Chapter Text
The concrete wall was cool against Viktor’s forehead, a relief, almost, from the fever. A low-grade infection had set in that past night, or perhaps the day before. Time had been slippery in the darkness, ever since the fever, courtesy of those thousand shrapnel cuts across his chest and arms, had set in. Nothing the Stilwater guards needed to care about, nothing that would kill him, not before the trial in any case.
Perhaps it would have been better if the explosion had killed him as it had for those three counsellors. Instead, the same debris that buried himself in his flesh tore apart the clothes that had once hidden his modified hand and leg.
A violation of the ethos.
The words were said as if such a thing was unprecedented. But they were angry, and Jinx was nowhere to be found.
A violation of the ethos was good enough.
It wouldn't be a death sentence passed down at whatever pantomime of a trial the remaining counsellors decided to enact. It wouldn't matter. Just three days in the dark and damp, Viktor could feel his body eroding under the strain. Stale air burned with every breath and even his healthy joints ached, stiffened by stagnation; his crutch had been confiscated with perverse glee. The two steps it would have taken to cross the tiny cell became a worthless challenge after that first day.
He could feel it even then, the Hexcore still in the lab, distinctly undestroyed, like a tiny string tied to the back of his mind, with every choking cough an imploring tug.
‘Let me help you,’ it seemed to say. A lost cause, but the core knew so little of the world. Had his mind not been addled with fever, he might have scoffed at such personification.
Far away, or perhaps nearby, the grinding scratch of a door opened. Who would it be that day?
The first had been Medarda. She had watched him in silence for such a long time, that Viktor’d first thought her a ghost. Ultimately, she said only half a dozen words, “I'm sorry it came to this.”
He believed her, not that she would mourn him. But for all her manipulations, her ambitions and schemes to weaponize hextech, she didn’t seem the type who wanted to win by default. She hadn’t returned.
Then it had been Caitlyn; she’d been angry, not at him, not really, but he was there, and so like the case of the council, his violations were enough. She’d thought him ‘one of the good ones’ for all her words; those were the ones that stuck.
She might well have returned, but time slipped through Viktor’s finger. He didn't expect she would; she was Jayce’s friend not his. But then they all were. Years top side and no friends of his own. Someone would mention that during the trial, no doubt.
Jayce had been absent.
Viktor might have called it a betrayal if it was any less expected. Their man of progress couldn't be seen with a disgraced discarded partner; no doubt Viktor’s name had already been stricken from the patents and the accolades. How convenient for everyone, an idle thought as heavy boot steps came close. They wouldn't have to bury his name in the history books. Much easier to simply omit him.
It wasn't the council room the enforces pulled him to, but an empty lecture hall, no audience, but for the few enforcers and aids to act as witnesses, it wouldn't be a spectacle at least.
Medarda was stone-faced; none of the sympathy she claimed showed through.
Behind Salo’s disgust was something else. Viktor might have given it a name if his head had only stopped spinning long enough.
Jayce said nothing.
Viktor’s guilt was assured his sentence already cast.. They'd decided before they called for him. He knew it. They knew it.
Still, they spoke of his crime and their disappointment. They never called for him to speak. His own input was long since unneeded.
Jayce said nothing. But, then, he hadn't needed to. Everyone there knew the ending, there would be no improvisation, no deviation from the scripted ending.
And that mutual understanding sent such a shock through the room when Medarda called for banishment over imprisonment. He didn't have long anyway, or so she argued. It would be merciful to let him spend those last few days with his own people.
His own people.
Jayce said nothing.
The world stopped spinning when Viktor’s knees hit the bridge when his crutch was thrown down by his side. “Go on then,” barked the enforcer, anonymous behind the uniform. “Don't test the council's mercy, Trencher.”
Mercy? Of course, how merciful for them to let him die where they wouldn't have to watch. But still, he didn't test it, whatever they wanted to call it.
Every step deeper piled lead upon his shoulders sent smog pumping through his blood, wrapped around him, a vice pushing inwards on his chest.
It had been hardly more than a week since he’d last ventured down, but there was a change to the energy of the Lanes. He noticed it the longer he wandered unimpeded by the residents. His wasn't the face of Hexteck, but he wasn't anonymous, not to the Chem Barrons who looked ever upwards. He’d expected to be pulled into an alley and pressganged into some cause for his last few months. Dreaded it even, but with an expected dread. A new kind of dread settled when the attack never came.
New that day, but the oldest fear Viktor knew.
Unknown, the eyes of strangers pinned him as a coughing fit paused his progress. They had named chem lung. They knew better than any Piltie doctor there was little they could do, even less they would be inclined to do for a stranger.
Unwanted, his mark omitted from the histories above and below.
Unneeded.
‘I need you,’ the almost voice, far away but still tugging at the back of his mind, seemed to almost say. The burning in his augmented leg wanted to call it a liar.
He hadn’t quite meant to find the cave again. He hadn't quite thought of avoiding it either. Two decades gone left him with scant few landmarks to seek out.
He thought to leave as movement from inside came to the entrance. Like so many times before, his chem lung stole the choice from him. Blood splattered the ground as he pitched forward. Rapid footsteps approached, more real than the ground Viktor clung to, less real than the string in his mind.
The air was water, no, more viscous than water, blood and mud and grey. Drowned from whence he came. That would be okay, best for everyone. The last thought before the darkness, a denial, it wouldn’t be.