Work Text:
It was early evening and the last streaks of light across the horizon were fading surely into darkness. Rays of bold color swayed across the exterior of the tall Piltovan buildings just outside the window of Heimerdinger’s labratory, shifting slowly with the setting summer sun.
The inside of Heimerdinger’s office was an organized disaster, research papers and crumpled balls of abandoned theorems skewen across every surface available. Various piles of books were stacked high from the floor, their towers leaning crooked feet into the air. Trinkets and pieces of half-designed equipment were left discarded on the numerous shelves, all perched at different heights on the cream toned wall.
In the center of the room were Viktor and Heimerdinger, the duo positioned just before the tall chalkboard that extended from the floor and up to touch the ceiling. The two were in close proximity to one another, separated by only a few feet as they bounced off each other’s intellect.
His cane resting just out of reach against the metal framing of the board, Viktor stood with his weight leaned on his left side, a hand placed loosely at his hip. Heimerdinger was to his right, the Professor sitting atop a three-legged wooden stool positioned near enough to the chalkboard that he could lean forward and scribble down his own notes should he find it necessary.
Beams of vibrant light waggled across the tile beneath the two of them, retracting across the interior as the sun descended the sky. A slow, dark shadow crept in with a lack of haste in its place.
The tap of chalk meeting the surface of the blackboard echoed softly throughout the room, the intermittent patter combating silence. Heimerdinger's lab was near soundless aside from the cadence of Viktor’s writing and the distant whirring of the academy’s air conditioning unit as it attempted to swathe the summertime warmness that hung in the air.
With all of Heimerdinger’s obligations on the council and his duties as the dean of the academy, his schedule was almost always packed to the brim. It was rare the apprentice and his mentor had a chance to actually collaborate on projects as they’ve been intending to for so long now.
Currently, the two were working on a rough draft for a hypothetical water filtration system to be implemented in a nearby district of the Undercity connected by the river. Pitched by Viktor, it was a design that Heimerdinger saw concrete potential in and wanted to offer his assistance in blueprinting and later executing.
Theoretically, the contraption would be set in place where the water canals in Piltover gave way to the Undercity’s watercourses. The system, with many kinks still to work out, would purify the water and rid it of harmful chemicals, preventing toxins from making its way into the Undercity’s drinking supply. This would ensure the citizens of the Undercity weren’t consuming more pollution than they already inhaled from the Gray on the daily.
In actuality, it was nothing all too complicated, the design process straightforward. It was a concept that someone, in Viktor’s opinion, should have come up with years ago.
It was absurd to him how something so simple could potentially impact so many lives. He struggled to wrap his mind around how the brightest engineers in the city had yet to think of something similar over their years. Viktor supposed Piltover’s academy of science had even less regard for the Undercity than he originally thought.
Wrist moving with flourish, the small half of chalk in Viktor's grasp bounded across the board, leaving squiggly formulas in its path. His handwriting curved disorderly around itself, letters and symbols blending together until his print was near illegible. Only them two could comprehend what was being written, as Heimerdinger had long become accustomed to deciphering his apprentice’s scribbles.
All his life, Viktor had written in a hasty fashion. As soon as his equations materialized on the board, the young innovator solved them in his mind, his fingers tripping in their sprint to catch up with the pace of his thinking. Chalk was dusted across his wrist and sleeve, a pale smudge of white powder that softly contrasted the burgundy velvet of his scholar uniform.
Breaking the silence, Heimerdinger tsked, the sound muffled in just the slightest by the yordle’s coat of fur. He raised a hand, pointing a stern finger at his apprentice’s sleeve as one of his ears twitched in disapproval. “I tell you, constantly, to keep your sleeves rolled up whilst you work, m’ boy. Now, you’ve given yourself a hassle.”
Turning his head mere degrees to the right, Viktor exhaled through his nose, a light gust of air that edged toward an almost vocal laugh. He lingered on the chalkboard for a moment longer until he slowly pried away his gaze, the words of his mentor drawing his attention from their project and to the yordle’s pale eyes.
“High quality chalk can be a substance quite extraneous to remove from one’s attire, lest the powder seeps into the fabric! You may face a gruesome laundry experience in your future. I cannot say I haven't warned you, prior,” Heimerdinger rattled on, the finger extended in front of him waggling in a scolding fashion with each word. He was a gritty mixture of amused and displeased, his features warping oddly beneath the layers of fur with the combination of emotions.
“Alas, Professor, I believe that is an issue for another time,” Viktor dismissed, his voice dragging slowly with a lack of haste. While this was a recurring problem, sure, it was something he would consider obsolete. Outward appearance and sense of fashion didn’t matter to Viktor, not in the slightest. There were much better things to dedicate his energy to in their world - the struggles of the Undercity being one of them.
Breaking their eye contact, Viktor looked down toward his sleeve, rotating his forearm so his wrist was facing upwards. With a second’s hesitation, he took the fabric in hand and folded it over itself, flattening the clean inside of the mahogany material over the smudged portion. Viktor didn’t spare the marks of chalk a second glance.
“There we are. Out of sight, out of mind- as they say,” he spoke with abandon, impatient to get back to his work. It felt as if every second he delayed the water filtration project, another child in the Undercity would fall victim to Piltover’s noxious excuse of a runoff drinking supply, as he himself had for many years of his life.
“Sure, that will do, for now… but, you cannot simply run from your problems, my boy,” Heimerdinger continued, seemingly set on giving his apprentice a life lesson. He gestured an outward blossom with two hands, fingers petaling around. Whatever he was trying to imply flew over Viktor’s head.
At the corners of his mouth, Viktor's lips quirked upward in the slightest, an entertained smile threatening to front. With a swallow, he resisted the urge to interject with, ‘I cannot run at all, Professor,’ and instead opted to give the yordle a defeated shrug of the shoulders.
Mentally preparing himself for the onslaught of another one of Heimerdinger's superior moral tangents, Viktor looked back to the chalkboard. His amber gaze narrowed with stern intent on the jagged numbers in front of him, seeking for where he left off as his mentor spoke.
It amazed him how out of the hundreds upon thousands of words in the English lexicon, Heimerdinger managed to use so many yet say so little. He had centuries of time to read over dictionaries and commit terms to memory, yet always found a way to beat around the bush in riddles and allusions.
Perhaps this particular lesson out of the countless tens of others he’s received since the start of his apprenticeship would be something worth hearing out. A lesson, perchance, relevant and clear rather than incredibly vague and cryptic, as most tended to be.
“Viktor, child. Should the smudges of chalk continue to layer, you may find yourself smothered by them! As blissful as ignorance may be, your issues will still prevail despite your refusal to acknowledge their presence. Asphyxiation is a cruel demise and– mark my words, chalk is a powder not designed for inhalation…”
“Hmm, well. Unfortunately for my uniform, Professor… I think, I will settle for tackling the issues at hand, rather than at sleeve,” Viktor spoke from the side of his mouth, a weak rebuttal. His eyes refused to leave the board a single time as he leaned forward with his body’s weight, pressing the tip of the chalk to his abandoned equation from just a moment ago. He made a few quick swipes, eager not to swerve off-track the train of thought he just reboarded.
There was a quiet scoot from his stool as Heimerdinger inched forward. The Professor opened his mouth to continue the lecture, to really ingrain this concept in his apprentice’s head, before he clicked his lips shut and let out a short huff. He wasn’t a fool. He could recognize a losing battle.
Once more, they were met by a silence filled only by the rhythm of chalk tap dancing across the blackboard. Seconds turn into minutes, and the soundlessness was at last interrupted by one of Heimerdinger’s raised ‘hmms.’
Heimerdinger thought aloud quite often, and while Viktor had become accustomed to tuning out his sporadic grumbles, this particular sound rang a tad different. It was a prompting sort of ‘hmm,’ rather than Heimerdinger’s standard ‘hmm’ of contemplation.
Faltering in his writing, Viktor pulled back the chalk by a few inches. He mentally begged that Heimerdinger wasn’t still on the topic of chalk and ignorance. If Heimerdinger believed his sleeve to be the epitome of filthy and unprofessional, he wouldn’t last a day in the Undercity.
With a quick shake of his head, Viktor ridded those thoughts from his tone, beckoning his superior with a polite, “What is it, Professor?”
He turned with his upper body so he was properly facing the yordle, his feet still angled toward the chalkboard. Viktor owed Heimerdinger a lot. Admission to the scientific academy of Piltover from the streets of the Undercity was a debt he would never be able to repay. At the very least, he could lend him an ear when demanded.
Once more, Heimerdinger pointed a finger at the air in front of him.
“Something about you, Viktor, reminds me of someone I once knew. Yet, I can’t quite put my tongue on…” he trailed off, voice rising in octave before falling silent.
Viktor stilled, curiosity arching an eyebrow toward his hairline. He dug lightly into the chalk with his fingernail, chipping particles into the air carried downward by gravity. A beat passed before Heimerdinger continued, the yordle snapping his fingers together as revelation found him.
“Ah, I believe I’ve figured it out! You remind me of an old partner of mine. Hm, yes. A dear confidant, he was. The nearest I had to an equal!” Heimerdinger let out a short, bubbly laugh. His mustache ruffled around his lips, expression softening to something almost… fond?
“His name was Singed.”
Viktor dropped the chalk, a breath of exhale recoiling from his lungs. The chalk landed with a clink against the tile below and his grasp closed loosely in its place, fingers ghosting one another. His heart pounded with a newfound ferverence in his chest at just the mention of his old mentor’s name.
Suddenly, he was a decade in the past, a curious child standing in Singed’s jagged cavern shadowed behind the oil sheened river. Surrounding him were tall testing chambers that touched the cave’s stone ceiling, their glass blood-splattered yet retchingly sterile. Rio was writhing on the stone in front of him, purple gooze leaking from every porous splotch of skin between her scales.
Viktor blinked away the mental image as a fear he didn’t realize he still had gripped him from deep within. Heimerdinger failed to notice, the yordle was separated from reality, reflecting similarly on what used to be.
“He was a very intelligent man. A Piltovan graduate from this here academy, actually. Singed was driven in his work and thorough in his calculations,” Heimerdinger went on, his straight posture sagging with each word that left his mouth. The yordle’s ears drooped as the present dawned on him.
Inching away from the Professor, Viktor took a half-step to his left, extending an arm quickly toward his cane where it rested against the metal frame of the blackboard. A quiet exhale escaped him upon meeting the mobility aid, the handle a comforting presence in his shaking hands.
He could barely hear Heimerdinger’s next words. It sounded as if he were drowning beneath the waves of his blood crashing against his eardrums, pulse gone wild.
“Singed, well… to put it simply, his methods violated the Ethos. He was dauntless, overly so. Singed was a man who took boundless strides in his pursuit for progress, yet never spared a glance where he stepped, nor at what he trampled. It is truly a shame,” Heimerdinger concluded, a fuzzy hand coming to rest where he sat. He drummed a short tune against the wood of the seat, looking off.
Viktor let out a short, thoughtful noise in response and begged his voice not to waver. His eyes were glued to the spot where his writing broke off in a sharp line of shock. He took in a slow breath, tightening his hold on his cane, his knuckles going white under the intensity.
“I've never heard of him,” Viktor feigned honesty in a quiet voice, all too much saliva in his mouth. He nearly felt sick. With an audible gulp, he attempted to swallow back his fear, finding himself unable to meet his current mentor’s eyes.
Luckily, the yordle wasn’t looking toward him, but instead off at the nearby wall, just where the blackboard gave junction to the painted interior. His light blue eyes were distant, and he seemed to be reliving a past memory of some sort. Viktor found himself thankful for whatever flashback swept him up, as temporary as it was.
With a blink, Heimerdinger was back in the present. Sliding off the stool he rested on with a snort, he wordlessly scooped up the discarded half of chalk on the faded linoleum. Boots clacking against the tile with each step, he gravitated toward his apprentice, offering the piece of calcite back to him.
Viktor's fingers closed around the chalk and he squinted down at the streaks of white in the crevasses of his palm. He rubbed two fingers together, watching as the powder whisked and was carried slowly outward by the draft. The air conditioning unit still hummed in the background and Viktor’s ears honed in on the noise as he attempted to calm himself.
Did Heimerdinger know about Rio? About the cruel, inhumane experiments Singed routinely subjected the poor waverider to? Surely not. Heimerdinger would have interfered if he did. The council wouldn’t have let that happen if they knew, surely. They had the power to stop Singed.
God, Viktor was digging his own grave. He needed to keep his lips shut, be sparing in his words. This wasn’t worth spending his mental energy on. People in the Undercity were dying with each second he spent deliberating. He had a project to finalize.
Alas, his curiosity got the best of him.
“How.. erm, How in so do I remind you of… him?” Viktor beconked, unable to say Singed’s name. Just thinking back on the man left a whirlpool of fear deep in his stomach. He was beginning to feel faint.
“My dear boy, your work ethic. The way in which you problem solve, per say. I reckon it’s quite comparable!”
Viktor blanched, suddenly certain he appeared as pale as the chalk between his fingers. He took a deep breath in an attempt to recollect himself, but Heimerdinger was perceptive. He had spent centuries surrounded by humans and other similar sentient sapien species across Runeterra. It was no wonder that he could read body language, subtle gestures, and facial expressions with efficiency. Hell, he probably sensed Viktor’s discomfort from just his sense of proxemics alone. Viktor was screwed.
“Now, don’t look so down, my boy. I've spoken ill of his image, but you have never met the man, after all. Say, I believe he was expelled from the academy before you were even born!” Heimerdinger spieled in a poor attempt at comforting his apprentice, his tone upbeat. He moved a few paces back toward his stool, leaning against one of the three wooden legs with the pad of his fuzzed paw.
“Don’t take the comparison to be an entirely negative thing, Viktor. Where Singed was misled, he was also determined. He attacked his schedule and many scientific projects with passionate vehemence! Skewed moral compass aside, he was a respectable partner in engineering.”
“He, ah- he sounds like he was… a great person,” Viktor spoke with an almost translucent guise of admiration, his voice quiet and borderline raspy.
It was a lie.
Viktor knew Singed, and he knew him to be the opposite of great. As close as they used to be, Singed was a terrible person. He had frequent nightmares about that man and his cavern, his unethical torturing of Rio… Viktor was nothing like him. Singed was not a good person.
“Indeed, he was. Before our fallout, we pioneered many wonders together. Singed… unfortunately, lost his way, as many have before him. It is not uncommon within the field, but it’s also not an inevitable outcome for us in positions of such expertise…” Heimerdinger paused to take a breath, his voice having lost it’s ever-present positivity. A rare look of dread pinned back the yordle’s ears.
“The past… it matters little to dwell on. I'm excited to pioneer the future with you, Viktor. It’s relieving to know I have another partner as capable and dedicated to do good as Singed once was,” Heimerdinger commended Viktor, shifting the topic to one of hope, rather than dread. The night was winding down and he didn’t want to leave a poor taste in his apprentice’s mouth.
“Same to you, Professor..” Viktor muttered at a loss for words, his voice just above a whisper. He feared if he spoke any louder, bile would rise with it.
He was nothing like Singed.
The fur around Heimerdinger’s mouth rustled, a smile hidden behind his coat. He averted his pale eyes from Viktor’s amber ones, his gaze darting toward the window. The final rays of color across the horizon had faded long into darkness, the sky a syruppy combination of cold hues. Tiny specks of stars and vast constellations stretched far into the distance, the pale moon a crescented slit, just out of reach.
Heimerdinger let out another ‘hmm,’ suddenly aware of the time. He pushed off the stool he leaned upon and craned his neck, pivoting to his apprentice. “Viktor. Pursue the horizons within reach and never lose sight of your dreams. You have a gifted mind and a bright future, my boy. Don’t throw it away,” he insisted, blinking down toward Poro who laid beneath the wooden stool. Letting out a squeak, the fuzzball hurried out from under the chair and to Heimerdinger's side. The creature’s claws clicked against the dull linoleum with each tiny movement.
“Um- thank you, sir..” Viktor mustered a weak reply. He was growing more light-headed by the minute, the vision of Singed's cavern still fuzzying his sight at the corners. It felt all too suffocating in the tiny enclosure of Heimerdinger’s office. Stepping with his cane, Viktor placed the half of calcite atop the blackboard’s golden framing, watching as the piece rolled for a half-second before coming to rest in one of its grooves.
“It's growing late. Perhaps, we should revisit this come the morning. There is always tomorrow, after all!” Heimerdinger let out a laugh, the first statement of the night that Viktor was able to agree with. The yordle made way to retrieve his jacket from where it was folded atop one of the lower hanging shelves in the room. His keys jingled in his pocket as he slipped them out. spinning them once in hand.
“Progress takes time. We've done good work today, but some things are discovered best through baby steps, rather than-- well, large strides,” the Professor gave his final statement, the topic of discussion coming to a close. The two advanced to the doors, gathering up their belongings and flicking off the lights.
They said their goodbyes, the tail end of the conversation going quickly forgotten in Viktor’s anxiety-ridden mind. The two diverged paths to head back to their rooms, Heimerdinger’s residence only a few convenient strides away from his office. He heard Heimerdinger’s door swing open and shut with a slam posterior to him, Poro letting out a distant chirp.
Viktor's room was further down the hall in a different branch of the building. He was housed within the academy’s residential wing, his apartment nestled in with the other student’s rooms. Vision still dotted around the edges, he felt ill as he traversed the hallway. This particular stretch of the academy was dark, the lamps hung high on the walls providing poor lighting throughout the interior.
The sound of his cane meeting the tile was punctuated in his ears by the pounding of his heart. God, he felt bile rise in his throat from just thinking back on it - the comparison. Him and Singed. Alike. Similar. Reminiscent of another. Out of all the scientists who had gone down in Piltover’s history, he couldn’t believe Singed was the first one Heimerdinger thought to compare him to.
He was nothing like Singed.
Confidence drained from his stride with each step until he paused in the hall, sucking in a deep inhale. He swallowed back the saliva accumulating in his mouth with a grimace, hunching forward to wrap his fingers around the metal railing nailed to the wall. The cool surface of the rusty bar was a jarring change in temperature from the summer humidity within the academy. Or, perhaps it was just him who was overheating.
“No,” Viktor breathed, adamant, shaking where he stood. “I am nothing like him,” he spat in a wobbling whisper. He repeated the phrase, the words a mantra clattering around his skull, echoing. He still couldn’t manage to mutter his former mentor’s name.
A bead of sweat dripped from his hairline and streaked down his cheek. His eyes shifted from the bar to just outside the large window nearby, the streets below too dark to make out under the cast of the moonlight. Viktor looked in the direction of the bacteria riddled river lining the entrance to his old mentor’s cave. His heart thudded in his chest, but he powered forward.
He was nothing like Singed.
Viktor couldn’t freak out here. God, he didn’t want to freak out at all. Why even was he? He was nothing like Singed, he knew this, so why did Heimerdinger’s words affect him so deeply? Hell, the person he looked up to most in the world had just compared him to the person he despised the strongest.
His room was only a few more tens of feet away, but the hallway seemed to stretch in front of him with each step, the straight lines of grout between the tiles going curvy in his vision. He was actually going to be sick. Eyes narrowing at his door up ahead, Viktor plunged his hand in his pocket, struggling to free his keys. The teeth of the keys snagged against the material of his pants, leaving his pocket hanging inside out.
Leaning with his shoulder against the doorframe, Viktor jammed his keys in the keyhole and threw open the door, the long unoiled hinges letting out a high-pitched creak in his ears. He stormed inside, the warm breeze shutting his door ajar behind him with a soft click.
Viktor didn’t bother to take off his shoes and the toe of his boot caught against the carpet as he moved through his room, causing him to stumble. He flung his keys at his desk, looking away as they collided with a tall pile of research papers and sent the pages askew with a jingle.
Tossing his cane against his tidily made bed, the mobility aid landed with a thud on the carpet, his aim rubbish. Viktor turned a sharp left that churned his stomach and hurried toward the bathroom, the smell of disinfectant meeting his nose. He needed the sink.
Viktor nearly crashed into the counter, toppling over a plastic container of painkillers and sending it clattering to the floor. With the sole of his shoe, he kicked the pills aside. A bottle of antiseptic he left out from the night before met a similar demise, discarded on it’s side on the countertop. Viktor’s pale fingers scrabbled against the granite for leverage.
The suffocating feeling from earlier hadn’t left him, his insides boiling. He released the counter with one hand, rightening himself and tugging at the collar of his scholar outfit. It took a moment, but he ripped free his tie, dropping it with abandon on the bathroom floor. He gasped in a short breath.
Heimerdinger’s words replayed in his mind like a tune stuck on replay. He and Singed, reminiscent of one another. It was a slippery slope. Viktor shook his head, reaching for the faucet and turning on the cold water. He needed to return to reality.
Viktor and Singed did not think similarly. Singed was an evil, evil man and the cause of Rio’s prolonged suffering. He tortured the waverider, pumping her full of shimmer, for what? Inconsequential results? Blood data? An essay’s worth of research on mutations and recessive genomes?
He was nothing like Singed.
In an effort to ground himself, Viktor plunged his head under the spout, freezing water spilling over his scalp and running down his back. The chill of the temperature surprised him and he recoiled a few haphazard steps back. His hair flung beads of moisture at the mirror, causing his image to blur as the drops streaked down the glass.
Dampness rolled down his neck, absorbing into the fabric of his collar and vest. The water had managed it’s way up his nose, causing him to snort. Viktor ran the back of his hand over his forehead and eye socket, rubbing his knuckles with pressure over his eyelids. Eyes unbearably dry, he blinked away the residual water, gaze falling on the mirror.
Viktor locked eyes with his reflection, but it wasn’t him who stared back, it was Singed.
“No!” he exclaimed, the shout tearing at his vocal cords. He unexpectedly retched, a wet gag with no actual vomit. Thick saliva dribbled down his chin and into the sink, a bubbly puddle of white that slowly swam to the drain. He shot out a shaky palm across the glass, his fingers slashing through the image with a squeak.
He was nothing like Singed.
Viktor didn’t want to see Rio suffer. He didn’t want to be the cause of anyone’s pain. Experimenting on living creatures for whatever vile projects Singed’s twisted mind could concoct wasn’t a price worth paying. Viktor couldn’t understand it. He wasn’t sure he ever wanted to.
No, lives weren’t worth sacrificing for progress. He would never bring that upon someone. How could Heimerdinger imply that? Viktor would never hurt anyone in the name of science, in the pursuit of his dreams.
Hands coming to rest on the edge of the countertop, Viktor's knuckles went as white as the ceramic bowl of the sink under the force of his grip. His bad leg was growing sore beneath his weight, a dull ache coming from the prolonged standing. Viktor shook his head, leaning forward to rest his temple on his forearms. He needed to recollect himself.
Drawing in a wet, steadying breath, the chalk smudged on his sleeve flurried outward from the action. Inhaling the powdery substance with a gasp, Viktor tasted grit on his tongue. The flakey whiteness scraped against his windpipe like sandpaper, all of a sudden smothering him.
He choked out a cough and heaved once more into the sink. This time, actual vomit came with it, the chunky bile mixing with the water in a nasty concoction of muddy hues before being washed down the drain. His throat burned, nostrils flaring as he hacked up the entirety of the earlier day’s breakfast.
The moment he thought he steadied himself, another tsunami of nausea crashed over him, more vomit spilling from his mouth. His heart pounded fast in his chest, his body seemingly angry at him. Minutes ticked by before his stomach settled and he moved to turn the handle, shutting off the flow of water.
Viktor finally looked back from the sink and to the mirror. Amber eyes met amber eyes as he stared into his blurred reflection. He gazed deeply upon himself, eye contact unfaltering. Tiny red veins branched across his sclera, contrasting the pallor of his flesh. His pupils were tiny, brown hair slicked back and dripping with a combination of sweat and moisture from the faucet.
He was Viktor fucking Tendercrisp. His work ethic, his morals, his dreams? They were not the same as Singed’s. His mind and his strides for progress would bring about good, not evil, nor pain, nor suffering. He wouldn’t lose his way. His dream would make an impact on the world as Singed had failed to.
He would prove Heimerdinger wrong.
“I am nothing like Singed.”