| “ | Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human. | ” |
–-Victor Vale, Vicious | ||
Victor was Eli's roommate at Lockland University. He is an EO (extraordinary) with the power manipulate pain.
Appearance
He is fair with pale blonde hair. His usual manner of dress includes black clothing with a black trench coat. His appearance is described as groomed and elegant similar to that of a Parisian.
Personality
Victor is a sociopath who is extremely calculating and only does anything if he deems it to be worth doing. He doesn't appear to have any morals but does not kill unnecessarily and takes no pleasure in killing. He is an Atheist who disapproves of Eli's strong faith in God.
History
Victor is the son of two world renowned writers of self help novels. He doesn't think very highly of them and seems to hold open resentment towards them. He makes a hobby of using their books to create blackout poetry and messages.
University Arc
As a pre-med student, Victor is in a Comprehensive Sciences Seminar with his roommate Eli. While Victor chooses adrenal inducers and adrenaline as his thesis, Eli chooses EOs. Curious, Victor confronts him on it, and learns that Eli plans to explore how EOs are created. This leads the two of them to work together on the project.
They realize that EOs can not only exist, but can be made through near-death experiences along with other factors. As the product of their research slowly become more tangible, they move on to the idea of becoming EOs themselves. Victor, wanting to be more then a footnote in Eli's research, offers to go first, by way of drug overdose. This attempt fails, and Victor just ends up hospitalised and under suicide watch.
Eli takes the next attempt, this time by cooling himself in ice water until his heart stops. This time, it is successful, giving Eli spontaneous healing.
After Eli refuses to help Victor become an EO himself, he convinces Eli's girlfriend, Angie Knight, who was also his close friend, to help him electrocute himself. He blacks out and his heart stops. Upon coming to, he is in deep pain. He forces the pain to stop, and when he starts it again, the experience kills Angie.
Victor calls Eli to let him know what happened. Instead of helping him, Eli calls the police on Victor, eventually instigating Victor's arrest for Angie's murder and the beginning of their 10-year feud. Victor quickly escapes by denying all charges then murdering his cellmate and the guard. He returns to find Eli who shoots him twice. Victor numbs the pain and stabs Eli multiple times knowing that he can't heal unless he removes the knife, as well as using his power to torture him. However, he collapses from blood loss and Eli shoots him again in the back before walking away unscathed to call the police.
Prison Arc
Victor is in maximum-security prison for five years due to being under suspicion as an EO. Because he shows no evidence of being one, they eventually put him in a lower security prison where he meets Mitch Turner, his large and tattooed cellmate and a pacifist who is plagued by misfortune. They become friends and escape together. During these four years, Victor practices the use of pain and learns to control his powers.
Present Arc
Upon escaping prison with Mitch, they steal a car and rent a room in the Esquire Hotel. A week later, Victor buys a newspaper and finds Eli's picture on the front page, in an article entitled "CIVILIAN HERO SAVES BANK." On the way back to their hotel, Victor stops the car and picks up the pained person he can sense by the side of the road, who turns out to be Sydney Clarke, a 13 year old EO.
Plot
Vicious
Relationships
Eli Ever
| “ | He and Eli were bonded, by blood and death and science. They were alike more so now than ever. And he had missed Eli. He wanted to see him. And he wanted to see him suffer. He wanted to see the look in Eli's eyes when he lit them up with pain. He wanted his attention. | ” |
–Victor Vale, Vicious, 1: Water, Blood, and Thicker Things, XVIII | ||
Eli was assigned to Victor as his roommate during their sophomore year after Victor’s previous roommate dropped out due to unspecified circumstances that Victor likely played a part in. At first Victor is unhappy with this turn of events, and planned a way to be rid of this new roommate. However, he admits Eli started to grow on him after turning out to be different than Victor had expected.
Victor was able to see past Eli's charisma and charm to see something that wasn't quite right, to which Victor identified with and developed a fascination towards. The two also shared a hunger to become more which resulted in them becoming EOs. Although their relationship was mostly amicable, Victor frequently lapsed into jealousy over the things and skills Eli had that Victor lacked, a small resentment that would cause him to sometimes feel triumph in Eli's failures. Still, Victor cared for Eli as he felt panic and sadness when he believes that he failed at reviving Eli and thinks of him as a friend despite his occasional resentment.
After Eli's betrayal Victor's opinion of him immediately flips and he turns on him in response. Consequently, the friendship is broken beyond repair as Victor from then on wants nothing but to make Eli suffer. It becomes his single purpose in life to get revenge on Eli throughout his ten years in prison and becomes something of an obsession as nearly everything he does in Vicious is done as a means to accomplish that goal.
Sydney Clarke
| “ | "No one is going to hurt you. Do you know why?" She shook her head, and Victor smiled. "Because I'll hurt them first." | ” |
–Victor Vale, Vicious, 1: Water, Blood, and Thicker Things, XXXIII | ||
Mitch Turner
| “ | The two had been in each other’s company for a long time. They knew when the other wanted to talk, and when they wanted to think. The only problem was that more often than not, Victor wanted to think, and more often than not, Mitch wanted to talk. | ” |
–Vicious, 1: Water, Blood, and Thicker Things, XVI | ||
Powers and Abilities
| “ | The absence of pain led to an absence of fear, and the absence of fear led to a disregard for consequences. | ” |
–-Vicious | ||
Victor is able to freely manipulate preexisting pain by increasing or decreasing the amount of pain a person, including himself, is feeling. Victor is also able to induce pain, however it is more effective for him to amplify a preexisting source of pain. This ability requires no physical contact with the person, they only need to be in his general vicinity. The amount of pain he is able to cause does not seem to have a limit, as when he first developed his abilities, he accidentally sent Angie Knight into cardiac arrest due to the amount of pain he gave her.
Using very small and subtle amounts of pain to those a certain distance around him, he is able to create a subconscious aversion to his presence, causing those affected to avoid going near him or even looking at him. He is also able to use his ability to sense others through the electrical charges in their bodies.
It is possible that he is able to transfer his own pain to others as he apparently did to Angie, which resulted in her death.
Weaknesses:
- Victor is unable to control his ability when he sleeps and often had dreams that cause him to radiate high amounts of pain as he sleeps, affecting all those who are near him.
- Currently, he is unable to permanently remove pain. Upon his death, the pain he alleviated returns to the person.
- After being brought back to life by Sydney, he suffers from episodes where he relives the pain of his first death, which always ends in him dying for several minutes before reviving.
- Although he can maintain the pain, or lack of pain, he sets on a person long distance, he cannot freely manipulate it if he is too far from the target.
Trivia
- V.E. Schwab has described Victor as being an autobiographical character.
- Victor is asexual.
- In an earlier version of the first book, Victor's villain name was "Vicious".
- He is a Capricorn.
- He often smiles before he lies.