Work Text:
Viktor has always encouraged Naph’s curiosity. To interrogate the world, he says, is the only way to advance oneself through it. That said, he would probably not approve of what Naph is about to do, but Naph is fourteen now, and he can take care of himself.
More importantly, he doesn’t trust this Jayce fellow just yet. Really, everything about the whole situation is so strange. Naph knows about him, of course, but only as a celebrity famed for defeating Viktor all those years ago (according to word on the streets), and as a mysterious figure from Viktor’s past (according to all the weird shit Naph keeps finding around Viktor’s house). This makes it doubly weird when his ward shows up at Viktor’s place out of nowhere, he himself comes to get her, and he and Viktor engage in a screaming match that devolves into them blushing at each other like the maidens in those dumb Piltovan plays Naph hears about sometimes.
For fuck’s sake, he made Viktor blush. Who does that? How is that even possible? Naph's known Viktor for years now, and that he has never seen that happen before.
So if he decides to sneak up to Piltover to figure out what the hell is going on between the two of them, surely it can be excused. Anyway, better to apologize than to ask for permission—Viktor couldn’t disagree with that.
One evening, while Viktor’s holed up in the lab, working on some project or other, Naph retrieves the jar of implants that Viktor keeps, the one he’d shown to Naph the first day they met. Naph isn't exactly a scaredy-cat, but everyone gets scared sometimes, and that's exactly what these were designed to combat. A little shot is all he needs—just twenty minutes of courage to get him started. In a strange new city, he can’t risk fear holding him back.
(He also takes one with him, just in case.)
Then he leaves. The door shuts behind him with a creak, and Naph navigates himself cautiously up to the Promenade level, weaving through the bustling crowds of the Boundary Markets, heading straight for Piltover. He doesn’t know exactly where Jayce lives, but that man is very famous; whenever Naph stops by a vendor and pretends to be a young, wide-eyed fan in search of his hero, they inevitably point out the right direction once they’ve finished advertising their wares to him. The streets get cleaner and smoother as he moves along; the buildings get bigger and nicer. The sky gets brighter. Naph didn’t think it was possible for it to be this bright outdoors, nor for the air to pass so easily through his lungs. This is Piltover, he realizes. The stories were true.
Eventually, after traipsing up far more steep stone stairways than he ever thought necessary, he reaches a residential district, where luckily there’s an old lady walking past who he can ask about the precise address of Jayce’s workshop.
When he tells her what he’s looking for, she eyes his clothing and asks, “Where are you from, boy? If you haven’t made an appointment with him, I wouldn’t assume he has time to entertain vagrants who don’t even bother to look presentable.”
“None of your business,” Naph retorts. “D’you know where he works or not?”
Her disdain for Naph’s appearance is ultimately defeated by her desire to have him leave her alone, so after a short trek following the directions she gives, Naph arrives at a large, beautiful door with a plaque next to it that reads:
JAYCE GIOPARA
DEFENDER OF TOMORROW
Bingo.
Naph scans the workshop. It’s smaller than he expected, for a famed inventor of Jayce’s caliber. But it’s still a good deal more grand than anything in Zaun; intricate designs surround the windows, and the parts of the roof he can see glitter in the dying sunlight. It looks like something out of a painting one might see at the markets.
The windows are, unfortunately, a dead end, so Naph goes back to the door. He picks the lock with relative ease, squinting around the frame for alarms or recording devices, but nothing happens when the mechanism gives, and the Enforcers stationed at the end of the block are chatting idly to each other, eyes cast lazily on the pigeons picking their way around the street. Evidently, no one thinks anything bad could possibly happen at this workshop—least of all Jayce himself, which strikes Naph as both foolish and overconfident, but he’s not about to complain.
He edges through the door and shuts it quietly behind him, then turns around and freezes.
There’s a screwdriver in his face, flashing steel blade inches from his nose, brandished wildly by—
Amaranthine. Thank God. Naph breathes a sigh of relief when he recognizes her curly blonde hair and round face, which lights up in surprise when she recognizes him in turn.
“It’s you!” she says, exhilarated, and rushes to withdraw her makeshift weapon. “Oh jeez, I’m so sorry. I thought you were a bad guy.”
“Do bad guys often break in here?” Naph asks wryly. “‘Cause if they do, I think you guys need better security.”
“More often than you’d think, yeah. Jayce has… enemies, but normally he’s around to deal with them. Or like, he has one enemy, who used to send his minions here to wreck his stuff, who I thought was an actual nemesis until last week when I realized they’re just really dysfunctional exes. Speaking of, how’s Viktor? You’re here about him, right?”
She beckons for Naph to come in, and he steps into the workshop proper, marveling at the skylight and the enormous spread of tools, prototypes, and papers that litter the room.
“In a way. How’d you even know I wasn’t Jayce? If he isn’t here…?”
“He’s away in a stuffy business meeting, and he’s a lot louder than you, trust me,” she says, audibly holding back a laugh. “So when I heard you picking the lock, I was like, uh oh. But normally Viktor’s other minions aren’t so sneaky anyway, so I should’ve known.”
Naph chuckles. “That was my bad. It’s always good to be vigilant, like you were doing.”
Amaranthine pouts at him, evidently having been determined to continue chastising herself. “Well, anyway, welcome to the workshop! I would give you a tour, but to be honest it’s not all as impressive as it looks. Mostly Jayce just makes fancy gear to sell to dumb, rich clients.”
“Is that what he does?” Naph muses. “I was under the impression he was a hero of some kind. Fights evil, makes superpowered weapons.”
“The press is a whole load of hot air. He’s super lame. If he’s not tinkering, he’s getting drunk and being really sad, or he’s trying to teach me mechanics, but he’s kind of a bad teacher.” Amaranthine pulls out a couple of chairs from the workbenches around them and sets them at a table, clearing it of charts and schematics, then putting a kettle on the small stove in the corner. “Do you want tea? Jayce just got this really nice tea set as a gift from a patron and I’m dying to use it.”
Naph smiles. “Go nuts,” he says, and she lets out a quiet whoop.
Once they’re both seated and Amaranthine is leaning over the table to pour their tea, a flood of words tumble out of her in a rush: “So I’m really glad you showed up because I was getting sick of bugging Jayce to go back down there already, ‘cause I’m so curious, like deadly curious, about what’s the deal between them? Whenever I ask Jayce he just makes this face”—she screws up her face, scrunching her nose, frowning exaggeratedly—“and says, ‘We were pals back in the day,’ and won’t tell me anything else.”
“I was hoping you could tell me about it. Viktor’s really cagey about that whole business,” Naph admits, trying not to show his amazement at all the little things Amaranthine has set out. In addition to the milk jug, there’s so many sugar cubes stacked in that little bowl, plus beautiful little baby blue porcelain cups with matching saucers. He pours a little bit of milk in his tea, then, when he reaches hesitantly for the sugar tongs, she waves a hand at him as if saying, help yourself, so he dunks three cubes into his cup and stirs. Viktor would say that’s too much, but Naph was an orphan, and a very poor one at that, so where he grew up, sugar was a luxury and everyone took as much as they could get.
When he looks up at Amaranthine bashfully to gauge her reaction, she grins at him, conspiratorial, and takes four.
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to figure it out ourselves, then," she says. "Jayce does always say you can only trust your own mind. ‘Never stop asking questions,’ he says, ‘because—’”
“‘—To interrogate the world is the only way to advance oneself through it,’” Naph finishes mindlessly.
Amaranthine looks at him in shock. “How’d you know that?”
“Viktor always says it to me,” he says, taken aback, and they gape at each other for a moment.
“Holy shit,” she says. “Dude. What even.”
“It could be a coincidence.”
Amaranthine shakes her head. “We need to get to the bottom of this.”
“To be honest, the word in Zaun is always just that Jayce is Viktor’s enemy, handed him a huge defeat years ago and won’t stop fighting him,” Naph says, tea forgotten until Amaranthine takes a sip of hers, prompting him to do the same. It’s incredibly sweet. It’s delicious. “But some things just don’t add up. Like, Viktor has this really old mug, right? And I never really thought about it before, but it says ‘Man of Progress,’ and get this: it has Jayce’s face on it.”
Amaranthine gasps. “No way.”
“It’s true! Plus, Viktor sleeps right in the lab, ‘cause he’s a total workaholic, y’know, and right by his bed, if you know where to look, there’s a picture of him and Jayce together. Also there’s an old Defender of Tomorrow poster in one of the closets. I never asked about either of those ‘cause I had a feeling he’d try and saw my head off if I did. Sorry, is that creepy? I know Jayce is sort of your dad.”
“Well, it’s a little weird, but not weirder than Jayce gets sometimes,” she reassures him. “I mean, my sort-of-dad sometimes rambles about your sort-of-dad when he’s drunk, or really sad, or both. But it’s never anything useful; all he does is say stuff like, ‘Viktor would’ve liked working on this,’ or ‘Viktor would’ve hated what I’m doing with this one,’ or ‘If Viktor were around, he’d tell me this is dumb and inefficient and stupid. I hate him. I hate him so much.’”
Naph brings his teacup away from his lips so he can laugh without choking. “Seems like they’re both a little obsessed with each other.”
Amaranthine huffs, eyebrows pinched in frustration. “I want to know the details! Like, they were coworkers, right, and maybe friends, and they totally liked each other that way, y’know? Did anything happen between them? Better yet, what happened? Why did they just—split up? Why is Viktor in Zaun while Jayce is in Piltover? Since they’re nemeses now, and they say Jayce beat Viktor like it was a big thing, they must’ve had a huge fight, but why? ”
Naph opens his mouth to respond despite not knowing what to say, because what do you say to that, really—how could anyone possibly even guess—when he’s interrupted by the sound of footsteps, relatively heavy, and a booming voice:
“I’m back! You better not have blown anything up while I was gone.”
Amaranthine gives Naph a look, to say, See, what did I tell you? Then, as the door opens, she hisses, “This isn’t over. I’m enlisting you to help me solve this mystery and get them back together, because obviously neither of them is over it,” and he doesn’t have time to do anything but nod before Jayce bursts in.
“Hey, kiddo,” he says to Amaranthine, then turns to Naph. “Who’s your—oh. You. You’re Viktor’s kid.”
Naph could deny it, because technically he’s more of Viktor’s apprentice than his kid, really, but above all else he is a little shit, so he responds, “Oh. You. You’re that one celebrity on Viktor’s mug.”
Jayce sputters. “What—how—how is that—he wouldn’t—honestly kid, what even—okay, reset. You didn’t meet me properly last time.” He sticks out a hand for Naph to shake. “Jayce Giopara, Defender of Tomorrow. Uh, do you want an autograph or something?”
Naph stands from his chair and shakes the proffered hand. “I’m Naph. I don’t need an autograph, but if you really want to sign something, Viktor has a photo of you two on his bedside table that you might be able to explain while you put your name on it? Why is that there and when was it taken?”
Fuck, Viktor’s probably going to kill him for this, but he also said that “fear is more often than not a limiting emotion.” Naph is pushing past his fear of Viktor’s wrath, so he would probably be at least a little proud, right? Anyway, Amaranthine is cackling and shooting him a thumbs up, which means he must be doing something right.
Meanwhile, Jayce is at a loss for words. “I—man—I really don’t know, kid. I would say to ask Viktor, but…” He shrugs. “If you’re not here for an autograph, what are you doing here?”
“I got lost,” Naph lies automatically. Jayce gives him a skeptical look, but he plows on. “I need someone to guide me back home, and Amaranthine can’t do it alone, so…?”
Jayce shoots Amaranthine a look. She tilts her head, wilfully echoing his shrug. He stares at her a moment longer before giving up and saying, “Fine, whatever. I’ll take you back.” He turns back to Amaranthine. “Wanna come? Actually, don’t answer that unless the answer is no. You are absolutely gonna get in trouble again and I’m not having it.”
She pouts, crossing her arms and subjecting him to the full force of her glare. “But you said—”
“I said we’d go back another day, during a planned excursion, not when your friend shows up outta nowhere and is somehow incompetent enough to not know the way home”—he breaks off for a second to direct a pointed glance at Naph—“which I don’t believe for a second, by the way, if you’ve learned anything from Viktor you’ve gotta be the smartest kid on the planet, next to mine.” Back to Amaranthine: “So do you want me to take him home or do you want me to dump him out on the street?”
She grumbles for a moment, then storms off, ostensibly to take the teacups to the sink for washing. When she passes Naph, she whispers, “Next time we see each other, tell me everything.”
“Got it,” Naph whispers back, then turns to beam at Jayce. “I’m ready when you are.”
“So,” says Jayce, shutting the door of the workshop behind them and ambling out into the cool night air, “You’ve been hanging around Viktor, huh? Does he, uh, treat you okay? Is this something I should be worried about?”
“He’s chill,” says Naph. “He is actually much more chill than any adult I’ve ever met, which is kind of sad since he’s a little crazy, but he’s nice to me. He teaches me stuff.” He has to do an awkward little half-jog to keep up with Jayce’s fast pace and longer legs, which, ugh. “First time we met, he offered to take away my fear.”
“He offered to take away your—”
“The implant was temporary. It helped me scare my bullies away,” Naph says, feeling oddly defensive of Viktor now that Jayce has taken on that horrified sort of tone. “It was kind of him. I never would’ve stood up to those assholes if it weren’t for him.”
Jayce scoffs. “Sure, more like he was testing shit on you. Word from the wise, kid: Viktor’s not everything he seems. He wants something from you, he won’t ask.”
Naph walks in sullen silence for a few paces. Jayce just doesn’t understand; Viktor can be multiple things at once: kind, yes; a scientist, also yes. Finally, he says, “He still helped me. And like I said, he’s teaching me stuff, he wants me to have—”
“He wants you to advance his ideas, his so-called glorious evolution—”
“He wants me to be smart,” Naph protests hotly. “He wants to give me power, more power than I’ve ever had. Power to change my destiny. When—no, I’m not done, when I told him I wanted to become his assistant, he told me to dream bigger. He said I could do more, that that couldn’t possibly be my life’s ambition.”
Even in the dim light of the moon and the yellow beams from the Piltovan street lamps, Naph can see a memory flit over Jayce’s face; pain and affection, entwined, visible in the cut of his eyes. Curiosity bites at Naph like a snake.
Then the specter falls away, and Jayce says, “Surely there’s nothing he could teach you that I can’t, huh? How about it? You want a couple of mechanics lessons, maybe some physics, maybe some chem?”
“Bio, actually. I’m going to be a surgeon,” Naph says. Out of the corner of his eye, Jayce tenses, and some wicked thing curls happily in his heart. “I want to change lives.”
Jayce sighs. “It’s not that I don’t want you to have dreams, bud. I’m just worried. What if Viktor’s just using you? I don’t wanna let my guard down, ‘cause that’s how people get hurt.”
Naph rolls his eyes, then turns his creepiest stare on Jayce and reaches toward him. “I’m a zombie now. I’m going to harvest your organs,” he says. “Down with humanity. Down with feelings. Everything for the Glorious Evolution!”
Jayce looks genuinely a little spooked, but he masks it well with an amused sort of annoyance. “Not funny, kid. Viktor tried to kill me with his minions once.”
That recontextualizes a lot of things Naph has heard about the two of them.
“I don’t suppose you’d tell me why?”
Jayce snorts. “If you’re so curious, figure it out yourself, kiddo.”
“Yeah, okay. You know, a really smart man once told me, ‘To interrogate the world is the—”
“—only way to advance oneself through it, yeah, yeah, wait—what the fuck? He still says that shit?”
Suddenly, illogically, Naph breaks into giggles. At this point, they’re well past the lower districts of Piltover and are now firmly in Zaun, so he muffles the noise quickly to avoid attention.
“You both say that shit, you pretentious old geezers,” he gasps, catching his breath. “Maybe Amaranthine was right. You deserve each other.”
Jayce looks affronted. “Hey! ‘Pretentious’ is just another word for ‘smarter than everyone else,’ I’ll have you know. And Viktor is so much worse than me. You should’ve heard him when we were in the academy together; he was convinced his ideas were like the coming of a deity.”
Sobered, Naph says, “Viktor’s going to change the world.”
“Sometimes that’s not always a good thing, kid.”
Silence falls. They’re entering the Entresol level; fog has begun to permeate the air, and the only light comes from the sickly green and pink neon-lit establishments that line the street. Jayce looks around and discomfort flutters across his expression.
Then he looks at Naph, really fixes his eyes—hazel in the light of the workshop, steel gray in the dark of Zaun—on him. “You’ve been with Viktor for how long now?”
“Three years.”
“Then I guess you should know.” He rubs a hand over his face and sighs. “We were… friends. We were colleagues. We were—this is so hard to explain, what the hell.”
“Never defined the relationship?” Naph teases.
Jayce snorts. “What you need to know is that Viktor and I were pals once. We met while we were both studying at the Academy, and he got me in a way that no one else ever did; he was the only person smart enough to keep up with me. We worked well together. He was brilliant,” he admits, with difficulty. “But then, as you know, he went a little crazy and started tampering with people’s brains, and that’s when I checked out and was like, ‘Dude, you can’t do that shit.’ He freaked, and also kind of got expelled, and then a while later we had this whole fight, and he tried to kill me, so that was the end of that. I hear he removed his emotions completely when he left, so if he sent you today to tell me not to get my hopes up, you can tell him I already know.”
Naph blinks, surprised. “Didn’t you hear anything Amaranthine and I said last time? He misses you. Why else would he keep that mug?”
“Utility? I don’t know, kid. I really don’t know.”
Naph scrutinizes his face. Jayce’s sudden hesitation to trust Viktor’s feelings doesn’t make sense, but looking at the soft resignation in his gaze and the tight curve of his lip, he thinks he’s starting to understand.
“You’re afraid,” Naph says softly. “You’re scared he doesn’t care about you the way you do him. You’re scared he’s become someone you can’t let yourself care about. You're looking for a reason to run away.”
Jayce grimaces. “Could you blame me?”
“No. But fear is often a limiting emotion. Are you gonna let it ruin your chances with the only guy you ever liked working with?” Naph fishes in his pocket for a moment until his hand closes around his stolen prize. He holds it up to the meager light—the implant Viktor designed, a silver bead barely visible through the fog. “You know, for the low, low price of ten gold pieces, I can make it disappear.”
Jayce shakes his head, looking disappointed. “Nice try, kid. But real bravery is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.”
“Be brave, then. Do it anyway,” Naph urges, but Jayce looks away.
“Easier said than done.”
They turn the corner onto Emberflit Alley. The darkness, the decrepit housing, and the smokey thickness of the air are a breath of home, to Naph, but Jayce coughs roughly into his sleeve upon his next inhale.
“Maybe I should just leave you here, kid,” he says.
But as he turns to go, Naph grabs his wrist, suddenly completely unafraid. It’s strange; the implant he injected today dissolved long ago, but the anger surging in him seems to replace it. It doesn’t even matter that Jayce is a head taller than him and so much broader—it couldn’t—not when he’s turning tail and running like this from the man who gave Naph everything.
“Don’t be a coward,” he chokes out. “Are you saying that you don’t care? That Viktor isn’t worth the risk? You can be brave for all those people up there who sit around at parties drinking champagne, be their great hero and fight monsters, but you can’t be brave for him? ”
Jayce stammers, trying to wrench his arm away from Naph, but he only clings on tighter.
“If you want him to still care, then at least show him you deserve it,” Naph spits.
Jayce deflates. He struggles to say something, visibly battling for the words, but before he manages to even start, two eyes like glowing coals appear out of the shadows.
Viktor steps out of the fog.
“It’s alright, Naph,” he says, taking his arm gently. “Let him go.”
“Is that what you want?” Naph asks, anguished. “You want him to go?”
“I want him to make the choice,” Viktor replies.
They both look at Jayce. He hesitates, then, having realized the weight of Viktor’s words, surges forward abruptly, hand coming up to cup Viktor’s neck, pressing their foreheads together. Naph almost worries he’s about to get a death ray through the chest, but Viktor just closes his eyes and leans into the touch.
“I’ll come back,” Jayce promises in a fervent whisper. “I’m not quite done with you yet, V.”
Viktor jolts. They stare at each other, astonished, and then he murmurs, “You'd better.”
Jayce vanishes into the fog, but not without one last look back at the man gazing after him, expressions flayed open and raw on both faces. Viktor just stands there and watches him go.
“You okay, Viktor?” Naph asks.
Viktor shakes his head, then places a hand on his shoulder blades to guide him back toward their front door.
“Let’s go home,” he says, and then, more quietly:
“Thank you.”