Chapter Text
There are times when Jinx wonders if her brother thinks she’s an idiot.
She knows he doesn’t– of course– years of watching genuine admiration flicker under his lashes and a thousand almost-compliments that Jinx wouldn"t accept from anyone else are proof enough of that, but still…
As she comes to a stop outside Viktors lab and stares down at the floor, and the small trail of red leading through it, she wonders.
Seriously?
He must think that she’s a fool.
“He must think I’m a fool,” she hisses.
In her arms, the reason for her visit– a dirty little whelp of a kitten– gives her an awkward, high pitched hiss in return.
“You agree?” She taps her fingers under its chin and it tilts its head, purring, to nudge back into her fingers. Apparently, after the streets of Zaun, the reek of gunpowder permanently etched under her nails isn’t an issue for its pink little nose. “Of course you do. Good boy.”
Depositing its scrawny frame onto her shoulders, she crouches, eying the splatter of red against the floorboards. She stares until it blurs, until–
There, in the corner of her vision, is another splatter.
Jinx cocks her head.
The new stain is nestled directly on the line between two boards, right before the exit to the rickety fire escape that crisscrosses the Last Drop’s back side.
No, maybe Viktor does think she’s an idiot afterall.
Or , says a voice in her ear, Or, that’s his blood, and he’s in there now and he’s hurt or worse and you’re losing another–
Jinx shakes her head furiously, slapping a palm to her temple.
“Shut up !”
The kitten flinches off of her shoulder, landing with an imperceptible thump beside her knee. It gives her a reproachful glance.
She glares back, lips curling off of her teeth in a snarl, but scoops it back into her arms anyways. It shouldn’t be on its feet– that’s the reason that she’s bringing it to her brother after all. The too-sharp angle of the joint on its back left leg. The pitiful limp-drag scrabble it had made towards a shadowed drain when Jinx had stumbled across it outside.
Viktor fixes things.
Mistakes.
Machines.
People.
Kittens too, if Jinx has any say in it.
“He’ll have you good as new in no time,” she tells the kitten.
“Mrrp!” he tells her.
At least he doesn’t seem to hold a grudge.
She scratches under his chin again and then grabs the door handle, ready to shove her way into Viktor’s lab just like she does every time–
The door doesn’t budge.
Jinx pauses, staring at the door in alarm.
She rattles the handle again.
A buzzing sort of panic swells up in her, distracting, disorienting– and there’s blood on the floor– blood, blood, blood– there may not be a lot but it’s there and it’s red and–
“Ugh!” She slams her palm into her temple again.
This time the kitten flinches, but it doesn’t flee. There’s something soothing about the soft warmth of its flank brushing up against her neck.
Jinx recomposes herself.
“Viktor!” she sing-songs, trying the locked door knob once more, harder this time, she can’t believe he’s really locked her out– “Viktor! Why is your door locked? !”
Jinx punctuates the question with a resounding slam of her palm against the door. The kitten"s claws needle prick her shoulder as it clings on.
Nothing.
Jinx growls.
Hits the door again.
No response.
“Open this door or I’ll open it myself! ”
And then finally– finally – the lock clicks and the door creaks open, Viktors face appearing in the narrow slot of space available behind it.
“Ah, Jinx,” he says, painfully awkward and clearly making a play at being surprised, “... hello.”
“You’re ridiculous.” Jinx bites back, glaring.
She shoves at the door again, with enough force to make Viktor back up, but still gentle– always gentle– always with him– see Vi!? See!? Jinx can be gentle too– and slips inside.
The lab is a mess.
Jinx’s attention skips across it, everything in its wrong place. A mess of blankets made a nest of on the floor, the filter prototypes mixed up on their tables, the tired rings under Viktors glinting eyes and the dishevelled fall of his hair and–
A flare of defensiveness shoots through Jinx.
And a man– a stranger– standing, gaping from the back corner of the room.
Her eyes narrow, and the kitten that she’d almost forgotten was still nestled into her shoulder makes a weak little hiss, as if in solidarity.
The stranger is tall.
If it weren’t for the blood dappling the hallway, for the bandages wrapping his torso, Jinx might think that this was something else . She knows what Viktor likes, after all. She’s watched him close enough to note what sort of people his eyes linger on with more than just the cursory analysis so customary to him.
A handsome face. Square jaw. Tousled black hair and warm bronze skin. And then there’s the broad shoulders, the large hands, the long arms– dangerous , a voice says in her ear.
Always dangerous.
It doesn’t matter that there’s bandages leaking red patched across his bare torso, or that he’s looking at Jinx with wide eyed hesitation, or that Viktor is standing beside her, leaning heavily on his cane, but unharmed from what she can tell.
Actually– that last part matters a little.
Jinx takes a step forward, edging between Viktor and the stranger. She ignores her brother’s little huff of irritation, his annoyance at her posturing, and crosses her arms over her chest, looking the intruder up and down as if she hasn’t already taken full stock of him.
“Who are you?”
ཊ
One would think that after years spent under the tutelage of first the Doctor, and then Silco, Viktor would be a better liar. That he would be more prone to improvisation, to thinking on his feet, and for the most part he is.
Really, truly , if it were anyone else asking that question, Viktor would have a perfect answer for them. But his powers of persuasion have never worked on Jinx– in the same way that her slinking and shadow lurking has never quite managed to work on him.
In all honesty, he’d been so wrapped up in the panic of Jinx shoving her way past him, of knowing that the Inspector was right there, right behind him, in plain sight, that he had forgotten the part where Jinx hadn’t ever seen the man’s face.
She is still suspicious, of course– Jinx is always suspicious– but if she’d known, if she’d recognized Jayce Talis from that day in the bar, well, this would be going a lot different than it is.
A lot worse.
“Ah–” Viktor says– stutters– trying to buy himself enough time to just think .
For some reason, the only notion that his brain can produce is the memory of the fascination in the Inspector’s eyes as he had turned Viktor’s prototype over in his hands, the quiet admiration in the softened lines of his face. He has to know something, then. Even the most rudimentary knowledge of engineering, of anything even tangentially connected to Viktors work.
Please , Viktor thinks– begs, really, to any god that might be listening– please let them have actually taught this man something more than how to shoot at sumprats at whatever prestigious piltie school he comes from.
“This,” he announces, stepping back around her so that she’s no longer making a wall of bristling aggression between him and Jayce Talis, “is my new research partner.”
The Inspector’s eyes go wide in shock, all too easy to read, but Jinx is already looking at Viktor, raising one thin brow in a skeptical arch.
“I didn’t know that was such a dangerous job,” she says.
For a moment, Viktor is at a loss for words.
Jinx tilts her head to the side, nodding towards the Inspector’s bandage swathed torso.
Right.
“It was–” Viktor begins, already scrambling for another excuse.
“An accident!” The Inspector cuts in.
Both Jinx and Viktor whip their heads to the side and stare at him at the same time.
“It was… it was an accident,” he says again. Quieter this time. Viktor can practically see the gears turning behind his eyes. Great.
Jinx snorts, clearly unconvinced.
“What kind of accident? ”
The Enforcer hesitates again.
Viktor had warned him– had specifically ordered him to ‘ shut up and stay out of the way’ before he’d opened the door– and yet here the piltie is, already drawing attention and with no plan to back it up. Viktors annoyance is only compounded by the realization that this means that neither of them can lie well– at least, not to Jinx.
Jinx who sniffs, taking a menacing step closer to the Inspector. Looks him up and down again. Raises a brow.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
“I–”
The Inspector takes a step back.
It’s a comical sight really. A man of his stature retreating from the slight frame of a teenage girl. Made even more amusing by the fact that he can’t possibly be aware of how dangerous Jinx truly is.
“You’re right,” Viktor rallies. “He’s not.”
Fingers tightening around the end of his cane, Viktor steps forward again, nearer to Jinx, bolstered by the knowledge that if this goes badly, at least she won’t start a fight if he’s in the vicinity.
He can tell by the expression on her face that she already knows what he’s going to say, but he can also tell that she doesn’t want to believe it– that she’ll ask, make him say it. No one hates topsiders more than Jinx, not even Silco.
“Then where,” she begins, voice low, “is he from?”
Viktor doesn’t say anything. Maybe if he just stays silent, forces her to acknowledge what they both already know without any real admittance to it, maybe somehow that will soften the betrayal.
He doesn’t like to lie to Jinx. Nor Silco either, really. It’s probably why he’s so bad at it.
He’s not like them.
Silco and Jinx are broken in the same way– twin vases nudged from their shelves by incomprehensible cruelty. Viktor is different. He hadn"t been abandoned, or betrayed, he’d simply been… left behind. With time, neglect ate away at his varnish, his edges grew chipped and worn. Jinx and Silco are all sharp, cutting shards, the knifelike fractures of what they once had been. Viktor is still himself, just different. Where circumstance made weapons of Jinx and Silco, it weakened him.
Made him too weak to admit to this now.
Jinx’s face twists in dismay, but the betrayal is there too, Viktor is certain of it.
“Really?” she hisses. “ Really, Viktor? One of them?”
“Jinx–”
She throws her hands up in the air and Viktor catches sight of something small and pale tucked against her shoulder before she brings them down again in a frustrated swoop.
“You don’t even need a partner! You’ve practically cracked it on your own, the equations, the numbers, it’s all right there and you–”
“It’s–” Viktor begins, searching for something– anything– to assuage her fury. “It’s only a trial period?” he tries.
“You–” Jinx furrows her brows. “You really don’t need a research partner.”
She looks at the Enforcer again, and Viktor follows her gaze. The Inspector sways a little bit, catching himself on the table with a large hand.
“You!” Viktor snaps, through the continued deluge of Jinx’s ranting that’s turned more to a muttered rambling now. “Sit down before you pass out again!”
The Enforcer obeys with surprising speed.
Viktor turns his attention back to his little sister, eyes catching on that flash of white again.
“Jinx,” Viktor says, thoroughly distracted by the glimpse of fur coiling around her neck–
“What!?” She snaps. She’s still not even halfway through her rant, he’s sure, but that– is that–
“Is that a… cat on your shoulder?”
It’s like a switch has been flipped.
One instant, Jinx is fuming, gesticulating wildly, and in the next she goes completely still, blinking down at the scrap of fur nuzzling into her throat as if she’d forgotten it was even there.
Viktor is almost positive it’s a cat at this point.
He sneaks a glance towards the corner of the room, where the Inspector is watching all of this go down with an expression of unadulterated bewilderment.
“Oh,” Jinx says. She reaches up to her shoulder and lifts the small bundle of fur into her hands. “I was bringing him to you.”
Viktor blinks.
Distracting her from the elephant– or Enforcer, in this case– in the room shouldn’t be this easy.
Jinx can swing from hot to cold, from furious to despondent, from miserable to ecstatic– all within the blink of an eye. Normally, Viktor takes this in stride, but with the Enforcer in the room, things feel different from the way they normally do. They feel… inspected, ironically enough.
He clears his throat, shaking the thought from his mind, and lifts the proffered kitten from Jinx’s hands.
It gives a pathetic mewl once separated from her.
Viktor blinks again.
It’s glaring up at him, but it’s soft and warm in his hands. His fingers look wrong against its fur– spindly, menacing. His hands have wrought such pain. They don’t belong here, like this, wrapped around a small thrumming ball of life.
“So!” Jinx chirps. Over her shoulder, Viktor sees the Inspectors" brows rise in alarm at the sudden change in her voice. “Think you can fix him?”
She leans into Viktors side, throwing an arm over his shoulders. Jinx isn’t heavy, but her arm does rest directly over the bruises from where Finn held him against the wall. Viktor knows they’re there, but hasn"t checked them yet, too hesitant to disrobe in such close quarters with an Enforcer– even an unconscious one.
His throat tightens and suddenly everything feels too much.
Jinx’s expectant expression. The intrigued warmth of the Inspectors eyes on the side of his face. The scrunched up face of the kitten cradled in his palms– and, even worse– the awkward twist in one of the kitten’s back legs, the harsh jut of an incorrect angle.
Viktor shifts on his feet, turning his back on the Enforcer in favor of holding the kitten back out to Jinx.
“That’s not something that can be fixed.”
The kitten was born with a bad leg. How it made it this long, Viktor doesn’t know. Perhaps it got lucky. Perhaps it’s a little like him. Either way, there’s nothing he can do for it.
Jinx’s expectant expression softens to one of realization.
He doesn’t have to explain for her to understand. It’s so much easier with Jinx than anyone else. He never has to say
She takes the kitten back without a word, her brows bunching together. After depositing it back into its perch across her shoulders, she looks hesitantly back to Viktor. No one witnessing this moment would call the gleam in her eyes apologetic, but Viktor knows it for what it is.
He nods.
It’s a mistake.
He’s been dipping his chin down, almost thoughtlessly, this entire time in an attempt to conceal the bruises that he can feel blooming around his neck. But when he nods, Viktor lifts his head– just slightly– and Jinx’s eyes lock onto a point somewhere under his chin. Then, they narrow into slits and her entire body goes stiff and silent.
“ What is that ?” She asks, voice razor sharp.
The switch has flipped again.
Viktor ducks his chin again, silently cursing himself.
“Nothing,” he says, scrambling, “why don’t you–”
Jinx steps closer, all in a rush, her blue braids whipping the air behind her, and catches his chin in her hands, ducking her head to peer at the markings lining his throat.
She’s quiet for a long moment before Viktor feels her fingers tense around his jaw.
“Jinx,” he says.
Calmly.
Soothingly.
She lets go. Steps back. Her face is expressionless but her eyes are dark.
Viktor knows what"s about to happen a second before it does, but he’s too slow to stop her.
Jinx has always been fast.
She’s across the room in half a heartbeat, poised overtop the Enforcer like a coiled beast. Somehow, the kitten has managed to cling to her shoulder, but its claws have opened thin red lines over the powder-pale skin of her bicep in the effort to remain there.
“Jinx,” Viktor says again, more forcefully this time. “It wasn’t–”
She ignores him, pressing the edge of one of the many small daggers she keeps on her person to the Enforcers jugular.
Jinx snarls wordlessly, leaning forward.
Jayce Talis, to Viktor’s relief, handles the threat of Jinx’s blade far better than he’d handled Finn and goes perfectly still. His eyes flick back and forth, from Jinx to Viktor and back again, and there’s an unexpected sort of understanding there.
“Was it you?” She hisses.
“It wasn’t–” Viktor begins again, only to be cut off by the Inspectors horrified reply of–
“No!”
His face is so easy to read.
The fissure between his brows. The widening of his eyes. He’s genuinely upset that Jinx would suspect him of that, which means he is either horribly naive or an utter fool.
Most likely both, Viktor decides. Tightening his grasp around the end of his cane and limps nearer, until he stand directly behind his sister.
Viktor plucks the kitten from her shoulder, trying not to wince at the irritated claw marks already rising across her skin.
“He didn’t,” he says quietly, and though he can’t quite make out her face, he can tell Jinx hears him from the way her bare shoulders draw together.
“The incident that caused…” he pauses, trying to think of a way to describe the aching circlet wrapping his throat, and when he can’t he settles for, “The incident that caused these is over. It has been dealt with and bears no repeating.”
The ‘ No matter how much I would like to see Finn on the opposite end of one of your guns ’ goes unsaid, unfortunately.
Viktor sits the kitten carefully down on the lab table to their right, getting it out of his hands as soon as he can. It’s not like he’ll actually be able to stop Jinx from doing whatever she wants but Viktor did not risk Finn’s cruelty in that alleyway just for her to put an end to the Inspector over a misunderstanding.
If it came to that, he would try to stop her, at least.
His hands need to be empty for that.
He leans his hip against the table and props his cane alongside it.
Jinx doesn’t seem satisfied by anything Viktor has just told her. She twists the knife between her fingers and Viktor knows that look well enough. He holds back a sigh when her shoulders untense.
She leans forward again, over the Inspector, who still hasn’t moved a muscle during this entire exchange.
Remarkable restraint, at least , Viktor finds himself thinking. Even if it is conspicuously lacking at other times.
“I’m going to ask you,” Jinx addresses the Inspector, “because apparently I can’t trust my brother not to lie .”
She takes a moment to cut a narrow eyed glare at Viktor, before turning her attention back on the Enforcer.
“Who are you? Why are you down here? And– ” Viktor winces as her hand presses harder, a line of red slips down the Inspector"s throat. “Who did that to Viktor?”
Instead of answering her, the Inspectors eyes find Viktor’s over her shoulder.
There’s uncertainty there, a question, and for a moment Viktor is confused. Then it clicks. He’s asking permission.
Permission to speak the truth.
Viktor’s jaw tenses, but even he recognizes that it’s far too late to find another way out of this. Jinx is like a bloodhound on a scent. Unshakeable.
He gives the other man a shallow nod.
“Inspector Jayce Talis,” the Enforcer admits, voice unwavering despite the way Jinx flinches at his answer. “Piltover Police Department. Your– Viktor helped me. I was in trouble. That’s how he got hurt.” And then, because clearly, his idiocy knows no bounds, a guilty expression sweeps across the Enforcers face. “It was my fault,” he adds, in an apologetic murmur.
Jinx doesn’t seem to hear it though.
Her knuckles are white, the grasp of her hand around the blades handle far tighter than it should be.
For the first time in a long time– since the early months, right after Silco brought a small, pale faced girl back with him and the whole world turned upside down again– Viktor isn"t entirely certain what Jinx is going to do next.
He knows that the voices speak to her but which one is the loudest. Is it Silco? If so, that blade will soon dig deeper. But if it’s Vander or that sister that left her or even Viktor himself…
The lab is silent.
Echoing in absence of any sound, but Viktor knows it’s coming. The eruption.
“Why?” Jinx snarls, whirling on Viktor. She’s moving so quickly that she loses her grip on the knife, but when it clatters to the floor she doesn"t seem to care.
Viktor spares a quick glance for the Enforcer, and finding his throat still in one piece, returns his attention just as quickly to his sister.
Her shoulders are heaving and her mouth wobbles. Viktor hates the fragility he sees in her face– hates that he’s the one that’s caused it, and hates that what he has to say next will only make it worse.
“You know what happened the last time they came across the Bridge.” Jinx flinches, imperceptibly. “You know what happened the time before, too.” Viktor continues, ignoring the sour tint of the truth on his tongue. “And you know what would happen if an Inspector ever died down here.”
“Well, what are you gonna do then?” Jinx spits. “Nurse him back to health and then send him on his way? Stitch up his wounds and ferry him back up to his ivory towers so he can keep grinding all of us under his boot?”
That had been the plan, actually.
Viktor frowns.
“Do you have a better idea?”
“ Do you have a better idea? ” Jinx mimics, voice notably louder than Viktors had been. She tilts her head back in a humorless cackle. When she’s done, her face doesn’t stop grinning, the sound just stops coming.
“How much do you think the pilties would pay to have him back?” She asks.
Viktor pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers.
He won’t say that he hadn"t considered that route. But for what would they bargain? Topside couldn’t possibly be prepared to offer anything meaningful for the life of one man.
Jinx, reaching that realization at the same time that Viktor returns to it, spins on her heel to stare at the Enforcer, who’s still slouched in his chair.
He’s taking this all remarkably calmly for a man whose future is being bargained away in front of him. Though, Viktor supposes, eying the red blot of bandages over his torso, that could just be the blood loss talking.
“Hey,” Jinx barks.
The Enforcer raises a brow.
“How much you think they’d pay?” she asks.
The man actually laughs then. It’s a dismissive sort of snort, yet somehow not at all an unpleasant sound.
“Most of them will be happy to be rid of me.”
That’s a surprisingly cynical statement, considering the man that it comes from. Jinx slouches in dismay, and with good reason. It’s not the sort of thing that you want your hostage in a possible ransom situation to admit.
Viktor leans more of his weight against his table, flattening his hand against its chilled surface, and eyes the growing red stain over the Inspectors bandages again. It’s spread since he last checked, only a few minutes earlier. If Jinx doesn’t leave soon, he’ll have to make her, if only to ensure that the Inspector doesn’t pass out again.
Something soft nudges at his hand where he braces it on the table. When he looks down, he finds the kitten peering up at him. Viktor edges away from it, but it follows him, leg dragging over the surgical steel in a noiseless swipe. He looks away, but doesn’t retreat from it again and then Jinx is there, scooping it back into her arms.
She perches it back onto her shoulder and looks directly into Viktors eyes.
“I’m going to find who did that,” she threatens, jabbing a finger at his neck, and seemingly already past her short lived aspirations of hostage negotiations.
Viktor doesn’t doubt that she’s capable of finding Finn, and he doesn’t care much either. He won’t tell her because he gave his word, and because in Zaun, a man’s word means something, but he also won’t dissuade her from hunting Finn down and tearing him apart if she so desires.
In fact, he’d be happy to watch if it comes to that.
“And him,” she jabs her finger at the Enforcer this time but steps even closer to Viktor, “you don’t forget what he is.”
“I already know–”
“No you don’t!” Jinx yells. Her mouth wobbles again but she composes herself. Then, quieter– “You don’t know. But I do.”
And she’s right.
Viktor has seen the wake of desolation and despair that lingers in the Enforcer’s passing, but Jinx has seen them enacting it with her own eyes.
They’re different. Jinx and Silco. Different from him. They always will be, and secretly, Viktor knows that’s because they don’t want him to be like them.
“I won’t.” Viktor grudgingly agrees.
The first sliver of positive emotion that Viktor has seen in a minutes that feel like hours slips across Jinx’s face, curling the corner of her mouth.
“You won’t what ?” She prompts, leaning closer, almost taunting.
“Forget.” Viktor says. “I won’t forget.”
He hesitates then, but he has to ask, has to know–
“Will you tell father?”
Her eyes narrow.
“He’ll be gone by the end of the week?”
Viktor nods.
“You promise?”
Viktor sighs.
That had been the plan, originally, anyway.
“I promise.”
Jinx gnaws on her lip.
“Then you better hope Sevika doesn’t find him.”
Viktor recognizes the warning for what it is.
Jinx won’t tell Silco.
Not yet, at least.
Not until the week is up and the Inspector has had time to heal and Viktor can force him out of Zaun and pray to gods that he’s never believed in that the man never returns.
“Thank you,” Viktor says.
Jinx waves a dismissive hand.
He points to the door.
“Now get out, unless you want to help sew him up again.”
Jinx casts an unimpressed glance over her shoulder, eyes catching on the red bandages.
“I’ll go,” she says. “But I’m still mad at you.”
On her shoulder, the kitten pops its head back out from underneath a thick blue braid. It hisses, as if in agreement, as if its rage is somehow equivalent to hers.
Jinx rubs under its chin with long fingers, still eying the Inspector.
“New research partner,” she scoffs, shaking her head. “Did you really think I"d buy that?”
So, it’s time for her to gloat now.
At least she’s acting more or less herself again.
“No, not really,” Viktor admits, ignoring the way that the Enforcer seems inexplicably dismayed by his agreement.
“Good,” Jinx tells him. “You’re smarter than that.”
She starts for the door, dragging it half open before pausing again.
“And do something about your neck.” Her face scrunches up. “It looks awful.”
He nods wearily and then the door clicks shut behind her and the lab is silent again.
ཊ
In the absence of the girl, Viktor seems to wilt.
His slender shoulders furl in exhaustion and he lets out a long sigh, pawing around the edge of his desk until he finds his cane again.
The sight strikes Jayce with an inexplicably intense bout of guilt– all blame for the argument that’s just occurred can justly be placed solely on his shoulders.
“Your sister?” He asks, to break the silence.
Viktor glances in his direction, his eyes flashing golden in the darkness.
“Yes.”
His voice is terse.
Jayce shrugs, trying to keep the conversation going.
She was terrifying , he thinks.
“You two don’t look much alike,” he says.
Viktor quirks a brow.
“Get to your point.”
The only problem is that Jayce doesn’t actually have a point– unless you count diffusing the awkward tension floating in the air as one. He scrambles for something to say, anything to stop that muffling silence from returning and–
“Different mothers?”
Viktor looks at him like he’s an idiot.
“You could say that.”
His cane clicks across the floor until he stands, once more, directly in front of Jayce, who has to tip his head back to hold eye contact.
It’s not dissimilar at all to their first meeting, and Jayce supposes he likely deserves this for his attempt at intimidation back then.
Viktor inspects him as if he’s looking for something in particular and then frowns. Jayce can’t tell if that means he found whatever he was searching for or didn’t.
“You’ve pulled your stitches.”
Technically, Jayce wants to say, it was your sister that pulled them.
He’d felt it when she first put her blade to his throat– her empty hand bracing itself over the wound. The excruciating pop-pop-pop of the sutures wavering and then failing.
He doesn’t say anything, though.
Nothing at all.
The corner of Viktor’s mouth tugs down.
“Stay there,” he says.
He limps across the room and tugs open a drawer. While he searches its contents, Jayce watches his shoulders shift, vision blurring in a now familiar way. Then, when he turns, Jayce watches Viktor’s face.
It’s sharp and swooping and contains a kind of honed elegance that would make even the haughtiest of Piltover’s aristocrats envious.
Golden eyes widen slightly.
Honey, Jayce remembers.
Kiramman honey.
It’s an odd thing to consider, but Jayce is cold and tired and the bandages over his abdomen are damp and warm now.
“You know,” he says. “I have a little sister that doesn’t look like me, too.”
The words come out slow and dragging. They don’t sound right– slurred together like they’ve tumbled from his mouth at the very end of one of Mel’s galas, only Jayce hasn’t had any champagne tonight.
Clicking.
Footsteps.
A shadow falls over him.
“You’re going to pass out again,” an accented voice informs him, sounding slightly annoyed at the prospect.
That’s the last thing Jayce hears.