[The rhythm of his turning slows into something easy and steady, but it's clear he is doing this while listening to Scien. Because he is looking at Scien mostly aside from the period quick glance down at his hands.]
There is no point to salvation if he can't spend it with the person he loves. [His hands have stopped, momentarily, but then begin again.] It's not a feeling I'm familiar with personally, [virgin] but it is... one I can understand. I don't know how to explain it to you. It isn't... science. It can't be explained. It isn't reasonable. It isn't meant to be.
It's love at its most maddening and illogical. [he agrees] But that love has cost so many other people their chances of salvation. It is selfish in a way that I can't even begin to understand.
[becaus scien cherishes nothing in the world quite so much, and likely never will. not to this extent, when as someone who has become the leader of the country, he has so much more to consider than just himself.]
What happens... is that the Institute gets rebuild. I follow a new lead that was dropped into my lap just before I came here.
I save the girl and her lover both, if I can, before they die to pay for the debt I owe them.
Then it worked out. Without you having to sacrifice a single person for the sake of many. Maybe.
[He rolls the finished cube around in his long fingers, and then he starts jumbling the cube up again. He moves to Scien, placing the cube down on the table and sliding it toward the other man.]
I know a puzzle you'll never be able to solve. [He glances up. Not because Scien isn't intelligent enough. Because it's unsolvable.] Love.
[he'll be honest about that. either way, people would've been saved, but he's not going to spend all that time waiting on a coincidence that might not come. while he doesn't think he was wrong, he also doesn't think he was right. his logic was sound, but his principles were almost compromised....
well. at the rest, he sighs.]
And why would I want to? It's clear enough that love puts more people at risk than it seems to truly help.
[Boy, does he know that sentiment. The first one. WHY ARE SO MANY FUCKS DOWN HERE LIKE THIS.]
I guess it's something you would have to experience to understand. Someone loving you, you loving someone else.
[He, of all people, does not have the answers for this at all. He's a virgin. One shoulder shrugs gently.]
You... had a sister, right? Family? Even if things did not go poorly with them, would you not have come to a frustrating impasse if you cared about them being alive with you, but their death meant helping thousands of others...?
The family was not a loving one. My father and my grandfather both spent the vast majority of their live concerned with the curse—I wouldn't be surprised if they procreated only for someone to take on the work. My mother was killed by bandits and my sister eventually found me to be unsalvageable as a person.
[it's said like a report. facts. that's what they are. even before scien was a reliver, he wasn't particularly emotional. none of this hurts him, the same way that he hasn't been afraid of memshare all week, because all of it is fact.]
If my death would solve the curse, I would be the first to sacrifice myself. But that is because I believe in the persistence of humanity and the right of the average person to live, not individual humans.
[he thinks briefly.]
There are some I would make exceptions for—that I would go out of my way to save. It's not as though I don't think the decision isn't difficult... but I don't think countless more people should pay the price for my selfishness.
[It isn't lost on Viktor he is getting these as facts, and... for once, it doesn't bother him. It does, but it doesn't spur any sort of defensive anger in him. He's Adapting.
Carefully, he crosses his arms over his stomach again.]
...When you died, Dahut was extremely upset. When you were testing our limitations for death here. He came out to tell us, and... I said "good riddance" because I hated how callous you were to others. As soon as I said it... the look on his face.
He cares about you a great deal. You mean so much to him. He even told me, and I questioned him. I couldn't imagine someone admiring and caring about a man who treated the very people he saved so coldly. And, yes, I know he understands the sacrifice of your life for whatever greater good you think is there, but it still hurts him. Your loss still affects someone, it still affects him.
I know you are both Relivers, and I know he only has a small lack of limiter, but... that's love, you know? It is. No one can grieve if there isn't some kind of love there already.
You are the second person to lecture me on something as if I don't understand it.
[but scien isn't an idiot. he doesn't know if he'd call his relationship with dahut as something like love, when there are too many things that make it more complicated than that. it's not this all-encompassing duty and loyalty. with the way that their country works, it can't be. but what he'll admit is - ]
I know what care is. I know what our relationship is. You cannot be next to a person for fifty years and feel nothing. It was irritating when, even when I was the one to kill Dahut, people spoke to me as if the only reason I could possibly be upset is because I was inconvenienced by not having my assistant. That doesn't see him as his own person, and irritated me far worse than anything else they said.
[even if he will not say so in such simple words - scien cares about dahut exactly the same. as a person, not a tool. it's just a hard thing to earn from him.]
But you would be surprised. In our country, so many people will claim to feel love and affection, but utterly fail to mourn someone's death. I understand it's not the same in other countries. That's a good thing.
[to not be a society that fails to properly grieve]
[Thank God Scien has at least a scrap of... Viktor isn't sure if he'd call that altruism, but that's what it is really.]
It isn't really different in Piltover and Zaun in that regard. No one in Piltover mourns the people dying in the Undercity. "They did it to themselves," they'd say. Even the children being forced to work the chemlabs. No one cares if they die. No one cares about the people addicted to Shimmer, wasting away in the polluted hollows and the dark.
[Another shrug.]
I'm not surprised people are indifferent to others' suffering.
There is a divide amongst our districts as well, though crime occurs amongst both the rich and the poor. Though our royal family is rather useless in actually doing anything to address it, or rather they'll often make it worse.
[but scien considers governance to be someone else's job, because he has a little too much to think about as is with his research and keeping the institute running]
There is plenty about human nature that people don't care to acknowledge.
Don't get me wrong. It happens in Piltover, too, but... they sweep it under the rug. They're... craftier about it. The crime isn't... violence. Murder, brawls, discontent. It's crueler. More manipulative.
[He frowns.]
Piltover doesn't have royals surprisingly, but it does have a council. They make all of the decisions by vote. It's the council... Jayce became a part of. I don't think... politics and science should be mixed.
I think he was being pulled in two directions he couldn't compromise. The council, and our Hextech dream.
You're right—the two shouldn't be. Those with political power will always try to get science to sway so that they can stay in power. It's half of what our royals bother me for, instead of doing their jobs.
[he shakes his head]
I'd be wary of that friend of yours. He's probably going to follow the illusion of power.
[Naturally, he looks somewhat irritably offended at the warning. It's reflexive, reactionary.]
No, Jayce... wouldn't...
[Dahut had also sort of warned him.
But he and Jayce have been partners for so long, have been close. And yet, in this moment, he thinks again about the hammer being dropped near him the last they had truly spoken. He thinks about... how he had accepted the Shimmer so he could utilize the Hex Core, unbeknownst to Jayce.
[His fingers curl, digging into the clothes over his arms while they're crossed. Jayce really went and made a weapon without talking to him about it... But he can't say anything? He went and made himself a weapon almost...
It's clear there is a bit of struggle going on in him.]
Maybe if he... just left the council.
[Haha.
His arms unfurl, and he picks up the Rubik's cube, twirling it in his fingers. Then he pushes it into Scien's chest. Take.]
You can keep it until your time is better than a minute and thirty-seven seconds.
[scien is already just twisting the puzzle - not an active effort to solve it, but rather understand the way it's constructed. when viktor offers, scien looks up before shaking his head]
If I wanted one, I would've already made it. If I find a great need, I will.
It's a personal choice. Rather... I am effective enough without one, and I would rather retain my humanity in any way that I can. I do not need to build my body to stray further from that.
[it's obviously not a dig at viktor or any of their friends who have gotten prosthetics - but rather scien's stubborn commitment to his own values. his heart being partially made of machinery is enough.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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There is no point to salvation if he can't spend it with the person he loves. [His hands have stopped, momentarily, but then begin again.] It's not a feeling I'm familiar with personally, [virgin] but it is... one I can understand. I don't know how to explain it to you. It isn't... science. It can't be explained. It isn't reasonable. It isn't meant to be.
[...]
...So now what happens?
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[becaus scien cherishes nothing in the world quite so much, and likely never will. not to this extent, when as someone who has become the leader of the country, he has so much more to consider than just himself.]
What happens... is that the Institute gets rebuild. I follow a new lead that was dropped into my lap just before I came here.
I save the girl and her lover both, if I can, before they die to pay for the debt I owe them.
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[He rolls the finished cube around in his long fingers, and then he starts jumbling the cube up again. He moves to Scien, placing the cube down on the table and sliding it toward the other man.]
I know a puzzle you'll never be able to solve. [He glances up. Not because Scien isn't intelligent enough. Because it's unsolvable.] Love.
But if you ever do, I'd love to hear the answer.
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[he'll be honest about that. either way, people would've been saved, but he's not going to spend all that time waiting on a coincidence that might not come. while he doesn't think he was wrong, he also doesn't think he was right. his logic was sound, but his principles were almost compromised....
well. at the rest, he sighs.]
And why would I want to? It's clear enough that love puts more people at risk than it seems to truly help.
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I guess it's something you would have to experience to understand. Someone loving you, you loving someone else.
[He, of all people, does not have the answers for this at all. He's a virgin. One shoulder shrugs gently.]
You... had a sister, right? Family? Even if things did not go poorly with them, would you not have come to a frustrating impasse if you cared about them being alive with you, but their death meant helping thousands of others...?
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[it's said like a report. facts. that's what they are. even before scien was a reliver, he wasn't particularly emotional. none of this hurts him, the same way that he hasn't been afraid of memshare all week, because all of it is fact.]
If my death would solve the curse, I would be the first to sacrifice myself. But that is because I believe in the persistence of humanity and the right of the average person to live, not individual humans.
[he thinks briefly.]
There are some I would make exceptions for—that I would go out of my way to save. It's not as though I don't think the decision isn't difficult... but I don't think countless more people should pay the price for my selfishness.
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Carefully, he crosses his arms over his stomach again.]
...When you died, Dahut was extremely upset. When you were testing our limitations for death here. He came out to tell us, and... I said "good riddance" because I hated how callous you were to others. As soon as I said it... the look on his face.
He cares about you a great deal. You mean so much to him. He even told me, and I questioned him. I couldn't imagine someone admiring and caring about a man who treated the very people he saved so coldly. And, yes, I know he understands the sacrifice of your life for whatever greater good you think is there, but it still hurts him. Your loss still affects someone, it still affects him.
I know you are both Relivers, and I know he only has a small lack of limiter, but... that's love, you know? It is. No one can grieve if there isn't some kind of love there already.
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[but scien isn't an idiot. he doesn't know if he'd call his relationship with dahut as something like love, when there are too many things that make it more complicated than that. it's not this all-encompassing duty and loyalty. with the way that their country works, it can't be. but what he'll admit is - ]
I know what care is. I know what our relationship is. You cannot be next to a person for fifty years and feel nothing. It was irritating when, even when I was the one to kill Dahut, people spoke to me as if the only reason I could possibly be upset is because I was inconvenienced by not having my assistant. That doesn't see him as his own person, and irritated me far worse than anything else they said.
[even if he will not say so in such simple words - scien cares about dahut exactly the same. as a person, not a tool. it's just a hard thing to earn from him.]
But you would be surprised. In our country, so many people will claim to feel love and affection, but utterly fail to mourn someone's death. I understand it's not the same in other countries. That's a good thing.
[to not be a society that fails to properly grieve]
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It isn't really different in Piltover and Zaun in that regard. No one in Piltover mourns the people dying in the Undercity. "They did it to themselves," they'd say. Even the children being forced to work the chemlabs. No one cares if they die. No one cares about the people addicted to Shimmer, wasting away in the polluted hollows and the dark.
[Another shrug.]
I'm not surprised people are indifferent to others' suffering.
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[but scien considers governance to be someone else's job, because he has a little too much to think about as is with his research and keeping the institute running]
There is plenty about human nature that people don't care to acknowledge.
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Don't get me wrong. It happens in Piltover, too, but... they sweep it under the rug. They're... craftier about it. The crime isn't... violence. Murder, brawls, discontent. It's crueler. More manipulative.
[He frowns.]
Piltover doesn't have royals surprisingly, but it does have a council. They make all of the decisions by vote. It's the council... Jayce became a part of. I don't think... politics and science should be mixed.
I think he was being pulled in two directions he couldn't compromise. The council, and our Hextech dream.
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[he shakes his head]
I'd be wary of that friend of yours. He's probably going to follow the illusion of power.
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No, Jayce... wouldn't...
[Dahut had also sort of warned him.
But he and Jayce have been partners for so long, have been close. And yet, in this moment, he thinks again about the hammer being dropped near him the last they had truly spoken. He thinks about... how he had accepted the Shimmer so he could utilize the Hex Core, unbeknownst to Jayce.
Their pact is crumbling in their hands.]
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scien sees the hesitation for what it is.]
You know him better than I do.
[he'll admit that. maybe viktor is right that there's nothing to worry about and scien is concerned for no reason. but.]
But the average person cannot sustain that level of power and keep their morals.
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It's clear there is a bit of struggle going on in him.]
Maybe if he... just left the council.
[Haha.
His arms unfurl, and he picks up the Rubik's cube, twirling it in his fingers. Then he pushes it into Scien's chest. Take.]
You can keep it until your time is better than a minute and thirty-seven seconds.
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his expression brightens because of course it does. LOVE PUZZLE!!!!!! but he will just look back to viktor and say, and about half-mean it]
I don't believe in luck.
But I'd wish you some if I did.
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[His luck feels like it has run out, honestly. He's thought that since the day Jayce told him the doctors' prognosis.
He leaves Scien with the puzzle, but stops halfway and glances back over his shoulder.]
Do you care about the arm? Do you want me to build you one?
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If I wanted one, I would've already made it. If I find a great need, I will.
It's a personal choice. Rather... I am effective enough without one, and I would rather retain my humanity in any way that I can. I do not need to build my body to stray further from that.
[it's obviously not a dig at viktor or any of their friends who have gotten prosthetics - but rather scien's stubborn commitment to his own values. his heart being partially made of machinery is enough.
he would rather not stray any further than this.]
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[Maybe. He has the makings of the becoming a machine origin story, and it had only just stopped right before it got worse.
But he shrugs one shoulder and arm a little.]
Alright. Suit yourself.
[He doesn't sound angry or offended, just accepting of one dude's stubborn commitment.]