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When Viktor opens his eyes it’s to a now familiar head of tightly coiffed brown hair sitting in a chair pulled right beside his bed. The hand holding his is soft instead of calloused, small and light where he would expect a heavier weight, he has to close his eyes again to try and stop his tears from coming. His eyes feel hot and his throat feels scratchy and he has to take a deep breath before letting himself come online again.
“Hello.” he rasps out, closing his eyes again when his dry throat means he starts coughing, he feels the cold of an ice chip against his lips and he just opens his mouth so that it can be fed to him, letting all of his pride aside for a moment in the wake of his parched throat.
“Hi,” Elora answers meekly. Her voice sounds watery, he thinks he can hear the tears in it “I found you in the lab.”
“I’m sorry.” he finds himself surprised at how truthfully he means it, he knows it would not have been a pretty picture.
Elora hums, squeezing his hand tightly before a noise comes out of her throat, indiscernible between a sob or a sigh, Viktor sees her eyes go glassy before she closes them, allowing a few of the tears building in her waterline to freely fall.
“I was so scared Viki,” she tells him in a rough whisper. Viktor feels like the most wretched man alive, his heart squeeze a bit in his chest “I though that you were dead, i thought you were lost and you had gone alone and i was finding your body.”
Viktor has no words to apologize, his own eyes fill with tears at the devastation in her voice. He has known for a while now that he’s going to die and although he’s known that he’s going to leave people behind he thought that his relationship with Jayce has been so terrible that no one would really miss him. Realizing that someone actually will mourn him when the time comes truly humbles him.
“I am truly sorry, Elora.” he tells her, squeezing back her hand and wishing he knew the right way to comfort people, to love them, even. He refuses to think to himself about how late it is to wish for it.
“You have to take care of yourself,” she begs him, still clutching at his hand like a lifeline, there’s desperation written in the lines around her eyes “I know i will have to watch you die but please, Viki, do not make me watch you wither away.”
“I won’t.” he promises. He knows it’s an empty promise, he has no control over what the sickness will do to his body, but he knows that in this moment Elora needs this promise regardless. She nods at him.
“I’ve made sure he will be warned.” Elora tells him, breaking the silence. Despite the circumstances, Viktor finds himself giggling tiredly at the way she refers to Jayce, her continuous distaste for him never losing the hilarity to Viktor.
The silence that follows feels heavier now than it did before, he knows both of them are thinking about it. Where Jayce would have spent his night and early morning that Elora would find him collapsed and not the one he should be sharing his lab and research with, the man he calls his partner. They haven’t truly been partners for some time now. Sometimes he surprises himself with the fact that he can still recognize Jayce at all, although he knows that he can barely recognize himself as well and it’s only bound to get worse. He feels tired, empty and hollowed out like someone took a carving knife to his insides. He wants to blame his sickness, the rot that has taken his lungs, but he knows it’s not solely to blame. He hates that he knows this.
“I will have to go soon,” Elora tells him with a guilty face, he just shushes her, suddenly too tired to speak. He squeezes her hand again “but i will be back,” she promises him “as soon as i’m able to i will be back and i will make you company and i will tell you all the gossip about all the councilors you don’t like.”
They smile at each other at that, for a moment Viktor feels his chest tighten again, not because of a cough or his lungs seizing but because he’s happy he has this, he’s genuinely so happy that he has this friendship right now and right here, he isn’t alone and he wants to weep because of it.
“You know, Miss Elora,” he starts, huffing at the displeasure in her face at the niceties “I am quite glad i got drunk enough to feel safe in commiserating that terrible night, all those months ago."
Elora’s face softens at this, the lines around her eyes easing a bit. She’s told him before about how alone she’s felt since Councilor Medarda and Jayce’s relationship solidified, unmoored without the one she’s held closest to her heart. He remembers holding his glass high when she confessed it, smiling at her with a mouth that had become unaccustomed to smiling as of late, saluting their shared misery with the fact that the people they loved the most now belonged to someone else.
“I am quite glad too.” she tells him, finally smiling. The silence isn’t as heavy now.
He must have fallen asleep then because Elora is gone when he wakes again and in her place is Jayce. He’s disheveled, hair a mess and clothes mussed and with the bloodshot eyes of someone who barely slept, yet he still looks golden even in the awful hospital light. If Viktor were more inclined to poetry instead of science he might wax about how even after everything Jayce is still the sun, glowing and golden, and how Viktor only shines with whatever light Jayce sees fit to give him.
“Jayce?” he finally asks, his eyes feel heavier than the last time he woke. He hears Jayce let out a shaky sigh.
“Viktor,” Jayce exclaims, his voice shakes a bit, quieter than Viktor has ever heard from him “The doctors, they said-” he cuts himself off, Viktor thinks he already knows what the doctors might have told him, he exhales.
“How much time do i have?” he asks Jayce, it would have been cruel to ask Elora but it doesn’t feel so right now. Jayce wasn’t there he thinks to himself.
Jayce doesn’t answer his question, merely sighing tiredly and rubbing his eyes. Viktor suddenly feels furious, he wants to scream at him, get off the bed and shake Jayce and shout at him, ask him where were him and how dare he feel tired when it’s Viktor’s life that is ending, when it’s Viktor who’s been bearing all this weight but the fury leaves as fast as it came. It’s too much for him to hold on to rage right now, there’s just the foreboding feeling that his end is near. Instead of confronting his feelings he lifts his eyes and stares at Jayce, only to see him staring unblinkingly at something in his side table, frowning. Viktor turns his head and finds a small arrangement of yellow flowers with a simple card stuck in the middle, Jayce lifts his hand and plucks it.
“You-” Jayce starts before shutting up, he’s staring fiercely at the card, mouth pursed in the cute pout Viktor has always found endearing. He remembers calling Jayce a pouty baby once, the way he flushed red all over to the tips of his ears.
Suddenly Jayce drops the card on the side table again, getting up quickly with a half-assed excuse of talking to the doctors. Viktor stares at the flowers. There’s only one person at this point in his life who would care enough to have flowers sent to his bedside and he wonders what she might have written in the card to make Jayce so incensed. He knows Elora has a sharp wit under the guise of subservient assistant but he doubts she would put it in a card such as this. He tells himself that Jayce must be upset about having to cut short his time with Councilor Medarda, about something with the council, about Hextech.
There’s barely any noise in the room and he hasn’t been awake long but he already feels tired, wringed out like an old cloth. He closes his eyes and hopes that Elora is here the next time he wakes, that he doesn’t have to feel this alone. It’s all he will let himself hope for.