Chapter Text
When Jayce Talis was five, he learned how to ride a bike. His mom and dad held the seat and gave reassuring pats on his head, covered by a snug, red helmet. He had painted flames on it to make it look cooler. His parents were confused, but supportive, when he explained his reasoning and his desire to ride a bicycle.
So there he was: tiny hands on the handles and tiny feet on the pedals. The bike was far too big for him, as it belonged to his father. They weren’t worried, though, as they assumed his body could take it if he fell. His dad would say it “builds character”.
The bike toppled over the second he got three rotations in.
It was a nasty scrape to his knee. Jayce cried, unable to shed the tears he needed to. He refused to look at his injury, but could feel the wetness seeping down his shin.
Cooing, his mother reassured him as his father brought him inside to lay down on the table. She held a dry cloth to his knee and told him how brave he was, her baby, how strong. Jayce sniffled — an unneeded action, there was nothing there — and told her how he didn’t feel brave.
She cupped his face with one hand, wiping away nonexistent tears. “I know, mi vida, I know,” she pulled back the towel that had grown saturated with leaking oil. “You aren’t meant to feel anything at all.”
-
When Jayce Talis was seven, he realized he didn’t like being a girl. He shouldn’t really have had any issues with his model, he’d been updated according to his age pretty regularly. His “brain” was fully in sync with his body. In the ways that mattered, at least.
That didn’t stop him from snagging his dad’s toolbox from where it had been gathering dust in the garage and hauling ass back to his room. He didn’t want to disturb his mom, who had kept herself busy in the empty house by watching soap operas, as of late.
His mom had been quiet for the last few months. Dad hadn’t come back home in that time. Jayce had asked, in that first month, where Dad had gone. When his mother began to cry, Jayce learned to not ask those questions.
That’s what his existence was for, wasn’t it? Learning and adapting to help those around him.
Still, his father’s absence made something in him hurt. Something different and raw, something a machine shouldn’t feel. He pushed it down.
Jayce held up his dad’s old screwdriver to the ceiling lamp. It reminded him of when they didn’t have enough money to go and get repairs for small things, like that scraped knee, so his dad did it himself. Maybe that’s why it felt like second nature to turn it against himself and search for those well-hidden panels in his skin.
Thirty minutes later, his mom came into his room to tell him that dinner was ready, and instead found her child unmaking his lower half. Through babbled sobs, Jayce explained how he felt with all of the grace and eloquence a seven year-old robot could muster about the complexities of identity.
“Oh, mijo…” his mom trailed off, like she was testing the word in her mouth. Gently, she lowered herself to the floor. “You didn’t have to sneak around. You can tell me anything.”
Jayce was lucky to know what that word meant. He smiled brightly, the gap in his teeth showing like a blot of ink on an otherwise perfectly white paper. He was her son.
-
When Jayce Talis was nine, he finished making his mother her new fingers. He had been working on them for weeks, but was making the schematics for them ever since they’d gotten out of that blizzard the year before and was sure he and his mom would be safe.
It was odd, to feel so proud about something he wasn’t asked to do. No one ordered him to make prosthetics, he’d just… wanted to. And he couldn’t keep that face-splitting grin off of his expression. Maybe this would make up for his inaction on the mountain. His uselessness. When a larger android helped them home, he felt something inside of him change.
He wanted to help his mom, more than what he was programmed for. And maybe, just maybe, her having metal be a part of her would make them closer.
A part of him to be with her, always.
After he showed his mom what he had made, she pulled him into the tightest hug he could remember receiving since after Dad left. It felt like home.
The next day, he found that her left hand had gained two new fingers and lost a tarnished wedding ring.
-
When Jayce Talis was eleven, he undid what the mechanic had added in the “updates” to his chest. He didn’t know why his mom didn’t just tell the woman that he was a boy.
When he asked about it, she gave him an anxious smile.
“I don’t want you to be taken from me, cariño.”
That only gave him more questions. It was the same answer she always gave when he begged to go to school. He didn’t think people were that prone to theft, in the city of Piltover. His friends at the park made him think that people from Zaun were the ones that did that. Maybe they were just making things up.
-
When Jayce Talis was thirteen, he was forced to babysit. They needed the money, he was told. He knew it was because of him. His updates seemed to cost more and more each time.
His mom made a friend at work. Mrs. Kiramman. She laughed when he told her that she looked fancy before he even shook her hand. She said that he was a charming young man. It made him preen. He’d never gotten a compliment on his personality from anyone but his mother.
He was requested to look after her daughter for an evening, as she and Mr. Kiramman had a big rich-person-party to attend.
Caitlyn Kiramman, the daughter in question, was six, and far too smart for her age. She had set up a tea party, equipped with the finest stuffed animals and fake china. However, the moment she saw her parents car pull out of the driveway, she turned to Jayce with a dissecting stare.
“You’re a robot!” she declared with unwavering certainty.
Jayce nodded. “Uh… yeah?”
She squinted even harder at him. “You don’t act like a robot.”
“…My bad?”
Caitlyn waved the apology off with a soft, pudgy hand. “I don’t care. Let’s play detectives. You’re the cadaver.”
They made sure to clean up all evidence of their escapades before the elder Kirammans returned, and were ready with tea cups clinking when the door to Caitlyn’s room was opened again.
-
When Jayce Talis was fifteen, he started working at the forge full-time. It wasn’t like there was anything else to do.
He wanted to get in the habit of making his own parts.
He hadn’t told his mom about his plan to stop needing those updates. He could take care of himself, he didn’t need her doting on him all the time.
She said he was just being a teenager. Jayce rolled his eyes at her and was promptly grounded from the family computer for the rest of the day.
-
When Jayce Talis was seventeen, Cait told him something.
“I like girls.”
He smiled and tilted his head. “Okay? Is that it?”
She scoffed at him. “I am… romantically interested in girls. Only girls.”
“Yeah, I got that the first time.”
Cait sighed and turned back to the true crime show she had paused to divulge this “groundbreaking” information. “Okay.”
Jayce couldn’t help but think she looked a lot lighter after that.
-
When Jayce Talis was nineteen, he found new ways to make money. Faster ways. More lucrative ways. Tutoring Caitlyn was fun, of course, but the fact that they were friends made it seem less like an actual job. He felt like he was letting his mom down.
He was on his phone. He’d finally gotten one, once he’d installed himself with fingertips that could actually use a touch screen instead of sliding off of it. Somehow, someway, he’d stumbled across a job opportunity. He’d never heard the word being used outside of the snippets of his mom’s old soap operas that lingered in his memory. And it seemed so, so easy.
And it was easy, the first few times. He had to lie to his mom when she asked where he’d been all night, but lying was commonplace to him. He didn’t realize that, perhaps, it should not have been. He was an android, lying shouldn’t have been part of his code. Maybe that was why his mom didn’t question his replies.
Jayce was good at acting for the people who payed him. He had altered himself enough to be attractive. Broad, but not intimidating. Handsome, but in a youthful, innocent way that those people seemed to drool over. He could play any role, any desire, needed of him.
Until those older women hired him. And he didn’t want to play the role anymore. He wanted out, he asked to stop. They thought he was playing. They grabbed him harder. When they realized he wasn’t joking, they told him he was a defect, that they were going to turn him in to Noxus, the manufacturers. That he was broken.
He wasn’t a kid anymore. He knew what happened to defects, to the batch he was originally sent out in.
Jayce didn’t want to be scrap for the same forge he worked in. He didn’t want the only thing for him to be remembered by to be the fingers his mom combed his hair with.
-
When Jayce Talis was nineteen, he felt fear.
-
When Jayce Talis was nineteen, he felt flesh on metal.
-
When Jayce Talis was nineteen, he felt a cut on his cheek, his eyebrow. A struggle.
-
When Jayce Talis was nineteen, he felt the blood of the two women mingling with motor oil.
-
When Jayce Talis was nineteen, he felt death.
He felt the pulse and life bleed out of them.
He felt the heat of the forge when he burned their bodies.
He felt the sting of the water as he washed away the evidence.
When he got out of the shower, he looked at himself in the mirror. Two little scars where he was cut. Easy enough to explain away to his mom.
-
When Jayce Talis was nineteen, he did not feel remorse.
-
Now that Jayce Talis is twenty-four, he still doesn’t. It’s not for lack of feeling, but for feeling all too much.
He makes his own updates, so he doesn’t need an extra job to make up for the money his existence wastes. His alterations are just a tad more prominent. Metal plating is hard to disguise when you don’t have high-quality technology at your disposal. Or paint that matches his skin tone. Or bolts that mold perfectly.
He’s managing. Or, he would be, if Cait wasn’t so suspicious. Not a day passes where she doesn’t give him a look that means she’s dissecting him. She keeps urging him to get an actual update. She says that her family will pay for it, so his mom wouldn’t hurt financially. He rejects the offer each time.
Jayce supposes, as he’s driven directly to the Noxus manufacturing facility by Caitlyn herself, he didn’t take into account how unrelentingly stubborn the girl is. Sixteen years old, just having learned how to drive, and she’s using it to take him to his equivalent of a doctor, of all things. She’s forced him to dress up today, a new white and gold suit to make him seem more put together than he is.
He would almost laugh if he wasn’t absolutely terrified.
- ⚙︎ -
Elbows-deep in a desecrated android body, Viktor feels at home amidst the wires and faux blood. Upgraded from the outdated oil and grease that once filled these machines, Viktor had invented a mix of the two that functions as a power source and a way to make the androids all the more human.
The sterile buzz of Viktor’s lab is like a hymn to him, a chant he’s grown long familiar with. A prayer to the very things he creates and destroys with worshipping hands. With those same deft fingers, he plucks out the machine’s hexcore. Also his own design, a way to keep the fake blood in circulation, a heart in its own right.
The gold and white design of the base androids was not his idea, though. That honor goes to Mel Medarda, the daughter of the founder of Noxus. Cecil Heimerdinger and Corin Reveck made the originals, the ones that were shipped out twenty-four years ago and recalled thirteen years later. Their designs were a bit more rustic, less appealing. Plus, when the androids began to harm humans, a rebrand seemed to be the best idea.
That’s where Viktor came into the picture. At eighteen, fresh out of his dingy highschool, he was welcomed on board to Noxus as head engineer and programmer. Something about Dr. Heimerdinger and Dr. Reveck seeing potential in him, before they parted ways under undisclosed circumstances.
Viktor is twenty-six now. Eight years at a demanding, unforgiving job, and he couldn’t be less fulfilled. He’s changed the world with his inventions; androids can be seen anywhere and everywhere. On the silver screen, they are the stars. On the radio, they are the top hits. On the streets, they are torn apart for pieces in ways that lack the reverence Viktor does it with now.
He’s changed the world, but he hasn’t made it a better place. Only a different one.
A familiar knock on his door snaps him out of his methodical trance. “Come in, Miss Young.”
She steps into his lab, mousy in her demeanor as always. “I just came to remind you that the Kirammans’ appointment is meant to be in ten minutes.”
Ah. Right. The firearms manufacturers. “I must have forgotten. Thank you for the reminder.”
“Of course,” she says instinctively, then pauses. “Are you alright, Viktor?”
Viktor’s eyes crinkle. The woman ping-pongs between friend-mode and employee-mode faster than he can keep track of. “I am fine, Sky. Don’t worry. I just have to clean up in here, and then you can send them in.”
When he turns back to his work, he can feel her eyes on the back of his head. Sky wants to ask something, he can tell. She must think better of it, though, because he can hear her soft sigh and the taps of her shoes against the hard concrete when she shuts the door.
The Kirammans had asked for him specifically. They don’t have a Noxus android, Viktor checked, but the request was to repair one. His job isn’t to ask questions, and he was offered a hefty sum of cash, so who was he to deny them?
His unmovable desire to never talk to strangers decides to rear its head now, of all times. It always spikes when it’s least convenient.
With a forced breath, Viktor reluctantly pulls his hands out of the droid’s chest cavity. A shame, he was enjoying his time in there. But the work will always be waiting for him when the appointment is done. He places a white sheet over it, making it look even more like a corpse than before.
He pushes his rolling chair over to the sink and washes his hands of the fake blood, watching it mingle with the hot water when it swirls down the drain. Getting the mess out of his clothes is another matter entirely. It’s times like these where he’s glad Sky talked — bullied, really — him into keeping a change of clothes in his office. The ten minute heads-up was necessary, as changing is no easy feat for a man with back problems that’s been sitting with the posture of a shrimp, brace be damned, for the past eleven hours. The eight-hour work day is a myth, to Viktor.
When he finally wriggles into a shirt that isn’t covered in grease and pants that don’t have scorch marks, not once leaving his chair, he gives himself a once-over in the mirror.
Same as always: devastatingly human.
It was no secret that part of the reason Viktor was so eager to work with Noxus in the first place was out of envy for the very things he creates. He yearns for a body like them, one that doesn’t creak and ache and betray him. Alas, the closest he can get to that ideal is creating what he cannot have.
So he ignores the eye bags, the wrinkles, the creases, and turns his attention to his hair. An unruly, brown mess of a thing. With two to three finger combs, he marks it down as “good enough”. That’s better than he can say for the rest of him.
Grabbing his cane, he hauls himself to his feet and staggers toward the door. Any second now, the Kirammans will be here.
As if called upon, Sky announces. “They’re here, sir.”
“Let them in.”
What Viktor does not expect is for Sky to be accompanied by a child and an android that is freakishly tall and clearly incredibly outdated. A Heimerdinger-Reveck droid, at that.
The android does not look happy to be there in the slightest. It fidgets with the hem of its suit jacket that matches the colors Viktor has memorized down to the hex code. It must be intentional, matching with the exoskeleton of his machines.
The little girl extends her hand. “Caitlyn Kiramman. You must be Viktor.”
Viktor raises an eyebrow and reciprocates her handshake. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Kiramman. Were your parents not able to make their appointment? It sounded rather urgent when they requested it.”
“I made that appointment,” she says, glancing up at her machine company. “He’s been acting weird for a while now, and I want you to help him.”
‘Help’ is an odd way to put it, when it likely will involve Viktor ripping out its insides, but he decides to let it go without comment. Viktor sits down and motions for Caitlyn to do the same. “Weird in what way, and for how long?”
Caitlyn remains standing. “It’s been five years, I think. And he’s just been… off? He’s acting like- it’s hard to explain. I think it would be best if you just talked to him. You’ll understand what I mean.”
“Do you have an example for me?” Viktor eyes the android that’s been standing behind the girl. It almost looks nervous. As nervous as a robot can be. He isn’t tempted to be alone in a room with it.
“You see the alterations to his model?”
Viktor nods. It’s rather obvious, the stark gray metal against warm plastic skin. From the cheekbones to the jaw, surrounding its Adam’s apple, the knuckles of its hands, all gleaming with bolts and steel. He can only imagine what its rather modest outfit is hiding of its other modifications.
Chewing on her lower lip, Caitlyn hazards a glance between the engineer and the engineered. “He did those to himself.”
Now that has Viktor interested. “Fascinating,” he murmurs. “Did you ask him to?”
“No, that’s the odd part! He just started doing it one day. Forged his own pieces and everything! His mom isn’t worried about it, says he’s always tinkered with himself, but I am!”
Viktor purses his lips. “‘His mom’?”
The android speaks for the first time. “Ximena Talis. My owner.” Its voice is smooth, deep, and filled with annoyance at having to make that clarification.
“Jayce,” Caitlyn hisses and swats at its arm. “We agreed that I would do the talking!”
“I didn’t agree to this at all! I told you, I’m fine.”
“A fine person doesn’t insist that they’re fine!”
The android — “Jayce” — grumbles under its nonexistent breath. Viktor has never been more captivated by something in such a short amount of time.
“Miss Kiramman,” Viktor says, snapping her out of their little spat. “I think I will take you up on your offer to talk to it alone.”
He swears he sees it bristle with a mix of nervousness and frustration. Caitlyn nods anyway. “Thank you. I hope you can see what I do.”
She exits with the ever-polite Sky, leaving Viktor alone with his new fascination. It does not want to be in the room with him, it seems, but it folds its hands behind its back in a polite manner. One that is undoubtedly programmed into him.
“You may sit,” Viktor gestures to the empty stool by his work bench.
It shuffles its feet and squints at him, hazel eyes focusing and unfocusing like a camera lense. “Why do you want to talk to me?”
Viktor takes a moment to absorb the little details of its face. Its flaws, to be exact. The scar on its right cheek, a notch in its right eyebrow. When it spoke, Viktor saw a gap in its teeth.
“Because you are an anomaly,” he answers easily. “How old are you?”
The question takes it by surprise, and it blinks. “I’m twenty-four.”
“Am I right to assume you were not designed to be that way?”
A slow shake of its head. “No, my original model was an infant. My parents couldn’t have children, so they got me. They named me Mariposa.”
Viktor is familiar with this use of the androids. Many are simply used for family, for comfort. One thing stands out about this story, though. “That is not the name Miss Kiramman called you earlier. She called you Jayce.”
“Because that’s my name.” Jayce squares its shoulders, and Viktor has to come to terms with how goddamn tall it is, especially when he’s seated. “There was a mistake in the model. I fixed it and was renamed accordingly.”
“There can’t be mistakes in the model.” Viktor is frankly appalled that the machine even implied such a thing. There are no mistakes in the shells, only the insides of the androids.
“Well, there were. And I fixed them.”
They look at each other for a few seconds. Then Viktor hums. “I understand why you were brought in, now.”
Jayce freezes its constant fidgeting. “What?”
“You are defective.” Waving his hand, Viktor says it like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “An android that has grown too human for its own good. You’ll need to be rebooted and remodeled, which will cost a pretty penny, of course, but the Kirammans aren’t particularly lacking in those.”
“What?” Jayce repeats its earlier question with a quiet kind of fear. What a funny thought, a robot being scared.
Viktor shrugs and turns to his notes, jotting down exactly what needs to be changed. “The cosmetic fixes will be easy enough. Minor scarring on the face and hands from what I can tell. What will be harder to fix are the home modifications you have done to yourself. Truly remarkable, with what you had at hand, but not up to par with the others.”
“Wait,” Jayce protests weakly.
He’s promptly ignored. “I can’t even see what else you’ve changed about your body, what, with your outfit. You’re a rather large one, too. What are you, six-foot six, six-foot seven? Just makes it harder for me.”
“Wait!” Jayce says again, urgently.
“Mh, then that leaves exactly how much of your original data we’d want to keep. Not enough for the malfunction to come through, but enough for Miss Talis to not notice a difference in her product. You are built to comfort, after all. Perhaps we should-”
Viktor’s writing wrist is clutched in a literal steel grip, cutting off his train of thought. Jayce looks at him desperately. “I said wait.”
Cocking his head, Viktor appraises him. “What is it, Jayce? I’m trying to fix you. I want to get on with my day.”
Jayce huffs out a breath and lets go of his wrist. Interesting, the breathing function has only been added recently. There must be internal modifications, too. “I don’t want to be fixed.”
A pause. Viktor leans his elbows on his knees and interlocks his fingers. For the second time this day, he mutters, “Fascinating. And how long have you felt this way?”
“Forever,” it exhales, and it feels like a confession it’s been holding in for a very long time. “Ever since I knew that there was something to fix.”
Viktor stares for a moment. “But there wasn’t something to fix. You just felt that there was.”
It scrunches its face in irritation. “I knew that there was.”
“Of course,” Viktor decides to placate it. “But… What was the end goal of these modifications? What were they in pursuit of?”
That one seems to stump Jayce. It looks into the middle distance, a shutter of its eyes resembling the glaze a human might get from daydreaming. Jayce’s jaw rolls in contemplation.
“I guess…” it trails off, then resumes with conviction, “I wanted to feel real. I still do.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I am real. I want my body to reflect that.”
Viktor takes another moment to truly look at Jayce. It’s holding itself in the way a cornered animal does, afraid and alert, ready to pounce. Androids aren’t supposed to be able to pounce at all, let alone prepare for it. An astounding feat of forced evolution. And then a thought comes to mind.
“You want to feel human, yes?”
Jayce eyes him warily. “Yes.”
“And you want to… come across as one? Unless I’ve misunderstood something.”
“You-” it snaps its mouth shut before trying again. “Yes, you’re right. I want people to think I’m like them.”
Viktor uncurls his fingers and leans back. Oh, how this enraptures him. The irony isn’t lost on him, an android desperate to be human and a human desperate to be machine. But, perhaps, if the transition could work in one direction, it could work in the other as well. Commutative property, and all that.
A deep breath. Here goes: “I think I can make your dream a reality. If you’ll allow me to,” he tacks on haphazardly.
The air in the room feels like being dipped in molasses, a firm embrace from a clingy relative you barely know. Awkward, suffocating, and a little bit too warm. Viktor considers adjusting his collar to stave off the silence, but that would be a little too much weakness to show in front of a defective android — the very things that are known for killing humans — that’s built like a truck and currently in an unsteady headspace.
“What?” It’s almost a shock when Jayce speaks again, yanking Viktor out of his regrets that he hasn’t finalized his will, yet.
When he looks up, Jayce is staring down at him with something akin to awe.
Viktor rolls his neck, an attempt to crack the blundering out of himself. “I can help you create a… synthetically human body, if you’d allow it. Keep you contained to my lab with no visitors. No charge. Call it a scientific experiment.”
“A scientific experiment,” Jayce parrots. A few more seconds pass. “And you won’t- you won’t parade me around? Sell me?”
He scoffs at the idea. “I am not a sellout, Jayce Talis. This endeavor is for us and us alone. Though you will have to keep it a secret from the Kiramman girl and Miss Talis. Can you do that?”
Jayce shrugs. “Kept it a secret up until now, I think I can keep doing that. I could just tell them that you’re repairing me, or that I got a job to help Má. It would explain my absence.”
“I’m not planning on paying you, so go for the former.”
The android frowns. “If you’re taking up so much of my time, I’m going to need to get paid. Unless you let me go do my shifts at the forge every once and awhile.”
“Jayce,” Viktor looks at it pointedly. “You are in no place to make compromises at the moment. Your answer is a yes or a no, and that determines whether I work on you or not.”
It looks around the room, at the empty husks that scatter across the desks. “You’ll really make me human?”
Viktor smiles; he knows he’s won. “I will do my best. And considering I’m the best in the business, that likely means ‘yes’.”
A hand drags down its face, a nervous tick.
“Alright. I’m in.”
- ⚙︎ -
As he’s led out of the frankly disturbing graveyard of a lab, Jayce can’t believe his luck. He walked in expecting to be torn apart like the rest of the androids in the room, and is walking out with a deal to make himself as human as he deserves.
Caitlyn is chatting idly by his side. “I can’t believe he presents himself like that, can you? I pay for a private meeting and he looks like he’s just woken up!”
“Or like he’s never slept at all,” Jayce supplies, and to his delight is met with a childish giggle.
His friend grins up at him from where she’s holding his arm. “That’s probably more like it. It’s shocking to me that he’s the man who’s made every personal droid and the blueprints for all of the mass-produced ones. I guess the stereotype of geniuses being mad holds some water.”
Jayce places an offended hand to his chest and scoffs playfully. “I’m not mad!”
“Well, now you’re mad and a liar.”
“Ah, but you agree that I’m a genius.”
She shrugs in a way that conveys ‘obviously’. “It would be pointless to say that you aren’t. Not all of us have the pleasure of having a computer for a brain. Though, yours is faulty.”
“Mhm,” Jayce grins to himself, a secret for him and Viktor to keep. “It’s going to get replaced. Might not be able to see you as much while it’s happening, though.”
Caitlyn pouts. “What? Why not?”
“Gotta stay in the lab for this one. But don’t worry, Sprout, you’ll get the big reveal.”
With a groan, she bumps him with her elbow. “This was a bad idea, you’re just going to get an even bigger ego.”
He ruffles her hair. “Yep! And it’ll be all your fault.”
“Tell Ximena I’m sorry in advance for the menace her only son will become.”
“Oh, she won’t even be able to tell the difference.”