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He’s five years old when he first becomes a witness of Death. It happens on the way back home - a hit and run. An unpaid debt. The man lies headless in the middle of the street and none of the passersby as much as blink at the scene. His mother picks him up at record speeds and rests his head in the crook of her neck. A woman screams and that’s when she wraps him up in her scarf, covers his eyes so he doesn’t have to see. People whisper, talk about the man as if he’s never been alive - or a person at all. ‘ He must have deserved it’ , a man sneers. She carries Viktor home in one hand, and the basket full of goods in the other. His little joints hurt more than usual that day.
He’s too young to understand, but that doesn’t stop the cogs inside his little head from spinning, perhaps a little bit faster than they should’ve. If he notices things, he’s smart enough not to ask questions. He grows up in his own little personal Viktor-shaped bubble, quiet and polite and attentive and his parents are grateful. Worried, but grateful nonetheless.
That is not the first death that young Viktor witnesses, but it’s one of the memorable ones that took root in the back of his mind.
( if only / don't tell me, / just / let me live)
Viktor gets his first official unofficial job at the ripe age of thirteen when he’s still gangly and his limbs are disproportionate. There are not many vacancies in Zaun, manual labor puts bread on the table and keeps Death from knocking at your door, so Viktor ends up in the spot that no one else is willing to take - a mortician's apprentice. Except it’s not quite a mortician, but also a pathologist playing pretend. The job in itself is less than legal (as most things in Zaun are, if we’re being honest) threading over the thin, blurry lines of mortality. But Death is a thriving market in Zaun if the presence-slash-influence of the Chem-Barons means anything.
Tante Paulina is a nice elderly woman, who lets him study from her anatomy books at her desk where he doesn’t have to come in contact with any corpses and teaches him how to fill an autopsy report, and answers all of his questions (no matter how terrifying it is to hear those words coming from a child). She’s nice, but she’s not stupid. And she knows that he’s not stupid either, that he’s well aware of her attempts at sheltering him. But his parents are old, and he’s not stupid.
It takes months of begging, and at fifteen Viktor gets to perform his first official unofficial autopsy. The room is quiet and the light reflecting off the white tiles is nearly blinding him. In spite of it not being the first time, he’s seen the remains of a dead person his hands are still shaking. It's definitely the first time it’s a person that he knows personally. Correction - that he knew. It’s a boy he knew from middle school - doesn’t remember his name. What he remembers is him saying that his parents couldn’t afford to let him continue his education. Instead, in an attempt to support his family, he took a job in one of the many rundown factories, where he got crushed by a piece of heavy machinery. What a way to meet your end.
The skin on his face is greying and looks waxy. Viktor's eyes are wide and alert with recognition and he hesitates to touch the sheet covering the rest of the body. His arms feel heavy as if he’s the one going through rigor mortis. His breathing grows uneven but Paulina doesn’t rush him. Instead, she coaxes him through the process with yes-or-no-type questions, And he only cries a little bit (in disgust and maybe frustration) when seeing the torn abdomen and the fractured ribs. She lets him work red-faced and with tears in his eyes and nods reassuringly whenever Viktor looks up at her. He writes the report all on his own and she tells him that she’s proud, as if to ease the mental pain. In reality, it does jack shit, but Viktor is thankful.
After Paulina is done applying the cosmetics ( the ones that smell so strong that Viktor can still feel the scent through the protective mask) the boy on the table no longer looks dead. It’s a long, meticulous process that Viktor could never think of replicating - he has the patience, but he’s not an artist. The body on the table no longer looks dead. The cheeks are rosy with faux laughter and the smile on his mouth tells the tale of a pleasant dream. They take a picture to be framed and kept by the family. The body will be sent to a crematorium. There are no cemeteries in Zaun, no room for burials and grieving. No room for more sadness than necessary. They leave together. The older woman takes his hand in hers, walks him home in perfectly comfortable silence.
It’s quite late, but his mother is awake and awaits him with warm beet soup and bread that’s barely out of the oven.
“How was your day,” she asks and takes a seat next to her son. Deep down she knows why his lips quiver when he opens his mouth to answer yet no sound comes out. He eats in silence and she’s there the whole time, watching his every move with fondness.
“ Mama, stop ” he whines when she wraps her bony arms around him. The embrace is awkward - Viktor has long outgrown his mother, now a head taller than her. His words of protest mean nothing. He'll never stop being her little boy, no matter how tall he gets. Viktor hisses in pain when he tries to hug her back, silently hoping that his mother doesn’t notice it when he flinches under her gentle touch.
“Go to bed, Vitya .” She places a kiss on his forehead.
That’s what he attempts to do for the rest of the night, but sleep never comes to him. Instead, he spends hours looking at the cracks on the ceilings. Tries counting sheep, but gives up at around the 12567th one. His eyelids don’t feel heavy at all. He tosses and turns, making a mess out of his bed. Nothing helps. Can’t sleep when his mind keeps wandering. He keeps thinking about the corpse on the table. How after some time the boy’s features started to blur and morph into his own and he wanted to run. How his mother’s skin felt cold and waxy against his and he almost shattered the bowl he was holding. Then he remembers how for a single moment, Death looked like deep sleep. That’s when a newly found fear festered inside Viktor’s head. He didn't sleep at all that night and started to sleep less and less from then on.
Long before the sun rises Viktor is in the bathroom, trying not to empty his stomach. His own flesh feels heavy on the skeleton as if it was not meant to be there to begin with. Wrong. Misplaced. Disgusting. Repulsive. Truth be told, Viktor never cared about his appearance before. But he still turns the mirror around, too scared to look at himself. Pretends not to notice it, and hopes that his parents don’t either. And if they do, they never mention it.
(deep in my bones / deep in my marrow / it's holding on, but I'm not)
Viktor is seventeen when he starts building fake limbs out of scrap material in the back of Paulina’s office, for those unfortunate ones who lost their own. And it feels right, it feels like he’s truly helping. He’s long finished devouring all of the anatomy books - mastered the human body to the point where there was nothing left for him to learn, now listening to some crackhead talk about philosophy on the radio. He’s read plenty of those books and now knows that philosophy is nothing but a load of bullshit. Plenty of his questions are left unanswered and he’s still trying to the relentless hunger that keeps him up at night. It's a nice white noise for when he’s busy, at least.
He’s stopped being afraid of Death. Death, who comes for everybody eventually, who doesn’t care about who it hurts in the process. Death, who takes and takes and takes and never once gives anything back. He doesn’t hate Death. Instead, he hates Life for being fragile and limited and succumbing to something so meaningless. Damned be humanity for being weak and fickle. Viktor doesn’t hate Death, but if it truly conquers all, may he be the one to never bend the knee in front of it. Instead of sleeping, Viktor spends his nights thinking of machines meant to help the citizens of Zaun.
Tante Paulina has more grey hair now and walks around with a pathetic excuse of a cane. Viktor constantly reminds himself to make a new one for her. He has plenty of time - he’s top of his class without even trying too hard, rather than studying for his own motives and satisfaction. She’s like a grandmother he never had, constantly beaming with pride at everything he does. ‘ See Vitenka, you’re an artist too,’ she gushes at his work. Points out the details and the fine measurements. The correct anatomy. She loves him like a grandchild and he loves her back truly, but he will never be able to tell her that out loud. She’s old, and that makes Viktor uneasy. He hopes that she lives to see him graduate, even though that seems unlikely. But against all odds, she does. She’s there to pat him on the back and pinch his cheeks. She has the first-ever fully functioning prosthetic he designed - a leg meant to accommodate her walking around without any aid. It’s ugly, but it does its job and people are quick to notice. In exchange, she gives him medicine that eases the soreness of his muscles.
Viktor is nineteen that summer when his work finally gains public traction and he gets invited into Zaun's prestigious Academy of Techmaturgy. But there’s also a letter from one Professor Stanwick, who seems absolutely ecstatic about Viktor’s work. Making a decision is not hard - after all - which fool would refuse the opportunity to work with the most advanced technology the world of RuneTerra has to offer? He’s feverish with excitement, so he replies embarrassingly fast to Stanwick’s letter. His mother cries that evening as he packs his things and makes lists, overwhelmed with pride and sadness. She crushes him in a tight embrace and Viktor wishes she could live forever. Just to quietly enjoy her grip a little bit more.
The fever persists, worsens, and Viktor finds himself in immeasurable pain. He’s burning inside and out, scared and confused. He’s sweating like a dog, suffocating, hyperventilating. He collapses face down on the floor, and as his vision goes dark the last thing he sees is his mother rushing into the room. That night is the closest encounter he has with Death, so close he can feel it stick to him like a second skin, with cold and unforgiving hands trying to pull the life out of him. But he lives, miraculously, at the price of losing most of his left arm. When he wakes three days later, he’s not at home, but in one of the miserable hospitals in Zaun. His father is there at his side, with a sorrowful look in his eyes. At first, he doesn’t even notice that his left arm is missing, distracted by the searing pain overtaking his entire body. Viktor chokes as he listens to his own father explain how the unknown bacteria was eating away at his bone, and how the doctors had no idea what kind of disease they were dealing with. Viktor no longer hates Death but hates human error and the incompetence that allows it to act freely.
His mother doesn’t visit. Doesn’t want to see her only son in agony again. When they let him go home, she looks at him like he’s come back from the dead (he does look like a corpse, pale and lifeless, and he knows that when he turns the mirror in the bathroom back around). For the first time ever home stops feeling like home that night, and he can’t quite figure out why. His mother sleeps next to him, holds tight, afraid that her little boy will slip away like sand between her fingers. He will not fade. It’s a quiet victory he can’t quite celebrate; Death tested him and he won the battle. What remains is a war yet to be fought. That night, Viktor is aching and tired but sleeps like a normal person again. In a few weeks, he builds his own prosthetic arm and pretends that he is whole again.
Viktor is nineteen when he meets his new roommate. His name is Jayce, and he’s quite possibly ill in the head. Jayce is tall and charming and handsome and everything that Viktor is not. He’s also insufferable and talks like he’s the center of the fucking universe. However, the only thing bigger than Jayce’s huge ego is his gigantic intellect. That makes him the only person that Viktor has pleasant conversations. His work is impeccable, albeit limited in practicability, but it’s nothing that Viktor can’t improve with his unconventional ideas. They’re both a bit loony, but they click like pieces of a puzzle and together they’re unstoppable. Or at least that’s what the professors say. Neither will admit it, but they’re each other's first-ever friend, maybe more than that.
Viktor is twenty years and six hours old when his mother dies of what they called natural causes. He finds out before he’s supposed to take an exam, and the first thing he feels is the sky collapsing on him. If Jayce sees him shaking while writing the paper, he doesn’t mention it. Actually, he doesn’t even have a chance to mention it at all, because Viktor storms out as soon as he’s done fifteen minutes later. (He got the highest score, two points more than Jayce himself).
Tante Paulina is waiting for him in front of the iron gates that lead to his home. She’s ditched her usual work gear and Viktor doesn’t recognize her at first, not until he sees the familiar metal leg. But when he does, his head turns to the ground, trying to hide the tears that are threatening to spill from the corner of his eyes. The older woman hugs him, and he flinches at the contact and can’t bring himself to hug her back. She whispers her regrets and now he’s fully sobbing, his shoulders quake with every breath he takes. The dam breaks all at once, and Viktor lets out years’ worth of bottled-up emotions. He doesn’t want to see her body at all, so he spends the night outside. His father eventually joins him on the porch somewhere past 11, and the two of them mourn in silence together. He doesn’t remember anything past that. Her ashes sit in a plain white urn, placed on the shelf above the fireplace. Viktor never cries again. (Nor does he return home.)
When he returns to the shared dorm room, Jayce is all over him, asking questions that he doesn’t have the energy to answer. He throws his shoes off - didn’t even notice that he lost the sole of the right one on the way. He’d walked like that through the snow in the middle of the night when the temperatures dipped below freezing. Jayce asks him something again but he doesn’t quite understand it with the ringing in his ears, so he shrugs in response and hopes that the other will just take that and leave him alone.
But Jayce, god bless his idiotic stubbornness, doesn’t leave him alone. In fact, he grabs Viktor by the hand (the fleshy one) and his jaw nearly hits the floor when he feels just how cold it is. It happens very fast - Viktor finds himself in a change of dry clothes that don’t quite fit him and Jayce is forcibly tucking him in bed under a comedic number of blankets. All while the piltie is mumbling something about Viktor ‘ dying like an idiot ’ and ‘ hypothermia ’.The shifting of weight on the bed startles the shivering man and he nearly jumps when Jayce croaks at him in the dark, asking to scoot over. Viktor scoots over.
Jayce’s hands are bigger than his when they grab them. It’s whatever happens next that sends the zaunite spiraling: the other man shoves Viktor’s hands up his shirt. Jayce’s flesh is burning hot under his palms and numb fingertips, warm and inviting. He lets Jayce wrap around him, lets his head lean against the taller man’s chest. His heart jumps in his chest when he realizes that it’s the first instance in years where he doesn’t flinch away from physical contact. And Jayce knows because he’s watching Viktor with those vigilant eyes of his, waiting for him to shove him away. When Viktor never does, Jayce rests his chin atop of the shorter man's head. That’s how they fall asleep that night, plus some that come after.
(I know I'm dead / but do I care? / I was barely there, / and now, / I'm less)
Viktor doesn’t care how old he is, has stopped counting the years that passed too long ago. The past is irrelevant to the future that he is trying to achieve. He’s more machine than human now, better and more durable - harder to kill. But not impossible.
He’s laying on the floor, bleeding pathetically like every other pest that walks on the wretched earth. Jayce looms over him with a sneer on his face - he’s exhausted, his bloodshot eyes never leave Viktor’s wrecked body.
“Aren’t you tired of this, Viktor?” he rasps.
He’s been tired of this for the past two decades, of fighting for a cause that he alone believes in. Of course, he’s fucking tired, he wants to tell Jayce just how fucking tired he is, like he used to do in college - when they used to huddle together in one bed and just be fucking tired together. But things changed since then and Viktor is more than sure that this time Jayce isn’t as willing to listen. Jayce changed. And so did Viktor.
“Aren’t you tired of this, Viktor?” he asks again, pointing the handle of the Mercury Hammer at the cyborg’s chin (or the general area, he can’t tell) for emphasis.
“Aren’t you?” Viktor laughs. Laughs harder than he ever did, unclasps the metal plate of his mask with his third arm just to let his ex-friend see just how hard he’s laughing. Blood dribbles from his mouth and nose, down his chin, and into his hair and he really hopes that he doesn’t choke on it. It’s hilarious, really. Spent so many years of his life afraid of death, of sleep because it was too similar, tried to fix the natural course of life - only to now realize that being alive is the fucking nightmare. He can feel the adrenaline rushing through his veins, urging him to stand up and fight. Survive. But he simply doesn’t want to. Survive? For who? There’s no one left - no one who remembers him no one who loves him no one who needs him no one-
Jayce stares at him incredulously - the last time he’d hear Viktor laughing was when he pointed out that Stanwick was wearing a toupee to hide his receding hairline. And that had a quiet giggle. Now, Viktor laughs with his whole body, his shoulders are shaking and his chest expands with every wheeze and chortle. He laughs like he just heard the funniest fucking joke. ‘Is he mocking me?’ Jayce thinks. He wants to ask him that, but then his eyes meet that warm gaze, the same one he remembers from back then and Viktor is laughing but he is crying. Tears roll down his pale cheeks, wash away the blood, and leave clean tracks behind. But he smiles and laughs like never before and Jayce doesn’t understand.
“Aren’t you?” The delayed sound escapes Viktor’s mouth, but his lips are spelling something else. ‘ Kill me.’ His laughter doesn’t cease, only slows down as Viktor coughs when blood fills his lungs or seeps through the various mechanisms inside his ribcage.
“Aren’t you?” The words echo. Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me.Kill me. The Mercury Hammer connects with Viktor’s celiac plexus with a wet squelching noise and the room finally grows quiet. The laughter stopped. Viktor’s face is frozen in a permanent smile, foggy eyes staring right at Jayce.
The Defender of Tomorrow kneels down to double-check the Herald’s pulse (there’s none, he just wanted to see Viktor’s face up close again). He takes off his gloves and lets his fingers hover over Viktor’s face - he hesitates before closing Viktor’s eyes. Doesn’t know if he’s doing it out of genuine respect for his rival and a former friend or if it’s just a meaningless gesture.
One last tear runs down Viktor’s cheek and onto the back of Jayce’s hand, smearing the dried blood that leaked under his gloves.
( and If I feel something, / my body betrayed me)