Enough was enough. There was too much risk with too little reward to just stay silent about things, and Syd had her fill of pouting. The more she thought on it, the more it made less and less sense to just shut up and wait. Someone else might’ve been able to fix him, she had no doubt about that. This place was filled with a lot of powerful magic and people, and healers beyond her wildest dreams.
But fuck that. She’d made this mess, she was going to fix it. Ever since she’d found out how bad Victor’s overloading had gotten, Syd had been determined. She’d come up with a plan back in Atlantis, she’d had it in her head, simmering away. But then Victor was gone, and then she was in Vallo.
With the way people came and went, there was a possibility that she’d never get this chance again. That he’d never get another chance to be fixed, because god only knew what was going on with him back home. Would it translate over? If he went home, would he go home fixed? No one knew, but that wasn’t a reason to just let it be here.
Not if someone she gave a shit about was hurting, even if he was too stubborn to admit it.
So maybe she was a little grumpy and forceful when she sat down next to him. “You’re overloading soon, aren’t you? You’ve been even more cagey than normal.”
Victor did not ask for help. Call it stubbornness, call it a need for independence, call it a way to physically shut off his emotions by keeping everyone and everything at arm's length, it didn't matter. He had handled his life with as much pride and power as he could imagine, and it was only through a series of events that people had come to depend on him. A side-effect of using others for his own purposes, but it was never for help.
That was why this business with his pain had gone on for so long. Finding a doctor in Vallo was a tenuous situation—many of them worked in basic clinical work. Nothing that could re-fuse his synapses to fire off properly. And relying on someone to shut off the pain that was continually building behind every nerve would put him at a disadvantage. And like hell was he going to start prodding the magical lot. That was a devil's bargain and Victor had already used up whatever luck he had in the world to not totally succumb to the shitty end of a deal. Mostly.
He was now starting to rethink that.
So as a distraction, he focused on watching Sydney move through her life. The few scant weeks he had spent in Vallo had proven that something better was out there for her. It both proved him right and wrong—letting her go was obviously the healthier alternative, but it still somehow didn't make him feel better. Not in the way it was supposed to. A part of him wanted to continue watching it unfold, but as the internal overloading tripwire became more apparent, Victor figured he didn't have much longer to do it.
He had been sitting at the dining room table, flexing and unflexing his fingers into fists when she sat down. A cruel and fruitless attempt to not think about the agony in every joint, with every pulse in his chest. This should have ended a long time ago—maybe this was the culmination of all those karmic points he had used. If he believed in shit like that.
"It's not your problem, Sydney," Victor said after a long minute. He had closed his eyes. When had he closed his eyes? "I'm handling it." He was most definitely not handling it.
Bullshit. She didn’t say it out loud, but it was there as an answer to both of those things. Victor might’ve wanted to erase her part in it all and spare her, but she was old enough now not to let him do that. That was partly his fault for raising her with a backbone anyway.
“How? How are you handling it?” It wasn’t as accusatory as it could’ve been, that question. It was softer as she looked at him with that gaze that knew the truth, but she also knew if they didn’t do something about it, that might very well be it. Victor Vale was like a cat, and each of those lives he had stored away were used up.
Sydney didn’t wait for an answer, she splayed her hands out on the table between them and let out a breath. “I think I can fix it. No-- I know I can fix it.” It was kind of a bombshell, and one she figured Victor might refute immediately, so she kept on. “I’ve been thinking about it since I was home, and I’ve been practicing. I study biology and anatomy at college, and the differences between regular humans and people with abilities. I think I can fix it.”
Victor did refute it immediately—the expression he leveled at her was one of unimpressed disdain. He knew that he couldn't keep thinking of Sydney as a child, despite the fact that she was to him. She could probably do the things she claimed. But even he wasn't exactly convinced by her explanation. Whether that was because he didn't want to give the solution a sliver of hope or because he truly couldn't support her remained to be seen. Victor glanced away, searching for a moment, but all he found was that tremor of pain under his skin. He tried not to wince.
"Thinking you can fix it and knowing you can are two different things," Victor said, which sounded like the start of another lesson. "I am not a hypothetical. I'm not consenting to a possibility." God, he was hypocritical, and if Victor bothered to care about those things, he would have taken those words back. But Victor was nothing if not stubborn in the worst way. He'd rather die being wrong than admit he was.
"And how would that even work? Wait until I died aga—" Victor sucked in a sharp breath, his fingers curling against the tabletop, tips turning white. If he didn't overload in the next ten minutes, he would be genuinely surprised. But the urgency had Victor saying, surprisingly, "I need more confirmation than what you're giving me."
She saw it, she noticed his hand, pointedly looked at it, and then back to Victor’s face. She hadn’t had a lot of time in knowing how it all went down, studying it, with him having kept her in the dark for so long, but Sydney had learned a lot of her keen observation skills from him.
“Yeah.” There was no reason to beat around the bush or lie about it. Victor had never liked when people softened blows, he liked truth. Sydney didn’t love being as blunt as all of that, but in this case… “I can put things right. I can feel what makes you you, it’s like.. Sewing a stuffed animal back together, or surgery. You make sure everything is in the right place. With people like us, it’s different. We’re different.”
Sydney reached out to his hand, putting her hand on his lightly, and leaned forward. “At this point, what do you have to lose? I can call a dozen of my friends and see if anybody can do something for you, but it’s not going to be quick.”
Victor's breathing went slow and shallow, a poor attempt to school his features and swallow down the pain. This was the worst of it, the moment right before nothingness, and then a hope—he hated the word—that he'd see another day. But what was the point anymore? Did he want to keep doing this dance between life and death or did he want to actually trust Sydney and what she could do? Not because he needed her to do it for his own plans, but because she wanted to for...
He didn't want to put words to why Sydney wanted to try. It was not like he had given her any reason to keep coming back or want some kind of validation from him. But then she put her hand on his, with a gentleness Victor was wholly unused to (and one he had purposely avoided) and something sharp in his chest twisted. It wasn't pain, but deeper, intangible pressure against his ribs. Fucking emotions.
"I thought I wasn't allowed to use your friends," Victor said. He wasn't saying yes, but he wasn't saying no. If he was going to give in, cut his losses, Victor might as well give himself over to a possibility. That was what he did all those years ago to get him to this point now.
"You're going to have to leave for a minute before it happens."
Sydney sighed in return. She knew she’d have to leave - there was too much of a risk of the overloading pain causing her to not accomplish her goal, even if she hated it. She’d been surrounded by death for so long at this point, and each time someone had to die alone, it made her heart hurt.
Even if they were going to come back. Even if she could bring them back. It was a cold and lonely and somehow made the pain worse, even when the body was numb.
Not that she was projecting or anything.
“Dumbass. There’s a difference between using people and asking them for help. Someday you’ll fucking learn that.” She wouldn’t hold her breath. But she did squeeze his hand before slipping out of her chair. Dol and Skelly followed, and she scooped up the cat before looking back over at Victor. “I’m starting a timer but I'm not going far.”
Victor wasn't going to say goodbye. Dragging out something that was inevitable felt useless, an unnecessary waste. But there was something about the way Sydney said she was starting a timer, like it was for both of them—a literal death day clock—that made it feel final. Maybe he wouldn't come back. What if something went wrong? Thinking about his mortality in a real urgent sense forced him to let all of his emotions out. Victor didn't have time to consider them and ignore them; he had to face them now. In case, in case, in case.
He just looked at Sydney as she started to leave the apartment with Dol, and the little black cat (that Victor had started to particularly like). And his mouth was traitorously speaking before he had a chance to run it through the filter, and said, "You have a good life here, Sydney. If this doesn't work, don't let me ruin it."
When the door closed, Victor took a deep breath and just let go. All the pain in his limbs, in his bones, he let it go, unleashed a floodgate that he had been trying to stop. It was always the same: he was going to overload himself to death.
Victor didn't hold regrets. He couldn't. But every time he kept telling himself I'm ready, don't fight it, Sydney slid into his mind. Did he regret how he raised her? Did he regret that he didn't give her a better life? Did he regret that there was a time he could have been more caring, more considerate, more compassionate? Did he regret not saying he was sorry for the shitty life he gave her?
He didn't have time to answer that. Victor could hear the sizzling of the lightbulbs above him between the roaring of blood in his ears. This was where he would try to pull it back again, for a few more needed seconds, focus on one thing so he wouldn't succumb to being a casualty again. He stood abruptly from the table, flight mode kicking in. But Victor couldn't run from death.
Sheer overwhelming agony arched through his body. One lightbulb burst, then another, then more—pop-pop-pop—throwing the apartment and the floors above and below into darkness as Victor's own lights went out. His body hit the floor in a graceless heap. Time was ticking.
She wished it wasn’t so easy to tell when it happened. The hallway flickered, the lights all around her dimming as Victor overloaded. It made Sydney wince, and she’d barely had time to pull her phone out before it stopped. Something popped in the distance and Dol whined against her side, as if he knew just as well as she did.
Syd only had a few minutes. When she was back in the apartment, Skelly took off to hide in the bedroom, and Dol lead her right back to Victor. “Couldn’t have went down on a couch or something, Victor?” She knew he couldn’t answer, but muttered the complaint anyway.
Dead people didn’t weird her out anymore. They used to, back when she was the young age of twelve and just recently discovering all of what she could do. Now they were old hat. This wasn’t the first time she’d brought Victor Vale back to life, but she wasn’t a kid anymore, just rushing through it. Now, as her hand reached out to his chest, she felt it, everything that bound him together. It was like cables running through a computer, but Victor’s was a jumbled mess with sparks flying all around.
Sydney fixed it. In what looked like just a few seconds on the outside, it felt like hours on the inside, stitching and pulling and mending. Making sure everything had it’s proper home, not just fixed beyond what was visible, like defusing the ticking time bomb that was just under her thumb.
Even as he took that tell-tale gasp of air into his lungs, she worried at her lip, unsure if she’d actually done it.
Going from nothingness to everythingness was a sensory overload. The gasp was both from drowning under the waters of death and an overwhelming kickstart to life. Just as his whole body was akimbo, Victor's mental state was the same. What had maybe only been minutes was an eternity to Victor—he was picking up right where he left off, braced for the overload of electricity and the pain, but none of it came. There was an unnerving blissful calm under his skin.
Victor had sat up in a frenzy, and when his thoughts caught up with his actions, he realized he was unintentionally clinging to Sydney's arm. That was years of instinct kicking back in; always on the edge, always aware of another person within reach. Except this time, this wasn't a stranger or someone trying to kill him, or—fuck—the memory of a nightmare of Eli in their constant battle. Sydney, in fact, was the opposite of all of them. And yet, he was still gripping her arm, vice-tight, because danger was always lurking. Or that was just his paranoia traitorously trying to tell him this wasn't real.
"Don't go anywhere," Victor said, harsh and demanding. Because he wouldn't be Victor Vale if he wasn't still dictating the immediate situation while recovering from distress. He quickly took a mental audit of his body—limbs still working, heart still pumping, and the pain smoothed away in an unconscious habit.
When he looked at her in the dim light from outside, his expression was stern, stereotypically inscrutable. But his chest was heaving, like he couldn't get enough air. He was alive, alive. "How long have you been waiting to do that?"
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Syd retorted back, but it was unheated and she didn’t go anywhere. She just looked relieved as he’d come alive, and only leaned back enough to give him room. It was just that last edge of teenage rebellion still stuck inside of her that popped up.
And maybe a little edge of teasing that she wouldn’t cop to because Victor might hate it. She looked him over instead, watching for any visible signs of it not being right, that he would be tempted to lie about. The fact that he was back and here was a win enough, but to have fixed it was the more important part, to her.
“Almost two years? I came up with the idea in Atlantis, but then you--” She knew he didn’t remember that, or that it was another version. Whatever. They were both the same level of comfort vs antagonizing brand of fatherhood she had come to both appreciate and dread. “Were gone. I didn’t know if I could do it there, so I studied anatomy here. Practiced on animals. Talked to a few people. Did it-- How do you feel?”
Somehow, it still threw Victor that Sydney had been off for two years where it had only felt like days for him. Not that he showed any of this surprise on his face, it just gave him more pause and allowed him to consider his answer. He took another deep breath, and there were no signs of pain in that inhale. It was strange to go from constant hum of discomfort until it was unbearable to nothing. Because he had control over it again.
"Different," was Victor's answer, and he let go of Sydney's arm to stand on his own accord. "Better." There was still a fear that this could be temporary and that he would overload all over again—much like any experiment there needed to be notes taken, observations made, isolation to not fuck up the results with any variables, but this was haphazard. Much like most of Victor's own bullshit he pulled together. Nothing was as streamlined as it was in his head.
"I'm trusting you," Victor said. "I have trusted you, regardless of what you may think. I know it means little in this situation, and don't be offended that I'm skeptical. I'm always skeptical, not because it's you." He paused, knowing this was as honest as he was going to get. "But if anyone could figure it out, it would have been you."
Syd followed him, still watching for any signs of anything being off. It didn’t say much, because they hadn’t known he was fucked up right away before, either. That had been gradual, until it had been too much for him to hide from her. Syd couldn’t quite trust he wouldn’t do the same to keep her hopes high, in this case.
He’d taught her that level of cynical, though, so he couldn’t blame her for it, right?
Her face still flushed with the compliment, since under it all Syd was proud. In those two years she had resurrected far less than she had back home, with the amount of healers and medical people they had here. She’d have to tell Adam that theory work did pay off sometimes.
“Fuck yeah, I’m badass. I still want to know if anything doesn’t feel right.” It was a weird level of confident and unsure all at once. “Are you hungry or anything? I’ve been craving burgers because of the network.”
"If you're going to keep asking, I'm going to stop answering," Victor said, taking his own internal assessment if things felt off. He wasn't sure, how could he be? All he knew at the moment was that on the surface peripheral level, things felt normal. As normal as an EO could be. Victor knew that the kindness that Sydney still managed to hold on to after all these years drove her to keep asking and to worry. She was part of the reason he had come back in a tangled messed up knot. But he had also been the one to convince her to do it before she really knew how.
He put himself in this mess, and now Sydney had gotten him out of it. Again. It seemed only fair to nod, almost resigning himself to the fact that he would be answering this question a lot. He didn't lie this time. "I'm fine. Nothing feels off."
Victor paced away from her, as if taking in the apartment for the first time. In some ways he was. The pain was not driving him from one point to another. The concern of overloading and dropping dead felt a little more distant as time went on. Victor looked at Sydney, in what was a new sense of purpose. Normally he would shrug off her request, leave the apartment for an isolated walk as he had been doing since he arrived in Vallo.
"I could eat." There was a beat, before he added, "Show me your favorite place." Because he was interested, he wanted to know, he had another chance to do something with the life Sydney had given him. Victor wasn't lying when he said he felt different, better. This was better, right?
It wouldn’t have stopped her from asking again anyway, even with his threat. But she appreciated when he did answer, and let out the breath she’d been holding. There were Victor lies that were more obvious than others, and this didn’t feel like either.
But then she also wanted confirmation enough that she was willing to accept it regardless. So she perked up, rocked back on her heels and gave Dol a loving little snuggle as he followed her around. It was like a chain went through her living room between Syd following Victor and Dol following Syd. But that was familiar, and for the first time in a while, it felt good.
“Okay well my favorite place makes things so spicy you can see the future regret before it happens.” She grinned happily at that threat. “I’m down for that level of torture if you are.”
Victor noticed it too, the familiarity of their little line sliding through the apartment. For the first time since he arrived here, this felt appropriate. Normal. He had been nostalgic for a time before all the pain and the complication; it seemed impossible, but this resurrection had done something to the world around him. Like his internal axis righted itself, finally.
If anyone could look disinterested and exasperated at the same time, Victor did. He considered spice torture not incredibly high on his list of desires, but he wasn't going to say no. "Given my tolerance for pain, I will watch you regret it first before I indulge in anything you describe as torture."