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Viktor has the great misfortune of becoming accustomed to standing in the shadows of others, never by choice and merely by fate. Growing up in the Undercity meant living in the darkness that Piltover casts from above. When the University of Piltover provided more resources and funding than the Academy of Techmaturgy could ever offer, he set out for the beginning of the rest of his life, but instead found himself in the middle, haunted by the ghosts of his past. There, if he wasn’t an assistant to Stanwick, then he was an assistant to Heimerdinger. And if he wasn’t an assistant to Heimerdinger then he was seen as an assistant to Jayce.
Despite the fact he is always listed as a co-author on Hextech research, everyone only cares for the first one listed: Piltover’s very own House Talis scion. Nobody bothers to look at the foreign-feeling birth name with no surname to follow, even though the lack of the latter is of no fault of his own. It is a cultural thing, as most of those in the Undercity never bothered with the documentation and preservation of posh lineages. Children change hands as quickly as the seasons, so any one child could be the son of so many. Everyone knows that, in the end, they all are children of Zaun, raised in an inhospitable environment by the streets, sewers, and civilians around them. He hadn’t felt shame about it until the Academy indoctrinated him to his own inferiority.
As he takes out the scalpel and syringe for the operation, he bites back a bitter laugh at how fitting this potential end must be. How many times had they all accused him of insanity for both his experiments and the audacity to step foot into the University? Professors and colleagues alike had tried to shove him into metaphorical and, on a few occasions, literal closets so those with patrons and prestige could step into the light while he was stuck in shadow. They not only expected his failure, but they were also complicit in trying to make it so, aside from the few, like Professor Heimerdinger, who ensured he hadn’t slipped through the cracks. A lot of it was insincere posturing as people tried to prove the good of their philanthropic hearts on the Undercity’s charity case, but he took it in stride anyway and used the same resent to build the faith in himself needed to propel him into relative success. Despite this, he still only remained an assistant. He still remained in the shadows. With Jayce though? It was supposed to be different and it was. Until it wasn’t.
They were partners, without any sort of rank and file of academia standing in their way. No longer a student, or an assistant, but finally a full researcher, Viktor could repeatedly co-publish in journals on Techmaturgy and innovation without issue. What once took years of combating the system rigged to ensure a Zaunite could not beat out Piltovans for spots in leading journals, fell away as publishers across the continent fought to host the latest and greatest research in Hextech. And in that partnership, built on mutual respect and understanding, the two of them decided on the future of Hextech as hypotheses were proposed and elements stabilized. There were things that rich pretty boys cooped up in glass houses away from chemical spills and freak detonations couldn’t quite understand. Conversely, the social dances of politics and patrons were foreign to poor outcasts who tinkered with scrap metal from artisans’ forges without the gold chain that came with an investor’s resources and funding. Where one’s knowledge lacked, the other met him halfway, but, on Progress Day it all fell apart.
He doesn’t blame Heimerdinger, but the fact they were barred from presenting the Hextech Gemstones was the beginning of the end. Even if the people did want the research, who they wanted more was Jayce, the Man of Progress. Instead of being at his partner’s side, watching from the sidelines placed him back in the shadows that he clawed his way out of all these years. He knows part of it is his own fault; Jayce had wanted him up there, but it wasn’t his place. It would never be his place.
Jayce was privileged with the charisma and rugged good looks that could charm investors if they hadn’t already been convinced, which was never Viktor’s forte. He wasn’t good with people, let alone any sort of public speaking, all too used to the heavy stares that passed judgment before his introductory remarks concluded. By virtue of his brace and Undercity accent alone, both academics and investors have whispered rumors about his parasitic relationship with Jayce for years, which he wasn’t about to prove by messing up. Still, it doesn’t mean that not being up there with Jayce hadn’t hurt. Jayce hadn’t even mentioned him.
And he never minded Jayce being the one and only face of Hextech, not until his prognosis. Fame and fortune was never the goal; it was instead a positive humanitarian impact for the benefit of all, especially those Zaunites without the agency that a life outside of poverty provided. While Hextech was his and Jayce’s brainchild, it was only the beginning of projects and programs to come. With the esteem in scientific circles that came with his ever-expanding curriculum vitae, the credibility would have enabled him to patent his own ideas and get the investors needed to make his mark. There are revolutionary projects like the Hex Claw that he’s helmed and wishes to bring to Undercity’s prosthetic industries and Academy of Techmaturgy which might readily accept him with open arms. While he would have still contributed to research done by his and Jayce’s lab, Viktor wants to make his mark on his birthplace’s scientific history and legacy, proving that Zaun had just as much of a stake in Runeterra’s future of progress and innovation. But, he will be forgotten. That is apparent enough.
The prognosis hasn’t even taken him yet, but nobody knows who he is nor has even tried to. His name is on all their papers, yet Jayce is the only one who is approached for interviews or lectures by the Piltovan elite. And while some may herald him as a paragon of the Zaunite Endersol, he is still dismissed as that Piltovan transplant. Former coworkers from his teenage years never failed to remind him he could have been Dean of the Academy of Techmaturgy by now if he had stayed. How, when he got to live in the cushy dormitories of the University and fiddled with apparatuses that were worth more than an entire residential street, those he loved had continued on, still trapped in their miserable lives. Viktor was the one who made it out, but his body could not escape being marred by the illnesses caused by Zaunite conditions. He is a citizen with a foot on each side of the fissure: the prodigal son of both, yet neither city. It’s days like these that make him want to flee back to the Endersol, but his time here has robbed him of his place down there in so many ways.
Conversely, his place here was stolen away by virtue of the Council taking priority, as Councilor Talis slowly forgets the man whose joint research helped earn him the title. Every council meeting and diplomatic function Jayce has to attend meant time away from the lab and the further stunting of their already stalled research. Instead of getting Atlas Gauntlets to the working-class mining colonists and Hex Claws to amputees and artificers, they are policing the tariffs, trade, and travel which were never the intended modus operandi. People are dying in collapsed tunnels in the fissure, chemical spills on the borders, and by the enforcers’ hands in the Undercity. Hextech can improve the proletariat’s lives now, but Jayce seems only to care how it impacts bourgeois black market trade interests and port politics. Piltover has always thrived off of the exploitation of Zaunites, but technology could help level the playing field and improve lives now. It used to matter to them both; It doesn’t anymore.
If the ever-growing professional rift between them wasn’t enough, the personal one only adds insult to injury. It is a bit of an open secret that Viktor harbored affections for his partner, but whether or not they were reciprocated seemed to be a closely guarded one. Ever since he had been tasked with examining Jayce’s workshop and saw the man’s writing littering the walls of the destroyed penthouse workshop, Viktor knew the man was more special than the boisterous innovator he had dismissed him as during their shared years of coursework. The hypotheses and research Jayce worked on are cutting edge, that much was apparent to anyone who looked, but what wasn’t is the man behind the mask of Progress. It is the little sporadic reminders to himself about the most mundane of things that dotted across the lab’s chalkboards and his combination research journal and diary. It is the gentle squeezes on the shoulder with a cup of warm sweetmilk at odd hours of the night when the breakthroughs were made and sleep was not. It is the stolen conversations after being pulled away from the Dean’s paperwork and pulled towards Academy alcoves. But, everyone wants to see a beauty on their Golden Boy’s arm, so they can bask in his glory vicariously, hoping that they too can be Piltover’s next face of innovation who has it all. And Viktor? He is anything but.
Councilor Medarda, however, is the perfect woman for that, as she is formidable not only in her looks but also in her words and mind. As beacons of progress and heralds of a new age in the public’s eye, there could not be two more uniquely suited for one another in that regard, so she fills the space he once took up more fully than he ever had the chance or mind to. He’s watched Jayce dabble in politics enough to know that many in the sphere lack sincere intentions and prays that she harbors a genuine affection for her fellow Councilor. Jayce, despite his flaws, doesn’t deserve to be hurt.
Besides, Jayce will need someone to watch after him once he passes on. For someone with such overwhelming bravado, Jayce is much more emotionally vulnerable than one would peg him for at first glance. Viktor lets out a bitter laugh at the thought Jayce will probably be a sobbing wreck at his funeral but halts the line of thinking when he recalls how few people will likely be present. The lab staff would, that was a given, but outside of that? He’s not quite sure. Would they bury him in Piltover’s sanctified ground or be sent back to the toxic Undercity soil that would eat away at his decomposing body as the air did his living one?
If he dies in pursuit of science to extend his life, he’s sure that Heimerdinger will disprove and he is one of the few at the Academy who did not despise him for the virtue of birth, rank, or anything else they found disagreeable. He is used to the slurs and the slander ever since he set foot in the Academy, nobody wanted a fissure denizen tainting their hallowed halls. The only time Piltovans would lift a finger in regards to the Undercity was to put it back in its place. And they could help, but they choose not to, even as things continue to get worse. Viktor had gotten out before the Lanes were flooded with the Shimmer that was slowly climbing out of the Sump and into the Endersol. Yet, visiting his old mentor meant facing the depths of the issues head-on.
He knows Singed is responsible for Shimmer’s Undercity prevalence, nobody else has the alchemical talents and there has always been talk of a man who was laughed out of the University of Piltover for the very same. As the man had once said, they are both exceptionally lonely men gifted with minds that set them apart from others and live on this cusp between worlds that never should have been allowed to exist. Viktor is an Undercity denizen transplanted into Piltover and Singed is the reverse, but it is far easier to be the latter than the former. Singed is at least free to pursue his machinations without judgemental eyes and whispers levied over him. Still, Shimmer is a threat to the people of the Undercity. Thus, peddling the vial of it for his own means makes him feel complicit in the shady dealings that he’s been accused of for years by Academy colleagues. He doesn’t wish to use this substance, knowing the risks and having seen how it mars its users on a physical, mental, and emotional level.
But there is a small part of him that understands the simultaneous agency and lack thereof it provides, and, subsequently, why the push for a Nation of Zaun his parents had dreamed of has been reignited in full force, Shimmer is both the reason and the means. Those who do not approve of its use have begged for Piltovan aid only to be silenced by the chem barons below and negligence above. Those who are sick of the same negligence want to govern themselves and Shimmer provides the means to achieve the hard-won freedom that Zaunites tried to achieve all those years ago, crossing the bridge.
He wasn’t there. He was in Piltover, prepping for the Distinguished Innovators Competition, instead of preparing his people for revolution. While his parents, only artisans, were too old and feeble to participate in the uprising, his former friends, neighbors, and colleagues had taken up arms. They’d all died to the enforcers’ emptied magazines, now only present in memory and the photos lit up by candles at the bridge memorial to the lost. The few veterans who remained were probably better off dead than living among the poverty, survivor’s guilt, and ghosts of the past that the conflict afforded. He should have been down there helping augment the machinery used to face the fiscally and technologically superior adversary, but he forsake his fellow Zaunites and the nation they wanted to build. And as Jayce refuses to let them help the masses and instead focuses on the political maneuvering of the elite’s council, here Viktor is, once again forsaking his people.
But, perhaps, if he makes this deal with the devil, this time he won’t have to. Love and legacy are the sacrifices of progress, after all. If he does this, Viktor is well-aware of how he’ll be written as the villain of Jayce’s history. He can see it now: The unstable, manipulative Undercity denizen who took advantage of Piltover’s golden boy and selfishly used their research for personal gain amidst a national crisis. While it isn’t entirely untrue, at this point, it would be questionable to say if it was for his own gain. Sure, the Hex Core could extend his life, but it isn’t as if he hasn’t made terms with his own mortality already. He knew from a young age he would die before his time came; everyone from the Undercity knows it’s only a matter of time before the effects of the pollution they’ve been nursed in reaps one’s soul far too soon. He’s more worried about the future of Hextech in the new age he and Jayce heralded in, praying that it will not be co-opted by the Piltovan elite to keep down the very masses it was meant to help. If he can be assured of the legacy he hopes for, he’ll have a much easier time accepting the fate he had been biding his time to avoid.
Now that the chips are down and the events of Progress Day have set into motion a turn of events that can only end in tragedy, he must do whatever he can to ensure he can live with himself. Jayce, despite it all, is still a naive pawn in the hands of the Piltovan political grandmasters. Should they wish to weaponize Hextech, Viktor expects the pressure of his lover and her political allies to make the man falter, ending up further and further astray from the path that their shared Dream had originally set forth. Despite Viktor’s gratitude that the Hex Core has survived, the loss of Professor Heimberdinger on the Council will wight heavy on Piltover’s future. Without his presence on the Council, no true buffer for the city’s newest Councilor remains. And while the elite will largely remain unaffected, it spells tragedy for the Undercity as when things escalate further; a few dead Piltovan enforcers will be nothing when compared to a few thousand dead Zaunites unable to safeguard themselves against annihilation.
With the parting of flesh via scalpel, blood spills out with a purpose. It doesn’t erupt from unwanted coughs or spill from his nostrils at inopportune times now; this time he consents to the letting. With a deft hand, Viktor transfers the runes and symbols ingrained into his memory into carvings upon his skin leaving intricate cuts to mar the metal and flesh upon the leg already lost to him. Emotions flood his head as he does so, landing somewhere in between catharsis, desperation, and fortitude. He has everything to win here and only his already expiring life to forfeit. At least time it would be on his terms: intellectual curiosity as opposed to fate’s cruel hand.
With the click of the vial, it locks into the syringe. He takes a deep breath and focuses on a vision of his people’s future in mind, where Hextech is widely available as the means for the long-awaited and deserved social mobility that so few Zaunites had achieved. He needs to live to see this through, no matter the cost. As he feels the needle pierce his flesh, Viktor silently prays that this faith will bring him deliverance. It’s not as if Jayce will.