Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the end, it isn't that hard to kidnap Viktor.

He's mostly relied on being alone and incredibly destitute to stay safe throughout his tenure in the Fissures, and apparently that precious, borrowed time has finally run out.

They catch him as he's making for Benzo’s shop, carrying his welding equipment with a limping, uneven gait.

He doesn't notice something is wrong at first. When he finds himself being followed, he sighs and begins assembling his equipment, watching as two men creep up on him from his periphery. This is a familiar song and dance. He thinks, typical muggers . Desperate or bored opportunists.

Behind him, to his right, a man says, “Hey—” and he ignites the welding torch.

He turns around, and the words die in their mouths.

“Hello,” he says. He's perhaps a bit less cautious with the flame than he should be, for something hotter than fresh lava.

The men freeze. Apparently fighting a man with a welding torch was not something they'd anticipated for today. Viktor is fairly content to let the silence stretch into awkwardness as they re-evaluate their life decisions. But—here, he'd expect them to flee with a couple parting insults.

Instead, they grit their teeth and square their shoulders, not even a look passed between them.

This is no simple mugging.

“I do not think this is worth your time or money,” he stalls, backing away. Evidently, they do not agree.

Did somebody hire them?

Why?

It’s not like it's hard to get an audience with Viktor; money or just generally existing around Benzo’s shop will do that easily. Who the hell would put in the money and effort to kidnap him? What could they possibly need from him?

He snatches his wallet and tosses it away, but the two don’t even follow it with their eyes. They’re gaining confidence—they think he won’t use the welding torch on them, which is wrong, he absolutely would, and he has before, he’d just strongly prefer not to barbeque anybody’s hands today.

Face Tattoo reaches inside his jacket— 

—and Viktor swipes the torch at a puddle of crude oil between them.

It’s instant—it erupts into ten-foot flames. It smokes gray and choking and very certainly poisonous and sucks away all the oxygen in an instant, burning hotter and taller and sending everyone scrambling backwards, gasping for breath.

He’s definitely burned his arms and maybe broken something in his hand, but he has a much more pressing concern, which is that he's holding a tank of pure oxygen next to a roaring fire.

He lurches towards the abandoned building as he shucks the fuel tank. He looks back—everything is a sea of flames and smoke. He could throw fuel on the fire. It would be an explosion large and hot enough to flash-fry them all, but at least it'd be quick.

But he hesitates.

The collateral damage would be—

—concrete crumbling abovehead, dust and insulation falling like snow, coating lungs and caking weeping wounds—

He abandons the tank with regret like bile in his throat and tears down the crumbling hall and into the stairwell.

If he can get to the area around the Last Drop, he'll be reasonably safe, but it's eleven flights of stairs down with a bad fucking leg and back and lungs.

And.

Well.

When he hears the door to the stairwell slam open a floor and a half above him, he knows he isn't getting out of this.

He's two floors down practically sliding down the railings and jumping entire floors, and his bad leg hurts so much, he can barely put weight on it without it crumpling beneath him, and there are two singed and angry but otherwise able-bodied men on his heels.

Four steps from the third floor, someone grabs his cloak and drags him backwards, shoves him the rest of the way down with painful jolts to his spine and head.

The cloak is torn away and tossed aside, and Viktor snarls, “I should've just blown us all up—”

And then he knows nothing.

Viktor wakes at once.

Everything hurts, and someone has him slung over their shoulder like a potato sack. His hands are manacled together, and they've correctly assumed that he's not going anywhere without a cane anytime soon.

He's in an office. A study, maybe. The walls are covered in faded wallpaper, the floor is polished wood, and the shelves are adorned with the most expensive and therefore ugliest trinkets money can buy. It’s as fancy as it gets in the undercity.

Viktor has never seen a place more obviously owned by a chem-baron.

Whoever’s holding him must notice him waking up because a moment later, he gets shoved into a chair with a painful jolt to his bruised spine and possibly sprained ankle? He’d be irritated about yet more potential central nervous system damage, but he suspects he won’t live long enough for it to be that much of a problem.

The man behind the desk is tall and gaunt. Sickly. Not unlike Viktor—it’s the look of miners and their children and the wasting diseases that eat them alive. But his mouth is cruel, scars creasing one side of his face. He regards Viktor like he’s evaluating the quality of a head of livestock and is not very impressed.

Viktor has never seen the man in person, but every undercity brat knows who to avoid.

“How good of you to join us,” fucking Silco says, like an asshole. 

Well.

There are only a couple reasons he can think of that a crime lord would bother to kidnap some cripple university student, most of them very unpleasant.

Traitors aren't looked upon kindly here.

And by the gods, he'll drag as many people down with him as he can.

“I suppose my being unconscious was inconvenient for you,” he replies with a shrug that physically hurts to perform but makes Silco’s remaining eyebrow twitch in a way that brings Viktor immense pleasure. Face Tattoo and Nose Ring are looking at him like he’s lost his mind. Viktor hopes they’re regretting not gagging him.

Silco stares, unamused, and Viktor laughs at his own joke because he might as well get his kicks in while he can.

Nose Ring is pressing a fist to his mouth. Viktor suspects that he’d be making a sound like a dying engine if he could.

“I must say, all of this was rather unnecessary if you were seeking a meeting with me,” Viktor continues, channeling the most saccharine piltie pleasantries he’s spent the past four years enduring. He flutters his hands around to be extra obnoxious. One of his fingers is most assuredly broken, and he is so full of adrenaline that he does not care. “Most people just send a note or ambush me at Benzo’s shop. Not that I’m not flattered, of course.”

To his right, Face Tattoo is going through every stage of grief.

And a bit too soon—Viktor absolutely intends to make this worse.

“I don't suppose you happened to keep my cane? I've heard that you sometimes honor last wishes, and I do specify in my will to melt it into slag and throw it into my grave first so I may fall on it one last time.”

Silco’s face relaxes abruptly, tension breaking like a popped balloon, and Viktor braces for the trap—“He said you’d be like this.”

He?

Viktor tilts his head, mind racing through possibilities. He doesn’t take the bait. “I am always like this,” he lies blatantly. “Though I am curious as to why you would put in all this effort to catch some cripple from the university.”

“Hm,” Silco says at a tenor that makes Nose Ring and Face Tattoo stop breathing. “Well. As much as I’d enjoy killing you, unfortunately, your expertise is needed.”

His.

Expertise?

“What?” Viktor is so taken aback that he forgets to be obnoxious. Genuine confusion crosses his features. “My expertise? What for?”

Silco proceeds to ignore him completely. He makes a gesture, and a woman in a leather jacket with an astonishing number of knives steps forward to dispense payment. The confusion only grows—a hundred gold for Viktor? He’s not sure if he’s owned that much money over his entire lifetime. Nose Ring and Face Tattoo leave as fast as they physically can without falling over each other running out.

And it’s just him, Silco, and the knife woman.

The kingpin regards him with a single dark eye in the ensuing silence.

Viktor gets the feeling that he should be intimidated, but he’s still very confused.

“Are… you sure you have the right person?” Viktor says, and he’s not trying to be irritating even though this may be the single most enraging thing he’s said to Silco so far.

“Child, I would’ve killed you four times over by now if I didn’t need you,” Silco says with a note of warning that doesn’t actually answer Viktor’s question. “Sevika.”

The woman steps forward with a syringe.

Great.

She jabs it into his forearm three times before she finds a vein, and Viktor is gone for the second time that day.

Chapter Text

Viktor’s absence from lecture is so deeply uncharacteristic that afterwards, Professor Heimerdinger hems and haws and asks Sky if she could just run over to the dorms and check on him, please because there was that one time he mixed stimulants with painkillers, and Sky walked in on him holding a bone saw to his own leg.

She grabs her things and hustles over to the elevators to the dormitories. Surely nobody would be foolish enough to lend a bone saw to a man with pneumonia again.

Her knock on Viktor's door goes unanswered. She lets herself in.

Empty. His messenger bag is gone, and so is his welding equipment.

Uh-oh.

The next obvious stop is the quartermaster, who informs her Viktor hadn't made it back to the dorms for curfew yesterday and makes it sound like a massive inconvenience the same way older women in the streets feel compelled to tut over Viktor’s health and general living standards while they to wrap him in a warm blanket and feed him soup.

Sky is specifically trying not to worry, but unfortunately, worrying is her best proficiency.

She thinks she knows where he disappeared to, and it's bad fucking news.

Viktor had insisted on returning regularly to the undercity despite, Sky could not emphasize this enough, being the approximate size and weight of a lap dog. They don't know the exact details of each other's schedules—they barely can keep track of their own schedules, thank you—but a trip yesterday wouldn't be surprising.

She changes course for Heimerdinger’s office, bursting in without knocking in her worry.

“Professor!” She’s saying before the door is even fully open, “I think Viktor’s—”

She's greeted by a faceful of smoke.

She slams the door shut immediately.

The smoke leaks through the cracks around the door like a shitty theater effect while she mentally re-evaluates her life decisions.

Unfortunately, it would look pretty bad if she chose to handle whatever this is the Zaunite way, which would be walking away and pretending she never saw anything.

Ugh. Pilties.

“Uhh,” she calls, reopening the door with her collar shoved over her face, “Professor?”

Squinting through the smoke, Heimerdinger is perched on his chair. Across from him is a student clutching his face in his hands. There’s a glowing, sparking thing in the middle of the room slowly eating a hole through the concrete floor and flooding the room with gray smoke. There is a surprising lack of activity from the occupants for a room that's about to be on fire.

“Do you need a… fire extinguisher?” She suggests as she watches the cylinder throwing off sparks like a firework steadily bore itself deeper into the floor with no indication of stopping or slowing.

Nobody’s even opened a window. The student’s hands have migrated to his hair. For some reason, he has a sledgehammer propped up against the desk.

“Unfortunately, chemical suppressors will not work,” Heimerdinger says with a confusing amount of levity. “What were you saying about Viktor, Ms. Young?”

Sky can't believe she's about to say this but, “I think you might want to deal with this first?”

“Oh, Mr. Talis will handle it in a moment. It needs to bore far enough into the floor that he can strike it without it going flying.”

Oh.

Oh, great.

Sky desperately doesn't want to be around to see what the fuck happens when Mr. Talis sledgehammers the incendiary melted into the floor.

“Okay,” she says slowly. “I think he’s in trouble, I think the details will have to wait for when things are… less on fire?”

Then she slams the door shut before Heimerdiger can compel her to stay.

Maybe they'll suffocate in there, but at some point, it's really their fault if a cloud of probably corrosive smoke does not register as enough of a reason to open a window.

Sky immediately starts speed-walking away.

She's brainstorming who else to ask for help when she hears an almighty crash, and Heimerdinger’s door swings open, noxious fumes pouring out into the hall. 

Talis sticks his head out. They make eye contact. Sky is halfway down the hall, clearly mid-escape. He is covered in soot and concrete dust. He says, “The professor said you could come in?”

Sky stares at him and his fucking sledgehammer. “Okay,” she says.

The windows are still closed. For a man who's so insistent on stress testing the safety of any outgoing inventions, Heimerdinger seems awfully calm about the glowing pile of slag slowly cooling into the cracked concrete flooring.

“Ms. Young!” He greets cheerfully, “Viktor is in trouble?”

“Viktor—like, materials synthesis TA, Viktor?”

Why the hell is Talis still here. Sky looks between him and Heimerdinger and decides he doesn’t matter. “I think he visited the undercity yesterday and didn't make it back.”

Heimerdinger sobers suddenly. Way more suddenly than she would expect. “What led you to this conclusion?”

“He missed curfew yesterday, and his welding equipment is gone. He only takes it out of the Academy when he goes to the undercity.”

Heimerdinger’s eyes narrow. Talis looks incredibly awkward. “Normally, we'd need a bit more concrete evidence, but there was a security incident earlier that I think might be related. Sky, can you make the time to accompany me to the justice hall?”

Enforcers. She would honestly rather eat her own shoes.

But Viktor is her friend, and he's—well. His family is gone. She knows if she and Heimerdinger don't push this, nobody will.

“Great!” Heimerdinger says, fluttering about gathering materials with an anxiousness that is deeply concerning for a man who experiences time at a whole different scale than humanity.

“Can I come with?” Talis asks.

Right. She'd almost forgotten.

“Do you know Viktor?”

“Yeah, he’s my, uh.” Sky watches words ghost over his lips: friend? Colleague? Partner? “A friend of mine?” He finally settles on with an incredible lack of confidence.

She crosses her arms.

“We're working together on a research project,” he offers.

Ah, Viktor’s sole avenue of social interaction.

“Sure,” she says finally. “What was up with the bomb?”

Talis is apparently bringing the hammer. He says, “The…? Oh, it was part of the security incident the professor mentioned. Some kid tried to burn a hole through the gates to break inside at, like, 3am today.”

That thing was supposed to melt through four solid inches of wrought iron, and you decided to set it off in a closed office…?

Heimerdinger, of course, says the important part: “The child mentioned Viktor to the enforcers.”

Whatever. They lived, and she has more important shit to do.

Tails tries to bring his emotional support sledgehammer into the station. He seems startled when the enforcers ask him to hand it over, like he'd forgotten he was holding it.

Sky pastes on her nicest, fakest smile to pass scrutiny. The glasses and the surname usually make her nondescript enough to pass as Piltovan, but her mannerisms sometimes give her away, and the last thing she needs right now is to end up in one of the cells they're walking past.

The guard leads them through a couple cell blocks, and Sky is starting to wonder if Heimerdinger’s definition of a child is not quite the same—he did once refer to an eighty-year-old human professor as his ‘young colleague’—when the guard finally stops and indicates to their left.

The boy in the cell is just a boy.

He's far too young to be alone, outside of the undercity, in torn, soot-stained clothes and disintegrating shoes.

His lip is freshly split, knuckles skinned. Typical of enforcers, really.

He hunkers down sullenly as their footsteps approach, eyes only catching briefly on the Academy uniforms. He tucks his chin into his chest like someone is going to throat-punch him from ten feet away, showing off a shock of white hair at the top of his head.

Heimerdinger and Talis and that random enforcer keeping an eye on them from the corner are looking to her to handle this kid, but the undercity has a great many number of communities, and they do not always mesh.

“Hey,” she says gently, and he sends her an uncomfortable look and shoves himself deeper in the corner.

Right. Undercity. She drops the gentleness.

“I’m Viktor’s friend. Why were you asking about Viktor?”

Dark eyes regard her warily. “Why d’you wanna know?”

“He's gone missing.”

A scoff. His eyes close again. “What can you do about it?”

This is an excellent question, and not one she can answer; she can't even guarantee she can get this kid out of this cell. She opens her mouth to lie baldly—

Talis, out of the blue, says, “Are you Ekko?”

Every eye in the room snaps to him. He looks discomfited by the attention, but she elbows him because he's achieved what nobody else has: Ekko’s full attention. 

He clears his throat, and it quickly becomes apparent that he has no plan. “I-uh, I mean, Viktor mentioned you once, I think,” he says. “He was making something for you. Well, he didn't say it, he had me carve your name on a part, he was—because I'm a blacksmith—I was helping make some custom—”

“He was making something?”

That.

Worked?

It did, actually. Ekko is laser-focused on Talis. “Did he finish it? What was it?”

“Almost, he just wanted to clean and polish it. I mean I think it's a gift. Like. A surprise?”

This kid looks one second away from strangling Talis. He crawls over to the bars, grips them with bony fingers. “What was it?”

“I don't know if he'd want me to—”

Ekko rattles the bars in frustration, manacles clattering. The enforcer takes a warning step forward, and both Sky and Ekko make identical snarls at him. Apparently this is not protocol because the enforcer looks cowed and steps back.

Ekko runs his hands through his hair, suddenly, desperately anxious. “Fuck the surprise! I need a-a—I need—” he struggles, casts around for the word— “proof. That I'm a friend. Viktor’s from Emberflit; they don't talk to outsiders.”

“You need Viktor’s endorsement,” Sky says, pieces falling into place. “You need a token from him, so they'll talk to you. What happened to him?”

Ekko stares at her. “You're from the undercity?”

“The Promenade, but stay with me,” Sky says, intent. “Do you think something happened to Viktor?”

Ekko stares at her with soulful eyes. He's so young. “I think a chem-baron got him.”

Chapter Text

Viktor gets up so fast that he isn't actually conscious of being horizontal before he's on his feet.

Which is awful because those fuckers took his cane and his brace, so he’s up only very briefly then immediately on the floor and dragging everything on the cot down with him.

Right.

Broken finger. Sprained ankle.

He claws his way back upright using the cot, which is more of a sad slab of limestone with a couple sheets draped over it.

There's only one bastard he knows who lives like this, and he's going to strangle him even if he has to crawl.

The room is lit with a single lantern, which Viktor seizes to inspect the space. It's unsurprisingly sparse. He immediately clocks the single crutch propped up next to the door. Not his cane, but certainly better than nothing.

He has to drag himself across the floor to reach it. The height isn't quite right when he takes a couple experimental strides, but he's had worse, and he can make better.

At least someone had wrapped his ankle and splinted his finger.

The door is insultingly unlocked.

It opens with a horrible screech, and he limps into a very familiar space.

The smell of formaldehyde brings up memories so vividly, they come to Viktor almost as headaches. The floor is scuffed and pockmarked from acid spills.

Singed, more gnarled and bent than Viktor remembers and also covering half his face for some reason, looks up from his work as Viktor stares at him, standing a couple paces away.

“Ah, my wayward mentee,” he rasps. “You've finally returned.”

“You told Silco to kidnap me,” Viktor says. Not a question, a confirmation.

“I did mention our acquaintance.”

Viktor sees red.

“What the fuck did you tell him about me?” he rages, “I’m a civil engineer! Why the fuck would he need me?” He swings his crutch like a golf club and connects with Singed’s shoulder with a satisfying thump. Infuriating that Singed doesn't even move to block it. Barely even blinks at the contact.

“I said your expertise could be of use,” he says.

“My expertise? In what—does he need me to build him a house?”  

Singed’s eyes take on a vaguely disappointed air when Viktor strikes him again. “Viktor,” he chides, “your physique has never been one of your strengths.”

“Yes,” Viktor hisses, “and we should always stick to our strengths.”

He swivels the crutch, hooking it around Singed’s ribs, and yanks with as much as his crumbling body has to offer—more than enough to pull Singed off his stool.

Singed hits the ground, hard.

Viktor limps a half step forward and grinds the crutch into Singed’s hand, putting his full weight on it. He’s grimly satisfied at the pained gasp it pulls from Singed.

“Child,” Singed rasps, definitely more strained, “you must realize you’ll truly be dead if you injure me.”

Viktor does not care.

“My future was constrained the moment I met Silco,” he says, dread flowing through him as the words pour out, as the realization settles. It makes him dizzy.

Then he's crashing to the ground. The fall is jarring, painful. Viktor has to take a moment to reorient.

Singed is sitting up, rubbing one hand. Viktor realizes he had knocked his crutch out from under him—“Have you become a lesser inventor in the time since we last met?” He says archly. “Silco has control of the undercity, his resources are as close to limitless as you can get, in all of Piltover and the Fissures.”

Viktor exhales. “For you, perhaps, in pursuit of your panacea—”

“You're wasted in civil engineering,” Singed says, matter-of-fact, “building houses and bridges, spending your whole life on a single project—did you think I wouldn't notice the prosthetics research? Abandoned when it couldn't get funding from Piltover’s godforsaken elite?”

Viktor is rendered abruptly mute. He says, “My talents lay in other subjects.”

“Is that what they told you?” Singed replies. “Piltover is only concerned with profit.”

And—there’s not much Viktor can say about that. It's true. Rich sponsors fund research, and rarely out of altruism.

“You could do any research you want,” Singed says. “Why waste your mind for a people that are only interested in whether they can wring out a couple more coins from it?”

Viktor hates this man so very much.

Singed is so brilliant. So driven and passionate and intelligent. He could've done so much good, in a different world.

And the worst thing is that Viktor is tempted, for a moment. But he remembers himself. He remembers why he left in the first place. He calms. “The topsiders are interested in profit, yes—but so is Silco.” He says, and he keeps talking, bitterness pouring out of him. The words taste like concrete dust in his mouth, coating his lungs, tearing open the lining of his stomach, he’d coughed up blood and sludge for days—he never really, truly ever stopped—“Everybody is so interested in fighting for power. Nobody spares a thought for the chaff until they're one of them.”

Singed shakes his head, disappointed. “You could be revolutionary.”

“Yes, but I don't need you or Silco for that.”

Singed mostly leaves Viktor to stew after that. He's not a very argumentative man; his convictions are so bright that he believes anybody intelligent enough will eventually agree with him. It's just a matter of patience.

Viktor limps out to the familiar shores of the creek, dotted with lurid, purple flowers. Fungi, actually, Fusarium. A bit of an oddity for its love of water so alkaline that it kills most others of its genus. He picks one, remembering the surprising heft, milky fluid leaking from its stem.

There's a guard—no doubt one of Silco’s men—keeping watch. More of a formality. Viktor isn't stupid enough to think that he could outrun or overpower the man anyway.

“I don't suppose I am allowed food and water,” he calls over to the guard, who gives him a glance like he's wary Viktor will start eating the glowing flower if he says no. He could boil and drink water from the creek, but it's also alkaline enough that it is horribly bitter, and most aquatic creatures that are unlucky enough to make it here, die quickly. Only extremophiles like Rio, the flowers, a few strains of algae, and colorful mats of bacteria thrive in conditions like these.

The guard says, “The Second wants to talk to you personally.”

The Second?

The Second is the knife woman. Now that Viktor is not peering at her through a suicidal rush of adrenaline, he realizes that she only has one arm. She walks up to him with a burlap sack and a slight unevenness to her gait that maybe says her limb loss was more recent than not.

“I'm Sevika,” she says, friendly, like she and Silco didn't hire two idiots to shove him down a flight of stairs and kidnap him to play their pet scientist.

“I'm Viktor,” he says, setting the flower down and shaking her hand with a hand covered in slime.

Unexpectedly, she laughs when they shake hands, wiping her hand on the ground and settling next to him. She handles herself with the confidence that she could take any physical attack he could launch on her, and he trusts her judgement in that. She tosses him the sack, and Viktor confusingly finds a generous amount of food inside. He says, “Is this poisoned?”

“You sure are suspicious.”

“You're probably going to kill me.”

“What, Singed didn't explain what was up?”

Viktor’s empty look makes her laugh.

“Serves us right for expecting that fucker to handle any social interaction,” she says with remarkably good humor. “We brought you here to build us prosthetics.”

“You kidnapped me because a madman once mentioned I made prostheses?”

Sevika cocks her head. “Well, actually he insisted that you were the one who would produce the best work—and that you wouldn’t come willingly.”

What the fuck.

Viktor must stare at her for a moment too long because she raises an eyebrow: “Singed said it had to be you.”

He keeps staring. He says, “Are you sure this isn’t some… elaborate mistaken identity situation?”

“How many Viktors can there be who are a student at the university—” she starts ticking off fingers—”know Singed, have a limp, are from Emberflit Alley, and know how to make prosthetics?” She stops here presumably because she has run out of fingers.

“But I’m hardly the only prosthetist,” he says. “And prostheses are not my specialty. Especially not chemtech ones. Singed already has mechanical knowledge, he needs medical knowledge, and I'm not a doctor. I don’t know anything about the medical profession.”

“Isn’t your title ‘doctor’?”

“Yes—no, I—” he breathes deeply. “I hold a doctorate. In mechanical engineering.”

“Well, why does Singed need you, then?”

Viktor would bash her with his cane if he didn’t think he’d die for it. As it is, he just sits and contemplates eating a potato raw just to see if it would end this interaction.

Sevika continues, though, “You think you can do it?”

He snorts, “Would you?”

“You’re sort of stuck here until you do.”

Viktor laughs a little. He maintains a scrupulous medication schedule in Piltover with row after row of pills scheduled in careful intervals. It's not meant to be stopped abruptly. If he can't access that medication soon, everything is moot; he'll live out the remainder of his life here.

He picks up the flower again, watching slime dribble out the torn end, thinking, for a moment, of Rio, then banishing the thought from his mind. Why show weakness in front of a predator? He tosses the flower into the creek and watches it drift away.

When he turns his head, Sevika is looking at him, really looking at him for the first time in this conversation.

“You're more reasonable than Singed led us to believe,” she says, getting up and dusting herself off. She looms over him briefly, ominously, but Viktor is fucking dead anyway. “See you soon.”

“That's not necessary.”

She snorts and waves him off, and on that confusing note, she leaves.

Chapter Text

Heimerdinger pays Ekko's bail, which is excellent because Sky has about two silvers to her name.

Talis gets his sledgehammer back, and he twirls it like a fidget toy as they head back to the university.

Sky doesn’t even have to smuggle a child into the Academy because none of the guards give them a second glance with Heimerdinger there. They're drawing some level of attention as they make their way to the dorms, but Ekko is deadly focused.

He explains, there was a fire at one of the most commonly used paths between the Promenade and Entresol levels. The undercity doesn't really have a fire brigade service, usually the people to deal with it are just the people who happen to be nearby. That isn't an unusual occurrence, but what drew attention was the welding equipment one of the impromptu fire brigade members took to the pawn shop where Ekko lives.

“It was Viktor’s welding stuff,” Ekko explains, “he showed me how he modified it once, so if anybody stole it they'd have a hard time selling it—”

The man, when confronted by the shop owner, revealed that it was abandoned at the fire, along with the wallet of some ‘Piltie student.’

Ekko noticeably does not explain how he came to possess the wallet, but he confirms Viktor’s student ID was in it.

“Viktor got mugged?” Talis asks.

“Viktor doesn't get mugged,” Ekko says. “Man, do you even know him? After, like, the thirtieth person he broiled, people caught on and stopped trying.”

Yeah, that… really sounds like him.

Anyway, asking around turned up that nobody in his circle of acquaintances had seen Viktor that day, and when Ekko tried to go to Viktor's little ethnic enclave in Emberflit Alley to ask, they refused to say anything beyond talking about some reward and promptly kicking him out. He even mimics the accent: outsiders should not concern themselves with our matters.

“A reward—? Someone took out a job on him?” Sky says like a gut punch.

Ekko throws up his hands in frustration. “That's what it sounded like to me! But only chem-barons and rich weirdos put out bounties like that. Nobody else heard anything about a bounty, and Emberflit won't talk to me cuz I'm an outsider!”

He swivels to Talis, who's making an expression like he's watching a train derailment. “I need a token. Viktor was making something for me?”

“Yeah…” Talis hesitates, and Ekko looks one second away from climbing him like a tree to scalp him. “It’s kinda like a homing device. The transmitter makes a specific signal, and the receiver always points towards it. I think the idea was—”

Ekko’s step stutters.

“Oh,” he says, small.

Sky and Jayce turn, concerned, but he keeps walking after a moment, eyes growing a little shiny. He's so young. “That's. Yeah. That works.”

The rest of the journey is spent in silence.

Viktor's door is the first one to the left on his floor, and Sky lets them all in with the spare key.

“Whoa,” Ekko says because Viktor's dorm is pretty empty except for a shit ton of mismatched chairs and stools and a massive chalkboard that takes up an entire wall. It could pass for a conference room that somebody stuck a bed in for some reason. There's very little in terms of personal effects. When Viktor moved into the Academy, all his belongings fit in a single messenger bag; even his clothes were furnished by the quartermaster.

Talis says, “That's… a lot of chairs.”

Ekko gives him such a look of judgement that he looks taken aback, the rusty gears in his head lurching to life and finally dawning on why a man with a bad leg might need to sit frequently. Ekko looks at Sky and Heimerdinger like: this is the best you have?

Viktor’s bookcase is jammed with books, journals, papers, but aside from what looks like a homemade quilt folded neatly on the bed, there's very little that marks the space as his. More to the point, Ekko’s tracker is nowhere in sight.

“Does he keep his projects in his dorm?”

“Where else?”

But aside from the haunting amount of chairs, his dorm is pretty sparse. There's a single box under his bunk with first aid supplies, medicines, a couple stray spare parts, and a spare cane which Talis seizes and studies. Heimerdinger starts looking through the bookcase, but there aren't any stashes in there; just books and papers marked with Viktor’s illegible scrawl.

He has a lab space, but it's shared; he wouldn't keep anything important there.

“He definitely doesn't keep it in the labs,” Talis confirms absently, cradling the spare cane. He meanders over to the window, frowning at it like it doesn't live up to his standards for craftsmanship. Sky is about to ask what the fuck he's doing when he reaches out and pulls out part of the window frame .

He looks at the metal bar in his own hand, startled, like he himself wasn't expecting that to happen.

“Uh,” he says.

“Holy shit,” Ekko says.

“I didn't mean to break it?”

“No—that’s—what? No, that's his—” Ekko shoves over, pulling off newly freed tile from the windowsill and exposing a hollow underneath.

“Viktor, you fucking psychopath,” Ekko mutters, fingers finding a seam. The whole wall underneath the windowsill hinges out, exposing a compartment big enough to fit a medium-sized adult.

The compartment, while not incredibly packed, clears up some questions about whether Viktor has any money whatsoever and also where he keeps most of his notes and projects. There are some emergency food rations and medical equipment neatly tucked behind the notes. Nestled in the corner with a couple other works-in-progress, Talis— Jayce —gently plucks up a soft cloth bag.

Inside: a compass-like device and a little pendant.

It’s gorgeous.

Viktor clearly put thought and effort into the design, edges grooves and machined to fit nicely in a small hand. The details are elegant but not too eye-catching. Jayce clasps a hand over it, and Ekko gasps a little—the needle glows in the dark. It does need a bit of cleaning and polishing, but it’s fully functional. Jayce flips the compass open, offering it to Ekko.

Ekko stares at it, watching the needle spin, drift until it settles pointing directly towards the pendant in Jayce's palm.

Ekko takes it like it's the most precious thing he's ever held. He’s so still that he's barely breathing.

The markings at the base of the compass are frankly beautiful. Ekko’s name is engraved at the bottom in bold relief.

“What’s the range?”

“At least from the Academy to the undercity.”

Ekko traces the details, reverent. He holds it up and watches it follow the pendant in Jayce’s hand.

“This is astounding,” Heimerdinger says, hushed. Ekko crouches down to show him.

Jayce is still holding the metal bar. “Will this work?”

Ekko looks like he'll fight them to the death if they try to take it away. “Yes, this is perfect,” he says with the slightest touch of sadness. “Thanks for helping me. I'll send you a message as soon as I get any news.”

“Kid,” Sky says at the same time Heimerdinger says, “Young man.”

They exchange a glance, and Heimerdinger straightens a little. “It would be for the best if you were not alone,” Heimerdinger says, patting Ekko’s hand as his face turns incredulous.

“Emberflit wouldn't talk to me, and I'm from Entresol,” he says.

“We're at least escorting you back,” Sky says with eyes to Jayce that dare him to contradict her.

The combined gazes of every adult in the room make him scrunch back.

Sky pulls out her trump card:

“You won't even have to talk to the enforcers on the bridge if we go with you.”

Ekko folds like wet paper.

The real challenge is getting Ekko to agree to stay for a night so they can prepare and get through customs at the bridge and also because Sky is very sure he didn’t sleep a wink in that detention cell. He’s starting to twitch like a demented owl.

He refuses to let the compass out of his sight, insists that they’re wasting time, and also implies that they don’t care about Viktor enough.

Jayce thankfully does not punt him like a football even if he looks tempted.

They manage to coax the child into sleeping on Viktor’s bunk which is so firm that it feels like a wooden board, but this is offset by the fact that Viktor hoards pillows like he does chairs.  Jayce seems to find this little tidbit adorable, if the fond little pat he gives to the pillow pile is any indication.

Sky and Jayce stretch out across a bunch of chairs shoved together in an arrangement that is somehow slightly more comfortable than the average Academy mattress and settle in for the night. They're not risking this kid sneaking out at night and getting arrested again. 

Jayce wakes up at the crack of dawn because he's a fucking morning person, apparently. He slept in his Academy clothes, and they decided last night that they were going to just take him and dunk him in the industrial runoff part of the river because nobody has plainclothes that'll fit him.

Heimerdinger cannot go with them because he is 1) the size of a cat, and 2) a councilor.

But he escorts them to the bridge where the enforcers sort of mindlessly let them through without even a sideways glance. Corruption is great when it's on your side.

On the other side, Sky and Ekko stand over Jayce while he puts his shirt on the ground and stomps all over it. He smears grime over his pants and holds his hands out like: tada!

“Yeah, this is fine,” Sky says.

Ekko looks on judgmentally: “Nobody will mistake him for a local.”

“Look at his shoes, nobody was ever gonna mistake him for a local up close, he's just gotta pass inspection from afar.”

Ekko gives in begrudgingly. He leads them into an abandoned building, down the stairs, and out onto an old fire escape. It overlooks the Promenade level, haunting greenish lights against gray haze.

He turns to them: “Have you guys ever climbed buildings?”

“What?”

“Like. Y’know. Parkour.”

“No?”

He smiles a smile that sets off every alarm in Sky’s head. “Don’t sweat it,” and he ducks under the railing of the fire escape, pointing downwards into the smog with ease despite hanging one-handed at the precipice of a bad fall. “That red roof there is good,” he says like any of them can see anything. “The silvery one is kinda rusting so I wouldn't trust it. Follow me.”

And then he drops.

Sky can't help that she shrieks. He disappears into the smog soundlessly, like a ghost.

A moment passes where she and Jayce just sort of stare at each other wondering if they just watched a child die when—

“You coming?” Ekko calls up from depths unknown. She can picture the exact shit-eating grin he's making. She's never felt the gap between Promenade and Entresol more keenly.

“Too scared?”

She won't be goaded by a child, she won't.  

A snort. “Fucking pilties,” drifts up from below, and Sky is vaulting that railing before she knows what she's doing.

She screams, but she lands, wobbly, on that red roof Ekko was talking about. He gives her a gap-toothed smile.

God, what a little asshole.

Now to heckle the actual piltie.

Chapter Text

Viktor’s childhood home is about a block of buildings in Emberflit Alley which look like they’re a bunch of mismatched apartments stacked on top of each other like a child’s building blocks. It's enough to make the engineer in Sky nauseous. Ekko tries to pronounce their name, but it just sounds like a mishmash of phlegm-y consonants: hershta? Hrzsht? Hhhrzschta? They decide to call them the Dalamorians. When Ekko, Sky, and Jayce get there, there's a Dalamori community gathering happening on the street, and the purpose of that gathering is to kick the shit out of two men.

“Maybe this is a bad time,” Jayce suggests. He has a handkerchief pressed to his nose and mouth. Ekko told him to ditch it, but the moment it left his face, Jayce had a violent coughing fit. He could not be more obviously from Piltover, watching a child throw a brick that barely misses one man's head with a look like a startled deer.

Ekko does not care. He marches up to an older woman and pulls out the compass.

In the background, one of the men cringes away and pleads as he shrinks underneath a burnt-out dumpster. This does not discourage the mob in the least.

Ekko announces, “I'm Viktor’s friend. I think something happened to him.”

They draw a lot more eyes than is comfortable for a people who've collectively decided to beat two men in the streets for reasons unknown. The woman doesn’t acknowledge his words, but her eyebrows shoot up when she clocks the compass.

She stares at him then stares at them then beckons someone over.

A child, probably eight years old, skips over while a crowd gathers around the men to take turns kicking them. The child accepts a lollipop offered by the woman. There's a conversation between the child and the woman which has a great deal of trills and harsh consonants and pointing at the three of them, then the eight-year-old says, lisping with a missing tooth, “Auntie asked where you got the box.”

Oh, great. The eight-year-old is the translator.

“It's a gift from Viktor to me,” Ekko says.

She hopefully translates this. The woman looks unimpressed.

“Auntie says it's more likely you stole it.”

“When's the last time anybody actually stole anything from Viktor?”

The lady gives them a thoughtful look. She waves at Sky and Jayce.

“‘Why’d you bring narcs?’”

“They’re not cops, he’s a piltie, and she’s upper-level.”

The kid gives them a very patronizing look like yeah, alright, but she relays the message. The lady gives them the exact same look. “I know what they look like, but they’re Viktor’s classmates.”

The woman gives them a deeply unimpressed stare, but her gaze catches on the compass again. Ekko, despite not allowing any other person to even give it a second look since it came into his possession, holds it out for her inspection. Sky suspects that if anybody makes any sudden moves, this is going to quickly devolve into a street brawl. The woman gives them a piercing gaze, and she calls someone over.

This time, it’s an older, matronly woman who had just been hitting a man with a cane. The woman catches sight of them and hurries over, wiping off her hands with an embroidered handkerchief. One of her hands is a prosthetic; Sky can recognize Viktor’s work.

“Ekko,” the woman muses in the same clipped accent Viktor has. “From Benzo’s, yes?”

Ekko’s eyes light up with hope: “Yes,” he says quickly. “I’m—I live at Benzo’s.”

She inspects the compass closely, tracing the machined grooves with her flesh hand. Then she reveals more of her prosthetic—an elegant thing. Gold and white acrylic. She flips up a panel in the forearm and reveals a maker's mark—something written in a script Sky doesn't recognize.

Ekko's face doesn't change, but Sky sees a little fidget that gives away his anxiety.

The woman carefully lifts the compass. She does some kind of twist-pull maneuver with the body of the device and reveals a hidden chamber nobody knew existed. Whatever she sees satisfies her. 

She flips the panel in her arm closed and looks at Ekko keenly. “You are the finger.”

That snaps all of them out of their reverie fast.

“The what?”

“The finger?” She looks at the translator child, who blinks and shrugs. “The… ah, the fingerling.”

Ekko’s mouth falls open. “Viktor calls me the fingerling?”  

Okay, that’s kind of funny.

“His boss is a yordle, and I’m the fingerling?”

Scratch that, that’s really funny.

Jayce is smirking. Sky has to press a fist to her mouth to avoid getting a pointy little elbow to the leg.

The woman turns her unnerving gaze on Sky next, and she frowns and says, “Sky.”

What?

Sky’s whiplash is like getting slapped. She fumbles for words, “I-uh, sorry, yeah, I'm Sky, how do you—”

“You and Viki played together as children.”

“Wait—Vicky? Hold on, played—as a child—you recognize me as his childhood friend?”

She wracks her memory for this woman, but she'd never even stepped foot in Entresol before today. Viktor was usually escorted by someone from his community whenever he ventured outside, but Sky’s childhood recollection is frustratingly blank on the faces and names of the people who accompanied him.

There is one thing she remembers, though.

“I’m sorry, uh, auntie? Teta?”

“Teto , darling,” the woman says, patting Sky's cheek affectionately. She even stops looking at Jayce like she's trying to decide how best to beat him up.

Ekko makes a wordless sound of outrage. Apparently, after breaking into the Academy, getting arrested, getting bailed out by a councilman, searching a weirdo’s dorm, and dragging two idiots through Entresol, all he needed to do was bring Sky here to get them to talk.

“I didn't realize anybody would recognize me,” Sky says, stunned. “Can I ask about Viktor? Have you heard any news?”

“Friends are important,” she says. “Viktor is, ah—” she says something, and the child helpfully lisps, “A hostage.”

“Oh,” Sky says with abject horror. “Is there… anything we can do?”

“We are opening negotiations with the Revolutionary.”

With the.

Rev—

The.

Revolutionary.

Silco?

Silco??

The horror of Viktor being kidnapped by a kingpin is only slightly offset by the thought of the kingpin trying to negotiate with this woman through an eight-year-old who’s translating for candy.

“It will be okay,” the auntie says probably because they're all just standing there, stricken, “this is not the first time this has happened.”

What the fuck kind of life has Viktor been living?

She invites them inside for tea. They agree because there's not much else for them to do.

The apartment they're led into is the size of a large closet. It has a low table and a rug which they all cram themselves around.

It's Viktor’s old apartment, the woman who introduced herself as Sofie says. Presumably the only reason it isn't crammed with chairs is that they can touch opposite walls of the room if they hold out their arms. He hasn't inhabited it for years, but they use it as a guest room occasionally. 

“Who's the revolutionary?” Jayce whispers while Sofie prepares tea in another room.

Sky gapes at him.

“He's a drug kingpin,” Sky says blankly. Silco the Revolutionary. He's a figure of almost-legend—one of the leaders of the revolution that wasn't. 

Ekko chimes in, “His name's Silco. He's been pushing this new stuff. Shimmer. I don't know why he would take out a job on Viktor.”

“We do not know either,” Sofie says primly, sliding each of them cups. “We are hoping to get Viktor his medicines at the moment, then we may discuss terms.”

She dumps a generous portion of what smells like paint stripper into her tea and offers it to them. Sky slaps a hand over Ekko's mouth before he can agree. He licks her palm because he's a little asshole at heart.

“We found the kidnappers—” she indicates the public beating going down outside—”but they don't seem to know the motivation behind the kidnapping.”

Ekko nods firmly. “Making an example.”

“Yes,” she agrees, then laces her fingers together in a habit that abruptly reminds Sky of Viktor. “Sky, I must ask that you bring the medicines from the topside. Viki has never been in good health.”

“Oh, his prescriptions,” Sky says, realization dawning. “Yeah, I'll talk to his doctor and get the schedule.”

Ekko opens his mouth and closes it again, fidgeting with his compass.

He looks down.

Sofie looks at him, stern face softening just a bit. “Speak, fingerling.”

Ekko doesn't even protest the nickname. He says, small, “What if they won't give him his medicine?”

Sofie’s face contorts around something like a snarl then fades back to a stern neutrality. She leans back in her seat, watching the public beating outside—they’re dragging the whole production to the mouth of the alley—and says, “We do not tolerate attacks on our own.”

He looks at her with glittering eyes.

Jayce says baselessly, “We'll break him out before anything bad happens if it comes to that.” He even rubs Ekko’s shoulder without getting bitten.

Some invisible tension in Sofie’s shoulders releases as she watches. She settles onto a ratty cushion, inhaling her tea. “I am pleased,” she says with deliberation, “that Viktor has made friends so good as to visit this part of the city. We are a, ah, insular people, yes? The language, the culture, it is difficult to mix with others. I thank you for your care.”

Sky's heart breaks just a little.

“It's our honor to know him,” Jayce says suddenly, seriously. “He's… incredible. He's one-of-a-kind.”

He earns them their first smile from the stern woman and a little cheek pat.

Chapter Text

Withdrawal is not as bad as Viktor anticipated. Maybe it's early in the making. Maybe everybody else is just awfully dramatic about it.

It goes without saying that Viktor is fairly useless. He'd left the undercity to start with because the air was exacerbating his diseased lungs, and lounging around on a stone slab in this death trap cave with no heating or ventilation is hardly helping. The explosive coughing fits aren't even part of the withdrawal. The withdrawal makes itself known in hot flashes and tremors. The constant sweating and grinding migraines.

It probably speaks to something that he’d been expecting far, far worse. He's not even hallucinating. Probably. He's had medication interactions worse than this.

Singed is apparently unwilling to simply leave him to succumb in peace, so he gets some approximation of his previous medical regime. 

“It is no use,” Viktor says, taking the injectables and the pills Singed hands him. “I suspect even a mild withdrawal will kill me if I don't return to my previous schedule. That hinges on Silco.”

“You must survive, Viktor,” Singed says and jabs him with a syringe.

Maybe it’s helping stave off the withdrawal, but frankly, his health has always been a delicate balancing act of treating one thing and afflicting another, and there are no substitutions for some treatments. Also, he’s not a doctor, but he’s pretty sure that’s not how that works.

He mostly stays sickly on his stone slab, getting some approximation of medical attention and passing the time that he’s lucid reading the research papers and books Singed keeps leaving behind like someone trying to lure a feral cat into their lap with treats.

Eventually, Silco must get impatient with the cripple eating on his dime but not doing any actual work because a couple guards come knocking at Singed’s door with grimaces like they’d drawn the short stick. They whisk away Viktor to Silco’s mansion. Sort of. He limps his way there so slowly that he can tell they’re tempted to just grab him and carry him like a sack. Mysteriously, they don’t; they don’t even jostle or heckle him. Maybe it’s no fun kicking a man who’s already down, but frankly, that’s never really stopped anybody before. They’re the most polite kidnappers he’s ever met.

Or maybe he's just that pitiful. He feels awful by the time they get to Silco’s mansion.

Silco’s office is probably purposefully laid out to make all of its visitors uncomfortable—no seating, frankly hideous decor, light from the window streaming directly into Viktor’s face. It's uncomfortable for Viktor, but that's hardly any accomplishment; all he needs for discomfort is for there to be nowhere to sit.

He gets deposited in the office, takes a weary glance around, and sits on the floor.

Silco executes a villainous chair spin that is entirely wasted on Viktor. Viktor is busy. Viktor is leaning his head on the cool wall, grinding his palm into the ache in his bad leg because physical exertion has made everything a hundred times worse.

“You’re looking worse,” Silco notes, evil monologue apparently averted.

“I am worse,” Viktor agrees. He stretches out his leg. His scalp aches like it’s too much of an exertion to keep his hair on his head.

Silco shrugs, apparently unbothered. He probably deals with addicts all the time; this isn’t far off. He slides an envelope forward—a letter. His name is on it in Sofie’s handwriting.

He wonders, briefly, if it would work for Silco to threaten him with the safety of his people. Probably not. They hardly need protection. The Dalamori enclave is best known in the undercity for being the inventors of napalm.

“Viktor.” Silco says. “From the steppe Dalamori enclave, hm? They care about you an awful lot for someone who left when they were twelve.”

Viktor tilts his head, curious to see where this is heading.

“Your father was a miner, your mother a mechanic. You were born with a twisted leg,” he recites like he's reading off a summary of Viktor’s life. “Your parents died on the night of the Bridge Massacre. You must've been… ten?” He doesn't wait for an answer. He already knows it. “No. Eleven. Your elders cared for you, for the orphans of our failed revolution, how lucky. But you left a year later—you worked for Singed for a year, then had your falling-out. And you were working odd jobs until you started attending the university.”

Viktor shrugs. Silco takes this as a signal to continue.

“What a strange traitor you make,” he muses, flicking the lid of his lighter open and closed. Flame sparking to life then snuffing out with each flick. “Scraping and crawling to get out of here then turning around and coming back every month. Tell me, Viktor, why is that?”

“What can I say? I miss the Zaunite air.”

Silco is building up to something that makes Viktor’s stomach sink with dread, something far more effective than any trite threat. He flickers his eyes like he’s amused. “I even went to the trouble of acquiring some of the inventions you sell at Benzo’s shop, hmm?” He slides open a drawer and starts laying out familiar devices on the table as he lists them, “Air filters, water filters, gas leak detectors, fuel-efficient lamps, gas masks, prostheses —” with a clank, he tosses a whole prosthetic hand on the table, the stump of it still stained with the blood of whoever they'd taken it from. Viktor flinches at the sound. His head throbs in synchrony.

“You’re no class traitor,” Silco concludes like a judge announcing a sentence. “You left because you had to. You want to make us better. You want to return.”

The breath leaves him. He hesitates, and Silco watches the whole thing with eyes like a snake. His rebuttal is weak. “Is that what Singed told you?”

“Your own actions give you away, child,” he laughs, victorious. “Singed still thinks you’d be persuaded by scientific advancement alone.”

He laces fingers together, leaning in. Viktor can feel the trap coming a million miles away, but he's helpless to stop it. “I'm not nearly as convinced.

“Why don’t I give you a better deal? You build a prosthetic arm for Sevika and an eye for me—” a hand ghosts over his scar—“and I install your precious air filters along every major footpath in Zaun?”

Oh, you bastard.

You fucking bastard.

“Who’s to say,” Silco sneers, “Maybe once living conditions in Zaun are better, I won’t have to rely on Shimmer to maintain power. Maybe we can organize a real government, not just whoever the richest crime lord happens to be.”

Shit.

Viktor knows he’s given himself away when he lets the offer hang in the air between them for too long. He shakes like an addict, taking deep, rasping breaths.

“And at the end of this,” Silco says, dripping poison, “you walk free. It would be a pity to let such a fine mind go to waste.”

Singed greets Viktor upon his return with a syringe to the thigh. Rude.

Viktor is in no position to object, being dragged as he is.

He gazes at Viktor like a shark. “Do you understand, now?”

Viktor spits. He's soaked with sweat. “Yes,” he says.