Push me forward, pull me back [JayVik, Arcane]

Dusk Falls

Dusk began to fall over Piltover, dark and cold.

Viktor was hunched away in the lab, slaving over Jayce's newest strings of equations, desperately brute-forcing them in and out of his latest invention and hoping for a breakthrough with every number amended. It was a pile of cogs and screws now, but soon it would be the future of hextech. A blimp, or a new hexgate, or a prosthetic limb. Every flick of the scientist's pupils, every number stricken and replaced on his blackboard was a calculated decision. Viktor could hear nothing but the twisting of the spanner in his right hand and the blood pumping quietly through his ears, paired so acutely with his flimsy vision which had darkened around his work hours before, when he had come into the lab as morning broke. Deep blues and an underlying purple hue seeped in through cracks in the windowsill, flooding and crashing against Viktor's pale skin, painting him against the walls as he mindlessly worked, completely unaware of time. Ticking clock hands moved with the slowed beat of his heart, furiously keeping his fingers nimble without having an ounce of energy spared after Viktor skipped all of his allotted break times, courtesy of Jayce and his worrying mind. Now, however, was far from the time for breaks. Work would not wait. Glorious evolution, or something similar.

It was times like this, when Viktor was so consumed by his work, that his place past society and into the wider universe felt solidified. He felt like he could stand on his own two legs, completely infatuated with the clicking of screws getting tighter and repeated patterns of numbers, spread in an uneven font across boards and powdering chalk dust like fresh snow seeping into the undercity. Silence was thick in the air, grasping at Viktor's throat as it usually did. He coughed every so lightly into a shaking fist, still consumed by the possibility of a breakthrough. Viktor coughed again, and again, and then again before he stopped for a breath, watching fresh blood trickle off of his fist and onto the workbench. Blood leaving his chest was a familiar sight now, but it still left the sound of hollow breaths bouncing off of the walls. Perhaps it was the stress of finishing his work, or the air of Zaun still lining his lungs from childhood. Either way, he took in a final shaky breath, slowing the rise and fall of his chest back down before bracing himself on the bench in front of him.

Ripped from his focus, from the simplicity of sounds and block colour, Viktor was abandoned in complete silence. With his head facing down, hair sticking to his forehead, he looked up at the blackboard in front of him. Hundreds of numbers and letters had been crossed out without care, a temporary reminder that Viktor truly was not moving forward here. The simple white lines suddenly hit him with the harshest reality he had ever had to face, forcing him to grimace as he looked back at the ground. It was something he fought at the end of every work day, something that crept through the aches in his bones and into the crevices of his conscience as he tried to fall asleep every night without fail. It told him plainly why work had been a drag for months now, and why his passion was merely temporary, always to be replaced by cramps and buckled knees. Jayce was barely around the lab to help out, being too busy fumbling about with the council and posing appropriately for the next portrait of his face to be plastered on the side of a blimp. It could make Viktor sick, the taste of spite rolling down his tongue and welling up in the corners of his eyes as he continuously had to watch Jayce be something he would never achieve. It was what kept him from his work, what held him back from finishing equations when the answer was always hidden behind a repeated thought, eating away at Viktor's confidence like venom, slowly infecting every aspect of his life. Viktor always told himself that him and Jayce were equals, and it was true, but the harsh reality that twisted in his wounds was that no one in Piltover could support progress being faced by an undercity cripple. Viktor had always tried not to care about the opinion of others, recognising his position within the Piltover Academy as far too prestigious to allow himself to be deterred by people who could never attempt what he achieved, but this fear was different to him. At this point, it felt as if even Jayce was beginning to agree with the others.