Chapter Text
The most noticeable of changes on the street are a few additional mechanical structures that are integrated into the buildings. He recognizes a few of them as his own handiwork. It makes his stomach churn uncomfortably. A cruel reminder of what he could have done for his own Zaun; what he should have done. Some of the annexed metal is just different enough to be foreign to him, but reminiscent of his style nonetheless. The further away he gets from the Last Drop, the less he sees.
The Lanes are lively, but quiet. Secretive. He follows the street, adding details to his mental map of Zaun as he walks. A beggar reaches out for him ( again), hands clasped. Faint purple veins run along their ashy hands. Viktor stops, guilt smothering him. He doesn’t have any money on him, much less shimmer.
“I’m sorry,” he offers, a truly apologetic look on his face. He doesn’t get a response.
He keeps to his mission. He’s not exactly sure what it is at this point, but it’s settling in that it will probably take him more than a few days to knock out every goal in his list. Still, his lungs burn too painfully for him to be reassured by the luxury of time.
After a while, he finds his way to the cave. His steps echo underneath the sound of running water. The doctor doesn't bother to turn around.
"Viktor," he says in acknowledgement. He's concocting something that makes the lab rats in a cage by him squeal and cower. Unsurprising.
"Doctor Reveck," he says in return, wincing slightly at the inclusion of his last name. He hasn’t shaken the habit yet. The doctor turns around. He is still burnt from head to toe, Viktor notes. It seems that Zaun hasn't deviated from his memories too far.
"What are you here for, Viktor?" After a moment of consideration, lab equipment gets swiftly tucked away and a test tube gets swirled one last time with a flick of the doctor’s wrist. He stands up, making his way to Viktor to look at him with a new attention. Good. He’s noticed that there’s something wrong.
"I need your assistance," he sighs.
"Hm," the doctor muses, blinking at him.
Viktor frowns, trying to think of how to explain something that he himself barely understands yet. He grabs the nearest sheet of paper and a pen, leaning over a table to jot down the best summary of their years of work that he can. A basis for expansion. Then, he scratches off half of it because he’s certain that the doctor doesn’t really need to see the directions to replicating the anomaly. After a few minutes of awkward silence filled with the sound of aggressive scratching, he pulls himself back up. The doctor stares at him with mild curiosity. "Ah," Viktor starts with a sharp exhale. “It’s, complicated." He sticks the paper out, hoping that diagrams and numbers could fill in the gaps of what he cannot verbalize. He truly doesn't know what else he can say. The doctor nods slowly, wordlessly, and takes the piece of paper from Viktor's hands to examine it closer. After a while, he speaks. "I am familiar with your intrigue in the hextech theory," he comments seriously. "You were persistent on testing it for a period of time, but materials were difficult to come by. This is something else. Larger in potential than any of the theories you had come up with before. And almost realistic." There is hunger in his eyes, and Viktor cringes slightly at it. The doctor tilts his head. "What is the problem?"
"The problem is that—"
"You are not Viktor," the doctor interrupts. Viktor freezes as a knowing eye is turned to him. He sighs. Of course.
"I suppose you could think of it in that way," Viktor replies helplessly. "From what I have seen of this world, I am close enough." When he gets no response, he continues. "This technology created an anomaly in the fabric of the universe. My universe, since you seem to have grasped the concept already. I cauterized it, but now I am stuck on the other side. I'm merely borrowing this body, in a sense. But I'm still Viktor. Things just...worked out differently for me."
The doctor doesn't make much of an acknowledgement, too occupied by scrutinizing the calculations hastily jotted down onto the paper, but Viktor knows that he's listening. "Powerful capabilities. I believe some of Piltover's minds have picked up on the genius of the research cobbled together from notes they have discovered. Certainly not to the application level of what you are describing, however."
Viktor pales, slightly. "Hextech cannot resurface." Some part of him twinges at the thought, a remnant of the hexcore thrumming away underneath his skin even after all this time.
"Other timelines. A possibility of godhood. A world destroyer in the hands of someone capable of creating one," the doctor states. "One may only imagine the consequences of such a thing."
"It wasn't made to be one," he explains weakly, as if the doctor requires explanation.
"It never is."
With that, the doctor hands the piece of paper back carefully.
"How long do you intend to stay?" he asks.
Viktor hasn't even thought about that. "I don't know," he answers truthfully. "I've been preoccupied with finding a friend; he was with me the last I remember. So, maybe until I find him. And it seems I have tasks here anyway."
"You should come visit more often, if you have the time. I am curious to learn more about your situation," he pauses. "And, your research." Then, he moves to take something off of his desk: a pamphlet for Progress Day, the number 200 printed on the front in an embellished font.
“You had left this the last time you were around.”
“Thanks.” Viktor smiles, a strange sad smile. This almost feels like a goodbye, even though he’s sure he is welcome anytime. The doctor watches him closely, brows knit. Viktor hesitates for a moment, and then sighs. It would eat away at him if he didn’t acknowledge the elephant (only visible due to what he has seen) in the room. “What you are doing to that man is monstrous,” he says softly. “But I understand your wish to save your daughter.”
“You would have liked her,” the doctor replies, turning back to his desk to hide the faraway look in his eyes.
“I know.”
Viktor leaves, gripping the pamphlet tightly.
—
The trek back is long, mainly because he gets distracted by the skyline of Piltover. It casts a shadow onto Zaun, a looming perpetual threat. Airships float lazily through the sky. He dips his fingers in the river water, feels the film of contamination stick to his skin. Frowns. He’ll have to consider building at least one model of a water purification system if his visit here goes past a week. It’s the least he can do.
The doctor hasn't changed much. That seems to be in his nature, though. If Viktor does stay longer, he'll visit again. Maybe he owes the doctor a way out, a shove forward in the right direction. He giggles. That would be terrible of him. Still, the perfectly preserved girl floating in a bath of chemicals is a compelling venture. Bits and remnants of the anomaly writhes when he thinks about it, yes, it says soothingly, you can fix her too.
He doesn’t dare to try and explore the Fissures. For a moment, he considers it, but his exhales already rattle, and he doesn’t wish to progress his illness any quicker. Plus, he isn't sure if he can bear seeing their faces. Instead, he walks down to the riverbank below the bridge. The water is murky, deeper here than the stream by the cave. The bridge is mostly barren, a few stragglers crossing in varying directions. It’s all the same. Viktor shivers. He feels smaller than he has in centuries. Days. Everything continues, with him or without him.
He thinks about what Singed had said about hextech. Some were still researching it: maybe it could be better without him. Maybe it is better. He hadn’t gone to Piltover to look yet, but maybe on the other side of the river, the world was whizzing at a speed that he had been inhibiting with his presence.
Two hundred years. They would be in the lab right now, perfecting the hextech gemstone in a nervous frenzy. They would be pouring over imports of books and news clippings regarding the arcane, trying to find the next rune to unlock another function. They would be dreaming up the next application, the next way to save the world with the power of their genius combined. They were both a little egotistical, but that's what gave them the confidence to do good.
Or what would have. Viktor isn't quite sure if he was good for the world anymore. The more he tried to fix things, the more they crumbled around him. Or maybe he just isn't trying enough, maybe it is not him who is weak but the subjects of his attention. Passing thoughts. He doesn't try to scrutinize them too much, lest he fall down another rabbit hole of dread.
It doesn’t feel real still. Not just the strange land that lay before him but himself, his utter existence. He had adjusted to being a concept, a figment of imagination haunting the world through a web of projection, split into hundreds and thousands of parts and even more eyes to look out of. Suddenly, too suddenly, it was all gone. He is a singularity again, and the loneliness of it is crushing. Though, loneliness isn’t the right word. They were all part of him, simply his fingertips in a vessel larger than life. Suddenly, too suddenly, his body had been cut off from himself as a person, stripped back down to nothing.
Backwards evolution. He feels disgustingly defunct in the body he (not him, but still him) had been apparently born into. He is not the highest form of himself and it makes him angry, and bitter, and sad, and nothing at all. This is simply nature righting itself, he thinks. But nature is behind the times.
As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, he craves the feeling he had felt with the entire universe connected to his mind. He’s lying. He hated the feeling, hated the crawling paranoia and the weight of an entire world’s disappointments on his shoulders. He is both. It’s an everlasting battle.
He picks up a stone from his side and throws it into the river with more force than ever necessary. A few droplets splash back at him and he feels like throwing up. Instead, he drags himself out.
Upon waking up from his daydream, he realizes that he has no idea how long he had stood there for, gazing into the depths with his head buzzing (or, well, he does; he stood for approximately two minutes before deciding to sit down, but he really doesn’t know how long he had sat there for). It had only taken a blink for the sun to start dipping slowly in the sky. Upright, and a few steps whisks him back towards the heart of Zaun.
Storefronts begin to appear as he walks. Food, simple tools, the news, scrap metal. A few pieces stand out in that booth, unique to his eye from the piles of trash, but he is penniless for the moment. Reluctantly, he walks away. As he walks, his legs wobble beneath him and his vision blurs. He blinks his eyes rapidly to try and stay awake. He’s tired, he realizes. Very, very tired. And then he feels grimy, the dirt on his skin all too apparent, and then he's hungry too. He shivers as the sun sets further towards the horizon. He's not wearing enough to avoid the chill. His leg yells at him. It's funny. He's forgotten what it's like to feel.
Of course, not funny enough to make him want to stay out any longer. He hurries his pace.
There isn’t much sun that seeps into Zaun in the first place, especially not to the lower levels of the city. But, by the time he makes it back to the Last Drop, everything is thoroughly black, the streets only lit up by flashing neon signage. It's still lively; if anything, it's livelier. The nightlife of the city is emerging for another round.
If he thought the Last Drop was crowded before, it was around thirty-five-thousand times worse now. The place is brimming with eager guests and he barely makes it out of the fray alive. He drags himself up the stairs to find his room, tries doors till one gives way to his own, and he locates the nearest bed with a bone-deep relief. He can hear the muffled sounds of people chanting along to a song through the walls as he curls into himself. He pulls the covers over himself.
He should take a shower, wash his hair, brush his teeth. Eat a proper dinner—he’s sure there’s food just downstairs. Knock out everything that has been bothering him the entire walk here, compressed annoyances that had begun to bubble back up. But he’s tired, so tired, and he’s cold, so cold, so he burrows further into his covers and slips into an uneasy rest.
—
The next day, Jinx finds him .
He had been walking aimlessly, rubbing his thumb over the embossed text of the pamphlet, boiling ideas around in his head. Silco was nowhere to be found, and nobody seemed especially eager to inform him on the whereabouts of Jinx (Powder), so he had simply taken to wandering, hoping to miraculously bump into her. Then, there was glitter on him. A lot of it. He blinks through the floating flakes of light to see a girl with two long blue braids trailing on the ground and a smug grin on her face.
“Jinx,” he calls out experimentally. “Hello.” A bit of glitter lands in his mouth and he tries to spit it out to no avail.
“If it isn’t Zaun’s resident mechanic.” She snorts. “How’s it going, robot boy? Ready to crash topside’s anniversary party?”
“What I make cannot be reduced down to just robots ,” he admonishes lightly, feigning a look of offense. “And we aren’t crashing. We’re attending.”
He keeps walking and Jinx falls into rhythm beside him, sticking her tongue out and rolling her eyes.
“Lame! You’re always so boring, Vik.” She rolls her eyes, melodramatically. “What’s next, I can’t bring bombs?”
‘Vik’ is an unexpected name. He was never the biggest fan of nicknames in the first place, with some exceptions made for one person. She called him ‘ Vik’ and he was fine with it. Strange.
“Err, I would prefer it if you didn’t, actually.”
“Why Silco keeps you around, I don’t know,” she grouches. She has a bright smile on her face despite the tone, maybe too bright. Her gait holds an air of self-assurance but she fiddles with her belt nervously at the same time, looks back at Viktor occasionally as if he’ll disappear if she doesn’t keep him in her line of sight.
Viktor brushes a bit of glitter out of his hair, sighing as he feels some fall into his clothes. He isn’t going to be able to get that out for days. The more he scratches at his head, the more that seems to appear. He gives up and Jinx snickers.
She’s comfortable around him. Her eyes are soft, curious, her hands shoved into her pockets and her head held high. He’s only ever heard of her as vicious. He’s only ever seen her hopeless.
As they approach the bridge, a sudden thought occurs to Viktor. “How come Silco is letting you go to Progress Day anyway?”
“Because I pinkie promised not to cause a ruckus,” Jinx groans. “And you’re going. And I would’ve gone even if he told me I couldn’t. Only because you wanted to see what they were up to, though. Piltie inventions are boring, bleugh. The better question is why you want to go, honestly.” She skips forward anyway, a childish sense of excitement overpowering her disdain.
Viktor remembers wonder from her eyes. She was an innovator that deserved the title as much as he did. In another life, Powder could have been something beautiful. Perhaps she is now, but he stays apprehensive as memories of red-hot aggression roll through his mind.
The bridge is milling with people and Viktor can just barely see the dense crowd of Piltover citizens beyond it. He can feel his mood lift at just the sight, despite his own thoughts on the city. It’s magical, a fantasy land of technology and invention unfathomable by the average man. It could impress anybody. Jinx oohs and ahhs at the airships, humming a tune as she walks.
Piltover is beautiful. It’s an undeniable truth. Buildings stretch into the sky elegantly, gold and bronze metal shining in the sun. Still, the perfection of it all is sharp—an invisible line with serrated edges somewhere between the two cities. It feels so artificially clean it’s uncomfortable: after all, the broken pieces of glass just get swept underneath the counter. And, only for him, the city feels bare without beams of blue light arcing through the sky. As they make their way into the main street, stalls begin to pop up selling tempting trinkets. A mechanical butterfly flies past him, and children run underfoot, chasing after it.
“Very crowded,” Viktor comments dryly. He almost trips and catches himself with his cane, sighing softly.
”It’s Progress Day,” Jinx replies cheerily, her voice lilting upwards. “What do you expect?”
He hasn’t really, properly gone to a Progress Day in ages. During the years of work that he did with Jayce, Progress Day was only a chance to expand, network, and Jayce did most of that (it still makes him chuckle to think of how defeated the man looked when he came back from a day designed for wonder. He was a scientist, first and foremost, not designed for the mind-numbing experience of artificial sweet talk.) Other than that, they had maybe only gone to the main events a few times. Even though he swears that he hardly remembers a single interesting thing from those days once he was old enough to see through the magic, an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu washes over him as he looks closer at the booths. Tools that are already years behind in his mind, faces that he remembers seeing (because contrary to anyone’s belief, he remembers every single one of their faces) not long enough ago, words that he’s read on signs that he’s seen, signs that all of them had seen before.
He doesn’t even care anymore. The panic is a part of being human again. All that thought squeezed back into a singular brain. He catches up with Jinx at the next stall. She’s looking at little wind-up toys and scoffing.
“I made better ones when I was twelve,” she says when Viktor joins her. The poor shopkeeper just smiles at the two of them helplessly and Viktor ushers her along.
Viktor buys a large cup of overpriced sweetmilk at a vendor and Jinx judges him. Harshly. ( Why is it called ‘sweetmilk’? It’s hardly even sweet.) It’s a comforting taste, cool in his hand. It allows him to amuse Jinx’s dialogue without having to reply to everything she says (he takes suspiciously big gulps of his drink whenever he doesn’t know what to respond with. She definitely notices.) As they walk, he keeps an eye out for Jayce, squinting at any vaguely Jayce-like figure to make sure he isn’t passing right by his primary objective. No luck so far.
On their second loop of the stalls (they aren’t even looking at the products anymore, just people-watching) he sees a man from behind that looks eerily like him and nearly has a heart attack.
“What’s freaking you out so much,” Jinx says with a quirked eyebrow. She’s wearing strange glasses that have distracting moving parts and by the time he tears his eyes away from them, the man is gone. So, he discreetly tries to find him again, dodging past shoppers and nearly bumping into an entire stall of items only to see a distinctly not-Jayce face. Jinx thinks he’s insane, but she isn’t surprised. He's starting to think that it’s in character for him.
Three quarters through that same loop, he spots another Jayce but he’s the wrong height. Boo. When Viktor gets (discreetly!) closer, he tries not to snort at how not-Jayce-number-two is a whole three inches shorter than him. He almost points it out to Jinx before remembering that she has no clue who he is thinking of.
Worse than the Jayces are the people that he knows. He sees Heimerdinger walking briskly through the street and has another heart attack. He’s running out of hearts to get attacked. He spots Kiramman guarding her mother’s tent and resists the urge to stop and ask, beg, come on, you would know where he is, right? She doesn’t look the friendliest. He’s certain he would come off as suspicious, and that would just be another hassle to deal with. She has a reputation of being jumpy at potentially incriminating evidence.
Eventually, he loses hope. If Jayce was here, he blended into the crowd far too well for Viktor spot. The dread is growing in his chest, blossoming and aiming to choke him at the throat. It’s fine. Provided he doesn’t have a sudden heart attack, he has time. Not an ideal amount, but time nonetheless. He stops looking as carefully, but he still turns his head whenever he sees someone even remotely familiar, just in case.
He’s giving up too easily; no, he’s being realistic.
It takes Viktor far too long to realize that Jinx has an agenda. After their third loop around the main attractions, they slip into a room packed to the brim with people. A group of Academy students had just finished presenting and the room was full of polite clapping. They’re at one of the many speaking events that he and Jayce were overly familiar with. The room quiets and sparks of blue light suddenly begin to fly. Fog begins to roll in and Viktor laughs despite himself. The entrance was more than a little excessive.
A man steps out, along with a gaggle of other scientists. He holds himself high, his head raised and chest puffed out. Viktor shivers as he spots a familiar face behind the man, the ghost of his mind. She shuffles behind the others before he can get too lost in his thoughts. He grins widely and sweeps his arm across the room, clearing his throat before starting to speak.
“Several years ago, we found a few scraps of documents relating to a technology deemed too dangerous for public consumption.”
The crowd murmurs. An interesting hook, bitten onto by their attention.
”They were almost disregarded, so destroyed and missing so many elements that it seemed like an impossible and unnecessary task to pursue. However, we saw something in it that nobody else did. And after ages of hard work and a wonderful team of the best scientists in Piltover, we found something beautiful. Something that can let us fight back against the undercity—“
Viktor bristles. Jinx’s eyes narrow and he thinks faintly that this may be what she is here for. She lied to him, earlier, then. Unless Silco wasn’t aware of this either.
“—and drive technology forward. After all, we are the city of progress.”
A few whoops. It’s all too familiar, and utterly, disgustingly wrong.
“We all know of the brewing tensions. Technology from the undercity that threatens our very way of life. With this—” A rifle gets pulled out with flourish, a dully glowing blue running along the metal. A target springs up on the stage and the speaker takes a shot, the bullet whizzing towards the target with deadly accuracy and smashes the wood to smithereens. “—the gun is lightweight. The bullets have an extra punch, an easier aim, even an ordinary citizen could arm themself for protection.” The crowd is quiet and the speaker laughs nervously. “Though, of course, we all hope that will never become necessary. For example, our jack-in-the-box toy…”
Viktor doesn’t even bother to listen to the rest. Jinx is watching him, he realizes, an almost worried look on her face. He must look anguished, he thinks to himself wryly. He’s usually better at keeping a poker face, but the idea of hextech ripping another world to shreds makes his stomach turn. That, and they were taking Jayce’s work without a single shred of credit. That, and hextech was his , and Jayce’s, and it was his.
“We are proud to introduce Hextech to our wonderful city of Piltover.” The speaker bows and all around him the crowd erupts in clapping and cheering. Viktor just wonders why it’s still called hextech . That is not their name to say. After the voices calm, he begins to speak again. “Thank you, thank you. So, any questions?’
Before he can stop himself, he raises a hand. It's not even purely out of pettiness. He's genuinely, dreadfully, curious. Less about the contents of their answers and more about how they will respond.
“ What are you doing?” Jinx whispers.
“Asking a question,” he responds.
“Yes, you there,” the speaker says ebulliently, pointing at Viktor.
“Who was the original creator of the documents that you sourced the information from?” he calls out. He hesitates and then, perhaps out of a lingering spite about Heimerdinger combined with the terrible weight of the future, adds, “Has this gone past an ethics board? If the technology was deemed as too dangerous before, what has changed?”
”That was more than one question,” Jinx laughs. “And they’re boring ones too.” He rolls his eyes. They aren’t boring, they’re reasonable . The type of questions that have a few select people in the crowd nodding and murmuring. In the end, they only mean something to himself.
The speaker stammers a little before composing himself, eloquently. “The original creator was unfortunately lost to time. We commend his or her research greatly, but most of the expansion was completely our own. Our name is a homage to his or her contributions, one of the relics remaining from the research we found in the wreck. We—well. Councilor Medarda is personally endorsing our research. We assure the public that the technology is completely safe and has been tested under the most strenuous of circumstances.”
The crowd nods, questions already flying about more practical implementations of the technology, and Viktor is somewhat (begrudgingly) satisfied with their answer—but only because it gives him something to pick at, not because it is enjoyable to witness. It makes sense that Mel would again be the one to endorse hextech, in whatever form it presented itself. He doesn’t believe that Jayce’s name was completely lost to time; in the beginning, the man had been obsessive over credit, his name plastered on every paper that he touched—it was endearing to see someone so passionate about a creation that they wished to stitch every part of it to their being. He also doesn't believe that they could have stabilized the crystal. Unfair of him, maybe, but he doesn’t truly believe that this team of Piltover’s supposed greatest could have figured something like that out. That is not an achievement that they deserve to hold. It’s his. And Jayce’s. It’s his. It’s him. He shudders at the possessiveness that coils up inside his chest. It is not his place to feel this way, not here, not anymore.
There's an uproar of clapping again, and he realizes that the "hextech" group had finished their presentation. The next to come on stage is a shy looking Academy duo that hesitantly present their idea for a more efficient form of travel using a new synthesized fuel. It's an interesting idea. Unfortunately, Viktor feels his attention slipping already.
He turns to leave, looking towards Jinx to acknowledge that they’re done here. She is nowhere to be found. The crowd looks undisturbed, the hole filled in near immediately by another figure. Powder, Jinx, is just gone.
He curses, and pushes his way out, ignoring the looks he gets from the others in the room as he barrels through. She’s irritatingly slippery, not a trace left at where she had just stood a few milliseconds ago. One thing is for sure, Silco would kill him if he lost Jinx. His mind sprints through where she could have gone and it lands squarely on a memory that doesn’t belong to him again; sneaking through hallways, snatching a smooth blue gem off of an anvil, the weight of it in her (his) hand. Make him proud. The arcane clings to him with a slimy grip, reminding him of how it feels and doesn’t he want that again? And he has to explain, fight with himself because no, he really doesn’t.
For a fleeting second, everything else flies out of his mind. The crystal. An infinite amount of things could happen from here: she could get caught, she could kill someone, hurt someone, get hurt, he could get in trouble that would likely involve a scalpel to the throat. Jinx is his priority right now and when he really thinks about it, it’s comical because he doesn’t know her. She’s a stranger in everything but her deepest desires and here he is, in a frenzy over her. She is his responsibility, even at her grown age, even though he isn’t himself. Some part of him almost believes that he could fix her (and he feels terribly bad about that, because he needs to stop trying to fix everything around him lest he forgets that they’re whole people again). He takes a moment to breathe, stop, think, tapping his finger against his cane with pursed lips. Knowing her, he should just go back to Zaun and wait. He doubts he could find her if she didn’t want to be found.
He’s halfway out of Piltover when he hears footsteps coming up from behind him, rapidly approaching. It must be Jinx, he thinks, relieved. That was faster than he had anticipated. What was all of that panic for? He barely turns, instead letting out an amused exhale. “I was beginning to worry about you, where did you—“
“Viktor?” rasps Jayce, voice wavering.
Viktor’s blood goes cold.