Chapter Text
News of the incoming storm has been drifting down from the department of Meteorology for several weeks now. Several years in fact, according to Viktor who treats the department with the kind of professional scientific contempt usually reserved for card readers and soothsayers. When Jayce challenges him lightly on this, more in the spirit of sympathy for the oft-ridiculed than any real desire to take the side of another department, the look Viktor gives him is absolutely scathing.
Meteorology, Viktor tells him, is a perfectly comprehensible science containing fully quantifiable phenomena, which, although affected by variables both complex and multitudinous, are entirely within the competent scientist's ability to predict. It is not the soundness of the science that Viktor is questioning, but the competence of that particular department who have repeatedly shown themselves to be both overzealous in their calculations and woefully incapable of restraining their grandiose wishful thinking.
Jayce takes this to mean that their optimism annoys Viktor, and then reassesses his opinion when he remembers how often the department has promised uncontested sun only for whatever festival for which they were auguring to be rained on to the point of drowning. Still, there has to be something to their predictions if the number of complicated and expensive-looking devices clustered on the Pathiks Tower is anything to go by.
It will be an entire week of constant snowfall, so the current predictions say, with coverage of up to three metres, drifting up to eight where the winds blow it against the buildings and so forth. Something to do with rare and unusual weather patterns over the mountains from the north hitting banks of warm air coming up from Kumungu Jayce hears, or maybe it was the other way round, he isn't sure. Either way, it leaves him chewing his lower lip as he waits in line at the canteen, staring off into the distance and wondering if the way his pulse is racing and his chest feels tight is a cause for concern. Is he having a heart attack? Is this what it feels like? Maybe he should go visit the campus medical centre.
It's not that Jayce hates the snow precisely. You can't survive in a city that borders the mountains of The Great Barrier and be scared of a few snowflakes every year. No, Jayce hates storms. That's why his past research trips have taken him predominantly into the deserts, or at least into the warmer climes. Places where the storms can't race up to you with terrifying speed, burying you in soul-searing cold and cutting you off from all salvation with no warning at all. Well, he amends, they can if they're dust storms, and although you might not be cold exactly you'd still be dead if you got it wrong, and look. Fine. It's the snow. Jayce hates blizzards, and he thinks he has a perfectly logical explanation for that, entirely within reason and not in any way a phobia. Which is odd really, because the greatest, most world-changing and magical event happened to him in the middle of a blizzard.
"Jayce. Jayce. Jayce, are you listening to me at all?"
Someone raps the side of Jayce's tray with their cane, almost making him drop it instinctively, and Jayce blinks back to the present and into the accusatory gaze of his partner Viktor.
"Yes," he lies. "Of course I'm listening."
"I very much doubt that," Viktor tells him, and then places two serviette-wrapped ham rolls onto his tray, along with several pieces of fruit and two extremely generous portions of cake. Jayce dutifully holds the tray steady for these precious burdens, and tries to get himself under control.
"What is distracting you so much?" Viktor asks him. "It cannot be the prototype, we have run through the specifications three times this morning and neither of us can see cause for significant concern."
"The resonance band is extremely tight," Jayce says automatically, and Viktor blows out a dismissive breath.
"Minor fluctuations are acceptable, we have both agreed this."
They have, but Jayce needs an excuse for the tension in his muscles that's not just the weather forecast is scaring me. He shakes his head and follows Viktor to the drinks counter where a young man is dispensing hot tea and coffee from a machine that alternately shrills and belches clouds of steam in a threatening manner. Viktor seems irritated as he accepts the full cups from the server and places them carefully onto the tray alongside their lunch.
"You think we need to run through everything again before we test?" Jayce asks uncertainly, trying to read his partner's discomfort. It's not the server and it's not the food, and Jayce is fairly certain it's not his apparent inability to pay attention when being spoken to, although clearly that's already been noted.
"No, Jayce," Viktor says shortly, setting out their food as they settle at their chosen table. "If we delay any longer we will simply lose impetus, and allow ourselves to become mired in theoretical complications."
Jayce supposes he's right. They've delayed field testing twice already this month, and each time it's been the right choice, but still the frustration of it burns in both their chests. Good science takes time, but sometimes you do just have to take a risk and see what happens.
Viktor has already started on the food, devouring it as though it is personally responsible for his woes, and clearing his plate is as good as clearing the obstacles away. Jayce tries not to sigh and looks sideways across the canteen at the floor to ceiling windows that grace the far wall. The skies outside are grey and heavy with cloud. Ominous almost. He squints between the figures of people passing by to their tables, and then realises, with a sinking heart, what it is he's seeing.
Out across the city of Piltover the first spiralling flakes of snow have started to fall, and Jayce Talis does his utmost not to see this as a bad omen.
*
The sound of the stool scraping sharply across the flagstones and Viktor's irritated sigh draw Jayce's attention quicker than a wailing siren. He pokes his head out of the store cupboard and peers around the lab to see his partner shoving his stool under the workbench and pulling his satchel roughly across the counter towards him. He'd gone out earlier to talk to one of the other departments, and Jayce hadn't heard him return. For a second he watches as Viktor digs angrily through the inside of his bag, tossing in a few papers and glaring around at the desk.
"Everything okay...?" Jayce asks finally. His tone lands somewhere around wary, which is probably only going to provoke further tutting from Viktor, but he can't quite help it. Viktor's not the sort to snap unnecessarily, but he can be irritable at times, and there's nothing like wondering if he's done something wrong or been the cause of someone else's discomfort to make Jayce feel truly awful.
"I suggest you pack a bag and prepare to return home, Jayce," Viktor says stiffly, still stuffing things into his old leather satchel.
Something cold and acidic runs straight through Jayce's veins at the words, and his breath catches in his throat.
"Wh-why?" he manages after a second. "Have we been- are we being? We have permission now! I have sign-off from the Council!"
Viktor does pause then and turns to look at Jayce. Irritation smooths back into something softer as he catches Jayce's panicked expression, and he shakes his head. "No, Jayce. Nothing of the sort. It is the weather, that's all. The Academy is closing this afternoon in readiness for the storm."
At once both relieved and confused, Jayce emerges from the store cupboard, part of a linear actuator still held in his hand, and shakes his head in query. It's been snowing lightly since yesterday now, but hardly enough to warrant a full scale shutdown of the Academy, and Jayce had been quietly pleased, thinking the danger past and Viktor's assessment of the Meteorology department's overenthusiastic doom-mongering once more proven accurate.
"I thought we weren't trusting Cheswick's lot?" he asks slowly and Viktor sighs, his mouth flattening into a displeased line.
"Not Cheswick, no," he agrees. "This has come from Professor Nugela, and unfortunately I trust her insight and calculations entirely."
The ice that had threaded Jayce's veins and subsequently melted away returns in full force, his stomach doing an unpleasant little clench. He blinks and shrugs uneasily. "Meaning?"
Viktor shakes his head. "The professor has calculated the impact of certain weather fronts from the north and has concluded that we are indeed due a snowstorm of intense severity, enough to be labelled a blizzard. She estimates that it will begin at midnight or thereabouts, continue throughout the night and peter away by midmorning. Obviously snowfall will not be continual, but she has predicted a coating of at least two metres, which is deeply unfortunate. No pun intended."
Not quite the dreaded three metre coverage and week-long monster storm the rest of her department had predicted, but a blizzard? Here in Piltover? Jayce feels suddenly unwell.
"Well, can't we? I mean..." he trails off, looking around the lab helplessly. They'd been due to do the first field test of their prototype cargo jump gate today. Just something small, a distance of a few metres, but they've been working up to this for months now and already it's been delayed twice. They need to get through this round of testing to secure confidence in their work, because from confidence springs the locking in of future funding, and from there the ability to go further, do more. And yet all of that is overshadowed by that one word: blizzard.
It's been sixteen years and he can still feel how small the towering storm had made him, so far from home and help, standing over his mother in the snow and knowing that if something didn't change then that was it, death for the both of them was inevitable. To face the end at such a young age is a fearsome thing, and he's never managed to shake off the sheer existential dread of it.
Viktor misinterprets Jayce's desperate attempt to fend off those distressing memories as true concern for their schedule, and shakes his head in disgust at the situation. One expressive hand flies up into the air, waving his frustration at the world in general. "They are intending for all students to leave the premises by mid-morning, faculty and sponsored-inventors out by early afternoon at the latest."
Snatching at another notebook Viktor tosses it furiously into his satchel. "A waste of time," he grouses. "As if we will be any safer in our own homes than here in the Academy."
A second understanding penetrates Jayce's fug of misery then, piercing through his building panic and for just a moment putting a stop to his spiral. Safer here in the Academy? Here in this fully central-heated building more like. Viktor despises the cold. Winter is a bane to him in his tiny second floor apartment, with its rickety old stove and querulous piping. It makes his joints ache harder, and exacerbates his slight cough into something that honestly makes Jayce worry. In all the two winters Jayce has known Viktor he's never once heard him compliment the coldest season. Quite the opposite in fact.
"Why don't we just stay here then?" he asks.
Viktor scowls and shakes his head. "They intend to close the building for two nights and then reassess."
Even as he's saying the words Jayce can see the other man thinking about it. "So?" he presses, sensing an opening. "I'll bet you Amberline's team aren't going to leave. Corston Lycon's either. They'll lock themselves in their labs and bar the doors before security can even blink!"
Viktor's angry packing has slowed, and he turns back to face Jayce, his expression already showing how easily Jayce's words have swayed him. "The kitchen staff will be leaving."
Jayce huffs in amusement. "I'll go home, grab us some supplies and be back before you know it. We can still cook in the kitchens if we need to, believe it or not I know how to work a stove."
Viktor narrows his eyes at him, but Jayce knows he's already won. The idea of staying here, locked up securely in their lab, completely safe and insulated from the blizzard outside is so appealing he cannot possibly entertain any other options. "Where will we sleep?"
Jayce waves a hand. "I'll grab us blankets, and I still have my camping kit. Bedrolls and pillows. We're engineers, we can rig up a quick cot to put them on! Come on Viktor, solving problems like this is basically our bread and butter. We'll use the washrooms in the student residential floor, we'll be fine. And what, you said it was for two nights? Great! We can get the testing done in peace."
Viktor is already quite clearly convinced by his arguments. Nonetheless Jayce cannot help but land the finishing blow. "And honestly we won't even need the blankets. This is place is warm enough without them."
Viktor's unenthusiastic packing has slowed to a stop, and he turns to look at the clock on the wall.
"We could run the first test in the Gretchen-Longfellow courtyard this afternoon, before the light fails."
Jayce smiles triumphantly at the faraway look in Viktor's eyes as he mentally sets out their experiment. A chance to do so without the entire faculty body trying to peer curiously through the proverbial keyhole at them is an opportunity not to be missed. Also, he thinks, success or failure it'll give them plenty of raw data they can hole up with and use as a distraction from the monster lurking around on the outside. Well, for Jayce anyway. And not that it's a real monster, and not that he's scared exactly, just-
"Great!" he says brightly. "That's sorted then."
*
"Mama?"
It's not until Jayce pokes his head around the door to his mother's study that it occurs to him he should maybe have taken her needs into consideration too. Thus it is he's frowning unhappily when his mother looks up and greets him, concern immediately creasing her brow. The expression on her face only serves to make him feel even worse.
"Jayce?"
What he should do is ask if she's okay, if she's ready for the weather to hit and if there's anything she needs him to do for her. What he says instead is, "Mama, there's a storm coming."
Sixteen years ago Ximena Talis took her son camping in the mountains in an attempt to give him the same adventures he might have had with his late father. The adventure they'd ended up on had very nearly been the last thing either of them had ever done, but it had also been the launch pad for an obsession that would last her son's entire life.
Ximena rises from her desk and crosses over to her son, putting a gentle hand to his cheek. The cold steel of her mechanical fingers touches his skin lightly and she realises only too late that such a reminder is probably unfortunate given the circumstances. She smiles for him, a little strained, but genuine nonetheless.
"I know, Jayce. I saw the papers. Will you be needing your room tonight?"
Jayce winces and shakes his head, then aborts the movement guiltily. He doesn't know what he needs to do now, everything rides on his mother's answer. "Mama, I came to check if you need anything," he lies. If you need me.
His mother lets her hand drop, clasping them both in front of her. "I'll be in the forges. We have an extra order in for House Ambathra, and it needs to be completed by the end of the month. You know the hammers never stop, Jayce. Come havoc or high water."
He does know this, has of course known it for his entire life. And yet here Jayce is, so thrown off-balance by the looming shadow of a memory from the past that he's almost forgotten it. It's always been the Talis way, to power through, to not give up, to be as relentless and dogged in their determination as the beating of the hammers in their forges.
"Okay," he says, feeling suddenly at a loss. He doesn't want to worry his mother with his anxieties, and to be honest he's not sure her locking herself in the forge with the rest of their team is anything other than what he'd intended to do with Viktor and their lab. But at least she'll be safe and around other people. In the middle of a modern city, fully stocked and safe from the weather, he reminds himself. This is not the Barrier Mountains. "I'm going to be in the lab then. With Viktor. We're going to work through."
As soon as he says it he knows it's the right answer - for him, and for his mother who seems immediately reassured by his words. Sometimes Jayce hates himself for how much worry he puts on her shoulders, and other times the frustration of old hurts raise their nasty little heads and he has to remind himself that all his mother has ever done is try to look out for him.
"That's good, Jayce," she says. "But will you be warm enough in there? What about food? What will you eat?"
And in the end it's that simple. Jayce spends an hour out of his morning visiting home, loading up with food supplies and squashing his old camping gear into his biggest backpack. He ends up with two bags in the end, and a hamper for all the food Ximena pulls out of the pantry for him, far more than even he and Viktor combined could eat in a week. And then, kissing his mother on the cheek, he goes back out into the freezing streets of Piltover, pulling his jacket closed tighter and glancing up at the ominous grey of the sky above.
"I believe we are ready to conduct the first test! Close the door, Jayce, you are letting out the heat," is the first thing Viktor says to him on his return to their lab. Arrayed behind him on trolleys are all the components they'll need to transfer down to the courtyard and conduct their tests. In his absence, it appears Viktor has not been idle. Jayce snorts, and tosses the blanket he's brought from his bedroom at Viktor's head, making the other man flail.
"That should keep you warm," he says, as Viktor sniffs and pulls the fabric closed around his shoulders like a cloak. "Now, let's get this show on the road!"
Storm or not, the Talis spirit doesn't lie down and die, it's as determined and relentless as the hammers they work, and just as indifferent to the whims of the world around.
At least, so they say.