Chapter Text
Finn, for all the man’s peculiarities, actually likes Jayce Talis. He’s an enthusiastic genius, more fit for science than politics in Finn’s opinion, but nevertheless approachable and pragmatic. Mr. Talis spent long hours pouring over bills and never missed a vote. Finn saw him work through countless nights to get bills up to snuff. He was sure Mr. Talis worked harder than most Councilors. He was generous with Finn’s paycheck and let him bring homework from the Academy with him to finish between tasks.
It’s why he didn’t mind the turbulent schedule of Mr. Talis’ rut week. Finn came in a few hours a day for most of the week, tidying up the house and making sure the laundry kept running. He ran various errands to make sure the kitchen was stocked up and that Mr. Talis’ correspondences were delivered promptly, even the confusing letter and the wrapped box he had to bring to Sheriff Grayson. He only came during the day, showing up after breakfast when the sun was rapidly climbing above the clouds. Mr. Talis even gave him a few days off at the end of the week, which Finn used to catch up on his work. He returns Sunday, Mr. Talis’ mail tucked under his arm. Finn is happy to get started on waking the house, pulling open the curtains in the main foyer. The house seemed to shine in the early morning light, the floors nearly sparkling. Finn admires them for a moment; Mr. Talis had to have mopped since Finn left, which was another task off Finn’s plate!
Finn hums, making his way into the kitchen. Mr. Talis is a fairly competent cook, but Finn’s been preparing meals so his boss can just slide them into the oven rather than cook himself a full meal. He knows ruts can really take it out of wolves, so anything he can do to help Mr. Talis feels worth it. Finn sets the mail on the kitchen island to sort and checks the fridge. He left enough prepared meals to last the weekend before he left, and he’s happy to see most of them gone, along with most of the flasks of blood. He’s sure Mr. Talis’ guest is helping him stick to a regular meal schedule, which is good. Half of Finn’s job is usually sneaking nutrients onto Mr. Talis’ desk until he absentmindedly starts eating something. Finn shuts the door to the freezer and turns.
His heart nearly stops when he sees Mr. Viktor standing on the other side.
Finn blinks. Mr. Viktor stares at Finn, head tilted to one side. Finn hasn’t really seen the man all week, but he looks different; his face less gaunt, spine less crooked, eyes less shadowed. Even his hair looks softer and shinier where it draps over Mr. Viktor’s shoulder. He’s wearing one of Mr. Talis’ shirts, but the collar is wide enough that Finn can see a necklace of bite marks around his pale throat, and the fabric of the shirt is thin enough that Finn can see a dozen other bruises darkening the vampire’s skin. He’s not wearing the brace he wore that first day, his purple-stained knee steady beneath him. Viktor stands casually, hip leaning against the counter, arms crossed loosely over his chest. He looks like he belongs in this gilded kitchen, perfectly at home with his expensive, beautiful surroundings.
“Mr. Viktor!” Finn says, voice wavering. He winces at how uncertain he sounds. Mr. Viktor doesn’t even blink, just looking at Finn, face an icy mask. “Um, is can I help you, sir? Is Mr. Talis-”
“Jayce is still asleep,” Mr. Viktor says, his voice cold. Finn feels like a mouse cornered by a cat, heart thudding loudly in his chest. Mr. Viktor sniffs the air, closing his eyes with a little huff of laughter. Finn has half an impulse to run, but the rest of his mind screams at him to stay as still as possible. “I’m not going to hurt you Finn.” Mr. Viktor opens his eyes, and Finn is stuck staring at them, mesmerized by the shining hazel. In the low light of the kitchen, with its windows still shaded and only the soft glow from the open doors to the dining hall letting Finn see anything at all, Mr. Viktor’s eyes look like molten gold.
They look so deeply sad. Finn’s heart hurts just looking at them. Mr. Viktor’s face is beautiful and perfect, but there’s a shadow to him that makes Finn’s chest squeeze tight like all the air is gone from the room.
Mr. Viktor hums. “I think it’s time you and I had a discussion, Finn.” He reaches past Finn, opening the door to the fridge. He reaches over Finn’s shoulder, coming close enough that for a moment they’re breathing the same air. He smells like Jayce, salt and earth and sharp iron, but also soft bergamot. Mr. Viktor pulls out one of the gold flasks from the fridge. He shakes it, the blood inside sloshing against the sides loud enough for Finn to hear. That first night, Mr. Viktor was so thin and starving he could hardly look Finn in the eye. He’d felt so bad for the man, who must have made the long trip from the Lanes without eating. It was so difficult to look at him – the shame of having plenty when this man so clearly had nothing made him acutely aware of how much the people of the Undercity were suffering. Finn was glad every morning to see more flasks missing, hoping their guest was feeling better and well-fed.
He’s not starving anymore, if the calm, calculating look he gives the flask says anything.
Mr. Viktor huffs another sardonic little laugh, looking at Finn. They’re nearly the same height, but in this moment, Finn feels two inches tall. Mr. Viktor shakes the flask between them.
“I need you to tell me where Mr. Talis got this blood.”
Viktor is already seated on Jayce’s cock when the wolf wakes up. He watches Jayce’s eyes go from hazy with sleep to wide with realization, his hands coming up to settle on either of Viktor’s hips. Jayce is back in his human form, nails blunt and body small in the navy ocean of his king-sized mattress. The bruises under his eyes are deep – they fucked nearly all night and into the morning to satisfy Jayce’s wolf, going until the man basically passed out. Viktor was able to slip in and out of bed easily with hardly a twitch from Jayce, rest a few hours, and rise with the setting sun to climb onto Jayce’s lap. He can still see the dying light peaking through the tops of the curtains to glow softly against the ceiling, early for Viktor, but he wants to spend his time wisely.
“I think your heat may be dwindling,” Viktor says conversationally, rocking his hips forward. In his smallest form, Jayce’s cock is still big, satisfying enough for Viktor’s sore cunt. Jayce rocks up into Viktor with a weak thrust of his hips. Viktor makes a show of moaning, just patronizing enough that Jayce’s face flushes. “Can you tell?”
“Viktor.”
“Then let me check.”
Viktor pulls Jayce up with a hand in his hair. Jayce blinks, and then gasps when Viktor’s teeth sink into the side of his neck. He’s already so keyed up just seconds after waking up, Viktor’s hot wet cunt clenching around him and nails digging into Jayce’s chest and scalp. Viktor moans at the taste of Jayce’s blood, and the sound is enough to have Jayce tip over into an unexpected orgasm.
Viktor waits for a knot, but he’s not surprised when it doesn’t come. He keeps rocking until Jayce is shaking with overstimulation before he pulls off and takes his teeth out of the man’s neck, licking the last of Jayce’s blood off his mouth. Jayce falls limply onto his back, gasping for breath. Viktor sits astride his hips, head tilted to one side as he watches Jayce’s brain reboot.
“Fuck, yeah, it’s over,” Jayce says, slumping with relief. Viktor watches him sink further into the duvet, lazy with content. His long golden limbs sprawl out carelessly. He looks up, smiling at Viktor. One hand comes up to cup Viktor’s jaw, his thumb brushing over his lower lip, catching a stray drop and pressing it to Viktor’s darting tongue. “Third time you’ve drank my blood.” He huffs a breathless little laugh. “Are you in love with me now?”
Viktor tilts his face into Jayce’s palm with a low hum. “It’s not the third time.”
Jayce blinks, looking down as he counts under his breath. “Oh, I guess you’re right,” he says, nodding slowly. His hand, the one pressed against Viktor’s face, still bears the bite marks from the first time they fucked, pale against his skin. “That makes it four times, doesn’t it?”
In a flash, Viktor launches forward, slamming both hands down; one on the mattress next to Jayce’s head, the other on the center of the wolf’s chest. Jayce blinks, pushing himself further back into the bed. Viktor smirks down at Jayce, his fangs painted red against his lower lip.
“Not even close, Jayce,” Viktor says at length, tone dropping into something predatory and sharp. In a snap, Jayce seems to understand that their dynamic has flipped, that he is no longer in control.
Good, Viktor’s mind sings, and for the first time in days, he recognizes the voice of his thoughts. He pushes against Jayce’s chest until the man’s breath wheezes out of him, just to see that he can. Jayce reaches up to grab Viktor’s wrist, but he’s weak from the aftermath of his rut, and Viktor is full and strong. Viktor leans in, hair falling around Jayce’s face like a curtain, narrowing the world to just the two of them.
“Tell me, Jayce,” Viktor says, lips nearly brushing Jayce’s they’re so close. “Did you think your rut endorphins would cover the taste of your blood? Or did you just think I was a fucking idiot?”
“Viktor-”
Jayce gasps when Viktor’s nails dig further into his chest. “If you lie to me,” he says, nearly hissing the words. “I will rip your fucking heart out.”
Jayce swallows, the bob of his throat obvious with how close they are. Viktor’s eyes dart to it, vestiges of the hazy mindset he’s lived in for days begging him to drink more of Jayce’s blood and sink back into the warm safety. The voice in his mind, the one that isn’t his but had him fooled, screams mate, don’t hurt mate! Viktor shoves his hand up until he can lock it around Jayce’s throat, squeezing him in warning.
“Stop, I know it’s you,” Viktor says, feeling Jayce’s heart race against the words. It’s not fair, Jayce’s will didn’t ask permission before it settled around Viktor like a chain, but he doesn’t care. Jayce set all the pieces in place to lock that shackle, he doesn’t get to run and hide from that. “You’ve fed me your blood every meal for a week.”
The awful truth sits between them, rotting in the plain light of the room. Jayce heaves a breath, face cracked open now that there’s nothing to hide behind. Viktor wants to be angrier at him, but his mind is so fucked up on endorphins he physically can’t. The rage sits in his stomach with nothing to twist around but itself, heavy as a rock and burning through Viktor like poison. He hates Jayce, but that hatred comes only because Viktor hates himself in that moment so much that it overrides every instinct, every impulse.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?” Viktor snarls, entire body tense with how much he wants to rip Jayce’s throat out. “How fucking crazy I’ve been?”
Jayce blinks, face paling. “What do you mean?”
“You’re an idiot,” Viktor shouts, tipping his head back so he can laugh at the incredulity of the situation. He laughs so hard he can hardly breathe around it. Beneath him, Jayce tenses. “You really don’t know anything.” He snaps his head back to look at Jayce, teeth bared and eyes stinging. He must look insane, a creature of pure vitriol and rage. “You fucking bonded us, Jayce. I can feel your heartbeat from a room away, I know what you want, what you feel, what you think. I know what you dream about, your nightmares. When you leave the room my stomach turns. I can’t hurt you, not without being out of my mind on Shimmer .”
Jayce’s eyes dart down to the hand on the center of his chest and the blood welling up beneath Viktor’s nails. “That’s not true.”
“Thank Finn for this,” Viktor snarls, and he feels the skip of Jayce’s heart beneath his palm. “He provided wonderful clarity about the situation.”
Jayce takes a sharp breath. “Did you kill him?”
Viktor goes still, mind crystal clear for a devastating second. He pictures Finn, the earnest way he told Viktor everything, the truth pouring out of him, the muted horror when Viktor said what Jayce had done. He’d seen the man’s heartbreak. And Jayce sits there and accuses him of killing Finn?
“You think I’m a monster,” he says, voice hardly there. His rage flares up, so hot it’s cold to the touch. “That’s why you gave me your blood. It wasn’t enough to pay me, you had to keep me on your leash. You wanted to own me.” He laughs again, this sound a warble of hurt and rage so sharp it cuts him on the way out. Jayce's full body flinches. The move smears blood on the pillow behind him from his wounded neck. “Keep me fucked out and dumb off your blood, dangle the Academy in front of me so I’d be docile and keep your bed warm. All about you, you, you. Can I be yours, Jayce? I want to be your little pet! Please!”
“It wasn’t like that-”
“It was exactly like that!” Viktor nearly screams the words. His eyes are hot with tears that slash his face open. He’s blind to the tears cutting down Jayce’s cheeks. He doesn’t want to see them. “What else could it have been?”
Jayce shudders, face screwing up. When he speaks he’s so choked up the words are strangled. “I didn’t know it would affect you this much.”
Viktor snarls. “I told you. You saw it.”
“I wasn’t in my right mind-“
“You bled yourself for a week before I even came here.” Jayce’s heart beats a steady true against his chest. Viktor growls low in his chest. The week Jayce made him wait between the offer and the invitation makes startling sense, and Viktor feels dumb for thinking it had been Jayce working up the nerve. The image of Jayce bleeding himself into little golden flasks and lining them up in his fridge makes him sick. It was so much work, all in the pursuit of chaining Viktor to his will. He wants to gag. “And every day you warmed your blood up and fed it to me, knowing it was yours, knowing not to tell me that it was. You knew, Jayce Talis. Say it.”
“I-”
“Say it!”
“I wanted you to care about me,” Jayce says, the words nearly one sound as they tumble out. Jayce’s breath rattles in his chest, betrayed by his own honesty. Viktor glares until he continues. “My instincts needed someone that I could care for, someone that I could be affectionate with, and not just pretend. Sevika said you could be standoffish, and my wolf would have killed you if it saw you as a threat.”
It would have been kinder, Viktor thinks, shaking with his tears. You should have killed me if you were going to hurt me this bad. You shouldn’t have made me survive this wound.
Fear drags his next question from him. “Did Sevika know what you were doing?”
“No,” Jayce says, lightning fast. Viktor’s chest squeezes, relief nearly cutting his strings. The idea of Sevika betraying him on top of everything else would’ve killed him, regardless of Jayce’s pretend mercy. “It was just me. I did it to protect you.”
Viktor scoffs. “If that were true you would have told me.”
“Would you have drank the blood if you knew?”
“It would have been my choice!” Viktor snaps, chest heaving. Jayce lets out a shocked breath. Viktor grips Jayce around the shoulders just to shake him, trying to dislodge whatever temporary insanity is gripping the man. “How do you not understand that? Or do you think that paying me means you didn’t even have to ask?”
He told Jayce about his mindless, monstrous delirium, confessed how terrified he was about not being able to control himself. And Jayce listened, the whole time doing the very thing he tried to soothe Viktor over. That betrayal is a knife in his throat, impossible to breathe through.
Jayce reaches up, palms coming up to cup Viktor’s face. A gesture that would’ve felt comforting a day ago is nearly threatening. “It wasn’t like that,” he says again, but the words feel hollow against the mounting realization in his eyes of what he’s done. Viktor watches as Jayce starts to understand but still struggles against the weight of his confession. “I lied, and I shouldn’t have done that. But it wasn’t just the blood Viktor, I know it wasn’t.”
“I don’t.”
Jayce stills, heart thudding in his chest. His hands feel clammy against Viktor’s cheeks. He can’t believe he ever thought the man was warm. Right now he feels like he’ll never feel warmth again. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s true.” Jayce’s hands tighten on Viktor’s jaw, but he just shoves Jayce off him, climbing off the man’s lap. He looks for his bag, still neatly set at the end of bed, untouched for days. Why would he touch it when Jayce dressed him like a little doll? His things would ruin Jayce’s perfect image of him, after all. “Since the moment I came through those doors you decided to alter my judgement. I can’t trust you, I don’t believe you. I feel the sting of your betrayal even now. Whatever affection I have felt is nothing to me.”
He starts on his clothes, one of his nicest shirts and thin pants. They’re rags compared to Jayce’s clothes, but they’re his. Jayce scrambles to the end of the bed, but one look from Viktor keeps him tucked onto the edge of the mattress. Viktor is so furious for a moment he doesn’t even realize he’s standing and moving without any pain in his leg. The thought makes him irrationally angry; of course, wolf’s blood would repair his old wound, with its natural tendency towards healing. Another clue he was too endorphin-drunk to interpret. He shoves his brace in his bag so he doesn’t throw it at Jayce’s head.
“I’m leaving,” he tells Jayce, throwing the strap of his bag over his shoulder and turning away from the bed. The rest of the room is empty, couch and rug removed to hide the evidence of Salo’s death. He can almost see the unnatural sprawl of Salo’s broken body. Was that another lie? A convenient way to take out a Councilor to free up the seat? It’s ridiculous, but so was feeding Viktor his blood for an entire week without telling him, so he can’t be sure. The room, so comforting before, feels like a mausoleum, the big bed the lone coffin. Viktor huffs a laugh at the irony and storms from the room, ignoring the yelping and crashing of Jayce behind him.
He gets to the foyer before Jayce catches up to him, a pair of pants haphazardly pulled on, but his bruised chest on full display. The marks of Viktor’s bites are red in the lamplight. Viktor hates seeing those intimate marks. Jayce catches Viktor by the arm and has to jump back not to get slashed across the face. “Viktor, stop, I-“
He cuts himself off, looking at the couch. Finn is tucked under a thick blanket, fast asleep. He’s slightly pale, but breathing deep with sleep, two neat marks on his throat nearly closed up. Viktor tucked him in hours ago, sat with the boy as he fell into an exhausted stupor after Viktor drank from him. Jayce blinks. Viktor laughs. “You really did think I killed him.” He shakes his head. “You think so low of me.”
“No, Viktor, I-”
Viktor rips his arm from Jayce’s grasp. “If you touch me again, I’ll kill you.” He steps back, putting space between his anger and Jayce’s wretched stillness. “If you come into the Undercity, Sevika will drag you out.” He scrubs the drying tears from his cheeks with a heavy sigh. “And if you try to talk to me ever again, I’ll tell everyone about Salo.”
Jayce recoils as if he’d been hit. “You wouldn’t.”
“You think I won’t?” Viktor tilts his head, cold indifference digging its nails into his spine. He stands straight, shorter than Jayce, but that doesn’t matter. Jayce cowers in front of him. “It will not bite me the way it does you. Zaun will die before it turns one of its own to the Enforcers. But Piltover? You killed a Councilor, they’ll burn you.” Viktor hums, pouting at Jayce with the full weight of his condescension. “It was our crime, Jayce, but it will be your sin.”
Jayce opens his mouth to respond, but Viktor’s attention snaps up to the ceiling. A strange sound, so quiet it hardly bears noting, fills the air like the crackle of static from a nearly dead battery. Viktor’s mind slots the information with a second to spare, and he uses that to shove Jayce back hard. He stumbles back right as a thunderous bang steals the air from the room. Glass shatters inwards from all the windows and a beam in the ceiling snaps, crashing down right where Jayce had been standing. It cuts the room down the middle, leaving Jayce and a rousing, confused Finn on one side, and a shaking Viktor on the other. Outside the sky is red, but Viktor’s skin doesn’t burn as it would with daylight. Fire his mind supplies. It’s all burning down now.
“What was that?” Jayce asks, voice loud against the probable ringing in his ears. Finn stands, shaking, the blanket still draped around his shoulders like a cloak. He looks up, catching Viktor’s eyes. The solemn, apologetic look cuts Viktor to the core, even as his hand instinctively rises to his neck. You deserve clarity had been his words. And if you still hate Mr. Talis after, then you’re right to hate him.
Viktor shakes his head. Finn sighs but nods. Jayce looks between them with open hurt twisting his brows That convinces Viktor more than anything that the man just doesn’t understand, and maybe never will.
Viktor turns away from them both, heart fracturing in two over the man who tricked him into drinking his blood and the man who gave Viktor the choice. “A perfect distraction,” he calls over his shoulder, picking his way across the rubble of Jayce’s gilded manor. “War has reached Piltover. I hope it fucking burns.”
Outside, Viktor breathes in the night air and tastes smoke. He looks out over the skyline and sees the Capital Spire wreathed in flame, the impressively large window shattered. The tallest building in all of Piltover, blown to pieces. The flames are so hot the gold making the walls has melted, fat tears tracing down the sides of the spire. It dyes the sky blood red and rains ash down over the streets like snow. Viktor reaches up and collects a few specks on his fingers. Enforcers race in every direction, screams filling the streets as the people of Piltover recognize their city has been attacked.
You knew it was coming, his mind spits, flashes of the note of the Noxian assassins and the newspaper stories of the increased blockades coming to mind. What few parts of his mind not occupied forcibly by Jayce the last week knew with startling clarity that war was coming to Piltover. Zaun will need to choose sides, and Viktor feels the urgency in finding Sevika settle in his chest like a second heartbeat. With war at hand, Zaun’s population could be a critical source of fighting bodies. Piltover will come to Zaun on its knees and beg for help, promise whatever, or else just storm the streets and force the young and able-bodied to cross the bridge and join the fight.
Viktor sees a path to freedom, to independence for his country, hand in hand with the red and black banners of Noxus. His anger is a sharp thing, and in that moment he can see it, can picture himself so clearly lighting the fire that consumes all of Piltover.
But you still saved him, that traitorous little voice whispers in his mind, but Viktor knows like he knows the sun will rise that it is the last he’ll hear of Jayce Talis’ voice.
Getting back to Zaun is difficult, but Viktor manages to slip across the bridge between waves of Enforcers fleeing out of the Undercity. He walks easy now, no cane or brace to impede his steady stride. He rides the elevators down to the Lanes with his fists clenched, composing all the information he has to share into a neat list.
The Undercity is chaos; all the Enforcers have fled and the people dance in the streets. They shout their joy over the attack on Piltover, drinking and singing. Viktor can’t blame them. The referendums and the bloody fights it took to get them are fresh wounds, and the schadenfreude is deserved. Viktor walks through crowds that part easily for him, either recognizing him as Sevika’s man or responding viscerally to his seriousness. The Last Drop is raucous, but the back corner is as solemn as Viktor feels. The leaders of Zaun have gathered; Vander and Silco, Sevika, the chem-barons and their lieutenants. They’re arguing, hissing insults and plans to one another. Smeech shouts, slamming his prosthetic claw down just shy of Margot’s fingers, who growls and nearly takes out Fenni when she pulls her fist back to punch the man. Silco is quiet, eyes narrowed as he watches Vander argue with Chross, fingers tight over the handle of his cane.
Viktor slots himself against Sevika’s side with a nod. She’s irritated, brow furrowed, running a finger along one of her horns distractedly. Her arm gleams bronze in the low light, and Viktor’s just so happy it’s not gold that he nearly reaches out to touch it before shaking himself out of it. Jayce fucked his head up with all his casual touch and soft attention. He shoves his hands into his pocket, fist closing over the cool metal he moved from his bag on the long journey over. Sevika looks him over, eyes catching on his unbraced knee before sliding up to his face. She reaches out, dragging her fingers across Viktor’s cheek and pulling them back with an obvious smudge of soot on them.
“You just came from Piltover,” Sevika says, and the table goes quiet. Everyone turns to Viktor expectantly, a gossamer peace that hangs on Sevika’s assessment. “What happened?”
Viktor overheard enough from panicked Enforcers as they ran towards the Capital Spire. “A Noxian assassin set off a bomb in the Spire,” he says, ignoring the shocked gasps from around the table. He keeps his eyes locked with Sevika, jaw set against the faint sting of betrayal against Jayce. He needs time to bleed whatever biological loyalty he still feels for the man. “All the Councilors are dead, except for Mel Merdarda. Junior Councilors are being called to step up.” Including Jayce. Viktor snarls against his new enemy’s rapid ascent to power. It’s another reason to turn on Piltover – he’ll have no place in a Zaun still under Piltover’s thumb. “They’re going to war.”
“Salo is missing,” Margot says, a tight frown on her unnaturally perfect face. With Sevika kicking Salo out, Viktor is sure she got his business, and from the set of her jaw, it wasn’t welcome. “He may have survived.”
Viktor digs his hand from his pocket and upturns his palm on the table, the loud clatter of Salo’s lapel pin deafening. He wasn’t even sure why he grabbed it in the first place, his Shimmer-hot mind finding something shiny and ripping it from Salo’s shirt while he fed. It would have been lost if Viktor didn’t find it that morning when he went to talk to Finn, the bright gold flashing from under the bench. It must have slid away from his burnt hand after tearing it off, and he’d been too high on Shimmer to keep track of it. Still, he’d taken it, and Jayce hadn’t found it to get rid of. It was proof, maybe the only evidence anyone would ever find, which made it valuable beyond measure. Viktor could chalk up the collecting to his mind working faster than his body, even as the Shimmer took hold, but it was just as likely dumb luck and an animal’s interest in something shiny.
Either way, he’s got Salo’s pin, and everyone in the room suddenly knows his worth.
“Salo is dead,” Viktor tells them. He looks at Sevika, and sees the full weight of his words settle on her shoulders. She sees him. “There’s only one Councilor in Piltover, and she comes from Noxus. War is on our doorstep.” Sevika puts the pieces together the same way Viktor had, her eyes going fever bright. Beside her, Silco leans forward, his whole and damaged eye locked on Viktor. The recognition blooms around the table from there; Vander leans back heavily in his chair, Margot gasps into her palm, Smeech bangs his fists on the table. “We were never going to get our independence from the Referendums. This is our only chance.”
“We vote on it then,” Vander says, the whole room turning to him. Silco hovers a hand over Vander’s shoulder, but the static tension in the room is too much for even him to wade through. If anyone in the room understands hating Piltover, it’s those two, who nearly lost everything from the last brutal invasion, even each other. Viktor looks at their forgiveness and his stomach churns; it would take a thousand lifetimes for him to even look at Jayce again. “Let’s vote on whether Zaun’s first act of independence will be going to war.”
It’s nearly sunrise by the time Viktor walks home. He briefs Sevika on the way since the woman won’t let him leave alone. She keeps an eye on the crowds as they walk, prosthetic hand twitching anytime someone gets too close. Viktor’s stride nearly matches hers, moving much more fluidly with his healed body. It’s strange, after so long needing the support of a cane.
He tells Sevika everything he read in the newspapers, and what little he caught from the notes on Jayce’s desk. He describes the Capital Spire in flames and the movement patterns of the Enforcers after. Sevika takes it all in, listening to the words as they pour out. She doesn’t comment on the empty spaces between them where Viktor stumbles away from mentioning Jayce at all. The mouthfuls of Jayce he took to prove a point clash with Finn’s unadulterated blood, turning in his stomach. He’d retch it back up if he didn’t know to save whatever healing effect he can get, especially with war on the horizon.
“Did he hurt you?”
Sevika asks when they’re nearly at Viktor’s door, stopping when Viktor goes very still. She turns, standing in the street. Drunk partiers give them a wide berth as they pass, their celebrations long from over. Viktor can’t look at her for a minute, angry beyond sense. His vampiric nature, suppressed from days spent around a person he was chemically bonded to, snarls and snaps at the bars Viktor usually confined it to. The monster that killed Salo is right beneath his skin.
“Yes,” Viktor says, and he could pull aside his collar to show the claiming barks slowly mending themselves, or pull up his shirt to show his bruise-black hips, of even just hold out his palm, now covered in white-gold spirals of scars, but he doesn’t. His eyes are wounded enough for Sevika. “I don’t want him to ever step foot in Zaun again.” I don’t want to see him ever again. “As long as he stays on his side of the bridge I don’t care what he does.”
Sevika nods grimly. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a flask, handing it to Viktor. He can smell the blood before he even opens it, murky Zaunite blood with none of the rich heaviness of Piltover.
He drinks it like the finest wine in the world.
“I want you by my side for this,” Sevika says, clapping Viktor on the shoulder as they continue their walk. “If this is war, we’re not taking Piltover coin until we decide what side we’re on. And I need your mind on this. Every other empire in the lanes has a second vote at the table. You’ll be mine.”
I’ll take care of you goes unsaid, but Viktor hears it. It’s an opportunity he never could have fathomed having before, but luck has dropped it in his lap. He seizes it with both hands. “I know how things work up there now,” he tells her, justifying his good fortune so he can’t spiral with the thought that Sevika is using him. He needs to be someone worth listening to. Being Sevika’s is better than being Jayce’s, as far as he’s concerned. “We can win this.”
“I know we can,” Sevika says, reaching into her belt again to pull out a cigar. She lights it and offers it to Viktor. It’s fatalist, a vampire smoking, considering how flammable he is. Less so now that he’s well-fed and fully healed, but he could still burn to death off the cherry red ember at the end. It doesn’t stop Viktor from taking it, from letting the spicy smoke fill his lungs before he hands it back. Sevika nods her approval. “Piltover made a mistake, passing you over. You could’ve been deadly in their hands.”
Viktor snorts. Talis blue clashed against his skin. He never would have fit in that gilded cage. “I don’t think there’s a world in which I stood for Piltover.” He turns at the door to his apartment, facing Sevika so she knows not to follow him in. He’s drained, exhausted in every capacity. Sevika looks at him, mouth a thin line. “I have learned things about myself. I am no longer certain of who I am.”
Sevika’s eyes are flat black disks in the pre-dawn light, but Viktor can read the tightness at the corners of them. Sympathy is a difficult emotion for a creature of hell and a creature of the Undercity. “What do you want to be?”
Viktor takes a moment to contemplate that. “I don’t…” He takes a deep breath. “Good. I want to be good.” He looks up at her, a tender hook in his heart demanding the kind of praise and affection he’s had the last week, even knowing it was poison. “Can I still be good?”
“Viktor,” Sevika says, breathing out a mouthful of smoke that hangs thick between them. “You weren’t meant to be good. None of us were.” Before Viktor’s heart can break she reaches out, palm warm on his shoulder. “That doesn’t mean you can’t be. Fuck what they think.”
It’s cold comfort, but Viktor takes it and wraps his battered heart around it. “Goodnight Sevika,” he says, getting a gruff nod in return. He turns and nearly trips over a box sitting at his front door, the plain brown paper wrapping reading Viktor in elegant script. He picks the box up and shakes it, but nothing inside rattles ominously, so he brings it inside with him. With his door locked behind him, Viktor slumps, strings cut. He slides down the door, bag tumbling away from him and mysterious box held to his chest. His room is small, but the sight of his thin mattress is so comforting he can barely stand it. He frowns down at the unfamiliar box intruding on his safe space. It’s large, wider than his chest and deeper than the bottom of his rib cage, but it’s light. He sets it down and rips open the paper, confused why anyone would deliver something to him.
Inside, he finds a gold piece of parchment on top of a bundle of fabric. He sets the card aside and pulls out the fabric, recognition crackling over his hands.
It’s the duvet they ruined that first night, cleaned so there’s no stain, although the color is a bit duller now. Viktor picks up the card, eyes stinging.
I saved it for you, the card reads in Jayce’s scratchy pen. You deserve so much better, but I hope this keeps you warm.
Viktor tears the card to pieces, a choked-off scream tearing through his throat with how hard he holds it back. He gets both hands on the duvet and feels the fine fabric beneath his fingers. It smells like Jayce, heady and bright and iron-sharp, wolf and human twisted inexorably together. He wants to rip the fabric straight down the middle, shred it and then burn the shreds to ash. He wants to march over that bridge and shove the whole thing down Jayce’s throat.
He does neither. Viktor presses his face to the fabric and lets the scream he’s been holding back out. All the control he mustered for his conversation with Jayce, all the rage he buried so he could tell the man just how much he hurt Viktor, it spills out of him. He sobs, grief turning his face into a hideous mask. He shakes so hard his bones ache, and weeps so loud his lungs threaten to pop.
He can’t tear the duvet. Viktor clings to it and pours out his mountainous, untenable grief. He cries for his betrayal, for the sick feeling in his stomach that he’s been used, lied to, that he believed it. He cries for the confusion and the hazy headspace that he thought was safe but never was. He cries for the fact that Jayce made him feel good, all the while he had a knife in Viktor’s back. Jayce painted a picture for him of a better life, one where Viktor went to The Academy and had a kind person in his corner. Viktor saw that painting and thought for a single fucking second that he could have it, that he’d keep it and hold it and pass it down his family line until some spoiled relative who didn’t even know his name would hang it in his dining hall.
He's never going to get that. The grief of knowing that but still being fooled into thinking he could have it, only to get it ripped away again, makes the tears choke him. He drapes the blanket around him, holding it close to his chest. It's the closest he'll get to a hug in the Undercity. When he falls asleep, curled up in the far corner of his bed, it’s wrapped in that duvet, the smell of Jayce surrounding him. The sun rises on a Piltover covered in ash, but Viktor doesn't see it. In his dreams, he sees Jayce smiling up at him, soft and kind and completely in love.
Even in his dreams, he knows it's a lie.