Work Text:
Jinx, the now notorious criminal and heroine of Zaun walked slowly, clutching her sore side, breathing hard. She had escaped into one of the air ducts, injured by her own explosive during the fight with the beast. It was over, soon she would escape and the 'cycle' would be broken forever. Who needed her there anyway? She sighed hard, holding herself up on the cold metal wall. She continued walking for an eternity until the blinding light of the sun hit her.
He had finally found the exit, the blue ocean bright and hopeful as ever as the sea breeze ruffled the tuft of hair on his forehead.
She breathed, for the first time in a long time, happy to be alive. The cawing of a crow disturbed her renewed happiness. "Hey! You could be a little shu-" she suppressed a cry of fear, seeing the body of a human-machine hybrid all battered, at the foot of the exit of the duct. The mask on his face was broken, revealing part of the face of a man with cadaverous skin and long, unruly brown hair.
He was the man who had caused this war, the herald of Zaun, the madman who wanted to subjugate humanity and lead it to a 'glorious evolution'…
Wasn't he dead? Wasn't he defeated? Maybe the explosion had brought him there and…had no one noticed?
A strange three-eyed crow continued to caw, dancing above him and pecking like a vulture its dying prey.
"GET AWAY, YOU BAD!" Jinx screamed, roughly kicking the bird away from the battered body.
The girl approached the man and put her ear to his cold, exposed chest. His heart was still beating, albeit faintly.
So…what was she supposed to do? Of course, she could have let the man slip into the sea and drown with all the other corpses caused by this conflict…Her hand moved instinctively to his head, stroking with her thin fingers that untamed hair and…
Arcane.
All those minds, all those voices…
"Viktor."
Jayce.
It all ended.
A loud thud startled the man awake. He was standing on a cold, rickety floor surrounded by wooden crates. His broken mask lay beside him.
"Good morning, sleepyhead!" A young woman with turquoise hair and a wild look teased him, her large purple eyes seemed to scrutinize his every move. His mind was still foggy and confused, but he remembered the face of the girl he had met long before the conflict began.
"Powder, right?" the glee on her face faded into a frown of anger. "I save your life and you get my name wrong?" she scoffed, a hint of aggression in her voice. "My name is Jinx. J I N X. Remember that, you blockhead."
"Forgive me." He said quickly, placing a hand on his forehead. "Forgive me…"
The look on the girl's face softened.
"Why am I still here?" he asked tragically, a slight pang of panic creeping into his body. "Oh well, you got a good beating, there was an explosion and I found your body lying near the vents. Oh and I took you on this vessel I uh…borrowed! Well, I don't think anyone cares after everything that's happened, do you? Do you like it? I've never been on a flying ship!"
As the girl explained, the man noticed the girl's crude but effective attempts to heal him. Some parts of his body were covered with gauze, while others had been fixed with new mechanical implants.
"…why are you doing all this? Stealing a flying ship, escaping the two cities that would consider you their savior, distancing yourself from the people who love you and saving the life of the man who was about to destroy all your hopes and dreams? Why?! It's…illogical."
The girl approached him, she had a look that not even a brilliant mind like his could decipher.
"And why did you do all this?" she asked him simply.
"I…just wanted to do the right thing." He smiled wistfully, looking down in shame and embarrassment at appearing so pathetic and insane. "I wanted to create a utopia, I wanted to create a world where the conflict between Piltover and Zaun would never exist again, where not even death could harm its inhabitants. Instead, everything went to pieces! Every time I try to do something right in life, everything breaks and-"
"…and everything goes to hell." Jinx concluded, smiling wistfully at him. Viktor snorted. "That's a bit of a colorful expression, but yeah, 'everything goes to hell'."
Jinx punched him lightly in the arm. "You know, I think we're both in this together."
"Are you sure this is the way, right?" Jinx asked as she steered the ship with one hand and held the injured herald with the other, who was leaning on her with difficulty. He should have been working on a new staff already, but for now he gladly accepted the girl's support to hold him up.
"Yes, I'm absolutely sure…"
"Is it really such a beautiful place?" the girl asked him.
"It is, it is the ideal place to get away from the world and be in contact with nature…"
The girl whistled loudly as she looked at the huge mountains that loomed before her and arrived on a hill with roaring green meadows covered with flowers, illuminated by the sunset that gave warmth to its colors.
"How did you know about this place?"
"A person very dear to me told me that." He replied enigmatically.
"Okay…uh herald? Savior? What do you want me to call you?" "Viktor." Jinx smiled. "Okay… Viktor ."
They had parked the flying boat on that hill and decided not to go out of there for the night. There were many things to do but for now they decided to give priority to their tired bodies.
The two of them had eaten some canned food they had found in the ship's supplies. Viktor was still wondering what had happened. Why had the Arcane brought him back here? Did he still have business to attend to? What had happened to Jayce?
Sure, he worries about it now after nearly killing him. Maybe he was all that was wrong with Zaun. A simple, inhuman monster…
"Hey." Viktor jumped at the girl's call. She was looking at him with that indecipherable look of hers.
"You know, I don't think you're a monster."
How did he know what she was thinking? It wasn't possible...right?
"Yes, well, I… thank you, a monster would never have done that."
"What are you thanking me for?" he asked.
"For trying to fix Vander."
A painful and heavy silence fell over the room. "I…don't deserve your thanks, I failed and only made the situation worse." He admitted guiltily.
"Well…at least you tried. I blew him…twice." She tried to laugh it off but it was obvious she was uncomfortable talking about it.
Viktor coughed uncomfortably and tried to steer the subject elsewhere. "So uh… Jinx… what are you going to do now?" The girl blew her tuft away from her forehead. "I thought I'd take your advice. To use my talents to build, not destroy." She smiled, looking down. "You know, you were the first one to say something positive about me in a long time, thank you."
Viktor wasn't sure but he thought he saw a light shade of red on her cheeks.
"I really think so, you have a unique talent. I'm sure you would have sparkled at the academy!" He admitted without a problem. "He often said that too…you remind me of him a bit. The gaunt face, the same animosity and coldness in achieving his goals…and maybe a certain amount of kindness that no one understands, I imagine."
Viktor sensed that this discussion was another minefield and it was best to divert to more cheerful topics. "What do you plan to build?" Jinx's face lit up. "First of all, I want to build a shelter. Yeah, we can't live in here forever, right? Then I was thinking of building a giant shark, a big workbench, a new staff for you and-" "W-wait a minute!" The man interrupted her, surprised by her speed. "We?" Jinx looked at him as if he was very very stupid. "Of course! Where do you think I'd let you sleep, in the cold and frost middle of the woods?"
He shrugged dismissively. "Well, I'm not cold." He said it in such a serious, melodramatic tone that it made Jinx laugh and feel very stupid. "How are you not cold?" "The aftermath of being around Hextech. I don't even need to sleep anymore." She laughed out loud again. "Damn, and they say I'm the crazy one!"
She jogged up and sat down in the space next to him. "If you don't want to sleep, that means I can bother you all night with my next plans!" "I… I guess so." Jinx took off like a train, spouting off all his ideas for the future. She fell asleep about half an hour later, collapsing onto the man's silver shoulder.
"Perfect…" Viktor thought sarcastically, unable to move for fear of waking her. He didn't need to stretch his legs, at least. He looked at Jinx's relaxed face as she slept, clearly tired of everything she had been through, mostly because of him.
"It could have been worse, I suppose." He smiled shyly. The sudden onset of drool on his arm quickly made him change his mind.
Viktor helped Jinx build the shelter, getting wood from the woods by cutting down trees with a beam fired from the mechanical arm behind his back and transporting materials from his old laboratory by opening small space-dimensional holes.
Jinx absentmindedly looked at one of the holes as she tried to work on a piece of wood. "Is this normal?" she asked. "I don't have all the empirical and scientific data on that but…yeah. I think so." Jinx shrugged and went back to work.
It was strange interacting with that girl. He couldn't complain about her presence, it was nice to have someone by his side who wouldn't distract him during his studies and above all who wanted to help him with his research.
The real problem was that the girl was anything but unpredictable. There were days when she did everything, she couldn't stay still for even a second and she seemed to run at the speed of light, occupying her mind with a thousand activities.
Other days, however, the exact opposite happened. One afternoon he saw the girl with the turquoise hair on the work table, handling a device that was indecipherable to him and above all, whose purpose he did not understand. Her vivacity seemed to have completely disappeared and she worked melancholically, like a cold automaton. Something went wrong and she angrily threw that thing to the ground. She began to sob, holding her head with her hands.
"I messed it all up!" he heard her say, and then she started crying uncontrollably.
Viktor wasn't the best person for helping people with their feelings. He could heal them, sure, but the heart was a foreign subject to him. He once happened to see Mel crying in a room, angry about yet another stupid thing Jayce had done. At that moment Viktor willfully ignored the situation and left.
The same thing had happened with Skye. He had never noticed what was bothering her and he didn't even ask her in the Hivemind.
"It was nice talking to you."
"It is not true..."
Maybe even then Skye had realized that Viktor was a lost cause with personal relationships and now she was gone and he was alone in a room with an emotionally unstable girl, a former criminal and terrorist who was dealing with an emotional breakdown.
"What's wrong?" The girl jumped and spun around, noticing the man slowly approaching her. "I m-messed it all up...a-again! E-everything around me always goes wrong and it's all my fault!"
The man bent down and picked up the broken invention at the girl's feet. "I screwed up everything! I'm just no good! They were right, I'm just a fucking jinx!" She cried in despair, almost tearing her short hair from her head.
Being a genius, half machine and half incomprehensible magic helped and especially in a case like that, he understood the problem of the device. He fixed with impressive speed what was hindering its functioning. He returned the now repaired object to the girl.
"Everything can be fixed."
She was looking at him with an unreadable look, as usual she was a total mystery to him.
"No, you can't. Not everything can be fixed." She said coldly. "Especially if you're a ji-"
"I don't think you're a jinx, Jinx. Mistakes just happen, and not everyone understands someone they consider... 'weird.' If it's any consolation, I was often called 'Dicktor'."
The girl wiped away a tear. "Dicktor? Really?" He nodded and she smiled. "That's the stupidest insult I've ever heard!" She giggled and looked at him apprehensively.
"I swear even Professor Heimerdinger called me with that name a couple of times...He played a whole song on the ukulele on this name!" She giggled again and soon it became a genuine laugh.
A laugh that was a little loud and disturbing but that at that moment reassured Viktor, happy to see her smile again. "Would you like a glass of sweetmilk?" Said Viktor. "A weakness of mine, but I have always enjoyed anise flavor." She nodded.
"Hey." Jinx called to him before he left the room. "Thanks...Dicktor." she said, teasing him good-naturedly.
Viktor was still wondering why he was there. He knew that the 'meaning of life' was such a complicated and complex question that no one had found an answer yet. He just wanted to know why he hadn't died in that explosion and why he had returned to RuneTerra again. Did Hextech want to tell him something? Did Jayce want to tell him something?
He had been reading for hours but his question seemed unanswered. The slow sound of bare feet on wooden beams told Viktor that Jinx was approaching and that she was feeling down again.
"Hey." She called from behind him. "Hey." The man said without turning around, still searching for answers in a damn stupid book.
"You said everything could be fixed, right?" She asked hesitantly, chewing her nails nervously. "Yes..." Viktor sighed in exasperation, still leafing through the damned text.
"...could you fix me too?"
"What a fucking question!" Viktor blurted out. "You can't fix something that isn't broken! You're already perfect the way you are! Now if you'll excuse me I have to-" He realized too late what he'd said. Well, he hadn't said anything offensive...right?
He looked away from the text and saw the girl looking at him with watery eyes. "...c-could you please repeat that?" She asked hesitantly.
"You're perfect." The bone-breaking hug that followed made Viktor feel strange, he wasn't used to feeling this way. At least before, since he was living with her, it happened to him often.
After a while she pulled away from him, her cheeks flushed. She shyly adjusted the tuft on her forehead. "T-thanks and...s-sorry. Yeah, well, you were studying and I interrupted you again with a stupid question. I'm such a pain in the ass! Sorry, it's just-"
"You don't have to apologize." He said quickly. "You didn't bother me, my research wasn't going anywhere anyway..." he admitted disconsolately. She approached, watching with visceral curiosity. "What are you studying? If you want, I can give you a hand! As long as it's not about the boiler again!" Viktor felt a shiver down his spine at the memory of the infernal boiler.
"No, no. I just... I was looking for an answer to an existential dilemma." Jinx chuckled. "I don't think you'll find the answer there. 'The Perfect Piltover Housewife's Cookbook' is not the book for you."
Viktor only now realized what book he was reading. "Ah! That's why he mentioned eggs so much!" Jinx snatched it from his hands.
"Hey!" Viktor protested in vain. "I'll take this. You should rest instead." She admonished him gently. "You could take a walk in the woods around here. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to live so close to nature." Viktor ran a hand over his head.
"Maybe you're right...a short walk will clear my mind." He took the staff Jinx had given him and started toward the front door until Jinx called to him.
"W-Wait!" And on tiptoe, she kissed his cheek. "Come back soon." She told him, then walked away from him. Now Viktor was more confused than ever.
That short walk lasted hours and in that time he found no answer to his questions. He thought back to all those books, collections of stories, fables and even recipe books but nothing, his mind could not find peace.
He thought the solution was in Jayce's last words but thinking about it only made him angry, disheartened and sad.
"It's our imperfections that make us wonderful."
He sighed in frustration and decided it was time to go home to Jinx. As much as the man appreciated her willingness, her presence, her company, he seriously doubted that the lovely girl had the solution to his dilemma.
Pandemonium.
The state of the house perfectly represented the turmoil in the mind of the Herald of Zaun. The stains of cream, flour, and unspeakable leftovers led him into the kitchen. Jinx was wearing a stained apron over one of the women's dresses she had found as loot on the ship that she had never worn before. It was white and made of light silk, with no sleeves and a skirt that reached her knees.
"Viky!" she exclaimed with her usual enthusiasm and proudly showed him an awkwardly shaped cake on the table. On it she had drawn a smiley face with cream.
"Anise-flavored milk cake! Do you like it?"
Viktor didn't know what exactly to think about all this. "Why?" he finally asked, shocked.
"I wanted to surprise you. Well, it may not be as beautiful, delicious, and perfect as the sweets Sevika made, and believe me, that woman was better than all the famous pastry chefs in Piltover, but…it's the thought that counts, right?" She put her mechanical finger on the cream and licked some of it.
The enlightenment hit him like a hammer on the head.
Jinx was everything: messy, chaotic, clumsy, crazy, mentally unstable, loud, kind, affectionate, adorable…
It was her imperfections that made her wonderful, that made her...perfect.
A sense of euphoria and satisfaction washed over him.
Hextech had brought him back to RuneTerra to see it all…to experience it all.
The solution had always been right under his nose and Viktor hadn't even noticed.
Caught up in euphoria and excitement, the man rushed over to her and kissed her. Her lips still tasted of cream, sugar, and anise-flavored milk. He let go, leaving Jinx completely stunned.
"Oh." Was the only thing she said before taking his head to kiss him again. This time more possessive and passionate, clinging with her sharp nails like claws to his long, untamed hair.
They parted shortly after, breathing hard, their foreheads resting one on top of the other.
"We should go to another room…" Jinx whispered. "I don't want to mess up the kitchen!" she joked, giggling and Viktor laughed like a maniac.
He had never been so happy to be alive as he was in that moment.