Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They promised they’d finish it together, so they do. The aching not-sensation of the arcane screams along every atom of their beings as they hold each other close, together again in their final act. The world whites out.  

And then it fades in again.  

-- 

Jayce wakes up gasping, which is surprising for several reasons.  

His hands grasp at his throat on instinct, as if his body can still feel the Herald’s hand around his neck, and he’s forced to sit up and cough violently before his mind can even begin to ask questions like, 

 How the hell are we alive?  

We--  

Viktor.  

Jayce panics for a split second before his eyes fall on a small form covered with a familiar blanket. Viktor isn’t looking at him, focusing instead on the middle distance in a way that makes panic rise in his chest. 

“Vik-” it comes out a harsh rasp, his throat still struggling to work properly.  

Viktor turns to him then, a rare look of utter bewilderment spread across his sharp features.  

“Where are we?” Jayce asks 

The other man just stares at him, not seeming to understand that the question is directed at him. Forcing down his rising panic at his partner’s lack of reaction, Jayce looks for himself. 

They’re on what must be a promenade of some sort. Along one side, a row of closed shops advertise their wares with faded signs, but along the other a wrought-iron fence forms a railing against a steep drop. Through the swirling design of the fence, he can see the stark white buildings of Piltover, but he doesn’t recognize the part of the city where they’re sitting now. He pushes himself to his feet, grimacing as his broken brace fails to support his bad leg, and limps to the railing.  

It is Piltover, but it’s wrong. There are no Hexgates, and he doesn’t quite recognize the layout. It takes a minute to work out what’s truly missing from the city, but when he does, he feels all his shoved-down panic bubble to the surface.  

There’s no one here  

There’s not a single puff of smoke or steam from any chimneys or stacks, and not a single person is visible in the streets below. There’s no one, and he realizes as he looks that there hasn’t been anyone here in a while. The white stone buildings have been partially reclaimed by moss and ivy, giving Piltover an oddly soft look. When he looks more carefully, he can see that some of the buildings have been burnt and never repaired, forming black pock marks in the greenish-white spread of the city.  

He doesn’t realize he’s panicking, breath coming in stuttered gasps, until he feels the weight of a hand on his shoulder. It’s light, cautious, but it’s enough to draw him back from the sight of this not-quite-ruined Piltover. When he turns, he’s met with the sharp golden understanding of Viktor’s eyes. He almost fails to notice that the arcane kaleidoscope of hues has left his partner’s gaze because all he can think is, 

He’s in there  

—  

Jayce is in agony. He and Viktor are climbing down a series of staircases from the high promenade where they arrived and the pain in his leg has gone from being unfortunate to being nearly unbearable. It radiates up from his badly healed calf through his knee to his hip, forcing him to twist his body awkwardly to compensate with his other leg. His shoulders hurt from trying to maintain this awkward posture and from the iron grip he has on the railing.  

Viktor is walking in front at Jayce’s insistence. He had tried to convince him that it was because his limp would slow the other man down, but the look he got in response made it clear Viktor understood that Jayce still doesn’t quite trust him. Jayce is trying to ignore both the sting of the unspoken accusation and the angry justification his pain-addled brain is formulating.  

Would you still trust me if I tried to kill you?  

No, never mind, don’t answer that.  

He’d meant every word he’d said in the starry embrace of the arcane, but those had been the words of a man ready to die, bodyless and without fear. Now, back in his body still bearing the marks of the Herald’s hands and flooded with barely-ebbing adrenaline, he can’t quite let go of his self-preservation instincts. 

To distract himself from all of it, and perhaps because he wants to add the shame of being a voyeur to everything else, he concentrates on putting one foot in front of another while simultaneously trying to map what he can see of his partner’s new form from behind.  

Viktor’s right leg and left arm seem to have maintained their hexcore-induced lavender hue, but neither is glowing and whatever gifts of healing the hexcore might once have offered have clearly been revoked. He isn’t limping nearly as badly as Jayce, but the familiar twist to his leg has returned, causing his bare foot to land awkwardly with each step. It’s not as bad as it was at the end, when he turned to shimmer to fix what a brace never could, but he’s leaning heavily on the railing for support and he’ll need a brace and a cane again to walk properly.  

His hair is still long, as it was in the commune, although it’s lost its white underlights and returned to its natural auburn. The skin that Jayce can see between the folds of the blanket is covered in spiraling purple and white scars like a ghost of the Herald’s skin. The same pattern covers Jayce’s visible skin, arcane white latticework peaking out from his shirt cuffs. It seems that whatever brought them here has burned out the corruption of the arcane, but not without leaving its mark behind.  

-- 

They are making their way to the lab. Neither of them consciously intended it, but Jayce realizes where they are going as they pass landmarks that are the same in their Piltover: a statue of a councilor from a century before, a fountain sponsored by a long-forgotten university alumni, the bench where he and Viktor shared lunch on the few occasions Jayce could coax him out of the lab. It feels almost like home, if he ignores the utter silence and complete lack of people. As they get closer to the lab, the familiarity vanishes. Each building they pass has a red X painted over the door. Some have boarded windows, and the sidewalks are littered with broken glass and random detritus which Viktor with his bare feet is careful to avoid.   

The lab, like all the other nearby buildings, has that same angry red X painted over the door. Jayce pulls up short as Viktor, still dutifully walking in front, hesitates on the threshold.  

Jayce knows that he should hesitate too. His years of safety training are screaming at him that large hastily painted symbols of danger aren’t an invitation, but his years of ignoring lab safety and his desperate desire for something, anything he recognizes overwhelm whatever danger sense he ought to summon up in situations like this. He tries the handle first, almost stumbling when he finds the door unlocked. Inside, the foyer is cool and dark and he can hear the skitter of mice running for cover at their intrusion. Jayce feels almost safe at the evidence that no one else is here. There is a thick layer of dust covering the floor and the long-abandoned reception desk, and Viktor lets out a violent sneeze as the movement of the door disturbs it.  

Jayce stares at him. He doesn’t mean to, but it’s the first sound the other man has made since they’ve arrived here and Jayce can’t help it, he laughs. 

It’s just a small giggle, made wheezy by his abused throat, but it grows into a true laugh as all the tension of the day seems to break itself against this one absurd moment. Viktor stares at him for just a moment before the corners of his mouth tug into an almost-involuntary smile, and then he too is laughing. Viktor’s laugh loosens something in Jayce’s chest that he didn’t know was hurting. It doesn’t erase the panic and paranoia, but for the first time in a long time he feels like he has his partner back. 

Before he can think better, he surges forward and gathers him in a hug.  

He freezes for just a moment after wrapping his arms around the other man, his uncertainty belatedly catching up to his desire for contact, but then he feels Viktors smaller arms wrap around his back in response and almost dies of relief as they both melt into the hug.  

“Jayce-” Viktor whispers after a moment “You’re too heavy” 

“Oh,” Jayce responds stupidly, pulling back and realizing that he had been leaning most of his weight into Viktor’s slight frame to take some of the pressure off his leg, “sorry.” 

He’s not sure what else to say so he starts toward the elevator, pausing only to ensure that Viktor is following him. His partner gives him a strange half-smile and limps along behind him.  

The elevator isn’t working, which Jayce probably should have considered given that there have been no other signs of functioning electricity. They take the stairs instead, Viktor walking ahead again, because this time Jayce truly is falling behind. He’s all but pulling himself up the stairs by the railing and his shoulders are screaming at him for the abuse. Viktor stops periodically to look back at him but never comments on his slow progress. Jayce is more grateful than he knows how to express for this small mercy.  

When they finally make it to the third floor and down the long hallway to their lab, Jayce is ready to collapse. Viktor’s limp is noticeably worse after the stairs, but he seems to be doing better than Jayce, or perhaps he just has the benefit of having learned to hide his pain.  

“Shall we?” Viktor asks, trying for sarcasm but just sounding tired, as he gestures to the door of their lab which is adorned with an accusing red X of its own.  

Promising, Jayce thinks sourly, and tries the knob. Like the front door, it’s open. Apparently, whatever happened here was bad enough that locks weren’t deemed appropriate protection.  

Jayce shoves that thought to the side for later.  

The lab is a disaster. In one corner, there’s a pile of destroyed equipment, a sledgehammer thrown haphazardly on top of the pile as though whoever had done the deed wanted to leave the evidence that the destruction had been purposeful. The rest of the space is taken up by toppled desks and stools and messily arranged piles of paper. Near the still-open window, there’s a metal trashcan full of half-burnt papers.  

Neither of them acknowledges the change in atmosphere, but Jayce can feel his nerves screaming and he knows Viktor well enough to see the tension he’s trying to hide. They poke through the piles of paper half-heartedly, but Jayce doesn’t recognize most of what he sees. There are some mentions of hextech, but most of the scribbled formulas seem to be chemical syntheses or references to tests of live subjects. Even Viktor, in those final days before the council explosion when he was already using the hexcore on his own body, hadn’t been this advanced in his biological research. Jayce’s stomach turns over at the thoughts of live subjects and bright red X marks on every door.  

He’s interrupted from whatever spiral he might have let himself fall into by the scratching sound of Viktor using a metal flint lighter to spark the flame of a bunsen burner. Jayce watches as he makes his way to the window, shuts it, and then places another bunsen burner on the counter beside it, attaches it to the apparently-still-working gas line, and lights that one too.  

“What?” Viktor asks, catching Jayce staring, “It’s getting dark.” 

It’s getting dark. 

He counts the days by the appearance of light through the crack above him. Always the days, because the nights feel like years. He can sense them watching during the day, but at night he can feel them. Their empty eyes press in around him, their fingers clawing at his flesh, seeking a way inside so they can spread their infection. At night he lays and feels the pulsing of his leg, already infected, already contaminated--  

“Jayce,” Viktor calls softly, from the far end of the lab “come look at this” 

Jayce shuts his eyes, forces his breath out in a harsh sigh, and smooths out his features by sheer force of will.  

Viktor is in the lab’s supply closet where he’s just made the only discovery that has ever mattered: their counterparts in this Piltover also have a bed tucked into the supply closet in their lab. Unlike their foldaway bed, it seems their counterparts were more concerned with luxury. They’ve built a double bed into the supply closet, clearly designed to fold into the wall but left out and unmade as though the occupant was roused from sleep.  

“Do you mind if we share?” Viktor asks, carefully avoiding meeting Jayce’s gaze. 

“Of course --”  

Jayce starts, hesitating when he realizes Viktor is asking because he knows Jayce is afraid of him.   

“I mean, If you want,” he continues, somehow determined to make things worse, “If you don’t want to I can always find somewhere else--” 

“Jayce,” Viktor interrupts, “It’s fine.” 

“Alright,” Jayce replies, because he can’t fathom how to respond in a way that won’t make a bigger idiot of himself. 

The electricity of panic hasn’t quite left his muscles yet, so Jayce busies himself by checking the lock on the door and all the windows before joining Viktor, who has already crawled into the bed and tried to make himself comfortable. He’s still wrapped in that same blue blanket, a reminder of the last day they ever spent in their lab together. Jayce doesn’t have the energy to investigate the way his chest hurts at the memory.   

**** 

Viktor watches Jayce sleep in what little moonlight that filters into the supply closet from the lab windows, relaxing by degrees as the lines of stress in the other man’s face even out and he almost looks his age again. His eyes trace the pearlized fingerprints that sit on Jayce’s forehead like a crown and the white spiderweb scarring that peeks out from his collar and cuffs, stark against his coppery skin even in the low light.  

He wonders guiltily how much of Jayce it covers, if the scars across his chest will be unremarkable to him now when compared to all his new marks. He thinks of his own body, investigated quickly while Jayce’s back was turned, and the mottled purple-white scarring that flows over his skin like water. He keeps catching glimpses of his still-purple hand out of the corner of his eye, and each time he has to remind himself that it’s his arm and not some alien thing that’s attached itself to him.  

He tries very hard not to think of Jayce in the same terms, but some small part wonders if this is really the same man he knew, the man who was willing to manufacture magic and defy death itself.  

Jayce’s paranoia as they made their way through the abandoned streets of not-quite-Piltover had been almost understandable. Viktor could ascribe it to the whiplash of almost dying in the arcane and then waking up alive in an empty city where they didn’t belong. But he’d seen the utter terror in Jayce’s face when Viktor pointed out that it was getting dark. He’d watched as Jayce had checked the lock on the lab door no less than five times before shoving a stool under the handle for good measure before he would finally get into bed. At that point, he hadn’t even bothered fighting Jayce on the man’s insistence on sleeping fully clothed except for his coat and his boots.  

The Jayce he had known had always been cautious, calculating even, despite how hard he’d worked to portray himself as the earnest Man of Progress that the investors and the public desired, but he’d never been afraid. Not like this. The part of Viktor that’s still the herald wants to reach inside the man beside him and pull out whatever is hurting him by force. The part of him that was forged in Zaun wants to find whoever did this to Jayce and break their bones one by one. The part of him that has already worked out that it must have been him wonders half-heartedly if the roof access door will be unlocked too.  

— 

Jayce wakes up screaming beside him at some point in the middle of the night. Viktor had finally managed some semblance of half-sleep and the jarring sensation of being pulled back into consciousness startles him badly. Jayce is already fully awake by the time Viktor realizes what’s happening, apologizing profusely and telling Viktor it’s nothing, to go back to bed. He curls up facing away from Viktor, very clearly not relaxing by the tension in his shoulders and the shuddering breaths that are gently shaking the mattress.  

Viktor knows he’s not going to get back any semblance of sleep with Jayce lying there terrified beside him. He wants to reach out, but hesitates, uncertain of which of their old boundaries still stand and what he has a right to offer. When he’d touched Jayce earlier it had been on instinct, like flexing a muscle he had forgotten he had, but this felt different somehow, more intimate, beyond the bounds of their established dynamic.  

But that dynamic was established two lives and three bodies ago, and Jayce is suffering now, because of him.   

He reaches out, placing his palm between Jayce’s stiff shoulder blades. The other man flinches, but when he doesn’t pull away Viktor begins to rub small circles over the taught muscles of his back. Jayce relaxes slowly, letting out tiny sighs as Viktor gently massages his shoulder muscles, forming a repeated pattern as he moves from one shoulder to another, carefully avoiding the ridge of scar tissue in the middle of Jayce’s back. He’s only using what he’s started considering his good arm because the thought of touching Jayce with the other right now fills him with disgust. When he’s finally certain Jayce’s breathing has evened out for good, he pulls back and turns away, ignoring whatever sad part of his brain feels the lack of contact as a loss.  

-- 

Viktor wakes up with Jayce wrapped around him, radiating heat like a furnace. He feels warmer and safer than he’s felt in a very long time, and briefely contemplates allowing himself to stay like this, just for a little while. Jayce looks so peaceful curled on his chest it’s like he’s a different person from the man who woke screaming last night.  

His joints hurt though, and Jayce’s weight is twisting his body in a way that’s making it worse. Jayce insisted on sleeping on the outside of the bed, so even if he had the mobility to wiggle his way out of the other man’s embrace, Viktor would have to climb over him to get up. He has no choice. He nudges Jayce’s head gently with his shoulder, regretting it almost instantly when he startles awake with a look of pure terror. 

“Shit, sorry V,” Jayce rasps, when reality erases whatever horror he’d occupied for that moment after waking.  

He awkwardly extricates himself from Viktor’s body and swings slowly out of bed. Viktor doesn’t miss how fast his hand shoots out for balance as he tries to put weight on his bad leg. It looks like it’s going to be one of those days for both of them.  

They spend the morning pillaging the supply closet and searching the lab. Most of the equipment is beyond useless but there are a few ancient cookies in one desk drawer and Viktor finds a duffel bag in the storage closet with a set of clothes and shoes in his size. The brown pinstriped shirt and tan slacks carry a strange bitter nostalgia. It feels almost like too human an outfit as he sheds the blue blanket that he’s worn for over a year.  

He tries not to feel like he’s stealing his other self’s identity as he slides his leg into pants for the first time in a very long time. He doesn’t let himself think about the twist of his leg, or the fact that both he and Jayce are using every available surface as a crutch. He also very carefully doesn’t let himself think about how quickly Jayce shoves the older-than-stale cookies into his mouth and swallows them dry, eating like a man who’s being chased. He knows if he lets the weirdness of this in, if he truly thinks about it, he will lose his shit.  

— 

He loses his shit anyway.  

“Come on Vik, we need water!” Jayce shouts, perhaps thinking that volume will step in for logic 

“Which we can almost certainly find somewhere in this building!” Viktor shoots back 

They’re both dehydrated, running on nothing but stale cookies, but neither is giving in. They’ve made all the discoveries possible in what they are considering their lab and now Jayce wants to go traipsing through Piltover looking for food and water, which Viktor has helpfully pointed out to be a stupid idea because they’re both barely walking and surely in a building full of laboratories there will be at least one container of one of the most common chemical substances on earth.  

“Yeah, but we won’t get the lay of the land from here, what if there’s someone out there-“ 

“The lay of the-!“ Viktor sighs violently and lowers his voice to a normal volume “Jayce, you can barely walk” 

“Vik I’m fine, I—“ Jayce begins, but can’t seem to find the right way to go on when Viktor levels the full force of his glare at him 

He can’t believe he’s having this conversation. No, he can believe it, because whatever else Jayce is, he’s still a Pilt who sees every limitation as something to be forced through. 

“You are not fine. You are holding yourself up with that desk and you won’t make it down three flight of stairs much less across the city to wherever you think you’re going to get the lay of the land, and even if you do, any water you find is going to be contaminated and you’ll have to bring it back --”  

“Alright.” Jayce interrupts him 

“Alright?”  

“Alright,” Jayce scrubs his hands down his face and sighs “you’re right, my leg is shot, yours is probably worse, and I don’t feel like fighting, so alright.”  

Viktor feels somehow like he’s lost the fight despite Jayce’s acquiescence, but he can’t work out how. As they start their search of the other labs, he can’t shake the feeling that all his old patterns with Jayce are misaligned somehow, like they’re two cogs with broken teeth trying and failing to mesh. 

— 

They search systematically, using a piece of broken glass to scrape a line on the doors of any labs where they’ve deemed their search complete. Most of the empty labs are much the same as the one where they spent the night; broken equipment and toppled furniture and not much else. Viktor scans the notes and equations on the scattered piles of paper and finds more of the same biological hextech research. He can tell Jayce is reading over his shoulder, but neither of them brings it up. Maybe he too feels that whatever sins their other selves may have committed are no more or less grave than their own.  

In all timelines Viktor thinks bitterly. 

Jayce finds his other self’s cane in the fourth laboratory they search, half buried beneath a pile of papers that both of them pointedly do not read. A part of Viktor wants to refuse it. It feels like an admission, that he needs it, and that he and this other Viktor are both guilty of the kind of hubris that leads to abandoned canes and empty cities.  

Jayce gives him the same soft-eyes look he used when he caught Viktor standing at the lip of the drainpipe.  

He takes the cane.  

— 

Jayce is antsy. They’ve searched all the labs on the third floor and still haven’t found water, and Viktor can feel the first bloom of panic growing in the other man from halfway across the room. He’s still using any available surface as a walking aid, but he’s started running his off hand through his hair and over his face in a way that makes Viktor suspect he wants to claw his skin off.  

“Jayce,” he begins cautiously, “do you think we should split up?” 

He looks at Viktor like he’s proposing Jayce face a firing squad.  

“Why?” Jayce asks, tone clearly forced into something neutral against his will 

Because you’re panicking and we’re running out of time before it gets dark   

“ We can cover more ground if we separate,” he answers. “Let's go up a floor and we’ll both take different rooms” 

Jayce looks at him like Viktor’s the one giving the orders to the firing squad. 

“Alright,” he answers, turning away so his face isn’t visible. 

Viktor is beginning to hate that word.  

— 

They split up at the top of the stairs, each taking a door on either side of the hall.  

The silence is oppressive without Jayce by his side, so he fills it with the sounds of his cane tapping, of rustling papers and rifled-through lab supplies and tried very hard to think about anything other than the man in the lab across the hall.  

Viktor doesn’t want to fight with Jayce, he just wants something other than the same limp ragdoll of an exchange every time they have to make a decision in this bizarre place. When they used to get into screaming matches over materials or manufacturing processes or even lab safety, Jayce had always at least been participating . This new, eternally agreeable Jayce feels like the man who was always busy at investor meetings or galas, like the man who was only ever half-present even when he was physically in the room, and Viktor is angry at the familiar sense of loss.  

He’s angry at himself too for the selfishness of it all. He’s seen Jayce’s memories; remembers being brought back to himself by crawling inside his mind like a cancer and watching the other man’s suffering like some sick voyeur. He understands that Jayce must see this place as a sort of echo of the other Piltover, with its empty abandoned buildings and evidence of their guilt scattered across every available surface. He can list a thousand reasons why he should be gentle and patient and let Jayce do whatever he needs to survive this, but the part of Viktor that’s just barely surviving this too wants to shake the man and scream at him to give his partner back.   

Viktor trips. 

He curses, reaching to recover his cane, and then realization hits. He’s tripped over a pair of legs, although he almost didn’t recognize them as limbs at all. They’re a deep purple color, much darker than Viktor’s still-contaminated flesh, and covered in a kaleidoscopic shimmering web of arcane scarring. His eyes follow the legs up to their logical conclusion: a torso, curled in on itself and half hidden under the desk next to him. A small blue glow emanates from a Hexgem at the center of its chest.  

A thousand minds spread out around him, a galaxy of selves all too full of suffering. He can take their suffering, cure it. He can take all the choices they’re drowning in and reduce them to nothing. He can take away their pain. He can heal them and heal himself and heal the world. He feels them flow through him, their sadness and suffering washed clean. Their selves dissipated to only the parts they need to be free. No more suffering. No more pain.   

Viktor is screaming  

The part of him that is always himself, the tiny grain of sand in the vast suffocating oyster of the arcane is screaming and screaming. The part of him that knows the pain is necessary, that the violence and messiness are as human as they are ugly and losing them means losing something so much more important than one life. He's screaming and he can’t stop, but he can’t stop himself either. It’s his hands, healing and hurting and slowly ripping the humanity out of everything around him. It's him, his darkest impulses for control like a black hole pulling the world into his orbit. It’s him, the body in the council room, the broken meat of a man who should never have lived that long. It’s him, a God, standing behind the only person who has ever mattered and preparing to turn his soul to ash.   

Viktor feels the weight of someone crash down beside him, of strong arms wrapping around him. He feels himself pulled back against someone’s chest, hears soft pleading whispers in his ear.  

Jayce, his brain registers, because who else could it be. He doesn’t fight as Jayce holds him, running his hands along Viktor’s arms in slow circles.  

“It’s ok,” Jayce whispers in his ear. “It’s alright,” over and over again.  

It’s not his mind whispers back every time 

He lets Jayce hold him until his jackrabbiting heart settles into something close to the right speed.  

“Would it help if I told you I found water?” Jayce asks, after what feels like an embarrassing eternity when Viktor’s breathing has mostly evened out.  

“It might,” Viktor forces out 

His voice feels rough and far away, another alien thing. If Jayce notices he doesn’t comment, instead extricating himself from behind Viktor and turning to offer his hand to help him up. Neither of them acknowledges the body. Viktor lets Jayce pick up his cane for him, lets him rest his hand against the small of his back as they walk, and tries very hard to feel worthy of such kindness.  

— 

Jayce doesn’t comment on Viktor’s silence as he boils the water for safety and serves it in chipped mugs. He’s found oats somewhere as well and hands Viktor a beaker half-filled with plain oatmeal, cooked over a propane burner he’s pilfered from the lab across the hall. After two days with only a handful of cookies to eat, it feels like a feast.  

Viktor lets Jayce talk, filling the silence with an explanation of how he found the water and oats in a lab where their other selves were experimenting on live pigs. He doesn’t notice when the other man’s explanation trails off into silence until Jayce is suddenly beside him, his broad form casting Viktor into shadow.  

“Come on,” Jayce says, “let’s go to bed” 

It would be suggestive in another context. Instead, it feels like permission.  

Jayce helps him into bed, setting him down like something fragile and gently easing his shoes and socks off. Viktor is aware he should be embarrassed but he can’t manage to care. He’s grateful when Jayce doesn’t suggest taking any more of his clothes off.  

They lie in bed together, Viktor trapped by Jayce’s insistence on sleeping on the outside again. He faces the shelves of supplies, carefully labeled in his own hand, and tries not to let his body shudder as he feels himself collapse into sobs. He feels Jayce’s tentative fingers against his back and fails to muster enough self-recrimination to deny himself the comfort of the soothing patterns the other man rubs into his back.  

He almost cries out at the loss when, after a few minutes, Jayce pulls his hand back but is instantly flooded with guilty relief when he feels Jayce’s warm body slot against his back.  

“Is this ok?” Jayce asks. 

Viktor can only nod. 

He shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t let Jayce comfort him like this, after everything he’s done, but he doesn’t have the energy to argue so he lets himself be engulfed in the warmth of Jayce’s embrace.  

-- 

Jayce wakes up screaming, clawing at Viktor’s chest. They’ve managed to stay locked together but have shifted in the night so that Jayce is once again curled around him, ensuring that they’re both startled awake by whatever prowls his dreams.  

Viktor suspects it’s him. 

He tries to comfort Jayce, but the larger man turns away with a whispered apology and lies so still that Viktor wonders if he’ll strain a muscle trying to hide his terror. Viktor doesn’t reach out. He lies in the dark for a long time, letting guilt seep into him like the grey used to seep through the streets in Zaun. Or maybe it’s him who’s the grey, seeping into everything he ever cared about and corrupting it. He’s too tired and stretched thin to get the metaphors straight.  

Eventually, he makes a decision. Jayce’s breathing has slowed down enough that Viktor is reasonably certain he’s asleep. Carefully, he works his way out of the bed and over Jayce. He puts his shoes and socks back on in the moonlight streaming through the windows, grabs his cane, takes one flight of stairs, and only stops to catch his breath when he’s standing over the body under the desk. The faint glow of the Hexgem washes everything in blue, reminding him of that first night when he and Jayce had cracked Hextech and found themselves floating in Heimerdinger’s office.   

He crouches down, hooking his cane over the desk, and crawls close enough that his head and shoulders are under the desk with the body. The panic from before still grips his chest, but he shoves it down. He can do this, for Jayce. He reaches forward, gently grasps the hexgem, and pulls it slowly from the desiccated chest.  

He had worried that perhaps the gem was drawing power in some way from the body, but the glow never stutters as he separates it from its host. Some part of him is insisting that he should care who this person is, that he should consider that it might even be his counterpart, or Jayce’s. These thoughts are shoved into the ever-growing pile of things that can’t matter if he wants to succeed.  

— 

By the time Jayce wakes up Viktor has already rigged a rudimentary apparatus out of their broken equipment to hold the gem and started working out the equations they’ll need on a cracked chalkboard.  

“Vik,” Jayce asks cautiously, “what is all this” 

“If we want to get back to our Piltover, we’re going to need to generate an anomaly of a similar scope to the one that sent you to the alternate Piltover where you met the other me,” Viktor explains, as though it’s not obvious.  

“And you want that?” Jayce asks, “to go back?” 

“Of course,” he lies, refusing to turn from the blackboard.  

“Alright,” Jayce replies. 

Viktor refuses to flinch at the word. 

They will return to Piltover, Jayce will be with people who love him, who can care for him. All the things that haunt him will be healed among his friends and family and all the people who can give him what he needs. Viktor doesn’t care what happens to him after that. He’d die a thousand times if it meant Jayce was safe.  

He focuses on the blackboard, carefully writing out another rune sequence, and doesn’t let himself think about anything but the slide of chalk and the sensation of having a purpose again.  

Chapter Text

They settle into a routine, of sorts, exploring and scavenging what they can from the buildings closest to the lab. They find canned food, toiletries, and clothing easily, as though the city was abandoned quickly with no time for its citizens to pack beforehand. Most of the food is expired, and a lot of the clothing has dry-rotted but it’s no worse than anything Jayce ate in that chasm, and nothing can feel as bad as wearing the same council outfit for a year.  

They stuff the supply closet full of everything they find, shoving canned food and water next to spanners and spools of wire. They pilfer enough candles to give the lab the faint scent of wax all the time, reasoning there’s no point in trying to restore electricity to the building if they’re going home soon enough anyway.  

Jayce buries the body from the lab upstairs, leaving early one morning before Viktor is  awake. A part of him wants to inspect it, to ensure it’s not either of their counterparts, but not quite enough to look. He chooses a place in one of the university gardens, several blocks away from their lab. Viktor doesn’t mention it when he returns to the lab with dirty hands and dirty boots.  

He tries not to let on how little the thought of not getting home bothers him, when he sees the guilt in Viktor’s eyes at the sight of his limp or his scars. He doesn’t know how to explain how natural it feels to live like this, how it’s become comfortable in a way that made the few days he spent back in their Piltover feel like a foreign country.  

He misses his mother, sometimes, and Caitlyn, but when he thinks of seeing them again it feels like looking through dirty glass. He thinks of what he might tell them, how he might explain what happened to him, and finds himself unable to explain even to the versions of them he stitches together from his memories. He thinks of Mel, radiant in gold and white as she was when they first met, and imagines telling her about his life now. She would listen, he knows. She might even understand the strange tangle of his feelings better than he does.  

He imagines her as he last saw her, still radiant but somehow sadder, more hardened. He remembers all but baring his teeth at her as he accused her of manipulating him and Viktor; remembers how the weight of it hadn’t made her angry, just more resigned. More disappointed. She would have understood then too, he thinks, remembering the haunted look in her eyes. He wishes he had accused her of anything other than manipulation, knowing the weight that sort of conversational gut punch carried with her.  

As though you needed to be manipulated?  

As though you wouldn’t have given anything for a crumb of recognition and the promise of a fucking legacy?  

He knows Piltover will execute Viktor if they return, and he wonders sometimes if they would put him in front of the firing squad too. As a councilor he could have avoided prosecution for his part in Viktor’s resurrection, not to mention the utter shit show he’d made of the conflict with Zaun, but disappearing for gods know how long and returning covered in arcane scars with a score to settle wasn’t a good look. They had let him fight because he was the only one who could get anywhere close to Viktor, but even Caitlyn had looked at him with a new wariness in the end. She’d probably suspected he had an alternative plan for his part in the battle. She always could read him too well.   

Then again, maybe everyone in Piltover is dead anyway. 

He asks Viktor, on their sixth or seventh day in the lab, if he thinks anyone in Piltover is still alive. They’re eating oatmeal again, mixed with ancient raisins that have probably gone bad, and it takes Jayce a moment too long to realize this is not normal breakfast conversation when Viktor freezes at the question.  

“Yes,” he says finally, his face smoothed into a hard mask. “I remember feeling a loss at the end, like every soul I held was pulling away, being returned to their bodies.” 

 Viktor swirls his spoon through his oatmeal and Jayce feels guilt settle into the pit of his stomach.  

“I don’t think I was truly in control, in the end,” Viktor continues, “so when I stopped holding onto everything it just eh–” he gestures half-heartedly with his spoon, “returned to the way it belonged.” 

He looks at Jayce then, a sad smile pasted in place of his perfect mask.  

Jayce regrets asking almost as much as he’s grateful for the answer.  

-- 

They work as often as possible to create the anomaly. Viktor is insistent that returning home should be their priority, so Jayce lets him lead. It’s slow going, with no electricity they find themselves reliant on hand tools and one rusty acetylene torch to construct a permanent apparatus to contain and guide their single hexgem through the runic sequence necessary to become an anomaly. The calculations are obscene. Jayce can tell even without reading them based on the sheer number of frustrated sighs the process wrings from Viktor.  

He asks Jayce for help sometimes, but it doesn’t do much good. The sight of the rune sequences makes Jayce’s vision swim and his chest hurt. He corrects Viktor’s math a few times, but it’s an act of habit, not invention. Whoever Jayce may once have been, he feels like an empty house now, and the inventor of Hextech no longer lives there.  

At night, when they’re both too tired to stand at the blackboard anymore, Jayce works on his own projects, while Viktor attempts to decipher their other selves’ notes. Jayce can’t stomach reading them, but he can’t help but listen as Viktor recounts the research their counterparts were engaged in.  

“Essentially, they ignored the mechanical applications entirely and focused on the biological potential of Hextech from the beginning,” Viktor explains, gesturing with a pile of notes in Jayce’s handwriting.  

Jayce tries to focus on the brace he’s building for Viktor, but the sight of the other man steals his attention.  

He looks utterly disheveled in the candlelight. His goggles are pushed up on his head and his hair forms a rough halo, gold highlights shimmering as he talks animatedly. His face has filled out again, and the soft light against his pale skin makes him look like he’s glowing, eyes turned to liquid gold. He’s wearing a stranger’s shirt that’s too big for him, and as it shifts with his movement Jayce catches a glimpse of his bare chest beneath. Whorls of lavender scar tissue swirl up towards his collarbone as though radiating from a central point.  

He forces his eyes back to the brace, holding it tightly so Viktor doesn’t catch his hands shaking.  

“it seems that the other you was an engineer initially, but changed his focus to biology after the explosion in your apartment for some reason,” Viktor continues, “What I can’t figure out is why--” 

“Maybe he wanted to fix things instead of destroying them,” Jayce interrupts 

He knows he’s said too much as soon as the words have left his mouth. Viktor hesitates, drawing a sharp breath, but pointedly refuses to engage.  

“Perhaps,” he responds, the clipped sharpness of his accent cutting into Jayce’s chest. 

-- 

They’re avoiding the topic. Even surrounded by the evidence of their other selves’ guilt, they’re both still too cowardly to talk about their own. 

Jayce wants to pretend that it doesn’t matter. After all, how are you supposed to rationally discuss the guilt you feel for turning your partner into a demigod? What is the correct sequence of words to apologize for committing necromancy, especially when you aren’t actually sorry? How can he explain that he doesn’t want to go home because the person he had to become to survive there died in that fucking chasm and the person he is now can’t put that other man’s costume back on and just pretend everything is fine? 

But of course it matters, because he is beginning to suspect Viktor would kill himself to get them home and he can’t figure out why.  

— 

The buildings closest to their lab are mostly other academy buildings, but a block or so away residential buildings begin to take over. Jayce finds himself exploring these more often as the scratched marks on the wall of the lab representing their days spent in this Piltover begin to pile up. Viktor doesn’t comment as he slowly spends less and less time in the lab. He suspects they’re falling back into old patterns, but he still can’t find it in himself to sit bathed in the blue light of hextech for more than a few hours a day. It makes his skin itch, like it’s trying to burrow into him. He doesn’t tell Viktor this.  

In one apartment, he finds a carton of cigarettes, which he stores in one of the drawers of the lab building admin desk. He rations them out, smoking one only when the itching feeling of hextech gets bad enough he thinks he might start scratching.  

At least it’s something else to do with his hands.  

He finds new excuses to wander, and new projects to start. He builds a series of snares in the alleys and pathways surrounding their lab so they can have fresh meat, roasting the rabbits he catches over a fire in the academy quad.  

Viktor remarks that the smoke from the fire might attract anyone else who sees it. Jayce knows this, it’s why he carries a kitchen knife at his hip, in a leather sheath he carefully sewed the second week after their arrival. Another project to pass the time until Viktor gets them home.  

His newest goal is to get his old forge up and running so he can shape the last few pieces he needs for Viktor’s brace.  

The other Jayce’s forge he reminds himself, no longer sure if it matters.  

Lighting the forge and building its heat is harder than it's ever been. He chooses a day when his leg isn’t bothering him, slipping out of bed at dawn because he knows it’s an all-day project, but by the time he’s gotten the flames hot enough his whole body is aching and his limp is close to a liability. He forces himself through, letting the constant hum of pain fall into the background as he hammers and shapes the pieces of Viktor’s brace.  

He’ll pay for it later, he knows, likely waking up tomorrow barely able to move. But he’s always been a glutton for punishment, and this place is a buffet.  

****

Viktor is getting tired of not saying anything.  

It was one thing when Jayce was actually being useful, but his ramblings have turned from foraging sessions into scavenger hunts. He’s started bringing back winter clothes just in case they’re stuck here when it starts getting cold.  

Viktor had thought Jayce’s easy agreement to his plans was a survival mechanism, a way to cede choice because it felt overwhelming, but as he watches Jayce excuse himself to wander around Piltover and come back smelling like an ashtray he can’t help but feel he’s missing something.  

Jayce cannot possibly want to stay here. The more they both learn about this place, the more clear it is that their counterparts in this universe are responsible for the state of this Piltover. Viktor has seen references to a sort of arcane disease in some of their notes, but it’s unclear if they unleashed it on purpose or were merely victims of their own stupidity.  

He wonders if anyone thinks the same thing when they read his notes.  

— 

It rains for three days straight and they both stay inside. Viktor barely notices the change in weather, except that it brings Jayce back into the lab for lack of any excuses to wander.  

He copies calculations from the other Jayce’s notebook while Jayce quietly calibrates their most recent attempt at a containment apparatus. It’s the first time he’s stayed in the lab with Viktor for more than an hour or two in weeks and Viktor would be lying if he didn’t feel some vindication as he watches him actually make some progress instead of behaving like a child in detention.  

“Vik, do you think--” Jayce asks, turning from the apparatus only to be struck silent as his gaze falls on the gear Viktor is twirling between his fingers.  

Viktor looks up in time to watch  Jayce disappear into himself, his eyes unfocused and his breath coming in tiny gasps.  

“Jayce?” he asks, setting the gear gently down on the desk. 

Jayce isn’t hearing him. He’s gone wherever he goes when Viktor blows out the candles too fast, wherever his nightmares take him.  

Viktor slips from his chair and approaches the other man, but Jayce doesn’t react as he places his hand on his shoulder. He reaches down and pulls Jayce's hand from his lap, pressing it flush against his own chest and ignoring the odd sensation of callused  fingers over the raised scar tissue there. He slides his other hand against Jayce’s chest, forcing himself to ignore that he’s somehow made the mistake of using his bad hand to touch him.  

“Jayce, I need you to breathe with me,” he instructs.  

“Please,” he begs, both because he can’t bear to see Jayce so gone from himself, and because he’s worried he won’t be able to stand like this for long.  

Viktor’s not certain how long they stay like that, hands on each other’s chests as he whispers and pleads with Jayce to return to him, but at some point Jayce’s breathing slows and he can feel the muscles beneath his hand grow just a bit looser.  

“Jayce?” He asks, looking into the other man’s barely-focused eyes.  

“Sorry,” the other man whispers back, “I’m so sorry.”  

“It’s alright, it’s not—“  

But Jayce is already pulling back, leaving Viktor to catch himself on the desk as his balance is shifted.  

“I need—“ Jayce starts, turning his back before continuing so Viktor can’t see his face. “I need a minute.” 

Viktor waits until he smells cigarette smoke before he goes after Jayce. He finds him sitting at the bottom of the stairs in the foyer, the door to the quad cracked in a futile attempt to reduce the smell.  

“Am I interrupting?”  

Jayce huffs out a harsh laugh, making room for Viktor on the stairs before offering him a cigarette.  

“Eh, I don’t think my body was built for smoking,” he declines, settling down next to Jayce.  

“You sure it’s even the same body?” Jayce asks, an edge to his voice that makes Viktor flinch inwardly.  

No of course not, but I’m still stuck with it aren’t I?  

“I don’t—“ 

“Sorry,” Jayce interrupts, all the harshness bleeding out of his voice, “that’s — an incredibly shitty thing to say” 

“It’s alright,” Viktor replies. 

“It’s really not.” 

Jayce turns to him then, and Viktor is struck by how tired he looks. He knows, intimately, the way scarcity can age a body, but he’s always shied away from the idea that Jayce, perfect beautiful Jayce, could ever be weathered by circumstance. Now, Viktor wonders when he got such deep crows feet and how his eyes gained so much sorrow.  

His fault again, always  

“I wonder about myself sometimes,” Jayce continues, “if there’s really any of me left or if I’m just scraps being held together by magic” 

Jayce holds his hand out between them then, and Viktor’s eyes trace the scars across his knuckles. Every scarred-over nick on his fingers has its own webbed arcane halo, as though Jayce bled magic from every cut. They’re all healed now, ghostly white against his brown skin, but Viktor can still imagine the sickly kaleidoscope of arcane colors pulsing through them. He holds out his own hand, his bad hand, flexing his fingers so the shards of metal at his knuckles reflect the grey light from outside.  

“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought it too,” he tells Jayce.  

Jayce doesn’t respond, instead pulling Viktor’s hand into his lap and running his thumb in gentle strokes over Viktor’s knuckles, seemingly unbothered by the sensation of metal melded to flesh.They both sit, watching the rain pour down through the open door as Jayce finishes his cigarette and puts it out against the marble stairs, as though the building where they worked for seven years is only good for being an ashtray. Viktor isn’t sure he can argue otherwise.  

“I don’t think I can help you anymore,” Jayce says, “with the anomaly.” 

“Alright,” Viktor responds, hating the sound of that word from his lips.  

“I’m sorry, I know you want to go home, I just— I can feel it when I’m in there with you, like it’s trying to bore into my skin.” 

Jayce is once again refusing to make eye contact, but his thumb is still making those tiny strokes across Viktor’s knuckles and the absurdity of it hits him like a freight train. Jayce is somehow, despite all the things that Viktor has done, still the one comforting him. Even now, covered in permanent evidence of Viktor’s guilt, he’s still the one apologizing.  

“I don’t mind working alone,” Viktor lies. “Would it help if we moved the apparatus into a different lab?” 

“I— yeah, I think that would be better” Jayce responds.  

“I’ll need your help to lift it, though” Viktor tells him, ignoring all the other things he wishes he could put into words.  

“Alright,” Jayce answers, “but— later, ok?” 

“Alright,” Viktor says, and it feels almost true.   

They sit for a long time, Jayce tracing his thumb over Viktor’s knuckles until the rain slows down to a drizzle and Jayce wanders outside to check his snares.  

— 

Viktor turns the conversation on the stairs over and over in his head. He thinks about the feeling of Jayce’s thumb across his knuckles as he copies calculations and rune sequences. He feels the weight of Jayce’s words sink into his chest as he welds together strips of metal and tries to tell himself the tight feeling around his heart is just the fumes from the torch.  

I know you want to go home  

Viktor had never asked Jayce if he wanted to go home, and he realizes now that he may have miscalculated badly.  

He remembers the spidery white scarring across Jayce’s hand, and thinks of the first time he saw the thin scars across Jayce’s chest.  

“Please, don’t tell anyone”  

He’d caught Jayce changing before an investor meeting, both of them having gotten too comfortable after three days straight in the lab. The look of terror in Jayce’s eyes had been more of a shock to Viktor than the scars. 

He knew that Piltover was less permissive than Zaun, had learned the secret second language of reference that men like him used to ensure the safety of their not-quite-illegal activities, but he had never considered that someone as well-connected as Jayce would need to be afraid. He had promised secrecy without having to think. Months later, on a night when Jayce had drunk a bit too much and Viktor had drunk just enough to be brave he had asked.  

“It would ruin Hextech,”  Jayce had explained.  

“It’s not illegal,” he had anxiously clarified, as if Viktor of all people would care. "But if people found out that the creator of Hextech was a crazy person who had mutilated his body, it wouldn’t matter how much good we could do,” Jayce continued, voice bitter despite his inebriation, “No one would support it.”  

He had never brought it up again but, as he had watched Jayce at galas and investor meetings, he had begun to realize how much it weighed on him. He had watched how Jayce modulated every aspect of himself to be appealing in a way that was always above reproach; how he wore the man Piltover expected him to be like a perfectly tailored coat, cutting off pieces of himself when they wouldn’t fit; how he let that perfect mask slip sometimes late at night in the lab and let Viktor see his true face, as dazzling as the sun after a storm.  

He never once considered telling Jayce to stop, to step back from the razor's edge his carefully constructed mask let him walk. Viktor knew the gradual, wearing violence of hiding. He endured it daily as he smoothed out the edges of his accent and tried to hide his limp. Who was he to tell Jayce not to cut himself to pieces for Piltover’s approval? At least Jayce’s camouflage worked better than his .  

That line of reasoning feels foreign to him now, without the weight of Piltover’s gaze to pin him in place like some trapped animal. He realizes bitterly that out of the two of them he’s the only one who’s actually gone crazy and mutilated his body and he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

— 

Viktor’s not making progress. He’s honestly not sure he could even achieve the creation of an anomaly if he wanted to. Without electricity, it would require him to use the gem as a power source while simultaneously altering its fundamental state and guiding it through the rune sequence necessary for inter dimensional travel. 

It would also require him to want it to work, and his hold on the desire to return Jayce to where he belongs is slipping.   

Instead he finds himself surrounded by notes, his and his other self’s blending together into meaningless piles, considering whether he should ask Jayce for help or for permission to give up. He buries his head in his hands.  

“Am I interrupting?”  

It’s Viktor’s turn to laugh. It comes out like a bark, but he swallows it as he turns in his chair and finds Jayce holding the leg brace he’s been constructing.  

The late afternoon sun bathes him in gold, creating dazzling highlights in his eyes and turning his skin to glowing copper. He’s as radiant as that first night, when they were both bathed in Hextech blue. His hair frames his face in the soft shag of a poorly grown out undercut and his beard could stand to be trimmed. He’s wearing clothes that aren’t his, stained with sweat and machine oil. Still, Viktor wonders why it was him who ascended to near godhood when Jayce is so clearly the better candidate.   

“I was hoping I could check the fit,” Jayce continues, indicating the brace when Viktor fails to respond. 

“Of course,” he responds awkwardly, “is this alright?”  

Viktor turns his body so he’s facing Jayce fully, stretching his right leg out toward the other man. Jayce drops gently to his knees before him, failing to hide his grimace as lands awkwardly on his bad leg. Viktor watches, feeling naked despite the layer of fabric between them, as Jayce slides the brace over his clothed leg and carefully adjusts the straps. He fails to hide his own grimace when Jayce tightens the brace enough to fully correct the twist of his leg.  

“You good?” Jayce asks, glancing up at Viktor through his lashes.  

“Yes,” Viktor croaks out,”it just feels awkward after having it twisted for so long. I’ve gotten used to it, I suppose” 

“Honestly, I feel bad for how long this took,” Jayce says, gently adjusting the way Viktor’s foot sits in the brace.  

“Don’t, it's not that bad.” 

Jayce gives him a look that says don’t lie to me, I know your tells.  

“It’s not,” he protests, “most of my issues before came from muscle weakness, but it doesn’t feel the same now. The leg doesn't feel nearly as weak, it’s simply twisted.” 

“Hmm,” Jayce responds, returning his attention to the brace “do you think that means it won’t get worse?”  

He’s hiding his face again, using adjusting the brace as an excuse, but Viktor can hear the worry in his voice.  

“I’m not sure,” he tells Jayce gently, “it feels a bit like my body was approximated when we were sent here. As though the arcane gave me what it thought my body should be but didn’t understand the complexity of my health issues.” 

Jayce’s eyes snap to his then and he realizes he’s said too much when he feels the tremor in the other man’s hand against his calf. He’s tempted to ignore it, to let them both pretend this is just another scientific discussion, but he’s tired of falling into old habits. Viktor reaches out and pulls Jayce’s trembling hand into his lap, careful not to overbalance him. He runs his thumb across his scarred knuckles, letting the slow circles of contact soothe them both.  

“I’m sorry,” Jayce says after a moment, “I just keep making things worse don’t I?” 

Gods, Viktor wants to shake him , or gather him into his arms, he can’t tell.  

“How are you making things worse?” He asks instead, “by making me a leg brace? By finding us clothes and food? By being here, despite me trying to kill you?” 

Jayce flinches at that last question, but doesn’t pull his hand back.  

“You’re just working so hard to get us home and I’m useless,” he responds, turning his face away “you want this so badly and I feel like I’m just wasting your time.” 

“You are not wasting my time,” he tells Jayce, almost laughing at the absurdity. “To be honest with you, I wasn’t getting anywhere with the anomaly anyway. I’m not sure it can be done.” 

The admission feels like a weight off his shoulders, and a hot coal he’s placed into Jayce’s hand all at once.  

“Would it help to take a break?” Jayce asks, giving no indication that Viktor’s admission weighs on him.  

“What did you have in mind?” 

— 

What Jayce had in mind was beating Viktor six times in a row at poker. The bastard had always been good at the game, trained through years of cutthroat games with Caitlyn Kiramman. He had found a pack of cards somewhere in his ramblings and had apparently been waiting to tempt Viktor into playing with him. Playing cards in their old lab feels like the past in a way that some part of Viktor warns must be dangerous. He decides he doesn’t care.   

“Thank you,” Jayce says later, when they’re lying in bed together.  

“For what?” 

“For everything, I had fun today.” 

Viktor doesn’t know how to respond to that, or how to address the return of the tightness in his chest.

When Jayce wakes them both up with his nightmares, Viktor waits as he goes through his ritual of apologies and curling in upon himself. Then, slowly because he wants to give him time to refuse, he turns and curls around Jayce, wrapping his arms around his shuddering form.  

“Is this alright?” He whispers.  

“Please,” Jayce responds.  

****

Jayce can tell when Viktor is thinking too hard about something. There’s a certain distracted energy that he exudes, despite all his supposed aloofness. Something shifted between them, in that conversation on the stairs, and Jayce has been waiting for his partner to force a conversation about it for days.  

When he finally does so, it’s with a pair of scissors.  

“I want a haircut,” Viktor tells him, setting  the scissors on the table beside him as he attempts to darn a sock.  

It’s transparent, even to Jayce, but who is he to argue? He sets down his sock as Viktor settles himself into a seat. Viktor’s hair is beautiful, falling in auburn waves almost to his shoulders. Jayce runs his fingers through it, enjoying the feeling of the silken strands against his skin.  

“Any preference on the style?” he asks Viktor.  

“I trust you,” he responds.  

You really shouldn’t , Jayce thinks as he cuts the first lock of hair. He’s going slow, cutting in small sections to avoid taking too much off at once. There’s only the two of them here to see it, but he still wouldn’t forgive himself if he mangled Viktor’s hair.  

“Jayce,” Viktor asks, breaking the silence,“why don’t you want to go home?” 

Jayce hesitates on his next cut.  

“You sure you want to have this conversation while I’m holding scissors near your neck?”  

Viktor just chuckles at the implication.  

“If you wanted me dead,” he tells Jayce, turning to meet his eyes, “I would be. You’ve proven that.” 

Viktor turns around again, leaving Jayce to reconcile with the sudden cold feeling of guilt between his ribs. 

He hesitates, but realizes then they’re having this conversation over a haircut because the other man has noticed his tendency to hide his face. Despite the bite in his words, Viktor is still being gentle with him.  

“I don’t want to go home because there isn’t anything there for me anymore,” he tells Viktor, as he begins carefully cutting his hair again.  

It’s half the truth, but it’s more than he wants to admit.  

“What about your mother?” Viktor asks, “Caitlyn? Mel?”  

“They all think I’m dead,” he responds, “it’s better this way.” 

“Why?” 

Jayce considers not answering. He could simply finish the haircut in silence and let them both continue not addressing the necromantic elephant in the room. But it’s Viktor asking, and he’s never been good at refusing him.  

“I did a lot of things I won’t be forgiven for, after you—“ Jayce forces himself to continue, “after you died.” 

He can feel Viktor’s flinch at the words, but when he doesn’t comment Jayce forces himself to continue.  

“When I told you I abandoned Piltover to bring you back I wasn’t lying,” he explains. “It turns out that even councilors aren’t immune to being investigated for performing necromancy if they fail to show up to council meetings in the middle of a war.” 

The silence between them is heavy but Viktor, always the braver of the two, tries to break it 

“Jayce—“ he starts 

“There’s other things,” Jayce interrupts 

He’s suddenly overwhelmed with the need for Viktor to understand exactly what sort of person he is, as though if he can just admit everything Viktor will understand.  

“I killed a kid,” he continues, “in that stupid raid in Zaun. They’ll probably execute me for that if we go back. It was an accident but I—“ 

“Jayce!” Viktor interrupts him, rising from his chair and wrapping his slim hand around Jayce’s wrist  

He realizes then that he’s shaking.  

Gently, as though Jayce is a spooked animal, Viktor pulls the scissors from his fingers. He puts them down carefully on the table. He’s using the chair in place of his cane, but he reaches for Jayce with his other hand, holding his fingers tightly and rubbing gentle circles against the top of his hand.  

“If you didn’t want to go back,” Viktor asks, his voice a harsh whisper, “why didn’t you tell me?” 

“You wanted to go back so badly, I just—“ he forces a rough sigh, letting go of breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “You wanted to go back so I agreed, because it was what you wanted .” 

“Jayce,” Viktor says gently,“you are an idiot.” 

Jayce stares at him.  

“I wanted to go back because I wanted you to be happy,” Viktor explains, his golden gaze sharp as he stares into Jayce’s eyes. 

“Piltover will execute me,” he continues, when Jayce doesn’t respond. “Were you really going to let me die rather than stopping me?”

There’s a strange Déjà vu to their conversation and Jayce realizes suddenly that it feels like their conversation at the drainpipe, and their conversation when Viktor left after awakening from his resurrection. It feels like every conversation they’ve had since Viktor tried to go gently into the grave and Jayce refused to let him. Despite all that’s happened, they’re still saying the same things, still orbiting each other with the same ferocious gravity, pulling themselves to pieces trying to fill each other’s needs.

“We just keep doing the same wrong thing, don’t we?” He asks, a rough laugh cracking from his lips as he leans forward and rests his forehead against Viktor’s, gripping the chair for support as he realizes he too is unbalanced.  

They stay like that for what feels like an hour but can’t be more than a few minutes, Viktor still rubbing those tiny circles into his hand. Jayce wishes that this could be like their time in the arcane, that they could pour their individual selves into each other and each fix all the spiralling cracks in the other. He hates the desire, knowing how much it sounds like the Herald’s philosophy, but he can’t help but want to let Viktor fix everything wrong with him. 

Jayce’s leg can’t support their position, and he’s the first to break contact.

“Sorry—“ he whispers, “my leg.” 

Viktor huffs a laugh at that, easing himself back into the chair.  

“Do you think you can still finish my haircut, or are you too much of a cripple?” He asks, a smile tugging at his lips despite the wetness in his golden eyes.  

Jayce grins and awkwardly pulls another chair over so he can sit behind Viktor.  

“Turn around,” he instructs. 

Chapter Text

Viktor’s hair is uneven and a bit shorter than he might have preferred, but when he looks in the cracked mirror of the lab bathroom he can almost see himself again. He realizes suddenly that he looks his age. Not the unending tired look of a youth spent chasing impossible dreams or the haggard look of sickness, but actually his age. He can’t remember anymore if he’s 33 or 34, but he looks like a man in his thirties who’s not trying to outrun death and that’s enough. Jayce teased him after finding a few strands of silver hair during his haircut, and Viktor tries to find them now, to confirm with his own eyes that he’s lived to see himself begin to grow old.  

In the end, there’s only one silver hair that he can see, just above his left temple. The shine of the silver highlight in the waning light from the bathroom window feels like a celebration and an accusation all at once. Here he is, a dying man made whole, and it only cost the lives of half of Piltover. He knows that’s an overestimation, but can’t bring himself to be exact. One would be too many, no matter how brightly his silver hair shines. 

He can’t help but feel that he owes Jayce more than just his consent to remain here. Jayce has had his reckoning, has spilled enough of his own sins that Viktor now knows he’s not the only one with blood on his hands, but he still worries that the other man doesn’t fully grasp the horror of what he became. Some part of his ruminations must show on his face when he returns from the bathroom, because Jayce looks up from the sock he’s darning and tries to smooth out the edges of his hurt with small talk as easily as breathing. 

“How do you like it?” he asks, indicating Viktor’s hair and pasting a smile onto his face. 

“You’re not quite a professional barber,” Viktor responds, “but it will suffice.”

his own lips tug upwards despite himself as Jayce huffs out a laugh. 

“Well at least there’s no one but me to see it,” Jayce says, turning back to his sock with half a smile still on his face.

Viktor lets Jayce continue his project, feeling at a loss for what to do with himself. His nightly ritual of poring over their other selves’ research seems pointless now that Jayce has made it clear he doesn’t want to go home. Viktor could find a project of his own, he knows, but he feels too unsettled to try and think of what might be worth working on. If they’re going to stay here there are dozens of things they will need to improve in order to make the lab truly livable. Unless they want to move somewhere else. 

He realizes that they’ve never discussed it, that they’ve simply chosen to stay in this building out of some misplaced sense of familiarity. Some part of him wonders if that’s why Jayce has remained with him as well, if he’s seeking comfort in the familiar and has forgotten exactly how far Viktor’s time as the Herald carried him from the man Jayce knew. 

He must still be telegraphing his unease, because he finds himself presented with the sock Jayce was repairing. 

“Do you know how to darn a sock?” he asks, his eyes searching Viktor’s for something more than mending knowledge. 

“I think I can manage” Viktor replies, thinking of his early days at the academy when his socks were nothing but holes. 

“We can talk about it, if you want,” Jayce says, pulling another sock to mend from the pile. 

He turns his face to his work as though the sock in his hands is the only thing in the world. It’s a mirror of their conversation earlier, an offer so blatant even Viktor can’t refuse. 

“I’m not–” he starts, uncertain how to put what he is into words

Jayce waits, his gaze never leaving his sock. 

“You said you wouldn’t be forgiven for the things you did, after my death,” he begins again, forcing calm into his voice, “l don’t understand how you can forgive me for the things I did either.”

It’s a simple sentence, but it feels like he’s pulled his chest open, unspooling its contents like tangled thread. Jayce looks at him, hesitating until the silence is a taut wire between them. 

“Vik, that wasn’t you,” he says, voice gentle. “The Hexcore—“

“Magic is a force, Jayce,” Viktor responds, “it can corrupt, but it doesn’t have a will. It was always me, my will, my choice. I did those things!”

He’s nearly shouting, he realizes, as though there’s a volume he can raise his voice to that will make Jayce understand. Jayce puts his sock down on the table, looking at Viktor with an intensity that hurts. 

“It was never your choice,” Jayce tells him, voice fierce, “how could it be, after I put that thing inside of you?”

Jayce comes around the table to stand beside Viktor, resting his hand on his shoulder, his thumb rubbing gentle circles just above the collarbone. He's looking at Viktor with those impossibly big eyes, as though begging him to believe that he’s worthy of touch. It feels like blasphemy to Viktor, so he says the one thing he knows will make Jayce recoil. 

“I killed Sky.”

He doesn’t miss the subtle twitch of Jayce’s fingers against his shoulder. 

“I know,” he responds, voice still impossibly gentle, “I found her clothes in the lab.”

Viktor stares up at him. 

“You weren’t exactly good at hiding them, Vik,” Jayce continues, “I had to burn them in the incinerator.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He whispers. 

“I didn’t think it mattered,” Jayce responds, a hard sigh leaving his lips. “Honestly, I assumed you were high out of your mind on Shimmer. I know you wouldn’t have done it intentionally.”

“Jayce—“ he begins, not sure how to begin to express that intention doesn’t matter when someone dies as a result of your actions. 

“I had already killed one innocent person,” Jayce interrupts, “so what did it matter if I covered up another death?”

The tightness in Viktor’s throat makes him struggle to respond. All this time he had assumed Jayce had absolved him of his sins by convincing himself Viktor wasn’t in control. He had never considered that Jayce might understand that Viktor was responsible and still forgive him anyway. The knowledge feels like a weapon, as if Jayce has handed him a knife he could drive into his chest at any time with the promise of forgiveness even then. 

“Would you have gone to prison for me, if you were caught?” He asks finally, his voice harsh, “or let yourself be executed, even knowing what I had become?” 

“Does it matter?” Jayce asks. “In the end, I would do anything not to see you hurt. Even if it meant I was hurt instead.”

“You’re insane,” Viktor says,“that is the definition of insanity.”

“Probably,” Jayce responds.

“Do you truly want to stay here, even knowing how hard it will be?” He asks, needing desperately to be certain. “We could die here, and no one would know.”

“Better than watching you die if we go back,” Jayce responds, still rubbing those gentle circles into Viktor’s shoulder. 

“There are other places in our own world besides Piltover,” he points out.

“I don’t want to look over my shoulder every day wondering when we’ll get caught,” Jayce says, his voice dropping to a whisper as he continues, “and I don’t want to go through the anomaly again.”

Viktor very carefully does not react, but Jayce could always read him too well and the stuttered flinch of his fingers against Viktor’s shoulder signals his distress before he opens his mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” Jayce whispers.

“Don’t—,” Viktor replies fiercely, bringing his hand to rest over Jayce’s “you of all people shouldn’t apologize.”

Jayce hesitates, clearly fighting with his urge to argue. 

“Alright, then we’re staying?” He asks finally.

“We’re staying,” Viktor confirms, a tight smile tugging at his lips as he looks up into Jayce’s amber eyes. 

—

They settle into a new routine, slowly rewriting their old habits as they realize how much work they need to do to truly survive in this world. Viktor finds himself repeatedly discovering all the ways Jayce has already been working to ensure their survival while he’s been locked in the lab. He looks around at their stock of canned food, their clothes, their rainwater collection system, and their somewhat-functional kitchen with its propane burner and feels a strange mix of guilt and gratitude. 

They start a garden, creating raised beds on the quad and carting higher quality dirt from the gardens of Piltover’s elite to grow seeds Jayce found in the botany lab. It’s late in spring, so they choose hardier fall vegetables in the hope that they’ll be able to survive the winter on pumpkins, kale, and carrots in addition to the rabbits Jayce catches in his snares. Viktor listens as Jayce explains the smokehouse he wants to build, in order to better preserve the meat, and realizes it’s the first time the other man has been excited about creating something new since they’ve arrived. 

He doesn’t discuss the Hexgem with Jayce, leaving the lab where they store it closed and almost forgotten. The apparatus can hold it indefinitely with little risk, and he doesn’t want to break the comfort they’ve both found in their changing routine by bringing it up. He keeps wondering when they’ll reach a breaking point, when Jayce will finally realize what he’s gotten himself into, but it never seems to come.

Instead, they only seem to grow more entangled in a way that both terrifies and elates him. When Jayce wakes from his nightmares he seeks Viktor out now, curling around him like a vine seeking the sun. Viktor lets himself melt into the touch, and tries not to worry about how good it feels when he wakes up still intertwined with Jayce. 

—

He’s disappointed when he wakes one morning to an empty bed, but he can’t help but smile when he hears Jayce in the lab, the sound of him swearing and the thumping of something onto the table indicating that he’s likely gotten some project underway. When he comes out of the supply closet, eyes still bleary with sleep, he finds that Jayce has brought a scale in from another lab and is using it to weigh the propane tank they use for cooking. 

Viktor watches as he scribbles a quick bit of math on a spare scrap of paper, then weighs a different propane tank. Jayce frowns, forehead furrowed as he does some more quick calculations. 

“28 percent,” he says to Viktor, in lieu of greeting. 

“Is that all we have?” Viktor asks, putting together the pieces of Jayce’s meaning despite his sleepiness. 

“This is the last one,” Jayce confirms, tapping the side of the first tank he weighed, “the other one’s empty, for comparison.” 

“And there are no more in the other lab buildings?” Viktor asks, picking up the bowl of oatmeal and canned peaches that Jayce pushes towards him. 

“I’ve looked in all the other labs in this section of the academy,” Jayce answers, “We can check the freshman labs but I wouldn’t hold out hope.”

He places the quarter-full propane tank back on the floor, hooking it to the gas line on their burner. Without propane, they’ll have to boil all their water and cook all their food outside on the quad. It will mean carrying more things up the stairs, a task which Viktor isn’t suited to and which Jayce, despite how much he tries to hide it, can’t manage for long without pain. 

“Do you want me to come with you?” he asks, not missing the we in Jayce’s statement.

Viktor is aware that he hasn’t strayed far from the lab since their arrival. He hadn’t wanted to waste time that could be spent trying to send them home, but he also hadn’t considered that Jayce had missed his presence, that the other man might have preferred not to wander the streets of this abandoned Piltover alone. 

The smile Jayce gives him at the suggestion is all sunshine, his amber eyes shining and the gap in his teeth poking out from beneath his upper lip. It does something dangerous to Viktor’s chest.

“I was hoping you would,” he replies, “there’s somewhere I want to take you first.”

And who is Viktor to refuse an offer like that? 

–-

It’s eerie, walking through Piltover without another living soul except for Jayce at his side. He keeps thinking that something like an epidemic should have left more of a mark on the city, that there should be vast burned stretches of buildings or at the very least signs of a quarantine, but the city seems largely unharmed except for the obvious signs of human flight. Some of the buildings have their own arcane scars, he realizes, but like his and Jayce’s they’re white and dormant rather than the oozing rainbow of active magic. Clearly whatever happened here was contained somehow, the corruption arrested before it could infect everything. If that’s true, Viktor wonders why no one has returned.

Jayce stops in front of a shop with a silhouette of a boot in cracking paint on the window.

“A shoe store?” Viktor asks.

“A boot store,” Jayce confirms, grinning as he approaches the door. “You need something better than those if you’re going to wander around the city with me.” 

Jayce gestures at his shoes and Viktor looks down at his wingtips.They’re comfortable, and his other self at least did him the favor of leaving his insoles inside, but Jayce is right, they’re not suited for wandering. To be fair, Viktor isn’t really suited for it either, he just doesn’t know how to refuse Jayce. 

Unlike the lab, the owner of the boot shop was apparently concerned about his wares, as Jayce has to break the glass in the door to unlock it. Inside, boots still sit on their carefully-arranged displays as though not a moment has passed. Viktor hesitates at the threshold, but Jayce moves through the shop as though this is completely normal and Viktor supposes for him it is. It feels wrong to be here, as though they’re trespassing, but the owner of the shop is long since gone and Viktor lets himself be distracted from his ruminations when Jayce returns from sorting through the boots on display and presents Viktor with a pair. 

“Here, try these on,” he says, indicating a stool set near the shop counter for this purpose. 

Viktor sits, still vaguely unsettled by the oddness of the situation, and begins the process of unbuckling his brace as Jayce hovers above him, exuding nervous energy. 

“Are you going to stand there the whole time?” He asks, glancing up at the other man.

“Yeah I-I’ll just,” Jayce mumbles, making his way behind the shop counter and rummaging through the cobbler’s supplies. 

Viktor watches him for a moment, noting the casual way he pockets things he thinks they’ll need. It strikes him that Jayce truly is comfortable living here. Despite the utter weirdness of this Piltover there’s a sense of openness to Jayce that he never saw back in their own. He was always closed off in some way, keeping the world at arm’s length to ensure it didn’t see through him. Now his mask, like Viktor’s, has cracked and shattered and the man underneath shines through in ways that are surprising and beautiful to watch. 

He finishes the task of removing his brace and shoes and tries on the boots Jayce picked out. They’re comfortable, made of a soft brown leather that feels more expensive than something he ever would have bought in his previous life. They’re also too wide for his brace. He sits up, looking for Jayce, only to discover he’s disappeared into the shop’s back room. 

“Jayce,” Viktor calls, “I’m not sure this is going to work, these are too big for the brace.”

“It ratchets,” Jayce calls back, emerging from the back room with a pair of scissors and a cone of thick thread in his hands. 

“What do you mean it ratchets?” he responds, baffled. 

“It ratchets,” Jayce repeats, “here, let me show you.”

Jayce picks his brace up, turning it so Viktor can see the inside. He uses his thumbnail to turn a tiny gear inset in the side of the toe piece and Viktor watches as the two halves of it widen, still connected by several strips of metal built into the sole of the brace. It’s intricate, perfectly engineered in a way that is so classically Jayce it feels for a moment like they’re back home and he’s showing Viktor a new prototype he’s made, the proud smirk on his face washes Viktor in a nostalgia that is somehow untainted by shame. 

Viktor’s only made aware that he’s staring when Jayce meets his eyes, and from the heat he feels in his cheeks he suspects his face is betraying him. 

“It ratchets,” he repeats, utterly unable to find any other words. 

—

Viktor lets Jayce lead as they cross the academy quarter to the undergraduate laboratories. He pretends it’s because he’s slower with his new boots, but the truth is he doesn’t want Jayce to see his face because he’s afraid of what’s written there. He was always good at hiding his emotions, creating a perfect mask of half-smiles and competent mockery to keep everyone just far enough away. Everyone but Jayce. 

No matter what Viktor may have wanted, he and Jayce had been two celestial bodies locked in orbit, destined never to touch. It would ruin Hextech, Jayce had said when Viktor discovered his scars, and Viktor knew without having to ask that the sentiment extended to anything that could ever happen between them. He had never been bitter, had gently shelved his desire along with things like the desire to be treated with respect by their sponsors or the ability to walk properly as those had seemed just as attainable. 

But he had walked properly, for however short a time, and he had been feared and respected by all of Piltover for a time too, and Jayce had paid the price in every conceivable way for both those achievements. He remembers the way Jayce had looked at the Hexgem, like its mere presence was poison, and reminds himself that he's tainted too. The metal embedded in his arcane-tinted hand glints in the sun like an accusation, a reminder that Jayce’s forgiveness can’t erase his actions. A reminder that his partner is still untouchable, that their orbits are still fixed.

Jayce leads them into the first laboratory building and Viktor winces in sympathy as he watches the other man climb the stairs. The walk from their lab to the boot shop to this side of campus was short and even Viktor isn’t in much pain despite wearing new shoes, but he suspects Jayce has neglected maintaining his brace and his leg as he watches the other man walk. It’s not just the way he limps, but the way his entire body moves to compensate that worries Viktor. His hips and shoulders twist awkwardly as he generates momentum, and Viktor’s almost certain Jayce is stressing those joints to avoid stressing his bad leg. 

His brace was always an improvised device, fashioned from the remains of his broken hammer, but there’s been plenty of time for him to improve it since their arrival here and he hasn’t. Viktor’s hardly surprised, Jayce was always better at fixing other people’s problems, but the scientist in him sees an opportunity and the part of him that wants to make Jayce happy greedily joins in. He’s already considering improvements such as adding a lift to compensate for the different heights of Jayce’s legs and a mechanism to better control the position of his knee when Jayce pulls up short ahead of him. 

“Shit,” Viktor hears him whisper. 

He peers around Jayce’s broad shoulders to see the cause of his reaction. 

There’s another body. Like the one in their lab, the skin has turned a deep purple, with webbed arcane marks spreading across its flesh. Unlike the one in their lab, the marks don’t stop at the body but spread in white arcs over the floor and the walls as though whatever is wrong with it is spreading. Viktor feels panic rise in his chest, his heartbeat so loud in his own ears he can’t hear anything else. Jayce reaches out for him, turning from the body and blocking his view as he wraps his hands around Viktor’s upper arms. 

“It’s alright,” he says, his voice breaking through Viktor’s panic as he rubs gentle circles against his arms. 

“I’m sorry,” Viktor responds, hating how far away his voice sounds. 

“It’s ok, we can try another—,” Jayce begins.

“No,” Viktor whispers, “no, I need to do this.”

“Vik—“ Jayce starts. 

“Jayce, how many of these bodies have you found since we got here?” Viktor asks, cutting him off. 

“I don’t—“ he sighs “a few.”

Viktor takes a breath and forces it out, willing his heart rate down. 

“Enough that you weren’t surprised to find this one,” He replies. “Enough we will probably find more.”

It’s not a question. He can read the truth on Jayce’s face. 

“Alright,” Jayce responds finally, “alright.”

It’s become their mantra, and Viktor hates it more than anything at this moment. 

Jayce takes his hand, pulling him along the edge of the wall and past the body. He keeps swivelling his head to look back, as though Viktor will shatter like glass if Jayce can’t confirm he’s there. 

Up close, this body is much the same as the other one, just a desiccated deep-purple husk. The arcane webbing on the other body had still maintained some of its sickly rainbow shimmer, and Viktor realizes with a remote clarity that the Hexgem must have been maintaining its connection to the arcane. It’s distantly fascinating, and he hates how his mind begins turning over the mechanism behind it as Jayce leads him past, applying his own knowledge of Hextech and the information he’s gleaned from their counterparts’ research. 

“You alright?” Jayce asks, after they’ve turned a corner and lost sight of the body. 

Viktor nods, and he finds that it’s not entirely a lie. There’s still panic, it crowds his lungs and makes his breaths shallow, but it’s not the all encompassing terror that filled him when he found the first body. He can’t tell if that’s a good sign, or a sign that he’s letting the horror of his crimes fade into the background.

A part of him feels that the horror is necessary, that if he can just let it wash over him enough he’ll eventually be cleansed of whatever broken parts of himself made him into a monster. It’s only when he looks at Jayce, watching him limp from cupboard to cupboard searching for the propane tanks that feed the lab burners, that he understands the uselessness of self destruction. If they’re going to stay here, if they’re going to survive here, he can’t afford to punish himself forever. His partner needs him to be more than a vessel for re-lived guilt.

He watches as Jayce nearly unbalances himself pulling a propane tank from a cupboard and resolves that if he does nothing else for the man he will ensure that Jayce has a brace that supports his leg properly. Maybe their orbits are fixed, but that doesn’t mean he can’t reach out. 

 ****

Jayce wakes up stiff and aching, wishing he could force himself back into oblivion until his body regains some semblance of comfort but knowing that the light in the window and the sound of Viktor tinkering in the lab won’t let him return to sleep. He levers himself out of bed, using the shelving in the supply closet to keep from falling. His leg is unstable, badly knit bones unable to properly support his knee as he fails to find his brace. He has a suspicion that Viktor has decided Jayce is his new project and the thought of it makes something sharp tangle in his gut.

He limps from the supply closet to find Vikor sitting with his brace in pieces at their table, a bowl of half-eaten oatmeal at his elbow and sheets of scribble-covered notebook paper in front of him. It reminds Jayce of the early days of Hextech, and Viktor looks so like himself that the sight of it takes his breath away. For a moment he’s 25 again, and the world hasn’t yet fallen to pieces. They’re just two scientists in a laboratory with the whole world at their feet. He catches himself staring and busies himself with making his own oatmeal. 

“Good morning,” Viktor says, not looking up. 

“Might be a bit better if my partner wasn’t a thief,” Jayce responds, a smile in his voice despite himself. 

“It’s only theft if I don’t intend to return it,” Viktor remarks. “Here, look at this.”

Viktor turns a prototype drawing toward him and Jayce freezes. It’s been so long since he’s seen Viktor work like this. The neat lines and carefully-annotated labels feel like a gut punch as Viktor hands them to him with his hexcore-tinted hand, a reminder that Jayce took so much more from him than just the choice of how to die. 

The design is beautiful, carefully engineered but simple enough that Jayce can easily forge the pieces from materials he can scavenge. It has a lift at the base, to raise his foot, and a much more complicated knee support than his current brace. It looks like a brace for someone who will be wearing it permanently and Jayce flinches inwardly at the thought. 

“It’s–” he begins, desperate not to hurt Viktor’s feelings, “It’s more complicated than my current brace.”

“Your current brace is terrible,” Viktor replies bluntly, taking the prototype drawing back. “It doesn’t accommodate the different lengths of your legs and it doesn’t support your knee at all–”

“I didn’t break my knee,” Jayce interrupts, the words far harsher than he intends. 

“No, but you’re certainly injuring it,” Viktor replies, hurt and confusion at Jayce’s tone flickering across his face before he hides them away. “Jayce, Can you really not tell how bad your limp is?”

He’s facing Jayce now, the prototype and Jayce’s breakfast forgotten as Viktor looks into his eyes. He wants to hide, to turn his face away, but he knows it’s a worse tell than honesty where Viktor is concerned. 

“I know,” Jayce says finally, “I just— I don’t need you to help me.”

“Because you’ll help yourself?” Viktor asks,  gesturing at his bad leg, “as you have obviously been doing so far.” 

“Vik, I’m fine,” he replies, voice falsely even, “I don’t need any of this.”

“Of course not, but what if I want to help you?” Viktor replies, “you said you would do anything not to see me hurt, am I not allowed to say the same?”

“That’s different,” he says, not certain if it is. 

“Well if you have a murder you want me to cover up I will certainly do that as well,” Viktor snipes, caustic humor covering any emotional reaction he might have to referencing Sky, “but for now how about we start with the brace?”

Jayce can’t find an argument that stands up to Viktor promising to cover up a murder for him, and the emotional energy required to untangle his thoughts feels like far too much to muster. 

“Alright,” he says, not missing Viktor’s flinch at the familiar refrain. 

“Alright,” Viktor replies, a sad half-smile on his lips, “give me an hour and I’ll put it back together. I don’t want you accusing me of theft.”

–-

Jayce lets Viktor work. He can feel the intensity of the other man’s focus and knows better than to get in his way. He tries not to shy away from the kindness of Viktor’s intentions, but the thought of being scrutinized and found lacking, even by Viktor, feels like a crushing weight. He thinks of Cassandra Kirammen, reminding him a thousand times over to fix his face as a teenager, to behave  himself, to act like a proper man if you want to be one so badly. He feels eyes on him as he moves through the city, ghosts of his past watching as he finally falters, no longer the Man of Progress. Three decades of creating the perfect mask and now he’s just a man with a limp at the end of the world. 

His body hurts, but without Viktor to keep him company he finds himself at loose ends, so he begins work on the smokehouse. The uncomplicated physical nature of salvaging woods from nearby buildings lets his thoughts settle into the background, calming his frayed nerves. The pain in his joints is constant, exacerbated by sharp movements and heavy lifting, but it too is a comfort, a reminder that he can still push past his limits. That he's strong enough despite the pain. 

The construction of Jayce’s brace goes much faster than his construction of Viktor’s, aided by the single-mindedness of his partner. They trade responsibilities, with Viktor tending the garden and checking Jayce’s snares as Jayce works in the forge and Jayce searching for more propane and supplies as Viktor completes the construction of the brace. It feels strange to be in lock-step again, working in sync as though they’re still partners in Hextech instead of two men who almost ended the world. Jayce wishes they could be focusing on anything other than fixing him but at least he can’t complain about the company. 

He’s well aware that he’s terrible company, that his discomfort at the process only makes things more awkward between them as he snaps or shuts down anytime Viktor wants to discuss the brace, fraying the edges of both their patience. 

-–

He sits at their table and lets Viktor measure his leg, long fingers wrapping strips of cloth around his calf and thigh in place of measuring tape.

“You could consider a cane, you know,” Viktor says as he compares the strips of cloth to the pieces of Jayce’s brace, carefully not looking at Jayce. “It would help with your balance.”

“My balance is fine,” Jayce responds, turning back to the hinges he’s making for the door of his smokehouse. 

“Is that why you wake up in pain every day?” Viktor asks, frustration seeping into his voice despite his obvious attempts to keep it light. 

“Oh, because you never wake up in pain?” Jayce snipes back, voice raised, aware that he’s pushing too hard but unable to pull back. 

“I have metal in my spine you asshole!” Viktor replies, matching Jayce’s volume as his control finally frays enough to snap. “I have a degenerative disease and I have no idea if it will get worse. You have an injury, one that healed badly, yes, but there are things you can do to reduce its effects and I can’t figure out why you’re not doing them.”

Jayce hasn’t seen Viktor so angry since the day the council suggested they turn Hextech into a weapon, but that had been a righteous fury, this is something else and his frustration at Jayce feels almost like a reward, like proof that Jayce is still good enough at something to get a reaction out of him. Jayce knows he’s picking at the scab of their shared wound, but enjoys the sight of blood despite the chance of scarring. 

“I told you, I’m fine,” he responds, voice ragged despite his efforts at calm. 

“You are a terrible liar Jayce Talis,” Viktor says, frustration still biting at the edges of his voice as he struggles to keep it level. 

He can’t bring himself to respond as Viktor abandons Jayce’s brace and comes around the table. He’s forgotten his cane, and he’s not as steady without it, but Jayce doesn’t reach out. Instead, Viktor wraps one hand around Jayce’s shoulder to balance himself and uses the other to guide Jayce’s chin up, forcing him to meet Viktor’s eyes. 

“Did I do something?” He asks, his voice harsh, “for you to be so willing to hurt yourself?”

His words twist the proverbial knife that’s been in Jayce’s gut for as long as he’s known Viktor. He doesn't have the words to explain what it feels like to be broken after nearly a decade of being molded into the face of progress, but the look of utter hurt on Viktor’s face demands a response. 

“I–” Jayce struggles to explain, “I don’t want to feel weak.”

Viktor lets out a strangled laugh. 

“Do you think I’m weak?” he asks, fingers tightening around Jayce’s chin, “Do you think I would be stronger if I stopped using my brace or my cane?”

“No, but you’re–” Jayce begins, struggling to finish as he looks up into Viktor’s eyes. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to take care of me.”

The admission does something to Viktor’s expression that Jayce can’t read, and the chance to try is taken from him swiftly as Viktor wraps him in a hug, pulling Jayce’s head against his chest. 

“You stupid man,” Viktor says, his chest rumbling against Jayce’s ear, “I want to take care of you.”

—

Jayce waits until they’re lying in bed with the candles blown out to apologize, letting the darkness make him brave rather than afraid for once. 

“I’m sorry for making this so difficult,” he whispers, feeling Viktor stiffen beside him.

“Come here,” Viktor says in response, and Jayce can feel him move to open his arms.

He hesitates, aware that they’ve never let themselves be this close outside the context of Viktor comforting Jayce from his nightmares, that they’re breaking a boundary so well-enforced it’s lasted past even their deaths. 

“Jayce,” Viktor whispers, his gentle prodding enough to crack Jayce’s resolve. 

He curls himself against Viktor, resting his head on his shoulder and letting his arm fall across his chest. He feels Viktor’s arm curl around his shoulders while his other hand smooths Jayce’s hair back from his face. It’s too much, the gentle kindness of this moment, and Jayce feels himself crumble as his tears fall against Viktor’s chest. 

“Do you think we’ll be alright?” He asks, the question encompassing so much more than he can express. 

“Yes, we’ll be alright,” Viktor tells him, still gently running his fingers through Jayce’s hair. 

“What if we can’t find enough food, or what if it doesn’t rain enough for us to have clean water, or if I can’t—“

“Shh, it will be alright,” Viktor interrupts him, and Jayce feels him shift and gently kiss his hair. 

He feels Viktor hesitate after, his breath warm against Jayce’s scalp, as though belatedly realizing what he’s done, but when Jayce doesn’t react he kisses his hair again, letting his lips rest comfortably against his scalp for just a moment before pulling away. 

“It will be alright,” he says again, and Jayce almost believes him. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, rubbing at his wet eyes, “I don’t want to keep falling apart on you.”

“We dissolved into magic and managed to survive,” Viktor says, laughter in his voice, “I think you’re entitled to fall apart.”

“I know, I just— I never used to,” Jayce says, aware that it’s a pitiful explanation.

“True, but you’re a different person now,” Viktor says, as though it’s such a simple thing, “we both are.”

Jayce lets himself relax into the rhythm of Viktor’s breathing and the feeling of Viktor’s fingers against his scalp. Some distant part of him knows he should be worried about the implications of their closeness, but those worries feel like they belong to a dead man. All Jayce can worry about is how best to keep himself alive and whole so that they both survive in this strange place. 

“I’ll wear the brace,” he says, his voice a sleepy murmur as Viktor cards his fingers through his hair, “and I’ll try a cane, but I don’t think I’ll like it.”

“Alright,” Viktor replies, placing another gentle kiss against Jayce’s hair.

Chapter Text

They don't talk about it, which Jayce supposes is the story of their entire relationship. It’s his fault, this time at least. He avoids Viktor, waking early and leaving before he’s awake. He can’t stop remembering the three tiny kisses Viktor gave him, feeling his partner’s breath on his scalp over and over as he pieces together his smokehouse, hinging the walls and digging out a pit beneath it for the coals. He feels eyes on him as he moves through the silent streets of Piltover, feels naked as though the walls themselves can read his thoughts. 

He might be going insane. 

He knows that everything they’ve said and done so far can qualify as acceptable if they simply let it, if neither of them pushes they can be two men comforting each other in an empty city. Maybe they’ve both been too forward, but that can be the end of it. He’s noticed the way Viktor’s touches have changed since they’ve been in this Piltover, how easily the other man reaches out now when he hesitated before. Jayce had always been the one to initiate, and always with just the right kinds of touches that never strayed beyond plausible deniability. A hand on the shoulder, a supporting touch to the lower back, always in the context of celebration or support. Now, their touches have become comfort and kindness, and Viktor initiates as often as Jayce. He worries that Viktor also means them as affection and attraction and Jayce isn’t sure how to respond. 

Attraction is a losing game when your naked body can’t keep the promises it makes clothed. He’d learned that lesson early, his own mother gently explaining the danger of his wants to him at sixteen when he’d finally worked up the courage to ask. You’re not like other people, she’d told him. People will think you’re tricking them if you don’t tell them first, mijo, and they might be angry even if you’re honest. I don’t want to see you hurt. She had pulled him into her arms then, and held him as he tearfully reconciled who he wanted to be with what was safe for people like him. 

For a long time, attraction had felt unobtainable. He had tried, moving in the circles where his body was simply an oddity or even an exotic prize rather than a dangerous subversion, but even among people who found him attractive he could never quite manage to reciprocate in the way they seemed to need. He had been surrounded by beautiful, brilliant people, and while he’d seen their brilliance he had never felt the same spark they all seemed to find so easily. Affection had been easier. He could offer anyone a hand on the shoulder or a hug when needed, but it had never felt like more than friendship or kindness, even with people who so clearly wanted it to be more. 

Mel had been different. She had never pushed him, had simply made her desires clear and let him respond in his own time. He had needed it, had needed her, and with hindsight he realized that she had needed him too. Alone in a city full of sharks, they had been each other’s safe haven. He had felt safe with her, had even thought he loved her, but then Viktor had collapsed and he’d had seven years of unrealized feelings slam into him like a hammer to the leg. He remembers sitting next to Viktor’s hospital bed, the smell of bleach and death in his nostrils, and realizing he would tear the world apart for the man in front of him. 

The problem is, he followed through on the threat. 

Now, they’re no longer partners dancing around something it seems neither of them had the sense to admit earlier. They’re a former demigod and the man who forced him to ascend. Jayce remembers his one glimpse of the raised lavender scars that stretch across Viktor’s chest, it plays on loop in his head just like the feeling of Viktor’s gentle kisses. A condemnation of both his weakness and his strength. I promised you, he’d told Viktor, and even then he’d wished he could have made a different promise far earlier. 

—

He washes the sweat of the day off with a rag made from someone’s shirt, letting the water drip down the emergency shower drain in the lab across the hall. The cold water feels odd over his bad leg, like the sensation is both too close and too far all at once. His eyes trace the ruin of it, the bump of his mis-healed bones beneath his skin and the white striated scars of arcane corruption stretching out from it like concentric rings. He lets his eyes trace the rest of his body, imagining it as Viktor might see it. 

His thighs and stomach have changed shape, despite his lack of calories. He’s grown softer, more curvy, years of intentional change reversed by the slow progress of his own body’s nature. He knows his face is softer too, rounded in ways that makes him feel younger and older all at once as his softer skin makes the lines in his face more obvious. He wonders when he’ll start bleeding again, when he’ll finally consume enough calories for his body to remember all its original functions. It should bother him, but the sheer inevitability of it makes him apathetic. His body has always been a poor vessel, a few more cracks is nothing new. 

Even if he was brave enough, even if he could bridge the gap between who he is and who he was before, how can he offer a body like this to his partner?

—

Viktor is reading one of their counterparts’ journals by candlelight when he finishes bathing, looking like a contented academic despite their circumstances. He’s gotten a sunburn from his time spent in the garden, pink cheeks and nose slowly fading into the ghost of a tan. His moles, usually stark against his pale skin, have been joined by a constellation of freckles that make Jayce’s hand itch to trace their paths along his cheeks. 

He’s definitely going insane. 

“You’re back,” Viktor remarks, his tone making it half a question, as though Jayce might not have returned. 

“I was–” Jayce begins, uncertain how to finish, but certain Viktor knows his tells well enough to spot a lie. 

His partner closes the journal in his hands, placing it down on the table beside him as Jayce watches his face slide into a hard mask. 

“Your brace is complete,” Viktor tells him, mask perfectly serene, “Do you want to try it on?”

“Alright,” Jayce replies, feeling very far from it. 

Viktor rises, and Jayce takes his seat, watching as the other man sits on the floor before him, stretching his bad leg out awkwardly beneath the chair. Viktor’s nimble fingers make quick work of his current brace, letting it slide to the floor with a loud clack. Jayce realizes then that neither of them is speaking, the silence filled with uncertain electricity. 

“Thank you,” he says awkwardly, as Viktor slides the new brace onto his leg. 

He looks up at Jayce then, hesitating with his hands just above Jayce’s knee. His features are still locked in a mask of serenity, but his eyes are resigned, as though he’s done a dozen calculations and they’ve all come out wrong. 

“There is no need to thank me,” Viktor replies finally, his hands resuming their course over his leg. “I wanted to do this.”

“I’m sorry,” Jayce responds, almost instinctual in his desire to somehow make things right between them.

“There is no need to apologize,” Viktor tells him gently, carefully cinching the straps to the brace, “and no need to— to reciprocate or feel any obligation towards me. I apologize, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

It’s a speech, a well-prepared one despite the fact that Viktor still isn’t looking at him. Jayce can’t tell if he’s sparing his own feelings or Jayce’s but either option feels like another twist of the knife.

“You didn’t make me uncomfortable,” Jayce replies gently. 

“Then why are you avoiding me?” Viktor asks, voice almost a whisper. 

Because I’m afraid

Because I’m broken

Because you won’t like me anymore when you see the real me

But these are habitual responses, repeated on command as though Jayce’s body is a rosary and he can pray hard enough for them to stop feeling true. He realizes, as he looks down at the hurt and confusion Viktor struggles to hide, how far his ruminations have carried him from the truth. Viktor isn’t a god, He's just a man with a sunburn trying and failing to figure his way through a second chance he never expected. Despite all evidence his mind presents to the contrary, Jayce is no different. They poured their very souls into each other in the arcane, how is it that they still haven’t figured this out?

Viktor is staring at him, face upturned and still filled with hurt as he waits for a response. Jayce realizes he must be staring too. He reaches out, his palm cradling Viktor’s chin, and runs his thumb over the smattering of freckles on Viktor’s pink cheeks. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he says, as the pink of Viktor’s sunburn turns into a blush that spreads down his neck. “I’m just not used to this sort of— of affection.”

He watches as Viktor slots the information into his existing calculations, his face doing something complicated and painful before settling on an expression that’s half surprise and half sadness. 

“Do you want me to stop?” Viktor asks, his eyes searching Jayce’s as though there’s some secret catch to his admission. 

“No,” Jayce tells him, thumb still gently stroking his cheek, “Just— be patient with me? I’m not the person I used to be.”

“Neither am I,” Viktor says, huffing a laugh as some of the tension leaves his shoulders, “but I like this version of you.”

He reaches for Jayce’s hand, pulling it away from his face and kissing Jayce’s palm. The sensation is electric, as though Jayce has been struck by a live wire. He wants to chase it, but instead Viktor places his hand at the top of his brace. 

“Hold this,” he instructs. 

Jayce obeys, taking Viktor’s change in topic as an end to their unguarded honesty for the moment. He holds the top of the brace steady as Viktor carefully tightens the straps and adjusts the foot to fit over his boot. He notices all the tiny touches that Viktor has added: the more sturdy ratchet system built into the foot, the knee support that gloves his joint tightly to prevent him from twisting it, the latticed metal around his calf designed both to support it and protect it from casual bumping because Viktor has noticed it’s still sensitive. Jayce remembers forging the lattice. He had wondered its purpose, and now that he sees it employed so elegantly, he feels his chest tighten at the sheer amount of care Viktor has put into his brace. Into him. 

“There,” Viktor says, tightening the last strap, “stand up, see how it fits.”

Jayce stands, taking a few experimental steps. The new brace is lighter than his old one, but somehow sturdier. Bending his knee feels like work now, the supports Viktor built in forcing the joint to align properly with each step. The lift feels like an odd weight at the end of his leg, but his balance is far better. He can feel the way the brace changes his gait, forcing him to be more conscious of how he moves while providing far more support than the brace he improvised in the ravine. 

“Thank you, it’s—“ Jayce says, hesitating at the look of worry in Viktor’s eyes, “it’s lovely, Viktor”

He watches as Viktor blushes again, a victory that makes his chest feel like it's full of butterflies. 

“Yes, well I am one of the Founding Fathers of Hextech,” Viktor jokes, his lips stretching into the beginning of a smile. 

“The founding–” Jayce laughs at the affectation, “I’ve never heard us called that.”

“Eh,” Viktor shrugs, “I’ve heard you called all sorts of things, Man of Progress.”

“Oh Gods, don’t start,” Jayce shoots back over his shoulder as he turns on the propane and lights their tiny stove, “you want rice for dinner?”

“Is there another option?” Viktor asks, eyeing the carefully stacked bags of rice, beans, lentils and other dry goods they’ve pilfered from every abandoned grocery store they could find. 

“There’s also beans,” Jayce notes, his face deadpan for only a moment before he can’t help but break into a smile. 

“Perfect,” Viktor replies.

Jayce can feel Viktor isn’t quite finished with him. There’s a hesitation in the way the other man lets him cook without interruption or banter that indicates he’s ruminating on something before bringing it to Jayce’s attention. 

Viktor waits until they’re both eating to broach the subject, giving Jayce the option of using his food as an excuse to avoid looking at him. 

“I wanted–” Viktor begins, struggling to put his thoughts into words, “I think we should consider leaving the lab.”

“Leaving?” Jayce asks.

“We’re running out of propane,” Viktor explains. “It’s only a matter of time before we have to resort to cooking things over the fire. I can’t carry food up three flights of stairs every day, or carry water–” 

“Alright,” Jayce interrupts him, aware that he doesn’t sound it, “where do you want to go?”

“Jayce, I need you to be certain,” Viktor says, suspicion in his voice. “Don’t just agree because it’s easier.”

“I’m not,” he responds, sighing hard to try and force the frustration out of his voice, “you think you’re the only one who can’t manage the stairs?”

Viktor doesn't respond, but the look he gives Jayce  is one of surprise, as though he expected a fight. Jayce is as tired of being in pain as he is pretending not to feel it. The thought of leaving the lab fills him with panic, but, like his self recrimination, it’s habitual and he can ignore it if he tries hard enough. 

“If you’re certain,” Viktor says, sounding less certain himself, “I think we should consider finding a freestanding building. It would make it easier to convert it from the city power grid to run off Hextech.”

“Off Hextech?” He repeats, his skin suddenly feeling too tight. 

“Yes,” Viktor says, his voice purposefully soft, “there is likely no way for us to restore power using the existing grid, and solar would take too long and be too unreliable. But with the Hexgem we could power a small structure—“

He breaks off as Jayce stands up suddenly, making the dishes clatter. It takes Jayce a moment to realize he’s standing, and another to get his breathing under control. 

“Jayce—,” Viktor says, voice still so gentle as he reaches out as if to comfort him.

“It’s fine,” Jayce says, forcing his body back into his chair. 

Viktor can clearly tell it isn’t, but they’re both well-versed in the art of not talking about it so they continue their meal in silence. Jayce tries to think of small talk, of some way to ease the conversation back into neutral territory, but finds himself at a loss. If they were normal, maybe they could talk about how they spent their days, but he doubts I thought of you for eight hours straight and now I can’t even look you in the eye would make this better. 

“I see the smokehouse is complete,” Viktor says, breaking their uneasy truce with such gentleness it makes Jayce almost flinch. 

“Yeah.” He says, voice brittle. 

“Have you caught any rabbits to try it with?” Viktor asks, nothing if not persistent. 

“No,” Jayce sighs, “all the rabbits I’ve caught have been too young, so I have to let them go. I don’t want to kill babies.”

“No,” Viktor replies, his voice wavering just a fraction, “that would be cruel.”

Jayce wonders if he’s thinking of the children he killed as the herald, or the child Jayce admitted to killing in Zaun. They finish the meal in silence, because neither of them is brave enough to invent more small talk. 

—

Jayce dreams of Viktor’s golden eyes following him, of Viktor prying his ribs open and sliding Hextech-blue hands into his chest. In the dream he watches as though the gentle slide of his partner's limbs into his chest is inevitable, but when he wakes up Viktor is clawing at him, breathing hard and whispering unintelligible pleas. Jayce holds him, wrapping himself tightly around Viktor and feeling the other man relax at the sensation, his breathing gently slowing.  

He watches Viktor sleep, letting his eyes trace over his freckled cheekbones and his sun-chapped lips. He’s beautiful, Jayce thinks. His face has filled out since coming here, and he no longer has the gaunt look of a man pursued by death or forced into godhood. Jayce wonders if Viktor might actually gain weight, if he could feed him enough. The thought of Viktor, healthy and whole, fills him with the desire to make it possible at any cost. He recognizes the thought as dangerous, remembers the cost the last time he wanted Viktor alive above all else, but can’t shake the idea that the only thing he needs to fix to ensure Viktor’s happiness now is himself. 

****

Viktor wakes up alone and tries not to let frustration be his first instinct. He knew it was too much to ask Jayce to consider moving, knew it was foolish to use the brace as a way to soften the blow of his proposal, but he did it anyway. His leg hurts, the cold burning of nerve, or whatever he's got now, pain never quite fading now that he takes the stairs more often to tend their garden and help Jayce with the other tasks necessary for their survival. He wonders if it would be easier to convince his partner to move if he was more honest about his pain, but he doesn’t want to remind Jayce that he’s broken, not when the other man still looks at him like he’s a god.

He knows that should make him anxious, that he should feel guilty about failing to keep his distance. He’d sworn he wouldn’t cross the line with Jayce, and then had proceeded to utterly obliterate the line because he wanted so badly to make him feel safe. He thinks there must be something broken in him to keep pushing Jayce like this, to keep finding new ways to torture him. 

But, Jayce isn’t exactly keeping his distance either. Viktor can still feel the warmth of his hand against his cheek, the calloused fingers gently rubbing a line across his sun speckled face. It makes him want to scream, to tear the world into a thousand tiny pieces just so he can put them back in the right order to show Jayce how good he is, how much he deserves to be happy, and how much Viktor would do to see him happy.

No, those thoughts are too dangerous. That kind of desperation belongs to someone, to something else. He is just a man again, and all he can offer is his once-again-broken body and a willingness to reach across the gap between them. 

—

He had expected Jayce to already have disappeared, but when he emerges from the supply closet it’s to the sight of his partner surrounded by paper covered in scratchy drawings. Not drawings, maps, Viktor realizes. Jayce has mapped out several sections of the city, circling those buildings he thinks are of interest. 

“I figured it would help if I mapped out all the free standing houses I could remember,” Jayce says, as though they had somehow settled things last night instead of falling into bed in uneasy silence. 

There’s an intensity to his actions that makes Viktor nervous.

“Jayce,” he asks gently, “do you actually want to do this?”

“No,” his partner responds bluntly, eyes carefully fixed on the map in front of him, “but I’m tired of being in pain all the time, and you’re right, the stairs are too much.”

He looks up at Viktor then, and the vulnerability of his face at the admission brings Viktor back to their first meeting. All of Jayce’s guarding, all the walls he’s built to protect himself, disappear for just a moment before he once again turns back to his maps. 

“I think we should start with this house here,” Jayce says, indicating a structure perhaps six blocks from the lab. “It’s a townhouse, so it will likely be wired into the city grid, but it is technically freestanding and it’s close enough that moving will be easier.”

It’s a clear, concise, and accurate plan. Jayce is correct on every point. Yet, all Viktor wants is to gather him up in his arms and soothe the hurt he is so obviously hiding.

—

Jayce’s maps are meticulously accurate, and the first house he suggests is easy to find. Unfortunately, he neglected to mention a key drawback. 

“It has stairs,” Viktor says, more bluntly than he means, at the sight of eight steep stairs at the front of the townhouse. 

“Sorry,” Jayce says, “I didn’t— I don’t think I ever noticed.”

Of course, because this is new to him. Because he's never had to notice before, but some version of Viktor made certain that he will never fail to notice again. 

Most of the other houses Jayce has selected have similar drawbacks. They walk through houses full of water damaged plaster and nearly caved in roofs, each one making more clear that they are woefully underprepared for the rigors of homeownership in a city without a single contractor. Despite their disappointment, Viktor finds himself easily distracted as Jayce falls into the rhythm of problem solving, suggesting ways each house might be fixed despite their varying states of disrepair. 

His hands seem to constantly find their way onto Viktor. A touch on the shoulder at the sight of another too-damaged house, a hand around his elbow guiding him away from damaged floorboards, a hand against his lower back as they survey a new prospect from the street. Jayce has always been physically affectionate, always quick to touch and never upset when Viktor doesn’t reciprocate. But that was before Viktor broke their carefully-held truce, before he let the plausible deniability of their partnership crash and burn in his desire to hold Jayce just a little tighter.  

Now, he wonders if Jayce is touching him to signal his own desires, or if it’s simply another mask. Perhaps Jayce thinks that, like agreeing to leave the lab, it will be easier for them both if he gives in to Viktor’s wants. Maybe Viktor has been manipulating Jayce all along, backing him into a corner where the only options available are to acquiesce to Viktor or be trapped, alone in an empty city surrounded by evidence of their sins. 

“I can hear you thinking,” Jayce says, breaking his reverie as he tries to open a swollen-shut door. 

They’re in another damaged house. Water stains creep along the walls beside them, the result of windows left open in the owner’s haste to flee. Viktor can smell the mildew behind the plaster and knows already that he’s going to reject this house, but he’s following Jayce anyway because despite himself the other man is enjoying the rhythm of exploration. 

“That’s unlikely,” Viktor replies, automatic in his rebuttal. 

“Vik—,” Jayce says.

Viktor hears the splintering of wood a split second before the floorboards give way under Jayce’s feet. He doesn’t have time to utter a sound other than a soft huff as the breath is pushed from his lungs and he’s stuck up to his shoulders in the floor. 

Viktor lunges toward him without thinking, dropping his cane so he can use both hands to hold onto Jayce. His leg screams at him as he tries to brace against the floor, knee giving way and landing him painfully on his rear. Jayce shifts as Viktor falls, their change in balance causing him to sink further into the floor, but Viktor hangs onto Jayce’s hands with a death grip, nails digging in as he ignores the pain of his fall. 

“Don’t let me fall,” Jayce whispers harshly, eyes filled with terror. 

“If you weren’t so fucking heavy,” Viktor grunts, mild cruelty covering the way his heart hammers at Jayce’s fear. 

He braces his good leg against the door frame beside Jayce, pushing against it as he pulls until his shoulders ache. Slowly, Jayce’s torso is freed from the floor. He wrenches one of his hands from Viktor’s grasp, using it to push himself up. Inch by inch, they pull him up until he has enough leverage to wriggle his way out of the hole. They both flop down onto the floor after it’s over, breathing hard. Viktor’s joints are in agony, and from the sound Jayce makes as he turns toward him he’s not in much better shape 

“Fuck this house,” Jayce says. 

Viktor laughs, he can’t help it. The adrenaline in his veins must be making him giddy. Beside him, Jayce lets out an answering laugh, the gap in his teeth on full display. Viktor’s eyes follow it, and when Jayce catches him looking he doesn’t hide his gaze. 

“You’re beautiful,” Jayce says, and the shock of his directness makes Viktor freeze. 

When he kisses Viktor it’s less of a shock and more of an inevitability. The soft press of Jayce’s lips against his feels like an admission they’ve both waited far too long to make. He melts into it, letting his eyes flutter closed. When Jayce pulls back he feels the loss keenly, but carefully avoids chasing him. 

“Is this alright?” Jayce asks, his expression complicated and raw. 

Viktor brings his hand to Jayce’s cheek, letting his thumb rub a gentle circle over his cheekbone.

“Yes,” he says, wrapping his hand around the back of Jayce’s head and pulling him into another kiss. 

If their first kiss was an admission, this one is a declaration. Viktor can feel the electricity of Jayce’s desire, and answers it with his own. He wraps his hand around the back of Jayce’s neck, pulling him closer, kissing him deeper, running his fingers through his hair and letting his nails drag along his scalp. He feels Jayce’s tongue test the barrier of his lips and gladly lets him in, moaning into the other man’s mouth. Jayce’s hand is on his back, nails digging into his skin through the fabrics of his shirt. He smells like sweat and old houses and—

Ozone. The sharp tang of it is drowning him. The scent of Hextech, of magic, the scent of his not-flesh and the thing that is no longer a mining hammer. He can feel the destruction of his chest, the slowing of a heartbeat that was never really there, but it’s distant, unimportant. All that matters is the scent of ozone and the sight of Jayce before him, hazy like a mirage but more real than anything Viktor has seen or done since his resurrection. 

“Vik?” Jayce whispers, his voice a quiet plea. 

They’re on the floor, the hard floorboards digging into his hip. Jayce is lying beside him, his hand rubbing grounding circles into Viktor’s upper arm, and he looks terrified because Viktor has just initiated something they both wanted and proceeded to lose his mind in the middle of it. 

“Are you with me?” Jayce asks, still whispering, as if he’ll startle Viktor if he speaks at a normal volume. 

“I’m sorry,” Viktor whispers, his breathing harsh and his chest tight.  

“It’s alright,” Jayce whispers. 

He moves as if to embrace Viktor, but hesitates. 

“May I?” He asks. 

The weight of Jayce’s care feels like too much, so Viktor refuses it in the most gentle way he can. 

“Will you get me my cane?” He says, “I want to go home.”

Jayce gives him a look that’s all furrowed eyebrows and sad eyes, but he recovers Viktor’s cane and helps him up from the floor. He's unsteady on his feet, head swimming and the scent of ozone still in his nostrils. It clings to him, and to Jayce, tainting everything and making him nauseous and shaky. 

Jayce keeps his distance as they walk, close enough to catch Viktor if he falls but far enough that they don’t accidentally touch. He’s limping badly, but trying to hide it, as though Viktor doesn’t know all his tells. He hates that he’s hurt Jayce, that the man beside him would give anything to comfort him and he simply can’t accept it. He doesn’t have the energy to explain the way the pieces of him still tangle with the Herald, the way he would do anything to avoid tainting Jayce with all the parts of him he isn’t sure are him.  

The stairs up to the lab are a special agony, as though the universe is mocking them both. Jayce goes first, still pretending at greater mobility than he truly has, and Viktor almost bumps into him when he stops in front of the door to their lab.

“What—,” Viktor starts, freezing in shock when he spots what made Jayce stop. 

Come to the bridge. Noon tomorrow. the door reads in dripping neon paint. Viktor recognizes the style distantly, as though the memory isn’t fully his. Something about well-made bombs with monkey’s faces.

“Jinx,” Jayce whispers, his recall unaffected by two deaths and a stint as a God.

Powder, his brain supplies, a little girl with a toy rabbit. 

“This isn’t our universe,” he points out, struggling to keep his voice even as he realizes exactly how he knows that name. “It could be someone else.”

“You really think that?” Jayce asks, already making his way down the hall towards the lab where they’ve been quietly ignoring the Hexgem. 

It takes Viktor a moment to realize where he’s going, but when he puts the pieces together he’s filled with a cold dread. 

“Shit,” he hears Jayce say.  

Viktor follows him into the lab, surprised to find it mostly intact. The Hexgem is missing, but the apparatus is undamaged. This isn’t a grandiose and explosive theft, it was carefully calculated to avoid both their presence and any potential harm to the Hexgem. 

“They would have had to watch us, to know when we wouldn’t be here,” he says quietly, almost to himself. 

“I thought I was going crazy,” Jayce replies, talking fast as frustration eats at his control. “I kept feeling like I was being watched when I was out in the city.”

“They took the journals too,” Viktor notes, taking a mental inventory of the lab. 

“The journals?” Jayce asks, “the ones from the other us?”

“Yes,” Viktor says, realizing Jayce doesn't fully grasp his meaning, “and my journal as well, with my notes on constructing an anomaly.”

Jayce stares at him, and Viktor can’t tell if he’s more angry or surprised. The scent of ozone fills his nostrils and he lets the cold release of dissociation turn his face into a mask. 

“How much did you write down?” Jayce asks, already pacing the length of the lab. 

“Enough that I could pick up the research again if I needed to,” Viktor tells him, aware that this is the wrong thing to say, but unable to stop himself. 

“Why would you—“ Jayce asks, as if he’s just remembered Viktor can keep a secret. 

Surely, he of all people should know better. 

“Because I wanted to have it, in case you changed your mind,” Viktor says, his voice even and perfect despite how far away it sounds. 

“You didn’t trust me to know what I wanted,” Jayce says. It’s not a question. 

“I didn’t think this, our life here, was sustainable,” he replies, clipped and clear. “I didn’t know there were other people here or I would have—“

“What? Hidden it better?” Jayce interrupts, his voice acidic.

I would have left you with them and found the tallest building in Piltover, he doesn't say. 

“You would have left me,” Jayce says, reading the truth behind his mask as easy as breathing. 

“I would have spared you the trouble—,”

“And what if I want your trouble?” Jayce asks, voice raised in frustration. 

“Jayce—,” Viktor starts, a plea that he doesn’t know how to finish. 

“No, you don’t get to decide this for me,” Jayce interrupts, closing the distance between them. His hand is like a hot iron on Viktor’s arm, despite the fact that his grip is nowhere near tight. “When I said I wanted to stay with you I meant it, don’t you dare talk about sparing me the trouble, alright?”

He wraps his fingers gently under Viktor’s chin, pulling his head upwards until he has no choice but to look into Jayce’s eyes. His gaze is filled with an intensity Viktor hasn’t seen in a long time, a certainty that nearly makes him flinch. He had forgotten what Jayce could look like when he wasn’t afraid, and the sheer drive behind his eyes burns all Viktor’s doubt to ashes. 

“Alright,” Viktor whispers, because anything else feels like too much. 

“Alright,” Jayce says. “Now we just have to figure out how to keep an unstable lunatic from learning to travel between universes.”

Chapter Text

“So, how do you think we should handle this?” Jayce asks. 

He looks haggard, but Viktor doubts he looks much better himself. It’s far past when they should be asleep, yet they’re burning candles low and talking in circles. 

“Do we have a choice?” Viktor asks, “we have nothing to bargain with, so we will be at the mercy of whoever has the gem.”

Jayce scrubs his face with his hand in a way that makes Viktor want to hold it so he doesn’t hurt himself. He’s spent the better part of the last few hours insisting that Jinx is responsible for the theft, and Viktor has finally talked him around to the possibility that if that’s true she might be working for someone else. 

“How far, exactly, did you get with your research?” Jayce asks.

Viktor tries to keep his face neutral, but he can feel himself shrinking from the question. 

“Far enough to know it’s not possible to achieve with a single Hexgem, we would have to recreate the Hexcore in order to generate an anomaly of any size,” he explains, his voice sounding wooden even to him. 

“I take it that’s why you didn’t tell me you kept the research?” Jayce asks, forcing eye contact in a way that alerts every one of Viktor’s nerves.

He’s being gentle, avoiding a fight because they’re both exhausted, and Viktor can’t tell if he’s grateful or not that Jayce is pulling his punches. 

“I didn’t want to create another Hexcore, and you didn’t want to go back,” he says, keeping his own voice even, pulling his punches too. “It seemed convenient.”

“And if I’d changed my mind?” Jayce asks, “you would have created another Hexcore?”

“If you wanted me to,” Viktor tells him, too exhausted to lie, “I would do anything.”

He sees the weight of it hit Jayce, the understanding that, at least for Viktor, whatever is between them isn’t simply adrenaline and loneliness or whatever else it seems they’ve both been telling themselves. The look he gives Viktor as the realization hits home is filled with adoration and just a little fear. 

“You’re insane,” Jayce says.

“We both are, we have established this,” Viktor responds, chuckling half heartedly. 

Jayce doesn’t laugh, but Viktor can see the cogs turning in his head. The brilliant mind behind Hextech turning itself to the problem at hand. 

“if the research isn’t complete, would anyone reading it know that they need to create a Hexcore to succeed?” Jayce asks. 

“I don’t—,” Viktor begins, then realizes Jayce’s point, “no, I don’t think I referenced it.”

I couldn’t even bring myself to write the word.

“Then we’re the only ones who know the research can’t work without a Hexcore,” Jayce says, thinking out loud. “If we can convince whoever has the gem that we just need time to make it work, maybe we can find a way to destroy both the gem and the research.”

Viktor notes the we in Jayce’s statement.

“You want to pretend to work on Hextech research?” He asks, “you can’t even be in the same room—,”

“Do you have a better idea?” Jayce interrupts, finally showing his frustration. “Sorry,” he amends, “I just don’t think either of us has much choice.”

“No, I’m the one who should apologize,” Viktor says, the words carrying the weight of too many sins to count. 

Jayce sighs. 

“I think both of us are past the point where apologies will do any good,” he says, his hand scrubbing down his face again, “just— no more secrets, alright?”

“No more secrets,” Viktor replies, thinking of the name Powder and how he learned it. 

Jayce smiles tiredly, levering himself up from his chair and mumbling something about bathing. As he passes, he rests his hand on Viktor’s shoulder, a comforting weight he didn't know he needed until it was there. 

“It will be alright,” Jayce tells him, leaning down to lay a gentle kiss against his hair. 

It’s hesitant, like everything else between them, but that single kiss is the most grounding thing Viktor has experienced in what feels like an age. When Jayce moves as if to leave Viktor’s hand shoots out of its own volition. He wraps his fingers around Jayce’s forearm, a demand he doesn’t realize he’s making until his mouth is already open. 

“Do it again,” he whispers. 

Jayce huffs a laugh and gently kisses Viktor’s hair again, and when Viktor hums his pleasure at the touch and refuses to let his arm go Jayce continues kissing him. Gentle pecks across his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, but when he leans toward Viktor’s lips he hesitates. 

“Is this—,” Jayce asks, interrupted as Viktor pulls him into a kiss. 

It’s gentle, a soft meeting of their lips, but it feels like being alive in ways Viktor will never be able to articulate and it tastes nothing like ozone. When Jayce pulls back he looks at him with just a  touch of worry. 

“It’s alright,” Viktor says, not certain which of them he’s reassuring. 

——

The next morning, as they ready themselves for the meeting, Viktor can feel the fear begin to set in, but when Jayce pokes his head into the closet wearing a headband to hide the fingerprints along his forehead he can’t help but laugh. 

“You look ridiculous,” he chuckles. 

“Maybe, but they’ll ask less questions this way.” Jayce replies, flashing a grin that makes something flutter dangerously in Viktor’s chest. “Here, I brought this for you.”

He hands Viktor a leather glove. 

“It’s to hide your hand,” Jayce explains anxiously. 

“Thank you,” Viktor replies, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Sorry there’s just the one, I couldn’t find the match,” Jayce says sheepishly. 

“Don’t worry,” Viktor reassures him, “if they ask I can just say the cane grip chafes my hand.”

Jayce looks at him for a moment too long and Viktor realizes it’s the same excuse he used what feels like a lifetime ago when Jayce found him in that drainpipe and coaxed him back off the ledge. His partner had wanted to know why he was wearing only one glove, and he’d offered the fastest lie he could produce. Now, as he sees the worry on Jayce’s face, he can’t help but feel he’s brought them to some terrible precipice again. 

What was it Jayce had said? 

We keep doing the same wrong thing. 

—-

Viktor reaches for Jayce as they leave the lab building, wanting some small contact to reassure himself they’re still alright before they face whatever’s coming, but his partner pulls back. 

“Not out here,” Jayce whispers, “they might be watching.”

His words land like a slap to the face. Viktor knows he’s right, that the chances of them being watched are high, and that knowledge of their queerness could be a weapon. Still, Jayce’s reaction makes him clench his teeth to avoid a snarl. He’s spent nearly a decade waiting to touch the man beside him and even a universe away the casual violence of Piltover’s disapproval still haunts them both.

He notes the subtle changes in Jayce’s face as they work their way through the city towards the bridge. Viktor watches as Jayce disappears, replaced by the careful mask of Counselor Talis and tries not to be angry at Jayce for wearing the mask or at the world for making him. He's angry at himself too, at the small animal of his soul that very much wants to be held and cared for despite the fact that the mess they’re attempting to clean up is one he made. 

The bridge is by far the most obvious sign of whatever happened in this Piltover. While the rest of the city is mildly disarrayed at best, the bridge looks like a battle scene. Broken barricades litter their path and long scorch marks on the ground bring back memories of that terrible day on the bridge in their Piltover that Viktor carefully shoves out of his mind. Like Jayce, he needs to be someone else in order to make it through this, and he can’t afford to be reminded of something that perhaps never even happened in this Piltover. 

“Took ya long enough,” a snarky voice rings out against the stone of the bridge, as a head of blue hair appears from behind a barricade.

Viktor feels Jayce stiffen beside him, but if the young woman who emerges from behind the barricade notices she doesn’t comment. Viktor had expected someone different when Jayce had sworn it was Jinx who took their gem. He remembers hazily how the woman in his commune had dressed in clashing patterns and maintained hair long past her waist. The woman before them is dressed sensibly in a pair of grey overalls with a utility belt and a gun at her waist. Her hair is held back in a utilitarian braid that barely extends past her shoulders, and nothing about her demeanor suggests the sort of fractured soul he remembers from the Jinx-who-had-been-Powder he met before. 

“I’m Powder, by the way,” She says, waving her hand in an almost-comical gesture of welcome, “you must be the Men of Tomorrow.”

She doesn’t approach further, keeping a solid eight or nine feet of distance between them. Close enough that she can draw her weapon and pick them off with ease, but far enough that without guns they’ll never reach her. 

“I’m Jayce,” his partner introduces himself, not making any move to approach Powder, hands carefully held at his sides, “and this is Viktor, I believe you have something important of ours.”

“Ya know, if it was so important you should really have kept it locked up better,” Powder replies, a smirk tugging at her lips. 

“I understand that you must want something in exchange for the gem,” Jayce says, Councilor Talis in his voice, “and we’re more than willing to negotiate. Why don’t you start by telling us your terms?”

“My terms?” Powder asks, “I don’t have any terms, and I don’t have your gem, I’m here because my father wants to meet you.”

Vander, Viktor’s mind supplies, the name attached to memories he can’t afford to reckon with right now. 

“Your father?” Jayce asks. 

“Yeah, his name’s Silco,” Powder replies, “used to be a big fan of yours.”

—-

“Don’t worry, there’s an elevator,” Powder tells them as she leads them across the bridge and into an alcove overgrown with ivy. “Hooked it to the generator before I came up since you both looked like you needed it.”

She pulls a lever and the whirring sound of the elevator coming to life greets their ears. 

“Are you certain this is safe?” Viktor asks, as the elevator comes up its tube in fits and starts before coming to rest before them. 

“Safe as it ever was,” Powder replies, flashing a smile that does nothing to reassure him. 

They survive the elevator journey somehow, although Viktor is more grateful than he can express when he feels solid earth beneath his feet again after the jerking, nausea-inducing ride down. They are following Powder to a place she refers to as ‘The Village,’ although she wouldn’t provide any more details when asked, so they walk in silence only broken by the sound of birds calling. 

It’s odd, Viktor doesn’t remember birds in Zaun, yet here they seem comfortable, as though this is their city and the three humans are merely invaders. He notes how easy it is for him to breathe down here, and wonders if the birds have returned because air is cleaner or if his lungs are another thing that have been altered by the arcane. 

Beside him, Jayce’s head is on a swivel. He’s hiding it well, but Viktor can feel the paranoia roll off of him and he wants nothing more than to reach out but he’s not foolish enough to try. Jayce still has his councilor mask on, looking serene and unbothered, but his tells are easy to spot. His fingers twitch at every small sound, as though he’s reaching for the hammer he no longer has, and his eyes rest far too often on Power’s gun, as though she’ll draw it and fire without warning. He’s holding himself carefully, stepping in a way that disguises his limp but that Viktor knows from experience takes far more effort than it’s worth. 

“We’re here,” Powder tells them, as they round a corner and find themselves facing a seven foot  fence stretching across what was once one of the widest streets in the Lanes.

The fence is an amalgamation of steel roofing and barbed wire bolted to what were once light posts. It looks like something out of a horror novel and Viktor can’t help but wonder exactly what it is the village needs to keep out. It’s guarded by a young man Viktor recognizes only through the haze of Vander’s memories. Clagor, eyes covered by goggles and a rifle strapped across his chest, looks so little like the boy Vander remembered. Still, Viktor feels his chest tighten as Powder nods to the man and leads them through the gate. He hadn’t considered how many of Vander’s remembered family and friends might be alive in this universe, and he’s not certain how he’s going to survive the onslaught of familiar faces when he can already taste ozone on his tongue. 

****

Viktor is flagging. Jayce gives no indication that he notices, as he doesn’t want to alert Powder or anyone else in the village that his partner is struggling, but he can see the focus fading in Viktor’s eyes and can tell from the sound of his footsteps that he’s leaning more heavily on his cane. At first Jayce thinks he’s simply tired, but when Viktor’s entire body flinches at the sight of a thin young man with a mustache he realizes it's more than that. Viktor has the same look on his face that he did when Jayce kissed him, as though he’s only half present, and it takes everything in Jayce’s power not to reach out for him, to try and ground him physically. 

Powder leads them down the street to a building with large windows and a faded sign reading The Last Drop , guiding them past a disused bar and down a dingy hallway at the back of the building. 

As powder pauses to knock on a door at the end of the hallway, Jayce shoots his hand out and grabs Viktor’s, giving it a quick squeeze. The gentle squeeze his partner gives him back pushes away just a bit of his worry. 

“Ah, the men of tomorrow,” Silco greets them, a sardonic smile on his face, “please, come in.”

He's sitting behind a large wooden desk, their counterparts journals and research notes spread out before him. 

Jayce keeps his facial expression carefully controlled at the sight of Silco, giving no indication he’s met the man before. He looks different in this universe, his eye no longer red but a dull white, arcane scarring spreads out from it in jagged lines, filling the grooves of the earlier scars of his initial injury. Jayce can’t help remembering the body they found in the freshman labs, with the white halo of the arcane spreading out around it onto the floor and the walls. His eyes dart traitorously to his own hands, and his arcane scars before he realizes he’s been quiet too long. 

“By all means, take a seat,” Silco chuckles, gesturing at the two chairs placed before his desk. He must see something of Jayce’s inner thoughts in his face because he follows it up with, “What’s the matter, do I look different where you come from?”

Shit. 

Jayce hadn’t planned for this, he has no idea how to play this and how much or little to reveal. He can feel himself panicking, but can’t seem to get his mask back on properly and say something to take control of the situation. Beside him, Viktor takes the offered chair and sits heavily.

“I apologize,” he grates out, automatically playing up his own exhaustion to cover for Jayce’s silence despite the hazy half-present look in his eyes, “the walk here was a bit taxing .”

“I imagine it was, Mr Talis, ” Silco snipes, “but you really don’t have to pretend. I’m more than aware that you’re both, shall we say, not from here.”

He sees Viktor flinch at the statement, and his own stomach feels as though it falls through the floor. Silco clearly notices both of their reactions.

“I take it you’re not married in your universe?” he asks, a smile playing on his lips, “how sad, your wedding here was the event of the decade.”

Silco reaches for a faded piece of paper and slides it across the desk. Jayce picks it up gingerly, reading the faded grey-blue lines of a wedding invitation, his wedding invitation. His fingers trace over the letters announcing the nuptials, meandering down the page until he gets to the bottom where an etching of him and Viktor takes up half the page. Viktor stands tall, with a cane rather than a crutch as though his disease did not progress as rapidly in this Piltover. Beside him, Jayce is pictured in a wheelchair. He runs his thumb over the wide grey circle of the printed wheel.  

So this is why he wanted to make medicine, he thinks, not certain if he hates his other self more for the hubris of it or for the knowledge that he’d probably want to find some way to fix himself too. He thinks about the fantasy he has of cutting his leg off sometimes, then forces it out of his mind. He can feel Viktor looking over his shoulder, and some part of him fears his partner can still read his thoughts. It’s a reflex rather than reality, he knows this, but still he feels sick at the thought. What would Viktor think if he knew Jayce’s secret desire to carve away the thing that makes them so similar now? What would Viktor assume Jayce thought about him if he was aware of the desire? 

“You can understand why I doubted you were, let us say, original to this universe,” Silco says, pulling them both back from their reverie, “although your notes certainly confirmed my suspicions. Do people not keep secrets where you’re from?”

“If you already know who we are, and where we’re from,” Jayce says, keeping his face neutral as he tries to pull back some of the control he knows he’s lost by his fascination with the invitation, “why don’t you tell us what it is you want?”

Silco sighs, gesturing at the notebooks before him as though they contain a poorly-prepared grant proposal rather than the knowledge to warp time and space. 

“I’ve read your notes, and had Powder explain the more technical details to me,” he says, gesturing at his daughter who’s taken up a place beside the door like a guard. “It’s clear you don’t understand the situation you’re in, although that much was obvious from the way you’ve been playing house topside.”

Jayce stiffens at the implication, but forces his muscles to relax. Silco expects the two of them to act like a married couple, not a pair of scared rabbits expecting every mention of the relationship to be a snare. 

“Let me ask you something,” Silco continues, spreading his hands in an appeal, “in all the time you were up there, did you ever think to try leaving the city? Or wonder why it is that no one has returned?”

“We assumed that the rest of this world was like Piltover,” Jayce explains, confused. 

Silco laughs at that, the sound hoarse and brittle. 

“If the rest of the world was like Piltover, I would have been more than happy to leave you alone,” he explains, “but no, the rest of the world is just fine. Piltover’s just fucked because the two of you created a disease so deadly that the only solution was a permanent quarantine.” 

“A permanent quarantine?” Viktor clarifies, his voice sounding more even, as though he too has managed to finally fit his mask on. 

“There is a wall around Piltover, made of magic,” Silco states bluntly as though explaining to particularly difficult children, “it’s designed to kill anyone who tries to leave and to keep anyone from entering the city. No one gets out, no one gets in. Except, for some reason you.”

Silco waves his hand, forestalling any attempt they might make to explain their arrival. 

“I don’t care how you came to be here, or where you’re from,” he says, sounding tired in a way that lingers, “I simply want to know one thing, could you use this–” he gestures vaguely at the notebooks before him, “to get us through a magic wall?”

Jayce and Viktor share a look. It couldn’t be this easy, could it? They had come down here with the intention of convincing whoever had the gem to give them access and Silco is simply asking them to work on Hextech research. It feels like a trap. 

“Honestly, we have no idea,” Jayce says, letting suspicion seep into his voice, “and you haven’t given us a reason to try.”

Never let them see you offer, Mel had told him once, always make them think they had to beg, then when you ask for a favor in return it will feel like a relief.

He never mastered the effortless way Mel played politics, but he can still fit the advice crudely to this situation. Another useful ghost. 

“So you want to remain trapped here?” Silco asks, his working eye flashing with something like humor. “I suppose you did seem rather domestic topside. House hunting was it?”

The words catch on something sharp in Jayce’s chest, some animal instinct activated at the knowledge that Silco knows that he and Viktor share more than science. It’s stupid, Silco seemed unbothered by the idea of two men marrying, but the fear still makes him desperate to blurt a denial. 

Before he can make a fool of himself, Viktor speaks. Without a single word between them, he’s picked up on Jayce’s intentions and is covering for his hesitation.   

“It’s not a matter of domesticity ,” Viktor states sharply, his voice cold in a way that reminds Jayce for just a moment of the herald, “we simply don’t need the research in order to achieve what you’re suggesting. We could recreate it and leave any time we wanted.”

“I see,” Silco replies, opening his desk drawer, “so you wouldn’t need this?”

He places the Hexgem on the desk gently, the blue light it emits coloring his fingertips and the edges of their notebooks like a soft halo. The sight of it makes Jayce’s chest tight. 

“We could easily make another one,” Jayce says, feigning confidence he doesn’t feel. “You, on the other hand, have no idea what this is or what it does.”

“Don’t I?” Silco asks, “I know enough to tell that you’re lying. If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have come.”

He lets the silence sit between the three of them for just a moment. 

“You might not need this,” Silco continues, “but I know you don’t want me to have it either, so let me propose a deal. You help me and my people to leave this city, and I’ll return this to you.”

“We’ve seen what our research did to Piltover, and you’re clearly infected,” Jayce responds, “why would we help you spread a disease that destroyed the entire city?”

“Do I look infected to you?” Silco asks, an edge of frustration in his voice as he gestures roughly at his white, arcane-scarred eye. “We have a treatment. If we didn’t we would all be dead by now, or worse.”

Or worse? Jayce wonders.  

“How can you possibly have a treatment for a disease that killed all of Piltover?” Viktor asks. 

“Does it matter?” Silco asks, “I’m well aware neither of you are doctors. Now, will you help my people or do I have to hand this to Powder and tell her to do her worst?” 

He picks up the gem and twirls it through his fingers, smiling as Jayce flinches despite himself. 

“How do we know you’re not lying about the barrier?” Viktor asks, refocusing the conversation and covering for Jayce. Again. 

“We can go visit the wall tomorrow if that’s all it takes,” Silco smiles, carefully putting the Hexgem back in his desk drawer and making a show of locking it. “For now, I’ll have Powder show you to a room. I have some things I need to–”

He breaks off as a knock sounds at the door, followed immediately by the entrance of a large man with a salt and pepper beard. Jayce feels Viktor stiffen beside him, noting the white knuckle grip his partner has on his cane at the sight of the newcomer. He’s keeping it together, face locked in the same mask he’s been wearing, but Jayce can spot the faraway look in his eyes.

“Sil, they’re waiting for you downstairs,” the man says.

“Of course they are,” Silco responds, the command in his voice softened at the edges for this man.  

He pushes himself out of his chair and reaches for a cane Jayce hadn’t noticed, his gait stiff as he moves from behind his desk.

“Jayce, Viktor, this is my husband Vander,” Silco introduces them, “Vander this is– well I’m sure you remember them.”

He doesn’t miss the way Silco’s face contorts minutely as he says it and he wonders exactly how well Silco knew the two of them in this universe.

“Pleasure,” Vander says, offering a smile as his hand comes to rest on Silco’s lower back. 

Jayce says something perfunctory in response, carefully covering for Viktor who doesn’t seem to have it in him to respond. He marvels for just a moment at the idea that Silco is married to a man, at the way he can reference his husband so casually, but when Powder starts down the hallway he hurries to catch up, all but dragging Viktor along with him. 

-—

As they follow Powder to the room prepared for them, Viktor reaches for Jayce’s hand, squeezing tightly as though Jayce is his lifeline despite the awkwardness of holding hands while walking with a cane. When the door finally clicks shut behind them Viktor all but collapses onto the bed. 

Jayce sits gently beside him and pulls him into his arms. “It’s alright,” he whispers as he pets Viktor’s hair and kisses his temple. 

He can feel the tension in Viktor’s shoulders as the other man holds back a sob, as he forces all his sorrow and horror somewhere Jayce can’t see it. He wants to reach inside Viktor and pull it back out, to force him to allow at least one person to bear witness to the parts of himself he thinks are beyond forgiveness. No more secrets, they’d promised, but Jayce can feel the depth of what Viktor is keeping from him like a vast ocean lapping against his feet. Whatever this thing between them might be, kissing and not talking about it doesn’t give him any right to pry his partner apart and see his sorrow, so he lets Viktor fit his mask back on in silence. When he turns to Jayce his eyes are dry and his expression is unreadable. 

“Do you believe Silco,” Viktor asks, his voice sounding wet despite his dry eyes, “about the barrier around the city?” 

“Shit Vik, I don’t know,” Jayce sighs, accepting the change in his partner’s demeanor with as much grace as he can muster, “I don’t think he was lying, but it just seems odd.” 

“Odd?” Viktor asks. 

“Convenient I guess? If there was this barrier all this time why didn’t they approach us earlier? Why wait?” Jayce replies.

“Ah,” Viktor answers, and Jayce can see the calculations in his head despite the thread of panic still in his voice. “Perhaps they wanted to be certain they could trust us?”

“You mean they might have been watching us this whole time?” Jayce murmurs, thinking of all the times he felt eyes on him in Piltover. 

“I don’t know,” Viktor answers, “but I don’t think Silco was lying. Why else would these people have stayed here unless they had no choice?”

“We stayed,” Jayce points out. 

“We didn’t know we couldn’t leave,” Viktor responds, “now that we do I wonder if perhaps we should consider it.”

“Maybe,” Jayce answers, “but I’d rather not give someone like Silco access to Hextech. We can figure another way out of the city if we need to.”

“Can we?” Viktor asks, “if Silco isn’t lying—,”

“We’ll figure something out!” Jayce interrupts, aware he’s raising his voice but unable to stop the panic that he feels at the thought of actively working on Hextech. He forces himself back into some semblance of calm. “We have a plan, I think we should stick to it.”

Viktor looks at him for a long minute. 

“Jayce,” he says gently, “I know this isn’t what you wanted, but if we spoke to Silco–,”

“What I want is to finish what we came here to do,” Jayce says flatly. 

It’s his turn to be cold, and the casual way his voice turns hard scares him just a little, but not enough to back down. He needs this to work, needs to know Viktor is with him, because the panic he’s been actively shoving down is threatening to boil from under his skin.

“Alright,” Viktor says gently, his hand sliding around Jayce’s waist and pulling him back against his side. 

Jayce hadn’t realized how far he’d pulled away. As he repositions himself beside Viktor, leaning into his partner’s body, he finds himself wondering if he’ll ever be able to be the person Viktor truly needs rather than a collection of whatever scraps of himself he’s able to dredge from the depths of his panic. 

He wants to express this, but he worries that Viktor is already angry with him and what comes out instead is “do you think we’ll be safe, sleeping here?”

Viktor stiffens, then pulls Jayce tighter against him, as if Jayce is a frightened child instead of a grown man who was arguing with him a moment ago. Jayce wonders when his partner will ever get tired of being so gentle, when he’ll finally decide he’s done his penance and can be honest. 

“I don’t know,” Viktor says, his voice so impossibly gentle it feels like an accusation, “but I don’t think either of us can walk back at this point, and they will have turned the elevator off.”

“Alright,” Jayce replies, agreeing automatically because he can’t think of an argument that amounts to anything more than he’s scared.

****

Viktor can’t sleep. Beside him, Jayce murmurs tiny noises as he dreams. He’s taken off the stupid headband but now Viktor can almost feel the fingerprints in his forehead staring at him like an accusation despite the fact that it’s too dark to see them. 

And what if I want your trouble ? Jayce had asked, and Viktor still can’t understand how he can feel that way. Surely he must be angry, must have even the tiniest grain of resentment towards the man who tried to destroy everything he loved, who broke him in so many ways that neither of them can escape. His entire body is a map of Viktor’s sins, yet he does nothing but forgive. Viktor resents him for it, just a little. He wishes Jayce would be angry just for a moment, just to get it over with. The closer they’ve gotten, the easier their whatever this is has felt, the more he’s found himself waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now, with Jayce’s single-minded desire to destroy their only way out of this Piltover, he thinks it might be about to. 

He doesn’t want to wake Jayce with his ruminations, but he suspects he won’t sleep, so he slides out of bed carefully and finds his cane. Jayce, ever thoughtful, leaned it against the nightstand before they got into bed. Viktor takes his cane, grabbing Jayce’s coat from the chair where he threw it and makes his way silently out of the room. There’s no one around as he passes through the bar and out into the street, and the silence feels like a relief. He feels something in Jayce’s pocket and reaches in to find a half-crushed box of cigarettes, pulling the last one out of the pack, feeling guilty but not enough to stop. He needs this to hurt a little, and he hopes secretly his lungs haven’t truly been healed by the arcane. Maybe a bit of wheezing will finally let him feel human again.

Jayce will understand , he thinks as he rolls his partner’s last cigarette between his fingers and sits heavily on the front step of the Last Drop, leaning his body against the building’s facade. He finds Jayce’s lighter in his other pocket and pulls it out but doesn’t use it, letting his head tilt back to look up at the stars. Viktor remembers the sight of Zaun’s sky from his childhood, endless clouds of Grey seeping into every fiber of the city, into every fiber of him . The sight of stars here flames half-hearted rage to life in his chest, at the thought that his home has been allowed to heal while he’s been left behind still filled with rot. But that isn’t fair, this isn’t his Zaun and it owes him nothing. 

“You planning to smoke that?” A voice asks, breaking his reverie. 

He hears the tap of Silco’s cane and the hard intake of breath before the other man lowers himself gently beside Viktor. 

“Prosthetic,” Silco supplies, answering Viktor’s questioning glance and pulling up his right pant leg just enough that Viktor can see the glint of metal in the moonlight, “bit of a bitch to care for in our current circumstances unfortunately, so I’m stuck with the cane. Now are you going to smoke that?”

Viktor places the cigarette into Silco’s waiting hand along with Jayce’s lighter. The other man lights it without hesitation, sighing contentedly as he pulls smoke into his lungs. 

“So, I take it you knew my husband back where you’re from?” Silco asks bluntly, blowing smoke carefully away from Viktor.

He hesitates, not sure how to answer and aware that even in a different universe he’s still talking to a man capable of the type of violence necessary to rule Zaun with an iron fist. 

“You noticed,” he remarks weakly. 

Silco only laughs, smoke huffing around his lips. 

“If it makes things better, I killed yours,” Silco tells him. 

Viktor is careful not to let himself flinch visibly, despite the ice the admission pours into his veins. 

“He tried to bring his research down here, looking for help to fix his mistakes,” Silco tells him, face turned up to the stars. “He was wanted by the council, and if Zaun was caught hiding him it would have fucked our progress with Piltover. I didn’t realize at the time that it was too late for politics to matter.”

He says it all with such an even tone Viktor almost believes it’s the whole truth, but he’s a child of Zaun as much as Silco and he can spot the holes in the web the other man is weaving. 

“Why would Jayce bring his research down here?” He asks, carefully sidestepping his horror. 

“He wanted to speak to a man in my employ, calls himself Singed. He has more skill with medicine than the rest of Piltover combined.”

“Ah,” Viktor fills space in the conversation as he makes sure his breathing remains under control at the mention of his mentor. “I take it that’s who made your treatment ?”

“Among other things,” Silco says.

“Why are you telling me this?” Viktor asks. 

“Because I want your help,” Silco replies, “because we’ve been down here six fucking years and we’re running out of time, and I think you and your not-husband may be our only way out.”

Viktor hears the truth of it in Silco’s tone, but he also knows more than one thing can be true at once. He waits as Silco stubs out his cigarette on the stairs, and the other man proves him right.  

“And because I’m sure you and your— Jayce have other intentions in coming here, and I need you to understand you’re just as trapped as we are.“ 

He sighs heavily, handing Viktor back Jayce’s lighter and pulling himself up with the railing beside him. 

“Maybe I’m wrong,” he says, “maybe you wanted to stay here forever living off Piltover’s scraps, but I can promise you it’s not sustainable, and I have a feeling your partner won’t like to hear that.”

The click of Silco’s cane fades as he makes his way into the Last Drop but Viktor remains on the step until his good leg goes numb. He wants to go back inside, to tell Jayce everything and make some semblance of a plan with the scraps of information he’s just been fed, but he suspects that Silco is right. Jayce has been living without a thought to the future for as long as they’ve been here, solving immediate problems but unwilling to move beyond his comfortable haunts. Silco met them for less than an hour and picked up on Jayce’s fear like a shark with the scent of blood, who is Viktor to deny it?

He had thought Jayce was simply afraid of Hextech, but his partner’s single-minded desire to destroy the gem feels like a refusal to look forward as well as backwards. Viktor could never afford to avoid thinking about the future, about the potential of his body failing or the world failing him, and that’s no different here. He doesn’t know how long this body has before it too falls apart but, he realizes suddenly, he doesn’t want to spend those years simply waiting to die in an empty city. He wants a future with Jayce, even if he has to drag his partner into it with him.  

No more secrets , he’d promised, but after all the promises he’s broken what’s one more? 

—-

“Couldn’t sleep?” Jayce asks when he returns to bed.

“No, you?” Viktor replies, crawling in beside him, letting Jayce curl up on his chest. 

“I had a nightmare,” Jayce whispers, his voice husky with sleep and scratchy with fear and shame. 

The sound of it makes Viktor’s chest tight, and he wonders if perhaps Jayce struggles to look forward because he’s so haunted by the past, by what Viktor did to him. The thought is enough to make him hug Jayce tighter to his chest, as if he could manage to protect him from everything if he simply got close enough. Maybe Jayce isn’t strong enough to see the possibilities of working with Silco, but for once Viktor can be strong enough for both of them. 

“Did you smoke my last cigarette?” Jayce asks, sniffing Viktor suspiciously. 

“I would apologize, but I think I needed it,” Viktor lies. 

He has no idea what he needed, has no idea what he needs , but the feeling of Jayce’s weight on his chest is enough for now to calm the restless itch under his skin at the thought of how things seem to be unraveling around him. 

“S’alright,” Jayce murmurs, interrupting Viktor’s thoughts, “I was saving it for a special occasion, but I guess this counts.”

Viktor chuckles at that.

“Special is certainly one word for it,” he whispers, pressing a kiss against Jayce’s scalp.

—

The expedition to the barrier around the city is far more of a procession than Viktor expected. Silco brings along no fewer than three armed guards, all people Viktor can’t name, as well as Powder and Echo. Viktor is careful to keep his face neutral as he regards the boy who made his third and final death possible. He suspects Silco was told about his reaction to Milo and Clagor and doesn’t want to give the man any more evidence of weakness. It’s foolish, he knows, but there are too many variables at play and he needs some semblance of control so he doesn’t feel as though he’s being pulled apart at the seams.  

Silco brings them to the very edge of Zaun, nearly three miles from the Last Drop and far too long a walk for any of them, no matter how Jayce might try and hide his limp. Instead, he has Echo drive them in a car that has seen much better days while the other guards follow in another. Despite the lack of doors and constant backfiring, they make it to the barrier in one piece. 

The barrier, or the wall, as Silco calls it, makes Viktor’s skin itch. It’s visible, but barely, a swirling semi-opaque thing that is most noticeable when the sun bounces off of it. He can feel the magic in it, and some perverse part of him wonders what would happen if he were to touch it. Would it pull the remnants of magic out of him, cleanse him of it and leave him like Jayce with nothing but dormant white scars? Half of him wants to try, if only to know what it feels like to be fully human again, but he won’t risk hurting himself and leaving Jayce alone with these people. 

“So, do you believe me now?” Silco asks derisively.

“Well there certainly is a barrier,” Jayce snipes back, “but I still have questions.”

“Ask them,” Silco replies, eyes flicking to Viktor for just a moment. 

“We’ve been here nearly four months, why wait to approach us now?” Jayce asks, his voice level and his chin held high. 

For a moment, Viktor is seeing Councilor Talis again, the casual confidence in Jayce’s voice and bearing sending him back in time. It’s a mask of course, a flimsy one, and from the look on Silco’s face he sees it too. 

“To be honest with you, we assumed you’d be dead by now,” Silco replies, a sadistic twinkle in his eye. “The mages who made this return from time to time, to remove any stragglers, and with all those scars you certainly qualify.”

He gestures to Jayce’s forehead, indicating the fingerprints he was so careful to hide. 

“Stragglers? you mean there are other survivors like you?” Jayce asks, his hands flinching as if he wants to pull his headband off. 

“Like us? No,” Silco chuckles ruefully. 

“Right,” Jayce says, “because you have a treatment. How exactly did you come by that, by the way?”

Silco’s glance flicks in earnest to Viktor this time, and Viktor struggles not to flinch. He realizes suddenly that he has miscalculated. His conversation with Silco wasn’t a negotiation, it was a test, one Viktor has failed by not telling Jayce about Singed.

“We have a doctor, Singed, who prepared the cure for us,” Silco explains. “It’s apparently a combination of ground petricite and some other chemicals. I can make him available to you if you’re worried, but from what I can tell your infection looks dormant already.” 

“Petricite?” Jayce asks, “if you have a supply why don’t you use it to absorb the barrier’s magic?”

“Because our supply is limited,” Silco answers, “which is why we need you to get us out of here.”

“So you waited four months to make contact, knowing you were running out of time?” Jayce presses. 

He’s pushing Silco harder than he has to, his mask no longer resembling a junior councilor. His hands shake, just a little, and Viktor realizes exactly how close Jayce is to losing the point of this conversation. 

Silco smiles, like a predator finally discovering its prey can fight back. 

“We waited because any movement topside usually attracts the mages attention within a month or two at most and when they find infected up there they flood the city with magic designed to kill any living thing.” He says smoothly, as though he’s not discussing their death, “I apologize if you wanted a better reason, but we truly were expecting to rob your corpses. Fortunately for you, it seems our jailers aren’t paying attention.”

“So you stole from us to get our attention?” Jayce asks.

“We acquired leverage without which you would never have agreed to come this far,” Silco says, finally letting frustration bite at the edges of his words, “so, do you plan to help us, or do I need to use that leverage?”

Silco takes the Hexgem from his pocket, eliciting a barely-noticeable wince from Jayce. Viktor waits as Silco twirls the gem between his fingers again. Jayce need to be the one to agree to this, otherwise Silco will never trust them. He silently prays to whatever gods might listen Jayce hasn’t lost sight of their goal, even if Viktor is no longer certain they share the same one. 

“Alright,” Jayce says finally. 

“Excellent,” Silco replies, his smile failing to reach his eyes, “then let me show you your lab.”