#sunscorned

Ask Me About My Muse’s Family Members.

“Oh, Vityusha...” Yekaterina takes in the scene, the years of dust caking every surface of the room. She hadn’t wanted this. She hadn’t expected this: surely Grigoriy would stay, he had years left... But she was supposed to have years left too, and look where that had gotten her.

Grigoriy’s hands are steady as he pulls a stack of letters from the nightstand drawer. Each and every one is as crisp and sealed as the day that he or his wife had written them. They were supposed to be read. But Viktor always liked his collections, his keeping things in neat-and-tidy order, and what would letters of love be if not prized possessions to be kept?

“Did we fail him?” he asks softly.

“I don’t know,” she replies, picking up an old photo frame. Viktor can’t be older than seven in it - she still has streaks of black hair amidst a sea of grey. His smile beams up at her. “I think Zaun did.”

“We could have done more. I could have showed him the mortality tables and arranged for someone to watch over him. He was twenty-three.”

Yekaterina could say so many things. She could agree, she could debate, she could talk of all the things that they had done for their only son. But she’s old, even now, and something in her aches as she looks at the room around her, preserved as if she or her husband were simply away on vacation. (But there is the choking dust, the proof that Viktor has not set foot in here for fear of what it will do to him. He was always emotional. It was one of the uncountable things that she loved about her son.)

send me an au and i’ll give you 5+ headcanons about it

1. Viktor has a huge interest in space travel, after everything on Runeterra is... fixed... ah, anyways - it’s certainly not due to the media he consumed as a kid. That is not an influence whatsoever.

2. The Full Machine chassis stands exactly as tall as Viktor was in life. He didn’t see any reason to make it taller.

3. It is, in fact, Viktor in there. Not a copy. Although it’s fair to say that it’s not all of Viktor: after all, he “deactivated” his emotions. They (sadly?) couldn’t be fully purged, but he rendered them inaccessible.

4. Inaccessible does not mean fully gone. Certain events can occur that would break the blocks he’s put around his emotions (or the virtual versions of them, but then-again you can argue whether or not our emotions are just as constructed...!) and allow him to experience them again. This is not advisable.

a slightly altered timeline. - 14. the timeline in which they took a chance they didn’t in canon.

It isn't right. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

Viktor doesn’t storm into Professor Pididly’s office, doesn’t yell or shout or scream. There has to be a reasonable explanation for this. There has to be a reason for why the news this morning says that Blitzcrank’s revolutionary learning processes were created by Dr. Stanwick Pididly, and not the team of students that he was advising. Not Viktor. Something was misinterpreted, assuredly - the press does it all the time.

Professor Pididly - Stanwick, to his advisees - rises from his desk. He looks calm, maybe even apologetic, although Viktor isn’t sure.

“I assume you saw the news, then.”

“I did,“ Viktor says flatly. One of his hands is worrying at the hem of his sweater. “...What happened?”

“It’s a necessary evil,” Stanwick replies with a sympathetic frown. He steps closer. “If the public knew what we did - that you’re really the brains behind all of this, and I’ve just helped with the organization and funding - you’d be snapped up by a research lab even before your graduation ceremony.”

“That is not a bad thing...” Is it? It can’t be. That’s what he wants for his future.

“Oh, I’m sure it’d be just wonderful in Piltover. Everyone on that side of the bay’s all about morals and ethics, even if it means we beat them in everything else.” The professor gives Viktor a sly grin - like most in Zaun, he has no love lost for the shining city to the northwest. “But here? Do you really want to work for the lab that offers you the highest price?”

It’s a valid point, even as something in Viktor’s gut twists. Research is a business first and foremost in almost every case, which means that any company that offers him a lucrative salary wouldn’t be doing it because Blitzcrank was originally meant to be a waste-reclamation robot. They’d be doing it so they’d have another young bright mind working for them, and he’d...

“You’d probably end up working on making more robots like him,” Stanwick continues, jerking a thumb back over his shoulder. There’s a small photograph on his desk of himself, Viktor, the rest of the doctoral team, and Blitzcrank. They’d taken it after the chassis had been finished. Viktor had been smiling, something of a rarity in pictures of him. “In the sapience sense. And not just for fields that need them, but...”

Oh. Viktor understands. Robots don’t have to be paid. And now, with the ability that Viktor and his team has - but it’s truthfully just Viktor, he’s the one who spent hours working on what could be termed Blitzcrank’s brain - there’s a way to make robots capable of doing almost anything a human could do. It could be a wonderful future, one where no one has to risk their lives in crowded factories or in crumbling mines, one where people don’t have to labor endlessly, but...

Zaun won’t pay those displaced by this invention. The profits would go to who they always do, this time without even an attempt at wages. People would suffer.

Stanwick seems to catch the look in his eye. “I imagine we came to the same conclusion. But there’s a way out of this - I’ll take the credit for some time, while you gain standing and money in the field. Then you can break away, I’ll tell the world exactly who came up with Blitzcrank, and you can start your own lab. I’ll even invest! You’ll be able to work on whatever you’d like, hire whoever you’d like - I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people wanting to work with someone as bright as you - and sell only to places you trust.”

It seems so true. Because Stanwick wouldn’t lie, would he? He’s been nothing but accommodating, even when Viktor’s first and second project ideas had fallen through. Even when his parents had passed. Even when he needed time that the university had hardly wanted to give him. Stanwick wouldn’t lie, and yet...

Viktor’s parents had warned him of people who’d try to take advantage of him. Of people who’d see nothing but a target where his heart is. Of people who’d twist their words around until he’d be all-but-ready to sign away everything for nothing.

But Stanwick wouldn’t do that.

Viktor gives a long, tired sigh. He’s never been good at operating in Zaun. He’s lucky to know someone who is. “I... understand. Will it be a while?”

Stanwick beams. “Just a few years,” he says, and offers his left hand.

// if the lines had to be kinda personal then that would pretty much imply that she is in Demacia disguised as the husband -

questions for the mun, regarding the muse.

Oh, of course I do. Viktor being happy would be... so good for him, genuinely.

What he thinks will make him “happy” is going full machine, but I think everyone on this blog knows how that will end.

Send me a character and I’ll tell you my opinion on them!

“A... remarkable creation. He has evolved beyond his original purpose, has he not? A triumph.”

“I have no further opinions.”

Send me a number and I'll write a drabble about my muse's past 

Jayce had been hauled to the precinct without any notice but a knock at his door. It had only been a day - or maybe not, time seemed to slip by like water through open hands - since Zaun. Since Viktor. Since...

He really should have gone to a hospital. His hands are in agony (the rest of him isn’t much better) as he waits for the Sheriff. It takes most of his concentration to sit still. Was this an arrest? Why else would people look at him like he was a criminal?

Caitlyn steps out of her office. “Mr. Merriweather. Do you care to explain why you attacked a Zaunite at his place of work?”

She looks tired. There’s something in the nearly-concealed shadows under her eyes that speaks to having stayed up the previous night. Was it due to him? Jayce clenches his eyes closed for a moment, trying to figure out how to explain.

“I... I told you that the crystal was dangerous, and that it couldn’t be left to him. What else was I supposed to do? You didn’t see... it’s...”

His head is pounding. Was that surprise on Caitlyn’s face? Did he just imagine it? Maybe he can push himself to his feet, argue his case - isn’t it clear what Viktor had done? He’s still wearing the armor, the gloves. Isn’t he proof enough?

Send me a number and I’ll write a drabble about my muse’s past

Viktor looks down at the eraser-smudged page. The last few hours have been spent fruitlessly trying to coax an idea from his mind onto the paper, and all he’s been left with is a hand coated in graphite.

It’s foolish. He’s putting the cart before the horse, or one of those other quaint Demacian idioms. How can he possibly expect to design a chassis when the internals haven’t even been decided upon? The technology isn’t there for a transfer, maybe a half-hearted copy at best. That’s failure. But time is already so limited. How long will it take him to discover what is needed? How long does he have left?

He presses the tip of the pencil into the paper, nearly breaking it. A row of half-complete faces stare back at him, all lamplight-eyes and smooth metal. Function over form, function over form. He can’t even live by his own statements.