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Viktor lays there, against the mattress and beneath the duvet, and he thinks. It feels like everything and nothing runs through his mind at the same time, his thoughts both too loud and too quiet as he stares up into the darkness of his bedroom in the unsociable hours of the night. It feels suffocating yet freeing, the emptiness - the silence . He feels vulnerable and exposed and weak as he lays there alone, body shivering but lacking the executive function to do something about it. He’s a cold man by nature, so the shivers are almost comforting in the way they wrack his body.
It’s not often that Viktor allows himself moments like these. In fact, he cannot recall the last time he did. He’s constantly fighting. Fighting to prove himself worthy as a Zaunite, fighting to get people to look past his disability. Fighting for others, for those less fortunate than him who are still confined to the Undercity, suffering effects from the poisoned air in the fissures not too dissimilar to his own. Viktor realises, sometimes, that he fights for everything but himself. He realises that no one fights for him. Jayce argues that it’s not true - that he fights for Viktor - but the less logical part of his psyche that he keeps buried just can’t accept that as fact no matter how many times he offers a polite smile and a ‘Thank you, Jayce’. Hextech was made for people like Viktor in mind, but never for him. Jayce reminds him that curing his illness is now one of his priorities since he collapsed in the lab, but Viktor knows he doesn’t have the time left to see the outcome. It won’t happen in his curbed lifetime, he knows that with certitude.
It makes him sad, truly. Right in the depths of his heart where it pulls at the strings like a belligerent child denied a want. Viktor would love nothing more than to watch Hextech - the years worth of research and experimentation - come to fruition. To be more than just a dream, more than something the Council sees as something to exploit and line their pockets with. It makes Viktor sad knowing that no matter what happens with Jayce’s dream, he won’t be there to experience it alongside him. It’s a painful piece of knowledge, one that feels like rocks in his stomach and water in his lungs. One that makes him want to claw disease from his blood and flesh like a feral beast taking apart its prey. He cannot change the outcome - and it hurts more than he ever allows himself to admit - but Viktor is happy to be there for the journey. He’s happy to be the one to help Jayce along the way, to give him the tools and skills he needs to continue on for the decades more he will live without Viktor by his side.
Viktor lays there, the backs of his eyes burning with tears unshed as he lets them close with a heavy sigh. How long had it been now, since he allowed himself the opportunity to sit and feel? He figures the last time his thoughts, his fears , caught up to him was when he scattered Sky’s ashes, staring down from that ledge and wondering if the concrete and flowing water below would be enough. How stupid he had been. Viktor remembers the look on Jayce’s face. Those words. Am I interrupting? A beautiful and melancholic parallel to when he’d found Jayce in a similar position. Even now, the guilt of behaving so selfishly claws at the back of his throat like a beast, bringing bile along with it. He can’t believe that, even for a second, he’d thought of doing such a thing.
Except right now, he can. Viktor can imagine the wind in his hair, fluttering against his clothes as the Earth beckons him closer with the siren’s call of death whispered between the cracks in the concrete. He imagines the impact. Would he die straight away? Would he be left there, in even more agony than he already was with a body that was rotting away? His fingers subconsciously reach down to scratch at his thigh, at the scabs over the runes carved one night. He remembers pausing at the first break of flesh, the catharsis that came alongside it surprising him. It shouldn’t have, really. Viktor knows people hurt themselves, he’s not stupid. He’s thought about it too. But he hadn’t expected the oxymoronic pleasure, thinly veiled behind the pain. Hadn’t expected that with each line etched permanently into his skin, his mind became less and less filled with fog. It hadn’t been enough to stop him from injecting shimmer into the meat of his leg, but he could certainly understand the appeal.
Though at the same time, he supposes he can’t understand it. He wonders if that’s because no amount of pain could distract from what he already feels where his illness has progressed over the years. The pain of pins forcing his spine and right leg to be stable, the pain of braces digging into his shoulder, his torso, all the way down to his ankle. Viktor wonders how anyone could willingly subject themselves to the superficial pain of an open wound, though he understands why so many seek comfort in it. After all, physical pain is tangible. People can see cuts, burns, scars. They can’t see the turmoil, the unbearably crushing maelstrom of emotions that make someone feel like that’s their only way to express how they’re feeling.
Viktor lets out a curse as his nail catches on scabbed skin, tearing off his body’s hard work and feeling blood accumulating under his nail. He pushes the duvet away so as to not get any blood on it, but he makes no effort to move and clean his skin. How can he, when suicidality sits in the grooves of his cortex like the gaps between the creases were homes specifically made for it? Viktor rarely admits to himself that he has days like this - never admits them to anyone else. Weakness is only used as a weapon, a tool to exploit people. Viktor is a lot of things. One thing he will never allow himself to be is weak. Vulnerable. Flayed open like a patient on a post mortem table, blood and guts and viscera exposed to gazes that ought not be there. Viktor has spent decades dragging himself through Piltover, bringing himself up to where he is now as the co-founder of Hextech. He refuses to let people see him as someone who needs looking after, someone who depends on other people for one reason or another. Viktor has spent too much of his life proving to people that he is anything but .
Pain seeps into every inch of his body, giving Viktor little to no reprieve even in sleep. He can feel his body decaying from the inside out. Can feel his lungs shedding their lining and forcing him to bring up the slough with poorly hidden coughs that leave blood streaked across the palm of his hand or against the fabric of a handkerchief like some kind of mockery. A reminder that day by day, his body is giving up on him. Like he can’t feel it. Like he can’t feel the way his posture deteriorates even with metal fusing the vertebrae in place. Like he can’t feel how each breath is more agonising than the last. Like he can’t feel shimmer thrumming through his veins, trying to turn him into something he isn’t. If it was just his leg - Viktor tries to rationalise - it would be fine. He’s used to that. Used to needing his cane (a crutch now, thanks to Jayce) to ensure his stability. It’s been that way as long as he can remember, and Viktor has long since found peace with the fact this is something that will be a part of him until death, even if he doesn't want it to be.
But of course, the Gods could never be so kind. Viktor can only think of two instances in his life where whatever deity was watching over him gave him something worth living for. The first, Heimerdinger offering him the position of his assistant at the Academy. The second, Jayce. Ever since Viktor interrupted Jayce, voice pulling him away from that ledge, the man has been somewhat of a rock in his life. A constant, no matter what. No matter the amount of pain he’s in, or how unsociable he feels, Jayce is there. He refuses to leave, digging his heels into the ground and reminding Viktor that they have to keep trying.
Viktor’s cheeks feel wet, and a shaking palm across his face confirms the tears falling from amber. He feels pathetic. He can’t believe that he’s wallowing in self-pity at - he glances at a clock - 2 a.m. It’s been hours now. He can’t believe he’s laying in his bed for the first time in years wondering if his death will mean something. If he will be missed. Viktor knows that yes, people will miss him. Viktor feels like that’s the biggest lie he’s ever told himself. This doesn’t suit him, he knows. The trembling and not-so-discreet sobs that echo out into the room are unbefitting of someone like Viktor, but he finds there’s nothing he can do to stop it. The last time he had cried was the accident with the Hexcore, when Sky had tried to pull him away and was instead whittled down to nothing but an urn and memories. He feels sick, choked cries stuck in his throat as he forces himself onto his side and heaves. The sobs turn into wet coughs as Viktor hurries to grab a handkerchief from the table beside the bed, gasping for air between silent cries of both physical and emotional pain. Viktor doesn’t look at the product of his emotions, already knowing the sight that awaits him - his illness painting a sickly portrait of itself against the fabric as he folds it and places it back down. He curls in on himself, the blood on his thigh leaving prints against his stomach.
Maybe in a different life, Viktor thinks, things are different. Maybe he isn’t disabled, or diseased. Maybe he’s healthy, like he’s meant to be, not rotting away like the core of an apple left discarded. Maybe he’s not different, not having to prove his genius to others who won’t believe in him. Not having to force the history books to remember his name through Hextech - and by extension, through Jayce. Viktor wonders if he ever gets the luxury of a name behind him in a different universe. It’s unlikely, he decides. If fate could be so cruel to him in one timeline, he doubts it would be so generous to him in another. He hopes, though, there is not a singular timeline where Jayce isn’t his anchor.
Viktor needs to sleep. Exhaustion feels as though it’s sinking deep into his bones, seeping out of his pores. He needs to sleep, but every time he closes his eyes he sees the view from that ledge. At that moment, it felt so inviting. The gentle sound of water trickling down against the wall, falling into the river it made for itself below. The gentle wind tousling his hair, the slight cold against his skin making him feel so alive . The almost gravitational pull of his psyche, beckoning him to step forward - just an inch, just enough that maybe his death could be ruled as accidental. He had just lost balance, his crutch slipping from beneath him and leading to a tragically preventable death. Accidental death is a lot more forgiving than suicide. Won’t leave people at his funeral, angry that he could be so selfish , that he could just leave everyone behind to pick up the pieces of the mess he left behind.
Viktor’s chest feels tight, and he can’t tell whether it’s his brain or his lungs to blame. The fault lands on his lungs, as it usually does, because accepting that his emotions pull such a visceral reaction from him is too real. It scares the man; acknowledging that his mind - as well as his body - is diseased feels Sisyphean in nature. He never claims to be without emotion, but this is not emotion. Viktor doesn’t know what it is, but it doesn’t feel human.
Then again, neither does he.