Work Text:
The poem read:
A strange thing washed up on the shore
It was gray, like a jellyfish
Two ventricles, four chambers
It made the most curious sound
Like the crackle of fireworks
Like an empty room, fog haze echoes
Like
A hand crumpled the paper, tossed the words in the river. Silco drew a cigarette from a moth-eaten coat, fingers unsteady in the chill. The flame of the lighter scorched his palm as he lit it. He breathed in poisonous smoke and exhaled.
It was bright today, naked daylight bearing down on the rocky flats of Entresol. The air was stale. Winter was snowless but ice-cold. It would be warmer in the Lanes, he thought, where the fog ceiling held in the heat, where the factories belched poisonous smoke, where the buildings cocooned themselves away like huddling bodies. Entresol was flat and open, a naked plateau beside the steppe, where water trickled down through the ocean levies. He could smell the brine.
Silco saw movement from the corner of his eye. There was a man standing upstream. He was elegant, straight-backed, thin. There was a strange peacefulness in the way he stood, an embodied calm.
Not many people lived out here. The small abode Silco had purchased had been chosen solely for its remoteness. It had belonged to a fisherman, perhaps, when the river still had fish. The closest cluster of houses was a mile away. Silco didn’t know if this man came from there. It seemed a long way to walk with a cane.
It didn’t matter. Silco turned his face back to the empty page in his hand. His pen tapped against the paper, leaving flecks of ink, marring the yellow-white.
He wrote:
My only companion, a man on the river,
No names pass between us, only winter’s shiver.
Terrible. He closed the book before the ink dried. He sighed deeply, his breath a haze of fog and smoke. When he turned to look upriver again, the man was gone.
Silco’s house was decrepit, sagging beneath the weight of neglect.
He walked up the crumbling steps to the front door. The rain had set in on his way back, and the gutters were swollen with water, algae-stained windows rattling beneath the patter. Silco inserted an iron key into the front door, unlocked it. It stuck for a moment before he managed to coax the rusted mechanisms free, wondering all the while why he bothered to ever lock it. No one would break in.
There were leaks in the ceiling. Silco laid out pots to catch the droplets of rain. The floors were made of cut stone tiles, which was perhaps the only reason the whole structure hadn’t collapsed in on itself decades ago. But it meant the water had nowhere to go, pooling in the uneven basins that footsteps had carved into the rock.
The space wasn’t entirely unpleasant to live in. There was a cast iron stove in the kitchen, and the stone bricks were solid even if the ceiling was not. When he placed coals in the oven, it warmed the room quickly, the windows steaming as the water evaporated. He sat down at his desk. Tobacco, paper. He rolled a cigarette, his fingers remembering the motions perfectly despite how long it had been. He could still afford cigars, but there was nowhere to buy them out here. Cigarettes would have to do.
The next part of his routine: his medicine. He took out the mechanism he used to inject his mutated eye. He’d brought a supply of shimmer, but not much. He had enough left to last two weeks. I need to go back, he thought, and get more vials from the doctor.
Or perhaps not.
It would be fascinating to see what he became without it. Why not?
Silco loaded the vial into the mechanism, brought it to his eye, and fired. He had to do it quickly, without hesitating, or he couldn’t do it at all. Not without Jinx’s help. The needle scraped his cornea, as it often did when he rushed. White-hot agony burst through his skull like a gunshot, and he snarled against the pain as he always did, wetness running down his ruined cheek.
It passed. It throbbed with the pressure of moisture, as it would for some hours. But he was used to the headache, used to the punishment, used to suffering.
Two weeks left. And then what?
Silco took the book from his coat, unwrapped it from the canvas covering that protected it from the rain. It was lopsided from so many torn pages, but still precious. The first page began, ever wonder what it's like to drown? His first soliloquy. But he didn’t look at it anymore. He only ever looked at the empty pages now.
Silco awoke to the sound of an explosion.
For a wild moment, he thought Jinx must have come back. When he was awake enough to think, he reminded himself that she wouldn’t. She had left with Vi a year ago, on the eve of Zaun’s independence. He had no idea where they would have gone. Far away, he thought. Far beyond the borders of Zaun or Piltover.
The rain had stopped in the night. It was sunny and cold again, the gutters still rattling, droplets clinging to the window panes. The scent of wet stone was pervasive. When Silco walked out into the main room, he found all of the pots overflowing. They’d barely helped.
So what was that noise?
He pulled on fresh clothes, leaving behind the mess of water. When he stepped out onto the front stoop, he realized he had no way of knowing where the explosion had come from. But, after a few moments of patience, he heard a shudder of crumbling stone. He hadn’t dreamed it, then.
He began to walk towards the noise. He couldn’t see anything from where he was; his house was tucked against the craggy outcropping that delineated the faultline beneath, at the cusp of the deep canyon that led downwards, where the river flowed towards the Lanes. There was a path upwards, a natural staircase that led out of the basin. He scaled it, panting by the time he reached the top. Smoker’s lungs weren’t designed for the punishment.
Silco saw him across the flats. That man again. There was a fresh crater carved into the ground, a plume of dust only disrupted by the pinprick of the sun stabbing through it.
Strange.
Silco walked towards the stranger. The journey was more difficult than it initially appeared; the ground was covered in the ivy that characterized Entresol. It was clear that no one came up here ordinarily. Why would they? There was nothing here. How a man with a cane had managed to navigate it was anyone’s guess.
The stranger either sensed or heard his approach. He turned, unhurried and unworried. He had a handsome face, sharp-edged but softened by amber eyes. He was smiling.
“I’m sorry,” the man said, delicately accented. “I was running an experiment. …It wasn’t supposed to explode.”
That was not the greeting Silco expected. The man seemed unfazed by his monstrous appearance, which meant he knew precisely who Silco was. Yet he said nothing about it, drew no attention to the fact that an industrialist from the Lanes was living alone in the most backwater part of Entresol.
Silco looked around. There were crates of boxes full of supplies strewn around them. He vaguely recognized the equipment from things that the doctor had in his own lab, but these were far superior, beautifully ornamented. They were obviously from Piltover.
“How did you get up here with your cane?” asked Silco.
“My cane?” The stranger held up empty hands. “I don’t need it. I just like having it.”
“I see.”
Silco looked down into the smoking crater. He could see a device in the center, something metal that was twisted and broken. It wasn’t entirely destroyed, he realized. The pieces seemed designed to break apart under great force, all the metal fasteners still intact. So the stranger must have anticipated the possibility of catastrophic failure. …No doubt another reason he was working in such a remote area.
“I was trying to make a… mh, let’s say, a miniature, self-contained Hexgate,” said the stranger. “Not so different from what actual mages are capable of.”
Silco stared down at the wreckage. He had never seen Hextech used. He had certainly never traveled by Hexgate before. He’d never wanted to. To want to see something outside the borders of his own city felt like a betrayal. Zaun was all he wanted, all he needed.
“You can’t already do that?” he asked.
“No, not at all. Our patrons wanted to transport enormous quantities of goods, not individuals. And since their funding determines the nature of our research, that is what we built.”
Ah. All at once, the identity of the man was known to Silco. Jayce Talis’ partner, co-inventor of Hextech. Like many trenchers, he didn’t have a last name. He was simply Viktor.
They were both known to each other, now.
“Why come here?” asked Silco. “No doubt you have all the resources you need in Piltover.”
“True,” said Viktor. “Just as well. If you asked them, I suppose they would say I came here to die.”
“Did you?”
Viktor shook his head. “Not at all.”
He stepped forward into the pit, sliding into the crevice. He most certainly did not need a cane. He was agile as a cat, moving deftly through the wreckage. He began to collect the scattered pieces of his device, waving away the dust. He sneezed a few times, but it was settling quickly. The sky was unearthed from the haze soon enough.
Silco caught a glimpse of a blue-white light from the crater, quickly hidden away by clever fingers. A gemstone, he thought. But those precious objects had no utility to him now. Without Jinx, he wouldn’t be able to do anything useful with one. He wouldn’t know how. And what use would there even be now? Zaun was independent. Sevika had taken his place as the head of the syndicate, at his behest. The Lanes were safe. As far as he knew, he and everyone here was a free citizen of a fledgling nation.
“I suppose I should thank you,” Viktor called up to him.
Silco’s blue eye narrowed. “Why?”
“You were the patron of a friend of mine,” said Viktor. “And without his research, I truly would be dead.”
There was no question as to whom Viktor meant.
Silco looked across the crater, out towards the steppe. In places, Entresol was almost as elevated as topside… just enough to see the ocean if you squinted. He could understand, however bitterly, why they had never taken up the cause like the Lanes had.
“Why did you come here?” asked Silco. “Really.”
Viktor didn’t stop working. He squatted down in the dust, unearthing little pieces of metal from the ground. He was meticulous and energetic in his work, and looked rather like an archaeologist extricating fossils.
“I came here to work,” said Viktor. “If you couldn’t tell.”
“I didn’t realize that Entresol offered such opportunities for ambitious young scientists,” said Silco dryly.
Viktor laughed, short and bright. “It doesn’t.”
“Do you think this work will amount to anything without them?” asked Silco. “The topsiders?”
Viktor did look up then. His expression was relaxed, but his eyes were sharp. For a moment, Silco thought those eyes were gold, a nocturnal shimmer despite the daylight… but then it was gone. He decided it was just some strange quality of the morning light.
The painful twinge behind his mutated eye suggested otherwise.
“If my work can only ever mean something to them, then I would prefer it not succeed,” said Viktor. “But I believe that it will mean something to me.”
When Silco returned to his home, he began the unhappy task of cleaning up the water. He wasn’t workshy by any means—one couldn’t survive in Zaun without being willing to get their hands dirty from time to time—but there was a special kind of unhappiness in realizing that your living standards had degraded. The aggressive climb for power had only led him back to the gutter. He no longer slept in a clean bed, no longer drank fine scotch nor smoked imported cigars. He would never again enjoy such creature comforts.
Of course, Silco prided himself on his adaptability. So he didn’t dissolve into a mess of self-pity. He worked efficiently, mopping up the water, squeezing it out into the garden when it became too sodden, repeating the motion again and again until the floor was dry. The menial task allowed his mind to wander.
Viktor.
Silco held that name in his mind like a curio. He tried to remember what he knew about the man, but truthfully, it wasn’t much. A brilliant scientist who forsake his homeland to slake his ambitions, an opportunity that only Piltover could provide. He was a cripple from Entresol. He was, by all accounts, a shy man, brilliant but socially unremarkable.
None of that seemed to quite match the fellow he had just met. A cane, only there for show. A feline confidence. He lacked Jayce’s pompous showmanship, surely, but there was no question of charisma, no question of handsomeness, and no small degree of vanity.
Silco sat at his desk, rolled another cigarette, settled back. He hadn’t eaten, but that was alright. He wasn’t hungry. He flicked his cigarette against an ashtray covered in Jinx’s colorful designs. It was one of the few things he’d brought with him. He observed it thoughtfully, an absentminded fingertip tracing the ceramic edge. He could see those lines moving, like the strings of a guitar being strummed.
These visual disturbances were becoming more common now. Silco reached into the drawer to take out the empty injector, fiddling with the mechanism as he wrote.
I occupy the space of a man complete,
Fulfilled entire,
We breathe polluted air together,
Yet through him it filters, as if through a tree,
And to me it sticks, as tar, as dust,
As the smoke of the flame
Enkindled, broken and brittle tinder,
I ask: what have I given to build that fire?
And to what purpose do I claim
To contaminate his air with my desire?
Or will he breathe that, too,
And exhale fresh air, born anew?
And, what then, will be left of me?
Viktor’s house was not far away from his own, as it turned out.
Silco found it one day while walking along the path of the river. It was farther up than he would ordinarily travel, but the winter cold made him eager to keep moving. He didn’t feel particularly interested in writing tripe today, nor did he relish the unchanging monotony of his drafty house. His mind felt scattered, all the lights of the world suddenly too bright, too tangible. If he looked at the sky too long, he felt dizzy, absurdly certain that he was going to fall in and drown. A lifetime spent in the Lanes made such open spaces feel more threatening than beautiful.
He found a copse at the edge of the steppe, just at the barrier where Entresol began to smooth out into the plains beyond, ending in the ocean. Not as high up as Piltover, but close. The golden city loomed on the western horizon, the spires piercing the sky. He didn’t look at it for long.
Up here, the gasoline smell of the undercity was fainter. The scent of earth and grass pervaded his senses, unfamiliar pleasantness. The trees swayed in the open breeze. He walked along a manmade path, the yellow tall grass parted by a dirt trail. He could see buildings beyond the lines of the trees; a home, a shed, a barn with only the faintest impression of its old red paint.
An old farmhouse, he realized. It would have been a single estate, owned by a kulak, with communal lodging for the workers. Usually seasonal hires, he thought. It was almost certainly abandoned. Most of these places had been left to rot when the soil became too poisonous to harvest wheat.
(The resulting famine had been terrible. Silco remembered those hungry years, but only dimly.)
He expected no one to be here. When he saw a shadow of movement from the corner of his eye, he started. Viktor was running across the field. It was recreational. He wore a loose fitting white shirt, thin cotton, trousers rolled up to his knees. He didn’t appear to be wearing shoes; unnecessary, on the soft grass. But he must have been quite cold.
But there was something else that caught Silco’s attention. One of Viktor’s legs was artificial. It was difficult to see from a distance, but the glint of sunlight against the gray metal was unmistakable.
So that’s why he doesn’t need the cane now, thought Silco.
He could see purple light in the seams, not quite like the pink shimmer glow that he was used to from Sevika’s arm. A new variant? Had the technology evolved in Silco’s absence? He’d heard nothing from the Lanes in weeks; his letterbox remained unopened. But the world was surely moving on, even if he was no longer a part of it. Progress, even in Zaun, was an inevitability.
He wondered at the strangeness of this whole morning. It was always strange when Viktor interrupted his solitude. He was like a stray cat that wandered in from time to time, only to disappear for weeks.
Viktor slowed to a stop, leaning forward to plant his hands on his knees as he caught his breath. His white shirt stuck to him, hair wet and tousled. How long had he been out here, Silco wondered.
Almost the instant Silco thought to leave, Viktor spotted him. He straightened and held up a hand in greeting. It could have been left at that, of course, but then he pointed to the farmhouse. Meet me there.
There was no reason to stay. But there was no reason not to. Silco walked towards the house. The back door was unlocked, so he entered the kitchen. There was a strong food smell in the air, a pot simmering on the stove. Borscht? It wasn’t a common dish in the Lanes, but popular in Entresol, where beets thrived in the mild climate.
The kitchen was old-fashioned. There was clearly recent work done; fresh brown paint on the walls, new drapes hanging over freshly-scrubbed windows. The countertops were original, the wood smoothed and discolored with use. The floorboards creaked under his feet. The kitchen table was covered in papers, scientific notes written in indecipherable cursive. The gold pen—real gold, not simple gold plating—that rested on the stack was one that Silco recognized from the doctor’s lab, given only to Fellows of the Academy. It was worth more than anything Silco owned now.
He heard the front door open, footsteps leading into an adjacent hallway. A few minutes later, Viktor appeared, freshly dressed, still shining pink. He seemed in good spirits.
“I didn’t expect to see you today,” said Viktor.
“Nor I you.”
Viktor checked the pot before he put an old kettle on the stove. He didn’t speak, didn’t rush to fill the silence. Neither did Silco. They were both men content with contemplation, with the natural lull. Or perhaps they were just not used to needing to fill silences anymore.
“When did you replace your leg?” asked Silco.
He was surprised that the answer interested him. Prosthetics were hardly uncommon in the Lanes. Sepsis was the most usual cause. Antibiotics weren’t plentiful, and infection was easy to catch, quick to set in.
“A year ago,” said Viktor. “Mh, although replace may not be the correct word. Transform may be more accurate.”
The kettle boiled. Viktor poured him tea, not asking what he liked before he added milk into the steaming cup. There was a strange, unspoken intimacy in the act. Or perhaps it was merely a lack of interest in the preferences of his guest.
Silco took the warm cup in his cold fingers. He felt bitterly ordinary, sitting in Viktor’s kitchen. His gaze rolled across the canvas of perfect mediocrity: the ticking cuckoo clock on the wall, the old, thin ceramic plates stacked in an open cupboard, the novelty salt and pepper shakers fashioned into the shapes of a hen and a rooster.
“My grandfather owned this place,” said Viktor. “He died a few years ago. It takes weeks for letters to reach Piltover, sometimes, so I didn’t even know he was sick.”
“My condolences,” said Silco.
He didn’t sound particularly sincere. Viktor didn’t seem to mind.
“He left this place to me,” he continued. “He was always proud of my accomplishments. …Strange, really, that success reaps such rewards, even when those might be better served elsewhere. But I appreciate the sentiment.”
Silco, who had spent the better part of his life toiling for his own successes, felt that such windfalls were perfectly well deserved, but he kept the thought to himself. His opinions, once so readily voiced, remained locked these days. Perhaps it was a lack of familiarity with his new world. When he was the kingpin, when he was in control, it was easy enough to know things for certain. To know oneself. Here, there was nothing to ground him. Just the coming of winter. His own existence in Viktor’s house felt strange and inexplicable, wrong. His life in Entresol was just as inexplicable.
What was he, really, without the Lanes?
“Why did you come here?” asked Viktor. “To Entresol, I mean.”
The question was disturbingly prescient of Silco’s mood. He was not used to such candor, not from men he barely knew. Not from men at all, in fact. Only Sevika and Jinx were permitted to be so bold.
He leaned back in his chair, fingers twitching for a cigarette he didn’t have.
“And why should I tell you?” asked Silco.
There was a warning in his tone, a deepening of the register that usually made his followers shrink. But Viktor was not a follower, and Silco had nothing to threaten him with. He didn’t even turn to face Silco, instead moving to stir the borscht.
“I told you how I came to be here,” said Viktor. “It’s only fair.”
“You only told me your grandfather left this place to you,” said Silco. “That you came here to work. And before, you said that the topsiders would assume you came here to die. So, to answer your question in the manner that you answered yours, I suppose I could say I bought the house I now inhabit, and I came here for the express purpose of not working. That is why I am here. And, I suppose, the people in the Lanes assume I came here to die as well.”
“Hmm.” Viktor leaned over the pot, dabbing the steaming ladle on his tongue. “Did you?”
I don’t know. He almost said it, laughably intimate. But there was a strange intimacy here, wasn’t there? The exchange was already well beyond the pleasantries of strangers. The emptiness invited secrets.
“I did what I was meant to do,” said Silco. “Zaun is free.”
“So she is.”
“My presence in the Lanes is more a threat to that victory than my retirement,” said Silco. “I was a symbol for the cause. I’ve made my peace.”
Viktor looked at him. His lips were stained red, almost bloody. Silco felt a strange, sudden impulse to lick them clean. The intensity of his own attraction was abrupt, disarming, a miasma of unwelcome tension and tenderness. His stomach clenched with a touch of nausea. It was never pleasant to yearn.
“So you’re retired, then?” asked Viktor.
That makes me sound old, thought Silco. The heart of a young man still beat in his chest, the same passions and pitfalls, the same vices, the same nightmares. It was the body that festered around it, melting like wax with the passage of time.
“Call it what you wish,” said Silco, looking away.
For a little while, there was silence. The cuckoo clock chirped, a green bird punctuating the emptiness with its frail tune. A bowl of borscht was placed in front of him. Viktor sat at the table across from him, invading Silco’s line of sight.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” said Viktor. “I was merely curious. Of course, I’ve heard about you before. Jayce hated you, and he hardly painted a flattering picture. I’m only trying to reconcile what I’ve heard and what I’ve observed.”
“And what have you observed?” asked Silco.
“A discrepancy between his impressions and my own.”
The way Viktor spoke was helplessly scientific, helplessly charming. It went without saying that no one in the entire Lanes would ever, ever speak the way Viktor did.
“Assume the worst,” said Silco. “Both can be true simultaneously.”
“Yes,” said Viktor. “And time is also a factor. As is intention. Which is why I wondered—”
“I’m not telling you why I came here,” said Silco.
Viktor’s mouth snapped shut. He smiled modestly, took a sip of his borscht. His posture was so straight that he looked like a Piltovan aristocrat. No doubt he’d spent decades mirroring them, learning the correct way to hold a spoon as not to offend their delicate sensibilities. Even so, he lacked their air of entitlement; he was simply lovely.
“Which is why I wondered if Jayce’s observations reflected an objective truth,” Viktor finished. “Or whether his timing was simply wrong.”
Silco relaxed minutely. He was being too defensive, too sensitive, too ready to scrap. Still a man from the Lanes after all.
“What did he say?” said Silco.
“Mh. That you were an unrepentant monster.”
Silco tipped his head, shrugged in passive agreement. “Is that all?”
“He said you looked monstrous, too,” said Viktor. “Uglier than I could imagine.”
Silco was not a vain man. Even before the scars, he could not say that he was beautiful. Crooked teeth, a hawkish nose, a weak chin, lanky limbs. People had found him attractive, back then, but he didn’t think it had very much to do with his body.
“You’re not ugly,” said Viktor. “Although, I am used to physical deformity. But mine are much easier to hide. May I?”
Silco looked up in confusion, which seemed to be permission enough. Viktor held up a hand in front of the scarred side of Silco’s face, closing one eye so he could only see the unblemished right half. Silco blinked, strangely self-conscious. He felt like an insect about to be pinned.
“You’re not actually very old, are you?” asked Viktor, still holding up his hand.
art by @kanskje-kaffe
Silco didn’t answer. Instead, he abruptly asked: “What deformities?”
“Hmm?”
“Yours,” said Silco, turning away to eat a spoonful of borscht. It was, as he expected, delicious. “Was it just your leg?”
“Oh—” Viktor lowered his hand. “No. My spine, actually. Which rather throws everything else out of alignment. I look like one of those wooden puppets with half the strings cut.”
Silco looked at Viktor’s proud posture. Up close, he could perhaps see the shape of something beneath his shirt, a brace of some kind. Silco hadn’t expected it, so he hadn’t been looking for it. He felt suddenly like he’d stopped paying attention now that there was nothing to gain from such insights.
“Would you like to see it?” asked Viktor.
Silco paused. Viktor asked the question as casually as any other, his voice gentle and precise. It took Silco a few moments to understand what was being suggested. Once he realized, he felt like he’d been caught out. Viktor had seen right through him.
“Yes.”
There was a locked room on the way, reinforced with metal. Viktor drew no attention to it as he guided Silco to the bedroom, and Silco forgot about it nearly as soon as he crossed the threshold.
The room was just as old-fashioned as the kitchen. It was small. There was a simple bed, yellow blankets with flowers, plush Piltovan pillows, iron bed frame. Sunlight streamed in through powder blue drapes, dust motes floating heavy in the air. They swirled as Viktor drew him in, gloved hand bound to Silco’s, lips quirked.
Silco kissed that soft mouth before they reached the bed, arm winding around Viktor’s waist. He could feel the brace beneath, hard leather and metal. Hands in his hair. The press of a warm body, a contact entirely unfamiliar given how long it had been since the last. Viktor was smaller than he was, birdlike, fragile in structure but wiry and solid to the touch. All his hard edges pressed into Silco, not an ounce of fat between them to soften the contact. When Silco lowered his head to kiss Viktor’s throat, there was no plushness between the muscle and skin. Metal wrapped in silk.
“Go on,” Viktor encouraged, guiding Silco’s hands to the buttons on his shirt. “Undress me.”
There was command in Viktor’s voice, so unlike the authority that Silco himself exuded. He was confident in this act, perhaps more practiced. Or perhaps he recognized that, for the time being, he had Silco wrapped around his little finger. The thought was nearly as offensive as it was exhilarating. Love was never trivial for Silco.
The shirt slipped to the floor. The leather brace was far more complex. Viktor had to reach back to unscrew the notches that bound the brace to his spine. It didn’t seem like something that Viktor was supposed to remove, but Silco had no intention of breaking the silence to ask. He simply did as Viktor guided him to, unbinding him. His hands were steady, but his breaths weren’t. He felt heat in the pit of his stomach, his groin, his face. He took care not to fumble.
When the brace fell to the floor, Silco drew back to look at him. Without the brace, Viktor’s shoulder jutted upwards, his ribs fell out of alignment. His pristine posture listed to the left, collapsed inwards towards the center as if he were holding some enormous weight. The lack of fat revealed all the awkward shapes his bones made. But Viktor didn’t appear to be in pain. Perhaps he simply hid it well.
“I’m working to fix it,” said Viktor. “I just need a little more time.”
“You don’t need to.” Silco rested a hand on Viktor’s chest, strangely repulsed by the thought that Viktor would ever be different than this. “You’re lovely.”
It wasn’t like Silco to be praising. He wondered if Viktor had any idea how unusual this was, this expressiveness. And to his credit, Viktor did look surprised, eyes flitting away, charmingly bashful.
The gloved hand lifted to cover Silco’s. “That’s sweet,” said Viktor. “But it may kill me if I do nothing.”
Silco leaned forward, hands snaking around Viktor’s narrow waist, mouth coming to rest against that slender neck again. There was a scent, something electric, metallic; a touch of beetroot and spice; ozonic soap beneath. Viktor didn’t smell anything like the men of the Lanes, drenched in sweat and smoke and booze.
A low noise rumbled in Silco’s throat. He was conscious of his own aches, the building pressure between his thighs. There were so few opportunities to indulge. Whores were a dull and costly distraction. Lovers were a risk not worth taking. Silco had abstained for years, content with his own hand and his memories.
Viktor stepped boldly into him, hips and chest flush. His hands encircled Silco, delicate fingers tracing the grooves of his ribs. He backed up, calves pressed to the mattress. Viktor guided him there, small gestures, little nudges to maneuver Silco right where he wanted him. Silco, lovesick and lonely, followed without a second thought.
Another kiss. Silco collapsed onto the bed, arms wound firm around Viktor. The uncertain awkwardness faded as their bodies fit together, tongues and legs tangled, erections flush through the thick, unwelcome barrier of fabric. Viktor unbuttoned Silco’s shirt, pushed it open. The belt next. Fabric dragged down his hips as his erection was finally uncovered, cold in the winter air. The bed was soft but talkative, every movement earning another squeak of old springs, a groan of rusted bolts.
It wasn’t elegant. Sex often wasn’t. They pawed at each other, sighing and squirming and strangely aimless. Silco thought, I should fuck him. But there was something lazy in their lovemaking, lackadaisical. Silco had nowhere to be, no plans, no hopes, nothing but the afternoon wheeling coldly onward. So he just kissed Viktor, hands meandering, sliding between his thighs. A shivery moan answered the caress. A hand combed through his hair. Fingers toyed with hard nipples. Sparks of sensation like popping bubbles. A hand closed around his erection and stroked, then pulled away a moment later to explore the emaciated planes of his stomach. Silco shuddered, drew a deep breath, submitted to Viktor’s whims, his teasing.
It had never been like this. After a little while, Silco wondered if they were even having sex at all. Whenever he started to paw a little harder, whenever his hand drew down to stroke Viktor’s backside, he was chased away with doting hands, guiding back to a languorous handjob or more kissing.
It didn’t take long to put two and two together.
“Is it painful for you?” asked Silco, mouthing a twisted collarbone. “Fucking?”
“Mmh.” Viktor’s fingers squeezed the back of his neck. A sigh. “Yes. It’s… challenging. Not impossible, but not as pleasurable for me as it would be for you. No matter the ah, configuration.”
No matter. Silco had a myriad of other ways to make Viktor feel good. He unbuckled Viktor’s belt, slid his pants down his hips with sensual slowness, revealed two very different limbs. Viktor’s artificial leg… Silco could see the place where flesh and metal connected, but it was so strange, an unnaturally seamless transition. The muscles of Viktor’s thigh were a gradient of pale flesh to dark steel. When Silco touched it, he was surprised to find the metal pliant under his fingers. And warm.
Silco kissed his way down Viktor’s malformed body, sliding between those parted thighs, palms flat to skin. The soft, wet heat of flesh; the firm, electric pulse of steel. And soon, Viktor’s cock underneath his tongue.
In his past life, when he’d still been interested in sex, Silco had done this quite a few times. It was often unpleasant. The smell was dizzying, the taste bitter. But perhaps it was something one could grow to appreciate. Silco breathed in the damp, musky scent. His own cock throbbed, insistent. He took himself in his hand, just enough to take the edge off, to allow him to focus. And beneath him, Viktor gasped sweetly; modest noises, never overdone, never exaggerated for Silco’s benefit. A life in Piltover had no doubt made Viktor conscious of how he expressed himself, even in the throes of passion.
That wouldn’t do. Silco began to suck purposefully, wet and slick as he bobbed his head on Viktor’s cock. He pushed those slender thighs farther apart, tolerated the hand that tangled in his hair. He relaxed his throat, took Viktor deep, held him until his lungs burned, released. And each time, the noises got just a little bit louder, a bit more desperate.
Better.
Even in sex, Silco had something to prove.
Before long, Viktor was moaning in earnest, and Silco felt a little like his old self. Powerful. Self-possessed. His eagerness was not an act. He felt almost whorish, swallowing Viktor into his throat until it bruised. The bed announced every thrust, the wet noise of his own spit rang in his ears.
Viktor was close. The moments leading up were obvious enough, and Viktor tugged at his hair in warning—but Silco remained right where he was. He swallowed every slick, bitter drop. And he kept sucking as Viktor trembled and squirmed underneath him, until the noises became protesting rather than appreciative.
He crawled up the length of Viktor’s body, kissed a wet path along his chest, his neck. And Viktor wrapped him in his arms, held onto him with free and untroubled affection. Silco found the embrace difficult to bear, but he forgot his reservations when Viktor leaned up to kiss his jaw and murmured: my turn.
It was too early for sleep, but embarrassingly, Silco did. As dreamless as death, he laid in that bed until nearly nightfall. When he woke up, he was alone. And when he wandered out into the hall, he could hear Viktor in the locked room. Footsteps, the rustling of movement, steel against steel.
Silco didn’t knock. He went to the bathroom, washed himself with cold water and soap that smelled like Viktor. After that, he left silently, taking care not to let the door slam shut behind him.
The clouds were swollen with rain, a far cry from the clear afternoon. In the back of his mind, the rain was an excuse. I couldn’t leave my house to be flooded. Perhaps he would say that to Viktor next time, if asked why he’d slipped away unannounced. But it was unlikely that Viktor would care. They were strangers, lonely creatures roaming the steppe. There was nothing between them but the companionship of convenience.
“Are you alright?” asked Viktor.
Silco was sitting at the riverside. This time, Viktor didn’t remain a lonely figure upstream. He walked down to join Silco on the bank. He was carrying a white umbrella, but it wasn’t raining. The clouds were black with the promise of it, though, and Silco resigned himself to the likelihood that he was going to spend another morning mopping water from his floors. He hadn’t had the fortitude to patch the holes just yet.
For a while, Silco didn’t say anything. He smoked, stared at the water, let the time pass unremarked. There was no rush.
“That’s a topside habit,” he said finally. “Asking that.”
“Perhaps it’s a Lanes habit that you don’t,” said Viktor with good humor.
“Hmm.”
The rain did begin to fall, then. Just misting, at first, soundless against Viktor’s umbrella. Silco shivered and pulled his coat a little tighter.
“It’s strange to ask a question you know the answer to,” said Silco, after collecting his thoughts. “Of course I’m not alright. A man who had as much power as I did, living out in the steppe? Why bother to ask?”
“Entresol isn’t so bad,” said Viktor.
Bitterness felt like rising water. Silco wondered what would become of him when it finally reached his mouth, his lips. When he was submerged underneath it. Was there anything left for him after that? He had no shimmer. The path forward had only one place left to go, and it was dark.
“You wondered earlier why I really came here,” said Viktor. “And I was too ashamed to admit it. I find it difficult to disappoint people, you know. Even people I don’t know. Even people who don’t deserve the consideration.”
Viktor lowered himself down beside Silco. He’d brought his cane today. He rested it across his lap, strangely fond.
“I came here because I realized that I would never be seen for who I am, up there,” Viktor continued. “In Piltover. Even the person I respected most couldn’t see me for who I was, not really. It wasn’t his fault. My shyness, my desire not to cause a stir, my longing to fit in… Well. That’s why I left. Why I came here.”
“To hide?”
“To see myself clearly,” said Viktor. “To find out what I could be, if I weren’t so worried about what they thought of me.”
So he came here out of hope. Not to die, no, but to grow in fertile soil. Silco felt the bitterness in him rise another notch. They perhaps did not understand each other in the ways he wished they did. But Viktor had already said that he had not come here to die, hadn’t he? So how could they expect to understand each other?
“I like your company,” said Viktor. “I hope how much I like it wasn’t somehow insulting...?”
Silco ran a restless hand through his hair. The rain began to fall in earnest, but Viktor held the umbrella over them both. It was a strangely cozy moment, pleasant apart from the wet chill of the wind. Viktor always seemed to bring a little bit of comfort to whatever grimness characterized Silco’s world.
“You didn’t insult me.”
You confused me, he wanted to say. But confusion and curiosity felt out of place here. If he wanted to decay in the steppe, then why be curious about anything? Why wonder why Viktor came here? Why wonder why Viktor wanted to have sex with him? None of it mattered. He felt the faint burn of rot in his eye, his face. It wouldn’t be long now before he reached a critical threshold. And what then?
He wanted to know. That, he supposed, was the final curiosity.
“Good,” said Viktor. “Because I enjoyed myself a great deal. Not always the case, given my condition.”
There was a small warmth in those words, as if Viktor had passed him a candle. Silco, greedy and wretched creature that he was, cradled that warmth jealously.
“A long time ago, I met someone,” said Viktor. “A friend. He was like me, I think. Different. I’ll always remember what he said: we can be loners together.”
Loneliness, thought Silco, was a dangerous thing. His mind wandered back to the first time Vander spoke to him at the bar. Such a simple thing, a single question. You usin’ this chair, mate? Silco, sitting alone at a table for two. Vander, dragging a chair away for another of his friends. The revolutionaries, the freedom fighters, Vander central to them all, the loudest, shockingly handsome, whip-smart. So unlike the rest of them.
Silco, sitting alone, staring after them, made the crystallizing decision to be useful—so useful that they couldn’t live without him. So he took the dangerous heists topside. He made money. He stole. He cheated, lied, killed. And sure enough, when he was useful, he was invited to the table. But only then.
Silco’s throat clicked when he swallowed.
He didn’t tell Viktor to go.
He started hearing Jinx’s voice.
Not words. Nothing specific. Just her voice. The perfect silence of the stale air was disrupted by a shout, a laugh. Something short, loud enough to make Silco jump, heart in his throat. He saw the shadows move across the walls… But there was nothing there. Just spiders, the dripping water carving a path down the worn stone.
Two weeks without shimmer now. Was the mutation entering his brain? Was that the path it was always destined to take? He laid on his cold mattress, chest rising and falling yet finding no air. His lungs were swollen and heavy in his chest, crackling with sickness.
Perhaps I’ll drown after all, he thought.
Another laugh, mocking and cruel in all the ways Jinx could be. But no, not to him, not ever. She had never been cruel, not even when she was leaving him behind. Not even when she took that chair—Powder—and walked out that door, and then out of the undercity entirely, hand-in-hand with her big sister.
“Stop,” he snapped. “Just—”
Ridiculous, talking to his own hallucinations, the demons manifest of sickness. It was strange to be so perfectly conscious that this was unreal. But it wasn’t some special quality of his mind that kept him sane. It was simple belief. He believed Jinx could not be here, because Jinx betrayed him. Jinx left him. It could not be her, because Jinx would never come back. Not even to torment him.
Voice in the windstorm,
She mocks my mausoleum,
Laughs as I decay.
Silco felt the edges of unconsciousness eating at him, insects in the dark. He was exhausted but terrified, certain that if he fell asleep now, he would never wake up again. The compression of his lungs, the shadows crawling across the room—was this not death arriving? Was Vander’s hulking silhouette in the doorway not the harbinger of oblivion? Could it possibly be anything else?
Shadow in the door,
Void of breath, silent exhale,
A beat of nothing.
The universe was compressing into the space, ink blackness spilling in through the cracks of the door, the window. His deep sea eye was burning. His face was cracking. He felt the burn of the infection sweep through him, a thousand stabbing needles. The blackness would surely be overtaking his whole face now, just like the mold growing on the rain swollen windowsill.
It was far too late. If he’d wanted to avoid this transformation, he would need more shimmer. But there was no shimmer here, not a single drop. There was nothing but him and the final permutation of the river’s poison. Silco climbed to his feet, staggered his way to the desk, to the small mirror tucked away in the drawer. When he fished it out, he turned the cracked glass to his face.
Nothing. No monstrous evolution, no werewolf transformation. No difference, apart from the lengthening hair, the pallid, sweat-soaked sickness, the panic in his blue eye. The infection was just the same. The poison was only ever poison.
He sat down on the floor, arms wrapped around his head, face buried against his arms. He could hear her again, the familiar scratchy tones. Another language, indecipherable nonsense, a mind too scattered to even conjure a single word. Yet his mind produced words all the same, nervous and fragmented bubbles that popped into his consciousness. Familiar patterns, rhythms, a soothing equation of sound and intention.
The black of winter,
Blind fingers seek hard edges,
Yet find only webs.
Hadn’t poetry been the beginning of this misery? That single poem, The Flood of Oshra Va’Zaun, tucked away in an old tome he came across in his hungry desire for more art. Those words were the cataclysmic event that filled Silco’s imagination with mad desire. The romanticism, the beauty, the devastation and ruin of the city that came before, the city that drowned, the city still hidden beneath Piltover’s metastasizing hulk. Zaun. His city, his beloved.
He fell asleep there, dreaming of the flood. He awoke to daylight, thin rays of morning lancing through the dusty windows. The light was hateful, an instant migraine, a hangover. Silco wrapped an arm around his head and ground his teeth against the pain.
He wasn’t dead, then.
Eventually, the pain settled. For lack of any other meaningful option, Silco returned to his usual routine. He ate breakfast. He brewed stale, bitter coffee. He boiled water for the tub and bathed, and still stank of cigarettes after. For a while, he sat at his desk and tried to remember the poetry he’d crafted the night before, but nothing came to him. He felt a quiet emptiness. His intention to catalog the slow decline of his health through the written word hadn’t yielded much. Torn pages, mostly. His imprint upon this world was thinning, washed away as surely as footprints in the coming rain.
When he was out of ideas, he went outside. The path to Viktor’s house was sodden and unpleasant. By the time he made the journey, he was winded.
He knocked. No answer. The door was unlocked, though, and Silco took a step inside. The lights were out. The dust hanging in the air was still, the cast iron kettle still upside down on the drying rack. No one had been through the kitchen in some time, then.
“Viktor?” he called, expecting nothing.
But to his surprise: “I’m in the bedroom.”
Silco meandered his path through the halls. When he opened the door, he found Viktor lying on the bed, nothing but his head sticking out from under the duvet. He looked haggard, thin and pale but smiling.
“Are you ill?”
“No.” Viktor looked Silco over, the smile fading just a little as he took him in. “Are you?”
No use lying when Viktor had a set of working eyes. “Obviously.”
Viktor scooted himself over in the bed, an invitation. Silco stepped out of his shoes, loosened his collar, and climbed in with Viktor. The trapped body heat was very warm. Silco hadn’t been entirely cognizant of the cold until there was heat to contrast it with. He shivered.
“I just had the worst night of my life,” said Viktor. His voice was soft, little more than a whisper.
Silco felt a strange feeling in his chest, as if Viktor had plucked words from his own mind. But had last night been the worst night of his life? No. The night Vander tried to drown him was the worst. Nothing compared.
“Why?”
Viktor turned to face him. He looked miserably tired, eyes dark and sunken, skin grayish. He reached out to find Silco’s hand, took it in his own, guided it to his ribs. Silco felt metal there, the same quality as Viktor’s leg; yielding, warm, almost fleshy. His hand twitched and pressed down, palm flat as he explored Viktor’s back.
More metal. Silco followed it up Viktor’s spine, now completely straight. Silco wanted to see, wanted to witness the fresh evolution of Viktor’s body. But there was something satisfying in feeling it, exploring the texture of it, and knowing only that.
“My body fused with the brace,” said Viktor, voice hoarse. Had he been screaming? “It was… unpleasant. But the results are remarkable.”
Silco’s hand found Viktor’s again. It was the one he usually kept gloved, but now Silco realized that it, too, was metal. Their fingers interlaced, because it seemed the only correct configuration. The intimacy was as natural as the flow of water, as inevitable.
“There’s a—poem,” said Silco, flinching at the suddenness of his own voice. “I read, a long time ago. A Zaunite poem. It was about the rise of the industrial age. Most of it was a bore, really, a meditation on what was lost in the coming of progress. But… I remember one line. And lo, he comes, wreathed in metal, fire-strike eyes, the Machine Herald.”
Viktor was contemplative. But he said nothing.
At some point, they fell asleep.
Days swept by. Nights dragged. The hallucinations began to push into the daylight hours, and Silco felt weaker, quieter. But he still went through his usual routines, cleaned the water out of his house, visited Viktor. Took him to bed, even if lovemaking was fragile and slow for both of them. Slept fitfully after.
“Who is Jinx?”
Silco was drinking tea when Viktor spoke. He started, burned his bottom lip, set down the mug with a frown. There was only one reason Viktor would have thought to ask.
“I was talking in my sleep, then,” said Silco.
“Yes.”
How irritating. Silco felt his already melancholy mood blacken into something much less pleasant. Not even in unconsciousness could he escape his misery, it seemed.
“I know her name,” said Viktor. “I even dismantled one of her bombs—at great risk to my own life, I might add. But who is she?”
Silco’s tongue worried the burn on his lip. He stared down at the tea, at the little plate of cheese and fruit that Viktor had set on the table, at the kitschy yellow tablecloth, translucent with age. He could see Viktor in his periphery, curled up with his research notebook in his chair, leg thrown over the kitchen table. He seemed to be enjoying every configuration of his body that contorted his new, flexible spine.
“My daughter,” said Silco.
“I’m sorry,” said Viktor, looking up. “Is she...?”
“She left Zaun months ago,” said Silco, his voice short. “I don’t know where she is.”
“I see.”
Silence reasserted itself, but it wasn’t the pleasant quiet of companionship. Silco felt little whispers at the edge of his mind, the faintest beginnings of panic and misery. They were getting louder as the day wheeled on towards dusk. Even now, he saw Vander in the deepening shadows, the shape of him etched into the geometry of Viktor’s house. Soon, Silco supposed he would never leave.
“What did I say?” Silco asked, with sudden sharpness.
Viktor set the notes aside, folded his leg against his chest, sat up a little. He could obviously sense the anger in Silco’s voice, and his attention was fixed.
“Nothing much,” said Viktor. “Nothing meaningful. Don’t listen to her, I think, but that’s all I heard.”
Just a bad memory, then. Silco felt a little more at ease, although his sullenness remained. But Viktor didn’t question it further, let the silence rest. When Silco left, they said nothing to each other. The path home was cold and wet.
Routine proved impossible. Silco didn’t sleep for the entire night.
The voices were no longer whispers, and they were no longer indistinct. And while he recognized them for what they were, demons in his own head, he could no longer entirely believe they weren’t real. It became too easy to believe them, to drink the poison. And when the sun rose, it didn’t cut them down, offered no respite. Vander sat across the room from him. Like a nightmare, he never quite came into focus. Time had taken away the detail, the intimate knowledge of his face, its texture.
Real or not, Silco was afraid of what would happen if he strayed too close. So he remained paralyzed, trapped on the opposite end of the room, back pressed to the wall.
He didn’t eat, didn’t drink. He let himself sit there, resigned, never brave enough to look away. His face throbbed. He could feel the rot spreading, insects under his flesh, nibbling away. He rubbed at his scarred cheek. It boiled beneath the pads of his fingers.
I didn’t want it to end this way.
Of course he didn’t. His own apparitions were unkind to him. He wanted to see Jinx, wanted to see her face one last time, but she didn’t show herself. Because she was gone. Because she left. Because she abandoned him. But Vander, he’d never gone anywhere, had he? Silco knew his body was in the doctor’s lab, perhaps dissected, perhaps preserved in formaldehyde. He’d never asked what the doctor wanted him for exactly. Experiments, he said. Silco didn’t want to know.
Perhaps he’s really here, thought Silco. Perhaps the doctor brought him back to life, and now he’s here. Come to finish the job. Drag me to the river. Or the tub.
It was shocking, how easy it was to believe that in his sleep-deprived terror. The thought left him wretched with guilt, with sorrow. Yet even that grief felt unearned. He had brought this on himself, hadn’t he? Just like with Jinx. They betrayed him because of what he was, what he did, what he failed to do. All the little defeats, the little mistakes, suddenly monstrous. They coalesced into a beast, a devouring, hungry thing.
Vander kept watching him. Blue eyes, soft. He said nothing.
“I’m afraid,” whispered Silco.
That little secret cut through the silence as sharply as breaking glass. Vander straightened, looked straight at him. And he did speak, then.
“Yeah,” said Vander. “So was I.”
Have you had enough yet, Sil?
Time passed. Silco eventually lost consciousness. He felt it happening, the dizziness, the shuddering breaths. And he was sure it was over. Vander would no longer be sitting in that corner, because the brain that conjured him there would be dead. And no one would be left to remember Vander, in all his complexity, in his loveliness and horror. Silco, feebly, did not want to forget.
There was a hand on his chest, on his face. He was aware of the sensation, but no longer aware of himself, where he was, who he was. The thin light of daytime was an alien invasion, unwelcome. And every part of him hurt. A bed. A touch against his face. A needle in his eye, a needle in his arm. Water in his mouth.
And then he woke up.
Silco was conscious for a long time before he realized he was conscious. He was aware, faintly, of moving shapes around him. Another needle bit his eye, a familiar burn. A hand on his own; warm, soft. And he remembered: Viktor. He could see him now, his slender face illuminated by lamplight.
“Where am I?”
Silco asked the question, not because he was interested in the answer, but because any other question was too painful to voice.
“Entresol, still,” said Viktor. “More precisely, my house.”
Silco’s eyes flitted around for some clue of Vander’s hulking presence, but he saw nothing. The room, apart from the two of them, was empty. There was silence, just the pattering of rain on the window pane. No voices. No laughter. No Jinx.
“You didn’t visit for two days,” said Viktor. “I was almost convinced you just didn’t want to see me, but… Well. I suppose I didn’t find it hard to imagine you were ill.”
What a strange thought, to not want to see Viktor. He was perhaps the last pleasant thing that existed in the undercity for Silco. But he said none of that. His hand tightened around Viktor’s fingers.
“I did come here to die,” said Silco. His voice was almost unrecognizable with exhaustion.
Viktor’s gaze was soft. His free hand lifted, the lightest touch of knuckles against Silco’s scarred cheek. His skin was sore, hypersensitive… but it felt something close to normal now. Silco still flinched from the touch.
The mattress sank and squeaked as Viktor took a seat next to him.
“Why did Jinx leave?” asked Viktor.
It didn’t surprise Silco that Viktor so quickly honed in on the root of his grief. But then, that was what Silco liked about him, wasn’t it? His intuitive sense of things. The way he fit around Silco’s moods, navigated them with an adroitness that Silco had never known. Vander and Jinx and Sevika had been caustic, loud, aggressive creatures. They never quite managed to grasp the subtleties, never navigated the waters of intimacy in a way that reached his shores.
And so, Silco told Viktor all of it. The whole sad little story of his life. And then, at the end of it all, they laid in bed together in silence, fingers entwined.
The days passed. Silco improved, slowly. He spent hours upon hours watching the sunlight’s path across the walls, the rise and fall, the gradient of gold to white to gray as the winter fog rolled in. He ate borscht. He slept fitfully, with Viktor at his side. Gradually, he felt well enough to read, to write. The poetry he wrote was meandering, reflective, shallow. But that suited the mood of quiet and sleepy boredom that came with recovery.
Eventually, when resting proved insufferable, he began to wander the house. The steel door of Viktor’s lab was open now, and he could see the man hunched over his desk, welding goggles in place as he poked and prodded at a glowing device. Now that his spine was fixed, his posture was almost rebelliously atrocious.
Silco leaned against the table and watched in silence. And Viktor, for his part, didn’t seem to mind. He was totally absorbed. There was a Hextech gemstone set in the center for what appeared to be some kind of golden gauntlet, strange scalemail. Each scale had a separate rune that lifted and spun freely around the central stone.
For a little while, there was only silence. But Viktor set aside his tools, pushed back his goggles. He looked up at Silco.
“It’s almost done,” said Viktor.
“Your teleporter.”
“Yes.” Viktor slipped it over his metal hand. “It’s especially designed to interact with my own, ah, changed physiology, in order to activate the runes. At first, I intended to make something that could be used by anyone. But I decided instead to make something just for myself. At least to start. It’s a welcome change of pace, I think.”
The gauntlet was beautiful, and it suited Viktor. But Silco felt a little stab of unease in his gut as he looked at it, wondering…
“Where will you go?”
Viktor turned in his chair to look back at Silco fully. He tipped his head, clearly conscious of Silco’s growing displeasure. Silco thought he wouldn’t draw attention to it. Viktor was hesitating. But then he asked:
“Afraid I’ll vanish?”
Silco’s good eye narrowed, lips pressing together. But he said nothing.
Viktor flashed a small smile before he turned back to his desk, fiddling with the gauntlet’s mechanisms as he did. “I don’t know where I’ll go,” he said. “But, this device can work for two people.”
When Silco was well enough to return home, he didn’t.
It was sentimentality, partly. The bed was comforting, as was the warm body that accompanied it. But Silco didn’t want to return to that place, shadows and wet stone and loneliness that raked through his mind like the claws of a beast.
Viktor never asked him to go. Silco remained an unobtrusive presence, and often, they didn’t speak much at all. When Viktor was working, he was unreachable. And when Silco wrote, it was in private, often out in the copse or by the river, rather than somewhere Viktor could find him.
The nights, however, were different. They both went to bed late, and insomnia proved a great facilitator of intimacy. Touches to kissing, kissing to everything else. Viktor seemed eager to explore the full freedom that his new body provided him. He could be surprisingly dominating despite his softness, pinning Silco, straddling him, riding him with dizzying abandon. Viktor wasn’t gentle to himself, pushed the limits of what his body could withstand. And Silco, half-blind with ecstasy, was in no state to discourage him.
It was really the moments after that were the most dangerous; Viktor laying across Silco, panting and wet; Silco, staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes, shaking. Molded together. Warm metal, thrumming against his leg, under his palm. Viktor’s lazy, slow kisses against his throat. Total vulnerability.
“May I ask you something?” Viktor asked, hushed and hesitating. “Something… personal.”
The timing of that question could only be planned. Post-fucking was the perfect moment to pose questions that otherwise would go unanswered, or risk an immediate rebuke. Silco, still winded and spasming with the aftershocks of orgasm, struggled to pull himself together well enough to comprehend the question—much less grow defensive over what it might lead to.
“Go on.”
Viktor propped up on his elbow. He looked at Silco, barely visible in the misty glow of moonlight. His gold eyes caught the light, transformed it to warmth. But the question, whatever it was, filled him with anxiety. Viktor looked rather like he was deciding whether or not it was safe to pet a tamed wolf.
“Ask,” said Silco, his tone sharp.
Viktor smiled apologetically and looked away. “Your friend, Vander… If he came back, if he said he forgave you for everything… Do you think you would go with him? Leave me behind?” Viktor’s hand tightened restlessly in Silco’s hair. “You do not have to answer.”
It was nauseating, because the thought was both too wonderful and too horrifying to imagine. Silco longed for that very scenario, dreamed of it, had nightmares about it. When he was very tired, his mind wandered to old memories, kinder times, when he did not yet know what horror was waiting at the riverside. It was only then he could admit to himself that he wished Vander were still alive.
Would he go with Vander now? Would he open himself to that pain again? Would it be worth the risk, to yield himself to the possibility that he could be forced to lose it all a second time?
“Why are you asking me that?” he said. His voice was hoarse.
Viktor settled down beside him, temple-to-temple. And he didn’t answer, not for a little while, carefully considering. He was always so precise, so even-tempered, which Silco ordinarily appreciated. Now, he found that silence almost unbearable.
“It’s a difficult choice, isn’t it?” Viktor said finally.
“An impossible choice.”
And, of course, Viktor’s point was made clear. Jinx had been faced with an impossible choice, too. And why wouldn’t she go? Vi offered her an opportunity to claw back some lost part of herself, some little sliver of innocence that had been so cruelly excised.
Silco had spent mere days listening to the voices in his own head. But a lifetime of it, the slow erosion of one’s defenses, the torment of past mistakes… Perhaps, for her, the choice was the final chance to experience a night of true peace, genuine solitude. A night where shadows were only shadows.
Finally, he said: “I don’t know.”
There was no answer. Vander would never come back. If he did, Silco could not decide before the moment of being offered the choice. It was impossible.
Viktor did not press the matter. He kissed Silco, soft and longing, as if Silco had said he would never leave him. Delusions can often be comforting, he thought. But that was uncharitable. He knew that Viktor was simply unafraid. For the life of him, Silco couldn’t understand why.
Silco woke early and found tea waiting for him. It was overpowering and tepid, having been left there, but he drank it anyway, and ate the bread and cheese beside it. After that, he wandered out the open door and into the bright, cheery light of early spring, leather book tucked under his arm.
A lifetime in the Lanes had made it difficult to parse such brightness. He sought solitude in the shadow of the copse. There, he found Viktor, holding a newspaper. Viktor must have gone into town before dawn to get it. But Silco usually stirred if Viktor woke up in the middle of the night, and he didn’t recall him leaving so early.
“Did you hear there’s a war in Noxus?” asked Viktor.
They were well past the point of being interested in good mornings. Silco appreciated it.
“That’s old news,” said Silco dryly. “When aren’t the Noxians at war?”
“They may lose.”
Viktor leaned back against a tree, arms crossed. He was wearing his runed gauntlet. Silco realized, he’s finished it. He didn’t get up early at all.
“That will put Zaun and Piltover into a difficult position, inevitably,” Viktor continued. “There may be enemies in our future. Or new allies.”
“And?”
“I was thinking,” said Viktor, “that maybe you fought too hard for Zaun’s independence for us to remain idle in the face of a coming threat.”
Viktor wanted to leave Entresol. Silco had ignored that inevitability, unwilling to consider what it could mean for them both. Now that he was faced with the reality, he felt a quiet anxiety creep up his throat. He looked away. The trees swayed prettily in the breeze.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said. His tone was guarded.
“Zaun will need protectors,” said Viktor, “and I have one in mind—save myself, naturally. But… it may take some time to locate her.”
Silco’s gaze snapped back to Viktor. He felt anger like a match being struck, sudden heat. But it was extinguished quickly. He found it difficult to harbor ill-will towards Viktor. He was too pliant, too unmoved by Silco’s moods, unfazed by his snarling. There was no point in getting heated.
“She left,” said Silco.
Viktor shrugged. “She may come back,” he said. “But you won’t know for certain unless you ask her yourself.”
Hope was a terrible thing. Silco never gave second chances to those who wounded him. But Viktor’s question from the other night stuck in his mind, throwing doubt onto the certainty that there was malice in her impossible choice… He couldn’t hate her. That, too, was impossible.
Silco had never traveled beyond Piltover’s borders. He knew nothing of what was out there, apart from the scenery that poetry painted of those other worlds… And he had always been pathologically incurious to find out. After all, why wonder? It would never happen.
“I wouldn’t know where to look,” said Silco.
“Somehow I get the impression that Jinx is not the kind of girl to escape notice for long,” said Viktor. “Come with me. We can look together.”
He extended that gauntleted arm to him.
Silco stood, watched the leaf-shade scatter across Viktor’s face. He was so lovely, imbued with all the heroic qualities that Silco would never embody. But Viktor had chosen to change, had he not? Just as Silco had allowed the weakest part of him to die.
Perhaps there was yet another death ahead of him, another iteration of Silco yet to come.
He took Viktor’s hand.
The gauntlet rippled, runes glowing as they began to weave their spell. White light arced like electricity around the gemstone. Viktor held his gaze, reassured him with his calm, his warmth, his certainty that his calculations were precisely right, that they would survive this, that they would survive whatever came next, too.
And in a flash, they were gone.