No, stop. You can't keep blaming yourself for that night in the lab. It isn't your job to check up on me.
[He doesn't want to be checked up on, feeling the same pang of humiliation he felt on the bridge, the deep-seated pride he harbors in spite of everything. The thought that Jayce sat at his bedside the night he collapsed, thinking about what he might have done to prevent that, well. It's all misplaced. Viktor is an adult. He can take responsibility for his own actions, even ones that end with him unconscious on the floor.
Of course, now he's being forced to acknowledge what that does to other people--to Jayce, arguably the only person whose opinion he really cares about. It's a hard pill to swallow, and his partner's truly distressed expression doesn't help.
Jayce loves him--of course he does. Jayce feels everything so thoroughly and so overtly that it all spills out all the time, in the way he acts, in the way he reaches out for Viktor to put a hand on his shoulder or at his lower back. It's impossible, at this point, not to know this singular truth about him. Still, Viktor fills in convenient, unspoken qualifiers. Like family. Like my brother. Love in the way best friends love each other and care for each other. Entertaining anything else is too painful to think about, so he files it away like he's done with the mental image of that hammer, something he's not sure he'll ever be ready to ask about.
He takes another few steps forward, seemingly undaunted by their height difference. Back on the bridge, Jayce had loomed over him. Now, Viktor stays standing, looking up to meet his eyes, unintimidated.]
I need you to understand what it's like, to have everyone look at you and talk to you like you're already dead.
[Heimerdinger, eulogizing him to his face. The Council, hardly sparing him a glance on the best days, making decisions with Jayce about Hextech like he isn't even there, or wouldn't have an opinion, or wouldn't also have the knowledge to safeguard it. The rest of Piltover, who barely knows he exists, because acknowledging him would force them to grapple with an inconvenient truth: that a Zaunite was both responsible for their prosperity, and careening towards a premature death as a result of their careless governing. Some of it was denial, of course. A chronic cough isn't much to worry about, not when it's to be expected, given where he came from. When the symptoms are so gradual, it just seemed easier to keep ignoring them, in favor of what's more important. In the process, however, he'd allowed himself to avoid confronting an uncomfortable reality.
A mistake, obviously. But one he can't exactly walk back, at this point, so all he can do is try to explain.]
I have spent my whole life trying to be recognized as more than, than this. [A vague gesture to himself--his body, and all of its inadequacies.] Our work, Jayce--our partnership, is, it's the most important thing in my life. I couldn't stand the thought of you looking at me and seeing only my illness. It would have distracted us from everything we needed to accomplish.
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Date: 2022-04-22 02:53 pm (UTC)[He doesn't want to be checked up on, feeling the same pang of humiliation he felt on the bridge, the deep-seated pride he harbors in spite of everything. The thought that Jayce sat at his bedside the night he collapsed, thinking about what he might have done to prevent that, well. It's all misplaced. Viktor is an adult. He can take responsibility for his own actions, even ones that end with him unconscious on the floor.
Of course, now he's being forced to acknowledge what that does to other people--to Jayce, arguably the only person whose opinion he really cares about. It's a hard pill to swallow, and his partner's truly distressed expression doesn't help.
Jayce loves him--of course he does. Jayce feels everything so thoroughly and so overtly that it all spills out all the time, in the way he acts, in the way he reaches out for Viktor to put a hand on his shoulder or at his lower back. It's impossible, at this point, not to know this singular truth about him. Still, Viktor fills in convenient, unspoken qualifiers. Like family. Like my brother. Love in the way best friends love each other and care for each other. Entertaining anything else is too painful to think about, so he files it away like he's done with the mental image of that hammer, something he's not sure he'll ever be ready to ask about.
He takes another few steps forward, seemingly undaunted by their height difference. Back on the bridge, Jayce had loomed over him. Now, Viktor stays standing, looking up to meet his eyes, unintimidated.]
I need you to understand what it's like, to have everyone look at you and talk to you like you're already dead.
[Heimerdinger, eulogizing him to his face. The Council, hardly sparing him a glance on the best days, making decisions with Jayce about Hextech like he isn't even there, or wouldn't have an opinion, or wouldn't also have the knowledge to safeguard it. The rest of Piltover, who barely knows he exists, because acknowledging him would force them to grapple with an inconvenient truth: that a Zaunite was both responsible for their prosperity, and careening towards a premature death as a result of their careless governing. Some of it was denial, of course. A chronic cough isn't much to worry about, not when it's to be expected, given where he came from. When the symptoms are so gradual, it just seemed easier to keep ignoring them, in favor of what's more important. In the process, however, he'd allowed himself to avoid confronting an uncomfortable reality.
A mistake, obviously. But one he can't exactly walk back, at this point, so all he can do is try to explain.]
I have spent my whole life trying to be recognized as more than, than this. [A vague gesture to himself--his body, and all of its inadequacies.] Our work, Jayce--our partnership, is, it's the most important thing in my life. I couldn't stand the thought of you looking at me and seeing only my illness. It would have distracted us from everything we needed to accomplish.