Chapter Text
A moment.
The gods only spared Viktor a moment to gain even the slightest comprehension of what was happening. His mind, while lightning quick, barely registered the explosion. To some degree, he felt it before it fully hit him.
Viktor's eyes forced themselves shut at the excruciating light. His ears rang as his skin felt initial wave of the blast — and then the searing heat that came after.
It was his lungs—his damned, doomed lungs—that roared in pain, letting him know that something terrible was happening. His lungs filled with dirt, grit, and soon enough, smoke.
Somewhere in his mind, he felt himself flung against a hard surface.
If Viktor was allowed one more moment, he would have thought about him.
He would have thought about the boy he found on a ledge all those years ago. He would have thought about floating in blue magic with the man who would become his best friend and partner. He would have thought about long nights in the lab, watching day turn into night and sneaking glanced at how the moonlight shone on his eyes.
If he was luckier, Viktor would have thought about Jayce. He might have even looked for the man in all the chaos.
But Viktor, who has had to earn every minute he was in Piltover since crawling out of the Undercity, was not granted such luck.
Viktor had spent his life seeking solutions for problems, and it took him all of one moment to know:
I am dying.
Viktor hated the new cane. He was perfectly fine with his old one, the one he had been using ever since making the treck from the Undercity to Piltover. Loathe as he was to admit it however, walking had become increasingly difficult. Pain was always a constant in his bad leg, but it was pain he had gotten used to since his childhood. After all, pain is an enduring presence in his life—sometimes a friend that lets him know he needs more care, more often a burden that refuses to let go.
That burden has turned into a beast now, however, and it sunk its teeth into Viktor's legs mercilessly.
But Jayce presented him with the cane and the matching leg brace so eagerly that Viktor can only smile.
It was a surprise for him. Jayce had gone behind his back and designed the new cane after he noticed Viktor struggling. He forged the damned thing himself, painting it in the Talis House colors.
It worked marvelously, but Viktor could not help but feel like he himself had become a burden. Part of him feared that Jayce thought him helpless. The other part of Viktor thought about how he could have done it himself, and likely do it better.
But there was, for the most part, a swelling of affection in his heart.
Viktor slept. And then he would dream. It was a select cycle of dreams. Sometimes, it would be fantastical dreams of running in a field with Rio by his side. Other times, it would be memories he long thought buried.
Viktor would dream for so long that he knew, to some degree, that he was dreaming. Perhaps, he resolved, that this was death.
Or more likely, his neurons were firing off and these were the final thoughts flying through the synapses of his brain. His mind was augmenting time for him, making it seem like months have gone by when it was actually the final milliseconds before death takes him.
He does not remember at what point the dreams turned into nightmares.
In one of them, Viktor never leaves the fissures and he dies together with his family. In another one, Sky stares at him with angry tears in her eyes as the light of the Arcane burns her into dust.
This, Viktor thought, was probably hell. A hell he deserved for tampering with nature.
Somewhere in his mind, whatever lucid thoughts he had left found their way back to Jayce. Viktor hoped that Jayce would not experience such things when he died.
And then Viktor's cycle of nightmares was interrupted.
He felt it change because something about this was painfully vivid. He was swathed in cold, darkness. The darkness carried him, making him float in pure nothingness.
This was worse than hell.
He forced his eyes to open.
To his horror, Viktor found himself in Rio's place, floating in a glass tank. He breathed and his lungs willed with the green fluid he was submerged in but he would not die. A man obsessed with keeping him alive looms around him but he could not see who it was.
But was he still really alive at this point?
Viktor thrashed against the tank, the tubes attached to his back threatening to tear him open. But he did not stop. He called out to the man who did nothing but stare at him. He tried to scream but nothing, nothing escapes. He desperately willed himself into any other memory or dream or nightmare but he was stuck. He sobbed and shrieked. It was a terrible thing: to drown knowing that death will not save you. Did his short and unfortunate life lead to an eternity of this?
The darkness eventually took him.
In his mind, he was floating in blue magic again; his hazel eyes beaming with hope as they stare back at him.
"Jayce?"
It was the first word that left his lips in what felt like an eternity.
He stared at his hands. Cold. Metal. Unfeeling.
If he had any tears left, they would fall. But Viktor felt...almost nothing. An endless cycle of dreams and nightmares has lead him to feel nothing.
"What am I?"