Archive of Our Own

Viktor isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do—he's walked, barely stopped himself from running—out of the lab and away from Jayce, from the man who violated him, who fused his corpse with the Hexcore after swearing an oath he’d destroy it, that he’d let him die a human death. But, then again, Jayce’s word means far less than it did only months ago. Since he’d been elevated—promoted—to the rank of Councilor, he’s been...different.

He’s been evasive, dishonest, and he’s completely ignored the reason they—can he even say ‘they’ anymore?—built Hextech in the first place. He cares more about making sponsors and the rest of the Council happy than helping people—the reason that Viktor helped him in the first place! His work was brilliant, inspired, but he never would have tried to take and fix it if he hadn’t been mesmerized by that brilliant, naive desire to help people. But now?

He’d always known—in a distant, disconnected way—that Jayce was a piltie. It’d never been a question, really: he’s a man from a house, a man sponsored by the Kirammans to make inventions for him, a man who got to go to the Piltover Academy without entering crippling debt or depending on the scholarships that got Viktor though. He had every opportunity to do what he wanted and study what he wanted and never, not for a second, had to worry when and where his next meal was coming from. He still believes in the enforcers, believes that they’re just and humane and worthy of respect.

(Viktor remembers when he was little—not even double-digits at the time—when he’d been beaten for having a book, because they thought a trencher like him shouldn’t own a book, much less know how to read. Would Jayce have believed him if he’d told him that?)

He’d known that Jayce, although kind, had that typical piltie outlook that meant he looked at Zaunites a little differently from Piltovians, but Viktor—like a fool—had ignored it, had overlooked it. Jayce fought to put his name on the patents and stated that Viktor was his partner every time he’d been called an assistant and never treated him for a second like he was less for where he was from. So, he overlooked it.

And now, he’s made weapons; he went down to Zaun to slaughter the poor people forced to work in factories just to make ends meet, to keep a ramshackle roof over their heads. And then he came back up with the weapon he swore he’d never make—their mining aids to better lives perverted to create Hextech weapons, welcoming destruction. And it’s that last bit that hurts the most.

Jayce betrayed him a million little ways before they reached this point, had made it clear that they weren’t partners anymore. And he knew that he couldn’t tell Jayce about his plans, couldn’t trust him to understand the way he’d told the Doctor he would. He broke his heart when it became clear that he either didn’t see Viktor as a Zaunite or that he was ‘one of the good ones,’ on the bridge. But this—what happened after the council chamber exploded—was a more thorough betrayal than he’s ever experienced before; not even the Doctor’s mutilation of Rio felt the way he feels now.

(He feels so stupid, so fucking stupid for thinking that following the Doctor’s advice wouldn’t turn around and bite him the moment he looked away—every time he let his guard down around that man, bad things happened. Every time he’s let him close, he’s come away hurting somehow.)

Viktor stumbles through the city, making his way back to the place he swore that he’d help, that he promised to make better. He doesn’t know if he can call it home anymore—has he ever even had a home? Has he ever been safe since he was kicked out of the mining housing, following Papa’s death? It doesn’t really matter, he supposes. He has places to go, people to help in the inevitable wake of violence that will wrack Zaun, bring the undercity to its knees.

(He hates them, hates their careless cruelty, hates their self-serving cunning, hates the endless games they play—he hates that saving lives isn’t a good enough reason to do something, that they need to profit off of fixing the suffering they put Zaun through to put a bit more into their pockets. He hates them more than he ever did before he ventured Topside.)

He doesn’t know where he’s going, doesn’t have a destination in mind as he crosses the bridge and makes his way back to the familiar, smog-ridden streets that were his childhood. Although there are enforcers, although they stare at him with their wicked eyes—can feel the depths of their disgust, even if he’s no longer bound by his disability—they do not hinder him as he starts across the bridge in slow, unsteady strides, still unused to walking without the need for his crutch. Then again, they’ve never had issues with Zaunites leaving Topside. Disgusting.

He can still see the imprints of blood on the tiles, despite the clear efforts that have been made to hide the slaughter that unfolded, and, for once, Viktor can’t bring him to revile the actions taken by those responsible. His revulsion towards violence will never change, he imagines, but he can’t say he doesn’t understand when he did everything to try to make things better the right way, the legal way, the way that those pilties always told them to. Don’t break the system, they said—don't try to change things with pointless violence, don’t give us a reason to hurt you—and then they stifled everything he tried to do for years: prosthetics, filters, waste cleanup, experimental robots to perform dangerous tasks. He gave them options to help for years, and they rejected it time and time again. No, he can’t judge the person who killed those enforcers—the name Jinx comes to mind, but he doesn’t know if that’s knowledge or hearsay—not when they’ve ignored every other attempt to communicate.

(Sometimes, in the darkest, sickest recesses of his soul, Viktor wonders if violence is the only universal language.)

Viktor feels something akin to nauseous, the pit where his stomach should be—though he doesn’t have any particular reason to suspect that he doesn’t have internal organs aside from a vague sensation at the borders of his senses—and he hears that thing inside its chest thrum in a disgusting mimicry of a heart. Although he can distantly absorb the sensation of his feet crossing the bridge, stepping over the beams and planks that make it up, he’s so isolatingly disconnected from the rest of the world. It feels more distant than the stars that barely prick lights into the lens of his telescope. The entirety of human nature is on display before him, a horrific portrait of what they can do and endure, and Viktor is some admirer of the art from across the gallery.

He’s a monster, a creature beyond understanding or accepting. He’s made from a weapon of mass destruction, shoved into the hollows of his corpse and given sentience by a foolish, cruel man. Viktor shouldn’t exist, shouldn’t have been born again in a world like this. What can a monster like him even do? Even following his revolting resurrection, he’s acted as if he’s somehow able to help anyone. He can’t even help himself, can’t even bring good to the people in his life—how could something like him help others?

He needs help, needs to figure out what to do with the urgent, painful voice that sounds so like Miss Young in the back of his head—in that space he seems to exist, entirely separate from his physical body, a place filled with stars and the vast emptiness of the cosmos before him. But who on Runeterra would be willing to talk to him? Who could understand the horrific, violent nature of magic, the way it destroys in an instant, wrecks anyone left in its wake.

And then, all at once, it becomes clear who he needs to talk to.

Heimerdinger.

Heimerdinger, who knew something was wrong, looked at him with disgust when the Hexcore started calling his name.

Heimerdinger, who created the twin cities to free them from the tyranny of magic.

Heimerdinger, who they ousted for telling them to slow down.

Heimerdinger, who was right all along.

Viktor’s not a praying man. He knows about the higher beings, knows their impact on the world around them, but he’s always found appealing to the tempestuous nature of higher beings to be a poor idea at the best of circumstances. (And now is certainly far from the best circumstances.) But he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to find the man who left Piltover after his less than friendly ejection from the council. He could be anywhere, and Viktor has no leads, nothing to do unless he wants to go about asking for an auburn-furred yordle. So, he guesses, he’ll try the praying thing. He doesn’t know what could go wrong—unless a god decides to call down a curse upon him as punishment for his violation against the natural order.

“Janna, please.” He whispers, though he expects to go unanswered entirely. “Please, I need to find him; I need to tell him I’m sorry.”

He waits several seconds for a response, though he never stops moving, making his way from the bridge into the familiar streets of Zaun.

He’s not sure what he expected after all of the time—almost ten whole years—he spent on the topside, but he’s surprised to find that nothing major has changed. The ground is filthy, trodden and misshapen by a million feet pressing into the muck to get where they need to go. There’s the starting of gray smog already building up in the air, and even the lightest and cleanest air of the city is contaminated and damaged. Neon lights stain the smog in a rainbow of colors, bleeding through the skies and lighting the world despite the lack of the sun. He twitches in instinctual discomfort, though he doesn’t notice any actual discomfort. The buildings loom above him with a closeness that is claustrophobic after a decade of space and sky and clean, safe air to breathe. But, in a twisted way, he’s comforted by the closeness of the buildings above him, pressed together like kittens at their mother’s stomach for warmth. The state of the buildings is considerably more worn down and repaired with newfound scavenged parts, but none of the changes alter the fundamental nature of the Lanes.

Viktor’s home.

There is no sudden understanding, no bolt of inspiration that tells him where to go, and Viktor feels profoundly foolish for even considering that prayer or being home would make things better. Even if Janna had heard his prayer, what use would she have for a spineless traitor who fled from Zaun and didn’t even have the good sense to make things better for the people he left behind. No, he doesn’t blame her for abandoning him in this time of need, and he feels utterly foolish for ever having considered it in the first place.

“You don’t need her, you know.”

The voice is familiar and friendly, and it makes Viktor sick. Nausea wells up at him with the voice of the young woman he got killed—he murdered—rings in his ears despite her physical form having been reduced to ashes. No, he cannot bear it, and he speeds up, as if he can somehow get away from what is obviously a hallucination, a manifestation of his guilt. (Perhaps a curse? Divine punishment for what he’s done, for all the pain he’s caused by existing?) Miss Young’s journal of inventions sits heavily in his hands, and all he can do is clutch it to himself beneath the blanket he now wears as a cloak.

“Shush,” He whispers, though he distinctly knows that speaking to no one is the first sign of madness.

A hand locks on his shoulder, and, suddenly, Viktor is dragged back from his physical body and into the vastness of the star-filled sky, feet landing on some invisible, glass-like barrier without so much as a sound. Before him, there is a fuzzy depiction of his own vision, a way to watch his own first-person perspective from the third in a bizarre and nauseating experience. He is not meant to see this, not meant to experience his senses in such a way. But Viktor was not meant to be. He’s a mistake, a reviled mutation that needs to be put out of his misery before he can ruin another good life. But he cannot focus on that when all he sees is the gorgeous nebula before him, the brilliant sparkle of stars, a thousand times more vivid than even that night of the meteor shower. It’s the most gorgeous thing he’s ever seen in his life.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” The voice asks again, and Viktor whips around to face it before he catches a glimpse of his form.

Even he seems somewhat brilliant in the light of the cosmos, his flaws and weaknesses melted away until his ideal form emerges from beneath him—but there are no clothes or any of the awkwardness he associates with his body, just as strange and starry as the world around him, defined and colored by brilliant nebulas. He feels...he supposes, complete? Whole? Undamaged. But Viktor pushes the sight of his body aside when he sees her.

Sky stands before him, just as beautiful as she was in life, though her glasses are nowhere to be found, and he wonders if that was a result of her glasses not being disintegrated when she was butchered like an animal. She’s made of starlight, too, her now-silver-white hair pulled into a bun atop her head, and Viktor distantly wonders if his own hair appears this way, now, but he can’t afford to focus on anything but the brilliant woman he murdered.

“Miss Young.” He whispers, voice soft but filled with pain. “Miss Young, I’m so terribly sorry. I never meant—”

Miss Young stops him with a look, and he stares at her expectantly. Clearly, she has something to say, and Viktor’s going to listen to her the way he failed to do so many times. He worries at his bottom lip until pain spikes against his senses to keep quiet, looking over at him.

“I woke up her after what happened.” She explains, voice as quiet and somber as one’d expect from someone referencing the way they’d been killed by people who were supposed to protect them, but she stops him with a raised hand before he can do more than open his mouth to apologize once more. Viktor falls silent again. “I’ve had a lot of time to consider what happened, and I’ve come to a conclusion.”

“And what is that?” He finally asks, instinctively swallowing, though he’s not sure if he’s physical here or simply imaginary.

“I’ve always been inspired by you, ever since we were children—and since I’ve died, everything’s become so clear. We have a mission: we need to save them.” Her voice is warm, alight with the hope and passion that he so callously snuffed out with his egoism, his selfish desire to live a little longer.

It doesn’t make sense. Viktor had expected her to scream and shout or attack him, to take control of his body and ruin what’s left of his life. But Sky isn’t doing that, and he cannot, for the life of him, understand why. He’s a monster, despicable—she should hate him, should want him to die, should regret that Jayce brought him back as much as he does. But she doesn’t, and Viktor has no idea what he’s meant to do—not with himself, and not with these strangers he’s supposed to save.

“Save who?” He finally asks, because as enlightening as her explanation is for his understanding of her motivation, it doesn’t explain who he’s supposed to be helping—saving. He wants—needs—to understand, needs to know who he should focus his attention on.

“Everyone.” Sky states simply, and it’s then that he understands.

He’s a monster. An abomination, a reviled distortion of nature never meant to exist, much less see the light of day. But, whatever he is, maybe he could do something good with it. Maybe he could use his strange, new, and durable body to save people from dangerous situations—maybe he could go places others couldn’t to scavenge and help. Maybe he could tap into that mystical wellspring—the endless power in the Hexcore—and do something good for once in his life. And he wants to—it's all he’s ever wanted to do, to help people. But he still has to do something first. He needs help that even Miss Young, in her newfound astral form, cannot provide to him.

“I want to,” He says, then continues at her skeptical expression, “I really do—I just...I need to speak to Heimerdinger first. I need to talk with him about this.”

Sky’s expression is heavy, solemn and skeptical in a way that he hasn’t ever seen her before, but she eventually nods, walking towards the peculiar display where he can see his physical body’s vision. Viktor doesn’t know what to expect, doesn’t know what she means, so he watches her until Miss Young’s eyes meet his own before gesturing to the above. He stares up at it, stares at his field of vision, surrounded by a web of stars.

And then, in a movement that has his newfound mechanical body almost retching up its possibly nonexistent stomach, he’s back in his body again—back in Zaun. His feet stumble and stub against the uneven ground, but Viktor’s newfound body can handle that the way his old one couldn’t, adjusts immediately and without any difficulty.

Heimerdinger. He needs to find Heimerdinger; he reminds himself. His feet start up again, but, this time, his body seems to know the way—even if he doesn’t seem to. But Viktor isn’t going to question the logic of his new instincts just yet; he can do that later. He feels like he has a string attached to his chest—tied deep and strongly against his ribs—and that someone on the other end, wherever or whoever they are, is pulling at it. The simplest thing, he decides, is to follow it. He did ask Janna for help, after all. Maybe this is her working in mysterious ways, moving to get him to the one person who’ll know how to stop him from becoming a danger to others. (A bigger danger, that is, says a voice that sounds uncomfortably like Salo’s snide drawl.) He shoves it aside and starts walking.

Viktor finds that, when in a healthy body, he actually likes walking, and it’s such a bizarre thing that he can’t process it beyond a moment of contemplation before pushing it to the back of his mind—he has far more serious things to worry about.

Zaun has always been an impoverished place—Viktor grew up in poverty, like everyone else he’d known, and survived on scraps or junk that had been abandoned by Topsiders. But it’s never been like this, even though Shimmer had taken hold of the populace before he had left. Now, it seems there are people on every corner of each street with the same mutations he saw on the Doctor’s creations, with wary, Shimmer-stained eyes watching him from every angle—trying to determine if he has anything worth stealing. (Viktor’s never judged them, not at all. He, more so than most, understands what it is to be eternally vulnerable, and he would have taken Shimmer, too—if his mind hadn’t been his only source of value. He could never afford to jeopardize his intelligence.

Without the same reservations that had stopped Viktor from using Shimmer upon himself, he knows that it would have been too powerful of a lure for most people to resist—to feel strong, to feel safe, to feel in control. It’s an instantly addictive sensation, mixed into the opportunity of medicine in the depths of Zaun—cough medicine spliced with additives to keep people coming back and buying more. No, he doesn’t judge them at all—at his own most vulnerable, he fell victim to it from the kind-seeming confidant of someone he shouldn’t have trusted.

These days, though, people seem more devoured than ever by the poison that the Doctor put onto the streets. The drug is defined by suffering, made from the torture of the sentient, brilliant being that had been Viktor’s first ever friend. It breeds suffering wherever it goes, but at least he doesn’t feel beholden to the concoction anymore—something he only wishes he could share with the others living in pain. Sky’s offer—suggestion, command—comes before him, and Viktor’s mind wanders. How could he cure such suffering? How could he help others when he’s a blight upon the art of existence? How could he do good if he was born from cruelty and perversion?

He spares a slow, sad glance at the world around him, at the suffering stitched into the very fabric of their being, before he moves on.

It takes some time, but the sensation of being pulled grows stronger, winding its way through his blood and bones, until Viktor is walking—walking without stumbling—across uneven ground and into the labyrinth of pipes and walls that make up all the best places to hide in all of Zaun. He sidesteps and toes around the more dangerous shards of metal and glass, needles—though he doesn’t know if his new, metal body can even be harmed by such things. Still, he’d rather test that in a safe, clean environment. Though it’s not as if either of those are common in Zaun.

Viktor hopes to whatever horrible, capricious being is up there that his newfound instincts haven’t led him astray, but ducks into a large ventilation shaft—three feet tall, and the same kind that he used to sleep in. They’re familiar, and he shuffles onto his hands and knees, an action that doesn’t hurt him for the first time in his life, and it’s only through the memory of waking up—confused, alone, and scared—that he stops himself from exclaiming in wonder at having a working body. He wraps the blanket he stole from Jayce more tightly around himself and continues crawling, something far easier than walking while squatting down, even if he knew how to balance himself properly.

The pipes are filled with grease and oil and grit, but they’re relatively clean of garbage or signs of someone living in them, and Viktor sighs in relief at that awareness—he'd have to fight someone off who just wants to defend their home, though he suspects that he wouldn’t be the one winning that fight. He inhales a breath he no longer thinks he needs and continues on, one step in front of the other. It’s simple work, following the insistent tugging that’s leading him beyond his knowledge—though he deeply and profoundly hopes that it’s where he wants to go.

The space before him opens into nauseating vastness as the pipe he’s been climbing through comes to a fault that quickly turned into a jagged, metal ravine. It fills him with a heavy, visceral fear, and Viktor jerks himself away from the ledge before he can be tempted by the call of the void—he's heard of things like this before: metal chasms that go into the depth of the world, places where Topside’s plumbing and disposal breaks apart and creates a gully filled by a toxic, waste-filled sludge. People who go near the jagged ravines fall down and gash themselves open, again and again, until they reach the bottom, then either bleed out from the wounds or drown in the muck. Those things were kid-killers, corpse collectors.

No—even with a newfound body and the potential possibility of not needing to breathe, Viktor won’t be trying anything that risky.

But that undefined tugging is beckoning him across the chasm, and he doesn’t see another way across.

He’s come this far already—can he really just turn around and leave without finding Heimerdinger? He needs his help, needs to understand what’s happened to him—what's been done to him by someone he thought he could trust. He needs answers, from someone who understands the Arcane, who isn’t likely to kill him on the spot like an enforcer or experiment on him like the Doctor. He needs someone—not someone he can trust; he’s not naive enough to fall for the folly of trust—but someone whose actions he can predict, all the same. He needs Heimerdinger, as callous as he’s been to him.

Fuck. Fuck. He’s going to die—he’s going to do this for an entirely stupid, unproven hunch that he might, somehow and magically, know exactly where Heimerdinger is? Is he once again actively suicidal?

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Viktor hisses, body trembling as he shifts towards the ledge. He’s doing this. Like a suicidal, monumental idiot, he’s going to climb across a pipe ravine—something not even the dumbest, most desperate of the sump children searching for scraps do. But he doesn’t have a choice, not really. He needs to do this.

To find Heimerdinger.

To get answers.

He loops the blanket over one shoulder and under one arm before tying the ends together—he refuses to travel through Zaun unclothed, even if he’s no longer easily discernible (if discernible at all) as human. Besides, it provides some degree of coverage from his ruined, alien body; it would be all too easy to get seen and snatched by profit-seeking individuals or taken to immoral people who prioritize knowledge of ethics, like the Doctor. It’s the most logical decision to cover up, to hide himself away from sight. Still, at the present, what matters most is free use of his arms and not disguising his entire form, and he resolves to fix his appearance when he gets the opportunity—he can always go back to stealing clothes, even if he finds it distasteful.

Viktor turns around before dangling his legs off the ledge of the metal pipe—a particularly nasty-looking barb of toxic metal until the tips of his toes can barely brush against the next pipe down. Whatever fucking intel Heimerdinger has had better be good, he tells himself. If he finally finds the yordle and doesn’t get shit from him, he’s going to commit crimes.

(Technically, he already has, says a dark, hissing voice in the back of his head. He smuggled Shimmer past the border between Piltover and Zaun, used it on himself to perform unsanctioned experiments upon himself. He got Sky killed, is the reason she died. He’s a criminal of the worst kind, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise. He’s dangerous, just like Jayce always thought of Zaunites were, and the thought sickens him.)

Still, despite the terror bubbling in him like a pot of soup atop a roaring fire, Viktor continues his slow, strategic descent towards the depths of Zaun. He can feel his limbs trembling with the adrenaline coursing through him—though he doesn’t know if he still has veins, if what he’s feeling is actually adrenaline, or if it’s something else designed to mimic the functions of his true body. He keeps his eyes distant, focused on the ledges of the metal pipes rather than his body, tries to ignore the way he’s different now, even if he benefits from it by avoiding gashes, infection, or tetanus from it. Thinking about it hurts too much—he’d rather think about anything else.

It’s like a ladder, Viktor theorizes, although he’s never been much in the habit of climbing them, considering his bad leg—something that’s been completely cured ever since his fusion with the Hexcore. A sharp, dirty, and dangerous ladder, but a ladder, nonetheless. He can make it—with his new body, he’s not being carved open on the jagged metal or torn apart like a turkey in a barbed-wire fence. He’s not been impaled or otherwise harmed, and Viktor has every intention to make use of his strange new abilities to get towards his mentor, to get to someone who can give him answers.

Viktor as rarely, if ever, used a ladder before, and he decides that the experience is entirely unpleasant, though that might be defined by the fact that he’s mostly-suspended above a broken, serrated pit of metal that’s all but straining to reach up and sink its claws into his mutated flesh, with a disgusting cocktail of chemical runoff and toxic water awaiting him, should he make yet another mistake in the long series of them that’s brought him here.

His body isn’t clumsy to use, despite the alien nature of it, and that almost makes Viktor feel more sick than he would have had he been experiencing extreme physical adjustments. This isn’t normal—he isn’t normal—so why is his body reacting like nothing’s happened to him?

Metal digs into his hands, pokes at the mutated flesh of his feet, and even his new, distant-seeming body can’t take him away from the discomfort that prods at him like a particularly callous student during a dissection. Still, his body doesn’t ache or rebel the way it used to when he walked too many stairs or climbed into places he shouldn’t have. He supposes it’s the best he can hope for: no physical pain, no exhaustion, no consciousness towards the ever-hastening deterioration of his body.

Then, a shard of scrap metal gashes against his back, and he’s only saved from a horrible fate and agony that won’t go away for months by the unhappy nature of his existence. He wishes it had hurt him, wishes that it had cut him open and put him out of his misery before he even had a chance to fall to the bottom—or that he could clamber and crawl his way into another pipe and curl up to die. Something burns in the back of his throat, and Viktor can’t tell if it’s bile, or if it’s another phantom sensation attempting to tie him back to his diminishing humanity.

The thought makes Viktor want to vomit, wish his body would let him puke up his insides and purge himself of the feeling of being wrong, of being disgusting or tainted—whatever name for the feelings in his intestines that he can’t manage to name. Viktor was a scientist, not an author or any literary genius, and his own emotions have always been a particularly nebulous experience for him. He never thought that he’d be in a situation like this. He doesn’t even know what he’s supposed to feel beyond hurt.

And, once again, he’s dragged back into heavy, all-consuming the sort of thinking that has the strength leaving his bones, draining from his body as it sinks its teeth into his flesh—the idea that it would be so much simpler to give up, to give in. He’s exhausted, and he’s on the verge of figuring out if his new body is capable of crying. He’s spent years—a decade now—trying time and time again to make things better, but it’s all been for naught. Things are even worse than they were when he started, and the point of it all begins to evade him.

But he’s never been one for giving up, and Viktor has a goal beyond his own health: to make life better for the people of Zaun, to help people with the talents he’s cultivated his whole life. He can still do that—can still help people; he just needs to get help, find Heimerdinger.

Viktor stretches until the balls of his feet can land against the metal of the broken pipe below him. Then, he’s turning around until the jagged tube is poking against his back once again—if the other side of the metal ravine is close enough to slash against his back, then he can probably (hopefully) cross to the other side and continue to follow the innate tugging that he thinks is taking him to Heimerdinger. He’s shaky and uncomfortable, but he can’t afford to turn back or give up. Where would he even go—could he even trust himself to be safe around other people? What if his mere existence poses a threat to living beings, the same way that the Hexcore always destroyed the plants in his tests? He couldn’t bear the idea of causing such damage to anyone else. That alone convinces him to continue.

He, shakily, reaches across the narrowest part of the chasm—above his head and barely within his reach—and grabs onto the sharp, jagged metal, letting out a sigh of relief when his palm isn’t gashed open the way they have been in the past. Viktor reaches out with his other hand and takes hold once more, fighting the instincts that kept him alive for more than thirty years. Then, he takes an entirely unnecessary breath to calm himself, and he backs up to swing himself forward—just to have enough momentum to get to the other side. His stomach jolts when he lurches across the gap before dropping like a bag of rocks when he tries to catch himself and slides far further than he had intended to.

He gasps, sucking in a breath when his inertia sends him further into the swing, and Viktor becomes very aware of what’s about to come next—he’s about to reverse. (For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction, the Doctor had told him while he sat by Rio’s side, petting her in between writing notes.) And, if he didn’t let go, he would—in all likelihood—slip backwards and down the ravine. He only has a moment left before he reaches the apex, and then he’ll be on a one-way trip to his highly probable second death, and Viktor. He inhales sharply, holding his breath in his chest in an attempt to steel his nerves before doing something that could most certainly get him killed.

Viktor lets go.

He yelps when he lets go, despite having known that he was going to do it, once he goes through the dark, yawning chasm that is the open pipe before him. There’s the sound of air whistling against his ears, and, then, Viktor lands on his back with a groan. He’s not in pain—he doesn’t think he is—and there’s no evidence of any damage, but the noise leaves him the same way that he’s seen people yelp before they even know if they’re hurt, a preemptive noise in preparation for the worse of the two outcomes. But, as Viktor lies flat on his back in a rather large pipe and stares at the grimy surface above him, all he can think is that it worked. He got to the other side. He’s in one piece, doesn’t even have any broken bones—nothing protests or snaps when he shifts and stretches his limbs—and the relief that fills him is addictive, a rush as the stress and tension leave him all at once. He’s still alive. He may yet live to see Professor Heimerdinger. Viktor waits a couple minutes, lets himself breathe despite his lack of need for it—more a comforting practice than any necessity—and then he picks himself up to continue his walk.

The pipes are wide, considering he’s an adult and able to semi-comfortably crawl and shuffle through them without bending his head, and Viktor distracts himself from the weirdness and wrongness of what he’s doing by focusing on Heimerdinger. He should probably say something to him when he shows up there—maybe an apology for not taking his warnings on the Hexcore seriously? Or some explanation of how it’s not what it looks like—Viktor didn’t willingly pervert himself with such dangerous magic. Well, he did at first. But he learned his lesson the moment that it drew too deeply, took an innocent young woman’s life. After that, though, he’d been willing to end his life—had almost ended his life, if Jayce hadn’t stepped in—and Viktor, shamefully, finds himself wishing that he hadn’t, that Jayce had been just a minute later, wishes that none of this had happened to him. But all of that is pointless longing.

The issue remains. Viktor still doesn’t know what to say to Heimerdinger.

He feels nauseous at his alien body, forced to stare at his newly-made limbs as he makes his way through the pipeworks. He can hear the noise of his metal body brushing against the pipes, even with the blanket softening the noises of his knees. Everything around him just burns the awareness of what’s been done to him further into his brain, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. Viktor brushes back the too-long strands of his hair that are at the perfect length to fall into his eyes and affect his vision. But it’s the least of all his concerns at this moment, and he simply tucks it aside—trying to stifle a shudder at the skin-warm sensation of his metal hand—before he moves on.

He doesn’t know how long he travels—it could be only two score minutes, or it could be innumerable hours—but time has never mattered much in Zaun, not when the light of day scarcely reaches most of her levels. He might be down here forever.

But the end of his trek approaches eventually, and he stumbles forward, rising to his feet as the tunnel grows larger and longer, until he’s eventually clambering out of the vent that he’s been using to transport himself throughout the underground city. He pulls himself up, untying the blanket from where it’s knotted and wrapping it around his shoulders like a cloak once more. He feels more secure like that, more able to ignore his monstrosity. The world around him is familiarly gritty, but the air smells peculiar, the scent of petrichor striking him amongst the must of soaked earth and the chemical fumes that stain the air—it feels fresh, clean in a way that things in Zaun have never been.

It’s gorgeous.

It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Viktor remembers the first time he saw a tree—he’d caught glimpses of them before in storybooks, seen decrepit, skeletal figures that he could imagine as living creatures but never put into words or physical concepts—but the first tree he’d ever seen was when he was nineteen years old, the day he stole an Academy uniform and crossed the bridge, and started attending classes. He’d stared at the world around him, stared at buildings covered in sunlight and cloaked by the thin, cool air of Topside, brought to life by the beautiful, strange things that stretched like an electrical pole into the sky—though monumentally thicker, made of still-living wood, rather than the dead versions he’s seen used in fires or furniture—with healthy, beautiful, brilliant leaves stretching towards the sky.

He’d cried, the first time he’d seen it. He hadn’t known things could be beautiful, that they could exist outside the poison that choked Zaun. It so overwhelmed him that he could barely make it to the first class he wanted to attend on time, and, even then, his eyes were red-rimmed and teary as he took his seat. Ever since then, Viktor’s made it a point to see every garden, nature center, orchard, and growing–place possible, whether it’s the fields that are used to grow the foods that Topside eats or brilliant gardens designed and organized by those lucky souls who get to cultivate life as they see fit. He’d written essays about each one after he’d finished them, analyzed the themes and designs of them to his heart’s content and kept it in a private collection of Piltovian gardens until Heimerdinger had suggested he publish it.

This tree puts those—and every other one he’s seen—to shame.

It’s an ancient thing, a beautiful oak that puts Topside skyscrapers to shame, a thick, curved trunk sprouting from the roots that burrow into the peculiarly rich soil that must have provided it the nutrients to sprout in the first place. If Viktor had to guess, he’d say that it was at least two hundred years old—maybe as old as half a century—but he’d never carve apart such a brilliant piece of life just to see when it sprouted. It’s healthy and whole, and it astounds him that such a fragile piece of life could become so strong in the poison of Zaun’s air and water. It radiates life in a way that he’s never seen outside those peculiar, mutated plants that grow in the Fissures of his youth. The ancient tree’s been strung up with fairy lights of different colors, made into a tree that seems almost festive, even though there’s little to celebrate below the world’s surface. It radiates life even beyond that, Viktor notices the buildings wrapped around it, stairs spiraling along the trunk that lead up, up, up into the boughs of the remarkable tree—though Viktor distinctly notices that the homes are built around the tree, not harming it. A million beautiful Firelight bugs set the evening air alight, flickering in their mating calls and other communication.

It’s Zaun. It’s broken and resilient and beautiful, despite (or maybe because of) its imperfections.

Viktor raises a hand to his mouth, trying to muffle the choked, broken noise that escapes his throat like a wounded cry, moves to brush aside the tears that he didn’t even know he could shed in his new, horrific form. He stumbles forward, approaching the tree until his outstretched hand—and when did he extend it? He last remembers staying curled in on himself as some miniscule form of protection—can press against the warmth of the bark in the evening light, and the rush of life that hits Viktor only confirms everything he assumed about it. The tree’s seen life and love and loss and years and years of care, held the hope of hundreds of people in its limbs without breaking under the pressure of it. It’s brilliant—it’s a miracle that he never could have imagined.

“Who are you? And what are you doing here?” A young man’s voice asks, and Viktor is jerked away from his reverie—the thrumming of life and energy of the brilliance of the tree leaving him when the touch ends—before he spins around to face the source of the noise.

He’s a handsome young man, a boy of maybe sixteen years based on his appearance—so, knowing the Zaunite tendency of malnutrition, Viktor clocks the boy as eighteen to twenty. He’s around the average height for a Zaunite boy, strong in the wiry, lithe way that he’s seen of the healthier ones. (He doesn’t look like he’s been starving all his life, not like Viktor always was, and that relieves him greatly, even though he doesn’t know him in any manner.) His skin is a gorgeous brown with cool red undertones that make him think of gems. White hair, grown into dreadlocks on the top and shaved on the sides, is loose in the front and tied up in a bun in the back. He’s dressed in the traditional array of scavenged clothes that are customary for Zaun. But it’s the mask mounted on his belt that gives him away—he recognizes that mask from rumors and the meetings led by the late Sheriff. He can only assume that this young man is the leader of the notorious Firelight faction that he knows have long tormented the chembarons.

Viktor stares, forgetting what the young man asked.

“Who are you?” The leader of the Firelights asks, enunciating his words clearly. “How did you even get—?”

“Viktor?” A familiar voice asks, and his legs almost crumple from the relief he feels.

“Professor?” He questions, voice breaking in an unusually childlike manner that hasn’t happened in decades.

Professor Heimerdinger looks much the same as he did last time Viktor saw him—when Jayce ousted him from the Council—a dark blue coat with gold detailing, a thick belt, and striped, golden pants—but it’s been paired with and complimented by a heavy brown cloak of a good enough quality that it would noticeably mark him as a member of the Zaunite upper class, a prime target to be stolen from, granting that people assume that he isn’t a dangerous individual. But he looks healthy and happy and whole, despite the betrayal that Jayce put him through. He blinks back tears of relief, a shuddery, trembling sob of a breath that tries to escape. He found him, and maybe, now, he can figure out what to do about what’s been done to him.

Viktor stumbles forward, realizing as he approaches the man he’s so desperately searched for, the being he scrambled through a metal graveyard to find and clambered through the bowels of the dangerous underground city that he hasn’t lived in since he graduated university. His feet scrape against the stones and compacted soil of the ground around him, but it doesn’t summon the same bursts of pain that they did when he was a child—he’s unharmed, but surprised by the sensation of it.

“Professor, you have no—” He starts, hoping he can do justice to the way that he feels, but he’s quickly interrupted.

“Viktor, what have you done to yourself?” The look he gets from the professor is filled with horror, with disgust, and Viktor’s once again cruelly reminded of the violation done to his body by someone he thought he could trust, that last time they’d spoken, Viktor had been noticing that the Hexcore started displaying unusual tendencies around his blood—something that he, in his monumental foolishness, had intended on pursuing further. Something he did pursue until his recklessness cost Miss Young her life. Once again, Viktor’s reminded of what he is, the disgusting violation of nature that his existence poses.

He’s revolting, repulsive, and it only makes sense that his mentor—the man who first urged the restriction of the arcane in Piltover, who urged that Jayce be expelled from the Academy and forbidden to study again, to be exiled from Topside if he violated his constraints again. And, even as he’d grown more accepting of Hextech, of the potential and capabilities of it, he’d been wary and hesitant—outright rejecting the Hexclaw and the Atlas Gauntlets, trying to forbid further study of it. And then, when he’d seen Viktor’s inclinations? When he saw the Hexcore, even knowing that it could be his only option for survival, he had ordered that it be destroyed. He would rather have seen Viktor dead than the Hexcore used. (What had it been he’d said? “I’ve seen nations destroyed by a single seed, and it looked exactly like this.”) Heimerdinger was right of course—Heimerdinger was right from the beginning, and Viktor’s stupid, selfish desire to live longer has done nothing but cost a bright, young woman her life. It’s only natural that the yordle be so disgusted with him, by what he is now.

The hand he’d extended to reach towards his mentor—his teacher, the man who let him into the Academy despite his less-than-legal entrance to the grounds—falls limp, drops to his side, and he crumples in on himself, trying to be unseen. Viktor finds himself staring at it, finding the monstrosity of his form easier to tolerate than the look in the eyes of the man who was almost like a father to him—the man who’s been in his life far longer than the meager six years before Pa’s passing.

“So, you…you know each other?” The leader of the Firelights asks, and Viktor nods, blinking back tears. His voice fails him when he tries to speak.

“Viktor was my assistant for some years,” Heimerdinger explains, and it hurts to hear the yordle distance himself from him, but he understands—knows that he doesn’t want his new Zaunite student thinking he’s associated with whatever Viktor is now. So, he doesn’t speak, doesn’t say a word to interrupt either of them.

“So, he wasn’t always…” The young man, whatever his name is, hesitates—clearly far more hesitant to reference Viktor’s condition than his former mentor is—before gesturing to his form at large.

“No, no, no.” Heimerdinger responds. “He was human. This—whatever this mutation is—it’s not natural, not in the slightest.”

“I didn’t.” He gets out, tries to speak up before he gets spoken-over again, the way he’s always been at those Council meetings—even when talking about Hextech to the councilors. But his former mentor has no intention of letting Viktor explain himself, not even if it means he’ll be told that he was right, that he should have listened to him.

“Professor,” He starts again, trying to repeat himself once again. “Please, I’ve come here to—”

“I know why you’re here.” Heimerdinger says, and it’s the coldest thing he’s ever heard the man say—not even his plea to destroy the Hexcore summoned the arctic fury that those words hit Viktor with, and he knows, deep in the chest, that regardless of his opinion on Jayce’s coup to get him off the Council, Heimerdinger does not forgive him, and he does not consider him trustworthy the way he once did. “You meddled with the Arcane—with things beyond your comprehension—just as I warned you not to. And, now, you want me to fix it.”

No. That’s not it at all, but he doesn’t even get a moment to pause or interject the truth of what happened.

“Viktor, you were my assistant—my student—and I’m almost as fond of you as I’m able to be of humans, but you’ve really crossed a line here.”

After that, Viktor can’t hear a single word that the yordle is saying to him—it just blurs out of his comprehension, and, suddenly, he’s staring at the ground, trying to regulate his likely unnecessary breathing before he goes into a panic attack. He can’t think, can’t put the words he needs to use to make the professor understand what happened to him—what was done to him—was not by his choice.

But it doesn’t stop. He won’t shut up.

Stop, he commands the noise contaminating his senses, but nothing changes.

He wants him to stop, wants Heimerdinger to stop talking and listen to him—wants a moment to catch a break or a breath before he has to fight or defend the idea that his bodily autonomy has been violated by someone he thought he could trust, someone he thought would listen when he said that the Hexcore needed to be destroyed. But Jayce wasn’t who he thought he was—he wouldn’t be here if he was. He just wants a couple seconds—just wants enough air so that he can explain the truth. He didn’t do this—well, he did, but he stopped it when he realized he was wrong. He was ready to die to spare the world the horrors of what the Hexcore could do, ready to let the corruption of it end with him. He didn’t choose this—he didn’t want it to happen—and Viktor wishes the man he so greatly admires would just let him explain what happened.

But he doesn’t—he just keeps talking and assuming and getting things wrong, and Viktor wants to disappear from existence. This was a mistake—this was such a big mistake, and he should never have come here.

“Hey, are you okay?” The young man—he’s really just a boy (But aren’t they all?)—asks, and Viktor’s roughly dragged back into his body from where he was starting to dissociate from it.

For another moment, he doesn’t even process what the boy asked him, barely understands that he’s being addressed at all beyond the all-consuming wave of Heimerdinger’s disappointment. Then, comprehension comes to him, and Viktor’s choking back a watery chuckle.

Is he okay?

He’s not okay—he’s not sure if he’ll ever be okay again. And then, as if thinking about what happened for more than a second, all he can focus on is what’s happened. His body’s been warped and changed beyond recognition without his consent by someone he thought he could trust, been fused with the same horrible thing that slaughtered Sky in a second. Jayce had sworn he’d destroy the Hexcore, and, instead, he…he did this to him, knowing his thoughts on it, knowing that what he’d seen from the Hexcore had driven Viktor to the verge of suicide, even before he’d known what it had done. And that man—his friend—decided to violate him, to turn him into a monster.

“I didn’t.” He finally gets out, and though it’s a relief to get the words off of his chest, it does nothing to ease the bone-deep sense of violation, the phantom sensation of filth under his skin and caked to his flesh. He feels dirty; he feels like his soul is stained, and he’ll never be clean again. Viktor stares at his hands—the same hands that made inventions he was so proud of, the same hands that got Miss Young killed—rendered entirely unrecognizable, alien to his own senses.

“You didn’t what?” The young leader of the Firelights asks, face shifting with curiosity and concentration in a manner that betrays the boy as a scientist of his own right—and it occurs to Viktor that he might be the mind behind those brilliant hoverboards used to travel. And, oh, it would be wonderful to get to talk to another Zaunite inventor, someone working as an engineer in the mechanism of revolution and the difficulties of politics. But that’s something for a future Viktor to consider and look forward to. Right now, he desperately needs to get this weight off his chest before it crushes him.

“This—me—I didn’t do it. I didn’t want this.” Viktor explains, and he fights his ingrained disgust for his new form enough to drop the blanket from around his shoulders—letting them see what he is now, lets the warped, Shimmer-colored flesh and the gold painted down his body (Not unlike Councilor Medarda’s golden accents, if they became an irremovable reminder of the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.) be seen instead of hidden.

That, it seems, finally draws Heimerdinger out of his lecturing, and Viktor watches as his entire body stiffen as his ears pin back before he tries to compose himself into the picture of propriety—as if there’s any rulebook that could possibly tell someone how to act in a situation like this.

“Pardon me?” He asks, and Viktor heaves out a sigh of relief instead of crying.

“There was an attack—” He starts, then cuts himself off—that doesn’t provide nearly enough information on the situation. “After you left, things were discovered. The chembaron, Silco, and his follower—a young woman named Jinx—were behind the Progress Day attack.”

“So you figured it out? That enforcer told you all the truth?” The boy seems oddly aware of what’s going on, but Viktor imagines that it makes sense that he’s aware of the situation and the causes of it. “Because I heard you were blaming us for a while.”

Viktor hums in agreement—that was the truth; until Caitlyn and Vi had appeared with the tale of Silco and the way he controlled the chembarons, they had been told by the sheriff that the Firelights were the most likely assailants, and the Topside elite hardly had access to the information that Viktor did regarding the major players of the Undercity. But the young leader’s knowledge implies he actually encountered Caitlyn, perhaps was even involved in the gathering of that information.

“Oh, right. Viktor, this is Ekko,” Professor Heimerdinger cuts in, and he files the name away for later use. “He’s the leader of the Firelights—who were the primary suspect for the attack, according to Sheriff Marcus.”

It doesn’t add anything else to his concept of what happened beyond a new name, so Viktor simply nods and moves on.

“So I assumed. Regardless, there was, after some…violent confrontation,” Viktor trails off when he’s forced to think of the violence done to his people (By Jayce, that betrayed, furious voice in the back of his head snarls.), then he snaps out of it. He can’t afford to zone out right now. His voice is heavy with discomfort. “Jayce cut a deal with Silco—independence for Zaun, in exchange for Jinx. We were voting on it when she launched weaponized Hextech into the Council room.”

“What?” Heimerdinger gasps, and his eyes go wide with a horror, and Ekko—although clearly astounded by the discussion and the vote that were going on in Piltover (And Viktor can only understand his confusion when faced with the decades of cruelty Topsiders have shown to Zaunites.)—seems just as implausible as the sky in the Sumps. 

“It exploded.” Viktor explains, hollowing his voice out to stop it from trembling. “Half of the councilors were killed in the blast—only Councilors Talis, Salo, Shoola, and Medarda survived.”

He doesn’t quite know how to explain the apparent devastation that the room experienced, the sudden flash of light coming from the window behind them, the sound of glass shattering just before the sound of an explosion—the sensation of flying through the air, crashing against the unyielding stone wall, the way his broken body crumpled to the ground and was buried under rubble. He doesn’t have words for the agony of his last ragged breaths when his already-failing respiratory system was punctured by his broken ribs, the excruciating sensation as blood was sucked into the vacuum of his lungs. He doesn’t know how he can explain his senses fading, one by one, until all he could hear was the sound of Jayce sobbing. It was like dying to a symphony of suffering. He doesn’t know how he could ever do justice to it.

“And what about you?” Heimerdinger finally asks, when the silence has dragged on far too long.

“As I said, only those mentioned of the councilors survived the explosion.” Viktor states delicately, before he decides that he’s sick of mincing his words for Topsiders to make his experiences—his life—more palatable for them. He’s been doing it for more than a decade, and the thought of it continuing after this violation to every part of himself feels like some sort of betrayal. “I was killed on impact.”

(It’s technically not true—Viktor lingered for close to two minutes before his mind faded entirely, only reawakening in the presence of the Hexcore, but he thinks it better establishes the inevitability of the outcome, the fact that he would have died, no matter what.)

Heimerdinger lets out a shocked, distraught noise, and Viktor stares at him, surprised—the yordle had been so unbothered upon finding out about his diagnosis, the fact that he was choking on the toxins Topside put in his lungs and had only months to live. In fact, although Viktor will never speak a word of it, he was devastated by the calmness of Heimerdinger’s acceptance, his refusal—for all his claims of caring for him—to even consider any other option, not any of the standard treatments or anything experimental that had helped some in the past. He had accepted his death with a placid smile on his face, and Viktor knows that he’ll never be able to look past such a choice, no matter what he tries. And, yet, the former Councilor is acting as if his death is something horrific, now. Is it because it happened sooner than he expected? Or is it because of the manner in which he died?

“You what?” Ekko questions, and although there’s the traditional apologetic look in his expression associated with conversations of death—particularly in Zaun, where death is so common—his expression is dominated by curiosity and concern. He stares over Viktor’s horrid, tainted form once again, and it takes everything he has to not curl beneath the blanket wrapped around him.

“I died.” Viktor repeats, clearing his throat when his voice cracks like a child’s—an embarrassing failure, but one he pushes past before anyone can comment on it.

“Then how are you here?” Ekko inquires, once again showing the thirst for knowledge, for understanding, that summons pride in him once more. Still, although his thirst for knowledge is overpowering, he seems to maintain an awareness towards what Viktor had said before, and there’s a heaviness in his gaze that seems to be, at least, aware that there isn’t a happy story behind his return to the land of the living—though that might just be because he bothered to listen when Viktor started his stilted, awkward explanations of what happened. “And how did this happen?”

“Jayce.” He states—voice wavering once more—and he feels his inhuman eyes water uncontrollably—that’s something he’d thought would go away with his newfound lack of humanity, but, apparently, his body is still capable of crying. Viktor opens his mouth again, and every ugly word he’s been trying to hide in his chest comes out at once. “He—against my explicit instructions—you have to understand me; I told him not to do this. He promised that wouldn’t. He fused my corpse with the Hexcore—he violated me.”

“Viktor—” Heimerdinger starts, looking thoroughly horrified—it’s probably the use of that word, Viktor surmises; it’s ugly, unpleasant. Even just thinking about it conjures associations with rape, whether it’s violence done by intimate partners in places you should be safe or by strangers on a dark part of the street—it’s something people dislike, a term they fight against, if only to allay the severity of whatever crime’s been committed. But there isn’t another word that could possibly fit the situation, isn’t anything that could describe what was done to him—his body was changed, mutated, against his express wishes for someone else’s purposes, because someone he thought he could trust decided his wants were more important than his bodily autonomy.

“He promised—he said he’d destroy it, that he’d let me die a natural death.” Viktor stumbles over himself, and his voice is distinctly vulnerable, extremely out of character when compared to how he usually speaks. But, at this point, he feels as raw and vulnerable as he did when he was a child—right after he fled the Doctor and ended back up on the streets. “He lied to me. He broke his promise, and he mutilated my body.”

“My boy, is this the truth?” Heimerdinger’s tone is somewhere between concerned and horrified, though he thinks it falls mostly into disbelief, and bitterness wells up in Viktor’s throat. Would the yordle have hesitated this way if Jayce had come to him and said that Viktor did the same? Would he have wondered for even a moment before believing him? He picks at one of the golden veins that travels down until his fingers, ending in a now-golden fingernail. He feels like he’s going to be sick—he’s going to puke. He’s here, right now, baring himself to another person he thought he could trust about the most horrific thing he’s ever endured, a transgression against his autonomy—and his mentor just suggested he lied about it. He doesn’t know if he’s more hurt or furious. “Not to say I don’t believe you—that’s just…quite the accusation.”

(He feels dirty, feels like he’s been submerged in grime and debris—that he’ll never be clean again—and, this time, all he can wonder if he did something that gave the wrong impression, if the plea he made after a suicide attempt was somehow misleading. Did something about the way he acted suggest to Jayce that he was lying, or that he was incapable of making his own decisions? Was there something about him that just compelled people to break boundaries, to push his limits until he fell apart? Is there something about him that invites cruelty? That means he deserves it? Or is it just that unbelievable that something like this happened to him?)

“Does he look like he’s capable of lying right now?” Ekko interjects, and it drags Viktor from the thought that he may have done something to deserve what’s happened to him, drags him from wondering if Heimerdinger would believe Jayce if their places were switched. “He looks like he’s about to start crying.”

The warmth of relief builds in Viktor’s chest, and he offers a tremulous smile to Ekko once he’s able to draw his lips into the expression. The man has no reason to like or defend him—especially considering he’s a traitor by many Zaunites’ standards—but this stranger chose to defend him to Heimerdinger, someone he’s clearly been spending time with for several days now; maybe even since the yordle was expelled from the Council some days ago. There’s already a relationship there—one that seems closer and fonder than Viktor’s own relationship with the former dean—and Ekko is willing to jeopardize that to support Viktor and tell Heimerdinger that he believes him. It makes his chest tight with a warm, achy sensation that he can’t quite define or name. The boy gives him another look—one of the careful ones Viktor saw a lot as a kid, the kind they gave to fragile people who might fall apart or the ones that might be dangerous. But, unlike the other times, he doesn’t feel angry, though. And, unlike the other times, Ekko doesn’t look down on him when he stares that way, doesn’t act like he’s inferior for the way he is or the tenuous ground he’s standing on. He just looks sad, something heavy behind his eyes.

“I didn’t—I don’t want this.” He repeats, voice gutted and trembling, as if it’ll make what he says true, make people believe what’s been done to him. He feels like a liar, feels disgusting and wrong and as if it’s somehow his fault—though he’d told Jayce not to do it, had told him to let it go. “I didn’t ask for it.”

Heimerdinger stares at him for another moment, clearly trying to determine whether or not he’s telling the truth, but he eventually gives in, one of his large ears flicking back in a sign of clear discomfort before he begins to approach him, and Viktor nearly crumples to the ground in relief—his mentor believes him, trusts that he hasn’t done this to himself, even if he seems hesitant to believe the violence that’s been done to him. But he understands—despite the agony of betrayal that builds in his chest, he understands—Jayce was always seen as good, as obedient, despite his illegal research and constant rule-flouting. He has those wide, expressive eyes and well-meaning earnestness that makes him seem trustworthy. It would be hard for Viktor to believe if he hadn’t been the one hurt. He doesn’t blame him, doesn’t blame Heimerdinger for his disbelief, even if it hurts.

“Why are you here, my boy?” He questions carefully, both of his small hands wrapped around one of Viktor’s human-sized ones, though the yordle recoils upon coming into contact with his newly made skin. Nausea twists where his stomach once was, and he tries to ignore the repulsive appearance—his revolting existence—long enough to explain his reason for coming to the professor, only to be interrupted.

“Wait; let’s get somewhere more private,” The young leader of the Firelights suggests, and he doesn’t have the words to express his gratitude before they move away from the edges of the clearing and to the center. Heimerdinger and Ekko lead him towards the tree, and Viktor takes note of the spiraling staircase wrapped around the tree, leading them from one building to another and another, until it reaches the house perched in the arms of the tree, exactly where they split up into different directions. What a brilliant idea, he thinks, despite his pain, and it makes Viktor ache with a longing that he’s never really let himself feel. He wishes he’d known about this, that he saw this tree—standing defiant against everything that tried to keep it down—before he’d gone Topside, wishes he’d gotten to see something good and beautiful before he spent almost a decade trying to hide his heritage just for the chance to help people. He wishes he’d noticed more of the good that he was fighting for. But it’s too late for that, now, he knows.

They lead him up the stairs, one at a time, and Viktor’s stomach drops when he doesn’t feel the familiar, ever-present pain that comes when he walks up stairs—even on good days, stairs have always been hard for him. His lungs had always ached when he walked up more than a flight—and that’d gotten far worse once he started showing obvious signs of Fissure Lung, with even a brisk walking pace leaving him winded after less than a block. But Viktor doesn’t hurt. His body doesn’t ache. His lungs don’t protest. Not even his hip twinges in its usual manner, the one that has him gritting his teeth and biting back noises of pain. He doesn’t tire, doesn’t slow down, even after they’ve gone up twenty steps and are still ascending. His body is fixed, and it feels like there’s nothing familiar about it at all. He’s stuck in a machine—a stranger’s—body, and it leaves him trembling in revulsion. He’s an abomination, and the ever-present awareness of it has his stomach churning with disgust.

Ekko hooks his arm in Viktor’s elbow, and the contact—friendly, unafraid touch—has him blinking in shock, abruptly pulled back into himself. He’s such a young boy, he thinks, looking at the youthful softness of his face, barely more than a child. Even the definition of his cheekbones can’t hide the fact that he’s only a boy. But Viktor’s familiar with growing up too fast and being left to deal with the emotional repercussions. They walk up the stairs in silence. Viktor listens to the quiet, steady sound of Ekko’s breathing, a clear familiarity with the stairs and the path. He doesn’t even break a sweat, fit in the same way that most who live in Zaun are, from climbing buildings and running down streets and escaping trouble.

Professor Heimerdinger, on the other hand, is not as unaffected by the stairs, despite his familiarity in them from Piltover—though that may be a result of his being a yordle and, therefore, much shorter when compared to the steps—and he’s panting quietly by the time they reach the top of the spiraling staircase. They stand at the top for a couple moments, and Viktor gapes at the world around him. The tall buildings that surround the tree’s clearing are painted with bright colors and made a beautiful, mysterious green when the light of the Firelight bugs meets the misting in the area, though it seems more like water vapor than the smog and pollution that clouds other parts of Zaun. Lines are strung from boughs to bannisters to hang laundry from, and he marvels once more at the beauty of this place.

The house at the top of the tree is equally impressive to behold. Railings wrap around the edges of the stairs and the deck-like landing that lets people stand at the top while still being outside, each of them made from scavenged wood—which is practically a luxury item—and made to last in the way only Zaunites do—because they can’t guarantee they can afford to replace it in the future. The house (as well as the little rooms and buildings they passed on the way up) are made of a warm, almost red wood, light spilling into the air through the traditional stained-glass windows of Zaun. Shingles cover the roof, provide protection and stability in cases of the torrential downpour that happens when rain makes its way through the streets, accruing debris and pollutants as it goes. The entire compound—the whole operation is utterly brilliant.

“Remarkable,” Viktor whispers, glancing over at Ekko. “That you made something like this—it is truly extraordinary.”

Ekko grants him a half-faced smile before gesturing for the three of them to head inside, closing the door behind them.

The inside of the Firelight house is as awe-inspiring as the outside—out of scraps and abandoned materials, a group of teens and young adults have created a home for everyone there. It’s cramped in a way that’s not quite claustrophobic—though Viktor would sooner call it close or homey than that—but everything about it is indicatory of careful thought being taken, planning to produce the most effective housing composition. Warm chem-lights illuminate the house, each of them hung from hooks in the ceiling to keep them out of the way, and a gathering of chairs, the odd but comfortable chaise, and a couch create a ring around a low table that Viktor has faint memories of being called a coffee table. Beyond that, the house leads to a hallway and a kitchen area adjoined to the entrance-and-public room. It’s cozy, he decides, and he lets it draw a faint smile to his face.

Ekko immediately moves to the kitchen, and Viktor hears the familiar sound of a kettle being put on. Immediately, he knows that it’s something that Heimerdinger’s gotten him interested in—the main people who consistently have tea are apothecaries and business people, rather than the traditional, lower-class citizens of Zaun. He wonders if the boy has any actual interest in tea, or if he’s simply making it for the professor, who Viktor knows is truly fond of tea. He enjoys one or two types, but he’s far too used to drinking it when he’s sick, sweetened with caramelized sugar—or, once he got Topside, actual honey—to soothe his throat. (And, oh, he’d drunk so much once he’d started coughing up blood, all but smothering himself in a chamomile blend that hurt his throat the least.) Regardless of whether or not he can still stomach the stuff, Viktor doesn’t even know if his new body is capable of consuming anything.

There’s the high-pitched whistle that indicates the water’s ready and the sound of a kettle being taken off the stove. Viktor and Heimerdinger stand in the entrance of the house, waiting for Ekko to return to them. He stands there for a moment, clearly pouring water into mugs and stirring them to speed up the rate of the steeping. Then, he turns around with a mug in each hand, and walks from the kitchen to the living room, and Heimerdinger makes his way to sit in one of the comfortable, cushioned chairs. Viktor goes to sit at the couch—about a third of the way in—at Ekko’s ‘go ahead’ gesture, not wanting to take up what could be someone’s preferred seat. Someone can always scoot to the side to get out of the way. Ekko, without hesitating, chooses to sit near him on the couch rather than on one of the several chairs next to Heimerdinger, although he shifts to place one of the mugs on the low table in front of the yordle. He offers the other one to Viktor, and he shakes his head, despite the discomfort he feels at turning down something that’s already been made for him.

But, when he looks at the tea, all he can taste is blood in the back of his throat.

“We have some privacy, now—I flipped the switch on the doorknob. The others know that means to not come in.” Ekko explains, and guilt catches in Viktor’s throat—even now, all he’s doing is inconveniencing people, but he needs to find a way to determine the threat of his existence first. Then, after that, he can worry about the degree of trouble that he’s causing to others.

“Thank you, I really…” He pauses, eyes dropping once more to his warped skin that can’t be covered by the blanket he’s been wrapped in. “I appreciate it.”

“What did you need to talk about, my boy?” Heimerdinger asks, and he takes an unnecessary but shuddering breath to brace himself—still unused to the peculiarities of his new form—and tries to compose himself somewhat. He’s all but certain he fails.

“I—you were right.” Viktor tells him, unable to meet his eyes. And, then, he realizes that it’s a remarkably unclear and elaborates in a flood of words that escape faster than he can regulate. “About the Hexcore—about all of it. It was dangerous, and we should have listened to you, and we never should have touched it.”

His vision is blurring once again when he glances back at the professor, and Viktor’s struck particularly by the expression on his face. His ears are pinned back like a frightened prey animal, eyes wide with some sort of emotion that he’s unable to define—even after years by the yordle’s side. But this? This expression that makes him think of revulsion, of the looks Councilor Salo gave him when he thought no one else was looking. Or the shocked, discomforted look that the late Councilor Kiramman fixed him with if he made the mistake of mentioning any detail of his childhood—something that shattered in her perception of the world that she’d rather never acknowledge again. It feels like that, and the memory makes him sick.

“What happened?” He questions again, looking almost fearful. “Before, you were so…eager to use it, so certain that it could do good. What changed?”

“It—I was experimenting with it, and it…it got out of control.” Viktor gets out, trying to dig his newly-made nails under his flesh, force enough pain into his body to distract him from where he is, what he is. But his body is resistant to all of his usual attempts to ground himself. He digs his teeth into his lower lip until he feels the fragile, human skin split. “It killed Miss Young.”

Silence.

Viktor can’t meet their gazes, can’t bear to see the eyes of someone who once trusted and relied on him and now knows that he’s a monster—a killer, a disgusting mockery of everything good and pure in the world, and he’s the reason that a bright young girl with plans for the future is dead. He’s sump-rat that got delusions of grandeur and tried to crawl his way out of the barrel, and all its done is gotten people killed—the very people he always swore he wanted to protect. There hasn’t been a single Piltovian harmed by his actions the way that Zaunites have been, but everything he’s done has left a trail of red across his home—from the present all the way back to Rio. He wishes he had never been born, that he had died long before he could cause the damage he has.

“I came—I came here to ask you something.” He says, choking on the words. “It’s something I need to know.”

There’s a heavy, painful pause, and it’s nauseating how silent the room is. They hate him—they have to hate him. There isn’t a single world where they see him as anything other than the monster, than a threat. He draws great, shuddering breath and speaks.

“Is it…safe—for something like me to exist?” Viktor asks, and he finally manages to meet the professor’s gaze. “Am I putting everyone in danger just by being?”

Silence fills the room again.

Heimerdinger looks horrified—even with his notably poor ability to read expressions, Viktor can tell that the yordle is appalled by him, his existence. Professor Heimerdinger spent such a long time counseling them to destroy the Hextech from the start. Surely, he must know that he’s a threat, that his mere existence is dangerous. He has to know that the best option—the only option to protect people—is to find some way to kill him and destroy his body, so that it can never be used for another’s purposes again. And Heimerdinger must know the best way to go about that—he did not eliminate magic in Piltover by simply passing laws, after all.

But, when he glances briefly at Ekko, he doesn’t see the disgust or the horror or the hatred that should come from the corruption of his body and the depravity of his soul. He doesn’t have any of the expressions he’s come to associate with people revolted by his existence, and it’s utterly bizarre. Viktor is a monster, in the truest and most accurate manner, and it makes no sense that Ekko doesn’t understand that he’s evil. But he has none of the signs, no tellings of rage—shouldn’t he hate him? After all, he’s caused the death of a brilliant young woman who could have helped people the way that Topside hadn’t let him. There is no logic to his peculiar lack of judgment, and he drops his eyes back to his lap rather than wait for the boy’s feelings to turn.

“What the fuck?” Ekko asks, and the silence is broken in an instance.

Then, there are warm hands covering his own, and Viktor glances over at the boy. His eyes are, once again, brimming with an emotion that he can’t quite identify in his current condition—though he doesn’t know if it’s due to his mutation or if it’s a result of the stress he’s under. But Ekko doesn’t slow down for a second, and he looks between Viktor and Heimerdinger with some look that might be concerned incredulity.

“Are you seriously asking what I think you’re asking? Asking your teacher if you should kill yourself?” He questions, and Viktor’s almost relieved to see the anger in his expression—he can handle anger, can endure the coldness of disappointment, but he doesn't know what to do about the jagged, unfamiliar edges of concern.

“The Hexcore is dangerous, Ekko,” He informs coldly, though his fingers wrap around the boy’s in an attempt to keep the feeble warmth he’s provided—a welcome change from the distance and isolation of his new body. “It reduced a woman to ash in an instant, and it could have easily served as a weapon before it was fused with me. It’s only prudent to take precautions—and the professor is the expert on the Arcane in these cities.”

“Prudent my ass—you’re in shock. Your friend betrayed you, and you’re horrified by what he and this ‘Hexcore’ have done.” Ekko shoots back, but his tone isn’t any harsher than it needs to be—just loud enough to get through the noise of Viktor’s brain. “You’re panicking on what this means for your existence and concerned that more people could be hurt. But what if you can do good with this? It won’t undo shit, but, maybe, you could do some good despite it.”

“I–” Viktor stutters out a word, not quite sure what to say, though he’s quickly interrupted before he has to deal with that.

“Killing yourself isn’t the answer.” Ekko states it with such sincerity that he can almost believe that it’s true. “And I’m sure that Heimer will say the same.”

Quietly, Viktor wants to laugh. Professor Heimerdinger saying that he shouldn’t die? When he’s the man who instantly—the very first moment he saw the Hexcore—said that it must be destroyed? The one who called it destruction and said it had to be dismantled, even at the cost of Viktor’s life? Heimerdinger, who called him an abomination, a violation of the natural order—an affront to existence for being what he is? No, Heimerdinger’s going to see reason; he’s taken more than one good look at what Viktor is now, and he’s going to tell him that it’s best he kill himself, that it saves the world from the threat that’s posed by his mere existence. He looks over at the yordle, waiting for him to go along with what he said before.

His former mentor doesn’t immediately respond.

“My boy, it may be a bit heedless to automatically move to…to suicide, but it would definitely be sensible to suppress any abilities or tendencies that manifest—at least until we know more.” Heimerdinger’s voice is hesitant, stumbling over the word ‘suicide,’ but he seems certain on his opinion, and Viktor gapes at him, confused.

It doesn’t make sense. Viktor’s an anathema—he’s a monster in every sense of the word. His existence only continues by the way of bodily violation. Why would Heimerdinger ever argue that he should continue existing, especially in this state? He’s always reviled mages, feared their power and their connection to the Arcane. Piltover was created for a reason, even if involved the overtaking of Zaun—a haven safe from the dangers and whims of the Arcane. It doesn’t make sense for Heimerdinger to allow his existence when he argued so fervently against Hextech, and the lack of consistency punches a hole in Viktor’s chest. He thought that Heimerdinger would understand, that he’d know a way to neutralize him before more people die. He did before, even if he didn’t at the time.

“No—don’t you understand?” Viktor asks, voice breaking again as he leans “I’m exactly what you’ve always feared—I’m a mage, and I wasn’t even meant to be one! There’s a reason mages aren’t allowed in Piltover! There’s a reason you told us to destroy the Hexcore. How is now any different?”

The professor has that concerned, hurt look on his face now, too, and it doesn’t make any sense. How is this any different from before? The Hexcore is still getting destroyed. Viktor’s still dying. Nothing of note is any different, so why is Heimerdinger giving him that heartbroken look? Tracks of wetness—hot and salty, air biting against the soaked skin—streaks down his face, and he reaches up to brush them away before he processes what they are, profoundly embarrassed when he does. He hasn’t cried in years, hasn’t let him cry since long before he’d arrived in Piltover—in that nest of rats and liars, any weakness would be exploited or punished, and it’s not as if displays of vulnerability were encouraged on the streets, either. (The last time he clearly remembers crying is twenty years ago, when he’d abandoned Rio to be tortured and fled from the Doctor, and the memory fills him with guilt—no matter where he’s been, he’s left a trail of ruined lives in his wake. He needs to be stopped.)

“Viktor, it’s not the same—the situation is entirely different now.” Heimerdinger argues, and the scoff that leaves him is unusually bitter. But Viktor doesn’t want to spend the last hours or minutes of his life lashing out like a wounded animal. If he’s going to die—which he has to, for the safety of all the people he wanted to help—he wants to still be himself when he does. He doesn’t want to be Jayce’s creation. He wants to be him, whatever’s left of him.

“It’s not. It isn’t any different from before.” He responds, voice quiet and plaintive. “The Hexcore still needs to be destroyed. I’m still going to die. Nothing’s changed.”

“It’s completely different, my boy.” Heimerdinger tells him, and he has the same look that suggest he’s wise beyond these simple humans—Viktor tries to ignore it to avoid inflaming his temper. For all his years and wisdom, the professor has never been knowledgeable on what it means to be human—how it feels to be human—and it’s caused frustration before. Maybe this is different for humans, too; it’s not as if Viktor still counts as one, anymore. But he doesn’t understand. Not a bit. Even when he’d been human, he hadn’t understood. He’s never seen a difference between things; there were good deaths and bad deaths, obviously—the difference between passing in your sleep or in the arms of someone you love versus the agony of starvation or the terror of murder. But Viktor doesn’t understand why suicide is different, especially when it can be kinder and faster than most natural deaths.

“The outcome remains the same. Nothing important changes.” He argues; he tries to pull his hands free from Ekko’s grasp, but the young man holds him firm and brushes his thumb across the backs of his hands in a move he remembers from his mother when he was a child. It’s enough to stop his attempts to pull his hands loose, his brain instinctively associating the gesture with safety, and Viktor waits for some explanation from Heimerdinger, some explanation that makes things make sense. He doesn’t think it will come.

“Viktor, things are different from a natural death if you kill yourself.” Heimerdinger explains, sipping at his tea in a manner that he recognizes as entirely different from his usually-calm demeanor. He’s agitated—distressed—and it’s absolutely bizarre to see when Viktor considers the placid way he’d told him to accept his own death.

“So it’s alright if I die of Fissure Lung, but not if I do it to keep people safe?” Viktor questions, voice rising with indignation—Heimerdinger had practically told him he was destined to die when he collapsed in the lab and was eventually diagnosed. It doesn’t make sense, and the hypocrisy is upsetting. The yordle will do all but call him an abomination, say that he’s not natural—that the Arcane is a danger that needs to be stopped—but the idea of suicide repels him so thoroughly that he’ll go against his natural inclinations? It makes no sense, and a spark off distress turns into a blaze.

“When you say it like that—” He starts, but Viktor just wants answers, and he interrupts the man for the first time since the yordle had found out he was attending the Academy illegally.

“It’s a yes or no question, Professor: do you think it’s in the world’s best interests that I self-terminate?” He asks, placing careful emphasis on the last words, since the professor seems to dislike the traditional term for it.

“I—at the current moment, I do not, my boy.” Heimerdinger eventually says, and confusion wells up in Viktor. He’d thought for certain that the professor would see the logic in this, that he’d understand why it was necessary for Viktor to stop existing, why he needs to die—it isn’t natural for something like him to exist. (Can’t Heimerdinger understand that the universe is wrong, made so by his mere existence?) The professor continues, slowly and hesitantly, but firm in his decision. “You should repress any new…instincts you get as a result of your transformation. But you haven’t proven you’re a threat; you shouldn’t do something so permanent over something you have no proof of—that’s not what a scientist would do.”

That’s wrong. That’s entirely wrong, and Viktor fights back instantly.

“It reduced Miss Young to ash in a second—you think it won’t do that again if given the chance?” He starts, moves to plead, to point out that, if something goes wrong—if the weapon fused with Viktor’s very being kills another innocent person—the blood of it will be on Heimerdinger’s hands, too, only to be stopped by a hand pressed against his lips.

Ekko fixes him with another serious, concerned look, and all of his protests die on the tip of his tongue, shame dousing every spark of panic into something closer to bone-deep worry. (It doesn’t make sense that he’s being so kind, that he isn’t looking at Viktor like he’s a monster or a traitor or any of the other horrible things he’s been called over the years. Even Jayce—and the name sparks an agonizing, heart-wrenching combination of betrayal and hurt—hadn’t acted like he was a person in the end. So why is Ekko, someone who has every reason to hate him for his abandonment of Zaun and his contributions to the deaths of innocents, treating this way? His chest twists up with thorny, painful emotions that he can’t quite place at the moment.

“You asked for his opinion.” The boy points out, giving a searching look. “You asked for his advice, and he’s given it to you.”

“I…what?” He asks, voice painfully small. The young leader of the Firelights shifts his spot on the couch, moving to sit beside him, so close that Viktor can feel the distant warmth of Ekko’s thighs pressed against his own. Then

“You came here to ask for Heimer’s advice about what happened.” Ekko states simply, offering him a shrug that vastly undersells the complexity of the situation.

“But how am I supposed live like this?” He asks, and that explains the confusion. “How am I supposed to just keep existing after that?”

Once again, he’s given one of those heavy looks that he can’t begin to understand, and Viktor bites down on his lip to stop himself from saying something that he’ll regret—Ekko hasn’t hurt him; he hasn’t even been rude, just entirely unclear in what he means, and Viktor shouldn’t lash out at him for that. He’s not the one that’s done wrong, here. But the idea of waking up in this world, day after day after day and forcing himself to pretend to be a human being when it’s obvious he isn’t—that he’s never been one, really—is sickening and utterly beyond his emotional comprehension.

“How we all do,” Ekko eventually replies, voice filled with something like determination. “You wake up every day, and you try to make things better than they were the day before, even though it’s hard.”

That…

Viktor pauses. Stares at Ekko again. That makes a certain degree of sense, he can admit—though he’s not sure what he can do that qualifies as ‘good’ right now—but the idea seems to have potential, and Viktor supposes that it’s enough for him to hold off on his plan to 

“You,” He starts, then stops. That doesn’t say things how he wants to explain them, and he takes a pause to breathe unnecessarily. “There are people—dangerous people—who might come looking.”

He, very pointedly, doesn’t say Jayce’s name, though he’s not the only member of that group.

“Then we stop them.” He responds, as if it’s ever been that simple—and he can see in Ekko’s eyes that he knows it’s more than that, too.

“If it comes down to it—if those people find me—you have to promise me something.”

“And what is that?” Heimerdinger asks, voice sounding anxious, but Viktor’s attention turns to Ekko, rather than the yordle.

“Don’t let them make me into a weapon. Stop them, by any means necessary.” He pleads, meeting the boy’s bright eyes, as if that will somehow convince him of the urgency. There’s hesitation in his gray eyes, concern that Viktor knows comes from the weight of being trusted with someone’s life—with their death. But Ekko is from Zaun—Ekko is a Firelight—if there’s anyone in the world who could understand doing dangerous things—things you may dislike—to prevent something from going horribly wrong, to prevent more people from getting killed.

“It won’t be my first choice.” Ekko tells him seriously, and Viktor pauses, blinking in surprise.

“What?” He asks, and the boy huffs out a sigh, giving him a look that makes him feel particularly seen—like Ekko is looking beyond his flawed flesh and blood and seeing whatever it was that used define him.

“You can do in this world—you want to do good in this world.” Ekko explains, brushing one of his dreadlocks out of his face. “That makes you uncommon down here. Most people just try to scrape by, mind their own without making a difference. I wouldn’t want to…to give up on someone who actually cares about people, who wants to make things better.”

“Oh,” He whispers, unsure how to respond or convey the warm ache that’s filled his chest. Viktor doesn’t know how he’s supposed to explain how much that interpretation means to him, but he suspects that Ekko can tell when Viktor has to blink back more unnecessary tears.

“This place runs on rain, mostly—there are pools that store it between storms. We filter our water, obviously, but it starts out clean for here. Regardless, it leads to plenty of accessible water for basics—cooking, cleaning; we even have a garden...” Ekko starts rambling—changing the subject completely at random—and Viktor tries to listen to what he’s saying, to absorb what he clearly wants to convey.

“If there’s a purpose, I’m afraid I don’t follow.” He comments, quiet with a degree of shame, eventually, and the boy stops his long-winded explanation—one that, although fascinating, he’s far too exhausted to follow for long. (He does, however, note to ask Ekko about the water systems if—when—he feels well enough to pay attention.)

“I’m offering you a bath. It might make things feel better.” He states plainly, and every thought in his mind comes to a sudden, screeching halt.

“A bath?” He asks, blinking back in surprise—even back in Piltover, he didn’t have access to a bath. He’d spent his time in the community showers of the dorms, pulling a stool in there to balance on when he was washing himself. The idea of having a bath—of using so much water for cleaning when you could use a damp towel to clean yourself—is all but unimaginable, and Viktor gapes at the boy. Not only is he an absolute stranger that he’s spent far more effort than necessary caring whether Viktor lives or dies or how Professor Heimerdinger feels about him, but he’s offering him a luxury that’s unimaginable to all but chembarons and smugglers. “In Zaun?”

Ekko snorts, clearly amused, and Viktor finds himself almost grinning incredulously at the boy—only stopped by the heaviness in his chest and the complete and utter bafflement he feels.

“Did you miss the part about reusable water?” Ekko asks him, voice lighter with something reminiscent of a child’s joy. It makes Viktor ache with horrible clarity. He wishes that boy got to exist without the fear that children grow up with in Zaun. He wishes that he got to experience safety and comfort, the way that Topsiders do. He deserves better, and it’s painful to see the way things turned out. “We have a water heater in the bathroom—it warms it up and puts it in the tub. When you pull the plug, it goes through some filters and goes into a receptacle, where it can be reused.”

“That’s…ingenious.” Viktor states, though he thinks that it falls a little short of how impressed he is, and Ekko nods before he shoots him a proud grin.

“Mhm—your day seems…remarkably fucked up, if I’m being generous.” He comments, getting to his feet and offering a sympathetic hiss before he turns to face him. “Being clean’ll help, emotionally, at least.”

“Are you sure?” He asks warily—baths are such a rarity, and he could never expect him to just offer one to a stranger like himself—and Ekko nods, getting to his feet and gesturing for Viktor to follow. “I don’t have a way to return the favor—yet, that is.”

(You never say you can’t repay a favor, Viktor knows. You’ll pay in your body or your life.)

But Ekko gives him another one of those looks that has his gut twisting uncomfortably and shakes his head before he has the opportunity to bargain further,

“Nah, man—the Firelights aren’t about that kind of thing.” He claims, and Viktor fights the urge to raise an eyebrow. People aren’t nice in Zaun—not without something in return. The last time he put his faith in that kind of behavior, he got burned so violently that he’s not sure he’ll ever recover from it. But the boy is giving him a desperate, almost pleading look that Viktor wonders if he made once upon a time, many years ago. But, eventually he gives in, and he lets out a sigh before forcing himself to his feet again. His body doesn’t ache, but he’s tired beyond words, and he desperately wants to sleep—if he’s still able to, that is. He supposes he can settle for a bath.

Ekko rises without a comment and starts heading for the back, and Viktor follows him easily. The floor is made of actual floorboards—he can tell based on the way they feel under his feet and the soft way they creak in response to his footsteps. (He wonders, idly how heavy he is as a result of his new, metallic body.) It must have taken months, maybe even years, to gather all the supplies needed to build somewhere so magnificent in the middle of Zaun, to stain it all to match. Viktor lifts his gaze from the floor to watch Ekko’s movements and glances around the building. It’s an amalgamation of life, of personality, clearly influenced by the many people, and he’s surprised to note he aches with longing at the thought of it.

“Here’s the bathroom.” Ekko gestures to the door, and Viktor stares as one of his distorted, alien hands wraps around the handle and twists it open. It’s cramped but homey, and there’s something in him that relaxes when he sees the room, closed-off and crowded, with a porcelain-looking bathtub to the left-hand side of the room, the toilet in the right-back corner, and the counter-sink combination that’s somehow common in both Zaun and Piltover—usually what one likes, the other makes a point to be repulsed by. He supposes, though, it’s useful enough that both of them manage their mutual dislike. Almost half a dozen toothbrushes sit in a divided glass, and Viktor stares at it. It’s strange to consider living with others after spending his childhood alone, surviving alone. In the bathroom, the floor here has a layer of tiles over them, likely due to the potential of rot. Still, there’s a woven rug in front of where Viktor imagines one would climb into and out of the tub to catch and clean up water.

“Have you ever used a bath?” Ekko asks, curiously. “I mean I know you lived Topside, but…”

“No,” Viktor replies with an almost-wry grin. “I stayed in student housing at first, and then I was over in nearby apartments—there weren’t any baths there for tenants." For all the benefits of Topside, he’d never been privy to those sorts of luxuries.

Ekko nods and pauses just outside the bathroom, opening a cupboard in the walls to reveal a niche filled with towels and taking one before he enters the bathroom. The boy moves around the small space naturally, resting the towel on top of the toilet lid and searching through the below-sink cabinets to pull out what looks like containers of body wash to be used. (Idly, Viktor wonders if that’ll even work for him, considering his new body seems to be made primarily of metal.

“I can clean your blanket up, if you want.” He offers with another one of those looks that makes it seem like generosity is natural, that kindness is expected. It’s a world Viktor’s never seen, and he’s almost blind. “I mean, it’ll go in the laundry pile, which won’t be done until tomorrow, but it’ll be clean when it’s done.”

“I do not have anything, eh, underneath.” Viktor replies, hands tightening their hold on the blanket. Ekko looks at him blankly.

“We’re in the Lanes—nudity’s nothing new. You take the bath; we have clean clothes, so I’ll get some to you after that. If that works, I mean.” Ekko explains, and it takes Viktor a moment to realize how adjusted to Piltover he’s become—he’s become so used to their policies and their tendencies out of a frustrating desire to avoid giving them a reason to hurt him, to punish him. And, now, he’s all but unfamiliar with the norms of his own people. An outsider, once again.

It makes sense, Viktor reminds himself, although there’s a part of him that wants to recoil from the suggestion. He’s a monster—he’s revolting. He doesn’t want Ekko to see him, not when he’s the only one who still looks at him like he’s a person. (And he is—even Jayce was shocked by what he’d done, what he’d become as a result of the Hexcore. Jayce, the one who’d done this to him.) It’s a fact that he’ll be likewise repulsed when he sees Viktor exactly as he is. But there isn’t a point in vocalizing that, isn’t a point in making Ekko a liar when he tries to claim he won’t be disgusted by what he sees.

“Yes, I know. Pilties are, eh, a bit weird about nudity.” He explains with a shrug that only looks natural—it doesn’t feel easy or thoughtless at all, just another futile attempt to act like a person before the facade is brutally ripped away from him. Viktor heaves out another pointless sigh, but he gives in, unwrapping the blanket from around himself and handing it to Ekko. The fabric is vaguely soft against his metallic skin, but any feeble warmth gleaned from his internal mechanisms is left absent without so much as a shiver—He’s not cold, after all. The weather is decisively close to pleasant. And he’s not sure if he could feel it even if it were cold. So, the blanket is useless, really. There’s no point in holding onto it.

He doesn’t like looking at his new body, but it’s made unfortunately clear where Ekko’s gaze has gone, and he glances down at himself. His body is made of the unearthly violet metal that wraps around his body, mimicking muscles and tendons, as though his skin has been removed entirely. Gold accents decorate his arms and chest and legs, cruel mimicry of his leg and back brace, the corset-like metals that held its form rendered a permanent part of him—and, he strongly suspects that the bolts in his spine have been immortalized in the same way, a constant and eternal reminder of his body’s failures, of his inability to fix them. His knuckles are marked with gold, accents tracing up his sternum and down his limbs where the cords of muscle or bone seemed particularly prominent in his humanity. He’s disgusting. He’s horrific, and being forced to deal with the sight of himself is making him nauseous. He looks away, looks away from the abomination of his body, from what’s been done to him—and, Janna, he feels so stupid for trusting anyone.

He hears a quiet gasp from the young man before him, and Viktor tenses up instinctively. He waits for insults and disgust, waits for exclamations to gods, crying out, ‘what is that thing.’

But it doesn’t come.

Viktor cracks his eyes open, then wonders when he shut them.

Ekko’s staring at him, eyes tracing his body so thoroughly that it makes his skin prickle uncomfortably—but, considering his situation, he’s either genital-free, or entirely concealed by his new form, and that alleviates some of the unbearable tension at being naked in front of someone else for the first time in years. Ekko doesn’t look disgusted or repulsed—he looks fascinated, looks curious, and it doesn’t make any sense. He associates the expression with something benign, a desire to understand and build and help that he hasn’t seen in years—and something about it has his heart clenching up painfully in his chest. But looks can be deceiving, and Viktor knows that better than most. So he waits another several moments for some verbal explanation to make sense of the abnormality of the situation.

“You look wicked.” The boy breathes out, and confusion bursts through him like a flood. Wicked, last time he checked, was Zaunite slang for ‘cool,’ was a compliment. Viktor doesn’t understand why on Runeterra the boy’s convinced that he’s cool—he’s a creature straight from nightmares, and Ekko’s staring at him as if he’s something fascinating and good and something not worth the suspicion and terror he earned from his mentor.

“I figured that I was, eh, more than a bit monstrous.” He replies, using some painful mix of honesty and sass to defend himself from how utterly bewildered he is.

“Sorry I—no offense; I know you didn’t choose this.” Ekko explains, one of his hands scraping the back of his neck in a clearly discomforted move before he inhales. But, he takes a moment to compose himself, shifting again to push his hair out of his eyes, and speaks again. “You look like a mage.”

That’s something that Viktor hasn’t heard before, and he finds himself echoing the boy’s comment before he even considers it.

“A mage?”

“Yeah, a mage. In the stories, they always look different from regular humans.” Ekko explains, and the light in the boy’s face clearly ties back to a simpler, happier time in his life.

“This,” Viktor gestures to himself, “is a result of being fused with Hextech. It makes a certain degree of sense that I resemble a mage. I am bound to the Arcane.”

“Maybe you’ll end up with magical abilities.” Ekko offers, and he struggles to choke back a laugh—he’s never been lucky enough to have something good come from his suffering, and he doubts that now will be the start of it.

Ekko doesn’t comment on his skepticism, instead turning to the bath and turning on one of the faucets. Viktor wants to cringe—cleaning in Zaun is usually done with what he privately calls a towel bath, soaking a towel in a bowl of water and scrubbing it with soap before using it to wash himself, and even for people who didn’t tend to that, baths tend to be rather large pots of water warmed over a fire—so, to see a faucet running in Zaun, simply to wait until the water warms up, frays his nerves. But Viktor banishes the part of himself that frazzles like a cat confronted with a river, reminds himself of the water filtration and reuse system that Ekko made. The water isn’t being wasted, isn’t being treated as if clean and safe water isn’t a luxury down here—it’s just going to get cleaned and reused once again.

After a minute, maybe two, the heat starts entering the air, and soft steam starts curling up from the water, fogging up the reflective face of the mirror. Ekko reaches down simply and places the plug against the drain, and the sound of water turns from the noise of it crashing against the porcelain of the bath to the sound of water falling upon itself, crashing before it’s absorbed by the whole. The noise of it is bizarrely soothing, and Viktor lets his eyes slip shut for a moment, the noise filling his brain and pushing the stress of his thoughts from his attention, albeit briefly. But Viktor’s nerves prick at the idea of leaving his eyes shut, even considering his current situation and apparent safety, and he finds himself watching the environment again. Then, the basin of the bath is full, and the young leader of the Firelights is turning off the water and moving towards the door.

“I’ll come back in a little while with clothes. There’s probably something that fits you somewhere around here.” Ekko explains, and Viktor finds himself on the verge of trembling. He’d always dreamed—ever since he was a young boy—of a place in Zaun (then, the Undercity) where kindness wasn’t a weakness, a risk. It had always seemed entirely out of reach, especially for someone like him. Yet, here it is now, gifted as if Ekko doesn’t know it’s worth gold and left without thought as he heads to the door. There’s a lump in his throat, pressing against his throat and silencing him, but he can’t just let the boy leave without thanking him for all the kindness he’s done—without even exacting a promise of returning the time and effort and, now, resources involved.

“Ekko,” Viktor states, voice halting, and the boy turns around. “Thank you.”

He doesn’t even get a response, just one of those bizarrely genuine smiles before he turns around and closes the door behind himself. Then, he’s left alone in the bathroom, standing on the cool tiles that cover the floor. He stands there for several moments before realizing that Ekko will be coming back later, and it’s likely been implied that he’s supposed to get in the bath, rather than wait for direct permission. (Admittedly, it’s more than a touch embarrassing to take such time to put it together, but in Zaun, it’s always better to ask if you want to keep the relationship.)

The water is beautifully, warm, and the shock of it against his inhuman flesh burns the tension from his body. Viktor slumps into the bath, landing against the porcelain with a jarring noise that reminds him of his monstrosity, but it’s quickly pushed to the side when he slides his legs forward, easing the quiet tension that comes from having muscles in use for an extended period of time—something that, apparently, doesn’t entirely go away, even if he’s a metal-formed monster and likely beyond traditional human needs. It’s pleasant, and he sags until the water comes up to his neck, a relieved groan escapes him.

His eyes are shut before he’s consciously thinking about it, and it’s remarkably simple to just feel the water for a couple moments—something immediate and binding and inescapable, after the fleeting sensation of anything against his new form. The weight of the water, as little as it is, presses down against him, but Viktor’s limbs easily settle against the bottom of the tub in a manner that indicates he’d sink if he was dropped in the river. (It doesn’t sound like such a bad way to go, he muses—he’s heard that drowning was peaceful, almost painless.) But it probably isn’t true, he reminds himself. (To say nothing of what might be in the water.) He’s in Zaun; if people new there was a guaranteed pain-free method of death, everyone would do it when their time came.

That thought, though, drives him out of the peace the water put him in, and his stomach feels like it’s filled with lead once again. Viktor’s always been a survivor—he had to be, if he was going to go anywhere from the slums—but he’s almost certain that this is beyond his ability to withstand, his capacity to endure everything that’s been thrown at him time and time again. It’s too much. Before, he’d always had something to fall back upon, something to use—even if it was just his intelligence, an understanding of himself that let him find his way.

He can’t do that anymore. He’s been changed, permanently and entirely—down to whatever now makes up his DNA—his body’s foreign, now, more so than even Noxus.

(He doesn’t remember much—he isn’t even sure that anything happened, or if it was just an imagining made by his brain as he was dragged back into life—but, he remembers the sensation of quiet, a snapshot impression of peace. An end to the pains that had plagued him from the moment of his birth until his death. None of the torment or cruelty he had anticipated as a result of his crimes. Just him. Just that temporary tranquility.)

And, then, he was back.

And everything was ruined.

He can’t imagine doing anything good with this. Can’t imagine something good coming from it—how could something that’s only caused death, only reaped destruction, bring about life? How could it help when it kills everyone who hasn’t poisoned themselves with Shimmer? That toxin’s done enough damage to Zaun already; he could never expect someone else to put it in themselves to be mutated by a monster—because, if it did heal, it wouldn’t make things better, wouldn’t make things right. It warps and alters and deforms all it touches, himself included. (Himself especially.) He doubts that anyone would volunteer for something like that.

(And they’d have to volunteer—he couldn’t do what Jayce had done to him, couldn’t tear another person apart and make them a stranger in their own body, couldn’t violate them like this and leave them to pick up the pieces.)

He hates Jayce—hates him, has to after what he’s done—but it hurts more than anything else. He’s dirty and broken in a way that makes his previous deficiencies almost whole. He’s irreparable, and it’s Jayce’s fault—his cruelty—that put him here. (But he couldn’t—he couldn’t hate the man whose dreams he fell for, who made magic with him and called him his partner every time Salo thought to call him a trencher or an assistant. Jayce, who braved the cold he hates so much, to care for him when he was sick. Jayce, who fought tooth and nail to get him some of the revenue from Hextech.) Jayce, who lied to him when he needed him most, who broke his promise and shattered his trust. Jayce, who said he cared too much about him to respect his consent. It hurts, sharp and deep and lethal, and he wishes it would stop.

His face is wet, and Viktor’s aware of himself enough to know that it’s not condensation from the bath. But, he’s not being watched, here—he’s not being evaluated or assessed, judged by eyes that have no reason to absolve him of what’s happened or tolerate his weakness in Zaun. Viktor hunches over himself, curling into the same position he’s used to hide himself since he was a child—presses his face against his knees and wraps his arms around them in a hollow mimicry of a hug. He gives himself five minutes. Five minutes to fall apart for all he’s lost—but he can’t indulge longer than that. He might forget how to put the pieces back.

A ragged breath comes stuttering to life in his chest, and there’s a part of Viktor that resents it—resents this continued weakness when he isn’t even human anymore—but he quickly abandons that line of thought when his panting turns into genuine hyperventilation. He can’t breathe, and there’s a sharp jolt of panic when his thoughts go fuzzy amongst the thrumming in his skull. Each breath he takes is too shallow, gone before the oxygen can sink into his mutated body and leaves his body starved of it. His vision swims, despite its domination by the shadowy not-flesh of his body, splotches of light dancing across his eyelids when he shuts his eyes. He can feel something like a pulse stuttering beneath his flesh, and the noise he makes—a laugh, he thinks—is high and hysterical. Is he only living when he suffers? Is he only real when it hurts?

His hands find their way from wrapped around himself and into his outgrown hair, fingers slipping into the tangles and pulling, hard. Pain sparks through his sense, the follicles, the same sharp sensation that’s always grounded him in his childhood. His hair’s grown out, actually, must have done so after he was transformed—and now that he’s actually thinking about the logic of it, the concept’s so peculiar that he pauses. He’s not human. He barely resembles one in form, closer to a machine than a man. And, yet, his hair is growing. And that means he isn’t just a machine. He can’t be.

He’s not human. He’ll never be again. But he’s not just a machine.

Again, he’s almost laughing, the noise ricocheting across the borders of the room, and, although it’s interrupted by quiet weeping again, they’re tears of relief. He’s living. He’s alive.

It’s easier, after that, to move onto what is traditionally expected from bathing, reaching across to take one of the containers of soap and a washcloth. It takes a bit of effort to get some out, requiring Viktor to shake it until the body wash dislodges enough to hit the lid, and then he’s able to squeeze some out and onto the washcloth. He doesn’t know if his new body will react to this, if he needs to worry about bad reactions in this form, but he can’t afford to refuse the first opportunity he’s gotten to clean himself after a particularly hellish day, so he scrubs the cloth until suds appear before rubbing it across himself.

The sensation is distant, still, removed from his body and placed behind an intangible wall before it reaches his nerves and travels to his brain, and the now-familiar sensation of disgust begins to well up in him once again. Even if he’s living—flesh and not simply metal—things will never be the same. It would be foolish to expect it to be, but the reminder has a sharp, acidic taste building in the back of his throat. He’s alive, Viktor reminds himself—he’s alive, although that isn’t a comfort when he considers what was supposed to happen, what did happen before Jayce did what he did. He scrubs the cloth against his body once more.

Viktor scours his flesh without concern for the possibility of damage; he clung to jagged, dirty metal and pulled himself across the chasm—he can handle scrubbing himself clean with about as much kindness as he deserves. His new body doesn’t burn with discomfort the way he would have when he was human, even though he’d been long-used to the harshness of Zaun before he even hit five years old. It should be a gift, should be a freedom, to escape that horrid sensitivity and all the other ways his body has failed him for decades. But it isn’t. It isn’t triumph or discovery. It’s not absolution or a cure. It’s violation, and that’s all it’ll ever be.

He puts more soap on the hand towel, scrubbing the fabric against itself until there are suds once again, and drags it across his body. His new, inhuman flesh doesn’t react, but he can see the grime coming off of him, better revealing the Arcane gleam underneath his flesh: brilliant white light seeping from his veins that just seems to emit from him without rhyme or reason. Viktor shoves his hands underwater, and he cleans them again, next. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t pause—the moment he’s finished cleaning one part of himself, he moves on to another and another and another, until the sins of his flesh can be washed away, and he can be made clean. It doesn’t matter if he’s washed there before, it just matters that he’s not thinking. And he falls into the madness of it.

He’s scrubbed himself four times over now, but it hasn’t worked.

He still feels dirty.

There’s a knock at the door, and Viktor lurches back, startled, before he realizes what’s happening, and Ekko peeks his head into the bathroom.

“Are you done?” He asks, and Viktor nods easily—he gets the meaning of it, as well-intentioned as it is: he’s been in the bath long enough, now. His respite is over. He has to go back out and pretend to be a person again.

Viktor turns around and removes the plug from the bath, allowing the water to drain through the hole in the bottom and vanish in miniature whirlpools with only the noise of the water to indicate that it had existed in the first place. His body moves easily—too easily—when it lets him get up from the tub, lets him stand without issue entirely, and the faintest stirrings of nausea build in him once again. This is wrong. He shouldn’t be better, doesn’t deserve to be fixed after the mistakes he’s made. His feet land on the worn, but soft, mat placed at the tub, and he’s left feeling awkward and uncomfortable—too vulnerable in his nudity.

But Ekko doesn’t have the same issues that Viktor is having, and he enters without issue before closing the door behind himself. It’s at that moment that he realizes that there’s a perfectly good towel set aside atop the closed toilet, and he wraps it around himself before he goes through the motions of drying himself off.

The towel comes away entirely dry.

“I’ve gathered some clothes that I think might fit you. You can just go through them and choose what fits best.” Ekko explains, setting out the variety of shirts and pants that seem about his size: slender, average height.

Instinctively, Viktor’s settled on something before he’s even fully seen it—a light jacket—barely anything more than a shirt—in a color of taupe that Viktor’s heard called keystone gray, violet wrapped around a wing collar, one of the ones that could be flipped up to defend the neck, and buttoned on the right with toggle buttons. Like many Zaunite clothes, it’s asymmetrical: right sleeve long, while the left sleeve torn partway down. His breath catches in his throat, an ache of profound nostalgia hitting him. But he knows he’s probably making connections out of nothing special, and pushes it aside to continue picking through the garments.

Next, he finds a classic of Zaun fabrics—dark gray with slender violet—a shirt with a long left sleeve and a shorter right sleeve. Then, he finds dark green pants, the right leg completed with brown fabric about halfway down the thigh, and Viktor can’t hide the astonishment he’s hit with. It’s entirely unrealistic—unfathomable, really—that he’d find these clothes in such a similar manner to his childhood.

“Where did you find these?” He asks, looking over at Ekko curiously. His clothes weren’t anything fashionable, at least, beyond the gray-and-purple striped undershirt—those are used across almost the whole of Zaun. They were, like most children’s, cobbled together and worn until they were nothing more than rags. It makes no sense that they’d reappear to him, now.

“Scraps people threw away, mainly. Things we’ve salvaged or traded for—some of it makes pretty good bandages. Stuff that people aren’t around to use anymore.” Ekko explains, though his expression is somber, and Viktor intimately recognizes the look on the boy’s face—grief, the loss of someone you care about, the weight of seeing evidence of them when there’s nothing they can do to return to your life.

“I’m sorry about that.” Viktor eventually manages to get the words out around the lump in his throat, and he pats the boy on the shoulder in what he hopes is a comforting move before he returns to picking through the clothes. Most people don’t take too kindly to a high degree of affection from strangers, and he ha

“That’s the Undercity.” The boy responds, but his voice never reaches the tone of someone who believes what he’s saying. Then, he leans against the door, and it becomes apparent that he should get himself decent, and quickly.

Viktor starts with undergarments—an unpleasant thing to reuse with different people, but not something he’s in a position to argue about. At least they’re clean, he reminds himself. Then, he dresses in the gray-and-violet undershirt, the long sleeve loose around his arm until it’s held close by the cuff at his wrist. The other sleeve is short, loose against his flesh. From there, Viktor slips on the pants, the rough fabric barely registering against his inhuman body, but the faint sensation is a relief. (He used to wear a brace on the brown part of the right leg, used it as markings of where everything should go. There’s no use in it anymore—his leg is fixed—but he feels unusually naked, maybe more so than he was in his nudity. Something’s missing, and it won’t come back.) He fastens the hook on the waistband and the button halfway down his fly, straightens out the fabric until both pants legs go as far as they can. From there, he pulls on the jacket and does each button, flipping up the collar before he can think twice about it. The right sleeve of the jacket only goes partway past his elbow when folded in his traditional tendency.

Finally, he feels almost composed enough to act like a person again, and Viktor makes a point to fold the other clothes—Ekko took time and effort to gather clothes for him to wear; the least he can do is leave the pile as neat as he found it. The fabric differs in the roughness and fineness of their weave, but it never gets to the same silky smoothness as Piltovian fabric. But Viktor isn’t bothered by that, can’t be when there’s something painfully nostalgic about the feel of it. When the fabrics are managed, he sets them back on the counter where they were placed. Viktor pauses, glancing between the pile of socks and his inhuman feet. Better to cover them up, he decides, and he selects a pale olive-colored pair that end up almost long enough to reach his knees.

He catches a glance of himself in the mirror before he’s able to instinctively look away, and Viktor stiffens when faced with his own reflection. It’s like looking at a ghost—looking at a dead man—dressed up in his childhood clothes with all the mutations of his new body, hair longer than he’s ever kept it before, after all Piltover’s always had specific rules about appearances. Long hair was less acceptable there than it was below. He’s spent a decade—just a bit longer than that—abiding by Piltovian rules, blending in and assimilating, doing everything he could to make them forget what he was, where he was from. (He had thought that maybe, if they didn’t remember where he came from, then they’d listen to him more; he’d be able to help more. But Viktor had been wrong. It hadn’t worked. It hadn’t worked at all.) There is nothing left of that man, now—the man in the mirror is modified beyond Zaun’s abilities—beyond humanity—and there is none of the symmetry that defines Piltovian clothes. With ragged hair and hollow, almost colorless eyes, he looks more like the wraiths that haunt Zaun, half-starved children that never grow up right.

He looks like he never even left.

But Ekko glances him over once more and gives him a nod, so they move on. Some of the clothes are scooped off of the counter, and Viktor moves to take the pile of pants and socks before his benefactor can take more upon himself. Ekko opens the door in a perfunctory manner and leads him down the short hall and towards a room that seems somewhere between a closet and an infirmary: a grim looking gurney flocked by chairs and counters dominates the room, but clothes are hung from hooks on rods, and every open cabinet is filled with disinfectants, bandages, surgical scalpels, and even what looks like medicine—actual medicine, and it must have cost a fortune if it wasn’t stolen, considering the cost of anything good in Zaun. But Viktor hasn’t been given permission to look around, and he knows better than to invade someone’s home, so he waits near the door and hands clothes to Ekko when he’s ready for them.

Then, they’re heading down the hall once more, back into the room, and Viktor tries to remind himself how he’s supposed to act—he doesn’t want Heimerdinger to see how destroyed he is, doesn’t want to risk.

“Viktor!” Heimerdinger exclaims softly, a look of surprise on his face. “You look…different outside your usual attire.”

Viktor’s stomach churns with discomfort—he’s familiar with that look, though he’d rarely seen it on the Professor’s face before today. It’s the one that Topsiders get when they’re reminded too much of those who live below, the instinctive discomfort of their different styles of attire. Piltover, after all, values symmetry and elegance, the cleanness of straight lines and finely-woven fabrics that cost a fortune even up top. Their beauty is in refinement. Zaun can’t afford to be that picky—children go from scavenging their clothe from scraps to making them, and it’s rare for things to match. Those who live down here end up dressed in mis-matched, asymmetrical garments, and many Zaunites have taken a liking to it, emphasizing their differences from Piltover and their standards. They’re different, and they choose to emphasize what Topside says they should hide.

But Viktor had never dressed like that, at least, not since he started attending the Academy. He had scrounged up enough money to buy a uniform (although it was likely second-hand from a thief), and he had worn it every day until Professor Heimerdinger noticed him a month in, washing it each night with as much care as he could. Once the yordle had arranged scholarships to let him stay, Viktor had gotten access to a few new sets, and he made a point to purchase a single reasonable outfit to wear outside school with his first Dean’s-Assistant paycheck. He made sure to assimilate, to belong—not to draw attention to his other-ness in any way beyond his disability and accent.

It was useful. He wouldn’t have gotten where he did if it wasn’t.

It made him a traitor.

And it ensured that Heimerdinger never truly saw him as a Zaunite. A notion that he has just been disabused of.

“Yes, Professor.” He responds simply, uncertain of what he’s supposed to say. “It’s more suited to the environment down here.”

The look that Heimerdinger gives him as he sits down doesn’t halt, and Viktor tries to ignore the ache that builds in his chest about it—he’d always known, since the moment he pushed against lobbying of beneficial projects he proposed: mining tech, high-precision lasers, air and water filtration, soil recovery, and prosthetics. (He doesn’t think of the Hexcore, doesn’t think of his stupid, naive hope that damned a young woman to death.) Each one struck down before it could get out of the theoretical phase. Heimerdinger means well, but Viktor has long known he’ll never prioritize Zaun, not when there were improvements to be made in Piltover. He is resigned to the disappointment.

They resume their positions, sitting around the table like some distorted imitation of normalcy, and Viktor draws a quiet, shuddery breath, trying to act normal despite the tension in the room.

“I won’t stay here for long,” He states simply, glancing between the both of them. “I appreciate what you’ve done, and I’m going to pay you back for all of it.”

“That’s not necessary.” Ekko offers, despite the loss of time and resources that Viktor’s caused in his coming here. It’s unusual, entirely alien for someone in Zaun to deny repayment—even people who are well-off tend to ask for a return favor eventually.

“Don’t be ridiculous—it’s only fair that I return your kindness.” The words are on his tongue before he has even a second to think about them, although he doesn’t disagree with his words in the slightest. In both Piltover and Zaun, it’s customary to expect repayment for goods and services provided, sometimes even simple assistance. People just pretend that it’s different up top and get passive aggressive when it takes longer than expected. There’s a moment where Ekko stares at him, as if trying to gauge his sincerity and dedication to the sentiment, and, after a few moments, he looks away.

“Alright, then, but you can stay the night before you go.” Ekko finally offers, and, after a second of consideration, he nods in response to the offer—it seems like a good one. He’s tired, even if he doesn’t know his status on whether sleep is necessary or even possible anymore; he’s something entirely unfamiliar to himself, an altered creature without even the same brain—his thoughts feel different, almost pressed against, like something’s watching him. Any number of human processes could be difficult, impossible, or dangerous, now, and he can’t know until he actively risks it. He supposes that, if he has to start with something, sleep is the least likely to be harmful towards him.

“Is it acceptable if I sleep on the couch?” He asks, getting a hummed noise and a nod in response, and Viktor shifts his position, rolling onto his side with his back facing the rest of the room—it’s not a snub towards either of them (although, it is technically dangerous for him), but is more closely linked to his desire to ignore, his desire to forget. This day is one of the five most horrible days in his life—although he’s never bothered to rank them in order—and he hurts so much that he feels ill in response to it. He just needs some time to ignore it, and then he’ll find something to do, something to occupy his life.

Viktor’s never had a family—not really. Mama and his father had died before he was seven, and the Doctor made it clear that he was never his father. He’s always been alone in every way that matters, even when people are around. And he’s not stupid enough to expect that he’ll find one here. Ekko’s already paid him more kindness than he deserves, and he won’t repay that generosity with becoming a permanent burden upon him. So, he’ll find a way to pay him back, return the kindness. Then, he’ll leave—tomorrow, he’ll leave, and he’ll find out what to do from there. But, for now? He curls up on the couch and closes his eyes, hoping that sleep will take him in her arms once more.

_________________________________________

Ekko’s not sure what he was expecting when he woke up this morning, but it was not this—whatever this is. He’s heard rumors of the strange, Undercity inventor who made it Topside, the cripple who became a founder of Hextech. Admittedly, he’s a familiar story, some little kid who used to fix filters and make gadgets and limbs for change. It’d started with Benzo, with him talking about how some Undercity kid made his way to the Academy—the idea that had him considering figuring something out, doing something. (He still doesn’t know what he would have done, so it doesn’t really matter.) Then, everything changed, and Hextech burst into existence with an illegal break-in to Heimer’s lab.

He’s not what Ekko expected—both legs are fine, for one—even aside from the audience. When he’d heard about someone like him making his way Topside and founding an enterprise like that, he’d expected someone bold. And, since the birth of Hextech, he’d had experiments and a few studies to read, always written simply by Viktor—no last name, a sign of total disrespect to Topside’s two-name tendency. He may as well have shouted that he was Undercity. Instinctively, he had assumed that someone was bold and brave, reckless even. And Heimer’s descriptions of his assistant, the one who broke the law to attend the Academy in the first place and broke them again to create a scientific innovation, had been of someone sassy and clever and more than willing to fight back against discrimination with a pithy retort.

That’s not the man he met half an hour ago.

The man who stood before him, wrapped in only a blanket, was a man torn apart. He’s ragged and emaciated, and there isn’t a single spark of that wit he’d heard so much about. Viktor’s made it to adulthood, is older than Ekko is, but there’s something painfully young and fresh-faced about his face—about the expression on it. Betrayal. (And Ekko has seen that expression before, saw it distorted in the green-colored glass of The Last Drop, when Powder—Jinx—had told him to leave, had told him she didn’t need to be saved. He had caught a glimpse of his own reflection that night, and he’ll never forget the face he saw in it.) If that hadn’t been enough to prove that things had gone horribly wrong, the story spilled out of him the moment he could speak was.

Brutal self-experimentation.

A dead assistant.

His own death in the Council attack.

A broken promise from a friend—a total violation of autonomy.

Ekko met him once. The other founder, Jayce Talis, that is. (How could he forget it? That’s the reason that everything went wrong in the first place.) He’d seemed nice, at the time—entirely naive, enough to pay double for the crystals that he’d been searching for without even an attempt to haggle. (That’s why he’d suggested him for the hit.) The man had said his ‘pleases’ and ‘thank you’s, had the traditional Topside accent and weirdly-white teeth that marked him an outsider as clearly as his clothes did. He’d seemed friendly, harmless despite his apparent physical strength. Even after, when he’d been marketed as the Man of Progress, the Hextech Creator, he had seemed earnest, well-meaning. Not like someone who would mutilate his friend’s corpse to bring him back from the dead.

(And there’s something about the way that Heimer reacted to the situation that has discomfort churning in his stomach—the disbelief, the automatic assumption that the man had been lying, that what Viktor had said about Talis had been exaggerated or misconstrued until he had directly argued with him. Something about the immediate, familiar dismissal of a Piltovian hurting someone from the Undercity, as if it’s unthinkable that things would happen in the way that they have been for centuries, now. Is it really so difficult for Pilties to see how their choices affect everyone? To understand that there are consequences for their actions, especially in the Undercity? Ekko had, admittedly and naively, hoped that Heimerdinger was different, that the cruelty inherent in the system hadn’t been his part to play.)

But, clearly, he was wrong, at least to some degree.

The man lies on the couch, curled in on himself and facing towards the back’s cushions—a move Ekko remembers making when he felt vulnerable and wanted to block out the rest of the world. There’s a moment where, suspecting the habit of feigning sleep to gather information, he intentionally walks across squeaky floorboards to make another cup of tea for Heimer, but the complete lack of a response from him indicates that he’s likely asleep by now.

“So, what’s the deal?” He eventually asks, glancing over at Heimer curiously, although his voice sounds warier than he intended it to be.

“Viktor was my assistant, a founder of Hextech, a brilliant mind.” Heimer explains, sounding almost mournful. “But we disagreed over the use of Hextech—he and Jayce wanted to use it to fix things. In the Undercity, I mean. They wanted to move forward, and I advised caution. Eventually, it culminated in a disagreement regarding the adaptive rune matrix—the Hexcore. They thought that it could be used to cure Viktor’s disease.”

Ekko absorbs it quietly, letting the information seep in and leave an impression like water in the soil. There have been people who got out before, people who made it to the Promenade level—or even Piltover—but few of them ever return, much less address that part of their life. Most of them were happy to ignore the Undercity and immerse themselves entirely in their new lives. Viktor’s apparent dedication to his old life is unusual, to say the least, but it makes him feel better about helping the man. Despite the wreck of events over the past months, he’s well-intentioned, at least.

“You didn’t like it? Even from the start.” Ekko asks curiously. Despite the general closed-mindedness of most Pilties, Heimer seems to be some exception to that for most subjects, and it’s bizarre to think of him so immediately rejecting something that, at the time, was thought to have the potential to cure diseases—even terminal ones. It seems unlike a scientist to reject discovery from the start, especially considering Heimer’s initial allowance of Hextech, following the successful experiment.

“I’ve seen nations destroyed by a single seed, and it looked exactly like that.” Heimerdinger says, and the expression on his face is so grim that it makes Ekko’s body run cold—it’s not the look of someone attempting to stop progress or disappointed that he didn’t come up with the idea on his own. It’s the look of someone who’s terrified, who sees death around the corner with no way to avert it. (And, vaguely, Ekko remembers stories of Heimerdinger having seen the Runic War almost a millennia ago—he’s not sure if it’s true, but it’s easily possible, considering the peculiarities of yordles.)

“And you thought that Viktor disobeyed your advice?” Ekko posits, although he can understand how those words drove the inventor to agitation—everyone in the Undercity has had years, or decades, of people telling them to drop dead, to stop fighting, to give in and be compliant. The only way anyone can get anywhere is if they fight against the status quo and everyone else trying to keep them down. Telling someone—especially someone driven, like Viktor apparently was—to stop, to give up on his life after they only made it as high as he did by fighting was poorly thought out—it would have been unlikely that anyone would have listened to it.

“All I had were my assumptions. Viktor was…different, and Jayce headed the movement to remove me from the Council for my advice.” Heimerdinger explains, voice some combination of heavy and weary, and Ekko pauses to marvel at that thought: Jayce Talis, the newest member of the Council, had the influence to eject the founder of Piltover from the Council. He feels nauseous—he’s the one making the weapons that are being used on the Undercity in their pursuit of Jinx.

But Heimerdinger’s behavior doesn’t make sense—sure, it makes sense for the initial assumption to suspect that Viktor had done that to himself. But after, once the man had clearly been upset and all but frantic, it should have been obvious that what he said was true—or, at least, that was his interpretation of what happened—in only an hour, Ekko can see that the scientist wears his heart on his sleeve. It’s heard to lie when you’re someone like that.

“Was it really so hard to believe that Talis hurt him?” He questions, glancing over at Heimer through the corners of his eyes—he’s been pretty reasonable since they first met, but the immediate dismissal, the side-taking and asking if it was the truth has him nauseous. “You said he kicked you out of the Council, that his actions were concerning. Wouldn’t that support his story?”

Heimerdinger stares at him, ears twitching in what Ekko thinks is discomfort, and he instinctively assumes that the yordle is going to get up or make a justification or leave—it’s what a lot of people do when their biases get pointed out, especially when they tend to think of themselves as the embodiment of sense. (It’s a Piltie thing, a reaction that occurs when someone they think is lesser criticizes them.) He sighs—it’s a deep, heavy sigh, and the yordle’s ears droop like a cat’s. Heimer sips at his tea slowly, adding a few spoons of sugar to it, as if it’s suddenly become too bitter for his taste. There’s a silence between them, like the stillness before the storm, and Ekko feels surprisingly hesitant to break it. After another moment’s hesitation, Heimer looses another sigh and finally begins to speak.

“Jayce is prone to recklessness and breaking the rules, yes, but something like that is…horrific. I didn’t want to think that the young man I did everything to get out of trouble when his experiments were discovered, who I supported when he and Viktor pioneered Hextech, and voted to make a member of the Council would do something like that.” His voice starts out steady and somewhat similar to his usual upbeat tone, but any shred of joy is gone from it—a hollow farce of stability in the face of. At that point, Heimerdinger doesn’t look angry or bigoted or disbelieving. He looks like he’s grieving, grieving the person that he knew and the friendship between his students and the lives that have been lost. It inspires more empathy than he had been expecting.

Ekko sits there in silence. He hadn’t thought about it that way. Heimer helped teach and mentor Talis, watched him study and graduate and had spoken in his defense at the trial. Someone that had been voted into the position of Councilor with Heimer’s express approval. They’ve been colleagues for years, now. How must it feel to realize that someone you put so much faith in was so different from your perception? (You know exactly what that feels like, an insidious part of Ekko’s mind hisses at him.) It doesn’t negate the immediate dismissal or the accusation of lies, but it’s more than simple bigotry against the Undercity. It’s more than just assuming someone from below was lying about being wronged by a Topsider.

“Is it always like this?” Ekko eventually asks, gesturing between the two of them. “This…intense?”

“No, it’s never been like this before.” Heimerdinger replies, and that hollow tone is still evident in his voice. “Viktor’s always been so determined—I never thought…I didn’t think he’d ask something like that of me.”

Is it safe for something like me to exist? Viktor had asked without hesitation. Am I putting everyone in danger just by being?

It’s not the type of thinking that comes about lightly.

“He’s been brave, and giving up—doing something like suicide—it isn’t like him.” Heimerdinger eventually restates. It’s said with the same certainty as a parent speaking about their child, and, for a moment, Ekko wonders if that’s something similar to how their relationship normally is. No parent ever wants to think about their child killing themselves. But it’s shoved aside by the ever-present implication that suicide was selfish, that it was evil and wrong. It’s a common Piltovian belief, that death—or, at least, self-caused death—is wrong, somehow worse.

Suicide is common in the Undercity—people get so sick or hurt that they can’t imagine a way things go on, that the idea of holding out for better days is harder than breathing in the Fissures. It’s sad; Ekko’s always thought it sad, but it happens, and it’s better that people get their own say in how things go than be forced to endure whatever suffering that may not ever end. People from the Undercity rarely get to choose how they live, forced to work and struggle to barely scrape by. It’s better that people get a choice. It’s better if they at least get a say in how they die.

He doesn’t think that Viktor should kill himself—in this particular situation, things can’t go back to the way they were. There won’t ever be a return to normal or whatever simplicity there may have once been. But that doesn’t mean that suffering is all there’ll be. Viktor’s appearance mirrors the differences seen of mages in stories from the old days—he’s even referred to himself as such. And the myths held a wealth of reasons to hope, told stories of miracles and cures and safety. Protection without relying on something monstrous and toxic, like Shimmer. There’s something with potential, here—a movement based on something more than hate and fear. If anyone, in this day and age of tension, can make a difference, it’s a mage with a desire to help instead of hurt.

“He’s going to make changes down here.” Ekko finally states, voice steady and firm. He doesn’t see the future—he scrutinizes the past, how things could have changed or been fixed, what he could have done to make things different—but he doesn’t doubt his words for a second. “Things are going to get better.”

“And how can you tell?” Heimerdinger questions, but there’s something almost like hope in it for the first time since the man arrived at their base.

“He was willing to die to keep people safe—from himself, specifically.” Ekko points out, his tone more somber than he expected. “Someone like that wouldn’t use their abilities for harm.”