Chapter Text
Viktor has never been one for playing with others. He was always the shy one. That in itself led to him being bullied by some bigger kids often. Bullying that left not only mental scars on him, but physical ones as well.
“Come on, why don’t you climb down and get your toy back”
“Hahaha, you know he can’t. And even if he did, he’d be too weak to climb back up”
“What a loser. Let’s leave him. I heard Jericho got some new receipts and if we get there by noon we can eat for free!!”
Their voices were just background noise as he looked down at his toy train. It was something he fixed in his room and was glad to play with it. Now it was just a bunch of scrap at the bottom of one of many drops in the Zaun relief. Of course, there were ways to get there without climbing straight down, safe ways, ones that elderly take… But he was too young to navigate them with ease, so a climb down was his only choice.
He swallowed before starting to move towards the drop as he jumped to one of the protrusions on the cliffside. Step here, jump there, he knew how to parkour, not as well as others, but enough to get around… Except, these cliff sides were much more slippery than he expected them to be. One wrong step and he slipped. Crash. He fell to the ground. Thankfully it wasn’t from too high up, but it was enough to hurt himself. Tears welled up in his eyes as he felt the sharp pain in his side, the almost numbness of his leg. He bit into his lower lip, holding back screams in pain, as he didn’t want to summon the other kids back.
He was laying there in pain for a few moments, tears streaming down his face, while the numbness and pain continued. After a while, the pain subsiding barely any, he pushed himself up. He didn’t know how long he was lying there, his clothes got more ripped than they originally were, his vision blurry from the tears. Through the blur and faint light, he noticed the broken train close by and reached out for it. As he tried to bend his right knee, a sharp pain shot through his nerves, making him bite onto his lower lip hard once more and wince. This was worse than any pain he’s ever felt.
It took him many tries, and even more knee pain, before he finally got up on his feet, leaning heavily against the wall. He looked down at the train parts still on the ground, and he winced just thinking about moving from the wall. It was impossible. He looked down at the part he had in his hands before sighing and tossing it to the rest as well. There was no way he could go home in such a state while carrying that as well. He might return for it one day.
And thus his painfully slow and long climb began. His body leaning against the wall for support, stopping occasionally to rest his leg, but never sitting down on the ground, out of fear that he will stay where he sat down. That fear was the one thing that drove him to move forward, but the pain slowed him down from returning home much, much faster.
But not everything was always dark for the young Zaunite. He met a scientist once while he was playing by the river. His name was Singed. Singed appeared to have a pet, named Rio. A mutation that he has created that he wanted to keep alive. Singed was a loner like Viktor, so even with the initial fear, of both the man and the animal, Viktor warmed up to them. Singed offered him a purpose, he offered him something he was yet to find up till then, a place to be.
But, proof that he was indeed rightfully afraid of the man came after not too long.
One day, as he was bringing in the glowy mushroom-like plants that Singed gathered for his research, Viktor opened the door to a sight that he would never forget. Rio was laying on the ground, tubes connected to her body as she was growling in pain, heavily breathing. He dropped the crate with the plants and, not even caring about his own pain, ran over to the animal, hugging its giant head.
“Rio will live”, he heard his teacher’s voice from behind him. He was shocked and in disbelief.
“You did this?”, he asked, half hoping it wasn’t true. He wished Singed would say no, that he was trying to stop this.
“I thought you understood. The mutation must survive.”, there it was again, the sentence that Viktor couldn’t understand. Why would it need to survive so much that the poor animal is in pain and barely holding onto its life.
It pained him to see Rio like that, he couldn’t look at it, so he grabbed his cane and moved out as fast as he could, leaving singed and his dying mutation alone.
He ‘ran’ far, out of the cave, away from the river, all the way to the room he called his before he got onto the bed, and shed his tears. He shed tears for Rio, the poor dying animal that the professor kept alive, forcing it to live far longer than it was supposed to. He shed tears for himself, losing the one place he felt welcome at, the mentor who taught him science, did experiments with him.
He couldn’t return there. He couldn’t help turn Rio into such a monstrosity.
He didn’t want to.
After a few days of tinkering with scrap in his room, Viktor realized just how used he got to Singed. To be praised, having his head patted, a friend to play with in Rio… Could he return there again? Would Singed allow him to?
He made his way there, trying to stay out of sight from the other kids as he first headed towards the river. On his way there, he ran into the kids who bullied him, those who broke his train. They noticed him and soon enough they circled around him, laughing at his situation. They took the cane from him before starting to push him around between them, laughing louder as the crippled kid fell, once he lost his balance. He could see them raise their feet, ready to kick him and whatnot, when a cough was heard from behind one of the kids.
Viktor didn’t want to raise his head, but all he saw was the kids take a step back and the run away. Thinking it might’ve been an animal of some sort, Viktor remained still on the ground. That was the simplest way of getting an animal disinterested.
“Now, Viktor”, he recognized the voice almost immediately. It was his professor. “Come, let’s get you inside”, as Viktor looked up, he could see a hand extended, the face of his savior, his mentor down it. He pushed himself up slightly before reaching out and taking the extended hand.
“I want to help you”, he said, repeating the words as the first time that they met, “I want to help Rio and people in Zaun like me”. Singed’s face crooked into a smile as he helped the boy up, handing him his cane back.
“Then let’s go. Rio is waiting”, and they made their way back to Singed’s laboratory, descending into the darkness of the cave that surrounded it.