Chapter Text
The things we bury never stay buried. They continue to breathe under the surface, feed the worms in the ground, and produce fertilizer for the flowers. And eventually, they bloom in the cruelest hours, when you least expect it.
Viktor is older now. Thirty-eight to be exact, though the mirror might argue otherwise. Grey has already started to thread at his temples, contrasting against the auburn like frost in a late autumn that still insists that it has time left. It has grown out in the back, brushing the nape of his neck in a way that would have once irritated him. But now? He hasn’t had the time. Or maybe he simply stopped caring. The last time he touched a pair of shears to it was before the divorce. Before the long silences, the loud arguments in the kitchen. Before Elara started sleeping in his bed just to feel some kind of safety. Oh, how much he hates himself for all she had to see.
His glasses sit crooked on the bridge of his nose, fogged faintly from the climb up the three floors with no elevator, because the landlord promised it was being fixed “next month.” They’re smudged, too. Some from his own fingers, pushing them up mid-migraine. But others are smaller, sticky juice box prints that only a child could leave behind – his daughter’s tiny hands in action, tugging at his sleeve, his face, his attention.
He hasn’t slept properly in days, maybe weeks. Maybe even longer, making his body feel like a clock left to tick with a dying battery. Time has passed in strange ways lately, weeks compressed into hours. Uprooting a life is never clean. Doing it with a child who’s just learning to spell “goodbye” is even harder.
His ex-wife used to say he worked too much. And maybe she was right. Maybe all those late nights at work, all those deadlines and grant applications, were just another form of cowardice. Easier to drown in blueprints and fumes than admit you didn’t know how to be loved.
Now, he’s left with the consequence of that distance.
The apartment is modest; third floor, creaky stairs, a strange hum in the walls that never seems to leave. The tiles are cold underfoot, the cabinets crooked with years, and the wallpaper peeled in the corners, covered with cheap, glossy paint by the previous renters.
He breathes it in; the stale air, a hint of old smoke, and faint lemon cleaner from the showing two days ago. The place isn’t beautiful. It’s not even particularly clean. But it’s a start. And more than that, it’s a fresh start.
The kitchen window overlooks the Piltover skyline, all arrogant angles and self-assured shine. The heart of innovation, they call it. He remembers it from his student days, walking those streets like he had something to prove. He majored in engineering. He could have belonged to that glittering world. But somehow, he’d always found himself just outside the light – too Zaunite, too strange, too distracted by ethical questions that made his professors uncomfortable.
He’d built machines that could have changed things, that could’ve actually mattered. Then watched them gather dust in favor of sleeker designs with market value. He hadn’t made peace with it. He probably never would.
He unlocks the door with a sigh too heavy for his frame, one hand clutching a battered suitcase, the other curled tightly around the smaller, warmer hand of his daughter.
Elara. Jupiter’s most beloved moon – his most beloved orbiting stardust.
Seven years old, shoelaces always untied, her hair a mess of brown curls that refuse the order of his brush. She is impossibly expressive, full of unfiltered wonders, yet soft as the sunrise, and entirely unlike him in every way. Some days, she’s his shadow; others, she disappears into her own world, only resurfacing to ask questions he can’t answer, like why people fall out of love, or what it means when people leave.
Her eyes are not entirely his. Not her mother’s either. They are a color he cannot place, something like a golden mango, but darker in certain light, as if the sun has taken root behind her irises and refuses to set. He doesn’t know how she got them. Maybe she was born with sunlight inside her. Maybe she stole it and made it her own.
“Are we home now?” she asks, squinting at the ceiling like she can see ghosts sleeping in the water stains above. Viktor breathes out through his nose, tugging at her hand to stop her from straining her neck so much. “As close as we’ll get,” he murmurs, not quite meeting her eyes.
She nods, content. Trusting him more than he deserves. Kids her age should ask for more, demand things he can’t give. But Elara never does. She adapts. Too quickly. And it terrifies him.
Her pink-orange shoes hit the floorboards with a soft thunk as she kicks them off, and her backpack is flung into a corner like she’s marking territory. Then, she spins with spread arms, mapping her surroundings, trying to find seams where she fits in. He watches her with the kind of aching fondness that feels dangerously like grief. He doesn’t cry. Not yet.
She darts around on socked feet, jumping from corner to corner, room to room. “It smells... old,” she calls, nose wrinkling as she tiptoes back to Viktor’s side. Her father huffs a laugh in return. He shifts the weight of the suitcase from his fingers to the floor with a tired thump, reaching instead for the cane he'd leaned against the wall upon arrival. “Like me, then, hm?”
Elara giggles with a silver-bell sound that doesn’t belong in this place, and runs off to open every door, explorer mode activated. Viktor watches her go, then lowers himself carefully to sit on the couch – old and secondhand, picked up from a marketplace listing. He rests his hands on his knees, palms open. The apartment is small, yes, but not disappointing for the price. Cracks in the plaster. A radiator that looks like it hasn't worked since before the second world war. But it’s a roof. A door that locks. Four walls that they can fill with something new.
The last suitcase waits beside him, smaller, lighter. Inside are his essentials. Folders of Elara’s school forms. A water-damaged copy of Collected Works of Elemental Science. A jar of screws and bolts from his old desk drawer. And, tucked beside a faded hoodie, a crumpled pack of cigarettes.
He stares at them. Thumb brushing the edge of the cardboard. There's only one left. He considers it.
The balcony door sticks when he tries to open it. He shoves harder. It gives with a groan, letting in a rush of cold air, city noise, and the smell of exhaust mixed with distant rain. He steps out just enough to breathe, just enough to see the skyline and pretend that the ache in his chest is something else. It’s the same skyline he once dreamed of changing the world in. He’d been twenty-six then. He had a different cane – house Talis colors, made by the same person that carries that name. No daughter. No cigarettes. Viktor taps the last one out, rolls it between his slim fingers.
Then he looks back over his shoulder.
Elara has made a nest in the middle of the living room floor. Cross-legged, surrounded by a mismatched army of stuffed animals pulled from her boxes, her back to him. She hums a soft tune under her breath while handling each toy like it’s alive. Dusts off their fur. Cradles them. She speaks to them like old friends, reintroduces them to one another, as if the move wiped their memories.
“This is General Puff,” she tells a small plush tiger, serious as a diplomat. “He’s very brave.” Elara then turns to a small stuffed bear, one that was gifted to her when she was born, nowadays more thread than stuffing. “And this is Baby... not a baby, his name is Baby. He has anxiety but he’s trying.”
She presses them gently nose-to-nose, nods to herself, and sets them side by side, tiny shoulders straight. Her movements are delicate, like she’s reassembling a broken world and needs to be careful not to lose any of the pieces.
Viktor watches her, and suddenly the cigarette feels heavier between his fingers. Poison wrapped in paper. A choice he keeps making.
He sighs slowly, quietly. Then slips the cigarette back into the box. Folds it shut like sealing a letter he’ll never send. He walks into the kitchen, opens the sink cabinet, and tucks the pack deep into the furthest corner of it. Out of reach. Out of sight. The desire doesn’t go away, but he tells himself it’s has to last now.
Elara looks up from the floor as he reenters the room, legs tucked under her in a makeshift throne among the plush toys. There’s a smear of jam on her cheek from the sandwich he handed her hours ago during the long drive up from Zaun. Viktor crouches carefully despite his knees beginning to flare up, and wipes the jam away with the corner of his sleeve. She doesn’t flinch, just flashes him that same crooked grin.
“You’re gonna like it here,” she declares, full of certainty, as if she’s the reassuring adult here.
He wants to tell her he hopes so. That he’s trying. That it’s hard; harder still when you were the one who decided to leave.
But he doesn’t.
He nods instead, voice fond. “I like it anywhere with you, brouček.”
Elara squints at him, then crosses her arms with theatrical offense. “I’m not a little beetle, dad! I’m a full-grown Hercules beetle now,” she insists, puffing out her chest and flexing her skinny arms like she might actually lift something twice her size.
Viktor laughs, warm and tired and full of love that doesn’t know where to go except into her hair as he tousles it. “Alright, můj velký brouk ,” he relents.
Lately she’s been obsessed with insects. She checks every windowsill for antennae, names the ants on the sidewalk one by one, calls their microwave the “Bug Zap Zone.” He indulges her. At least bugs don’t call him a bad father and leave.
Later, when all the essential furniture is set up, the bedframes don’t wobble, and Elara’s shoes are lined up at the front door like she’s lived here forever, Viktor stands at the windowsill and watches the skyline with arms folded across his chest. He tries not to think of the old street just a few blocks down. Tries not to think the apartment, the different version of himself.
He’s taken a research post at the university he once studied at. Date management, systems architecture, all the back-end drudgery that keeps him out of the spotlight. It's work that doesn’t require eye contact. He doesn’t expect to see anyone he once knew.
That’s the promise he made himself. That the past would stay folded like an old letter he never mailed.
Three days pass. The boxes shrink, bit by bit.
They buy a plant for the windowsill; a little pothos from the corner florist, whose shop smells like dust and sun-warmed ceramic. Elara names it Commander Leafy, insists it has a rank. They both forget to water it. Twice. Commander Leafy droops like he’s been personally betrayed.
Elara teaches him how to braid hair using her favorite bear, Baby. She sits on the living room rug with deep concentration, tongue between her teeth, tiny fingers looping yarn strands as she narrates the process like a tutorial channel. Her mother used to do all kinds of hair styles for her – Viktor barely knows how to make a proper ponytail. He watches, amused, bemused, then learns, clumsily at first. Her own hair is harder. Softer. Real. He tries anyway.
Viktor burns dinner on the second night.
The smoke curls like accusation from the skillet, and he doesn’t even try to make a joke. Just stares at the blackened mess with a heavy sigh, rubbing at the back of his neck as Elara offers a single potato chip from her emergency snack bag with her usual generosity.
“Five stars,” she mumbles, chewing. “Very crunchy.”
He smiles, barely, yet he forgets to reprimand her about talking with her mouth full.
On the fourth day, they go to the local market. Elara picks cereal based on mascots alone, Viktor forgets half the list. The overhead speakers crackle and buzz between songs, and then–
He hears it.
A familiar rhythm. Acoustic, melancholic. The opening chords of "Obstacles." It floats through the fluorescent-lit aisles like the ghost of someone else’s voice and Viktor comes to a full stop.
The cereal box slips slightly in his grip. He remembers it – not just the song, but the feeling. Summer heat thick on the back of his neck. Jayce’s laughter, slurred and sweet, tangled with rooftop stars and rooftop liquor. The nights when they had nothing but each other, nothing but want. The night they sprinted down the university halls, barefoot, soaked from the rain and giddy from too much stolen champagne.
Jayce had sung along to that song once, off-key and shameless, holding Viktor’s wrist like they could outrun the future if they just ran fast enough.
“Someday, we will foresee obstacles, through the blizzard.”
He exhales slowly, placing Elara’s obscenely bright cereal into the cart. The ache in his chest flares and folds in on itself, quiet and cruel. Suddenly, his daughter tugs at his sleeve. “Dad, look! They have the dinosaur mac and cheese!” He just nods, swallowing whatever lump tried to force itself out of his soul.
That night, they try cooking again. Something simple. The dinosaur mac and cheese, peas stirred in for “health”. Elara insists on grating the cheese herself and nearly shreds a finger. Viktor hovers too much after that. Commander Leafy leans toward the window like it’s already giving up on them.
In the background, the bluetooth speaker they unpacked from one of the final boxes plays softly. Viktor’s playlist. One of the old ones, from his university days, with all his favorite songs, albeit a little edgy. “Obstacles” hums into the room again.
Elara stirs the pot with a plastic spoon, swaying a little to the rhythm. “Is this a sad song?” she asks suddenly, without looking up. Just then he notices that she’s using a plastic spoon and quickly switches it, sighing. Viktor pauses as he ponders her question. “Maybe,” he murmurs, folding a towel over his shoulder. “It used to be someone’s favorite.”
Elara shrugs like this means nothing. How could it? She never met the someone. “It’s kinda pretty.”
He nods.
She hums along, half in tune. Off-key.
Viktor sets the plates, and neither of them say anything about the playlist anymore.
Then – finally – a Friday rolls around that feels ordinary enough to be harmless for once. But that doesn’t hold on for long as his coffee begins to tremble as if there’s an earthquake. Elara bursts through the front door after school with her backpack half-zipped and her shoes already kicked off in the hall. She’s breathless. Glowing – which would be good, if she weren’t wearing that kind of incandescent joy that makes Viktor’s nerves flood with unease.
“Papa!” she calls, her voice too big for her lungs. “Papa, look!” She’s holding someone’s hand. A smaller girl, younger by a year maybe, but louder by several decibels. The child is all elbows and energy, tugging Elara forward like a comet pulling its own gravity.
“This is Mae!” Elara beams, eyes lit. “She wanted to come over. Is that okay, dad?”
Viktor steps out of the kitchen, dish towel slung over one shoulder, cane tapping against the tile and then wood as he moves towards the hallway. He carries the scent of vanilla, soap and rosemary in his clothes.
And stops.
Like a camera flash to the soul.
Mae looks up at him with the unabashed confidence of a child who’s never been told no. Her grin is missing a front tooth, framed by cheeks still round with baby fat. Her hair is wild, a brown bramble tied into three crooked pigtails with glittery ties that don’t match. He’s no expert in hairstyle but three ponytails is a little excessive. She’s in the middle of speaking, has been speaking, never stopped, voice tumbling in every direction like marbles on hardwood.
But it’s her eyes that make all the syllables drown out.
Hazel. Wide. Curious.
Familiar.
His breath stutters in his throat. It catches on the edge of her name like a splinter in his side. Viktor leans back just slightly, as if the threshold is a ledge he’s about to fall off and not a doorway.
With a hard swallow and an awkward cough, he finds his voice. Soft, forced. “Hello, Mae.”
The girl beams brighter, as if she’s hearing her name for the first time. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Viktor!” Then, she immediately launches into a winding story about their math teacher, something about frogs and glitter and why the number seven is “sneaky.” Elara listens with full-body attention, hands clasped, eyes round, the way she does when someone else gets to be the main character for a while.
They migrate like a raging storm into the living room, spilling markers and stuffed animals across the rug, declaring wars and royal treaties between teddy bears and plastic horses.
Viktor doesn’t move from the doorway. His fingers curl around the frame, white-knuckled.
He watches. He watches her.
Watches him in her.
Not in the mouth or the nose. But in those eyes. The confident way she fills a room. The cadence of her voice. The refusal to be small.
He turns toward the sink, blindly. Runs the tap. Forgets why.
In the living room, Mae is explaining her theory about why glue should count as a food group. Elara disagrees. A passionate debate ensues.
“I already told you, Vik. This accelerator is too weak, it can’t possibly power this whole thing!”
“Not impossible until we try it.”
He dries a cup that’s already dry.
The knock comes late in the afternoon, when the sun has begun casting every wall in a soft peach. It was polite. Harmless. Like the mail man, or the kind grandma from downstairs, who loved bringing cookies. Viktor doesn’t think much of it at first. He wipes his hands on a dish towel, glances at the clock. 5 PM, a reasonable time for every possibility.
Despite all that, Viktor opens the door with a little too much caution. And time collapses.
Jayce Talis stands on the other side, haloed in gold from the sun and silver from the lights above.
He’s slightly taller than Viktor remembers, broader through the shoulders, his once-boyish face matured by exhaustion and a little sorrow that Viktor can read in his eyebags. His hair is longer now, but it’s still him. Every inch. And there’s a beard, just slightly grown in.
Though, the eyes hit hardest, hurt him most. Those same hazel depths, sun-warmed and impossible to forget. The eyes that used to look at him with such shine.
Jayce doesn’t speak at first. He just stares. Both just stand frozen like the awkward teens they once were.
Then–
“Viktor?” he breathes, like the name spoken will wake him up from this impossible dream – or nightmare. The sound of it hits like a flare to Viktor’s chest, and he flinches, barely. How he missed those letters from his mouth. He wants to catch each in the air, tattoo the echo into his ears so he’ll never forget the sound ever again. The girls chatter behind them, oblivious.
Jayce recovers first, weakly. He offers a smile that looks like a wound split open just when you thought it healed. “Didn’t think I’d– I’d, uh, see you again.”
Viktor can’t speak. His hands are trembling. The doorframe feels like a noose. He doesn’t trust what might crawl out and see the light of day if he opens his mouth.
Mae bursts into the entryway with Elara on her heels, the older girl helping her friend to pull on her jacket and talking over each other. Something about their stuffie multiverse and a doll war. Jayce gently reaches out, rests his bigger hand on Mae’s shoulder; soft, loving, natural. The small child giggles, jumping up and down excitedly as she babbles about her day with Anna.
And Viktor – Viktor feels it in his bones. That instinct. That gentleness. The part of Jayce that used to belong to him. And he can’t help but wonder who else it belongs to now, if not him.
His heart is thunder beneath his ribs.
Jayce glances at him one last time, that same lopsided smile on his tan skin, one hand tightening at his side. “Thank you, Vik– uh– Viktor. For taking care of my Mae.”
Viktor swallows hard. Nods. He still can’t speak. Not without falling apart.
Jayce lingers for half a second longer, like he wants to say something more, like the words are right there on the cusp but–
Viktor closes the door. And he’s alone again.
Later that night, the apartment is dim, lit only by the yellow glow of the living room lamp, the one Elara insists on keeping on “so the plants don’t get scared.” The air smells faintly of lavender laundry soap from an earlier washing and the remains of dinner that went mostly uneaten, mainly by Viktor – his appetite vanished after this afternoon. It was a calm evening, on the surface.
But Viktor walks like the walls are thinner than they used to be. Like something might hear his heartache through them if he breathes too deep. He finds Elara curled on the couch, one sock half-off, her mouth slack in a deep sleep. Her arms are tangled around a bear blanket and a sheet of printer paper clutched in her hands. A drawing.
Viktor eases it free, careful not to wake her.
Crayon on white portrayed two girls in extravagant dresses and crowns, standing atop a hill of stars. Elara has wings. Mae is holding a fire sword. Above them, in blocky lettering: Queen Elara and Knight Mae, Defenders of the Stuffie Realm!!! (Yes, three exclamations marks.)
His chest aches. Viktor crouches beside her and smooths her curly hair back from her forehead, brushing a kiss there. She sighs and turns into the thin corner pillow.
He lifts her gently, relying on his brace for the few steps. He’s done this many nights before – after story time, after nightmares, after falling asleep during cartoons. She’s grown heavier, but he doesn’t mind, not as much as his back does at least. It means she’s healthy, growing. Her father’s little girl still.
Once he reaches her already brightly decorated room, he tucks her in. Folds the blanket up to her chin. Leaves the drawing beside her on the nightstand with a cup of water.
And then he leaves the room, closing the door until only a sliver of light spills in.
He stands in the hallway for a long time after that, still in the shirt he never got around to changing. The buzz of the fridge drones from the kitchen. His laptop glows on the table. The glass of wine he poured earlier – his second – is untouched on the counter, condensation dripping slowly down its stem like sweat.
His hand presses flat to the front door. As if touching it might somehow bring Jayce back. As if he might still be on the other side, breathing just as shallow, wondering if he should’ve stayed.
Viktor swallows. The air tastes like dust.
He told himself he buried it. That it had been years. That the pain had settled into something manageable. A scar, not a wound.
But scars remember how they were made.
Some things don’t stay buried.
Some things are just shorter now, smaller, full of sugar and new beginnings and someone else’s genes. They have hazel eyes and a gap-toothed smile. Two things, actually.
Some things come home.