Archive of Our Own ^beta

Even the nurse’s hands are shaking. It’s odd, Viktor notes, that this has shaken her. The woman who had likely been given training on how to steel herself, rocked. In fact, Viktor seems to be the only one in the room who sits deathly still. He is a statue, at the center of the room, as chaos swirls around him in the form of shouts and rushing doctors and nurses and patients and carts of materials and screams and blood and copper and flames and ash and mud and pain. A boy in the middle of it all, the rock parting the river, 16 with eyes far too old for his face. They drift without focus and settle on nothing particular, the world doesn’t seem quite material anyways. He tries to ground himself, his senses. The taste of copper in his mouth, the smell of disinfectant and blood, the yellow glow of the lamps around the room and the distant movement of people, the clatter of metal on metal and the sounds of suffering that scream and beg and speak in hurried terms he doesn’t understand, the cold of the metal beneath his palms against the warmth of blood that drips down them, and the pressure of the nurse’s hand on his shoulder. But he doesn’t feel the pain. Not yet. He will. He’s being asked something but he can’t understand what, muffled sounds in a language he has knowledge of, but the dictionary in his mind seems out of reach, and he can barely grasp the words. 

He opens his mouth to speak. Blood drips onto his shirt. 

“Příští týden mám nastoupit do školy.” It exits his mouth before he knows what he’s saying or why he’s saying it. His words feel hollow. Everything is hollow. His tone is shockingly apathetic. He says it more for himself than anyone else, and he doesn’t realize he’s spoken in the wrong tongue until the nurse speaks again. 

“I don’t know what that means.”

He shakes his head. 

“Please. Tell me how this happened.”

He supposes all things start at the beginning. 

The beginning, to him, is long before his birth, when topside acquired a piece of land that they didn’t realize was occupied. They called it “the undercity”, but the natives called it Zaun. Home. In his language, it meant home. 

A language he may be one of the last speakers of. Even among his friends and family, he’s the only speaker now, and he ventures it would take quite a long time sweeping what’s left of his hometown to find another. It wasn’t that way forever. Ten years ago it must have had hundreds of native speakers. Ten years ago his people were alive. But even back then it was dying, albeit slowly.  He always dreamed of making a dictionary to submit to the great archive, so someday scholars could put together the pieces of his culture long since lost, but dreams change. 

He supposes it starts when topside moved their factories to the undercity and built them to dump their chemicals and empty their exhaust into the river. When the clouds blocked out the sun, they thought it was the weather. When the river changed color, they thought it was the Gods, but when the air became so thick they could see it with their bare eyes, they named it šedá, the grey. Most fled, but those who couldn’t, stayed. His parents were among those. 

He wasn’t the first to be born the way he was. Chyba a Janna, God’s mistakes, through the people outside his community just called them fissurechildren. “Born wrong”, though he had never believed that. His parents had told him that he was born that way on purpose. The river God had blessed him with the ability to breathe the air and drink the water, and taken his mobility as payment. He hadn’t questioned this until he was much older, the same point he stopped believing in Janna altogether. What had She ever done for him? 

He supposes it starts with his parents death. Their factory was only two blocks from where he lived. He was younger then, and much less mobile. He hadn’t woken up to the sound of screams or the glowing light in the distance, he had woken up to the smell of smoke, overwhelmingly strong. He had woken up to an empty bed and an apartment with air thicker than it normally was. Then he heard, and saw, and against his better judgement, he ran. He didn’t feel the pain as he made his way towards the glow, everything in his body fell quiet, the only thoughts in his mind were those of savior. It took him longer than he’d have liked to get there, but no amount of time would have made a difference. 

“Tatka! Matka!” His words were loud but impossibly hollow. He didn’t expect an answer. He knew better than to think the world was kind. The survivors settled outside were fewer than he’d hoped, and it hadn’t taken him long to survey the group, gathered in clumps around the entrance, and find that his parents weren’t among them. 

Once it was clear that there was nothing he could do, he turned to stone. 

He would look back later and wish he had reacted more at the time. Cried, screamed, hell just frowned instead of standing there, empty. In the following months and eventually years, he would never be given the chance to mourn or grieve properly. This was his only chance. But he didn’t cry or scream. He just stood there. A statue. His eyes locked on the floor and the sounds muffled and blurred around him. People he must have known at some point spoke to him familiarly, trying to get him farther from the flames that licked his face, but he was a rock. His body had been left empty. His mind had left it the moment he realized he was too late. He stayed until the flames had died down to embers and the cold night air had returned to envelop him. But he didn’t shiver, he didn’t blink, and remained unmoving until someone came to get him, a friend of his father’s who spoke gently and hugged him and convinced him to let her carry him back to bed. He didn’t sleep. His thoughts stayed on this awful idea. 

That as bad as he knew they would look, he wanted to see the bodies. 

He kept that thought with him well into his life; he wanted the closure of bodies. 

It’s a thought that returns to him now as he thinks back to the events of the night. He knows now. He’s grateful he never saw the bodies. He’s seen enough for a lifetime. 

But this is the trauma of the night talking. Truthfully, he supposes it started five years prior. 

He had just turned eleven. Two days ago, to be exact. As a gift to himself, he had saved up for parts. Months now he had been putting aside a spare cog or two from the doctor’s allowance until he had enough for the pieces he needed. When he was checking out, the man who ran the shop (Benzo, he would eventually learn) had asked what he was building. 

“A boat” he had remarked with a certain pride, but a greater fear. The man was quite large with a thick accent that made his words harder to understand, and he had an affinity for going on tangents Viktor had trouble keeping up with. But he seemed sweet enough, and didn’t seem to mind that Viktor responded infrequently. 

“Well, come back and show me if you ever get it workin’, eh?”

Viktor had simply nodded in response. 

Now, he trekked through the Lanes with a burlap bag containing his pride and joy. He imagined the shopkeep was waiting for a small boat with a spinning gear, and was honestly a bit excited to present this overengineered and probably needlessly complex toy. He was quite disappointed when he found the shop to be closed, having entirely forgotten it was a Saturday. He read the common tongue much better than he spoke it, and the sign on the door had made it quite clear that the shop would be closed much earlier on Saturdays. He had come right after work, and wasn’t happy with the idea of tucking tail and heading home. 

“You looking for Benzo?” A woman said as she passed the shop. Viktor nodded. “He’s probably at the meeting.” He gave her a puzzled look. “I’m heading over there right now. Want me to take you?” 

He nodded and smiled with a face he hoped said ‘thank you’

She was a tall woman, purple hair and a broad, happy face, and -Viktor noticed as she led him forward- quite pregnant. She outpaced him at first, but when she turned around and saw him behind trying to keep up, she seemed to slow her pace until he was back with her, and kept at what he knew to be a lessened pace until they made it to the “meeting location”

“What business do you have with Benzo, kiddo?” She asked. 

He liked the sound of her voice. It was calm and level, with a happy tone and a lightness he didn’t often hear. She didn’t pity or condescend him but she did seem to speak to him intentionally. Her accent was clearer than he usually heard and she spoke at a speed that allowed him to understand with little effort. He shrugged in response. 

“A man of few words. I can respect that” she leaned down and bumped his shoulder playfully. “It should treat you well in the meeting. Silco doesn’t much like being interrupted. Just stick to the back corner and Benzo will find you when they let out, hm?”

He nodded again. She chuckled. 

“Don’t suppose you’ll tell me your name?”

He paused. Her eyes were kind and her smile welcoming. “Viktor” he said quietly. 

“Well that’s a cool name. I’m Felicia. Viktor, that’s a fissure name isn’t it”

Suddenly the broken cobblestone roads were quite fascinating. 

“Oh, no. I didn’t mean that as an insult. Just trying to make conversation.” She explained. For some reason, he believed her. Perhaps because she had a strange authenticity to her, everything she said seemed genuine. Perhaps just because she hadn’t shown him pity yet. She still spoke to him as if he deserved to be spoken to, and that counted for something. “Do you know what these meetings are then? I didn’t want to treat you stupid, but I doubt the movement reaches all the way down there.”

He shook his head. Curiosity painted his face. 

“Well some of us don’t think it’s very fair. That Topside gets to tax us and send cops here and force us to work in bad conditions for a few cogs. So we get together and we talk about what we can do to change that.”

His face must have lit up the way she reacted. 

“Yeah. They’re open meetings, if you’re ever interested in coming back. No age limit. Although to be honest I’m not a big fan of getting kids involved. We talk about a lot of adult stuff, don’t want to make you grow up too fast.”

He was unshaken by this warning, and as he entered the bar, he was filled with both determination and expectation. 

The room was warm, not just in temperature but in feeling. It felt warm. Welcoming. It was filled with patrons drinking and smoking and sharing stories as they waited for the host, Silco, from what Felicia had said. It was so full that most patrons were standing by walls and tables, drinks in hand. Viktor went to take Felicia’s advice and find a place to stand at the back when he saw she had gone elsewhere, and he looked around for a gap in the crowd he could navigate through. Before he did, he heard Felicia call his name from across the room, where a burly man was leaving his seat. She beckoned him to sit and took the chair next to it, but he hesitated to sit. Had the man been kicked out of his place for Viktor? Felicia seemed to read his mind because she chuckled and said. 

“He’s a big boy, he can manage to stand for a few minutes”

Viktor didn’t sit. 

“Don’t be scared of him.” She chuckled. She realized it was pride more than fear. “Look, just sit. That man, he’s both stubborn and caring. He’ll leave that seat empty if you don’t take it just to make the point.”

He sat, leaning his cane against the table. “Did you make him get up?”

“I suggested it. And he knows better than to disagree.”

“He listens to you?”

“He has to.” She winked, “He’s my husband.” 

Viktor looked up at the man, towering over the table. At first he didn’t see it but now that he was closer, he noticed the bundle tied to the man’s back, which he was rocking gently as he listened quietly to their conversation. Within it, a lock of pink hair peeked out. 

“That’s Connel” she said, motioning to the man, who simply smiled back. “And the little one is Vi. We haven’t been able to get her down all day and she falls asleep on the way over.”

The man extended a hand and Viktor shook it. His palm seemed like a marble in the man’s giant grasp. He imagined the man was a miner, the calluses on his hands and muscular build seemed to support as much. The man was like Viktor, clearly, the quiet type. They didn’t get to discuss much more when the back door swung open and two men entered. The first was large, the same build as Connel, but tanner and with longer hair wearing a threaded shirt and a leather vest. Behind him was a man built much more like Viktor’s father, an image he fought away quickly. Tall and lanky, long shocks of black hair falling over his face. The two had a commanding presence and the room seemed to quiet the second they entered. Felicia introduced them in a whisper as Vander and Silco. She and Connel were the only ones in the building that didn't seem just a bit afraid of them. Silco scanned the room with his eyes and immediately locked in on Viktor, his gaze shifting quickly to Felicia with a questioning expression. Viktor didn’t see what she did to send the gaze away. 

“People debate which one is scarier but they're wrong. Those boys are just puppy dogs.”

The image made Viktor laugh.

Those details are quite clear in his recollection. The meeting itself is a blur for a few reasons. 

First, Vander did most of the talking, and his accent was, in many ways, worse than Benzo’s. Eventually, he’d adapt to this but at the time he was still only in his third year with the common tongue and although he could practice reading and speaking at home, listening was more difficult to come by. His line of work didn’t provide a lot of socialization, really just with one rather quiet man, and his lack of family and companions didn’t help that. In the years since their death, he could probably count the number of common conversations he’d had on his fingers. 

The second was because, although he’d never admit it to Felicia, he was quite lost in the words themselves. The pair discussed complicated political plans and unions and something called a coup and debated endlessly about industries he didn’t know existed in areas of Zaun he’d never been to. Even if the conversation had been in his native tongue, Felicia had been right, they mostly talked about adult things. 

The third was because he hadn’t even come for the meeting, and he found politics dreadfully boring. 

And the fourth was because he hadn’t slept in quite a while and had spent all day preparing samples while the doctor was out. His mind fought to stay in the present but if he were honest with himself (which he rarely ever was), he was already running on fumes. So it was a relief when the people started to get up and the meeting had seemed to be adjourned. He caught sight of Silco, making a B-line for their table, and ducked into the crowd to where he had seen Benzo earlier in the day. He had nearly forgotten why he’d come to the lanes in the first place when he finally entered a conversation with the man. 

“What are you doing here, kiddo?”

He mulled over the words once to understand them and twice to remember why he was there. When he did, he pulled out the boat. The pride in his tired face was palpable. Benzo took the boat in his hands and inspected it, spinning the rotors with a gentle finger. 

“This is great” he said with a more genuine tone than Viktor expected. “You made this yourself?”

He nodded and smiled. He did a lot of that. 

“How old are you?”

Viktor didn’t like saying that number, he was 99% sure he was pronouncing it wrong. That would be an issue now, he realized. But that was a problem for another day, so he held up his pointer fingers. 

“Eleven? Gods, this is good for eleven.”

That’s how you say it, Viktor sighed. He had, in fact, been saying it wrong. He made a mental note of the pronunciation. 

“uh-lev-in” he sounded out. “Ulevin, yes! Eleven!”

“Alright then. You uh, you got real talent kiddo. Your parents are engineers then?”

His face must have fallen the way Benzo reacted. 

“Guess not,” he said. His tone was more cautious now. “What are you doing at the meeting, kid?”

He didn’t exactly know how to answer that. Luckily he didn’t have to, as Felicia and Silco entered the conversation. 

“Said he was looking for you,” Felicia said. “Though he wouldn’t say what for. What’s that?”

“Boat,” Benzo said, handing it to her. She spun to rotors and looked around it, handing it off to Silco. Viktor didn’t love the idea of the man holding his work, but it didn’t seem like he had a choice in the matter. “Kid made it”

“You made this?” Silco asked. His voice was smooth but not comforting. Not yet, anyway. Some day, it would be one of the most comforting sounds he ever heard, but not yet. The man’s gaze was on the boat.  

He nodded, taking the boat from the man and inserting the key, twisting once, twice, and releasing. The mechanisms spun to life as he handed it back to Silco, whose eyes widened ever so slightly. The four watched through until the power died out and it was handed back to Benzo. 

“How old are you?”

“Eleven,” he said. He knew his accent still came through, but he was glad to be saying it right. He would rather not embarrass himself further in front of the man, who seemed to immediately take note of his accent, his cane, his clothes, his hesitation, the way he spoke. Silco’s gaze wasn’t entirely cold, but it was threatening. His eyes scanned the boy with scientific precision. It felt like being torn open and read like a book. Unnerving. 

“You’re a fissurechild then?” Silco said. The question was rhetorical, clearly, as he didn’t wait for an answer. “Either of your parents alive?”

Viktor was a bit put back by the bluntness of the question, but only shook his head in response. He tried not to appear upset, and seemingly succeeded. The man, Silco, certainly didn’t pity him though. He treated the boy as he would a colleague. 

“Unsurprising. Was it the grey?”

He shook his head. “Fire.”

“Not the one in the factory district?” This was the first time Silco showed any emotion, which Viktor noted as interest and possibly a bit of surprise. Not much, but enough that he stored the information in his mind. 

He nodded. 

“Mm. You’d have been, what? Eight?” Silco had returned to his apathetic tone. Umoving, unshaken. 

He nodded. 

“Is it just the leg? River isn’t always so kind.”

He nodded. 

“Good. Resourceful, then. Scrawny, quick, speak the language. You still live down there?”

Another nod. He was getting awfully tired of nodding. 

Felicia interjected what surely would have been a longer string of questions. “What’s with the third degree, Sil? I wouldn’t have introduced you if I knew you were gonna grill him.”

“You haven’t introduced us.” He turned back to Viktor and extended a hand. “Silco. Though I suppose she’s told you as much.”

“Viktor.”

He shook the hand but it didn’t feel very civil. 

“You a revolutionary, Viktor?”

He didn’t know what that word meant but he didn’t imagine it was a good thing. “Revolt” was a bad thing, and “revolution” had to do with rotation. He shook his head.

“Pity.”

Wrong answer. 

Felicia took Silco’s hand. “The fuck are you doing?” She asked in a whispered shout Viktor imagined was a weak attempt to keep him from hearing. “He’s a kid”

Silco maintained the whisper. “You know how untapped the market in the fissures is. The language barrier does more for Piltover than we like to admit. And in walks a boy who likely needs a job, who speaks the tongue, who could scrap if need be. I gather he has connections, all I’m suggesting is that if he wanted to, he could be useful.”

“He’s not a soldier” 

“But he could be an asset.”

“I’m an engineer.” He stated rather quietly. Both heard. This piqued Silco’s interest. 

“And what do you build, other than boats?” Silco asked. 

His voice had been rather stolen from him the entire conversation, but this single question gave it back. “I mostly specialize in mechanical design although I would say I am skilled with all dynamic systems. Most of my repair work is on air filters and lighting fixtures but my personal projects are all dynamic machinery. Things that move. I recently moved to prosthetic work, although I would not call myself skilled in that yet, and I have also been venturing into biochemical engineering but that would require more materials and a safer work environment. But for now, toys, single joint prosthetics, power banks, wired accessories. I could continue.”

Silco chuckled. “What do you do for work, again?”

His voice was once more taken. “That is confidential.” A bold move. He knew confidential meant private but he thought the context was wrong. 

“The factories then”

“Apprenticeship”

“Suits you.”

Viktor hated how this man seemed to glimpse so effortlessly into his mind. He didn’t glorify that with a response. The floorboards became fascinating. 

“Would you be capable of fixing a record player?”

His gaze rose. He nodded hesitantly. 

“Good. Ours has been on the fritz for months now.”

Felicia’s eyes grew wide and she turned aside. It was clear they spoke with one another but this time, they whispered properly. He didn’t know what they said, only that when they turned back, Felicia had a resigned and somewhat sad expression. She turned away and went to the back of the bar to speak to the larger man, Vander. Next to him, Silco and Benzo shared a conversational glance, exchanging silent words. Benzo nodded and left, handing Viktor his boat back and ruffling his hair a bit. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but decided against it, and left with a swing of the door. Now, Viktor was alone with the one man he had hoped to avoid the whole evening. 

Strangely, Silco’s features got quite soft. 

“It’s awfully late and you’re quite a long way from home,” Silco said. His tone had never wavered. “You can spend the night in our guest room and start work in the morning.” 

Viktor didn’t know what to say, but Silco didn’t give him the opportunity to do so anyway. With that, he turned and started toward the back of the bar. “Come on.”

As they passed the bar, Felicia and Vander grew quiet. She exchanged another knowing glance with him and left. She didn’t say another word to Viktor, but gave him a wave and a slight smile, one he knew to be forced. He waved back. 

“Watch him while I make up the guest room?” Silco said to Vander, who simply nodded in response. “He’s going to be taking a look at our record player.”

“Good, you know Fel hates it when it’s quiet in here.”

Silco left and descended the stairs behind the bar down to the basement. His steps were ghostly quiet, a practiced stealth to be sure. Left alone with the large man, he put the boat on the counter and pushed himself up onto a barstool, propping his cane against the counter. He dared not speak first, but Vander, in all of his threatening glory, seemed almost nervous to speak. He hesitated multiple times before he broke the silence. 

“So you uh, you built that?” Vander asked, pointing to the toy boat. Viktor nodded. “You uh, like building stuff then?” A nod. Fuck, he had to stop nodding already. “That’s nice. Fel says you speak Zaunite?” Nod. “How do you say uh, nice to meet you?”

“rád tě poznávám” Viktor said quietly. 

“Then rad te poznavam. I’m Vander.” He smiled. Viktor couldn’t suppress a chuckle at the man’s pronunciation. He realized that’s how he must have sounded to the others, speaking the common language. Mispronouncing 11. His laughter seemed to help the man’s smile. “That bad huh?”

“Viktor. And is not bad. You tried.” Viktor chided. He felt oddly comfortable, enough with the man to say what he couldn’t to Silco. “If you honestly need repairs I do not mind to return in the morning.”

“Don’t you live down in the Fissures?”

“So?”

“So it’s late. There’s all types in the Lanes.”

Viktor hesitated. It would be absurd to turn down a kind offer, especially when he rather needed one, but he knew better than to think he was lucky. When things seemed too good to be true, they usually were. “You… would let me stay the night? On nothing but my saying I will look at a record player and a toy boat?”

Vander hesitated a moment, turning back to wiping down the counter. “No one else is using the room. Why not?”

“And if I cannot fix your machine?”

He turned back to look at Viktor. “Then at least we know to start looking for a new one.”

“Why me?”

The silence lingered a moment as Vander looked away at the towel in his hands, midway through wiping down the counter. He collected himself and turned back. 

“Well,” Vander smiled. “A boy walks in who knows how to fix things and we need something fixed. Who am I to argue with the Gods?”

Silco returned, carrying a blanket 

Viktor looked up between the men, eyes full of wonder and doubt. “Thank you”

Vander resumed wiping down surfaces behind the counter and Silco motioned to the stairs, wordlessly leading Viktor down (at whatever pace, which didn’t seem to bother him), and into the room. It was small, barely furnished with a bed, a side table, and a lamp in the corner. But to Viktor, it was spectacular. He turned to thank the man again but found that he had been left alone in the room as the door closed behind him. He didn’t intend to fall asleep quite so quickly, it was unlike him to be so careless, he never fell asleep without surveying the area and securing his belongings, yet he slept. Quickly and effortlessly. 

That may have been where it started. With the feeling of safety. 

He doesn’t feel safe now, he just feels dejected. The world is spiraling out of control as he pictures the three in his mind. Felicia, Silco, Vander. One dead, one dying, and one who should be. How could he have known then, that the offer really was too good to be true?

He had woken later than he intended, in an unfamiliar room, in a real bed with a real pillow. He’d been sure the events of the night before were a dream, he had been rather delirious with exhaustion by the time he came downstairs. He also woke to a note telling him to come up to the bar when he was ready. They had spelled his name wrong, but the intentions were enough to make him smile. 

It took him longer than he’d have liked to get to the bar, having ascended the stairs quite carefully and gone the entire wrong direction opening a door that led out to an alleyway, but eventually he saw Vander. The face that met him felt familiar. It smiled and waved him down. The bar was empty of patrons but Vander was behind the bar washing dishes and Silco was at the counter on a stool writing in a small notebook. 

“You were out quickly.” Silco spoke without glancing up. “How long had it been since you slept?” 

“You ask many questions” Viktor said rather than answer. 

“And your nonanswers are damning.” 

Viktor didn’t have a response. He looked around the room and located the record player, much easier to find without all the people. 

“That is machine?”

“It is. I’ll have you look over it after you eat.” Silco said. He must have noticed Viktor’s hesitation. “I’m sure Felicia said quite interesting things about us last night and I’ve no doubt she called Vander a puppy. Can’t help herself. She’s right, of course, he can’t help but try to make people happy. And he won’t quit until you accept whatever he offers. Today he offers breakfast.”

Viktor still hesitated as Silco motioned to the stool next to him. 

“You don’t like my questions. Don’t make me ask how long ago your last meal was. Your reactions already speak volumes.”

Reluctantly, Viktor sat. 

“She called you both puppies” Viktor whispered as he sat. 

“Did she now?”

He nodded with a smile. Speaking wasn’t his strong suit but now, forced into conversations several times in one day, he realized how often he just nodded or shrugged or shook his head. It felt odd that someone was making judgements of him based on these reactions and answers. He wondered what Silco thought of him. The man seemed to read minds, always knowing and seeing through people. What must Silco have seen in him?

Vander entered, holding a bowl of what appeared to be oatmeal. 

He was an easier read. Viktor saw why people argued over which was scarier. Vander was a guard dog, if a puppy, and physically threatening. If he didn’t know the men, Vander was the one he’d avoid. But Silco was a bloodhound, and it was as if he could smell deception on you. When you spoke to them, Silco was the one to avoid. Neither was safe, logically, but he felt safe among them regardless. Not so safe that he didn’t practically choke with how fast he was eating. Like if he waited too long, it would be taken away, and he would wake up back in his tent in the cold, layered under blankets that did no good, and alone. Even if they were puppies, he liked the company. 

The second he finished, he thanked Vander and found his way to the record player. It was an older machine but not vintage, and rather poorly maintained. It had clearly been repaired before using bronze parts that didn’t look right along the lineup of tarnished silver gears, though it wasn’t a stretch to assume it had never been cleaned. The repair work was shoddy at best, and definitely not the work of a professional. 

“You need to fire your repairman,” he said aloud. He figured it better to speak his thoughts than allow Silco to read them. For the second time since they met, Silco showed emotion. 

Laughter. He laughed for just a moment but hard enough that he practically choked on his tea. Vander just stared. 

“Would if I could.” Silco said, a slight smile lingering on his lips. “But unfortunately he runs the place”

Vander glared, but he seemed to be in on the joke. “I don’t kid myself” Vander chuckled. “I’m not quitting my day job,”

Viktor couldn’t see himself, but by the heat, his face had gone bright red. 

In uncomfortable silences, he tended to speak too much. 

“It was well intentioned. The replacement of secondary joint, I mean, but misplaced. You repaired it along the system guidelines of a two-axis system, and you would have done a functional repair had it been a two-axis system. But this was built about 15 years ago, after they switch to a three-axis system to improve sound. The third axis also use the gear you replaced, and since you only oriented it with the purpose of fixing the second axis, the one for the vertical positioning of needle, you use flat gear, not bevel gear. So the needle moves up and down but not side to side, so it lands too far to left of the record point, so when it spins, it rotates the needle which has nowhere to go so it just moves right and scratches the surface. Destructive not only to equipment but to records. The uh” he searches for the word. “Hubda”

“Music” SIlco answered. 

“Yes. The music not playing because the needle cannot find the indentation and stay there.” Viktor paused for a moment. Under his breath, he muttered as he observed the innards.  “Šroubováky, ploché a křížové, imbusový klíč, nastavitelný klíč, kuželové kolo o průměru 2”, 32 zub, ne, 34. odstranit, nahradit, zachovat strukturální integritu.”

Satisfied, he sat and turned to the men carefully watching him. “I need tools. Screwdrivers, both the uh, long bit one and the… x bit one, a hexagon wrench, an adjustable wrench, and a 2” diameter 34 tooth angled bevel gear.”

The two sat in a short silence. 

“We have a toolbox?”

Apart from the trip to Benzo’s and the hunt for the proper tools within the crate of metal they called a tool box, the repair itself took only an hour and a half. He finished before the sun set, and bid farewell to the men, who practically rushed to keep him from reaching the door. Felicia was right, the both of them were puppies. In the dimly lit bar, just before opening, in the room filled with music, playing softly from the repaired machine, with the warmth of the lamps and the furnace, they were alive, and they were just boys. Not scary, not threatening, and certainly not ill willed. So he trusted them when they asked. 

“Stay a while longer?”

He didn’t argue that he should really get home or that he had work the next morning or that he no longer had reason to be there. He didn’t fight when they offered him dinner and sat him at a table by the back, or when Silco joined him at the table. Silco didn’t complain when he started watching the math being conducted in the small notebook. Neither spoke when Viktor wordlessly asked for the pen, many hours in, and crossed out his work, replacing it, in large handwriting, with a slightly different result. The older simply nodded, and the younger sat back again to watch. Time passed without much input. Songs cycled through on the record player. Viktor sketched on napkins. Silco tore a paper from the back of his notebook and handed it to him. He sketched the innards of the record player. On the back, he wrote instructions. They were less eloquent than he wished them to be. The mechanical terms were proper. The action words were not. “Put in the lever and move it around until it clicks” was something he just had to let exist. It upset him how stupid he must have sounded in their tongue. He handed it back to Silco. A repair manual. 

Silco sighed. 

Viktor pushed it forwards again. “So Vander can fix it good next time.”

“He’ll never be touching that thing again. Not now that we have a repairman.”

“You do?”

Silco’s gaze faltered. For the first time, his calculated expressions fell. Viktor couldn’t place it. Not pity, never pity, but empathy. 

“You”

Viktor was rarely stupid and never ignorant, but in this moment, he had been entirely oblivious. His eyes widened. His mouth was agape. 

“Don’t pretend to be an idiot, it doesn’t suit you.” Silco went back to his practiced apathy. “This place is new to us but it’s an old building, and it’s a mess. You’ve probably made note of a hundred things you want to fix or change or tinker with.” He glanced at Viktor and sighed. “Your mind is a gift and it’s wasted on the life you live. In all honesty, it’ll be wasted here too. But, oh I was hoping Vander would be the one to have this discussion with you”

“What discussion?”

“The one in which we ask you to stay with us. And I say nice things about family and loyalty or something, Vander’s specialty, not mine. And I make it clear that you seem to have wormed your way into our minds and neither of us particularly like the thought of you leaving and returning to your old life that can’t have been any good. Then I say how you’d be allowed to live independently here and do whatever you like and how if I am to be entirely honest with you, which I should as the foundation of what I hope to be a lasting relationship, this has been the plan since yesterday evening. Don’t gawk, you knew I was scheming. You weren’t the type to accept charity, and we did genuinely want the machine fixed but it was as good a reason as any to excuse offering you a place to stay. And now I have no reason to coerce you into remaining here except the truth.”

“But- I can’t accept that”

“I lived the life you did. Once. Vander doesn’t understand it but I do. So trust that I am doing this more for myself than you. I made myself a promise once that someday I would be big and powerful and charitable, and I would take in all the strays and make some kind of home. I’m nowhere near that, of course, but you have a potential, like I did, and you deserve the opportunity to make something of it. And for the first time in my life I’m in a place to offer that. Don’t argue. Don’t let your brain think about this and catastrophize and fear like it always does. Just say yes.”

He took in a breath. It felt empty. “Yes.”

Maybe it started there. 

A curtain opens across the room. Just for a moment, as a nurse lets herself in, there’s a glimpse. Silco. His father. He looks a mess. They won’t let Viktor see him, perhaps now he understands why. With the blood and sweat and mud and water washed off, he can see how far gone Silco is. Unconscious, clinging to life, covered in mottled bruising and cuts and oh gods his face. In the light of the lantern, he can see what he couldn’t at the riverbank. Decay. That’s the word. Practically a body. 

His father. 

What a cruel world to tempt him with safety as a means for further tragedy. What stupidity to allow himself to become attached. 

“Thanks Otec” (Thanks dad) Viktor had said when he’d been handed a tool. He’d been living there for just over a year and preferred spending his time in the bar while it was closed. It gave him more time with the men he had gotten quite close with. He often spoke without thinking when he was deep in his work. Second nature. It had been second nature to thank his father, who was not there and never would be. It took him 3 seconds to realize his mistake and 10 to get back to the room and lock the door behind him. He hadn’t looked up to see the men’s reactions, they didn’t matter. 

His father did. 

His father who would be ashamed to be so easily replaced by near strangers. 

His father who raised him for eight years and who wasn’t coming back. 

Ever. 

His breath was fast. His heart was beating out of his chest. The world spun. His hands shook. Tears welled in his eyes. “Kurva!” he backed up and stumbled onto the bed. His hands grasped the roots of his hair. “nemyslel jsem to vážně” he said to himself. His words came out muffled. His voice hitched.  “nemyslel jsem to vážně” His fingers trembled against his scalp “Ja- Ja ne. Ja ne.” his breath wouldn’t catch. “Slibuji. Ja ne” the tears were cold against his face. The wall was harsh behind his back. 

You didn’t mean to. You didn’t mean to. It was a mistake. You didn’t mean it. It was an accident. Fuck. You should be ashamed. You forgot. You forgot, you fucker. Loser. Cripple. Orphan. Nobody. How dare you? You should be ashamed. Feel it. Feel shame. Feel guilt. Let it eat you. You deserve it. You fucking deserve it. They’d hate you. Mom would be so ashamed. Dad would be furious. How could you? How dare you? Why do you get to live? You don’t deserve that. You don’t deserve to live. 

His hands grasped his hair hard enough to hurt. One released and began hitting the side of his head. Gently at first but harsher and harsher over time. It needed to hurt. That was the only way to get rid of it. The way it screamed at him so loud it took over the room. So loud he didn’t take in anything around him. Not the knock on the door, not the speaking outside, not the turning of the key. He took in nothing until he felt touch on his shoulder, distant but present, comforting. Usually it wouldn’t be, but deep in his brain, he knew whose hand it was, and it was comforting. The hand moved to his hand, lightly pressuring until it stilled and stopped on his scalp, then his face, it wiped his tears and cradled his chin in its hands, warm and steady. Steady. He took a breath. In. Out. Barely any air. Suffocating. He slowly released his hair and let his hands down, securing them around his knees, curled up against his chest. He dared to open his eyes. 

Vander’s hand hadn’t left his chin. He stared with a deep empathy that shook Viktor, as if he wasn’t already shaken. His breath hitched and hiccuped. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to be seen like this. The fingers wiped his tears, still flowing through the sobs that wracked his frame. 

“Leave” he said, though his body screamed for them to stay. The thoughts were angry, and only pain could quiet them. Pain he deserved. Look what he’d done. They weren’t supposed to see him like this. Weak. They weren’t supposed to know he was broken. It wasn’t too late to get rid of him. The head before him shook. 

Silco stood in the doorway and watched. That had been terrifying when Viktor had first moved in but now it was a comforting constant. Silco’s eyes on him. His breath had slowed just slightly. 

“Not happening until I know you’re okay” Vander argued. His voice remained gentle. 

“I am” Viktor lied. 

“You don’t have to be.”

If Vander’s touch had brought rain, those words brought a flood. His stiff body relaxed into the touch and trembled. He closed his eyes and allowed the world to simply exist around him. The blankets crumpling beneath his legs, the muffled conversations in the alley above, the ever present smell of alcohol that had become oddly familiar. 

Vander’s voice came out calm “You know we’re not mad at you, right?”

He nodded. 

“It made me pretty happy. That you felt comfortable enough that you accidentally said that. So nobody’s upset except you. What’s wrong?”

His voice came out quieter and shakier than he intended. “I called another man father” He opened his eyes and kept them locked on the floor. “8 years he cared for me and in 4 I have forgotten him” 

“Hey don’t say that” Vander stroked his face again and held his hand with the other. The boy relaxed ever so slightly. 

“But it is true” Viktor said. His tone had become dejected more than panicked. 

“Clearly it’s not” Silco finally spoke from the doorway. Emotions were painted all over Vander’s face, but Silco’s remained unfailingly neutral. 

“He would be ashamed.” Viktor whispered. 

Silco scoffed. “I highly doubt that.” Ever the rational one. Viktor looked at him wide eyed in a clear prompt to continue. He rolled his eyes. “Your father cared for you, did he not?” Nod. “Well if he cared at all then he’d want you safe in his absence. I think he’d be rather overjoyed at the idea that you’d found someone. Wouldn’t his first priority be your happiness?”

Viktor pondered this and eventually… nodded. 

“But you are being a terrible son” Silco risked, a joking tone in his voice. “The way you portray your father. You make him out to be vain and uncaring. Bothered more with semantics than you. How would he like that?”

It landed. Viktor chuckled. 

“Right then. Dinner should be ready in an hour.” He turned to leave. Hesitated. “And for what’s its worth neither of us mind the title, though you’re welcome to try another on for size. I think ‘Pa’ quite suits him”

Viktor giggled from the bed and finally unwound. 

“Thank you, Dad” he whispered. It still felt wrong on his tongue but he wanted it to feel right. 

He smiled knowingly and left the room. Vander stayed and kept Viktor in his arms until dinner was ready. Very few words were spoken yet volumes were expressed. Before they left the room, he muttered “thanks, Pa”

Vander chuckled. “Don’t mention it kiddo.”

He ruffled the boy’s hair as he left. 

Viktor still feels it, phantom and distant. Ruffling his hair. His father, unshaken. He’ll be unshaken. He’ll be stone. His eyes haven’t left the cold concrete floor yet. He needs Vander here, to take his head in his hands and tell him he’s okay. To break down in his arms. Permission to feel. To be seen. 

But Vander isn’t safe anymore. 

It’s a revelation to admit to himself. That those big hands are once again foreign to him, the safety dissipating with each drop of rain that pounds the windows and gone entirely among the beeps of the monitor in the next room. He’s sure of something: if the beeps stop, Vander’s a dead man. 

Vander isn’t safe anymore. 

He pictures the girls in Vander’s arms, mourning without him. Being taken back to the lion’s den. He was tasked with protecting them. Now Vander has them. 

And Vander isn’t safe anymore. 

He supposed it started with their first fight, the realization more than the outcome. Vander never hit him, he would assert that until his death, but Vander got angry. 

The house was safety by then. They were safety. Twelve -nearly thirteen, he insisted regularly- and finally getting a bit taller, and with an impressively large vocabulary. Too impressive, he knew that. So he wasn’t surprised to come home and find his parents sat at the dinner table with a dictionary and a prep book between them and a stern look on their face. The most offputting thing about it was the fact that they were both home, it was an hour after the end of third shift and the bar downstairs was packed and yet here they both were. Waiting for him. 

“Did you steal these from the promenade or from Piltover?” Silco asked. His face betrayed nothing, his voice steady as a rock. 

“I did not steal them.” He answered. He hadn’t sat. 

“You want us to believe you bought them? With what money?”

“They were a gift.” He said indignantly. “I am no thief”

“Whoever ‘gifted’ them to you certainly is.” Silco replied. He hadn’t faltered. This was an interrogation. “Who is this mysterious person??”

“A friend”

“And what did you give this friend in return? What do you owe?”

“Nothing, it was a gift!” Viktor said a bit too loudly. The look he got in response made him pull out a chair and sit. 

“Look kiddo” Vander started. His voice was too gentle, so he was playing good cop. “We’re not mad, we just need to know where you got these.”

“They were a gift. She did not even need them anymore.”

Silco noticed. Of course he did. “She? Who is this special she that just gifts you things?”

“Sky. She is a friend of mine, and she lives topside now and she had no need for them so she gave them to me.  For my birthday next week. That is all.”

“Why did you need them, then?” Bad cop asked. He had narrowed in on the real reason Viktor had been dodgy about it. He was fucked. 

“Piltovan is not my native tongue. There is only so much I can pick up conversationally. I wanted to learn more.”

“No.” Silco said entirely too quickly. “You’d have told us. This was hidden.”

“Why were you looking through my things in the first place?”

A gaze narrowed on him. The kind he used to fear. He understood why people folded so quickly. “The privileges of having a family come with the downfalls of dealing with them. You have no say in this, you live with us. Tell me.”

“I just-“ he backpedaled “why do you care? They are books, Dad, I am not doing drugs”

“Vik answer the question” Vander said. He sounded resigned. 

“I-“ his breath was starting to hitch. He hated feeling so small. “Janna sakra, I just want to go to school!”

The air was still. The room was quiet. Nobody spoke until he continued. 

“There is a school called the Academy, considered the best engineering school in Runeterra and I want to go. Sky, her new parents want to send her to the academy and so they got her these prep books so she could pass the entry exam and she gave them to me because I want to go with her. You said I could be something. This is my chance to be something.”

“You’re twelve, you’re not going to college” Vander finally pitched in. 

“I am almost thirteen. Applications can start as young as 16”

“So you have years until then.”

“Pa, a few years ago I did not even speak Piltovan. I need to begin preparations now if I ever wish to catch up.”

“College is expensive” Vander sighed. He didn’t seem angry, more worried. 

“They have a scholarship for Visa students, I checked the fine print and the Undercity is not specifically excluded.”

“You’ve clearly thought about this a lot. Why didn’t you-“ Vander didn’t get to finish his thought. 

“That school is in Piltover.” Silco practically whispered. “You’d be moving to Piltover.” He waited for Viktor’s reply but none came. His voice got more clipped but no louder. “You hid the books because after all our talk of revolution you’re fine to join them now they’ve got something to offer you. You’ve been bought.”

It was Vander’s turn to whisper. “That’s not true Vik, is it?”

Viktor wrung his hands. “I would come home. After. I could do so much more for Zaun if I had a real education. I could-“

“Everything we gave you. Just for you to turn traitor and run off to Piltover??” Vander stood, his chair clattered to the ground. Viktor took that as his sign to leave the room. He didn’t make it to the door. 

“Oi, I’m not finished! You hid this from your father and I. Would you ever have told us or just run off to go Piltie?”

“I do not know what-“

Vander grabbed his wrist when he moved to the door. 

“What-”

“You don’t get to run away from this”

“Let me go!”

“Answer!”

“What?!”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I was afraid of this!” He finally snapped. “I was… I am afraid of you.”

Vander recoiled like he’d been burned. Viktor knew the lick of the flame would linger on his skin. The heat. He let it as he made his way to bed. 

Sometimes a house wasn’t a home. 

Maybe he hasn’t been home since the fire. 

Maybe there isn’t such thing as a home. Not forever. 

Silco knocked on the door soon after. Viktor let him sit on the bed next to him. They were silent for a while as they gathered their thoughts. 

“He’d never hurt you,” Silco finally said. His tone was oddly somber. His gaze lingered on a wall, something far away. “He gets angry. He has big feelings. But he’d never hurt us.”

“I know.” Viktor lied. He knew the sting. He’d been burned before. “You said you wanted me to have opportunities. There are no opportunities here, not anymore.”

“There will be,” Silco said quietly. He seemed distant. “You’re young. You don’t understand this now but you will someday. You’ll change your mind. But so will Vander. He’ll let you go.”

“He will?”

Silco nodded. “He always folds eventually. Won't die on any hill. So he’ll come around and he’ll let you go”

“Not you?”

“Not me.”

The night air was cold even in his room. He waited until Silco spoke again. 

“He doesn’t understand why you feared him but I do. It wasn’t about him, you’ve just seen too much. Too much to ever properly trust. I don’t blame you for that but I understand it. And he has big feelings. He’s pacing a hole in the floor of the office, panicking that you’re afraid of him.”

“I’m not,” Viktor answered honestly. 

“I know. Now, this will be the last of this Academy nonsense. You’re too good to be wasted on Piltover. And this will be the last time you hide something from us. And I am angry with you. But as mad as we are, we’ll never hurt you.” He took Viktor gently by the shoulders “Vander will never hurt you”

Now he wonders whether Silco meant it. If he really believed he had the beast tamed, if he felt the false comfort of being in its pride. Or if that too was a lie, even to himself. That his husband wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

 Now he wonders if they knew even then that they would be ignored. That even fear couldn’t stop him. That he would go. His mother once said he was like a river, no matter the rock he would keep running. 

Now he wonders if he can keep running.  If eventually in life there comes a dam so thick and wide it can’t be surpassed and the journey comes to an end. Or if he keeps running changed, full of chemicals and pollution and Janna knows what else. Or if the life he’s lived with them was also just a rock he’ll leave behind as he runs. He’s not sure. 

Now he wonders if all he is good at is running. 

Now he wonders if he’s even good at that. 

It’s hard to believe it’s the same night. That everything has happened in a few hours. 

That’s where the story starts. 

He was angry, 16 and tasked with babysitting, staying home while his parents had all the fun. Vander said it was a peaceful protest, Vander said they didn’t need him, Vander said the girls were too young to be left alone. Well Vander said a lot of things. Most of all, Vander said “we’ll talk later” this week, while he was planning and scheming and doing things he clearly didn’t want Viktor to know about. 

“We’ll talk later”

And Viktor had taken it, because what else was he supposed to do? He was too old to keep complaining about things that didn’t matter. But he was bitter. Despite knowing that his father would change his tune, he didn’t argue, because he was too bitter to. So he kept returning, more frustrated and dejected, holding the letter with a broken red wax seal stamped with the academy logo and his name in perfect cursive on the front. All week he waited for his father to have just a moment of time, to hand him the letter and tell him it was actually happening, and all week he was met with the same response. We’ll talk about it later. He’d have ripped the letter into pieces if he didn’t need it so badly. 

Silco was even worse. He had the time for Viktor, albeit very little, but he wouldn’t have the reaction Viktor wanted. Not a smile or a hug or “I’m proud of you”, that’s how Vander would react. Silco would be upset. Turning traitor, running off topside, leaving his family behind. Silco didn’t possibly understand it, the draw of those golden capped buildings in the sky where you can see the sun. He didn’t know what Viktor could do if he got a real education. He just knew hatred and nihilism, and his weakness for his son wouldn’t be enough to change the rage that simmered and threatened to boil over. 

Clearly it did boil over, Viktor thinks. 

So he would tell Vander first, and probably Felicia, and they would help him break the news to Silco. It was such a worrying and yet exciting thought that it kept his mind occupied and he didn’t pry too hard about matters his family kept from him. The meetings downstairs were suddenly off limits and the door to his parents’ office was always locked. When he heard it was happening, he begged to join, to come protest. Though his parents weren’t speaking much that week, they came to a strange agreement to tell him he was needed here. To babysit. 

To fucking babysit. 

He didn’t say it aloud but of course he had the thought. They were keeping him home because they thought he was weak. That if it turned violent he couldn’t hold his own. They were wrong. He’d prove them wrong. 

He was itching for an excuse to leave when he heard the first sound. A low boom, rumbling and loud, distant. He locked eyes with the kids, too young for this. When Vi said “what was that?” it was the excuse he needed to say 

“I’ll check.”

He instructed the girls to stay home and look after one another and don’t open the door unless he did the special knock and try to get some sleep and he’d be home soon. He didn’t believe a word of it, stocking his bag with cloth and disinfectant and a first aid kit and a switchblade. In times like these, he’d be the closest thing to a medic within a mile. He hoped he wouldn’t need any of it, but he had his father’s nihilism. He’d seen too much of the world to be an idealist, or to believe it to be anything more than cruel. 

The smoke was so thick he could barely breathe, even as used to the smog as he had grown to be. The red from the flares and gas canisters combined with the hideous black of flames, the heat licking his face. His mind was being drawn backwards, but this wasn’t the time to return to memories. He fought them away. He wasn’t losing another set of parents. He was older now, and he was on time. His lungs burned and his eyes watered. The bridge was covered in bodies, but he fought his gaze away from the blood and soot, focusing in on their faces. The relief sickened him, relief that only came from lack of recognition. As focused as he was on finding his family, he couldn’t help but check pulses, look for breathing. No matter his opinions, he checked people from both sides, placing his thin fingers beneath the metal uniforms, bright red on blue. Not one survivor among them. Bodies. 

Bodies. 

Eventually, bodies he recognized. 

Felicia and Connel. Locked in a terrified embrace. Eyes still open, glazed over with tears and ash. He knew the sensation to expect, but he had to feel for a pulse. There was none. Felicia’s cold wrist in his hand fell limp, flat and pulseless, without energy or thought, a puppet without it’s strings, falling, forever falling. He didn’t cry. His hands didn’t shake. Instead, he closed their eyes and muttered a prayer in a language they didn’t speak, it didn’t matter to them anymore. He thought of the girls, waiting for news at home, waiting for their parents to return. He thought of how they’d feel, getting the news from him. Broken. But they would be spared from this, from the blood that stained his knees as he kneeled in the puddle surrounding him. They wouldn’t need to see the bodies. 

For the first time in his life he was glad he’d never seen his parents’ bodies that night. 

He should have gone home, he knew that, he should have been taking care of the girls, babysitting like he was supposed to, making sure they weren’t alone. But something beyond his control tugged on him to keep going. He couldn’t turn back, not until he had swept the bridge for other bodies. He was no longer expecting to see his fathers alive, but he needed the closure of bodies. He was older now, not a child, he had seen death and he’d stared back unyielding. He needed to know. He needed to. So he did. 

Unfocused eyes stared at him from faces locked in horror, caked in mud and tears. Faceless, nameless beings he would once have mourned. He would once have cried or run or thrown up at the sight of any one of them. Now they were simply not his father. When the rain began, he had just made it to the barricade. If either of his fathers were here, they weren’t on the bridge. 

They were under it. 

He should have gone home. He should have changed into dry clothes and given his body a rest, having barely slept in days, and not eaten for lack of appetite, and having seen more in the span of a few hours than he ever wished to. The first aid kit in his bag was still untouched. He should have held Vi in his arms the way his father once held him and shown her that family isn’t blood, and given her the space to do what he never had, to feel, in the safety of family, and mourn. Perhaps his parents were home with them and worried sick about him. But he was tugged to the riverbank. He had to know. He had to be braver this time. 

The rocks along the riverbank were slippery. Slick wet from the rain and unsteady beneath his feet, navigating the slope was a dance Viktor couldn’t master, and he kept causing landslides as he tripped his way down. He swore to never admit to his parents how much pain it caused, clearly they already saw him as weak enough. He wasn’t crying. He knew soon the emotions of the night would catch up with him, but he didn’t feel safe here. When he was safe, the emotions would explode from him, cradled in his father’s arms for solace. But now, he was steady and unfaltering in his goals. It was lucky, he didn’t feel the relief when he caught a glimpse of his father at the riverbank. 

The relief would have been temporary. 

Kneeling over the river, Vander’s form looked troubled. There was blood on his arm, more on his shirt. He seemed empty. His eyes didn’t take note of the small form to his right. He turned away from Viktor and walked - stumbled- away towards the other edge of the bridge. Zombie-like, hollow. Viktor chased after him in an apprehensive silence. He couldn’t explain why his body was on alert, but it was. It couldn’t relax. Not yet. Not in his father’s arms as he so desperately wanted to. 

He made it to where Vander had been standing. Something drew his gaze to the river. Someone. Silco. The water around him was dark red, his form floating at the surface, his eyes closed - eye, singular. His eye, as the other was consumed with horrid red, a slash through his face stretching the right side. Unmoving, unbreathing, unblinking. Vander had been kneeling, his hands in the river. Silco had bruises forming around his neck. It didn’t take a genius, but Viktor was one anyway and it hit him like a freight train. Someday, maybe, he’d be able to feel that betrayal, that confusion, that hurt, but not yet. Not with his father’s body in the water next to him. 

“Dad?”

He dragged the body to the shore, growing colder by the second, sheltered from the rain by the bridge overhead. His hands didn’t shake, his eyes didn’t cry, his breath didn’t hitch. He’d been trained by the best, after all. He worked quickly and efficiently as he unbuttoned his father’s shirt to get a clear look at his chest, leveled his body on an even patch of ground, and began to work. Compressions, perfectly timed, perfectly placed, perfectly precise. He felt his father below him, cold and unmoving, body shaking with the pressure. Over and over, minutes on end, until the exhaustion threatened to break through his facade of apathy, until he felt his father’s ribs crack below him, nonstop, until he truly doubted it would ever work, his cold clothes, wet with rain and river water, clung to his body like a vice, until- 

Water poured from his mouth like an explosion, up and out. Viktor tilted Silco’s head to the side and allowed the water to drip out. He was still unconscious, but he was breathing. Barely, strained, breathing. Primary concern handled, Viktor moved to the secondary concern. He found the wound on Silco’s chest, bleeding profusely and looking worse for wear. He poured too much alcohol on it and determined it was from a blade. Good, he didn’t have the materials to remove a bullet. He didn’t have a safe enough environment to stitch it closed - although it would need stitches- so he wrapped it with cloth and tied it off, doing the same to the facial wound. By the time he had wrapped both, blood was soaking through the first. There wasn’t time. Not for anything. Silco wasn’t waking up. The air was frigid, below the burning heat above them. Smoke permeated every speck of the air. 

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. 

He was supposed to tell them the good news tonight, right now, in the warmth of what used to be his home, and they were supposed to come home unburdened, and he’d be holding the letter from the academy, with his name in fancy writing and a wax seal and the opportunity of a lifetime inside, and they were supposed to celebrate and let him have a drink even though he was too young and thought it tasted like acid and Vander was supposed to ruffle his hair and Silco was supposed to give him that approving look as much as he hated it and Felicia was supposed to put a great song on the record player and tell Silco to lighten up and he was supposed to chuckle and agree and say he knew Viktor had it in him and Connel was supposed to stand in the corner and nod in that shy kind of way that showed he was proud and dance with his wife in the glow of the bar and Vander and Silco were supposed to take him aside for a moment and be genuine and proud and hearfelt without many words and the five of them were supposed to dream about tomorrow and have a weight lifted off their shoulders for the evening and he was supposed to be with his family. 

But home wasn’t home anymore, Felicia and Connel were dead, Silco was dying, and Vander? Vander wasn’t family, and he certainly wasn’t comfort. 

Vander was probably going home to the girls. 

Viktor wanted to puke. This wasn’t the time. Nothing was right. The survivors were mostly gone but he caught a glimpse of one being carried off by what looked like a medic, and he had a sickening thought. It was an enforcer. A lone enforcer carried ever so gently across the border, to what must have been a hospital on the other side of the river. The river was in the deepest part of Piltover and the highest of Zaun, and the bridge landed in the slums of Piltover. They didn’t care much where you were from there, they dealt with more Zaunites than the rest of the Pilties had. His mother had taken him to a clinic there as a boy, or at least she told him so. The bridge was closed off and blockaded. But he had a thought he knew his father would be ashamed of. 

That wasn’t the only way across the river. 

The water was freezing and the rain pounded on the bridge above. But if he could just get across, he could follow to wherever they were going, he could find the clinic, he could come back for his father. 

A groan from behind him interrupted his thoughts. Blood was leaking through the makeshift bandages. They wouldn’t save Silco, who could have gone at any minute. No, Viktor couldn’t leave his father here, still at the mercy of enforcers, still in the freezing cold breathing ash and coughing blood and lake water. He couldn’t come back to another body. He’d have to take his father with him. Across the river, up the other bank, through the crowded streets, and to safety. Easy, right? Easy. He wasn’t weak, and he wasn’t a baby, and if his father needed him, damn what he couldn’t do. It would be easy. 

What a fleeting thought. 

The waved lapped against his ankles with a sharpness that could cut glass and a chill that ate through to the bones. The river had an awful sheen atop its surface that he had known since his youth not to touch, but he fought that instinct. Silco was slung against his shoulder and he was dead weight, dragging Viktor down like an anchor. 

It was funny, in a way. Viktor thought back to a time that must have been recently but felt like a lifetime ago. He used to read whatever came across his desk, just to practice. Now, he remembered once finding a safety manual, and laughed at the thought of one of the lines he had always been confused by. 

“If someone is drowning, do not attempt to save them yourself. They will often bring you down with them”

He never was one to take people’s advice. If Viktor was going to drown, he’d gladly do it in the pursuit of care. Still, he felt Silco drowning, and pulling him down. To the depths of the water where the rocks and sand sunk beneath his waterlogged boots and enticed him to trip, his impossible unsteady footing finding every invisible hole. His father had tried to warn him not to come, but his father had always sheltered him, seen him as weak. Now who was the weak one, dragging Silco finally across to the shore, and setting him down on the rocks? The jagged edges of the shore tore at his hands but he could barely feel the sting. The rise and fall of his chest was a lifeboat Viktor clung to with strength he didn’t know he possessed. 

“Vydrž, tatka” he whispered as he caught his breath, falling back against the rocks, the rain pricking his face. “Just hold on.”

He didn’t allow himself very long to rest. The next step was ascent. It wasn’t the steepest slope, nor was it the tallest, but every step was dragged back down in the tumble of rocks that fell from beneath his feet. Sisyphus, pushing uphill, the precious bolder in his arms, and falling back down, unshaken in his determination with every new stride. Sweat stung his eyes, rain beat his hair into a curtain in his face. The destination was so close but so far gone. Fight or flight, he had no idea which instinct he was following, one foot after the other. Churning. Climbing. Gasping for breath through gritted teeth. He fell more often than he’d have liked, but he knew how to fall without truly falling, and managed to keep the fragile cargo across his arm from colliding with the ground. The blood on his hands was not his own, and it didn’t belong there. The rain washed it away. 

The paved streets welcomed him like an old friend, taking him into their embrace as he steadied himself. He leaned so heavily on his cane he thought it would snap. The cold made the world numb. It was only once he’d reached solid ground, the other shore, that he realized. It was good he was unfeeling, the relief of reaching the city, too, would have been short lived. Whoever he had thought to follow was long long gone, they had been out of his mind for a while and out of his sights for just as long, as was his hope of finding a hospital. He set the body by his side carefully against a building and began to pace the streets, though never letting his father out of his sights. Doors were closed and locked for the evening. It must have been late, judging by the emptiness, or perhaps the residents had simply hid from the noise beyond their border. Hidden their heads in the sand. 

He wouldn’t let them. 

Viktor had no idea how he must have looked. 16, scrawny and rather pale, leaning too heavily on a cane, hair wet and matted against his face, blood dousing his clothes, wracked with exhaustion, shivering, coated in mud, and desperate. He had no idea the reaction he’d face when he knocked on the first door, probably well after midnight, looking like that, with his accent and his clothes and his build, clearly from the other side, the barricaded side, knocking on a stranger’s door. But emotions weren’t allowed yet. So he didn’t hesitate. But the door didn’t open. 

Nor did the second, nor the third. Not until the fifth door did he get a response. A groggy man, whose face doesn’t register anymore in Viktor’s recollection, only the shake of his voice as he asked the boy “Are you alright?”

And the evenness of Viktor’s. “I am looking for a medical establishment. Do you know how to reach one nearby?”

He remembers the glow of the light in the man’s hand, welcoming him into the first real chance of safety he’d had in hours, directing him only a few blocks away, offering to help, which Viktor denied - too high a risk- and thanked profusely. He lifted Silco with a renewed determination. The home stretch. 

Knowing the end was near, his adrenaline dwindled, and his legs were barely holding him up by the time the pair reached the clinic, still open, with a bright neon sign above the door. “Welcome”

Welcome. 

He stepped in. 

He didn’t need to say a word, as they took his father from his arms and layed the man across a stretcher, taking him to another room. 

Viktor knew his reactions, they were predictable. When he could do something, he did, and he pushed emotions aside expertly, without thought, until the things were done. When he was well and truly safe, he would break down, cry, scream, preferably not hit himself, feel. But when he was unsafe, and there was nothing more to do but wait, he turned to stone. The world stopped existing around him. 

That’s what happened in the waiting room, barely taking in any stimulus the second his father was out of view, following like a robot without a code, aimlessly obeying directions without response. He felt vaguely that someone took him aside and seated him on an exam table in another room, and he sat. Cold steel, warm blood. He barely knew some of the blood was his own. Numb. Empty. Out of the fumes he was running on. People spoke to him, he didn’t listen, didn’t hear, didn’t understand. He couldn’t do this. Not when Silco was still fighting, not when Vander was still out there. 

But what else can he do?

“Please. Tell me how this happened.”

“I wish I knew”