Work Text:
There’s something wrong with this house.
The nib of Viktor’s pen spat a blot of thin ink from its bent tip when he paused, trying to think of how to describe what had been happening the past few weeks. They’d at once been a blur and in terrible clarity. Thumps, sounding far too close to heavy relaxed footsteps, circled through the rooms of his apartment. Like someone remembering halfway through walking to another room there was something else they wanted to grab.
There’s definitely new objects in his apartment. Things he never built but can see the warmth still sitting in the tackiness of the soldering. He’d lived in this apartment for over a year, why was a spirit deciding now of all times to start making itself known?
Maybe that’s why they were so willing to rent it out to me. The other comparable priced room was attached to the fishmonger.
He didn’t know what compelled him to set up the small table, or to root through his stored things to set up a place to communicate with the spirit that had decided to invade his home. He pulled out a squat pewter candlestick, delicate motifs of Osha Va’Zaun’s former native flora and fauna weaving over each other through the wide base.
He could hear the memory of his father’s voice when he went to the market. Could see the sad understanding in the shopkeeper’s eyes as she packed the vial of copper arsenate and wrapped the beeswax. Beautiful green candles to give to the dead and hope to guide them on.
“-plaited wicks?” Her quiet question barely cut through the thrumming of Viktor’s thoughts.
“Hm?” He shook his head when what she asked finally registered. “Oh, no thank you, I have the materials already.” He gave a small smile as he paid.
An old Shuriman tradition, steeped in Viktor’s bones and done with near automatic precision, he made several small deep green candles. The wicks a little off centre, but the colouring meticulously consistent. He carved small runes into the flatter sides of the candles from what he could recall his mother had shown him in her spidery handwriting. He hadn’t been old enough to help with carving, but neither of them had been in the habit of disregarding his willingness to learn.
He gently swept the curls of green wax away, the remnants of the dye staining his skin. When had he visited his parents last? He had so much to update them on.
Viktor took a deep breath, ignored the bubbling as it rolled around inside his lungs, and set the candlestick down on the small side table. The weight of it solidly pinning the short note folded underneath. He fit one of the short candles he’d made into the slot and lit it. It beaded and waned, but didn’t smoke.
A few days later, after the candle had been properly burned and cleaned, a small honey cake appeared wrapped in waxed paper beside the pewter dish. The note attached to it hadn’t been protected from the dense cake’s moisture and the greased ink ran the cursive together into illegibility.
“What are you trying to share…,” Viktor mumbled to the warm, quiet air of his apartment. He couldn’t recall reading anything about what to do if a spirit responded to the candles.
The cake was stored in his larder, uneaten. It had disappeared a few days later and Viktor chalked it up to the rats finally realising where he’d stored it.
A week later, on the same delicate cloth he laid his offerings on, he found a small dish. It was beautifully, meticulously painted with a pair of marigolds. Largely flat with a small lip rimmed with what looked to Viktor like gilding dust, it reminded him of the drawings of Ixtali glassworks he’d been fortunate enough to see come across the desks in Heimerdinger’s office. Placed in the middle, between the blooms of the marigolds, was a small powdered milk cake. The cream-yellow sparkled with the sugar encrusting the outside.
It was so soft that the lightest touch of Viktor’s finger to the outside of it left a gentle indent. Such care to cook something. Viktor couldn’t stop the soft smile that crinkled his eyes. So sweet.
A shiver ran down the length of his spine. He leaned harder onto his cane, but the creak of his floorboards came from the opposite side of his cane foot. Something standing so close it was practically mixing inside him. Every hair on his body stood up. He swallowed, tried to calm his breathing. This was a beautiful gift, not a warning. He had nothing to fear.
He left the milk candy until it was easier to handle, before carefully wrapping it in a spare piece of waxed paper and storing it in his icebox. It didn’t feel right to throw it out. He cleared away the small dish, storing it away in his kitchen, and cleaned the small table.
Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea of his to entertain a spirit that wasn’t moving on. He seemed to just grow bolder the more Viktor left his own candles out.
It didn’t seem to matter where Viktor stored away the small dish, it kept showing up again and again in the same spot on the laced tabletop with different treats set neatly in the centre of it.
Viktor hadn’t realised when he had switched from just throwing out the ‘gifts’ after waiting for them to become stale to actually using them. It was another passing thought that he shouldn’t, but it had never lingered long enough for him to actually follow through.
Things settled — the plate stayed where he had hid it away, the creaking of his floorboards sounded more like the house settling than someone walking, temperatures stayed consistent. The loss of his companion made his empty apartment seem lonelier than it had in years.
Viktor only had a moment’s shiver, cold settling into his joints and making them ache, before a gust slammed his balcony door open. The blue-cold of mid winter hitting him with a bite to his cheeks. Fat snowflakes gusted into his living room. The banging of footsteps as someone mimed through the movements of shedding their wet winter clothes in a frantic rush to warm themselves flit around his apartment.
Viktor couldn’t stop the surprised, confused noise that choked out of him. It was midsummer, easily a tacky 30 degrees outside, as far from the blistering cold that rolled in from his opened door as it could be.
The figure stilled as soon as the noise hit the room. The slight creak in the floorboards suggesting the shifting of weight on feet Viktor could not see.
Viktor held his breath.
“Hello?” The voice was still just as sweet, confusion lilting it at the edges. “Cait?”
Viktor tilted his head, eyebrows furrowing in sympathy — was this visitor looking for someone long gone? Not knowing whoever they looked for, they weren’t there and hadn’t been for years. He fought against himself to respond — no longer an argument with himself of if something like this could possibly be real, but on if it were a smart idea to interact with the other. What if the man didn’t know this wasn’t his life anymore? Would that anger him? Would that bring horrible things down on Viktor’s head?
Viktor caught the side of his mouth with his crooked tooth, grabbed his cane, and pushed up from the sweating pile he’d been on the settee. The soft taks of his cane foot made the figure shift his weight on the floorboards again. Sharp eyes watched as they bent and collected condensation from the severe difference in temperature.
He hesitated, holding in his rattling breath for a moment before the phlegm collected and stuck itself to his throat. Viktor inhaled, but the hacking coughs overtook his attempt at words.
A sharp gasp and the sticky heat of summer bore down in his apartment again.
The small plate had shown up again. A handwritten note balanced so carefully underneath it, trying to avoid any grease spots or moisture leeching from the carefully wax-wrapped cake.
Viktor’s blunt fingertips smoothed the crease with a reverent care. It had been months of these careful notes always being damaged in some way before Viktor could read the cursive that looped on it. But this one had avoided that fate.
He slid a finger under the bend.
A crack of blue-white, like a ball of lightning had exploded in the centre of his apartment threw Viktor to the ground. He choked on the air filled with dust he could not see. Barking coughs making his joints pop. He tried to drag himself to his knees.but the change in position just gave his coughing more leverage. Blood slicked the hard floor and it pushed its way out of his throat.
His hands slid against the flooring, clean and debris-free, trying to steady himself against more coughs. Soft, charred paper bumped against his skin.
“No, no.” Viktor scrambled to grab the smouldering note, trying to tamp out the remnant of fire off of it. He knew it was destroyed. He didn’t want it to be.
Aberrations coloured his vision. The edges of the paper and his hands bending and tripling. Magenta reds pulsed off of everything he looked at. Viktor’s eyes rolled back. He hit the floor hard.
A warm, heavy hand covered the entirety of Viktor’s shoulder. He jumped awake, choking on a scream ripping through his throat. Who had gotten into his apartment?
“It’s you,” the breathless, sweet voice was right in front of him. The thick fingers twitched but didn’t move from Viktor’s shoulder.
Viktor swallowed, tried to calm his breathing, his mouth open to try and get more air into his aching lungs. He focused his eyes on the face in front of him.
A young man — maybe two or so years younger than Viktor — clean shaven and handsome, held onto his shoulder. His kind, intelligent eyes pushed into a concerned expression by his thick eyebrows as he held Viktor’s stare. Viktor broke the eye contact, frantically looking over every inch of the strange man in front of him.
An academy uniform hugged his torso, though Viktor did not recognise the style of it. The seam detailing something he’d never seen in Piltover’s student body. Metal buttons punched into the uniform instead of the bone ones in his own. Viktor grabbed a fist of the other man’s sleeve. Even the weaving on it felt wrong.
He wheezed, a small whine whistled through his teeth.
“You’re the one that’s been taking my offerings.” The man’s voice felt warm and comforting still. The smile shone through his words, and Viktor could see the small gap in his front teeth when he finally looked at the other’s face again.
“What?” Viktor shook his head. “No, you’ve been responding to my… offerings, my candles.”
It was the spirit’s turn to look confused. His eyes skittering along the floor as he flit through information, shaking his head slightly when something didn’t fit. “You’re… your name is Viktor?” He caught Viktor’s eye when he asked.
Viktor felt all the air leave the room.
“How do you know my name?”
The other bowed his head and looked away.
A glisten of something red sticking to his temple caught Viktor’s eye. Without thinking, he reached out a hand and gently wiped it. The tackiness of cooled blood and the give of compromised bone made him shudder. But he didn’t withdraw his hand. Instead, he cradled the other’s cheek.
“What happened?” He paused. “To both of us.”
Jayce inhaled.