’m told I can be… a lot.”
Viktor’s thoughts pause. Recalibrate.
Viktor has never before considered that Jayce could be a lonely person. He has seen how people respond to him, how easily Jayce can charm a person with his unbridled conviction. He has assumed that Jayce’s sociability extended to everyone he met. But Viktor has been seeing the puzzle from the wrong angle.
Viktor is accustomed to being peerless. He grew up unable to keep up with the other children at play. Later, as a young teen, he found that they were no longer able to keep up with his mind. The bent body and rushing mind that he was born into are not dissimilar from a misshapen gear in a machine. The teeth of the gear do not align with those of the gears around it.
When Viktor first read Jayce’s journal, he knew he was seeing into a mind similar to his own. The structure of the journal made sense, the discoveries made sense, the thought patterns behind each equation made sense.
It was possible, in theory, that two mismatched gears – though both misshapen – could happen to have matching sets of teeth. Click the misshapen gears into place, and the machine begins to sing.
How bizarre, how imperceptive, of Viktor to have placed Jayce amongst the wrong gears.
When he had first seen Jayce on that ledge, that night after they first met, he had been shocked to see a man so young, so able-bodied, so able-minded, willing to throw his future away. He had been given many gifts that Viktor had not been so lucky to be born with – athleticism, a place in Piltover, a childhood in clean air, a natural charm – but his most envious gift was time. And there the man was, ready to throw it all away.
But he didn’t. He stepped back from the edge and questioned why Viktor would be willing to risk his career to help him. Because Viktor wanted to help people. Because he had made a promise to himself to help his mother.
Because he was always, always running out of time.
Viktor runs a hand across his mouth. “Well,” he says slowly to Jayce, into the stretched and awkward silence between them, “I suppose it’s all right if we pity each other. Equally.”
Jayce’s mouth twitches in amusement. “A pity superposition?”
“Destructive interference,” Viktor agrees. “If we pity each other equally, we cancel out the pity.”
Jayce holds out his hand, intending to shake on it.
Viktor eyes the hand skeptically. “I’m still contagious, Jayce.”
Jayce rolls his eyes and takes the blankets from his lap and throws them so that they collide in a heap with Viktor’s chest. “Use those, Viktor. And then tell me why you think the conclusions of this article are bullshit.”
*
III.
Viktor coughs up blood, and he is not surprised.
He has been running against the clock for too long, and now, in the crimson that he spits from his mouth, he knows that he has come to the end of it.
He had had hope, when he first moved to Piltover, that the clean air and cleaner water would heal his body. That perhaps he had been wrong when he was twelve, that his clock was not ticking after all. Perhaps he would live just as long as anyone else. He had kept that hope in his chest like a small flame, a secret, for the few years before his health began to decline. Rattling breaths. More pain. More frequent illnesses, chipping away at his strength.
His mother dies four years before he coughs up blood, before he can get her out of the undercity. He has helped people with Hextech, yes – but who? The people of Piltover, growing richer by the day. What has he done for the undercity? What has he done to keep his promise?
He cannot wait any longer. He does not have time to wait.
What happens after we die? he once asked his mother.
I’m more interested in the mysteries of the living, she had told him. And I’m more concerned about the needs of the living.
He wipes the blood from his mouth. He tightens his grip on his crutch. He has just enough time to help the undercity, just enough time to set things in motion, enough to set Jayce up to continue his work after he’s gone.
He doesn’t have time to wait for the world to change for him. Death will not wait for him.