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You should've known.
Soulmates can't be forced, no matter how hard you cry, scream, rage at the universe. There's no rhyme or reason beyond some divine force deciding the fates of two people.
For most of your life, you were at his side - children on the streets, huddling together for warmth. As teenagers crawling over rocks in the mines, as young adults arm-in-arm with your brothers to fight against those above who would see you flattened beneath their boot.
And through it all, was the expectation that Silco was your soulmate. You simply knew, from the first moment you clasped hands and felt your heart sing. You didn't need his name on your skin, you simply existed side-by-side with the quiet knowledge that until the universe decides the time is right, you won't wear each others' names yet.
Yet.
It's a word full of promise, one that will never be completely fulfilled. As you sit at his bedside and wait for him to awaken, you stare at the name on your wrist and wonder what you've done so horribly wrong to be cursed like this.
It happened almost a full day ago, when you'd brought Silco to the only man you knew that might be able to help contain the infection of his face and eye. The moment the Doctor began, the name on your wrist began to form. It's one letter too many - Viktor.
Just a first name, not a last. A dweller of the Undercity. Somewhere out there, the letters of your name burned onto someone else's skin, and you feel like vomiting.
Up until a few hours ago, you assumed that Silco would be blank. You hoped he would be blank, so you could pretend none of this had happened. Perhaps things could go on as they were. You couldn't be more wrong as you looked at his arm laying across his stomach, the stark black letters of your name staring back at you.
How could this happen? How is it possible? You checked yourself thoroughly, wondering if perhaps somehow a mistake had been made and you'd been left with two soulmates instead of just the one. But beyond the scarring of a hard-lived life, there was nothing on your skin except the name.
Viktor.
Despite hating him already, you spare a thought on what he may be like. Viktor is undoubtedly a male's name, though soulmates are tailored specifically to you so you suppose it doesn’t really matter. This Viktor is meant to be your other half, as decreed by fate itself. Who are you to go against that?
Thoughts of both him and Silco whirl through your brain until the man at your side wakes up. You think about lying, about putting up a facade and creating a deception about the name on your wrist. Silco would be none the wiser. In the same breath, there’s another person out there with your name, someone that doesn’t even know what he’s done.
Can you truly blame this Viktor when all three of you are victims to fate’s design?
In the days and weeks after, Silco depends on you for support so completely that Viktor’s existence is nothing more than a blip on your radar. There are more important things to deal with, like Silco’s trauma and the way his shaking hands cling to you in the night when he awakes with night terrors. You almost manage to forget it with the bracer over your wrist covering the name.
It happens in your sleep. Whether from your own tossing and turning, or Silco’s thrashing, the bracer comes off, lost between the wall and the side of the bed in the darkness. Not that it would make a difference - Silco sees the name on your wrist before you’re even lucid enough to hide it.
When you wake, he’s sitting up and cradling your hand in both of his own. There’s a puddle of tears in your palm and so much pain in his expression that it physically hurts your heart to continue beating - and there’s nothing you can do to assuage it.
Silco’s swallow is thick, lined with phlegm and the tightness of his throat in his grief. It precedes a quivering question that had been plaguing him through the night for an indeterminable amount of time, “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Your answer is simple, rasped through your sleepiness. Silco’s fingers tighten around your wrist, his thumb covering the name there with a frigidness you’ve come to know as normal for him. It feels biting now, in the wake of what’s happened. One of his hands lets yours go, and he sweeps the side of his index finger against each eye, as if that would stem the tide.
The last thing you expect him to do is beg, but he looks you in the eye and pleads, “I have yours. You know I have yours, you’ve seen it. Please… don’t leave me. Choose me - I’m your soulmate, I always have been. There’s been a mistake.”
Of course he’s your soulmate. But before you can reassure him that the thought of seeking Viktor out has never crossed your mind for a moment, he’s reaching for your body, pulling you into his lap until he’s hunched over you and his knee is pressing into your ribs. The ends of his hair brush your cheek as he clings to you.
“I need you. It’s always been us; You and me. We don’t need names, we’ve never needed names. You’re mine and I’m yours, we were always meant to be. Y-You can’t leave me.”
“I won’t,” You promise, snaking your arms around him in whatever way you can reach with this uncomfortable position that you refuse to leave, “Viktor doesn’t matter-”
Silco’s fingers suddenly dig into you, tight and unyielding and on the edge of bruising, “Don’t say his name.”
“Okay,” You breathe, and his tension dissolves the tiniest amount, “You’re my soulmate, not him. Not anyone else. It’s only you.”
Silco melts into your embrace, slowly sliding to lay with you once more. The twisting of your gut unwinds as he looks at you with one bloodshot eye, the other covered by layers of gauze. Even after your promises, Silco almost looks broken. You don’t blame him, not in the slightest. There’s only so much one man can take, and the prospect of losing his soulmate due to a fluke of the universe is enough to kill a man.
You won’t be the one to do it. Silco is your soulmate.
Silco is your soulmate.
If you say it enough, you can will it to be true. You know it. Every morning you tighten your bracer and kiss Silco between his eyes until he’s smiling again. You climb from the bed and tell the universe that Silco is your soulmate. You follow through on the plans Silco makes, the steps needed to drag yourselves from what is essentially the bottom of the river he’d been drowned in.
Viktor doesn’t cross your mind. With the exception of seeing his name when you clean yourself, Viktor may as well not even exist. There’s no worth to him, he holds no allure for you. As you squat over a body and ensure they won’t be getting up again for trying to double-cross you and Silco, you wonder what the consequence would be for doing this same action to the man branded on your wrist.
Would it hurt you? Not mentally, of course - you care about him so little that it’s easier to say not at all. But is there a physical aspect to losing the other half of your bond? A ripping sensation as it’s torn asunder and you’re left alone in the universe, perhaps. But you aren’t alone - Silco’s hand reaches out to help you up, and your name is scrawled on his wrist so prettily that it makes your heart skip.
Silco is your soulmate, you tell yourself over and over.
When the Doctor moves his operations to the hideout you’ve established, he does the unthinkable. During a procedure to set your broken wrist, he sees the name printed there. You don’t think anything of it, hoping he has the tact to keep his mouth shut after you’ve already made it known that you’re a soulmate pair with Silco.
Dread creeps in when he finishes splinting your wrist, hits you with a microdose of shimmer to the crook of your elbow, and says, “I’ve met him. Viktor.”
“Who?”
The Doctor blinks at you, slowly and in a way that tells you he’s sizing up your conviction. He must find it wanting, because even after years of knowing that you’re with Silco, he says, “Your true soulmate. I met him as a child, shortly after parting ways with you. Impossibly bright, maybe a bit too tender-hearted for the life he’s likely to lead with a mind like that. I could tell you where-”
“My soulmate is Silco.”
“Viktor wears your name. The bond with Silco is incomplete - you don’t have his name. But Viktor? The two of you were made for one another-”
The knife pointed at his throat - pulled from your boot in a swift movement that he doesn’t comprehend until it’s happened - stops his accusations permanently. The name “Viktor” never leaves his lips again. The Doctor may not have had tact, but he has the wisdom to understand that two syllables of six letters would bring an abrupt end to his life.
The Doctor has cursed you. Whether by choice or by bumbling accident, you’re not sure, but thoughts of Viktor enter your mind for the first time in years. The undeniable proof from the Doctor that he wears your name is haunting. It brings something to life inside you, a sick sort of wonder about the nature of the man the universe tried and failed to pair you with.
As Vander’s regime topples and you’re left as the victor alongside Silco, you’re able to fight it for a while longer. Life begins to grow comfortable between your work, caring for the new child Silco found in a gutter, steadily spreading influence to the point that information comes rather easily to interested parties.
Information like the invention of hextech from up above, spearheaded by the joint efforts of one Jayce Talis and his partner Viktor.
In one exchange with your informant, you’re sucked back into the cycle and as more information trickles in about their work, their locations, their habits… You don’t realize you’re building a profile on Viktor until you’re in too deep.
A thought from years ago strikes you, about the consequences of one soulmate dying. It shouldn’t kill you - people die all the time and there’s never been a case of both halves of a pair dying at the loss of one except in the elderly due to what amounts to heartbreak. You hold no positive feelings toward Viktor, and your mind is made up.
It happens on a day that Silco is impossibly busy with the burgeoning Chem Barons. You’re left to your own devices, and those devices take you across the bridge and up the sides of buildings. There will be no witnesses - you built an extensive portfolio on Viktor’s habits, the guard rotations, the things he eats for fucking breakfast.
For something so guarded, it’s almost too easy to break in. Even this early in the morning, you find it trifling to pick the lock of the lab, step inside, and tuck yourself into a corner just off the door. Quick and silent. It feels callous to leave his body where it falls, but touching him more than you have to risks leaving evidence.
Would it be kinder to let him look at you? To tell him who you are, why you’ve come, what he’s done to you and the thing he’s set out to destroy without even knowing it. If Viktor didn’t exist, the name on your wrist would be correct. It would read your soulmate’s name - not the name of a farce.
Silco is your soulmate.
You can hear the footsteps, accompanied by the light tap of rubber against marble flooring. It’s unmistakable from what you’ve heard - Viktor uses a cane to walk comfortably, according to what your little spy brought back to you. The pang of worry in your heart is as easily forgotten as the first time you heard it.
Your palm sweats around the handle of your knife, its surface and hilt unmarked, unadorned to prevent this getting back to you. The door slides open, two steps enter before it shuts behind the newcomer, and your fingers curl tighter around the handle.
You know in your very bones that this is your soulmate. The early morning light coming through the tall windows makes his hair almost seem to shimmer with a golden hue that matches his skin. You can’t see his face, but somehow you know you’d recognize him out of a billion others. You know Viktor, and you can’t bring the knife up to do the job.
With a sharp inhale, you ask, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Viktor nearly falls as he spins, his heel catching on his cane before he can right himself. His teeth are grit with a sharp pang of pain, likely from how quickly he’s moved himself, but it’s schooled into something akin to fear as he looks at you.
His wrist isn’t covered. Your name stares back at you, calling like a siren song for you to reach out and touch it, to make it real. Resolutely, you don’t move as Viktor stammers out something that may have been a question on what you’re doing here. If not, you answer it anyway, “I have a soulmate. I’ve had my soulmate for my entire life. I knew he was mine, and I was his. Tell me why my name is on his skin, and yours. Tell me why the universe stuck me with you instead of the man I wanted.”
“What? This is you?” Viktor raises his wrist, flashes you the name that you haven’t yet looked away from. It was unnecessary - you’re sure he can feel it too, with how his shoulders seem to lower. Desperately, you wish you had it in you to bring his tension back, to make him fear your presence.
Viktor’s eyes flick to the bracer you wear, and the confusion melts into something that’s almost imploring as he reaches toward you. He wets his lips and asks, “You are mine?”
“Never,” It’s hissed so sharply that he flinches, his hand recoiling. You raise the knife to point at him, a threat that only you know is empty, “You realize I came here to get rid of you, right? From the second your name got put on me, you’ve been nothing but a problem.”
“Why haven’t you, then?” Viktor takes a step forward, cane shifting to accommodate him. The end of your knife sways in his direction, betraying the sudden terror that you’ve been trying to hide. Another step closer, “You could have done it when I walked in. I would not have known.”
“I thought it would be kinder for you to know who ends you.”
“Kinder for who? Me? You?”
Viktor reaches out again, his sudden proximity startling you enough that the knife sags in your grip and nearly slips. His hand curls around your own, the knife being held steady again, “Well, I’ve met my soulmate, who apparently does not want me. What are you waiting for?”
You’re waiting for the world to end, apparently. You know he can feel the trembling of your hand beneath his palm - it’s warm but not clammy, with little calluses from a life of working with tools. For a man from the Undercity, he’s surprisingly unscarred - at least from what you can see. One more step, and the toes of his shoes are centimeters away from the tips of your boots.
“I’ve thought about you,” Viktor starts, you jolt at the broken silence, but he doesn’t let you go. His fingers unwrap from your hand and trail up to your elbow, curling beneath to support it almost tenderly. A shaking exhale leaves you and he breathes it in, “Every day, since your name was given to me. I never meant to cause you grief - before, now, or in the future, I just want you to be happy.”
“You don’t even know me.”
Being defensive is the only response you have when everything else has failed you. Viktor doesn’t seem to take offense; If anything your answer seems to amuse him. His mouth curls into the smallest smile, and you wonder what it would feel like for him to smile against your lips like that. Your stomach turns.
Silco is your soulmate.
“I don’t have to. As long as one of us wears the name of the other, I would be happy with your happiness. Even if it means it’s not with me, even if it means your happiness comes at the cost of this knife between my ribs.”
“Why?”
Viktor’s laugh is quiet, but it’s such a sweet song that you want to hear it forever. It makes your heart skip and your stomach twist with an anxiety that brings nausea in its wake. You don’t want this feeling, you don’t want him. Hesitation has ruined this for you, and now that he’s looking you in the eye and touching you so sweetly, you know you’ve lost.
The morning is coming behind him, casting him into a relief that makes him almost seem angelic, and the sight of something so holy feels as if the universe is beckoning you to take what it’s offering. This is what was meant to be, this is what’s right.
“Perhaps we were paired because we’re equally stubborn. Reckless, even. I would give you everything that I am, my life if you wanted it. Even though you don’t want me.”
Anger snaps at your nerves and coaxes your words into something harsh, “I don’t want you. I never did.”
“But you have me nonetheless.”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” You shrug his hand from your elbow, sidestepping from where he’s gently trapped you between himself and the wall. Viktor doesn’t fight to keep you there, though you’re not sure he could have succeeded even if he tried. Angrily, you jam the knife into the holster on your hip as you step from his reach again, “You won’t see me again.”
“Once was enough. You know where I am if you decide differently-”
“Silco is my soulmate,” You affirm, both to yourself and to Viktor. Whether he recognizes the name or not, you don’t know. It takes everything in you not to look back as you leave him alone in the sunlit lab. Heartbreak shouldn’t be a factor, but you swallow down the tears nonetheless. Your wrist aches.