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Author's note: I don't know why I've suddenly come down with fandom rabies a good 2+ years after Arcane came out, but here we are. This fic will deal with a lot of chemistry, biotech and other medical things but take any information about drugs and the human body with a massive grain of salt because I cannot science. Also, this fic is going to deal with matters relating to human trafficking and the sex trade so if you're sensitive to that I suggest you do not read.
Canon divergent, but it'll end up in largely the same place with a few changes.
Last thing, I listened to a lot of Dead Can Dance while concepting/writing this, so if you want one of those immersive experiences people seem to like nowadays, I suggest you pop on a playlist.
…..
Jayce can count the things he actually knows about Viktor on one hand. That's always been true, for as long as he's known him, but he's never felt it so much as in these last few hours. Springing him from the blockade and walking back in uncomfortable silence, he's mulled over whether he really knows his supposed best friend at all.
To top it all off, after that highly awkward meeting with Ambessa Medarda, he'd been approached by the lady's paid companion, clutching a letter he seemed desperate to get rid of.
“I've been asked to give this to you,” the young man said, his body language nonchalant but his eyes nervous. “It's for your business partner.”
Jayce was on edge in an instant, because people forget that Viktor is the co-creator of Hextech so often that hearing him brought up in conversation with a stranger is seriously jarring. He turned over the envelope in his hand; plain white, rough paper, no signature but a stamp in the shape of a bird he didn't recognize in blood red ink.
“Who's it from?” he asked.
“It's for your business partner,” the courtesan repeated. “I can't say anything else. Will you give it to him?”
“Sure,” Jayce shrugged, hoping the gesture looked casual.
The courtesan had left abruptly, and Jayce had stewed all the way back to the lab. He was tempted to open the envelope...surely this was the friend that Viktor had gone to see in the undercity? If it was a message regarding his failing health, then why give it to a paid companion of a visiting dignitary on the off-chance that it would make its way to him?
….
When he enters the lab, Viktor is tinkering with the Hexcore as usual, writing a series of tiny notes in what little blank space is left in his notebook. He waves a distracted greeting towards Jayce with his unoccupied hand, not even looking up from his notes.
Jayce bristles a little, but pushes the feeling down. They've struck an uneasy truce and if Jayce wants to find out what's in this letter, he has to play nice.
“I met with Ambessa Medarda today,” he begins. “She insisted on the bath-house as neutral ground.”
Viktor chokes out a weak laugh, still scribbling away at the notebook.
“Maybe she wanted you to be sure she had no weapons,” he suggests.
“I'm pretty sure there were some weapons somewhere, I just couldn't see them” Jayce responds. “Also, her boytoy had a message for you.”
That stops the scribbling. Viktor spins around in his chair, genuine surprise written across his face.
“Boytoy? What? Do I know him?”
“How would I know? All I know is he's getting paid big money to cater to Ambessa's every need and isn't shy about it,” Jayce says, affecting a casual shrug. “See for yourself.”
He hands over the envelope to Viktor.
There's a small, almost imperceptible shift in Viktor's posture, and it happens when he sees the stamp on the envelope. He goes ramrod straight in his chair, every visible muscle suddenly tense. Jayce waits for him to open it, curiosity stabbing like pins.
But Viktor just sighs, grabs a nearby bunsen burner, slides the envelope between a set of tongs and burns it. Jayce watches, incredulous.
“You didn't even read it?”
“No.”
“Do you know who sent it?”
“Yes.”
He turns back to his notebook and the Hexcore while the smoke from the burnt paper dispels overhead.
“Well, who sent it?” Jayce asks. “What do they want?”
“It's none of your concern.”
If Jayce pushes, he knows that Viktor will tell him what's going on eventually. That's how it's always been with them. It took him three months to learn Viktor's birthday, a further four months to find out what he liked so he could actually get him a birthday gift.
But the tension of the last few days is thrumming in Jayce's body, and suddenly he's furious. Before he can stop himself, he's grabbing the notebook out of Viktor's grasp and throwing it across the room, and spinning Viktor's chair around to bring them face-to-face.
“Was that really necessary?” Viktor asks drily, with a weak smile.
“We're under attack from undercity terrorists,” Jayce says through gritted teeth. “And you're crossing the blockade and getting secret messages from that same undercity. Do you see why I might have concerns?”
Viktor flinches a little, and that makes Jayce overly aware that he's looming over his much smaller partner in a manner that could be very threatening. Suddenly ashamed, he backs off, running an uneasy hand through his hair.
“I'm just worried,” he says, after a minute of tense silence. “You can understand that, right? If whoever sent it could cause us more trouble...”
“He won't,” Viktor says. He's massaging his temple, his face lined with exhaustion.
“How do I know that?” Jayce pushes. “I can take your word for it, but I'm still gonna worry...”
“You won't stop asking until I tell you, will you?”
“No. I can't.”
“Fine. But be warned, it's not a pleasant story.”
It's this admission that alarms Jayce, makes him want to backtrack. Viktor has disclosed some details of his childhood in the undercity that horrified Jayce in the past, and he did it with no such warning. He even managed to laugh about it. If Viktor is warning him now, it must be much, much worse than he anticipated.
“Gawain Le Vesconte, that's his name,” Viktor begins. “Also known as the Undercity Shrike. He's a flesh peddler.”
Jayce blinks. He doesn't know what a flesh peddler is, but it sounds unpleasant.
“Flesh pedd...so, what, like a cannibal?” he asks.
Viktor barks out a sharp little laugh.
“No, he's the one who stocks all the brothels in the undercity. He also negotiates for the private escorts in Piltover.”
Now it makes sense. Ambessa's pet is obviously one of the many private escorts that service Piltover's elite. Nobody acknowledges that they exist, and they are all very good at acting like they are devoted partners to the citizens that have hired them, but it's easy to pick them out at parties and theatre shows and even on the street. They're always a little too polished, too well-dressed, too flattering in their conversations for it to be real. It never occurred to Jayce that they went through an actual broker.
“His speciality is going to places that are being torn apart by war and grabbing any displaced and reasonably attractive person to sell them to the highest bidder. He may also be selling some of them as slaves, I don't know for sure,” Viktor continues.
“So...” Jayce asks uneasily. “How does he know you? I mean, how do you know him? I mean...”
“We'll get there,” Viktor shrugs. “He's not known as the Shrike for his business practices, but his hobbies. He supplies his clients with adults but he's probably the one responsible for the children that go missing in the undercity.”
A cold feeling in the pit of Jayce's stomach grows, and he knows he's probably gone pale. Viktor is smiling very slightly. This is his punishment for prying into Viktor's business.
“Whenever he was in the area, a child would go missing. We'd find what was left of them in the river, or a run-off ditch or somewhere equally horrible. Children are always warned to travel in groups and not to stay out late, but there was always one caught somewhere.”
Jayce really wishes he could get out of this conversation now. Even so, he has to ask.
“So you...”
He can't bring himself to finish the question.
“The children I travelled with, sometimes they forgot that I couldn't keep up with them. I was only alone for a few minutes, but it was enough time for him to grab me.”
Viktor leans back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. It's amazing that he can say it so easily.
“I'm not sure how long he held me for,” he says.
“You don't have to...” Jayce begins.
“You asked, so I'm telling you,” Viktor cuts in. “I know it was over two weeks. One of his associates told me he usually finished his catches off by the end of the second week. He was surprised I survived that long. I only did because I made myself useful.”
“Useful?” Jayce mumbles.
“Well, one day I was trying to distract myself while Le Vesconte was out working. The air filter in the room wasn't working so I repaired it. After he took notice, he brought me other things to repair.”
Viktor turns his gaze back on Jayce.
“The undercity despises him, they only do business with him out of necessity. So he had a hard time getting someone to agree to repair anything that was broken. I'm pretty sure that's the only reason he let me live. He still tortured me, but he let me recover in between so I could keep fixing things for him.”
“Why did he let you go, then?” Jayce asks.
“He didn't,” Viktor shrugs. “I was able to make some lockpicks from machine scraps. There was only one guard at my door and he was a drunk. I was sure Le Vesconte would kill me as soon as he ran out of things for me to fix, so as soon as an opportunity presented itself, I took it.”
It's the most non-science-related words that Jayce has ever heard Viktor speak out loud. It's a crying shame that those words are so awful.
“I kept a low profile until I moved to Piltover for the Academy. I thought he'd come after me but he never did. As far as I know.”
“I'm....” Jayce stutters. “I don't know what to say. I'm sorry.”
Viktor shrugs again, nonchalant. But his eyes speak of bitterness and his posture is still tense as a bowstring.
“I'm not worried about the letter,” he assures Jayce. “He never does business in Piltover directly, he's too recognizable to risk it. He probably just sent it to intimidate me by letting me know he knows where I am. No big deal.”
It's a big deal. It's a huge deal, but Jayce wants the conversation to end so badly that he'll accept Viktor's dismissal.
“You're absolutely sure he's not a threat to us?” he asks.
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, well...” he stammers. “Thank you for your honesty.”
It's odd, coldy formal for someone he considers his closest friend even with all the tension between them, but Viktor accepts his thanks with a nod and turns back around to the Hexcore.
Sheepishly, Jayce retrieves the thrown notebook and puts it on the table before leaving. Hearing Viktor's story has made him feel vaguely dirty, uncomfortably squirming in his skin. All he wants is a hot shower and a few cold drinks to soothe him into a dreamless sleep.
…..
All of Viktor's muscles are pulled tight with stress, it takes conscious effort to push them into letting go. The words had flown out of him as if he'd been waiting all this time to disclose what happened to him for years. But now that they had been released, he wishes he had never said anything.
True, he had wanted to give Jayce a shock, to teach him that prying into his business was an unpleasant matter, but he had neatly filed away those few weeks of hell into a do-not-open box in his brain intending never to think about it again. Now they were out, and scurrying around his mind uncontrollably.
The worst part was that he had left a number of things out of the story for Jayce's sake. Like how he'd been there when two of the bodies of the Shrike's previous victims had been discovered, one in the river missing a head, the other on a garbage tip near the overspill pipes. The second one's head had been mostly intact, just enough to see a pinched little face frozen in a mask of horror.
He'd left out how Le Vesconte took special care to pull on his bad leg as he was raping him, and blew smoke in his face to aggravate his lungs. How two more children were brought in once Viktor was given the repair work and Viktor outlived them both. How half the scars on his body were put there by Le Vesconte, on purpose.
After his escape, Viktor didn't leave his home for a full year. When he did venture back outside, it was only ever a few steps away from home. He killed time waiting for the opportunity to get to the Academy, Piltover, out of the Shrike's reach. He couldn't bear for anyone to touch him, even to gently ask him to move out of the way. He jumped at loud noises and scrubbed himself in the shower so hard he often drew blood.
Then, after getting into the Academy, he had a streak of what Pilties would define as promiscuity. One-night-stands in Piltover and a series of friends-with-benefits on the rare occasions he went back to the undercity. All sleekly muscled men with large callused hands, the physical opposite of the portly Le Vesconte and his eerily soft fingers. Hard, demanding sex made Viktor feel like his body was his again, like he was in control of it. If he ever got the sense that his bed partners wanted something longer-lasting, more serious, he dropped them without a word.
Eventually, he ceased his sleeping around when his position as the dean's assistant distracted him, and then Jayce Talis and his exploding study and brilliant but haphazard math had barged into his life. It was easy to lock away the past and not think about it when you could fill your head with scientific equations instead.
He hadn't thought about Le Vesconte in years. He'd hoped Le Vesconte would have forgotten him too.
It's just an intimidation tactic, nothing more.
Even so, he gets very little work done that night.
…..
In a dank little room in the lower bowels of the undercity, one young man regards another man with contempt, bordering on disgust.
“I agreed to meet you, that's all,” the young man says. “I'm not making any promises.”
“I can make it worth your while,” the other man says. His voice has the texture of oil dripping down a wall. “I have a new shipment in, courtesy of Noxis' warmongering. You can have your pick, and I'll pay you well. What have you got to lose?”
“A lot, if anyone hears that I met with you,” the young man retorts. “I'll get blacklisted. So I'll have nowhere to put this pretty young thing you're offering.”
“It's a quick job, in and out with my cargo. I'll make sure it can't be traced back to me.”
The oily man pushes a small green bottle across the desk to the young man.
“You're supposed to be the best. Surely you can manage this one small job?”
The young man regards the bottle, and the pouch with the coins sitting on his left. And thinks about a room of pretty young slaves he can choose from. If he pulls off this job, and he knows he can, he'd never have to pay the booking fee at a brothel again.
“Deal,” he says, at last.