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Viktor wasn’t entirely sure when he actually started to see you. He had known you for all this time, of course, but to really see you meant something else entirely.
You had both grown up together in the Undercity, two street kids with nothing but your minds. Where Viktor had a penchant for science, you were more comfortable handling words. Words could be manipulated into any form you chose. There was no need for absolutes or concrete answers; it was just your thoughts as they were, and that’s how you liked it.
While Viktor and Singed would create dubious concoctions in the old man’s laboratory, you would sit with Rico, equipped with a pen and notepad, writing poems and short stories to pass the time. Viktor liked to glance over at you while you worked. He would smile as he watched you make what he dubbed your “concentration face” while your pen glided across loose paper, and suppressed his laughter when you would ask Rico what she thought of your newest paragraph. The gentle creature would just chirp at you and nibble your closest limb.
“Hmm,” you would say. “You’re absolutely right! I’ll move this part down here.” Rico would then huff as you gently rubbed her snout. Viktor had always thought your little habits like that were so warm. Maybe it was then.
Or maybe it was when he had been discovered by Professor Heimerdinger, and you had been ready to follow right after him without hesitation, just like you did when he could no longer justify working with Singed. Just like you did when you first met.
“I’ll come with you! It’s the two of us always, right?” you had asked when he told you about the offer. Your fingers had intertwined with his and held them tight. You had looked at him then, eyes wide and searching. The look on your face from that day was seared into Viktor’s memory like a brand.
You had looked so lost and worried. That was the first time Viktor realised how dependent the two of you were on each other. You had fallen into a spiral at the mere idea of going your separate ways with Viktor, and he realised that he was the same. Not once had it occurred to him that he would have to leave you behind if he moved to Piltover to pursue his research. It had always been you and Viktor, Viktor and you, never anyone else. Neither of you had had parents or any other family to look after you, but you had managed to find each other in the labyrinthine streets of the Undercity. You viewed each other as safe, as home. It wasn’t a bond that could be easily understood by others. To split up was never an option. He would rather have died, Viktor realised.
And so you followed him to Piltover. The decision was easy, but the reality was harder. Much harder. Viktor may have been an assistant of the great Heimerdinger, but that didn’t mean he was liked or respected. You both saw the side-eyes, the dirty looks, the way Topsiders would talk to the two of you in that condescending and uptight tone, like you were the filth under their expensive shoes. The beds were soft, but the mistreatment was as sharp as knives.
You made it better, though. Whenever Viktor would retreat into himself, you were there to lift him out of that self-doubt and deprecating state of mind. Perhaps it was actually then that he started to see you more clearly. He knew that without your presence, a part of him would feel disconnected or missing, and it wasn’t related to his illness. Could he even live without you anymore? The thought of such a thing disturbed him, honestly. If something were to happen to you, what would become of him? It was easier not to think about it and instead focus on your breathing as you leaned on his shoulder or the feeling of your hand when it held his.
Viktor finding a kindred spirit in Jayce was a blessing for him. He realised that he could be something more than just a street rat with more knowledge than he knew what to do with. He had a partner now, a brother who understood him in a different way than you. But sometimes Jayce knew a little too much.
One day, when Jayce had managed to drag Viktor away from his work for a much-needed coffee break, he had asked Viktor what he thought of you.
Viktor had paused and raised an eyebrow, his steaming mug inches away from his mouth. “Where’s this coming from?” he’d asked.
The grin that crossed Jayce’s face then was a familiar sight. It was something he wore when he was about to say something he knew Viktor wouldn’t like. The Zaunite blanched and looked away as his best friend smirked beside him.
“It’s the way you look at her, Viktor. And she’s the only person who can get you to speak in coherent sentences when you’re deep in your work,” Jayce laughed. Viktor looked away and took a deep slug of his coffee, ignoring the way it scalded his tongue.
“We’re family,” he responded after a moment, without meeting Jayce’s eyes. “It isn’t what you think.”
He was such a liar. Viktor loved you. He was in love with you. He wanted to have you to himself. Even if it was barely. Even if it was no more than he could allow himself to. No more than he could justify.
As long as he could keep you close, he convinced himself he would be satisfied. By this time, he knew he could see you. All of you. That didn’t mean he knew what to do with it, though. From childhood to now, you had been a constant. But Viktor knew better than most that a bond broken was one irreversibly changed.
But he was dying. His body was breaking down, failing him, threatening to rip him away from you. How could he ask you to give yourself to him when you would essentially be abandoned in the near future? It would be an action most despicable.
And then Viktor really did die.
In the moment between a presumptuous assurance of continued existence and doggedly clinging to life, Viktor cursed his fear of selfishness. So when the Hexcore brought him back to the land of the living, he decided to throw all caution to the wind. His body was different now, he knew, but he was alive, and he could walk, so maybe now he could love you all he wanted. Now he could stay by your side without the impending inevitability of his part in your story coming to a slow and agonising end.
Viktor never wanted to be brought back, especially not with a conduit as volatile as the Hexcore fuelling his body, but he would be damned if he ever left you again. After waking and parting with Jayce, he went to find you, gripping his staff and clinging his new robes tighter to his changed body. This was never how he would have wanted it to go, but he couldn’t part from you again, not if he could help it.
“[___]? Are you there?” he called softly.
You gasped as you turned around, and he slowly stepped out of the shadows. You dropped everything in your hands and rushed to him before he could even think to feel awkward about the unnatural indigo hue of his skin and gold markings. He should’ve known you wouldn’t care about any of that.
“A-Are you real? I can’t believe this! Viktor, you’re really alive?” you asked in a hushed voice as if he would disappear into smoke if you spoke too loudly. He nodded as you reached out a hand to move his hair out of his face and cupped his cheek. He leaned into your touch, giving a kiss to your palm.
“I’m really alive.”
You broke down and sobbed into his cloak, clinging onto him like a lifeline. Viktor let his crutch hit the floor as he held you in return, pressing his face into your hair. He never wanted to let you go again. He whispered your name again, and you pulled back maybe an inch as if you couldn’t bear to be any further away, still sniffling.
“I’m going to leave this place.”
Your head snapped up in panic, eyes glossy. Your grip on the front of his robes was severe enough that your knuckles had turned white. Viktor placed one hand over yours and another on your cheek.
“I want you to come with me,” he continued softly. His brown eyes locked onto yours and refused to shift. A few stray tears slipped down your cheeks, and he wiped them away.
“Where will we go?” you asked, voice rough.
“Back home, maybe. The Undercity, I mean. Wherever we end up, I’ll be okay as long as you stay,” he whispered. Viktor pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead.
You nodded, unable to speak. Slowly, you released your hold on his clothing, and your breathing slowed down.
“I’m so grateful you’re alive,” you said softly, wiping away more tears. You leaned down and picked up his crutch, although now that you were looking at it again, it resembled a staff more than anything. You handed it over while reaching for his hand with your empty one, already missing his touch.
You walked down stretching hallways and silent arches as the two of you made your way outside.
“I wrote a lot while you were, you know…asleep.”
“Is that so?” Viktor said, smiling. Looking at you sometimes felt like staring into the sun in the best way possible.
“Mm. I think it might be my next masterpiece! Or so my editor says.”
“Everything you write is amazing, [___].”
It was true. You had released many successful novels during your time in Piltover. It was quite the feat for a scrappy street urchin from the Undercity.
“Ah, but this one is different, you see. It’s about a genius scientist and all the things he does to bring joy to those around him and ease their pain despite having his own. He is of pure heart and brilliant mind among a few other things! And…he stands his ground. Even when his knees shake, and it feels as if his legs can’t hold him any longer.”
Viktor said nothing but squeezed your hand, letting you know he understood.
He could see you. All of you. He thought he always could. He couldn’t live without you. Viktor had wanted to die, but now that he had been given this second chance, he wasn’t about to waste it scrambling for cures and discoveries of peculiar things. No, with this new body, this healthy body, he would stay by your side as long as the universe would permit him.
But as with all things, nothing went quite as planned. Viktor became The Herald. The Herald wanted to create an age of Glorious Evolution. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to turn you. You would become part of the hivemind, part of him, and yet…
You were the most perfect thing he had ever known. There wasn’t anything he wanted to change about you, really.
As long as you kept loving him, he couldn’t ask for more.
You caught him deep in those thoughts one day, but when you tried to ask him what was wrong, he just pressed his lips to yours, silencing you. His thumbs brushed over your cheeks as he looked into your eyes, hands cradling your face.
“Just know that I have always loved you. More than you could ever understand,” he whispered. “Us as we are now is all I have ever wanted. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
Later, much later, long after the battle for Piltover and Zaun, you sat on the edge of your home city, wrapped in one of Viktor’s cloaks as you watched the paths of lights below you, spanning from the Undercity to Piltover. You shifted your eyes up to the sky and let the cool air blow over your tear-stained face. You reached your hand upwards as you so often did these days, as if you thought that if you were able to stretch far enough, you would be able to reach Viktor again. As if your fingers would be able to brush the far parts of the universe where pieces of him may still be hiding.
“Did you ever ask yourself what I would do without you?” you whispered. All you heard in response was the wind. You pulled the cloak tighter around yourself and shivered.
Winter was coming.