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There is little that Viktor puts his faith in that he cannot see for himself. By nature, much of his work is invisible. Slowly revealed to him by numbers and equations and symbology that he must decode. The magic to science, the unknowable becomes solvable in bits and careful pieces. He wouldn't say a 'higher power' is something that holds much bearing to him. At least in the sense that it is something to live his life by. As a child, he could recall some teachings of Janna. His mother's whispered prayers for him to be made better when she believed him asleep that would go unanswered did little to convince him of her existence, but...on some level, he supposes...he can see the appeal. The draw. The idea that there is something so much larger than yourself that you need only surrender, and trust.
Unfortunately, he is good at neither.
All told, though...he is still human. And humans, even the most brilliant of them, often put their faith into something. It's nearly a compulsion, he thinks, though that is not his area of expertise. If not divinity, then into luck. If not luck, to themselves, if not to themselves, then to the others around them, likely...just as broken as the believer. Viktor could fall into a few of these, of course, but...there was another he would turn to.
Even now, pouring over notes from their most recent experience that made little sense, his fingers twitched in patterns he recognized. Anticipation. Boredom. He struggled to keep his mind against the page as this fingers flicked and jerked. With a huff, he grips his bad knee, using the dull ache that rattles through him to keep himself a bit more grounded, but that becomes unbearable and unsustainable rather quick.
"Alright, alright-" He huffs, to no one but himself, as he pushes his chair to the side of his desk, and opens the bottom most drawer with his personal effects. A few medication bottles, the specific pens he favored, and among all the tiny trinkets Jayce had brought him over the years, a green, velvet drawstring pouch with an embroidered dogwood blossom. He hadn't brought much from the undercity. There wasn't exactly much to bring, any how. But this? This, his family had kept safe for a long, long time. Perhaps even before there was a city to be under, and it was all just land. And inside, a deck of cards. The twitching of his fingers is soothed. They shuffle easily, bending into the familiar arch of his hand in the way a beloved pet might. He doesn't even know what he's looking for really, keeping his eyes locked on the notes as he plays the cards back and forth against his palms until-
One falls out, and onto the table.
He flips it over and scowls at the upside down image of a hermit in cloak and staff, staring up at a steep mountain, eight chalices discarded at his feet. A suck of his teeth. "Wonderful," he hisses. "thank you for the insight I already had." He pushes the card aside, letting his eyes continue to scan as the shuffling begins anew. Another two. A third. "Chatty." He mutters under his breath, but turns them over nonetheless. A woman cradling her child against an ornate stained glass window depicting five coins, a heart pierced by three swords, and a young man valiantly, or perhaps fruitlessly, surrounded by staffs and gripping his own in defense. Translation: No good to be found here. With an aggravated huff, he tosses the cards down. "What do you know?"
"What does who know?"
The sound of another voice in the lap sends Viktor nearly out of his skin as he rushes to hide the cards and push them back into the drawer. "Nothing. Just talking to myself-"
"Hah, well, I can see that!" Jayce's easy tone puts him at ease, somewhat, as he comes to look over Viktor's shoulder. "Still no luck?"
"...no. None." He sighs, running a hand up to his forehead and further into his hair. "I would not be surprised if these runes were in fact changing their behavior simply to spite us by how little sense this is making."
"Mmh...well, we'll figure it out, hm? Maybe after some rest?" Jayce clapped his shoulder in that way he did when he was attempting to break Viktor's concentration. "It's getting late, maybe we both just need some shut-eye, and this will all make sense in the morning."
Viktor's grunt said he wasn't keen on the idea. But before he could really voice that, Jayce's hand entered his peripheral. "What's this?"
To Viktor's horror, he'd missed a card. The seven of wands, the youth with the stick, had gotten stuck int the fold of his notebook, and Jayce was now pulling it to examine rather thoughtfully. He flips it over. Turns it this way and that, all while Viktor does his best to seem completely detached and unnoticing of the situation. "Seven of wands...what's this?"
"Hm? Oh-" Viktor takes it from his hand as though he, too, were examining it. "Must have...must have gotten caught on something in my bag, earlier. A...flier from a business, or something." He puts it down on the desk. Makes a calculated move to push it out of the way. But Jayce crooked a brow.
"...Uh huh. Is that what you were talking to earlier?"
"Oh please, Jayce, I'd have to have fallen to a new low to be speaking to an advertisement. I'd ask you to commit me if I didn't think they'd take us both on the spot." To his annoyance, Jayce reaches to take the card again, and flips it over.
"I'm not seeing...anything else though, you know? No address, no shop name or anything...seems like a really nice business card, if that's what it is, but..." he shoots a look to Viktor. "looks more like a playing card. You're sure it's not yours?"
"...I am sure." Viktor moves as though he's setting up his microscope. Knowing full well that he had no samples to examine.
"Oh, so you wouldn't mind if I just..." Jayce's grip tensed ever so slightly on the card. "threw it away? If you don't want it, that is!"
With a great heave of annoyance, Viktor snatches the card from his partner and guards it beneath an arm. "Fine, yes, it is mine, you have caught me, leave it be."
"Hey, I'm not judging!! What, playing a game to clear your head? Sometimes I doodle to get mine clear! I've never seen cards like these, though..." Jayce perches himself against the table, his suggestion of rest forgotten in the promise of learning something new about Viktor. And that something, apparently, being that Viktor played cards.
"...if I tell you, you'll truly have me committed. And maybe rightfully, this time." Viktor opens the drawer to retrieve the other cards and slide the discarded one back into place. The deck was old. Backs decorated with stars against a deep blue color that evoked imagery of the night sky.
"Promise, I won't." Jayce's voice gets a bit softer. A bit more sincere...it was rare that Viktor ever, ever, mentioned his life before Piltover. That time had ended. It was behind him. And mentions of it often only brought mistrust and ire. Though Jayce-
...Viktor's hand hesitated in where he moved to seal the cards back into their velvet prison. He met the other's eye, brow set in a hard line, attempting to discern if that was, in fact, true. That years of partnership would not be lost in the face of Viktor admitting to some amount of belief in superstition. And Jayce, for his part, was doing his absolute best to appear so deeply and wonderfully earnest that there wasn't any possible way that Viktor wouldn't believe him. Trust him.
With a sigh...Viktor reveals the cards once more. "These...were my mother's." Is all that he says at first. A careful and practiced hand fans them out against the table, displaying the art on their faces. The careful illustration that had withstood the test of time. Spiraling, swirling art nouveau images, edged in silver that was beginning to fade from all the hands they'd passed through.
Jayce now dropped his teasing, looking at the cards with one of...real reverence. Appreciation. His hand hovered over them, looking to Viktor for approval, who motioned that he could touch. His fingers fell to an image of a knight, clad fully in armor, cradling a chalice in his hand. Viktor hummed. "Figures."
"What, what figures?"
"That you would pull that. The knight of Chalices is a dreamer," Viktor says, looking at the image with a tilt to his head. "The kind who focuses on ideals, goes running after his heart...A real romantic type. In tune with emotion and desire. But he's got this awful tendency to be a braggart. Egotistical." He flicks his eyes to Jayce with a smirk. "Sounds like someone I know."
Jayce scoffed, but the way his cheeks colored said he was flattered. If...perhaps a little defensive. "So...hah- What, are they...what?"
"They're called Tarot." Viktor said, turning them back over and shuffling them again. "Said to give you insight where...vision is perhaps...limited. My mother? She was quite the reader. Whenever someone in the community was expecting, they'd come to her. She'd take a look at the cards. Give advice where she could. And say what you will, but she had good instinct for these things. I...mostly just use them now to give myself new perspective. Today, however, they're telling me that this is a lost cause and I should cut my losses. I doubt they're truly saying anything of merit, but-" He sighs. "...clears my head. Makes me look from a different angle. That's all I need-"
"Do me-!" Jayce was eager now, pulling up a seat to the table. "Do me! Look at the cards for me!"
That gave Viktor another pause. He quirked his lips, gut reaction to refuse but at the same time...finding no real harm. "Well, typically, we ask a question. Do you have one?"
"...Not really, but...I don't know, what do the cards say about me?" Jayce gives a shrug, crosses his arms on the table and leans into them as Viktor fingers over the cards in thought.
"General, then. I believe I can do that. It's been...some time since I'd read for anyone but myself, and even then, I did it sparingly." But despite his words to the contrary, his fingers dance over the cards with skill. They practically dance between his digits, in a satisfied purr of material manipulated by a master. It's with no small amount of pride he knows Jayce is staring at his hands, transfixed. And when all is shuffled, he starts to pull. "We'll...start with three. Then you can ask anything else, hm?"
Jayce gives a silent nod.
Once Viktor feels he's showboated enough, he pulls three cards from the top and splays them out with a hum. "Ace of swords...Quick to action. A mind of clarity, and focus...this card usually represents eh...a new inspiration. Cuts through everything else. Like a new project that you can't get away from. Then the...Seven of coins. See here-" He points to the card, where a farmer stands with the beginnings of his crop, where the coins spring from the earth. "His bounty is coming, but it's not quite arrived. If he picks it now, he'll profit, but not as much as he could have if he waits. If he's patient. But even so, there's evidence of success. A growth. In yourself, or in your work, could be either. And finally...ah. The artist." He flips the card for Jayce to see more easily, depicting a figure crouched low to the ground, drawing tablet in hand, and gazing up towards the sky. "Perhaps those doodles of yours aren't so bad after all, hm? My mother made this card...it...ah, it's the card of a visionary. Someone...someone who sees what could be, rather than what is."
Jayce stares at the cards, looking them over, and attempting to see what Viktor did in the symbolism, in the story. And while the images were still lost on him, when Viktor explained it, he could see himself in the cards. He could see his face in those left blank or turned away. He hums in acknowledgement. "...I mean...I guess that's all pretty accurate." He muses, before looking up to Viktor. "What about you?"
"Hah, they always say the same things." Viktor says, throwing out three more cards without thinking about it. He gives a click of his tongue in recognition. "See? The other cards always vary, but this one-" he taps the final card of the three "is almost always the same."
The Tower.
Jayce stares at it for a second...and finds himself unsettled by the imagery. Gone were the warm colors and soft imagery of his cards, of the rest of the set thus far, Instead, this was a tower that scraped the sky, beset by storms and lighting, while a figure wrapped in blue plummeted to the earth. On his face was a silvered mask, in the same detail as the edging of the cards, flailing as he fell.
"This first card," Viktor continues "Is justice. Lady with the scales, she balances all to find fairness. Action against intention, Deed against misdeed, She will find the balance between them and give to each what they are owed, for better or worse. Then, the King of Chalices. He's meant to represent...humanity. Compassion. Leadership. Passion. He's meant to be a teacher, and a kind one. He does not rule by force or by fear but through the respect he has earned. Which makes this-" he taps the Tower "all the more upsetting. The tower is...the end of all things. The tower shatters because it is built upon something...inherently broken. The foundation is ruined, and so everything built upon it must come down. And that includes those who have made homes in that tower." He sighs, looking at the cards and letting his fingers flick over them. "...figures. If we're to take it literally, the tower as the body, mine was never that stable to begin with. And eventually, it must crumble. My mother pulled it when she was first expecting me, and apparently I kicked when she did. A troublemaker from the start."
Jayce looks on...more somber, now. Viktor moves to put the cards away, and he can't quite stop himself from reaching out to grab the other man's wrist. Viktor meets his eye. For a long second, neither speaks...before Jayce finally manages-
"...what about us? This partnership, I mean...can it say anything about that?"
That earns him a wry smile. Viktor looks at the deck in his hands and gives a nod as he pulls three more. "That is a question I feel I can answer on my own, but...why not, hm?" He spreads the cards before flipping them over...and giving a soft hum. "The six of coins, the Well...and the World." For a long moment, he just stares at them, a softness in his eyes that Jayce had rarely seen elsewhere.
"...what does that mean?"
"...The Well is another card my mother made. She said...it reminded her of me, when I was little. It's knowledge of all things. The nexus of ideas and creativity. Beginnings and ends. Water flows out, and so must eventually flow back in. It is a card of transformation. Followed by...the six of coins." His hand overs over the image of woman in a blue cloak, a scale in one hand and the other extended to two figures who beg at her feet. "This...is a card of equity. Charity. A give and take as needed to find balance between two parties. So...I would suppose that is you and me. And the world..." He hums, motioning now to the final card, Where clouds entangle an ethereally beautiful figure. Their eyes closed in a rest that could be momentary, or could be eons, heralded by the four elements from the other suits. "...the world is the oyster, I guess. The completion of a journey. Finding fulfillment. Expansion beyond the physical. What we're doing is good. Leads to good things, someday, I believe."
Jayce feels a tension leave his shoulders, staring at the cards in a sort of relief. From the Tower to the World...he could see now why Viktor found a sort of comfort in these cards. A new perspective. Some distance from the problem.
"Well, have I completely shaken your faith in me as a researcher?" Viktor asks, now putting the cards aside for good.
"No...I mean, that just made me want to work that much harder, so I'd say it worked pretty well." Jayce leans his cheek onto his fist, watching Viktor delicately slide the cards away. Back into the pouch. Back into the drawer.
"Hah, well, I'm glad I could be of assistance, now...if only I could make any progress on this...damn..." He sighs, rubbing a finger at his temple. For the first time, Jayce actually looked at the page, at the section that Viktor was working on and had to stifle a laugh. "What? What, what are you laughing at? You don't laugh at superstition but here you are laughing at my numbers-"
"Because your numbers are wrong- ow-!" Jayce buckled as Viktor caught his ankle with his cane and gave a tug.
"You take that back, Talis."
"No, no, I'm serious!! Remember, that meter on the acceleration measure is off by two. I haven't gotten around to fixing it, so if you entered your numbers regularly...you're coming up two short on this, this...and this."
Viktor stared at the page in disbelief for a moment, doing the quick mental math to find that Jayce was, in fact, correct. That his numbers had been off. That there had been no point in looking at this from the beginning because-
....because it was a lost cause. Cut your losses.
"Damn..." He hisses, dropping his head to his hands. "Fine, well-" He snaps his notebook shut with a grumble. "Fine, I'm...calling it a day, then. Can't stand to look at this anymore tonight."
"Tell you what," Jayce takes his notebook and flips back to the experiement. If you get some rest...I'll get that measure fixed for tomorrow morning! You just plug everything in and boom, good as new. Deal?"
"...Deal." Viktor offer him a crooked smile. A twisting of his lips to one side of his face that always felt more genuine than any grin he'd manage elsewhere. "But if it's not fixed and I have to manually adjust it all by two, I'll have your head."
"It's a promise. Tomorrow?"
"...Tomorrow."