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Viktor learns people by their hands. At this point in his life, he has learned many. But he has favorites.
Jayce’s hands are full and warm. A reassuring pressure against his back when Viktor misses a step, a clap on the shoulder when their latest idea finally comes to fruition. He knows no boundaries, scattering every line Viktor tries to draw in the sand between them.
(He doesn’t hate it. Jayce is an exception in that— Viktor doesn’t hate being so close to him all the time. He is the warmth of summer, the unrelenting brightness of the sun. Jayce never asks and never sees but Viktor lets him because, well. It’s Jayce. And it’s as simple as that.)
Mel’s hands are calloused. Viktor notices this first because it is so out of place for all of the noble people of Piltover he’s been forced to meet. She reaches out to formally shake his hand after he and Jayce have come down from the hextech’s gravity, and all he can think about is the roughness of it. It piques his curiosity, but he doesn’t ask.
(Mel does not touch him without asking. She makes her presence known in the brief moments they have together, and lets him set the parameters of their interactions. It is remarkably considerate of her, and he does begrudgingly enjoy all of their conversations. Sometimes, he enjoys them enough to almost forget how much he dislikes her, but then she talks about Jayce, and that, he figures, will always be something of a moot point between them.)
Sky is different. Viktor hires Sky because she understands. She does not touch him without warning. She does not automatically move to help him to his feet when he falls, but remains close enough that he knows he can ask for aid when he needs it.
(Sky does not touch him without warning. When he collapses before the hexcore, death wrapping an iron fist around his heart, he hears her call out in alarm. A rush of footsteps, of voices, all clamoring together.
In his haze, he envisions he is smothered by hands, by voices. He is too weak to tell them that he’s drowning. His skin crawls at the contact, a thousand firelights dancing on his bones. Fingers over his neck, his ribs, everywhere and nowhere, too much and not enough. Through it all, Sky’s voice cuts through the fog— give him some space.
The people of Piltover cannot even let him die in peace.
Sky, though. Sky reaches up to loosen the noose of hands around his neck, and he breathes a little easier as he succumbs to the darkness.)
Mel finds him sitting on the docks watching the boats. It is his only place of true solace, where everything is a little quieter and a little simpler and the thought of jumping is not nearly so loud. Jayce and Heimerdinger would not know to seek him out here, so he does not know how, exactly, Mel has discovered him.
“Viktor,” she says, dipping her head in a nod. In her elegant regalia, she looks as though she has just come straight from the tower.
“Councilor,” he returns, at a bit of a loss. He is dressed simply after his release from the hospital, and feels as though he probably should not even be graced by her presence in such a state.
(The assessing look she gives him up and down tells him all he needs to know— she looks upon the bones beneath his skin, the hollow of his cheeks, the bruises beneath his eyes, and pities.)
Mel’s hands smooth over the front of her dress. “Jayce told me about your condition. I am… terribly sorry.”
The words nettle, and Viktor grinds his teeth together. How many empty apologies has he heard in the last few days, the last week, the last year? People feed sorries to him as if it helps, as if it changes anything, and he is just so tired.
He gets to his feet and turns to face her, thin and worn and bleeding every ounce of strength he can muster with the growing irritation in his chest. “Why is everyone sorry? Do not be sorry. The platitudes mean nothing to me. All I want is for people to work to ensure that it is not a fate that anyone else needs to suffer.”
“It is not a fate that you should have to suffer, either,” Mel points out, and Viktor cannot decide if she means to sound that kind or if she is being condescending.
The itch in his lungs crawls up his throat, the corners of his vision blurring with red. “There are more important things to worry about,” he says, hobbling a half step away. “I will not allow the intentions of hextech to be polluted, even if I am the only one still fighting that battle. It is not some toy of trade for the wealthiest circles of Piltover. We made it to improve lives for everyone.”
Mel persists. She is, if nothing else, resilient.
(For all that Jayce is summer, Mel, Viktor thinks, is the steady, unforgiving calm of winter.)
“If that is the case, then why not start with your own?”
Viktor opens his mouth to respond, but all that comes out is a heaving, retching cough. He doubles over, clutching at his mouth. Blood flecks the palm of his hand, pooling in his nose and the back of his throat as he gasps for breath. Mel has stepped closer, one hand outstretched as if to steady him, but not close enough to touch. Her brow is knit with concern, the curve of her face gentled by understanding.
(She has seen his weakness, and knows, now, as well as he does; understands in a way that Jayce refuses to.)
“Time is not on my side, Councilor Medarda,” he croaks as soon as the last dredges of the attack pass. He is leaning heavily on his crutch to even remain upright. “I would not have you all waste your time trying to save me when I already have one foot in the coffin.” He reaches up to wipe the blood from his upper lip and only manages to smear it. It must be a harrowing sight. “There are people that can still be saved. I am not one of them.”
Mel is silent for a long moment. Then, she hazards a step closer, hand still extended between them, the question left unspoken. It is either a testament to how tired he is or how much Jayce has whittled down his defenses that he nods without thinking.
(Sky never touches him without warning. Mel never touches him without asking. Viktor clings to these two facts like lifelines, and allows himself to want.)
It’s a little disconcerting, how easily she moves into his space. Her hand comes to his arm, the touch warm and bracing as she helps him straighten. With the other, she fixes the blood-mottled collar of his shirt, letting her fingers dance along the ridge of his collarbone. He sighs, eyelids fluttering, and her hand remains.
“How did you find me here?” he asks.
“In truth, it was not my intention to find you, but it seems our motivations were aligned in that we both needed a quiet place to be,” she admits, hands moving to the columns of his neck, over his shoulders, undoing everything they touch. Then, they trail down, taking his fingers in hers. “Come, sit with me. It was a long walk here. My ankles hurt.”
The lie is a bad one, and one she makes no effort to disguise, raising a brow as if daring him to challenge it. Viktor doesn’t have the energy to pick this fight. Not now. His head lolls in a nod. She leads him back to the edge of the dock and helps him sit. Backlit by the dock lamps, hands folded in her lap, she looks terribly out of place.
The silence stretches. Viktor doesn’t know how to fill it.
( I’m dying and I have never feared death before now. Jayce is turning into someone I do not recognize and that scares me. Please touch me again because I feel as though I may fall apart if someone does not hold me together. The thought twists his lips. He would rather die with the words in his mouth than utter anything so humiliating.)
“Tell me about your life in the Undercity,” Mel says abruptly. She has turned to look at him, gold-green eyes striking.
Viktor blinks. “Why?”
“I should like to understand the problems I am attempting to help fix,” Mel says, a twinkle of amusement in her gaze.
This, Viktor thinks, is something new. Jayce had been willing to help too, of course, but he was an exception for many things in the organized catalogue of Viktor’s mind. He knows (knew) Jayce, but he does not know Mel. No one offers help without wanting something in return, and it takes an embarrassingly long moment to realize that Mel is not playing him. She is speaking as true and genuine as she has ever been with him.
(If he had a coin for every time that happened, he would only have one coin, but still. It’s a start.)
Viktor gapes at her a moment longer, then tries for a smile. “Ah. I see. Well, the air is very bad for you.”
“Oh, wonder of wonders— he can joke,” Mel drawls, but there is a laugh in the back of her throat, and Viktor marvels at the sound of it.
He speaks long and honest with her. Watches her piece things together, comprehend the wicked truth of it. When his voice is gone and there’s nothing left to say, she places a careful hand on his knee.
Viktor hates empty platitudes; she doesn’t apologize. But she stays, sitting on a dock with a dying man, and that means more than anything she could have said.
(Sky never touches him without warning.)
Viktor is no stranger to death. It clings to him like a chain at the ankle, like a rope around the neck. Chases him like a shadow, stitched into his skin like a scar.
Death is a promise. He looked into the hexcore and saw the truth of it, the finality, and allowed himself to be swayed. Allowed himself, for the first time, to reach out.
(Sky never touches him without warning. Why hadn’t she warned him?)
Sky is nothing but ashes and Viktor chokes on the dust of her as he sobs and screams and fists his hands in his hair.
(Sky never touches him without warning. Now, she will never touch him again. She is the dirt between his fingers, the mud of his tears, the metallic thrum of his leg, the air in his lungs and she is gone. )
“Jayce is gone,” Mel says by way of greeting, heels clicking across the lab’s marble floor.
Viktor stops tampering with what he was working on, turning his head in the barest acknowledgement of her presence. After a long moment of waiting for her to continue, he turns back to his work.
“Gone where?” he asks, knowing she expects the question from him.
“The Undercity, I believe. He took his hammer with him.” Her voice is rife with implications. That Jayce has gone into the fissures, seeking violence after all he’d talked of peace. That he is using the very technology they invented to help the Undercity against them. That he is going to come back to Mel and Viktor with blood on his hands and they will have to know how to deal with him, then.
Viktor’s hand begins to shake, so he sets down his tool with a sigh. His gloved hand remains perfectly still against the flat of his desk.
(A blanket covers the hexcore, now. He can still hear it whispering.)
“Did he go alone?”
“No. He took an entire dispatch with him, as well as a girl from the Undercity. Vi, I believe was her name. She was… displeased with the council’s inaction today. I have reason to believe she goaded him into it.”
Viktor hums, annoyance simmering low in his stomach. “I am certain that having weapons on hand did not help sway him towards a peaceful conclusion.”
“Nor did, I imagine, the pent up frustration of being unable to help his closest friend,” Mel retorts. “Jayce is a man of action. The intricacies of politics frustrate him. He wants to be able to do something. He built the weapons—”
“Let us not forget who it was that convinced him to build these weapons in the first place,” Viktor snaps, rounding on her as his anger flares.
“It gave him something proactive to do in a moment where doing nothing would have pushed him over the edge. I only wanted him to be prepared for the worst outcome,” Mel says, frowning.
“Preparing for an outcome only incites the likelihood of that outcome becoming a reality. You may have planted the seed in his head, but you did not have to sit around to watch it fester. ” He spits the word with more spite than he'd ever thought himself capable of, and thinks for a moment that perhaps he has finally gone mad after all. He takes a steadying breath, calming his voice before he speaks again. “War may be an inevitability in the life you have lived, Councilor, but life here is war. Piltover is no stranger to barbarity, least of all between its own people, but at least we did not have the proper tools before.”
Mel takes this all with surprising grace, like the culmination of his anger was to be expected. It is only when he is done speaking that she moves, approaching his desk and settling herself against its surface beside him.
“You are right,” she says, and Viktor nearly chokes on his surprise. She holds up a hand to prevent him from speaking, though he doesn’t even know what he would have said in response to that. “I have lived here for some time, but I am not from this city. I do not know its wounds as deeply nor as intimately as you, and I acted without the proper knowledge. I swore I would help the Undercity, and instead may have doomed its people.”
Her voice is even, but Viktor can see the slight pinch of her brow, the tension at the corners of her lips, and knows that this is something she had to rehearse to get it out without faltering.
The dedication is admirable. Needless, but admirable. He doesn’t have the energy to maintain much anger these days. He reaches out, the tips of his fingers brushing against her thigh, and her eyes shut.
“Jayce is not ready for what lies down there,” Viktor says quietly. “He does not know violence like we do.”
“No,” Mel murmurs. “No, he does not. How do you think we should fix it?”
“Jayce, or…?”
“The situation with the Undercity. The potential war we face if talking is truly as impossible as Vi believed.”
A sardonic snort escapes Viktor before he can stop it. “Now you ask for my opinion on that?” The words are acidic, and he reaches out to place a reassuring hand over hers when she recoils at them. “It— I do not know politics, Councilor Medarda. Your guess would be as good as mine.”
Mel relaxes at his touch. He hadn’t realized how tense she was until then. Her fingers tangle with his. “I do not expect a solution, Viktor. I just want your thoughts. I have been careless with your opinion before, and I feel as though that is half the problem. I would like to do better.”
Viktor cannot remember the last time someone came to him without expecting him to have every answer. It is a reinvigorating feeling, to be given the freedom to think without consequence.
“May I speak frankly, Councilor?”
“Of course. And please, enough with the formalities.”
(He will continue with the formalities. Just to spite her.)
Viktor leans back in his seat, head tipping back to trace the grooves in the ceiling. “I will always advocate for peace. All I have ever wanted is a better life for my people. If that comes in the form of a new nation, independence from a city that neglected them, then perhaps it is for the best.”
Mel processes this in silence, fingers toying with his idly. He lets her. It feels nice.
When she speaks again, he’d almost dozed off.
“Something is troubling you,” she says. It is not a question, just a statement of fact. Viktor is so disarmed by this that he does not even think to lie until it’s too late; the words have already left his mouth.
“How could you tell?”
“Every time your mind is racing, you find somewhere to be alone. You were not at the docks, which means that it must be serious enough to warrant a distraction.” Her thumb brushes over his knuckles. “What’s on your mind?”
Viktor is deeply unsettled by the fact that she knows him well enough to have noticed. Unsettled more by the fact that she’d sought him out.
(It makes him want to be honest. Which is a mindless, traitorous thought, but the truth nonetheless.)
“I think I have made a terrible mistake, Councilor Medarda,” he says, voice weak.
A hand thumbs over his jaw, turning his head. “You are human, Viktor,” Mel says, voice a cool, soothing balm over his frayed nerves. “You have the weight of this city’s future lying on your shoulders. You shouldn’t have been bearing it alone.”
Viktor pulls away from her hand. She should not touch him with so much kindness when he has done so little to be deserving of it. “I grow less human every day.”
This gives Mel pause— he can see it in the way she tenses, gaze honing in on him like he is a puzzle she can piece together, a problem she can solve. She caught the desperate truth in his words, but she doesn’t understand what it means, and he has learned that there is little Mel Medarda dislikes more than being kept in the dark.
(And maybe— maybe she should know. Maybe then she would stop looking at him like he’s something more than a sinking ship in an empty harbor.)
“Viktor,” she starts, and he knows what she will ask of him, and suddenly, her voice, her touch, her everything is too much. She cannot ask because he will answer, and he is selfish. He wants to bask in her glow for a little while longer.
“No,” he says, cutting her off, voice scraping up his throat. “Not— not now. Not yet.”
Mel’s lips purse, eyes dancing between his, calculating.
“Three days,” she says, tone final. “You have three days to tell me on your own before I figure it out myself.”
Viktor sags with relief. “Three days,” he says, and he may as well be signing a contract. He will allow himself to be selfish for three more days. Mel lifts a hand, running it through his hair, and he lets her.
“Promise me,” she says.
Viktor is weak; he always has been. He gives in. “I promise.”
(In three days, a bomb will shatter the council chamber. Viktor will stand at the window of his apartment, a distant witness to the wreckage, and remember, keenly, the taste of ash.
Death is a promise.
He hadn’t meant for it to be theirs.)