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'How about him? Do you see him? Do you know him? Call unto him. Touch him. He is not there. Because he does not exist, Judas.
Touch him.
Go ahead.'
- The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
“The… The rigor mortis never set in. Of all the bod--… I've, uh. Never seen that happen before.”
“It is a simple explanation, really. A phenomenon observed most often in infants and the chronically ill. Lack of muscle results in the apparent absence of stiffness, though it is still present.”
“Oh,” Jayce whispered, staring down at his lap. He was holding something. His fingertips had been pressing into it for so long they’d turned numb. When his wrist twitched, he tilted his head, confused by the lack of sensation he’d felt prior to seeing the reaction occur.
“This, eh, happens too.”
“What?” Jayce’s brow furrowed slightly.
“The dissonance between what you know to be true and what you are experiencing. The dissociation…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Behind him, there was a brief hum. Then, “Do you know how long it has been?”
Jayce didn’t.
“I do. Do you know why I know how long it has been?” He paused, but not long enough for Jayce to answer. “Because you do. You know that it has been fifteen hours and, eh, twenty or so minutes.”
He paused for longer this time, but Jayce still didn’t say anything.
“You are also thirsty.”
“Ha ha.”
“That was not a joke, Jayce.”
“I know, I know, I just…”
The weight on his lap hadn’t let up -- in fact, it seemed to keep getting heavier. Sinking, sinking, sinking until Jayce wondered if it would crush the bones in his legs. He shifted his thumbs and sensation flooded back into them; a swift shattering of the illusion the previous stillness had created.
There was a sound behind him, like an exhalation of breath or the flutter of a curtain settling after everyone had left the room.
“They're coming. But you already knew that.”
“Are you cold?” Jayce wondered, suddenly realizing he might be.
“Cold? No. No, I'm not cold, Jayce… I'm dead.”
Jayce pulled his knees closer together.
“Your hands… they're always so cold , V. I remember the first time you grabbed my arm. I thought a shot of electricity had gone straight through me.”
He tugged on the blanket. It was caught between an arm and one of Jayce’s knees, so he tugged harder.
“I… remember,” Viktor said from somewhere behind him. “It had been snowing. Everything past the front door was a sheet of ice.”
“For a split second, I swear I saw you cracking your head open right in front of me.”
He twisted around, a nostalgic smile mirroring the one that had burst from the back of his heart and right onto his face that morning in winter all those years ago.
“Seven,” Viktor said. He was standing by their workbench. “It was seven years ago.”
“You still used your cane, back then.”
Viktor looked almost guilty, his brow furrowing as he stared down at Jayce.
“Yes…”
Out in the hall, there was the sound of a door slamming. Of someone shouting to someone else.
“Jayce.”
He turned back around. Viktor was still watching him, the crease between his brows deeper. If the thing in Jayce’s lap wasn’t so heavy, he would have gotten up and smoothed it away.
“You… understand what happens next?” It was a reluctant question, like he thought Jayce should know the answer and was trying to subtly remind him. He did that sometimes when it was obvious to him but Jayce hadn’t caught on yet. It was always a kindness; always considerate.
“We should probably find Mel. The Council is going to have to issue a response…”
“ ‘We?’ Jayce, no. You're not--”
“Counselor Talis!”
Jayce swung back around and his vision swam from it but he still pointed an annoyed expression at the enforcer who'd burst through the door.
“Can you not see we're in the middle of something?”
“Counselor Talis, Counselor Medarda has been looking for you ev--” the enforcer stopped, her eyes widening.
“Is he… Marks! Get a medic in here!”
“He's just cold.”
“Marks!”
“Can you stop shouting,” he snapped.
“Counselor Talis, if you could just move aside--”
“Don't come any closer.”
“--so we can examine him.”
“I told you.”
“He's… Okay-- Marks! Okay. Counselor, look at me. Do you know when exactly he died?”
Jayce's lip curled and he twisted around, looking to Viktor for some sort of backup here.
Viktor wasn't there. The desk was empty. His crutch leaned against Jayce's chair.
“Counselor Talis?”
“Maeve, the medic.”
“Thank god you're here--”
“Do we know cause of death?”
“He won't answer any of my questions.”
“Of course he won't. We've all seen enough to not be answering much of anything. Kindly step aside.”
Remembering that they belonged to him, Jayce moved his hands. He slid them down a neck, down to a chest, across soft skin until his fingertips brushed the hard edge of a brace.
It was all so cold.
Frowning, he pulled at the blanket, wrapping it tighter around narrow shoulders.
“We need a gurney,” a voice said. It wasn’t Viktor’s so Jayce ignored it.
He wondered where Viktor had gone.
“Jayce.”
He looked up at the sound of his name. A man was crouching in front of him, medic armband glaring red like an angry eye.
“Here’s what's about to happen--”
“You understand what happens next?”
Jayce nodded.
“We’re gonna move him onto a gurney. Then we’re going to take him to the hospital so we can look him over, okay? But for us to do that, you have to let go of him, son.”
“I… don’t want to leave him.”
“You don’t have to. You can come with us if you feel up to it. Actually, that may not be a bad idea -- someone should look you over, too.”
“Sam. We’ve got it.”
The man glanced over his shoulder, waved two more medics closer.
“Over here. Slowly, now. Jayce?”
Viktor’s head was in his lap. His hair was sticking out at odd ends like it got when he wore his goggles all day. His mouth was slightly open -- Jayce could see the gap in his front teeth. Jayce tilted his head and watched his hands, waiting for them to rise and fall against Viktor’s chest. He waited.
And he waited.
And he-- he waited , and--
“I think, uhm…”
“It’s okay, son.”
There was a sudden hand on his shoulder. He wanted to shrug it off but didn’t want to risk jostling Viktor.
“Like I said, you can come with us if you want. But we have to move him and you can’t carry him the whole way.”
“I did.”
“What?”
“I did carry him. Hey,” he slid his hand back up to cup Viktor’s face, pressing his thumb against the bruised skin between his eye and cheekbone, tugging gently. “Viktor?”
Above him, the medic nodded to one of his colleagues.
“We’re just gonna take him, Counselor Talis,” a woman in front of him said, her voice kind and careful. “It’s okay.”
He was so tired . His shoulders sagged, breath pressing heavy against his ribs now, and when they lifted Viktor from his lap, Jayce felt that weight lifting off of him for the first time in fifteen hours and twenty-or-so minutes and it felt like he was going to dissolve into fragments. It felt like he was going to disappear into untraceable particles right into the air.
There was nothing holding him down.
On their way to the gurney, one of the medics slipped on the blanket. It fell away from Viktor’s shoulders, exposing more of his chest, all the way down to his hip bone. Jayce tried to fight the panic pounding on his sternum. The medic tried to gather the blanket out from under his feet, and in the process, his grip on Viktor loosened. The medic holding Viktor’s lower half grunted under the added weight and then she was grabbing at--
“Hey , be careful with his leg-- be careful, he’s got a bad leg. Th-the right one--”
“Counselor Talis--”
“And watch his back, he’ll be in pain for weeks if--”
“Now hang on, son, hang on.”
“If you--”
A hand tried to push him down, but they were twisting Viktor sideways and Viktor never moved that way Viktor was always so careful and they were hurting him and he needed to go with Viktor because he couldn’t let him wake up in another hospital bed alone and--
“His crutch,” Jayce realized.
“Counselor, please.”
“He'll need his crutch.” Jayce dragged himself to his feet.
And then he collapsed.
The world was a raging blizzard.
Ice cut into his face and burned every inch of him that was exposed. There was a weight against his chest, pressing into his body, and it was cold, too. He tried to grab onto it, but his hands passed right through. Right through the weight. Right through his own skin and bone.
There was nothing, nothing but the weight and the cold and the siren wind screaming in his ears.
Jayce felt his hands first because they grabbed onto the blanket underneath him in a grip that made the beds of his nails ache. When he felt his hands, he realized he could feel his arms, too, and then feeling bled into the rest of him like ice melting.
It took him a moment of wading through a hazy blur to open his eyes.
The room he was in was dark, an abrupt contrast to the blinding snow caught under his eyelids. He blinked it out and tried to focus on the ceiling hidden behind curving shadows. A lamp to his right sent a suffocating yellow glow onto the mix of maroons -- wallpaper, blanket -- and greys -- floor, curtains. He blinked, rolling his head and swallowing the urge to groan.
“Jayce?”
“Viktor?”
It took his body long, sluggish seconds to listen to the commands his brain was firing. When it did and his head tilted sideways, he let his eyes scan along the fibers of the plush bedside chair before looking up at her.
“Mel,” he breathed.
“Jayce.” She looked… wrecked. He’d never seen her like this; makeup faded, eyes red-rimmed, hair falling loose around her shoulders.
The last time he’d seen her, she’d been covered in ash. Now, though her skin and her clothes were clean, he thought he could see remnants of it in her eyes, in the way her brow was pinched.
“Jayce--” she took a breath to say something, then seemed to reconsider. “The doctors say you’ll make a full recovery. They don’t know how, but besides a few bruises, you’re unharmed.”
Jayce could feel the bruises now. He couldn’t before, but lying there on his back, they all rushed in. He did groan this time, dragging an unsteady hand down his face. It trailed the ribbons of an IV and felt suffocating and foreign.
“Are you alright?” he asked her.
She hesitated again -- and that’s when he should have known, really, that something was wrong.
“Yes. I'm fine.”
He nodded. And he nodded. And he bared his open eyes to the dark ceiling. It was like a cavernous mouth.
“Viktor. Is he…”
Mel inhaled half a breath, then leaned forward onto her knees and let her head fall into her hands.
“I’m so sorry, Jayce.”
The world was a raging blizzard, but in it, Jayce had found a bubble. A bubble where the wind ceased and the screaming stopped. So he stood in that bubble and he pressed his thumb to the teardrop gemstone at his wrist. It was warm, even while the rest of him was cold. And he pressed, and he pressed, and he pressed, and in a way, it kept him warm, too.
Half of the council was dead. A memorial ceremony was held for them. Mel led it, and her strength was a topic on the lips of just about everyone.
So was the attack.
A funeral service. Zaun hit them while they were down, then threw a few extra punches for good measure.
Jayce hadn’t been there. Several people had told him, in varying ways, that he needed to be there, that he should be there, that maybe it would help him to be there, but he hadn’t been there.
The lab was quiet this time of day. It hadn’t always been. He sat with his legs propped on his desk, chair swiveling from side to side. It was a motion he’d begun some time ago -- he couldn’t remember when -- and hadn’t stopped.
“Jayce.”
He stilled at the voice, but he didn’t look up. Thumbing the edge of his notebook, he sketched another line. A sigh cut through the silence.
“Six hours and,” a pause, “twelve minutes.”
Jayce turned the notebook sideways to get a better angle.
“This is a poor use of your time.”
He glanced up and Viktor raised his eyebrows expectantly. Jayce inhaled, his own eyes narrowing as he traced the curve of Viktor’s nose in faded charcoal.
“What?” he stuttered slightly, lips titled in that way they did when he was caught off guard by something.
“Nothing, V, just… just looking.”
There were three statues being erected for the fallen councilors. There was no statue for Viktor.
Jayce had drawn him on every page of his old notebook -- the one Heimerdinger had confiscated however many years ago. He couldn't remember. Viktor probably could.
“Is this all you are going to do, then?”
He was frustrated; Jayce could tell. He paced toward his workbench, and the absence of his cane thumping when it hit the floor was like a black hole threatening to suck the whole galaxy into it.
“Viktor…”
“No. No.” He gestured with a firm swipe of his hand. Jayce took a moment to look at him, at the way his legs had blurred around the edges; watercolor caught in the rain. His hair seemed softer. It was short now, too, like the way he used to keep it; used to complain about how often he had to cut it because it grew so fast.
Viktor stared right back at him.
“They are turning our dream into a weapon, Jayce,” he said after a moment. “You have to stop this. This -- this is madness, Jayce, this can't be.”
“You… never said my name this much when you were…”
Viktor heaved a sigh. He leaned back against his desk looking weary.
“What are you going to do about this?”
Jayce turned back to his notebook and began sketching Viktor’s brace and the shoes he used to wear.
The world was a raging blizzard and Piltover was caught in it. Zaun was a formidable foe, and Ambessa and Caitlyn were meeting it head-on. There was no longer any question of if they were at war; now it was when . When would Zaun attack again. When would Piltover strike. When would Jinx be brought to justice…
Things had already started their steady roll forward.
The world was a raging blizzard and Jayce was standing at the top of it looking down.
In a way, he’d always imagined the end looking just like this; a rooftop, a dark city, a feeling of surrender diluting through his stomach, out into his muscle and wet tissue until it entered his veins.
Jayce remembered exactly where Viktor had been standing. He remembered the way half of his foot had already been poised over open air. He remembered the way he’d led with his shoulders like there was a weight on them that was too much to bear anymore.
Jayce stood exactly where Viktor had. He imagined imprints of his feet where Jayce’s were now. He imagined looking out at the same things he would have -- the sky, the trickle of water so far below, the butterfly that flitted softly, landing silently a few feet away from him. He watched it and he imagined standing inside Viktor’s ghost.
“It was always going to end here, wasn’t it?” he said to the empty air, to the shell he had put himself in, boundaries made of whispers from the past, soft shuffles of fabric, and the thump of a cane as it hovered above an abyss, waiting for the moment it would be released, wondering which way it would fall.
It was always going to end here.
Half of his foot was already poised over open air and Jayce led with his shoulders, feeling, understanding that there was a weight on them that he couldn’t bear anymore.
And he wondered if, after it was done, he would be alone. He wondered if there would be anyone on the other side to offer their hand, or if he would have to get up in solitude.
He wondered if he even wanted there to be something at the end of it.
He raised his eyebrows once before letting his expression fall passive again, and there was an absence of the fear that had caused him to hesitate the first time. Closing his eyes, he stepped forward and--
“Am I interrupting?”
Jayce whipped around, tripping over his legs, reaching out to grab the edge of the archway to catch himself. The butterfly took off, tilting sideways, hanging suspended in time for a fractioned second before disappearing into the sky.
He straightened up, breath catching in his throat.
“… I thought you were…”
Viktor raised an eyebrow as he stepped forward. He was leaning on his crutch this time. Jayce glanced down at Viktor’s shoes.
“What? Someone real?”
“Don’t say that,” he pleaded.
Viktor pursed his lips in a frown, glancing everywhere but Jayce; something he did when he was thinking.
“You know--” he stopped next to Jayce and stared out into the horizon “--though the field of psychological science is outside the scope of anything we ever did here, you should still be able to at least somewhat ratiocinate how this works.” He glanced over at Jayce, golden eyes the same as they’d always been. “I am not going to say anything you’re not already thinking.”
They were so vivid, those eyes. When pieces of him faded from view, his eyes were infinite.
Jayce’s brow furrowed slightly -- a pinch across his expression the likes of which was weary and distant.
“So nothing matters, then,” he said, if only for the sake of speaking words and with no regard for actually feeling them.
“Mm,” Viktor hummed. “That depends.”
The sky had started to bleed, sun sinking into darkness, sagging against the final moments of day with a weariness Jayce felt inside him, too. Together they watched it, and below them, shadow was pulled like a heavy curtain across the ground. The reality that it was actually there began to falter with each darkened shade the night brought.
Every aspect of reality had faltered. Like maybe if he fell, he'd just keep on falling.
“Why am I here, Jayce?”
The question hurt -- but then, Viktor had never shied away from things that hurt. Jayce closed his eyes; a wince, the muscles in his face twitching, wanting to twist into something grotesque and tortured.
“Because… you've always been here? Because I don't know what to do if you're not. Because I can't imagine a world where you're not in it. Be-Because it's only been three days and I miss you more than-- m-more than--”
He repressed the choke working its way up his throat and tripped on a shudder instead. Head dropping into his hands, he turned away and hunched his shoulders, hoping that would be enough to hold all the pieces of him together.
Viktor was silent. Jayce tried to breathe without thinking about the way Viktor's chest had felt still against his palm.
He couldn't.
“It's been five days.”
Haltingly, he turned back around.
“What?”
Viktor was looking at him with sad eyes.
“It's been five days, Jayce.”
He stared at Viktor, wide-eyed and scared , like in the seconds before their presentation at the Innovators Competition, and Viktor had been nervous too but he'd given Jayce that smile like there was no possible way to feel about what they'd done other than proud and Jayce had thought, “Everything's going to be fine. Even if a cog takes someone's eye out, everything's going to be fine because he's here,” because not being alone had meant more to Jayce than their placement or the future of Hextech or what anybody else thought of him.
Now, Viktor was like a figment and his smile didn't quite reach his eyes.
“I'm going to resign from the council,” Jayce said as they both looked out at the dying sky.
He couldn't find the moon. It was probably behind them, hidden by walls and buildings. Creeping up behind the Hexgates, maybe.
“Do you… think that is a good idea?”
No , Jayce thought. I don't care , he thought. “My place was always with you,” he said. “I didn't realize it until recently, my vision was so clouded by… everything. I never even wanted it,” he laughed, short and bitter. Viktor was watching him.
“I just wanted to change the world. Not as a Councilor, but with the things I created. With magic and progress.” His short burst of enthusiasm died like the sun at dusk. “You're the only one who ever understood that.”
He ran a hand back through his hair, shoulders deflating.
“Only you.”
He looked up again -- always looking to Viktor, always trying to find him in a room, always seeking him out among a crowd of sponsors, always finding the shape of him in the darkness of the lab when there was nothing but machinery and shadows and Viktor, always Viktor.
He would always look for Viktor.
And right then, Viktor was looking back at him, golden eyes openly unashamed. Jayce could smell the scent of his clothes, could imagine what the hollow of his cheek would feel like. He could see him, every part of him, every moment that had ever existed between them.
And he thought, It was always meant to be like this. And he thought, I always imagined it would end like this. And he said, “It was always you, Viktor. Always.”
Silence wrapped around them, oppressive, world-shifting, woven into the fibers of their atoms and their past.
“What do you want to hear, Jayce?” Viktor whispered.
“Nothing,” he exhaled, a plea. “I just want my partner back.”
And Jayce couldn’t stop himself, just like there had never been a chance of stopping himself from stepping off the rooftop of his destroyed apartment; Viktor had been the necessary variable, the thing to save him then, and he was the thing to destroy him now.
Jayce reached for him, the only thing in the world that could stop him from falling.
He reached for him, to cling to his shoulders, to pull them together so they might stop this orbit of two planets drawn into the gravity of each other but destined to never meet. He reached, and he reached, and he longed to hold.
And his hands passed through Viktor’s body.
Figments.
The choke caught up to him, forced its way out of him, sent him turning away from Viktor because he couldn’t bear the reality that had been wrapping itself around his throat, coil by coil since the day Viktor’s heart had stopped beating.
“Do you understand, now?” A broken sentence. Viktor sounded tired. Jayce hadn’t realized how exhausted he’d sounded until that question.
Jayce closed his eyes, squeezed them tight enough that there was a chance when he opened them again, he would wake up in the lab to Viktor’s hand resting softly on his back -- always slightly hesitant when he touched him; always with the same delicacy Jayce had seen him use to disarm a faulty piece of equipment or a bomb.
Maybe if he closed his eyes hard enough and swayed forward, his cheek would hit his desk and a voice would reach his ear, telling him to “Come on, Jayce, we’re wasting time.”
Time. Time, time, time, five days, a hundred and twenty hours, seven-thousand two-hundred minutes, four-hundred and thirty-two thousand seconds, four-hundred and thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, and all of them empty because the one person he needed wasn’t here.
When he spoke, his voice was rough and tired. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was until he spoke.
“I always thought we’d go out together.”
Viktor hesitated; caught the broken pieces of Jayce’s voice, searched his face with his brow twitching slightly, the smallest tell that he was upset.
“A part of you must have understood that was never going to be true…”
“No,” Jayce shook his head, had to stop himself from trying to reach out and touch him again because he knew his heart would shatter when his hand found nothing but cold air. “Every part of me was with every part of you.”
Viktor took half a breath and shifted his weight, crutch creaking softly.
“Jayce--”
“Can you,” he swallowed and it felt like metal on the way down. “Can you stay with me, please? Just for a little longer.”
He could tell there was more Viktor wanted to say. Jayce sat down on the stoop of the archway again and put his hands. And that weight went on crushing him and crushing him and calling him toward the ground below.
“Okay.” Viktor’s legs appeared next to him, close enough to touch, so close, and yet, further than they’d ever been.
Jayce exhaled all the air in his lungs and hoped the crushing pain might go with it.
It didn’t.
“Okay,” he said anyway, and he stared at the seams in Viktor’s pants, counted the screws in his brace, and studied the curve of the shoes he used to wear.
Piltover and Zaun were at war; there was no denying it anymore. Barricades had been erected on the bridge -- “You authorized this?” -- and Jayce had nothing to do with them. Mel assured him she would prevent Hextech from being used as a weapon. Caitlyn was searching for Jinx in the undercity. Jayce was searching the halls of the Academy for a voice that had grown distant.
People looked at him with pity now; like looking through a window at the dog out in the cold.
He tried to return to the forge, but there was nothing inside of him for his hands to wring out. It had been years since he’d created anything that wasn’t Hextech, and the absence of blueprints drawn in a messy but intricate and familiar hand left an egregious black hole in the forge, in the lab, in the Academy, in the world. In Jayce, right between his ribs.
He still looked for Viktor.
When he turned a corner in the hall. When, in the early hours of the morning, he entered the lab that now always remained unlocked. When he woke up breathless in the middle of the night, lines from Viktor’s desk etched into his skin like riverbeds. He expected to see Viktor making his way down the hall, a book under his arm. He expected to see Viktor leaning over his work, eyes focused and energy pulsing into the room. He expected to find Viktor across from him, still writing notes or drawing blueprints.
There was a gaping, crushing, searing silence in all the places Viktor had been.
Some essential cog had been ripped out of the machine of Jayce, and every part of him was metal screeching as it tried to function under circumstances it hadn't been built to endure. He felt the click, click, click of that machine turning and turning and turning and accomplishing nothing.
The absence of Viktor was something Jayce hadn't been built to endure.
Viktor's desk was a tomb of life; objects left with the intention of returning to them the next day, chair still pushed back from the desk like he'd just gotten up to go into the next room, and an equation, half-finished, with a note in the corner.
‘Ask Jayce for assistance.’
Jayce ran his finger along the words, studied the curve of them, where they slanted, and imagined the way Viktor had propped his arm exactly where Jayce’s was now to write it out. He wondered when the desk had last grown warm under his touch.
Next to the notebook was a pen, sitting at an angle that suggested it had been lightly dropped out of the way. Jayce picked it up and pressed it into his palm.
He wanted to reach outside his body, crawl right out of the shell it had become, and float away. Maybe find where Viktor had gone. Maybe get back to him.
“Where did you go?” was the first thing he'd ask if he could still speak, wherever they ended up. “I've been looking for you.”
And if they couldn't speak -- if they had no mouths -- he would lay his hand on Viktor’s shoulder and let their skin sigh in relief.
And if they couldn't touch -- if they had no bodies, if they were nothing but their minds, their essence, a whisper or a memory -- he would meet the whisper of Viktor with his own, and he would melt into the essence of him until they were one.
And if he couldn't find Viktor…
It was an impossibility, proven by science and written in runes. Undeniable. Unescapable.
Without Viktor, his existence would cease to be. Time would fall in on itself, tripping back to the beginning where Jayce would meet his end. Without Viktor…
Without Viktor, Jayce sat in the lab; the same spot he’d once spent hours checking for Viktor’s pulse, panicking when it weakened, feeling the light of a thousand suns when it picked up, grew strong and steady. In those hours, Jayce memorized every tempo Viktor’s heart had ever taken and knew the depths of terror in every silence between.
Now, the silence pressed in on all sides. Jayce kept his head between his arms like they could ever protect him from something like that -- something that could move through matter like a ghost. He felt haunted.
Between his legs sat Viktor’s crutch. It was leaning on his thigh, and Jayce had run his hands over every inch of it. He could still remember the late nights they’d spent sketching its design, testing out different variations of it. Viktor always had something to say, something to correct or add, usually in a short, clipped way that Jayce began to understand was a potent mix of frustration and fear. Frustration at his body betraying him. Fear at his body deteriorating. Frustration at Jayce, maybe for being healthy, maybe for being kind; Jayce had never quite figured it out, but it didn’t matter. And the fear -- Jayce had seen shades of it every time Viktor went silent, every time he struggled to find words. Fear that, what? Jayce would leave him? That Jayce would stop helping him? That Jayce could ever not love him?
Love him…
Jayce loved him.
And now he was gone.
Fingers curled around the crutch, held it to his chest, pressed it into his neck. He turned his nose into the section that had once brushed Viktor’s ribs, and there he searched for the memory of Vikltor’s breathing, his body, his warmth. There, in the loom of that thing the Hexcore had created to hold Viktor’s body, Jayce tried to remember the song of Viktor’s pulse.
“I need you to come back,” he whispered. The crutch slid down a few inches. Jayce pressed the handle to his temple.
There were footsteps in the hall. They echoed, unfamiliar and cold, but for a moment he imagined Sky opening the door and greeting them, handing Jayce some notes, asking Viktor if he’d slept last night.
Jayce hadn’t slept in three days. He’d started a tally on the wall after staring at the notes on their chalkboard for hours, looking at every detail, so delicate and temporary. A few lines from Jayce, a few from Viktor; intermingled, sewn together. Jayce wrote his ‘y’s with a loop, Viktor wrote his threes with a flat line at the top. Every equation Jayce had written ended lower than where it started, Viktor’s characters slanted to the right and were almost all connected with loops or dashes.
Their chalkboard had never been blank. Not since they'd written their first notes on it a few days after cracking Hextech. Now, when there was no one left to fill it with anything new, Jayce couldn’t bear the thought of losing the work they’d never finish.
So he scratched his marks onto the wall instead.
Three days since he’d slept.
He couldn’t shake the feeling of being cold. One of the medics had returned the blanket to him -- looked him in the eye when handing it over, her expression tragic. All Jayce could think about was the fact that it wasn’t with Viktor anymore. That he hadn’t gone with Viktor. They’d taken him somewhere and done things with him and Jayce didn’t know what, and a part of him was convinced if he hadn’t lost consciousness, if he hadn’t let them take Viktor from him, everything would have turned out alright.
He’d taken the blanket from a medic he never spoke a word to, and it had seemed so wrong, not wrapped around Viktor’s body. What was Viktor wearing? What if he was still cold?
Jayce’s own temperature, the blanket could do nothing for. Even covering his shoulders, tugged close under his chin, something was missing from it. It would never get its warmth back.
The footsteps in the hall faded and Sky never appeared. The lights in the lab remained off and the papers on their desks remained exactly where they were, frozen in ice, a picture of times that had passed -- that had been ripped suddenly from life. Every universe, every reality had bled out in that room; Jayce could see nothing ahead of him, and the past behind him was getting blurrier. He clung to it with frozen fingers and a primal desperation.
When the door opened, Jayce thought he imagined it. All the images, memories getting stuck between the synapses in his brain but firing anyway, they always slipped through his hands. It wasn’t until the footsteps grew close enough to lose their echo that Jayce looked up from his shoes.
Mel took his face in her hands without saying a word. Jayce leaned into them. It evoked a strange feeling; he hadn’t bothered to shave since before the world had crumbled.
“Oh, Jayce.”
He sighed and tucked his nose into her palm. No part of him felt strong enough to hold himself up, but when she tapped her thumb against his cheek, he dragged his eyes open and it was like slogging through a blizzard.
“I would ask you how you’re doing, I’d ask if I can help, but I don’t think you’d have any answers for me… would you?”
Flinching, he slowly shook his head. Her thumbs brushed along his skin.
“Still, you deserve to know what’s happening. They’re planning to use Hextech in the coming war.”
Jayce felt the frozen air crack.
“Caitlyn pushed for it,” Mel reluctantly added. “My mother has planted her hooks effectively. This is exactly what she wanted--” A pause. “I think you should speak to the Council. To Caitlyn.”
“...I don’t know if I can,” he whispered.
Mel pulled her hands away.
“You can,” she said. “You owe it to him.”
Viktor’s desk was being used again.
Frozen papers had been shifted, pens and tools pushed to the side. Viktor’s notebook remained open, and every so often, Jayce glanced at it.
His own notebook, though it had few pages left, he'd flipped to a new one. Between long glances at the empty air, he was writing on it. Jayce didn’t know how long it had been, just that the process so far had been painstakingly laborious. He might actually get some sleep, once everything was done.
“Forty-two minutes,” a voice hummed from behind the chalkboard. “That is practically nothing. If I recall, your speech for the Investor's Banquet took us two hours.”
Jayce watched his cane appear first, and then the rest of him appeared. He stood before the chalkboard, hip jutted comfortably to look up at their notes. His eyes flickered over the equations with familiarity and hunger.
“Yeah, well, that was partly because we kept getting distracted by the gauntlets,” Jayce replied. For a moment, something in his chest shifted back where it belonged.
“What were they thinking, asking two inventors on the brink of a breakthrough to write a speech?”
He smiled faintly at the memory.
“What was Mel thinking, asking me to address the Council?”
“She did not ask you to write a speech.”
“I know.” He leaned onto his propped-up fist. “I just… I want to do this right, and I can’t organize my thoughts unless I write them down.”
Viktor turned around, his eyes gentle and that fond smile on his face -- the one Jayce only ever caught when they were alone.
“I know,” he murmured, shifting his weight onto his right hip for a moment. He must have been feeling good. Jayce’s smile deepened. He watched Viktor for a little longer, hesitant to look away. He didn’t get to look at him enough these days.
Characteristically, Viktor gave him a slightly befuddled look, like he couldn’t understand why Jayce was watching him and was trying to seem annoyed by it, but he couldn’t manage to when his eyes were so soft.
Jayce had opened his mouth to say something when Viktor raised a hand.
“What is this?” he tapped on his jaw. Jayce reached up to rub his own face.
“You don't like it?” He self-consciously moved his hand to the back of his neck. His hair had gotten long, too.
“Mm.” Viktor turned away, noticing the chalk marks on the wall.
“‘Mm'? What does that mean?”
“You make assumptions, Jayce. It means nothing.”
Jayce’s smile faltered. He glanced down at his notebook, at the paragraph he’d managed to write beneath the one he’d scribbled out, and tilted the pen between his fingers.
“I remember… back when they finished building the Hexgates, we had that meeting with the head of construction. We’d spent the night in the lab, but we both knew we had to go make sure they’d done everything right.” He chuckled weakly. “What did you say… ‘They don’t understand it like we do.’”
He looked up at Viktor. Their eyes met.
“You were putting on your tie and trying to fix your hair at the same time, and I was shaving, and that mirror is so small…”
It was still there, in the middle of the lab surrounded by papers held up by tacks.
“You bumped me with your elbow, and I nicked myself.” Suddenly he was studying the floor. “The way you looked at me… I thought…”
“...What?”
“I thought maybe there was a chance you felt the same way. About me.”
Viktor was silent. Jayce wanted to look at him, wanted to search his face for something distinctly Viktor that would tell him what he was feeling -- a smile or a blush or furrowed brow. Every small expression written in poetry across his body, Jayce wanted to feel beneath his fingertips, to study until he could recite it by memory, to know it so innately that words were empty compared to what was said in the silences.
“But… you can’t tell me,” he rasped, and he didn’t look up because he knew he would find nothing, and the nothing would destroy him.
“No,” Viktor replied, almost sadly. “I can’t.”
Jayce would never know. He should have asked him when Viktor was wiping the blood off his cheek. He should have asked him when he let Jayce’s touch linger on his back, or when he laughed at one of Jayce's jokes, or when Jayce woke up at his desk with a blanket over his shoulders that hadn’t been there when he’d fallen asleep.
He should have asked him a thousand times and told him how he felt a thousand times more.
“You did, in your own way,” Viktor said, but suddenly Jayce couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just because he wanted to hear it.
And he would never know. It was too late. He’d done everything too late -- he’d found him, loved him, lost him too late. And he would never know all the possibilities their lives could have taken together, all the things left unuttered, everything that had grown in the solitude of their hearts only to die there in the end.
When his face fell into his hands, the skin was already wet. Notebook caged between his arms, its paper caught the tears that fell; diluting ink, sending particles bleeding out into the fibers. Washing everything away.
His shoulders shook, sought to collapse under the weight of loss and grief and the certainty that, in another lifetime, things could have been different.
If he had been braver, things could have been different in this lifetime.
It tore him apart.
But then, out of the vacuum of emptiness, a hand. It landed softly on his shoulder; the brush of butterfly wings.
And the weight of it collapsed him, right down into the rawest form of his existence. He fell into himself, and even there, inside that planetary nebula, Viktor was with him.
Jayce spun around and lunged for him; a gesture as instinctual as reaching for the edge of a cliff as you begin to fall.
He reached, and there was no one there.
The floor caught the pieces of him left freshly severed.
“I think it’s time you start examining why I’m here.”
He stilled. Viktor had rarely ever visited him in the forge. When he wanted to oversee how a prototype was coming along. At midnight when neither of them could sleep, seeking him out to bounce ideas off of him. When he’d just made the walk from his apartment to the Academy and the cold had made his leg ache.
But it had been a long time, and so Viktor was illuminated by the light from their lab while everything else was cast in orange shadow. The fire could not touch him, nor could the darkness. Jayce’s eyes trailed over the hollow curve of his cheek.
“You can wait in the lab if you want.” He rolled his shoulders and lifted the hammer again. His arms had gone numb and he couldn’t remember what he was making. What he was trying to do.
“Jayce.”
There was so much pain in his voice. The hammer slipped from his grip, clattering onto the floor. Viktor had said his name so many ways -- uttered in annoyance, whispered in fondness, hissed when they’d argued, and formed around a smile so big it reshaped the very essence of the word, and Jayce had thought, “My name was created to be said by you. My name was given to me for your lips.” But this… this pain had never existed before.
Jayce wondered if, had he been able to speak at the end, Viktor would have said his name that way while he’d pulled him from the rubble. Jayce wondered if he would have said it like a cry while he’d tried desperately to save him.
He was still trying to save him. He realized it as the hammer settled on the floor and the fire roared.
“How could you leave me?” he rasped, whipping around, arm raised like he was trying to push away everything that had come between them.
Viktor’s face was almost passive, but Jayce saw the minute way his brow knit together, saw the pull at the corner of his mouth; would always see the poetry he hid in small expressions he expected no one else to notice.
“How? How could--” Could he ever leave him? Could he expect him to live in a world withering from the lack of his existence?
Jayce swallowed it -- all that withering emptiness -- and a groan was the only way he could get a breath out.
Viktor moved closer, thumb rubbing absentmindedly over the handle of his cane. He stood tall, tall enough that his head peeked above Jayce’s shoulder when he stopped next to him. He stared into the fire and Jayce stared into the darkness at the other end of the forge.
“There were so many things I wanted to do,” Viktor murmured. “I had so many ambitions, so many dreams… as did you, once,” he turned to look at Jayce. Jayce wanted to take Viktor’s face in his hands and hold him until everything else went away.
He didn’t.
“But, I think that yours cannot exist without mine. As long as your dreams are still beating, so will mine. They are two sides of the same coin. Inextricably bound. Unable to be separated.”
“But… you’re not here.”
Viktor shifted and for a moment, Jayce wondered if he would reach up and touch him.
He didn’t.
The weight of something final was pulling them apart.
“The coin has landed on your side, Jayce. Yet, if you turn it over, there is mine.”
“I can’t do this without you.”
“You’re not. Not really. What parts of you can you even separate from me?” He waited like he’d asked him the answer to an equation.
Jayce’s shoulders fell as he sagged forward.
“None of them.”
Viktor turned, eyes brightening and mouth curving into the picture of him when he’d been proud. It was something Jayce had clung to even when he’d been able to touch him.
“Turn the coin, Jayce. You must do something about all of this.”
“The council won’t listen. I tried. I tried, Viktor, but it’s not up to me anymore.”
Viktor stared back at him steadily.
“If you’re going to change the world--” Jayce’s chin fell to his chest -- “Don’t ask for permission.”
He sensed a shift in the air, the fabric of reality slipping over itself and wrapping around his shoulders. It felt like an embrace.
“Don’t ask for permission, Jayce.”
The hammer rested on the floor, waiting, waiting like the breath before a spark or a ripple.
He lifted his head.
The world was a raging blizzard and the sun had set on them all.
Zaun was in an upheaval -- rioting in the streets, a surge in violence, and widespread preparations for an attack on Piltover.
Jinx was dead.
Caitlyn pulled her out of a charred building in the undercity. Half of her body was missing. Pieces of a bomb were discovered nearby.
She was a martyr for her people. Closure slipped through Caitnlyn’s fingers like water.
For the first time since the attack, the lab doors were locked. Jayce was the only one left with a key -- Heimerdinger was gone, Sky was gone, Viktor was…
He put it in his breast pocket where it heated while he worked in the forge. He wondered if it would burn through his clothes and sear his skin, an imprint left behind, an identifying marker so everyone would know who he was.
In the lab, the tallies on the wall stopped at seven. It would be a while, he assumed, before anyone found them, and then it would probably be even longer until they took note of something so unimportant.
Before he locked the doors, Jayce stood in front of their chalkboard. He held Viktor’s crutch at his side, pressed his palm into it, and searched the fabrics of the universe for a ghost. And then he erased their work. He erased his crooked lines and Viktor’s slanted words, the last things to ever be written by his hand. He brushed their dreams into the air where they would never hurt anyone again -- where they would not be permitted to end another life. Where they would never be given their own life, either; their hearts beating only in the minds of two scientists who wanted to make the world a better place.
Their dust settled on the floor of the lab. Jayce laid his hand on the book sitting open on Viktor’s desk.
‘Ask Jayce for assistance.’
They would break through the doors, eventually. They would break through, but they would find nothing. Books filled with notes no one else would be able to understand, one filled with drawings of a man the world would soon forget.
If they forgot Viktor, Jayce hoped they forgot him, too.
They would break through the doors eventually, but for now, they stood tall and loyal and silent against the rest of Piltover.
From the lab to the forge, through the halls of the Academy, so quiet and somber. Things were different in war. The sight of someone passing you held more weight, a mutual awareness that at any moment, everything could change. But there was nothing left strong enough to hurt Jayce, and nothing could happen that would send his life crumbling any more than it already had.
He was a man of rubble. He was drowned but breathing.
Nobody tried to stop him. It was as if he wasn’t even there at all, like he’d slipped into a parallel plane of existence where everything was gray and all that remained were whispers of him hidden between a hazy film. Eyes passed right through him, enforcers in the hall paid him no mind, and there was no weight, no mutual awareness.
In the forge, he left a letter, sealed with his family’s crest and pinned carefully under one of his tools. He pressed his fingertips to it like he might will some of his warmth to remain there for as long as it was needed -- like some part of him might seep into the heat of the fire and never extinguish.
But in the end, he left it behind.
The ride to the depths of Piltover was stagnant. Its silence was suffocating, felt final; the beat of stillness before an action, the beat of a heart before death.
One hand gripped the Mercury hammer where its handle leaned against his hip. The other held Viktor’s crutch, fingers curled tightly around it, and he imagined Viktor's hand, Viktor's warmth, the sound of his voice, the curve of his nose, his lips, his smile.
As much as Jayce suffered the loss of him, Viktor still seemed so alive. He could sense him all around, as if he could hear the soft tones of his voice from the next room, or the sound of his cane as he made his way down the hall.
Viktor in transition; not quite here, but in the process of coming or going.
“What parts of you can you separate from me?”
The elevator groaned to a halt. His breath curled into the air, tendrils reaching out in a desperate last attempt to find something to hold onto. He could feel the weight of the city bearing down on him, glanced up at the curved ceiling like maybe he would still see it -- the streets he’d walked as a child, the building he’d found his purpose in, the rooms he’d filled with fervor, fighting for his dream until it had become so much bigger than himself that it couldn’t be called his anymore.
The dream that lit up the skies of Piltover. The dream that had been twisted down and shoved into guns, cannons, explosives. The dream that had given him life, now destined to kill.
“There is always a choice.”
Nothing but pipes hidden in shadow surrounded him; a tomb, the sound of a final vote echoing through a room,
Viktor’s crutch had warmed under his touch, but the Mercury hammer required two hands, and even then it shook as Jayce lifted it to the door. Blue sparks filled the darkness and machinery groaned and shifted as the door folded away, revealing blaring white light that forced his face into a wince.
Viktor’s crutch was cold again when he picked it back up. Jayce adjusted it in his grip, and with the flash of a memory, he was in the lab passing it to Viktor.
He turned and found only empty space.
Stepping into the core of the Hexgates was like stepping into that blizzard where his mother had collapsed at his feet and he was calling for someone, anyone to help them. The smoke from his breath was thicker here and he swore he could hear his own pleas on the uninterrupted air as he cut through it, stirred it to life.
The Hexcore seemed to pulse at his presence. Jayce stilled, eyes widening as he watched it shift and breathe, wondering how long it had been doing this without anyone knowing. Wondering when everything had changed. Iridescent webbing stretched across the floor, rippling only when his eyes didn’t focus on it. He reached up and rubbed them, jerking his head, focusing himself back on what he’d come here to do.
He dropped the Mercury hammer by the door. It hit with a hollow clang that rang through the room. It was glass shattering; there was no way of putting it back together, no way of undoing what had been done. Jayce watched until the handle toppled to the ground, watched it settle and still -- useless without anyone to lift it, and something inside of him settled, too.
There was relief in finality.
Jayce stepped around the webbing covering the floor, and even now he couldn't stop his mind from filling with theories of what it might be, what had caused it, what it could do. But he stepped around it, listening to the familiar ring of Viktor's crutch hitting the floor with every step, letting it guide him, give him courage.
He reached under the blanket wrapped around his shoulders.
Each wad of machinery fit into a slot, sliding in perfectly because they'd saved the blueprints for the Hexgates long enough for Jayce to pull them out and reference them and then feed them to the forge's fire. Another finality. Another relief, though this one diluted with tears. He had still been afraid, then.
A small part of him was afraid now.
Yet, everything fit together like destiny.
Even standing on top of the Hexgates felt predestined -- a cycle of over and over and over agains leading him to the top of Piltover. He stood at the precipice of everything they’d created and, for perhaps the first time in his life, understood exactly and without doubt what he had to do. It was as if he’d already done it a thousand different times.
Still, he stood for a moment. He granted himself that. And Jayce knew he was there before he even said anything; knew his presence even when it was only figments of what it had once been -- knew the pieces of Viktor even after they had been broken and scattered on the wind. Knew him.
Jayce turned and found him watching the city; solemn, as he had often been. Often, but not always.
“You must let me go, Jayce.”
He watched the curve of Viktor’s lips speak his name, noticed the way the rest of his face dissolved into something muddy and gray when Jayce wasn’t looking at it. So he made himself remember that face he’d drawn so many times, sketched in pencil with well-practiced hands, until Viktor seemed real. Until he could smell his clothes, his hair. Until he could remember what it felt like when Viktor had been near, the way the atoms shifted and the whole world curled around him, making room.
“No,” Jayce replied, another finality. “I can’t do that.”
Viktor looked at him, eyes of charcoal and gold.
“It’s too late, anyway,” he continued.
“…What are you going to do?”
“Heh. I know the field of psychological science is outside our scope, but shouldn’t you know by now, how this works?” A necessary pause. “I'm not going to do anything you don't already know.”
Viktor looked down -- down at the shoes he used to always wear, down at the streets of Piltover below them like veins in a body. They all seemed to lead to the beating heart.
“Then… perhaps you were right. Perhaps it was always going to end like this.”
The sun breached the eastern horizon.
“I wish you were here,” Jayce said. “Like, really here. Even if it would be impossible for this to happen if you were.”
He could see Viktor thinking, the way his eyes shifted and his lips bunched up, and he waited -- would have waited a thousand eternities to hear his voice.
“I am here,” he tilted his head. “Wherever you are, there I am, also.”
“...Inextricably bound,” Jayce realized.
A necessary silence.
“So, you are really going to do this.” It wasn't a question. Not really.
“I feel like I've disappointed you.”
Viktor frowned. “How so?”
“I couldn't save you. Couldn't save our dream. I failed.” His face twisted. “I’m sorry.”
He needed to be forgiven -- longed for it like he'd once longed for magic. He needed to be forgiven, but when he looked for it, the space beside him was empty; clear and cool in the morning sun.
Jayce held on tighter to Viktor’s crutch and waited for him to come back. When it took several breaths and the sun moving a few more inches in the sky, Jayce knew it was time.
“Thank you for being here. I know it's not really you, but… thanks.” He sniffed.
Viktor swam into his vision, and when Jayce turned, he found him there as if he’d never left.
He looked the same as the night he'd saved Jayce from dying and told him his name.
“Viktor,” Jayce said like a prayer, knowing it was the last time his lips would ever form the word.
“Jayce,” he replied, a whisper on the air.
Jayce pulled the crutch closer, held it tighter.
He knew what was coming, realized that somehow he'd known it back when he stood on the edge of his destroyed apartment and surrendered himself to death. And yet, so much life had happened between then and now. And yet, Jayce had experienced what it was to be alive before committing himself to the inevitable.
He knew what was coming, but he still had to ask.
“Will I see you again, after this?”
He very much wanted to see him again. Even if it was only in memories. Even if it was like this -- not real, never true.
“...You… don't want the answer you know I would give, so… what do you want?”
Jayce closed his eyes. He breathed in the cool air, let it fill his lungs like he was taking in the whole sky.
“Just tell me everything's going to be okay. Even if it's not.”
It was silent for a long time.
“Everything is okay, Jayce.”
The soft call of birdsong and a city waking up. The swell of sunlight and the hum of magic and its beating heart, same as it had been when they defied all odds and cranked reality into motion. Same as it had been when, for the first time, they were held inside its glow, two young scientists and a dream to make the world a better place.
“Maybe in another life, we could have done things right.” Jayce breathed, and he breathed, and he opened his eyes knowing he wanted to look at him when he said it.
“But, in all timelines… in all possibilities … I am proud to have been your partner. That I know for certain.”
Jayce watched the smile form on his lips like it was the very first time.
Viktor lifted his hand, stretched it across the distance between them and placed it on his crutch, and for a moment, the whole sky opened up and every timeline, every possibility stood side-by-side and watched as Jayce pressed the handle to his forehead.
"We finish this together, then," Viktor said, watching him with an infinite steadfastness, and Jayce knew in his chest that Viktor hadn't gone anywhere. Not really.
Wherever Jayce was, there Viktor was, also.
Jayce reached beneath the blanket, once wrapped around Viktor’s body, now wrapped around his, and pulled out a small panel. It only had one switch.
His hand was shaking.
Shattering the distance between them, now so small and thin, Viktor took his hand.
Jayce looked up, eyes wide but his heart singing, and the world around him washing away into aurora borealis colors and the feeling of Viktor surrounding him, and that void he'd left in his absence was filled and filled and filled until there was only Viktor.
Only him.
Them , because one couldn’t exist without the other.
It was while looking into his eyes that Jayce flipped the switch, and the final pieces of Hextech -- the only pieces made without Viktor -- began to tick. Down in the belly of the Hexgates, mechanics shifted in a final, unstoppable dance.
He wouldn't feel the heat from the first explosion for four more seconds. Four seconds that held everything Jayce had ever known, every moment he’d spent fighting for his dream, every ounce of joy and pain and love. It seemed impossible that all of it could be condensed into four seconds, but it fit inside that space like it had always known it was going to. Like it had been made for it.
Four seconds.
And Viktor held his hand.