Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Herald hasn’t seen a breathing human in a long time. He doesn’t know how much, nor cares; he has renounced following the concept of time. 

Time is humanity’s prison , Herald knows. Time is humanity’s limitation, too much time, too little time . To recognize time is to limit the potential, time is the weapon that tears apart the innocent childhood, the weight on the elder’s shoulder, and the gun on the temple of the sick. The Herald knows he’s conquered time when he stops caring about it. He’s no longer a creature depending on seasons or years; the Herald is infinite, the world will last as long as he wishes it. 

But he cannot help wondering how long it has been, not because he cares but because he’s curious about how long the screaming, fragile little creature has survived. 

The little thing screams in pain, the sound travels by the walls and resonates in the whole cave, it’s pain making his metallic limbs vibrate in harmony; and the Herald decides arise from the throne  he’s chosen to admire his creation. He’s curious–he’ss no longer tied to empathy and the vulnerability  it brings, but he still can sympathize with the pain; the howls of agony and the bawling remind him of suffering nature of humans, a melody he once had mastered painfully well. 

If he’s worried, it’s caused by his nature: an intrinsic characteristic, the need to shut down any pain, to transform the disease into strength. The Herald is truly curious, even concerned , about how a creature figured how to escape from his omnipotent hand. His long limbs move him through the cave, the articulations clinching in every move, similar to the sound of bones breaking. 

For the first steps; since his legs have forgotten how to move, the Herald uses the cane as support, for a second he lowers his gaze to his leg, where a golden incrustation in his purple muscles greets him. Memories arrive, they grab him by the ankle, they raise through his legs, and they want to reach his brain where they can torture him. But the Herald doesn’t permit himself to flinch, he walks until the strength returns to the metallic fibers. He’s bigger than any pain and suffering, he’s lasted more than his tortures, he’s the winner of all his battles.  

He feels the creature before he sees it, nervous energy leading the way and the Herald follows it as a hound; it’s a dense trail and if he hadn’t already given up the pleasures of smell and taste he thinks he could smell and even see the anxiety. A thick nauseous thing floating in the air, like the spores of a fungus, or as a luminescent trace on the floor, such as quantum particles illuminating the way. In his current situation, his divine anatomy allows him to perceive it as energy, raw and unstable revolving around him. It leads him through the cave, so dense it is felt as the desperate touch of hands all over him, pleading, begging. 

When he sees the creature, the brave specimen that somehow has survived the metamorphosis, he remains in the shadows, refusing to let the stranger know about his presence. The Herald doesn’t plan to abandon him; of course , but some little thing inside him is hungry in a way he hasn’t been in a long time. It’s a weird sensation, a bubbling feeling wallowing in his insides (there’s none), reflections flooding his head with millions of questions. 

He wants to discover the answers to all of them. 

So the Herald remains in the shadows, seeing the tired and broken body stretched on the irregular floor as a frog on the grass. Who is this specimen? A adult male, taller than average and stronger than average too, his skin a suit filled with scars, and soon he discovers the source of his suffering. The right leg is disfigured, folded at an unnatural angle, the fragile skin is all dyed with red, a white bone shining as a pearl against the deep red color. The Herald’s hand trembles, the man must be strong and healthy, that's why he’s alive. But in  his current state pain has reduced him to a tiny thing on the floor, a brilliant thing soiled by dirt. 

Before he reach for  his pitiful man to erase all the pains in the body, the man moves. The palms of his hands touch the floor, the muscles tense as they push him up; slow movements and hard breathings, but the man sits. The big hands take the broken leg, one at every side of the broken limbs; one big breath, the fingers wrap strongly; two big breaths, the man closes his eyes; three big breaths and he pushes until a cracking sound ceases his breathing; a horrible, still, silent second and then, the man is screaming. 

The Herald looks away.

There's an uncomfortable feeling in the throat. 

He dares to look back only when the sound stops, he finds the man unconscious, the arms extended as a martyr, he cannot any longer see the white bone. 

When he walks, the sound of steps resonates. Every time the cane touches the floor it sounds like a little bell. He approaches the man, but even during sleep the poor creature cannot find peace, his eyebrows frown so tightly it looks painful, his mouth is sewn in a tense line . He’s a strong man, he must have been a handsome one , knows the Herald; analyzing the shape of the face, the beauty of his features. A good distance between the eyes, expressive eyebrows (one of them with a notch  where a scar is, but instead of reducing how pleasing the man was to see the Herald thinks it adds to the charm), a conventionally attractive nose (straight septum, nostrils of good size), a mouth of good length and through his open breathing mouth the Herald could see the straight line of white teeth. Nice skull, proportionate measures. 

With the ability to analyze anything with the precision of a well-calibrated machine, the Herald could successfully affirm the face fitted nicely in the Golden Ratio. A good specimen of a man, conventionally attractive, strong, brave, smart enough to keep himself alive. The Herald wanted to dissect him under a microscope; examine anything to reveal the secrets of his body and mind, to dissect him, to examine the beating heart, the tension the fibers of the muscles contracted. 

The only unlucky features of the well-proportionate face are the scars and the wrinkles, some scars over the lip, and the wrinkles carved between the eyebrows. Even with the infinite knowledge, the Herald has access to, he still cannot say if those features are hideous and luckless for the man’s beauty or just features that exist. All the data from the consciousness of millions tells him that they could work to emphasize the pulchritude of the rest of his face, or it could be seen as a sign of violence and rudeness, the wrinkles may be undesirable since they are proofs of aging and the lost of all the virtues of youth. 

The Herald doesn’t bother to formulate a personal opinion about it, he’s an impartial researcher, one that only bothers with examining phenomenons that can be comprehended or measured. Opinions are worthless, biased by the experience and the diversity. 

He roams his eyes from the face with the sudden realization he has lost focus on his principal mission there: the leg, his pant cuff was wet and dark with blood, a small puddle growing under the wound. He extends his right hand, the fingers creak, rusty after years of disuse, the fingertips just barely graze the man’s hair. It is long, encompassing his face as a halo of shadows or a crown of carbon. He doesn’t touch his forehead. 

He closes the hand, hearing the man breath; he should enter into his mind, if he is so concerned about him the easiest way to gut and examine the fleshy insides of his brain and all of his secrets is to tear them apart with his fingers, stir the fingertips inside the brain and to have access unlimited access to anything he wishes to know about the beautiful little creature. 

But… anything that is done is the Herald’s will, and if the Herald, the infinite god he is, wishes to play with a mortal existence, then he wouldn’t be God at all. 

However, he still doesn’t know why he possesses this desire to keep that conscience intact. He isn’t a sensitive being, but he can admire the strength in the spirit of others, the will to survive, the desperation to live. A something raw floats around the man, a wild energy that embraces him in a hug, it’s something unruly, something alive, something unpredictable. It’s a melody the Herald doesn’t know, something new, something he’s willing to discover or to remember how it felt. 

The hand lands firmly on the leg, just where he saw the whiteness sparkling. He wants it, and as soon as he wants it, the leg is metamorphized into a hybrid among metal and flesh. Brilliant lights spill from where his hand is, as if the night has just been born. The strength of the magic elevates the limb in the air, when the Herald retires the hand it falls, creating a metallic and tinkling sound. There is silence, the breathing of the man soft enough to indicate his suffering has been reduced. 

The Herald is satisfied. And with nothing else to do, he retires to the shadows again. 

He tries to focus again on admiring his creation; he sits on the place he’s chosen for such a task. But he cannot find focus, the balance between chaos and perfection before him, just his to admire and still, his mind is unstable and unable to concentrate on its wonder. His mind, wanders  through the air, seeking an object worth his attention. He wonders when the man will open his eyes, the Herald cadn’t see its color, he wonders about it, scientifically curious; as he is with everything. He picks another place to sit, deeper  into the depths of the cave, where he cannot see his creation, but he has glimpses of the body, still asprawl, the only movement the chest expanding and shrinking with every breathing; up and down, an unexpectedly hypnotic rhythm of life 

He tries to focus again into admiring his creation, he seats in the place he’s chosen for such task. But he cannot find focus, the balance between chaos and perfection is in front of him, just his to admire and still, his mind is unstable and unable to concentrate in its wonder. 

Instead, he wonders when the man will open the eyes, the Herald couldn’t see its color, he’s curious about it, scientifically curious; as he is with everything. He picks another place to seat, going in the depths of the cave, where he cannot see his creation; but he has glimpses of the body, still lying down only moving with short breathings. 

When the man wakes up, the Herald cannot say if it has passed ten or twelve hours.

Chapter Text

When Jayce wakes up, he’s surprised that hungriness wakes him instead of the cutting pain in his leg. He blinks, the movement of the eyelids closing and opening enough to make him tired. He’s hungry. His eyes slowly get used to the light coming from the little piece of sky that he can see from his position, sunk in the depths of darkness and rock. It’s a little thing, not beautiful; the sky stopped being blue and beautiful long ago. But it’s the closest thing he has to the last world; it looks like a tumultuous sea, the clouds crashing with clouds as violent and destructive waves. This sky has an ugly color, almost gray and dirty; similar to the color of carbons in the forge every time he ended his working hours. 

It’s the closest thing he has to his world before it ended. And he cannot recognize it.

He stares at the sky, so little it looks like a scratch in a wide fabric. That’s how he realizes he will be trapped there for a long time. Until the leg heals at least, and he recovers enough strength to crawl out of the crack. 

The leg. Jayce takes a deep breath. He doesn’t feel the leg, he closes his eyes, refusing to look at the sky and refusing to acknowledge his cruel reality. He doesn’t feel his leg, it shouldn’t be like this, he straightened the bone; it won’t heal perfectly, he’ll be lucky if it heals decently. But it shouldn’t be like this, he doesn’t feel the leg ; he straightened the bone, he knows less about medicine than he does about anything else, but he knows it shouldn’t have stunted the nerves. 

He dares to move his straight hand, to touch his leg. It’s hard, unnaturally hard. Hard as a rock, no , hard as iron. Jayce knows iron pretty well, he knows how dense it feels on the touch, he knows its shine, how hard it is and even how it tastes. He knows iron better than flesh, so when his fingers meet the familiar feeling of a hard metal he moves so fast that an electrifying painful sensation runs across his spine. He sits up in a blink, every tense nerve in his back screaming in response, he had been accumulating stress in every backbone, and it’s getting harder to ignore. All the aches hanging from his back as demons, all his sorrows on his shoulders as chains. 

His fingers stick to the earth, the phalanges curl around the rock, the dirtiness entering into the tiny space between the flesh and the nail. He looks at his leg, it is still there at least . He takes a deep breath, he wants to close his eyes, to avoid any cruel detail of the reality that can enter through his pupils, order the torture to stop. But even when his eyes closed, he would still feel the disgusting movement of his guts, asking for food. In none of his days in this new world he has never been able to escape from the hungriness. 

So he dares to look, and a silver metallic shine greets him. 

What the fuck.

Jayce passes his hand through his face, a mania that not even the destruction of the world has removed him. 

What the fuck . 

He examines the leg. He doesn’t feel the leg, but when he thinks about moving the toes, he feels them move inside his boot. He breathes, and for the first time in many days the sensation is pleasing, the air caressing the lungs, oxygen kissing the lungs and filling the flesh sacks with life. 

What the fuck?

Jayce inspects carefully, his pants has a tear where the broken bone should be; his fleshy and red muscles have been replaced by rigid silver tendons. There is a pattern to it, but the textile blocks his view, so therefore, with one hand at every side of the tear, Jayce pulls until the fabric  yields, and it breaks with a whispering sound. He examines closer his new limb, the index finger following the curves of it, it looks like a spider's web, extending over his leg and colonizing it all. There is no longer pain, but there is no longer any other sensation either, and that scares him more. Broken or new, his leg is a web and he is nothing more but the insect trapped in it, unable to move and unable to look at it. 

He knocks it, in consequence, a light pain briefly paints his knuckles. The sensation haven’t entirely disappeared, but it is like throwing a rock into the water; a big fall that only causes waves that fade seconds after. He pulls up his pants, trying to see the space where the flesh meets the metal; he cannot see it, but his fingertips sink into the soft skin in the middle of his thigh. The sensation in the upper part of his thigh is still there; as always it has been, the nerves are perfectly fine. But the more his hand descends, the more the physical sensations evaporate, leaving just the ghosts of a superficial touch. 

He extends his arm to reach his bag– all his new life is treasured in the old and frayed sack,fossilized, just as the rest of the world. Jayce doesn’t think about it so much; not because he doesn’t want to, he’s wrapped and guided by constant efforts to ignore the man he was before and the wonderful life said man was blessed with. The worst wounds, the ones that break him the most, the ones that leave him seated in the same place for hours drowning with pain and getting drunk with suffering, are the wounds created by the memories. His right hand is constantly hurting, there is permanent pain in his lower back and his shoulders are always carrying the weight of his responsibilities, but the biggest disgrace of his new life is that despite all the challenges his body has gone through, the only thing that remains untouched is his ability to remember. 

The second-biggest disgrace of that new life of his is that he just lost all his research. 

His hands assault the bag with the desperation of a crazy man. Fuck , he turns the bag over and the gravity does the rest of the work. There is no way to know it since Jayce never worried about quantifying his progress. When there is no deadline there is no reason to be worried about such, but he dares to say he just lost 80% of his discoveries. 

Fuck three million times . He passes his hand on his face, and the thumb stretches the skin of his dark circles. He stares at his broken investigation, most of the Schott glasses didn’t survive the fall and the broken pieces of glass are scattered all around; that’s where he was storing the different concentrations of the metal-organic mass he found in some plants. The only survivor of the glasses is the one he mixed with Chloroform. Jayce exhales deeply, a weight floating away from his shoulder, there must be some deity looking for him because dealing with Chloroform and his ugly fall would be hellish.

It was a ridiculous experiment, but Jayce wondered if this new kind of plant was made with cells; and if they were, he wondered if those cells had a lipid-based membrane; and if they did, Jayce theorized Chloroform would break apart the membrane, and if Chloroform broke apart the cells… Well, he didn’t know what would happen then. Would it be possible to separate the metal from the organic material? To clean the metallic particles from the plant surface? Two weeks ago Jayce found a laboratory, one that probably made medical tests or similar, Jayce couldn’t tell. But it had microscopes, and after hours of seeing into the crystal lens and adjusting the adjustments with careful hand and tender fingers, he could distinguish something. Playing with the zooms until the image was clear, Jayce smiled; it was clear, the opaque green of the natural leaf and over it, a thin coat of the metallic material the whole world was infected with. 

Jayce called it Hexcore. It was a satisfying thing to pronounce. Maybe everything was an organic core covered with a metallic shell. 

Hexcore . That day he slept in that laboratory, the brain heavy and tired after seeing through the microscope for too long; but the mind floating in soft clouds, kingdoms of happiness. 

The idea of Chloroform came to his mind when he saw a jar of it in the lab's drawers the next morning. He remembered it was used as a solvent capable of breaking lipids. It wasn’t the safest idea. The extraction cabins didn’t work, and Jayce had to open the jar with his arms extended through the open window, holding on to his breath while filling the Schott that already had a leaf in its bottom.

The rest of the leaves he had stored were there only to analyze the process of decomposition. The oldest one was one month and a half old; it wasn’t that hard to recognize, what once had been a green leaf covered in litmus color had transformed into a black mass with a bitter smell, similar to the smell of rotten blood, something dense and metallic and disgusting. 

It was a shame for the Petri dishes, they had been especially hard to find and even harder to use since Jayce had never done a cell culture, but he wanted to study the Hexcore, his first guess was that it was some kind of bacteria or parasite and he had hoped the Petri dishes would help him to recognize which one was. 

He couldn’t have differentiated it anyway. But that’s why Jayce was leading to the Academy, before a misstep stopped his journey. 

“What is that?” A voice vibrates through the air as the sound of a violin whose strings were too tense, Jayce raises the eyes from his broken dream. Searching in the darkness as a blind animal, it’s hard to distinguish who spoke; the hair in his arms bristle like the spine of a nervous cat when he finds two brilliant golden eyes in the darkness, two stars staring at him. 

His mouth opens, just a dry cavity where no word exists. Jayce meditates on his words, he moves the tongue until it’s wet with saliva, until the muscle is energized with words and he can finally think of something to say: “It’s my research,” he explains softer than how he had intended, he wonders if it’s a wrong decision to share about his discoveries with the first talking-creature he has found in his way. “Who are you?” He adds seconds later, feeling the need to obtain some information in return. 

Jayce isn’t the kind of man who takes advantage of others, or at least, he wasn’t that kind of man. But he barely recognizes himself these days, trapped in the prison of his body– the survivor , the only man alive. But how does a man exist when no one is any longer there to recognize him? He’s hungry for many things, his guts hurt with the need to fill them with something delicious and nutritious but deep inside, deeper than where his intestine is, deeper than where his stomach is, he’s hungry for connection, for sharing. Even his hands hurt, starving for the desire of hugging someone, taking another hand to cup it gently. 

Jayce needs to talk. Jayce needs to hear a voice different from the ones in his head, the ones that are permanently angry, desperate, sad, furious, curious, and worried. Jayce needs to look at a face that isn’t his reflection. 

The golden eyes somehow, shine brighter. He hears something that sounds like steps, but heavier, and louder. “I am the householder of reality,” explains the voice, a third sound joins the steps, something that sounds like a little bell, “The machinery of this world.” bathed in shadows, Jayce has to squint his eyes to distinguish something that looks human, but cannot recognize the shape of it. The limbs are longer than they should be, the arms hanging at the sides like ivy, the legs tall and thin as daisy stems. 

When the figure approaches close enough to be bathed by the weak light in the cave, Jayce cannot control how a loud exhalation abandons his lungs, he cannot control how his eyes widen trying to rationalize what is he seeing. 

“Cannot you recognize me, little creature?” Says with deep and low voice, every word spread with amusement.  

“I don’t,” admits Jayce breathlessly, following every curve of the face starving with curiosity.

“I’m the Herald of the Arcane,” the creature, self-proclaimed Herald , leans towards him. What should be his face is opaque, rusty, and battered by time; but even when its beauty is blurred by time, Jayce can still see a part of it. Something that once must have been shining and brilliant under the sunlight. On top of the face there are golden details, masterfully mixed but on the top of the head, decorating it as a divine crown, an odd halo for an odd creature. 

“Is that what this is?” Jayce asks, starving for answers. “ Arcane, ” he whispers low, tasting with satisfaction how the lips move when pronouncing it. The Herald doesn’t answer. his head tilts, in the emotionless infinite field of his face Jayce can perceive a drop of entertainment illuminating his eyes.

Long seconds after, when Jayce realizes he won’t get answers and his chest hurts, hungry for interaction, he desperately adds: “But… How do I call you?”

A sound swings between them, dancing and falling to the ground, breaking like glass. It’s his laugh , discovers Jayce joyfully. “This research of yours,” the phrase resonates from the center of the Herald, slow and… Almost kind , thinks Jayce. “What is it about?” Asks the Herald and Jayce cannot help to rejoice when he notices the genuine interest in the echoes of the voice, though Jayce fears his solitude might be making him see promises of connection when there are only broken oaths. 

With a careful hand, he tries to organize and accommodate the broken gelatin and save the leaves from the sea of broken glass. “I’m trying to understand what happened,” he puts the leaves on a line in order of seniority, he offers the one month and half old leaf to the Herald. “You’ll see, I thought that the world has been permanently changed,” the Herald opens his hand, purple long fingers with golden details blooming between the knuckles, all extended to him, Jayce leaves it on the palm, as if he were leaving a blessed gift in a temple instead of a rotten leaf. “Like a butterfly: after metamorphosis, you have a butterfly, and even though  it once was a worm you cannot make it be a worm again.” The golden eyes don’t move from him, two brilliant stars shooting their whole light to him. “But it isn’t a transformation, it is a modification as if the butterfly’s wings were covered with dust.” the brilliant stars redirect their shine to the leaf, he approaches the hand that is holding the leaf to his face. 

“But the dust in the butterfly is the Arcane,” whispers Jayce, letting the words fall as sweet water, kind and gentle, a whispering sound that softens the path for a conversation. He doesn’t remove the eyes from the Herald and the magnificent piece that is his metallic existence, attentive to any kind of signal that indicates the creature is willing to share more. 

“And you concluded that with this ugly thing?” Asks the Herald with his deep voice, though he talks taking spaces between the words, a rich way to pronounce, as if the Herald were dancing around them. 

“No, I concluded that after doing many microscope tests but I wanted to see the process of decomposition of the organic material,” helping with his own hands to regain balance and remember how it was to stand on his two legs, Jayce bends his leg. It feels his , but in a distant and unknown way, as a numb limb or a ghost of his leg. “And that’s what my ugly thing helped me to conclude, the decomposition process is slower than before.”

No matter if Jayce makes a conscious effort to extend the spine and be as tall as his tired constitution allows him, the Herald is taller, extending over his head as if he could reach the sky and other galaxies with just his golden crown. A distant luminary. “Is the Arcane a refrigerant?” asks the Herald, somehow looking surprised. Though Jayce might be imagining it, his broken mind creates hopes when there are none, building fantasies with broken bones and rusty iron, he wonders if whatever the Herald is made of is the same material as his leg. 

“It could be, I also feel the air colder,” the Herald returns him the black leaf, and just when Jayce can feel the weight of his gaze on him, he talks: “Did you make my leg like this?”

He can recognize the pattern of the broken laugh: “Of course I did.”

“Why?” Jayce inquires, removing the eyes from the metal face to look at his leg. The pupils are dominated by frenetic movements, traveling between his feet and the Herald’s. 

“It made you suffer,” the voice answers, but no emotion peeks out among the vowels and consonants. Nothing, even when Jayce tries to imagine it.

His leg is covered with silver webs, extinguishing the brown skin that existed; Like an infection, the silver conquers the skin, extending its presence through the muscles, contaminating the nerves, and rotting the bone. Jayce raises his eyes with pain, up there is nothing worth looking at. The sky is still touched by that nauseous gray color, Jayce remembers the fossilized bodies, the abandoned buildings, the city withering away under the shadow of oblivion. He feels like all the grief sliding through his eyes, stirring inside his throat leaving a bitter taste behind. 

“You caused this.” The sorrow reaches his chest, compacted into a space too small for the size of the pain.

“Of course I did,” says the Herald. 

“Why?” He inquires desperately, looking at him in the eye. His hands trembled like weak leaves in the wind, as the weak leaves used to do when they still existed. 

“To remove the suffering from the humanity,” explains the Herald quietly. The Herald raises his golden eyes to look up, the scarce sunlight caresses his face before he adds, affectionately , to Jayce’s surprise: “This is the work of my life.”

What the fuck.

Once again, Jayce passes his hand through his face, letting the fingers creep through the skin until it hurts. Biting his own tongue to kill the words before they can arise and be shot violently by the Herald, who, being the actual dictator of the world, isn’t the most intelligent thing to piss him off. 

But he wants to , he wants to drive him insane with his furious hate until the Herald considers it is time to fossilize him too. To sharpen the words until they break the Herald’s mind, just as this new world has broken Jayce. 

“I’m hungry,” says Jayce instead, while sitting, both of his legs giving up under the pain. His hands dig the broken glass until he can see the shiny pink wrapper. In one of the multiple abandoned stores that now filled the city, he found some cereal bars and some cans; Jayce had eaten all the cans first, and the energy bars were his last provisions. 

With wandering fingers, he opens the bar, still seeing the purple feet by the corner of his eye. Standing there; motionless and quiescent, as a ghost refusing to stop tormenting him. Jayce chewed stronger than necessary, the fingers curling around the remains of the wrap, the fingers possessed by all the fury he couldn’t express. 

A metallic crash at his side, a tiny sound, something delicate, like a spoon hitting a cup. A brief look at his side and he saw the Herald, kneeling at his side with a grace that felt unfair after knowing his hand had been the disgrace of the world. 

Jayce wants to scream, scream and him, and complain about all the things he caused. He found himself surprised by a sick realization: If the Herald had caused the whole world to hibernate, he had also decided Jayce to be the only survivor. 

Jayce wants to scream at him. To take his hammer, and  make the bend with the strength of his arm, until it gave him answers and explanations, until it returned the peace to him. To pound the metallic bones until he stopped feeling like the only man alive and remembered how it felt to be a guy in the forge, pounding metal while being embraced by the flames. But instead, Jayce throws at Herald a bar as if it were a bullet, “Do you want one?” 

It isn’t necessary to look at him to know the Herald isn’t eating, but Jayce hears for minutes the tinkling sound of the long fingers moving and playing with the wrapper.

Chapter Text

Faster than he can bear, the silence starts to drown him. The lungs harden with air empty of sound, it is creeping into his lungs as fluid; just as fluent as water, just as bitter as vinegar, just as dense as oil. Breaking the silence as thunder; the Herald talks, “What is this?” The melody of his voice resonates against the walls, staying in the air longer than what’s natural. It is a powerful sound, not filling the silence but disappearing it, killing it with the sharp swords that cover every one of the syllables, the daggers hidden in the consonants. 

Jayce is thankful for it. 

When he sees the Herald, a third arm has arisen from his back, a metallic limb he didn’t notice before; the claw creates little clinching sounds when it closes. It bends over his head, opening  to catch a broken piece of gelatin ; its tips sink into the gelatin, when the claw elevates with a whispering sound a big piece of broken gelatin falls to the floor. Jayce looks at it, destroyed and melting as a bleeding meet. He shivers . 

“They were cell cultures,” answers Jayce with a soft tone. 

The Herald interrupts him, “I know what they are. What were they for?” Jayce flinches, nervous when the edge of the words is pointed at him.

“I am interested in the behavior of…” He hesitates, the Herald moves  his golden eyes to stare at him. “The Arcane, as you called it. I had thought about it as Hexcore,” the metallic face tilts to the right, a gesture Jayce cannot tell if indicates curiosity. “I wanted to know if it behaved as a virus or a bacterium, I thought if I cultivated it I could identify it. See how it grows and compare it to other bacteria and viruses, maybe I could see some kind of similarity. When I saw it, I thought it was some kind of… Evolution of something else.” Jayce momentarily loses himself in the words. 

It has been a long time since he could talk and be heard. Before, Jayce had feared the tongue had atrophied; the dead muscle had given  up, numbed with necrosis due to the lack of use. And for a moment that’s so brief Jayce cannot taste nor feel. He feels healthy and innocent, as a young lacking of sleep but abundant of happiness, staying in the laboratory after the day disappears, creating theories and talking to himself until the throat goes dry and sore. “But I guess you already know the answer,” he concludes. And for that brief moment, Jayce realizes he feels healthy and innocent but better, talking to himself in an empty lab but better; because for first time someone is hearing him. 

The two brilliant spheres don’t stop looking at him. “Actually, I don’t,” the voice vibrates through his bones and Jayce looks at the Herald, kneeling at his side, a hand on his left knee, a hand holding his cane, his straight posture. As a statue, a divine ornament meant to be adored, forgotten in time, but still preserving the shine that invited to devotion under the rusty surface. 

“How does it come you don’t understand your creation?” Asks Jayce, letting filter some anger through the gentle tone of his voice, he’s dancing between the anger and the yearning at a dangerous speed. He looks at that face and tries to hate its misshapen nature. The misshapen nature that has made this world succumb to chaos and forgotten. 

The Herald stares at him; the bright yellow of the pupils doesn’t change. But Jayce feels something in the air, a minimal change in the light wavelength, something that Jayce doesn’t know how to read. “Do not misinterpret me, little creature,” speaks slowly the Herald, each of the words thrown in the air as something, signals, warnings , Jayce cannot tell the difference. “I understand the Arcane better than you’ll ever be able to do. The Arcane moves in unpredictable ways the human mind cannot even imagine in the wildest of dreams,” the metallic face looks at its cane, on the top of it a brilliant sphere rests; the Herald looks at him by the side of the eye, and Jayce can easily recognize the emotion encapsulated in the yellow light–: Compassion. 

Something that looks (or at least Jayce feels) like a smile; the Herald talks, “much less understand.”

As a natural reflex, Jayce’s mouth tenses, a bitter line decorating his face. His blood boils, filled with the deep need that has always been integrated into his bones, the need to destroy the doubts about him, the need to remove the bandages that don’t let others see his value, the need to destroy the disparage that separates him from respect. 

The Herald must see his angry mouth, because he raised the hand that didn’t hold the cane to shut him up early. “But I never worried about a specific question: What it is? From a strictly biological sense, how does it work?” His face moves, looking around as if the whole existence wasn’t his piece. “Talk to me more about your theories. Little creature.”

“Call me Jayce, that’s my name” he dares to order since the Herald throws orders comfortably. “I got the Petri plates from a laboratory; at least, I think it was one once. I cultivated whatever is growing on the leaves of some plants to try identify what it is.”

“It’s a fungus,” interrupts the Herald.

As an echo in the cave, Jayce repeats: “Fungus?” I thought it could be fungus! But I wasn’t entirely sure.”

The Herald leans towards him, both of his hands holding the cane while lying down against the surface of the cane. “What did you think it was?”

“First I thought it was bacteria,” says Jayce while staring at the broken gelatin, shiny broken webs dressing the surface. “It grew in Blood Agar and the look of the culture isn’t characteristic of fungus, it’s smoother and growing pretty plain.” The culture wasn’t anything Jayce had seen before; he didn’t have vast experience in microbiology, but enough to identify that the pattern he was staring at was completely unmatched for bacteria. The gelatin wasn’t filled with tiny circles of cells, it was filled with filamentous strands, extending over the red gelatin to reach each other. “But it doesn't act like bacteria; I have seen… Something similar to this pattern before… A project of the Academia, they worked with a specific type of fungus; a variation of mold, to create new roads, more efficient ones.” He explains lazily. 

The Herald tilts his head to the right, and Jayce tries to invoke the details of the project he heard about only once in a conference. “It wasn’t exactly a fungus, it was a protist with nuclei. And it could grow at really fast speeds, twice its size in a day. It was an… Intelligent creature, in the way it optimizes its connections choosing the better routes by series of calculations we couldn’t understand,” he sighs, his tired mind hurting while trying to remember the distant memories of that presentation. 

“I never heard about that project,” adds the Herald, tapping the surface of his cane with his index finger. Why would you have heard about it? Jayce wants to ask, “I agree with your theory, it is fungi or a variation of mold. You are limited by your eyes, but mine can detail every microscopic vein in it; like a brain, like fungi.” Jayce is memorizing every little detail he can about the Herald, collecting pieces for a puzzle he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to solve. 

“Do your eyes work like… Microscopes?” Jayce asks slowly, the admiration drops out from his mouth without permission, staring at the Herald, the yellow stars shine brighter, but their light doesn’t blind him; those pupils move as distant nebulous, brilliant enough to illuminate galaxies.

“I can see many things you cannot, Jayce,” he explains with simplicity, the name in his name sounds natural, raw, and rich. Almost human , “if I try, I can see the insides of your eyes, the blood vessels, and your irises closing.” The metallic face leans closer, the nebulous are no longer distant, they had turned into meteorites falling into his atmosphere, gravitating in the same magnetic field as him. As a distant thought, a tender realization, the Herald adds, “You are wonderfully alive, Jayce.” His hands squeeze the cane, the gold inlaid into his fingers shining as rings, “I had forgotten how beautiful vitality is.” 

Jayce exhales, the world glooms around him as flowers and trees. It is an odd thing; something that is close to being painful, to be under the blinding light of tenderness and adoration after being in the dark so long,  “what else can you see?” He tries changing the topic of the conversation. 

The Herald looks around until his eyes capture something worth his attention up in the sky, a crunching sound fills the air, the sound of his laugh , Jayce has learned fast. “If I see the sky, I can see some distant galaxies.” The crunching sound increases, bouncing against the walls, as a broken orchestra, an abandoned song. “I had never bothered about looking at the sky, it’s not that different from a person’s soul,” he explains as if Jayce understood what he’s talking about. 

When the silence prolongs and Jayce doesn’t find anything to say, the lips tied with fear and morbid curiosity in equal parts, the Herald removes his gaze from the sky. “I can show you,” it sounds like a gentle invitation, more melodic and sweet than anything the Herald has pronounced until that moment. But one of his hands abandons the cane and opens, searching for a place on his face to lie the tip of the fingertips on. Jayce can feel them, floating deadly cold millimeters apart from his skin, and in short seconds the gentle invitations transform into the ugly face of death. 

“No,” he whispers breathlessly, petrified with desperation. The Herald doesn’t move his hand, the purple fingers twitch; until a decision is made and the hand moves to grab the cane again. 

“Well,” answers the Herald eloquently, his gaze doesn’t abandon his face, strongly sown at him. With a clinical coldness, the metallic voice explains: “I can describe it. Imagine it like your own irises, the cells holding pigment such as new galaxies expanding.”

In the short period he has between the silence of the Herald and his answers, Jayce wonders why? What was the sense of doing all that? What is the Herald trying to gain? If the Arcane is the being able to colonize the world, is he his conscience? The vital center that searches for its expansion? Then why? Why curse Jayce with addictive kindness if his fate is to end up as the rest of humanity, unrecognizable under a dense coat of Arcane? He tries finding the answer, a change in the eyes at both sides of the mask, a signal in the mouth peeking out. There’s nothing but infinite seconds filled with emotionless expressions.

“I was leading to the Academia,” he tries changing the topic again, to something he has control of (though the expression may be too generous when he’s standing in front of the responsible of the new world). “Thank you, I wanted to find something that could help me to understand all of this, and I did.  Thank you.” Unexpected but raw honesty blooms between the words. Jayce had intended it as a subtle effort of manipulation, to correspond to the gentleness in hopes it would create some kind of partiality towards him. 

He doesn’t get an answer, Jayce cannot assure it, but he could almost bet the Herald is surprised, “What are you planning to do then?” 

A resigned look at his leg, his hand passes through his face tired; all the last events crashing over him, sleepless days, weary limbs, blurry eyes, and perturbed mind. “I have to get out of here, I…” Both of his hands cover his face, “I don’t know how, but I’ll have to climb, or something.” The mouth is dry, and the throat is heavy with repressed screams. “I have to sleep, I’ll solve it tomorrow.”

Silence is heavy in the air. Again, Jayce feels like it will drown him, entering through his lungs and creeping until there’s no space for breathing. “That won’t be necessary,” says solemnly the Herald. Before Jayce can ask what he is talking about, the weight of the air disappears, when he looks down he doesn’t find his iron leg tying him to the floor. Instead, it floats, as weightless as dust. 

All of him, his body, his demons, and his chains are all floating, the weight of all of them dying under the lack of gravity. It’s like being underwater, finding peace in the loss of forces without having the fear of drowning. 

For once, Jayce feels like it, wonderfully alive.

He searches the Herald, who stands in the air without losing grace or elegance. He ascends through the air as a sharp knife, keeping his eyes on him, waiting. With his new leg, Jayce does what he can, kicking in the air, moving senselessly until his limbs coordinate. 

Swimming in the air, he and the Herald ascend, golden eyes dived in him, guiding the way as lights in a road. A vibrating sound filling the air, it’s his laugh, Jayce knows, a pleasing sensation shining in the thought. He follows those eyes, as a sailor reading the stars, until the invisible sea ends and the floor appears under his feet. 

***

The Herald is fascinated. And the variable for such change is Jayce, a little curious creature. It almost makes him laugh, to hear the interest in his voice and the shine in his eyes every time he talks about his research. It’s almost cute , how the Herald has been submerged into understanding and predicting every intricate pattern of the Arcane and Jayce; whose existence in trivial and unimportant for the big machinery of the universe is so focused, so devoted to a useless research. 

When his nose wrinkles as an indicator of annoyance, his voice breaks the pattern, it’s gentle and kind. 

The Herald is fascinated. 

He analyzes Jayce’s expressions. The Herald has never been interested in human behavior, it is a cycle of senseless connections, without ending and without start, just endless pain and infinite selfishness. 

“I did another test I haven’t mentioned to you,” says Jayce while they walk through the city, there’s no light, just the anomaly shining in the top of his cane to illuminate the way. “I tried dissolving the Arcane with Chloroform, seeing if it could dissolve the Arcane and remove it from the leaf,” Jayce laughs, but the Herald doesn’t find happiness in the sound or any signal of joy in his face. The mouth is tense, the eyebrows are furrowed. “It dissolved the Arcane and the leaf, but I had the hope that… with some research, I could revert its effects, not just in plants.” His eyes deviate, the Herald follows his gaze, he’s looking at the multitude of frozen bodies.

“But I have to ask you something, and I want you to be honest with your answer,” says Jayce. What a ridiculous though, that the Herald could lie, that the Herald would bother about creating a lie, a stupid waste of energy and mind.

Jayce looks at him,in the eye fiercely. “Are they dead?”

“Not dead, Jayce, not in the traditional sense.” The images of the field filled with bodies overlaps with the infinite galaxies, every brilliant soul attached to the stellar tapestry. “I know their mind, I can access to them any time I wish. I know them. But despite their individualist nature, they don’t longer belong to their bodies anymore. The people you’re searching to save exists, but they won’t ever return.”

Jayce doesn’t answer, and the Herald wonders why. He pays special attention to him, to his gait, his eyebrows, the mouth’s curves, trying to capture a clue that could help him read the thoughts in the complex mind. But there’s nothing the Herald can understand, Jayce limps, but there’s nothing different in the swinging of his body. 

What he notices is how his hand pats the backs of the fossilized people, scratching the heads of what once were cats and dogs and caressing the foreheads of the little bodies. “I cannot see what you see,” he finally says when they are standing in front of a building. The Herald remembers it; once it had been a student residence, the Academia is close. “For me, I’m walking in a cemetery.”

Jayce enters the building, murmuring something about searching a bed. 

The Herald waits five seconds before following him. 

***

The truth is, Jayce thought he was the chosen one. 

It was a ridiculous thought. An even more ridiculous theory; not even a theory, a ridiculous hypothesis. Something that has gestated from his desperation. Why? To appear in an unknown land being prey of suffering, why to suffer if there wasn’t a regard for it at the end? Why to be punished with breathing death and sorrow with every step when there wouldn’t be life and creation at the end of the road?

It was a ridiculous theory, but when he thought about it, there were no argument against. One man threw to a destructed society, one man with enough knowledge and overflowing passion, enough energy and dedication to find for a solution. He wasn’t the greatest scientist, or a scientist in general. Expelled from the Academy and condemned to a forge. But didn’t that made his journey much more better?

He had imagined it. The way the whole world would heal. 

He would lead to the Academy, where he suspected everything started. He would work for months, walking among fossils and murmuring promises and consolations. One day, sooner than later; somehow, the complete world would regain color and the air would be easier to breathe. 

Sometimes, when the edge of the night pressed against his chest; Jayce wondered what would he do if he couldn’t solve everything. 

What then? Isn’t what scares him, he knows the answer. A part of his brain, deep inside and hidden under many layers of bittersweet positivity, Jayce knows the answer. He will grieve, he will walk around the city patting shoulders, hugging frozen corpses and kissing foreheads of the little ones. And at the end of the day, he’ll sit in the highest part of some building storing the pain of the whole city in his chest, letting it press his heart until the pain vanishes or his heart explodes. 

What scares him is the why? Why him? If he’s not the hero, then he’s just another one of the prisoners. And if he’s not the hero, then he’s paying for sins he didn’t know he had. 

Now, with his feet at the edge of a destroyed building, the answers aren’t clearer. He looks down for a brief moment, the iron leg shines; weakly, but it does. The leg is heavier than the meat one, his hip hurts due to carrying it, even when he didn’t walk for long. The air becomes denser, plagued with dead and stinking with rot. 

He abhors the Herald, its unnatural face and long limbs, he closes the eyes, imagining the crushing sound of his laugh turns into the crunching sound of the body breaking under the pressure. 

But how would he? To exert enough pressure to kill that creature when it; in its divine essence, can erase gravity.

There is no sense in anything, nothing worth fighting for, everything that could be worth a fight is deceased and vanishing at every passing second. And if there isn’t a fight that is worth having, then why should Jayce spend his remaining energy into ending an infinite being?

His bones weigh, he doesn’t have sensation in the iron leg. Fast, it has become the heaviest part of his existence, a constant limitation, a reminder at every step about the cave, the fall, the broken bone and the Herald.

He hates it, but in the world where the Herald doesn’t manipulate gravity the iron is heavy, heavy enough to lead him down in the floor, let the body crash, the bones lose weight as the rest of the limbs lose sensibility, the air losing density as it stops creeping through his lungs. 

He moves first the iron foot, moving it until the rubber of his boot is more out than in. Closing the eyes, he dares to imagine the world as something more than a rolling mass of corpses. 

“Am I interrupting?”

What the fuck. 

“What the hell is your problem?” Jayce explodes, turning around just to find the emotionless face of the Herald. 

“You are upset,” says the Herald, though his voice lacks from the mechanical echoes. 

“Of fucking course I am!” The Herald doesn’t look affected by his words, by the burning and hurting fire of his pain, and it just makes Jayce hate him more. “I don’t know where the fuck I am! I don’t know why the fuck I am here or why I! I just lost my leg, and I’m thankful because you avoid me an infection and many days there, but mostly, I detest you for what you did.”

“What I did?” Jayce searches for his bag, abandoned in the corner of the room. 

“To turn my leg into iron! To be the cause of all this hell!” Jayce finds his hammer, and in the hot air of the moment he throws it at the Herald. It does nothing, the Herald doesn’t react.

Softly, his voice is soft, the Herald explains: “You were suffering, they were suffering too.” 

“I am still suffering! So why don’t you end with me as well?” He looks at the golden eyes, shining as the eyes of a scared wolf in a hunting. 

The eyes blinked, “I do not…” Somehow, the Herald sounded nervous, surprised even, “kill, I do not kill.”

Jayce points his hand to the desolate city, “and them? Didn’t you say they weren’t dead?”

“They aren’t, but you looked so… Shaken and you just… I won’t do it to you.”

The Herald doesn’t do anything, he doesn’t look like a vengeful god, raising his hand just to destroy him in a painful (but hopefully) fast way. Jayce just detests it more, the way grace and elegance don’t abandon him, the way he carries himself filled with dignity, the way he isn’t angry or offended when Jayce shows him the teeth. “I hate you,” he spits, the words coming out of his mouth as poison, “I do not like you,” he clarifies, hoping that bullet will trigger the composure of the Herald, “nothing you can do could make me tolerate you.”

Jayce looks at him, hoping that in his eyes the Herald finds something that is worth of killing.  

“You are confusing.” He whispers, raw and soft, after long minutes.

Chapter Text

To his unquiet dreams and recurrent nightmares is added the disturbing presence of the Herald, when his mistakes don’t haunt him, the silent but constant presence of the Herald does haunt him. As a ghost, a lost spirit following him. Jayce fears, hopefully, that he might be imagining it, the tinkling sound of two heavy feet and a cane hitting the floor. He closes his eyes until it hurts, but it does nothing to disappear the horrific images tattooed on his eyelids. He has been permanently changed, the man he used to be just another corpse in the immense cemetery that’s the city. It’s all around him, the air bitter as gasoline, the air dense as oil, the sound of metallic steps trapped in his ears, resonating until no other sound exists, until the sound of his own voice feels remote and unknown. 

The iron leg is cold, it sinks on the cushion as a rock in the sea, and Jayce cannot bear it, to be drowned by this wild and violent world and just sit watching it. He can’t stand being only a witness to his own deterioration, counting breaths as hoping every breath is his last one. He once had dreams, strength to fight for them, to scream for them and to fight for his own worth and value.

His brain hurts, every thought hurts; millions of daggers nailing from the inside to the outside, every thought tears him apart. What a shameful thing has become his brain, nothing else but a parasite feeding from his desperation. Both of his hands cover his face and, in an ugly realization, he feels the skinwet, his cheeks and palms bathed, humid, and hot. Against the pillow, Jayce cries. For just a moment, during ephemeral seconds, his cries silence the metal steps He tastes alt and stops counting breaths. 

“ Why me? ” He asks against the pillow, trembling violently, freezing in fear. 

He cannot stand being a witness to his own death, counting the days until the last one arrives.

Therefore, he cleans his face until the saliva dissolves the salt in his mouth and the eyes are inflamed, threatening to fall from his crane, heavy as they feel, Jayce could almost consider it as a blessing. Though his dirty hands remove the tears, it does nothing with the weight of existence on his shoulders. Cleaning the tears from his cheeks, some part of his mind feels slightly lighter, a part that yells with indignation. He had dreams, he shouldn’t be punished with experimenting a constant cycle of collecting pains, he shouldn’t be punished to collect sorrows. He won’t be a witness. He can’t be, he had never been, and he never will. If he has control over something, it’s control over; at least, trying . 

Standing on his feet, Jayce searches for the Herald; coughing in every step, trying to remove the knots trapped in his throat. 

He finds him quickly, close to his room, moving away in long but slow steps. 

“You are…” Says the Herald when he notices Jayce, swinging against the walls like a hurt animal, “not fine.”

“End this,” orders Jayce, the cold air against his cheeks like the edge of a sword; “just do with me what you have done with the rest,” he extends the hand to grab the Herald’s; a thin wrist that Jayce can easily catch between his fingers, he guides the cold limb to his forehead, where the smooth fingertips rest against his skin. It’s almost like he has a deadly fever, all of his face burning, almost calming under the refreshing touch of that purple fingers. 

“I won’t,” the Herald condemns, every one of the words vibrating through the air, vibrating against Jayce’s brain until there’s no other existing sound. 

Jayce presses harder, leaning his forehead against that hand, “ Why? ”

“You are suffering.”

His other hand raises to hold that wrist, feeling every curve of the arm against his skin, “Weren’t they suffering too?”

“Yes,” admits the Herald. His voice is something that Jayce could, even; deranged with fever and contact hunger, interpret as comforting . The thumb on his cheeks moves; up and down. “But it’s different, you don’t like what you’ll become,” the thumb continues moving, caressing the bone cheek: up and down, the kind of movement of someone who isn’t used to providing caresses. It’s rigid, up,down, as the sea churning; something messy and dangerous, up and down, Jayce surprises himself when he finds himself leaning to the touch. 

“Did they like it?” Whispers Jayce as a snake, low and warning. In hopes that will erase how easily he leans to the touch, how little (nothing) he’s doing to apart his face from that touch. 

“They did,” he answers quickly, through the metallic flesh of his fingers Jayce looks at him; he doesn’t know what kind of thing is encapsulated in his eyes. Something violent and angry, something desperate and hungry; whatever it is, it’s enough for the Herald to consider deeper his answer. “I think so…” The thumb on his cheek stops, “I… I cannot be completely sure, there is always a deviation, a percentage of error.”

The fingers that are still on his forehead move, removing the hair that falls, “It is always like that, in science and other ways of life,” concludes the Herald, before continuing the caresses with his thumb. 

Pressing his cheek into the gentle touch, Jayce pleads, praying that the kindness in the hand isn’t an illusion, and the Herald is authentically merciful, “Just do something, anything , just make the pain end.”

And, disconsolate, Jayce cries, no pillow to shut his cries up. 

The hand moves, the fingers wandering on his skin, abandoning the forehead to find a place on his cheek. His humid breath warms the long fingers, his cheek resting on the cold palm. Blurry with tears, Jayce sees the Herald’s eyes as nothing more but two brilliant dots in the darkness. 

“You said you hated me,” murmurs the Herald, the brilliant dots close to him, their lights reflecting on the brown skin. With a tender voice, he asks, “Why do you want me to make something?” Jayce tries finding a cutting edge in the words, a clue of condescension or compassion. Something, anything that could reveal his nature, the nature of a cruel God instead of the soft gentleness that drops from his voice. It’s almost cruel, to find that the havoc has a benevolent source.

“How could I not hate you?” Jayce murmurs, by the side of his blurry eyes he captures how the other purple and golden hand appears, it twitches in the air; here it is , he thinks, half hopeful and half fearful, he will end with me . The fingers twitch, floating towards the face until they reach the jaw, Jayce closes his eyes, waiting for them to grab his neck and press until the air abandons him and the bone marrow breaks. 

His eyes open by themselves when the hand lands on his cheek, a gentle touch instead of annihilating. The hands cup his face, holding him as a precious gift offered to the stars rather than the broken bag of bones and blood he feels like, the eyes illuminate the room as soft fires. Even when it’s weak; a fire dying in the darkness, Jayce holds onto it, the hand smells like iron; and deliriously, it’s like he’s in the forge.

“You made all of this, I cannot recognize my own leg!” he cries against the hand, the fingertips pressing his cheeks as hard rocks; “I’m exhausted, I haven’t slept well, I want to return home!” The tears run hot and fast on his cheeks, the voice trembles under the realization he’s standing on his broken youth. 

“And it’s all your fault,” concludes Jayce.

If the Herald was hurt by his words, Jayce didn’t care; poor interest he had in the emotions of the creature. “I wanted to-” answers him in the continuous discourse he insists about having.

“Yes! I know! I’d be worse with an infection and trapped,” Jayce interrupts him with the cutting edge of a thunder, “but still I cannot control how furious I am with you.” Where is the Herald’s limit, the palm against his face are still lacking the dangerous touch an angry creature would have. What does it need to break the limits of his carefully emotionless face? To insult him? To wound him? To blame him? “I depend on this” he points at his metallic leg, “and it wasn’t my choice.” A soft whisper breaking the dense air.

The soft fires the Herald’s eyes were haven't extinguished, “Your suffering-”

“What do you know about suffering?” The words are sharp, covered with spines and salt. One hand abandons his face, the other one moves from his cheek to the jaw, this is the limit , knows Jayce, hopes Jayce, while a stranger feeling creeps in his guts, tickling in his stomach something that feels like happiness (almost fullness) accompanied by the acid sensation of nauseous fear. 

The fingers find a tight grab on his chin, moving it with the sure touch of a hand not used to rejection. The fires of Herald’s eyes are brilliant and intense, two growing fires turning even the air into ashes; if Jayce wanted to turn away, he was stopped by the firm grab on his chin. “I know how it feels,” explains the Herald with a carefully cared voice, as diamonds shining in every word. “To be scared of dying young, alone and in pain.” Diamonds cutting easily every surface of the universe, scratching human flesh. 

“I wasn’t always like this, Jayce,” his eyes as close fires. It was like he was in the forge, facing the flames; hot and wild, so close he felt like burning.

“I’m sorry, I didn't know you-” he apologizes automatically, unable to remove the eyes from the eyes and mouth peeking out of the mask. Undeniable human and raw.

“You must be tired,” interrupts the Herald, his fingers tracing abstract patterns on the skin until freezing on his neck; “you must be cold,” the fingers press, making him walk through the hall, guided by that hand.

“Go to the bed, I’ll help you rest,” says the Herald, as if it were an extremely simple matter.

Once he was in bed, wrapped among blankets and tangled among his own thoughts,, Jayce found himself thinking about lost eyes and a disappeared mouth, wondering how was the Herald before. Looking at his close figure; at the side of the bed, tall enough to reach the roof and painfully thin; skeletal even, Jayce feared if in that cold metallic body he could still felt hunger. 

When the Herald approached to him, his hand extended as a blessing, he wondered if, in this world wicked to a constant coldness, not enough to be winter but far from being summer–the Herald could still feel cold, as a distant sensation on the surface of his skin.

When the Herald touched his forehead, Jayce wondered, a distant and blurry idea in his sleepless mind, if he had already reached the Herald’s limit, but rather than breaking him into anger and omnipotent fury, he had broken whatever that had contained all the gentleness and tenderness stored in his infinity. 

With five fingers on his forehead, Jayce slept better than he had done in years. Dreaming of growing universes; he, raised in the sky, was just another star burning in an endless canvas of beauty and celestial dust. He was nothing else but a speck of stardust floating in the infinite, a meer witness of the beauty of the universe, staring at the cycle of constant birth of the luminaries. Jayce found that he didn’t mind being a pointless dot in the timeless narrative of the existence. As long as he could admire the life existing in it.

Chapter Text

The Herald has never missed anything. It’s hard to miss something when the Herald is constantly thinking in the present, all the chains from his past broken and fossilized in the ground, condemned to be forgotten. 

Even when his past is supposed to be buried in the ground, rotting under his strong feet. Sometimes he gives a misstep; an unexpected mistake where his eyes catch a glimpse of one of his legs. Memories arrive, they grab him by the ankle, they raise through his legs, and they want to reach his brain where they can torture him. And the Herald has to turn aside his eyes to stop himself of flinching. 

In the middle of his scientific curiosity, the Herald finds himself searching for Jayce; who, the last days, has been slowly drowning in silence. It’s curious, how a creature whose screams vibrated with the strength of his pain is now breaking down in quietness. But would it matter if he broke down in screams and cries? Nothing different between the sound of his spirit crushing in comparison with the sound of a tree falling in the middle of a forest, no one to hear either of them. 

No one but the Herald. But even if Jayce broke down with the stellar crash of two planets collapsing, it matters little if it’s the Herald who hears him, does it worth if there is someone to hear if that someone isn’t interested in remembering? What will happen with Jayce? Once his body disintegrates, his bones joining to the buried bodies of his past, all of them meant to be forgotten. Will he have ever existed? Will he have ever matter if there’s no one bothering in remembering him?

It doesn’t matter, because the Herald has never missed anything and has never yearned for anything. Future, present, past, all of them are conceptions ; knows the Herald, b ecause time is the trap of humanity ; he repeats to himself, too much time, too little time ; he thinks carefully.

How much time does Jayce have left?

“How does the reproduction of the Arcane works?” He is surprised by Jayce’s voice, “how does his dispersion work as a fungi?” He adds, 

“Fungi reproduce through spores, but I have to admit I do not know.”

Jayce whispers, a comment that the Herald is almost sure he wasn’t supposed to hear, “what do you know about it?”

“I know it could help,” insists the Herald. The truth is; even with the cosmic knowledge his mind carries, the Herald doesn’t wish to make an effort to fully understand the reasons behind his thorny behavior. 

Emotion is humanity trap , knows the Herald, he has run away from his prison long ago; emotion is a cave, thinks the Herald; emotion is the shadows on the wall of the cave , reflects to himself; he has escaped from the cave long ago, he has stopped looking at the shadows and has found their sources long ago. He doesn’t have to return to the cave, he doesn’t have to accompany Jayce when looking at shadows. 

When they are arriving to the Academy, Jayce is now following him .; he staggers some steps behind, with weak legs. The Herald takes a moment to look at him, and when he sees that recognizable soreness shining in his pupils, he fears that there are caves Jayce isn’t meant to escape. 

Guided by a higher force (what a ridiculous notion, what could be higher than him?) the Herald walks, recognizing the halls even when they have been heavily transformed by abandonment. He doesn’t know how; but somehow, he makes the right turns to get to the room, opening drawers with a confident hand until finding a leg brace. How curious, he doesn’t remember why he kept it, a pointless memory of his past; it feels like a bloody knife rather than a rusty brace. 

An obstreperous sound interrupts that thought. It’s Jayce, who else could be? Jayce, who has hit the frame of the door while walking. He follows him like a lost pet, a sad ghost trailing behind. Little lonely creature. 

“For your leg,” he hands him the brace, like bradishing a gun at him. 

Charismatically, Jayce answers with a tiny oh . He receives the brace with unsure hands, holding it as though it  were an alien object, something he has never touched before, because he hasn’t , thinks the Herald, and he knows it’s true. How could Jayce know something about it? Jayce, shining Jayce, beautiful being created with the golden ratio, poor broken Vitruvian’s man. 

“For your leg,” he clarifies. Jayce nods, moving with short steps until he’s close enough to throw himself onto the bed. He falls as a rock in the dirt, raising a cloud of dust; he looks at him, a hidden question written in the pupils. He’s lost , still following him around, just like a lost pet. 

Even when it would be easy to explain; there’s something that impulses him to only give him a clue, “you have to adjust the diameter for your measures;” and he removes his gaze from those pleading eyes. His body moves for himself, finding easily a cane that fits too well in his hand; how funny how much his hands had changed and still, they haven’t forgotten how to hold it. 

“Take this too,” he says, interrupting the avalanche of memories before it falls over him.

Jayce’s hands stop working in the leg brace. He’s smart , has already noticed the Herald, but he gets a nice satisfaction in seeing the way his fingers move, becoming exponentially familiar with the iron and the screws to adjust the brace. He takes the cane and leaves it on the bed at his side, he smiles , “thanks.” it’s probably the first time he has seen Jayce smiling, he has a gab between the incisors. 

“I hope it relieves you,” the Herald says; as a late occurrence, before leaving the room. 

He wanders, unsure about his destination, confirming that he still remembers and knows every hall of the Academy. Even when he already knew; deeply buried in his mind, that he had never forgotten. 

Jayce called this city a cemetery, and in a literal sense, the Herald agrees with him: there’s not a single alive thing in the world but himself and Jayce. In a metaphorical sense, the Herald agrees with him in a single thing, if the whole city is a cemetery, the Academy is his grave. When he is staring at the tiny room that was once his office and lab, he cannot stop the avalanche of memories that falls over him, burying him in the ground together with his memories. 

His fingers touch an abandoned notebook;, the one that was once his binnacle, and he has never regretted anything particular about his past, maybe some senseless mistakes, but he has never regretted any transcendental decision. However, when he reads the last notes he wrote, he finds himself not missing, rather he imagines something else, something different. He barely spares thoughts in the life he got, less to say he spares thoughts in the life he could have had; he has never considered the possibility of a very different, distant world, where the things that change aren’t his senseless decisions or his big transcendental decisions. But, when he looks at his messy equations, he finds himself wondering about a very different, distant world, where the only variable that changes is meeting Jayce a little earlier. 

He closes the notebook stronger than necessary, it’s ridiculous , to reflect about how could have been his life if Jayce were there; they aren’t friends, he theorizes Jayce tolerates him only for the need of not being alone. But why does he; the infinite Herald, tolerates Jayce? He’s a cruel creature towards him, he has spitted all his poison to him without reservations. Why does he tolerate him? Why does he imagine a life where Jayce arrived earlier? How would it change? 

It’s ridiculous , he knows; it would be a ridiculous life to meet Jayce early, a ridiculous life where they become friends and Jayce smiles to him sooner. 

Simply ridiculous, a lost possibility in the immense canvas of the universe. 

As ridiculous as the very real fact that Jayce appears in his office, panting, wearing the brace and holding the cane. 

Without breath, Jayce enters the room, “You are good at hiding.”

It’s a strange accusation, “I wasn’t hiding.”

Jayce moves nervously, passing by his side in a fast movement to reach the chair (with a dense coat of dust). “Thanks for the brace and the cane, they are…” He stops talking, the eyes move everywhere as if he could find the world somewhere hidden in the room, “nice to walk with.”

Taken off by the whole situation, the Herald finds himself in the uncomfortable position of not understanding. It’s a weird thing, to not understand a thing when he has unlimited knowledge. Jayce plays with the cane between his hands, spinning and swinging it; for a short moment, the Herald thinks he has nothing else to say, but that has no sense, since he’s still seated in the dirty chair. 

“Whose are these?” He asks after ten seconds. 

“Once they were mine.”

“The room too.” It’s not a question, but the Herald still confirms it. 

Jayce stops talking again; drowning in silence, but this time he looks at him. He has a small cut in an eyebrow. 

His eyes wear a strange expression, a raw mix between a deep sadness and something else, something bitter, “I read some of your notes.”

“Which one?”

“The one about cleaning water with bacteria,” his eyesn gleam with the distinct shine of surprise and curiosity. 

“There is a surprising long list of bacteria species able to decompose waste; unfortunately, none of them can destroy completely the waste, most of them break down it into smaller pieces, molecular pieces. After all, mass is neither created nor destroyed in chemical reactions.”

“Only transformed,” adds Jayce, and the words whine with excitement. 

“Exactly, and there is a shorter list of bacteria with enzymes, and the smaller pieces aren’t longer waste, the enzymes can turn them into silk,” his own voice fills with interest. Maybe that is why he spares a thought in that distant, very different life.

“And what happened?” Jayce is on the edge of the seat. 

It’s a strange question, “with what?”  

“Your project,” the Herald wonders when Jayce considered the cleaning bacteria as his project, he never did.

“Nothing happened,” why would something happen?

Jayce looks strange, his eyebrows frown with pure confusion, not like he’s misunderstanding his words, but like he’s not understanding them at all, like if they are talking two different languages. “Why?”

“It didn’t have financing,” it’s a very simple issue. 

“Why?” Why?

“Probably nobody was interested in financing eating trash bacteria,” he says, thought it feels like a question. 

Jayce looks at the floor, blinking quickly, as if he were trying to see something new in the grab of his cane. “But why?” He insists, with that strange determination in his face, the same that once himself had when he was facing an extremely difficult problem.

“Why would eating trash bacteria get a patron?” 

He answers faster than expected: “Because you’re brilliant.” It doesn’t have sense, it such a simple answer, totally unrelated with the roots of the issue. Somehow, Jayce finds a way to pronounce them; trusting and sweet, that looks impossible to not believe in them.

How is he supposed to react? It’s strange to be the addressee of Jayce’s praise after being the victim of his free hate. 

“I also found a photo,” adds Jayce, after he doesn’t get a response, deviating his eyes to somewhere over the table; “was it you?” He sounds like close to exploding if he doesn’t spit everything he has to say. 

There aren’t many photos in that room; in specific, there is only one: The one that was taken when he won the Distinguished Innovators Competition. “Most likely,” he limits to answer. 

And, he must have too many words in his mouth, because he explodes as soon as the Herald stops talking, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” The cruelty? The open disgust?

“For what you had to-” He starts to say, that’s an old melody the Herald knows pretty well, he has never forgotten.

“For the life I had? For what I had to face? For how brave I should have been?” He has never forgotten anything, no matter if he tried to bury his past and all the memories in the ground, sometimes they come out to grab his ankles, raise through his legs and try to reach his head. An avalanche of rancor and hate makes him say: “Poor cripple from the Undercity who-”

Jayce raises his hand, his hands extended to him in a sign of peace as calming down an angry beast, “I’m sorry you had to go through it all alone.”

Fast, he attacks: “What makes you think I were alone?”

Faster than expected, faster than the Herald would like him to talk , Jayce replies: “Because you are still alone,” a little gasp, “you were alone before I…” His eyes wander, as lost as he looks, he takes a deep breath, “and I’m glad that I don’t have to go through this alone.”

“It doesn’t look like this,” adds Jayce with humorous tone, “but I’m happy I have you.”

For some reason, the Herald considers right to correspond his praise, “I’m also… pleased to have you here.” For some other reasons he doesn’t know, he throws a promise to their conversation, “but I’ll help you to return home, you mentioned you want to return home, didn’t you?”

There’s a tender vulnerability in Jayce’s eyes, “How will you do that?” 

“I don’t know yet, but two brilliant scientists should be able to figure it out,” Jayce laughs, it’s the first time he has done it. The Herald hasn’t seen a laughing being long ago, he doesn’t care how long; he’s more interested in how the sound looks to wake up something inside him, something pretty hidden, something that should be buried in the ground. 

“Go rest,” orders the Herald, “We’ll start our research tomorrow, but you need rest.”

Jayce gets up, but he doesn’t make a movement to leave the room, “Will you come with me?” He waits until the Herald nods to leave the room, he leads the way with slow but firm steps, slowly becoming familiar with the cane. 

The Herald is surprised when Jayce walks to his room– no , Viktor’s room.

Chapter Text

When he saw the Herald working at his side; twisting with his long fingers the fine focus of the microscope, Jayce realized how scared he should be. It’s such a ridiculous thought he cannot help but smile at it; he has shared the last days with a creature made of steel and horror and somehow, his brain cannot still produce the necessary neurotransmitters and hormones to make him feel a fiber of fear. 

While the Herald closes an eye to see better, he cannot help but almost laugh at the ridiculous situation: seated with a monster, a creature made of steel and horror, a creature able to break and destroy a whole world and disappear gravity if that’s his will.

“Do you need a microscope?” Jayce says with a laugh, looking at the Herald bowed in an uncomfortable position. A creature that has reduced himself to a partner in his laboratory, in an investigation that no longer means anything; “aren’t your eyes able to see much more than an old microscope?” He laughs, the Herald is hunched in a pose that lacks the constant elegance that his body possesses. 

The Herald doesn’t laugh, but his voice is airy and light, “I do not need one, but you do,” he takes a step aside to the microscope, leaving him place; “go ahead,” his eyes doesn’t change, they are bright and shining in the dark iron of his face, but Jayce almost feels like he’s smiling wild and wide. 

He closes an eye, seeing for a brief moment his own eyelashes, it makes him smile. While letting his eye adjust to the light he’s surprised to find himself genuinely joyful and amused, almost overwhelmed by the addictive taste of excitement before being for so much time numbed and cold. “This is incredible,” and the tone of his own voice; vulnerable, genuine, amused, raw, and terribly alive, leaves him overwhelmed; grabbing the table until his knuckles turn white, feeling dizzy not just due to the microscope. 

“It is?” He feels the presence of the Herald leaning over him, bathing Jayce and the microscope with his shadow.

Jayce nods, keeping the eye wide open as if he could devour the entire image in seconds. “It’s wonderful,” he whispers again, breathless, with every syllable dripping with fascination,; “the staining works wonderfully.”

He opens both of his eyes only when a cold brushes his cheek, “can you see the nuclei?” Asks the Herald, Jayce isn’t sure if he’s truly pressing the corners of his face against his warm skin, maybe he’s just feeling the natural coldness that emanates from his body made of metal, “I do.”

“How many cells do you think are there?” Asks the Herald, his voice isn’t an omnipotent melody of echoes, it’s human, painfully human and scratchy. 

“Twenty?” He looks through the microscope, bathed under the fresh shadow of the Herald and trapped between the microscope and his gentle voice, “we should print it, or save the image somewhere.” The Herald abandons the place against his cheek, leaving a different kind of coldness behind. He moves through the room, looking at the machines; covered in dust and oblivion, “we’ll need to repair this, but we can try.”

“Two brilliant scientists should be able to figure it out, shouldn’t we?” Jayce says while walking around the room, slow and heavy steps resonating against the floor; accompanied by an inconsistent third sound, the cane hitting the floor. 

He finds chalk, and while he fills the corner of the chalkboard with senseless sketches, the Herald talks: “How does your leg feel?” Strong and powerful, his voice fills the room, a resonating sound that orders to be obeyed. It should be a warning, almost threatening, it should make him shiver. It might be that the Herald looks like a human, it might be that he sometimes sounds like a man, it might be that he once was a scientist, just like him; Jayce cannot still feel fear, even when the edge of the cutting voice can be resting against his neck. 

“I do not feel much, everything is a little bit too distant, it’s still there, but very far away,” he curls the metallic fingers inside his boot, “it’s frustrating.” he cannot feel, no matter how much he tries, no matter how much he concentrates in feeling, he cannot recognize his own feet. 

He didn’t notice when the Herald had approached so much to him, “I’m not sorry for what I did.” 

“I know,” Jayce sighs. The Herald doesn’t inspire him fear, just confusion. He cannot tell if it’s his godlike nature that makes him egoistical or his monstrous one that makes him frightening. 

Or his human one that makes him unpredictable; submerged under dense layers of iron but somehow, peeking out of the surface to say the most lethal things, “but I need to apologize, only because I have caused you a different kind of suffering,” says the Herald with the voice wrapped with an undesired honesty. “I do not expect you to forgive me, but I expect you to believe me fully when I say I’d try to help you, I want you to be in home, Jayce.” 

And Jayce believes him, fully, as he believes in God, no , as he believes in gravity. The Herald is simply another force of nature, unstoppable but for some reason, working in his favor. 

“I don’t even know where I am,” Jayce answers after a long silence. 

But as a force of nature, a weak impediment isn’t enough to stop the strength of his will, “but I do know,” in the reduced range of movement his face has, Jayce has the deep sense that he’s smiling. “You’ll see, little creature,” his voice lacks the detached tone he generally uses to pronounce that; instead it’s like honey is flowing from his mouth, Jayce has never been closer to sweet before. “I might not understand the biology behind the Arcane, but I have learned deeply about other sides of it, like the divine one.” 

He sounds amused, the most excited Jayce has heard him (the most excited Jayce has heard someone ever). His hand moves through the air, he rambles long about runes, magic, and infinity. Jayce cannot understand all of the concepts, barely paying attention to the words, too distracted with the new discovery standing in front of him: A man, Viktor , still passionate and smart even when trying to hide under the dense coat of the Herald. 

Viktor. 

“Do you feel hunger?” He interrupts the Herald- Viktor ; in the middle of an explanation about some kind of divine equation. 

“Me?” He repeats as if the question were deeply funny, “I do not, I have gotten rid of many pains from humanity.”

“Then how do you feed? Where do you obtain your energy from?” Asks Jayce, having forgotten the biology of the Arcane and the microscope tests, too distracted with the addictive realization that in front of him there is the Herald; a chimera between man and beast, the most mysterious force of nature. Somehow, in front of him, pleading to be discovered and understood. 

He approaches the Herald, examining with clinical eye every twist of his body, “I’m tightly intertwined with the Arcane, its energy keeps me,” he explains as if it were a simple fact. 

But it’s not enough for Jayce, hungry of explanations and discoveries, “Do you feel cold? Everywhere in this place is pretty cold,” his hand raises to land on the Herald’s wrist, tracing with the tip of his thumb the metallic tendons and muscles of the forearm. “You feel cold from the touch,” divagues Jayce, following with his curious hand the cold path like a devoted explorer. 

“Like a distant sensation, so far it’s no longer inconvenient,” explains the Herald, extending and closing the fingers, “it’s easy to ignore.” 

Jayce reflects the words in silence, twisting them in his mind, analyzing them thoughtfully. His body uses a different kind of energy, but could it be that his body transforms the wild energy of the Arcane into usable energy, like calories, or his body has simply evolved to not need such? He wanders around theories and divagations, spinning every senseless hypothesis in his brain trying to find the angle where they have sense. 

He presses the place in the wrist where the pulse should be, finding nothing but cold skin and fossilized veins. “Do you feel this?” He presses harder, until the tips of his fingers turn white; there’s no pulse, there’s no warmth, but the Herald opens his hand; it's like the sun is laying on his palm. 

“Very far, very distant,” says the Herald with a sad voice, like announcing a depressing tragedy, “but I know it’s there, and that’s good enough.” 

“It is?” He explores the contours of the palm, pressing in aleatory points just to see if he wakes up with some kind of reflex by luck. He does, not the kind he was expecting. “It is,” promises the Herald, his fingers curling to trap Jayce’s hand. The Herald is warm, lost in his own cruelty, a creature that despite its monstrous nature figures out a way to keep his hand hot. 

 “Is it good for you, Jayce?” The way he speaks his name makes it look a more sacred word than it actually is. The words are covered with a satisfying sound, an accent , discovers Jayce happily, Viktor’s accent , he realizes while getting drunk with the syllabes. 

He had barely spent a thought on Viktor, the human behind the Herald, and why think about him?, when what remained of him was an abandoned room which the Herald didn’t care about. Jayce has thought about Viktor longly, staring at his photo for so long he could see his face even in the dark. For moments he felt the triggering sensation  of sleeping on the bed where someone had died, the blankets stained and worn out due to the use, and when he opened the night table, all of his notes were there, disorganized as if Viktor had planned to read them later. And without a Viktor to read them, Jayce did until the words were tattooed on the back of his mind; until he could recite them as if they were poetry. It was like reading an obituary, he was just a witness of Viktor’s death.

This belongs to: Viktor, said with simplicity the first page of the journal, the corner of the page decorated with a messy sketch of something that looked like a nanoparticle, with a core of something Jayce couldn’t identify and a shell of some organic particle, the name Viktor was small, a brief word in the big canvas of the page. 

This is how I’ll improve lifes in Zaun , was written in the second page, followed by a detailed plan. He talked about functional prosthesis, about clean water and green fields, he promised fresh air in every breath. It was the most ambitious thing Jayce had read in his entire life, more ambitious than what he had ever allowed himself to be. It was beautiful. Viktor ended the page with a bitter note ( I don’t know where the finanting for this would come from ) but Jayce could still taste his hope as if it were his own. 

And while he laughed at the sporadic jokes written in the pages, marveled with the designs of machines, he found himself laying under Viktor’s dreams. His hands grabbing what have been his cane as if he could find Viktor’s hand hidden in the smooth surface, trying to capture a crumb of his warmth somewhere in the grab of the cane.  

In consequence, when Viktor’s dreams crushed over him, they buried Jayce too. 

I cannot do this without a patron , the page was filled with a long list of crossed out names.

I couldn’t get a patron, no one is interested , said the next page, a big brown splotch in the middle of the page made difficult to read the rest of the words; but through the dense brown of the old blood Jayce could read: I’m not surprised .

From that point it was more a diary than a scientific notebook, Viktor ranted about Piltover and its games, the games that he always lost before they even started. I won’t do it, I cannot do it , read one the last pages with desperation, the ink spilled for the whole page creating abstract shapes. 

Jayce remained there, the book opened in front of his face, breathing Viktor’s bitterness. There’s a way , he wrote, in one of the last pages, the last thing he wrote, without providing further explanation. There’s equations, sketches of machines Jayce cannot comprehend, when he read it for the first time, he had thought of it has a triumphal return. What a stupid believe, when he was conscious of where it ended Viktor's fate, those weren't triumphal words, but Viktor’s last words, a farewell before disappearing to let the Herald be born.

Constantly surrounded by the death that plagued this world, Jayce felt how his chest turned heavy with sorrows. The air in his lungs was heavy and bitter, dense like oil creeping through his lungs; in the cemetery that was the city, being in Viktor’s room was like sleeping with his corpse, surrounded by his remains, condemned to see them rotting.

It was more painful to discover the clues of the tenderness in the Herald, to discover that the natural cruelness of the world hasn’t been enough to kill the gentlest pasts of Viktor. He felt stupid, how he could have considered Viktor banished? When the Herald still had his thin mouth and closed eyes peeking out from his mask. 

“I can feel your hand,” says Jayce with simplicity, the only words that felt right to hold on his tongue. “It’s good for me,” palm against palm, Jayce could detail the gold intertwined among Viktor’s fingers, like sun melting between their hands.

“You said you hated me,” whispers Viktor; lately, the vulnerability flourished in his words with more regularity. “You said that you liked nothing about me, that there’s nothing I could do for you to like me,” he added, his hand trembling on Jayce’s, like a fragile creature instead of a powerful force. 

“I hate what you did,” Jayce agrees with pronounced certainty even as it leaves an acid trace on his mouth. “Everything you did,” Jayce tightens his grab on Viktor, “Maybe I won’t be able to forgive it.” Jayce looks at him in the eyes, they sparkle as drying stars. It looks like Viktor is unraveling under his gaze, the firm purple muscles undoing as if they were melting. 

Jayce would pay more attention to the implications of just how his raw words are enough to wound the Herald, if he weren’t putting his whole being into letting his honest mouth spew every true word. “But I was taken by emotion when I said that, there are things about you I like,” his gaze doesn’t waver, wishing that Viktor can see the peerage shining behind his pupils; Viktor leans, his curious eyes pleading for an explanation Jayce is willing to give, he talks before thinking: “You have a fascinating anatomy, for example.” Feeling like those eyes are taking the words from his mouth, Viktor laughs, and it’s not the bone-breaking sound he’s used to– it’s deep, satisfied, and charming. A vibrating sound that comes from the deep of his throat. Jayce wonders how the rigid fibers inside his neck can produce such sore and beautiful sounds. Is his throat filled with flexible cords? Or do the sounds come from nothings, simply resonating against the rigid walls of his neck?

“Fascinating anatomy?” Viktor leans, slouching to be as tall as him. Suddenly the air is light; “I was once a man, Jayce, I still have two arms, two legs, and a head,” he squeezes his hand. Suddenly the air is sweet, “this time they are all more functional, though.” Another laugh, and Jayce realizes it was a joke. 

“Was it your right leg? Jayce approaches the question cautiously, making a conscious effort to not look away. 

He says with simplicity: “It was.” It’s not a surprise, it’s a confirmation. In the endless minutes of staring at Viktor’s photo he has caught  a flash of the brace’s metal, just a gleam of its metallic shine in the frame. And, as a mark that cannot be erased; the Herald, or Viktor in his divine body, conserved a golden path on his left leg. 

His eyes gravitate towards Viktor’s leg, following the magnetic path of gold, from the ankle to the knee, from the knee to the thigh. “We should calculate the size, the cell’s size, I mean.” murmurs Jayce, rubbing Viktor’s knuckles.

“Go ahead,” Viktor whispers, his metallic hand abandoning its comfortable place on Jayce’s hand to land on his shoulder. Jayce feels its pressure: it’s heavy, not like a demon on his shoulder or like a chain sinking him in the ground, but a comforting presence, another part of his spine keeping him still. 

Jayce looks through the microscope, falling in deep daydreams while taking the crystal slide from the stage clips. While counting squares of the graph paper, pressing his eyebrow bone against the frame of the lens, he felt an unexpected but unmistakable weight on his shoulder. 

“What are you doing?” Jayce whispered while starting to count the squares again. 

Still with his divine face resting on his shoulder, Viktor said with humorous tone: “I’m supervising you, of course.” The words play around his head, gambling with his mind until  any other thought is erased. Jayce lost the count again. 

Viktor is a force of nature, a powerful one, a magnetic one, a devouring one. It’s like his presence is taking away any coherence in Jayce, crumbling it with just his close presence. In a brief moment of consciousness, he wonders if his weakness over Viktor’s touch it’s caused by the time he has been alone, if loneliness has turned his skin sore and raw.

“Anyways, why are we doing this?” Jayce says louder than intended, setting aside the eyes from the lens. Viktor removes his face from his shoulder; he doesn’t touch him. 

“I want to help you to return home, Jayce,” and without touch, Jayce feels caressed by the accent in the words, wrapped in Viktor’s shadow. “And I have a theory,” Viktor whispers as if sharing a dangerous secret, “but I would like you to tell me how you arrived here.” 

“I’m not sure,” admits Jayce with a low voice. A purple hand raises in an elegant movement, and when it lands on his shoulder, Jayce feels how all the words unravel from his tongue. “I was working on some energy tests.” 

“A project of yours?” That hand squeezes his shoulder and without thinking about it, Jayce searches with his fingertips a place on Viktor’s waist, thin and slim, like a corpse.

“No, no, mine. I never could get the financing,” he sighs, slightly embarrassed to have to admit that, when Viktor is such a devoted listener. “It was about…” Jayce searches for a word, passing his hand through his face, “travels, they wanted to optimize traveling for…economy, market, tourism, that kind of stuff.” 

“It sounds like you deeply enjoyed working in that,” jokes Viktor with that playful voice, sweet tone wrapped with bells. 

“It was so… vain,” his head falls to rest on Viktor’s shoulder, forehead pressed against the hard skin, his eyes staring at their feet. “Anyways, I thought that if I impressed them, maybe I could get financing for a project of my own, my very own.” Jayce whispers, closing his eyes as Viktor’s fingers wander from his shoulder to his back, the cold tips tracing letters Jayce cannot decipher. “I believed I had an alternative energy source which could be used to optimize and enhance the speed of travels. Not certain how it could be used, to power trains, maybe? I don’t know, I don’t really care, I just wanted to make something amazing.” A certain movement of Viktor’s hand on his back leaves him speechless. 

And a certain caress; a tender touch between his shoulder and his spine, pulls the right strings to make Jayce open the eyes and raise the head. Unfold the words hidden in his tongue: “I wanted to create something I could be admired for.”

Is that the reason behind his fate? Is this the price to pay for the sin of avarice? Jayce feels like breaking under that ugly realization. “Is that bad?” He asks Viktor, who’s powerful, stripped from pain and lighted with knowledge, the only God that favours him; the only one who is brutal enough to spit only the truth, the only one who is gentle enough to cradle his face while doing so. 

“No,” Viktor replies quickly. “I don’t think there’s something wrong with wanting to be admired, to be respected.” The hand leaves a final caress; a tender farewell, before meandering to cradle Jayce’s neck. “How blind they should be, when you are so brilliant, to refuse to give you a chance.” Viktor spits the words as if they were the only truth, holding his face as if he were the only thing worth looking at. 

He probably is, considering the world where they stand is broken and damaged to the point of no return, but then, Viktor holds him as if he is the only thing worth saving, the only one worth preserving by his side. 

As if Viktor’s eyes were skinning him, exposing his beating and hurting chest to his eyes, Jayce cannot stop the words: “I miss my mom.” And the safe space between her arms, the golden words under her tongue and her strong kisses on his cheeks. 

As if he could hear the cries of Jayce’s bleeding heart, Viktor makes an admirable effort to comfort it. Heavy limbs surround him, trapping him in a metallic cage until Jayce cannot see nothing but the iron muscles tensing around him. 

“I miss Cait.” And her sharp mouth, judging eyes, and the crazy way she grows older every day despite being just a child.

“You’ll see them again, I’ll make sure of that,” whispers Viktor, his long limbs wrapped around Jayce, as if he could hide him from the sorrows plaguing the air. 

And Viktor must hide a magical code in his fingertips, some kind of spell in his touch. Because somehow, he again touches the right strings to thwart Jayce, shattering ribs to reveal the sore heart. 

“You’ll see them again,” Viktor repeats, his voice rumbles, devouring any other existing sound. “I promise,” and maybe it’s the tender words or the way Viktor pronounces them as if they were sacred, holy music. Jayce’s hands creep through Viktor’s body, raising the fingers to embrace his golden chest, presenting his palms to the altar that’s the Herald. His fingers search for a way to hold to the golden salvation in front of him, clinging to his back where his nails sink in the purple knots of the cold back. 

Viktor’s hands cover Jayce’s head as if he could remove every suffering from his mind with his touch, he holds his head like something precious, guiding it to rest on his chest. Jayce sees nothing but an abstract space of purple brushstrokes and golden splashes, as a galaxy in expansion in front of his eyes, born under corruption but still preserving sparks of humanity, stars that have never died.

Surrounded by the firm embrace of the universe, Jayce allows himself to cry. It’s different to the last time he cried with the Herald present, back then he was possessed like a wild beast by anger and pain, in tears to exorcise the demons that have threatened with drowning him, trying to use his sorrows to drown Viktor instead. 

This time, he feels like a different kind of beast; a wounded one, bleeding in Viktor’s arms while he licks his blood, caressing his broken bones.

He lets himself feel the rawness in his chest, tasting the pain and every frustration hanging from his mouth like cries. Viktor is patient, caressing his hair until there’s no knots, leaving circles on his shoulder as if he were doing a healing ritual, throwing praises to appease the soreness. Jayce feels the tickle of Viktor’s hair on his cheek.

When the tears stop he dries them off with a gentle hand, but even when his hand is clean and warm Jayce doesn’t separate them from the safe space against Viktor's chest. 

“Do you have a heartbeat?” Jayce asks spontaneously, pressing the ear on the inlaid gold, closing the eyes while searching for a clue of the sound. 

Viktor laughs. “You tell me, brilliant creature, do I?” 

Jayce squeezes him between his arms, pressing until his cheek touches the cold skin. “No,” his nails sink. “I can hear nothing,” he presses harder, and so does Viktor.

“I did a good job at getting rid of emotion,” says Viktor with a humorous tone that lacks genuinity. “After all, what is more sentient than the heart?” 

And Viktor has a point, he’s an intellectual man, he’s a smart one. So of course, Viktor can clearly know the historical significance of a beating heart. Was that the first thing he removed? The pulsating organ in his chest? Maybe he took it out, the first sacrifice for the creation of his divine identity. 

But loneliness had made Viktor stupid and ignorant in the matters of sensitivity, ignorant in his own fragile existence. There’s no longer a beating heart treasured in his ribs, but Viktor has admitted a fatal flaw in his analysis. 

It’s now a weird thing to happen , knows Jayce, interpretation mistakes are usual and inevitable in matters of science and divinity. And loneliness has deprived Viktor of a second opinion, a peer opinion. 

“You’re wrong,” assures Jayce, knowing it's true, the thing that plumbed blood into his veins disappeared. But whatever the source his emotion is, it wasn’t his heart, it was never his heart. Jayce doesn’t know what it is or where it is, if it is a wild mass of magic and craziness located in some part of his chest, or a brilliant sphere of energy hidden somewhere in the universe. It doesn’t really matter where it is, because it exists , even if it’s buried deeper than Jayce can imagine, its force   exists constantly around him. 

“What?” 

“You’re wrong. Fundamentally incorrect,” repeats Jayce. “You did an awful job at getting rid of emotion. It’s not bad, I’m thankful you failed,” Viktor was quiet and silent in his arms. “And Viktor, I think you are also thankful you failed.” 

He did not answer, Jayce could almost swear Viktor was containing the breath if it weren’t due to his cold chest not needing air anymore.

After long silent seconds, Viktor dared to speak. “No,” he whispered, a fragile sound. “I don’t…” Viktor continued, with a voice filled with fear. He took his time to talk, Jayce feared he had accidentally broken something inside Viktor. 

Finally, he talked, low and firm: “Ask me another question, anything.”

Jayce is taken by surprise by the petition, perceiving a rare desperation in the way Viktor claws his fingers on the curve of his dressed shoulders.

“What…” He looks around, searching objects in the room, trying to find a question worth asking. On the table, he finds two protein bars, one half-eaten and the other in its package, his and Viktor's. “What is your favorite food?”

“Sweetmilk,” Viktor answers easily. 

“But…You don't eat.”

“Once I did, it was good while it lasted,” Viktor touches the smooth surface of his face, his hand floating where a thin mouth should be. 

“Do you miss it?” Jayce flowers his voice, not knowing if he wants Viktor to hear him or not. 

Viktor echoes, “Eating?”

Jayce smiles, his fingers follow the curve of Viktor's back, “It’s a little pleasure life gifts us.”

“And to not look too merciful, first it gifted us hunger.”

His smile fades, trying to raise the head to look at Viktor, but the metallic fingers stop him from doing so. “Sorry,” Viktor pats his head, as if he were a dog and Jayce does his best to not laugh. He wonders if loneliness has also made him ignorant in the arts of love. 

“Sometimes I do miss it, the little pleasures,” even without breathing, the Herald sighs. “Never to the point of regretting it,” he concludes, sharp and leaving no place for objection.

Jayce searches for words to smooth the sharp edges, but Viktor must feel his desperation, because he admits: “But I do reflect about the chance that maybe, there could be a better result than this. Some place where I can remove the pain without removing the brief moments of happiness.”

“A better ending,” the Herald looks through the window. “For all of us.”

He sighs. Jayce wants to think  he is trying to not cry. 

“I do regret not finding that better world.”

And Jayce, mouth empty of words, presses his face against his chest, trapping Viktor’s skeleton body within his embrace as if with that he could get into his ribs, lie where his heart should be. Or lie against whatever the thing from which all his tenderness comes from. 

Chapter Text

The Herald never expected caring for someone would be such an inconvenience. Viktor; on the other hand, has never forgotten about the eternal inconvenience that had been taking care of himself. He hadn’t missed it.

“How do you plan to return me home?”

But somehow, Jayce and his impractical human fragileness — whiny, unpredictable, sensitive, kind, generous, and adorable — had earned his patience. 

“Viktor?” He insists after not receiving a quick response. An impractical creature, anxious, with a tendency to succumb to his emotions. Viktor hadn't missed the recurrent pain and the brief instants of happiness, it was a surprise Jayce’s wild nature didn’t turn into an annoyance, but simply a matter of fact.

Before, the Herald had evaluated the possibility it would be either a reason of hate or love, something that made Jayce into an unbearable person or an extremely charismatic one. But he didn’t spare the possibility that he wouldn’t mind it. 

“We’ll recreate the circumstances which brought you here,” he explains, his right hand resting on Jayce’s back. “In a controlled environment, of course.”

“Creating a similar implosion of energy,” Jayce leans to the microscope, but his eyes don't open with the amusement that Viktor had planned. “From where?” He asks instead, the Herald could see the nervous energy churning around his head. 

“I asked you to make a mitochondria staining,” Viktor puts both of his hands on Jayce, one in every shoulder, expecting the moment of the realization, wishing to feel his satisfaction vibrating under his palms. 

“Yes,” Jayce laughs, turning his face from the microscope’s lens to look at him. “You are slower than me using micropipettes, why are your fingers so long?”

Viktor conveniently ignores him. 

It is hard impractical to meditate that even in the perfection of his body, in the eternal beauty of the Herald. His body still wasn’t cut out for everything. He did his best to not spare a second in those reflections–after all, he had never planned on becoming a scientist again. 

But isn’t  that the worst part? is he once again the victim of a greater plan? A plan that he still doesn’t have access to, even when the universe and life itself conquered by his hand. It is impractical to meditate how, even when time doesn’t exist, ( it is a human conception, a prison ); there doesn’t exist a time where he can run to his laboratory. 

“Look at it, what do you see?”  

Jayce leans over the microscope, and Viktor can hear his chuckles. “I’m just seeing mitochondria.” Inside the circle of the microscope, he should be seeing a large number of shapeless cell bodies, filled with dark dots like stars on the sky. “These organisms have an absurd amount of…” 

The realization slowly hits him, he lets go a deep and loud breath, trembling and brilliant between his lips. Viktor could almost see his awe, he could almost see the way his intelligent brain shined with ideas. 

“You want to make an organic battery with fungi, transform the energy generated by mitochondria into a usable one,” says Jayce with a soft voice, breathless. Viktor can almost taste the sweet amusement in the words, rolling it on his tongue like candy. 

Jayce is tense under his hands and guided by the unexpected need to remind him (and himself) they are both real and alive, Viktor caresses both of his shoulders until the tension abandons Jayce’s muscles. 

“I don't…” His voice breaks, his fingers press against the surface of the table. “I don't think it can be done.” The tips of his fingers are pale. 

Viktor couldn't help feeling surprised, and he found himself unsure how to proceed. 

Jayce rambles, lost in fear Viktor suspected couldn't be avoided, “We do not have the equipment and we don't know how long it will take.”

Times where Jayce was pessimistic and anxious weren't unusual. Viktor didn't blame him, only regretted that it was just him to comfort Jayce. He was a social creature; his fatal flaw and his celestial gift was his sensible heart. Viktor couldn't say if Jayce’s bones were built from generosity made carnate or if through his veins ran a different kind of blood. But he was devoted to any show of affection, it could be the simplest of things: Just his gaze, just his attentive eyes were enough to make Jayce bloom back to life. 

Sometimes, he suspected it was caused by his traumatic experience and the long hours of solitude. It was a logical thought, human minds were fragile and even Jayce’s, with all its smartness and strong thoughts, could succumb to loneliness. It was the most logical explanation, but admitting it was admitting that the kind, shining thing growing between them was a consequence of desperation. 

He stopped that train of thought, what a cruelty was to reflect on that. 

Instead, he traps Jayce in his arms, satisfied when he relies on his touch. Viktor didn't hate the moments when Jayce was tired and nostalgic, he wasn't upset by the moments his mind went to dark places that couldn't be reached —not even with his long fingers or omnipotent will— but he found himself rabious that there was nothing better than his cold limbs to warm Jayce.

“We will, I promise,” he fabricates a voice that sounds firm and convincing, a strong force Jayce could trust. “Take my word,” he begged, how useless Viktor felt when his purpose was to erase pain but he couldn’t cut the spines permanently wounding his friend.

Jayce nods, resting the head on the hard shoulders, not running away from the coldness even when he shrinks. 

“I just…” Jayce babbles, “I cannot imagine how it can be done.”

Slowly, as if treating a scared animal, Viktor spins Jayce, until he can find his unsure eyes and remove every doubt with a tender hand and confident words. “Mitochondria produces energy; here, we have an organism that produces a higher amount than average,” he explains easily. Jayce nods. “Probably it directs its energy into reproduction and expansion, we do not know.”

“We do not know anything,” complains Jayce, rubbing his face. 

“Does any scientist know something? We do not need to know everything. Jayce, we only need to know the right things.” Some of the doubts in Jayce’s face disappear, but some questions remain hidden in his pupils. 

With the hope of bury every insecurity with promises, Viktor allows himself to not think before talking. 

“We do not need fancy machinery, Jayce,” he promises. “You have me,” surprisingly, he felt overwhelmed by the sound of his own voice. “And I won’t let you down, I can… Perceive the energy of the Arcane in these cells,” twisting, spinning around, shining with magic and vitality, but moving in patterns Viktor couldn't recognize. “We don't need fancy machinery, just some small tests so I can understand it. And once I understand it, I will be able to tame it.”

“Tame it,” Jayce repeats, and maybe it is the light that reveals the tiredness hanging from his eyes, or the position of his face which makes him look older, but Viktor can only notice how close to crumbling he looks. 

No matter what is causing it, Viktor cannot reach whatever that makes Jayce’s bones heavy. So he orders in a gentle voice: “Go rest.”

Jayce doesn’t protest; he follows him like a loyal dog. Obedient under his hand, docile with affection. He cooperates when Viktor guides him to the bed. How trusting he is, even if the world were brimming with beautiful and joyful creatures he couldn’t have a better disciple than Jayce. What a lovely creature he is, and how scary it is to consider the possibility that in another world, if everything hadn’t happened in this exact way, Jayce wouldn’t give him his devotion. 

The Herald could almost laugh, what a ridiculous thing to worry about that, the devotion of a small creature, a dot of stardust lost in the immense universe. How mundane to fear about listing the ephemeral company of a rotting body. 

But even in the void of the universe, there are stars brighter than others.

Jayce doesn’t move when his purple fingers stumble among themselves while removing the leg brace, simply existing as if trusting in the Herald was an easy thing to do, simply laying on the bed as if the Herald were delicate or gentile. He is not . His hands have evolved to hold power, to conquer mysticism and deform reality. Those aren’t hands made to take care of little things, those fingers aren’t supposed to (know how to) hold the weight of a brace. His fingers falter, there’s something wrong , the fingertips are too long, or the pieces are too small. 

Getting frustrated, he lifts his gaze up, suspecting to find the discomfort souring Jayce’s face. What a surprise it is, then, to find his expression remaining patient, as if it were an easy thing to wait for him. When he finally removes the brace he cannot help to think how Jayce’s hands, strengthen by the hard work and burned by fire, are able to hold the weight of every one of his words, as if the oaths his mouth casually drops weren’t heavy at all; how easily Jayce’s hands wraps around his, as if his metallic muscles weren’t heavy with sin. 

What a ridiculous thought, but how useless his fingers are, useless to work in the laboratory and useless to take Jayce’s suffering from him. 

“You rest, I’ll work” Viktor whispers, tucking Jayce in soft blankets until his eyes blink slowly. 

And, in the silent dance they have mastered, five metallic fingers search their place on his forehead, transferring him to quieter lands. 

He shouldn’t do this, fears Viktor, what had started like a casual way to help Jayce rest, a little mercy to give him peace had turned into the only way he could close the eyes comfortably. He shouldn’t do this, the human mind is fragile, with the tendency of rapidly descending into different kinds of addiction. But the Herald must be too merciful, too compassionate to deny Jayce’s brilliant mind some hours of kind sleep. 

So he does it, traveling together to quiet lands, where the galaxy is expanding and the time and magic dance together. Jayce is nothing but a tiny shining light in the black void, swimming in galactic dust until his curious eyes find the Herald’s face drawn with stars. 

“There you are!” Jayce exclaims, his voice travels through the space and his legs kick as if he could fly to his direction.

And the Herald appears among the borning galaxies and dying stars, immense in the universe, making planets look like marbles he can play with. “Jayce,” he whispers, and his voice makes every planetary system rotate faster. He cradles Jayce between his hands, elevating him as exposing a brilliant jewel to the sunlight.

“Viktor!” Jayce screams, but it is not necessary, the Herald could hear him even if hidden in the more distant satellites. “You’re wonderful!” He adds smiling, as if the words were mere empty sounds and not heavy oaths. 

“Am I?” Viktor asks, just for the satisfaction of seeing Jayce nodding. They both laugh, and the Herald feels how inside his chest blooms with life, a rain of carbon flowing through his throat, clouds of hydrogen twisting between his ribs, oxygen filling his lungs and nitrogen exploding in his stomach. How empty is the universe, how meaningless is suffering and how short is life, especially when it is plagued with sorrows. But for the brief moment liveliness and vitality swirl in his insides Viktor has the abrupt thought that he can almost ignore pain. How wonderful joy can be, that it gives the impression that aches and pains don't exist.

Jayce is close to him, extending his hands to touch his mask as a curious child. How shining is he, issuing celestial light like some kind of divine angel while the Herald looks to be made of black holes and blazar. How long will his light last? Life is so short, nothing else but a sparkle that shines for brief moments before fading forever. And life is so bitter, when the greatest part of it is filled with pain, will these moments be enough for Jayce when he’s alone? When he isn’t surrounded by joy and happiness, and the pains that this experience has created for him, will this memory be enough to keep him standing? When there’s no longer Viktor to show him the most beautiful parts of life? When he’s simply alone with the aches of his leg and the sorrows of tiredness? 

The Herald doesn’t wish to think about that, so instead, he takes Jayce between his hands, carrying him over, to show him diamonds’ rain and metallic sand until he’s pure childlike wonder. 

“Do you like it?” Asks the Herald observing him from a distance, his head emerging from stellar dust, nebulae revolving around his neck like a collar of colorful stones, his mask dark as night sky, stardust sticked to his cheeks in unknown constellations, his hair floating in undiscovered colors, while his eyes shine in the dark as twin suns. A creature of wonder and destruction, holding Jayce between his hands as his favorite star.

“It’s beautiful,” whispers Jayce, swimming in a pulsating star, pink dust caressing his celestial body as water foam.

“It is, and it’s all for you,” adds the Herald, extending his hands to approach the little pearl on his palms to the brilliant explosions. It isn’t until the small limbs can touch the stellar dust and the specks of magic embrace the body that the Herald concludes Jayce will have happy dreams, and lets himself vanish in the black infinity void. 

And, in a blink, the expanding universe disappears and he’s in the room. Jayce’s sleeping, his face bathed in the softness gained from peace. For some reason removing the fingers from his forehead feels like skinning the tips, leaving an open wound behind. 

As he leaves the room, he has an odd sense of disconnection, as if walking in a land he has never transversed despite knowing every twist of the Academy halls. It’s a weird sensation, one that isn’t worth thinking of, so the Herald forces himself to focus on the work waiting for him, staring at the little cells in the microscope. 

He still believes it is fungi, Jayce had mentioned to have seen a similar cell with the difference that was a prokaryote. Though to distinguish which one their current specimen is would be necessary to analyze the base of its life, study the sequences formed by nucleic acids until the answer appears in the endless chains. Surely it would be interesting to study the secrets hidden in the nuclei, if they only have the time and instruments to do so. 

We could do it , Viktor cannot help thinking, they could do it. At least he’s willing to spend a life researching new secrets of the Arcane, but that might be because his life isn’t limited by time or years; Jayce is. 

Viktor had forgotten caring about someone could be so painful, it was impossible to deny (and that just made the pain grow bigger) but Jayce; brilliant and shining, was rotting and vanishing with every day that passed. The Herald wished he could reach all his pains to find a way to annihilate them all. 

How impotent he was, to know that his powerful hand could offer only momentary comfort. 

He looked again at the cells, the best he could do was to understand until he could tame the parts of the Arcane he didn’t understand. It could be a fungi or a prokaryote, but where did it obtain its energy from? Surely it was aerobic, it was spread all over the world, anaerobic organisms tend to prosper in extreme conditions. What else could it use? Glucose? Yes, that could be , a vast amount of organisms use lipids and sugar to survive, humans included. 

Was Jayce tired? Good food was scarce, the best he could find were canned foods that weren’t enough to leave someone of his size satisfied and healthy. Water had been another problem; the tanks of the Academy weren’t contaminated with the Arcane, Jayce had suggested innocently: "It looks clean. I can drink it." But Viktor could see every tiny microorganism happily floating in the water, clean only in appearance, there was a broth of bacteria (thanks to some little insect that figured out a way to get into the tank). And if it weren't for the potential diseases it could have, the tank lacked of the necessary maintenance, the material was giving up, the walls peeling due to pass of time, leaving the water filled with toxic sediment. Jayce has survived too long to fail for dirty water. So, with the natural needs of Jayce's body to hydrate the best solution they could create (after rejecting the innocent suggerence of Viktor: "I can make you to not need water or food at all") was to make an easy filter with rocks, sand, earth and carbon. It wasn’t perfect, but Jayce left water filtering during the night to boil it in the morning. Viktor suspected it didn’t taste good at all, lacking the freshness of good and clean water, but it was enough to calm Jayce's dry lips. 

Sometimes, when Jayce was concentrating on calibrating a pipette, he could see every one of his cells working, borning and dying in chaotic waves. An orchestra where every one of his organs participated just to keep him alive, it was a wonder to admire. The way his body; tired as it was, fought to endure the cruelty and adapt to the new pains. 

But what would Viktor do if one day the little things that keep Jayce standing cease, if the fibers of his heart will go into a programmed death without reason or explanation. 

There's work to do. Glucose, I can add glucose to the cells , compare the after and before, I can make tests with and without, what else could he do? He can see the spores floating in the air, reproducing the Arcane at unbelievable speeds. How does this organism move at such high speed? How does it produce the energy enough to do it?

He’ll solve it later, he can just observe the behavior with different energy sources, feel with his masterful hand how the energy twirls in every situation. 

So he starts, calibrating too-small pipettes, attempting to unscrew the reactants which slip from his fingers. Eventually, his too-long digits knock one against another and a crystal bottle falls to the floor, little fragments of glass falling around his feet like melting snow.

“Fuck this!” He screams at the broken bottle, passing his hands through his hair, stepping on the broken pieces as an act of revenge. The sharp little pieces do nothing to his skin, little harm one can receive when the bones have turned iron. The dangerous crystal fragments are incurstated among the twist of his feet, like diamonds blooming from his steel. It shouldn’t hurt him, it doesn’t hurt him, but then Viktor can’t explain where the ugly feeling taking roots inside his chest comes from. 

He sighs, opening the drawers to find a new usable reactant, but unable to concentrate. His mind is in another place, tied to the broken bottle and all of its broken fragment shattered across the floor. It didn’t wound him, but then why does his hands and feet tremble and throb with the pain of a cut? 

Viktor knows it, he’s conscious of the too-large proportions of his body, he doesn't ignore the way the bed creaks under his weight. Even when he tries, it doesn't escape from his attention how the hallways he once dreamed of owning don’t feel his at all; a stranger in the world that he had gifted himself. 

How is it possible, he has renounced so much of his past self but the pain still lingers? Viktor cannot let that continue what would it mean, for the work and effort and destruction, if everything were for nothing? 

No, Viktor is The Herald . He has mastered evolution, tamed time and desafied life. He can advance  another step, evolution is a continuous process after all. If a new need appears, changes are required. Another step forward, he can do it. 

So he does.

Taming the steel to turn it into soft skin, molding the body until it is smaller, until it fits in the room like he has always belonged there. 

He breathes. 

Then he coughs.The air is bitter, an awful smell all over the laboratory. A mix of something rotting, dust and reactants he cannot identify. 

It’s awful, he shouldn’t have opened those organic dissolvents. His eyes are burning and soft hands try to clean tears before they can fall, but he has to squeeze the eyes to dull the burn. 

With shaking fingers, he grabs reactant bottles to carry them in his arms, wobblying to the closest window like a sick man. De-evolving isn’t a real concept, it doesn’t exist in science, any form of evolution is simply evolution. But while opening the window to poke the head out, Viktor cannot help to think he has just made it. 

He cleans the eyes with the sleeve, lying the cheek down against the glass, clinging to the yellow glass bottles until clean air enters in his lungs. 

Well, there’s work to do . Viktor handles the pipette without thinking, feeling its weight, caressing the smooth surface with the thumb until his scientific awe ends. It’s just like he remembered; slightly different, the inner mechanism must be old and rusty, so he has to make an additional effort to move the piston. 

Yes, de-evolving must become a thing. It doesn’t matter, science is about making mistakes, he can revert it later, bury this ugly situation deep down. 

For now, he will take advantage of this body, the one that had been made for science. Made for science but not for living; it’s a sad thing, but that’s what evolution is about, the survival of the strongest, the smartest, the most suitable. 

Viktor looks down, organizing the reactants on a close table, unable to ignore that he’s wearing his uniform.

It wasn’t intentional, he simply didn’t wish to be naked and well, the very least he can do with his knowledge in magic and materials is to give himself a good piece of clothing. And what if it is his uniform? He just thought about random choice of clothing, he did use his uniform so it’s natural that from all the possible options his mind deviated to that, he wore it for years. 

So, when he catches his reflection on the yellow glass it means nothing. Except…that the face on the shiny surface is his, covered with a healthiness he expected never to have, greeting him from the yellow glass like a ghost of the past.

Bewitched by the face in the crystal, he abandons the pipette on the table, as a forgotten gun. 

And he stares, losing account of the time. Looking at the face on the glass, trying to decipher the riddles of that man. Why are you here? is the only clear thought in his mind. Why are you here? He asks again, dissecting the way the man on the crystal deforms when he spins the bottle on his hands. It’s his reflection, but it feels like someone else is greeting him from a very distant reality. 

He touches his hair, smoothing the rebel locks with a careful hand. He sinks his fingertips on his cheeks, feeling the touch until his nails leave little moons marked on the skin. 

So, he stares, trying to solve who is the one on the yellow crystal. 

“Viktor?” And the bottle falls from his hands, the man on the crystal dying with a million broken pieces on the floor. 

There’s not many possibilities of who can be. But Viktor has the stupid impulse just to look up, and to what? Find Jayce’s face bathed with horror. 

“What?” But his voice is no longer covered by the sweet sound of machinery, there’s nothing to protect him from the vulnerability of the voice. 

He shivers at the sound, and Jayce does too. Jayce does too . Both of them with the risk of breaking apart thanks to the monster Viktor has turned back to life. 

His first instinct is to shrink into himself, wishing to dissolve with his reflection in the poodle of liquid reactant on the floor.

“Viktor,” Jayce calls again, approaching carefully, almost afraid. Of what? Of the timebomb of wild feeling that has been gestating inside Viktor since… Forever?  

“You know how hard it is to push the piston of a pipette when your thumb cannot reach the right place?,” He starts explaining himself, embarrassment climbing through his neck, turning on the delicate skin until he feels like burning alive.

He can see Jayce boots next to him and Viktor feels tears in his eyes. It’s worse than inhaling acid reactants, worse than the air of Zaun, at least the last two weren’t his direct fault. But this? He’s poisoned by his own hand. He’s embarrassed. Like a boy who has been trapped after doing something he shouldn’t like watching porn, breaking a vase or assassinating someone. 

“So I just thought… Pretty rightfully… If I get more habile hands I could just,” he moves his hands in the air, just to show Jayce the shorter fingers. His hand moves frenetic to grab the pipette abandoned on the table, modelling it with his hand, the way the palm perfectly embraces the plastic and the thumb presses the piston with naturality. 

“Are you okay?” whispers Jayce, tiny and delicate. 

Viktor blinks, the words forming quickly in his tongue like an uncontrollable force, holding the pipette like a knife, pointing the plastic tip to Jayce; scared and nervous Jayce. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

Jayce opens his mouth, his face looking horrified and impressed in equal parts. “There’s glass on your feet,” he extends his hand, a gentle invitation. “Come here, we have to remove your shoes and see if there’s a cut-”

“I don’t wound, I cannot,” clarifies Viktor. 

But Jayce doesn’t react like he was expecting, he doesn’t smile and let it happen, his eyes move through the room as if there was something great, something massive in the room that Viktor is blind to. But he doesn’t desist, he maintains his hand extended like a permanent offering, “Then come here for my sake?”

Viktor does, just for Jayce’s peace.

And he does not regret it, when he sees how his tense tired face softness; a rare gift, when his powerful hand hasn’t been able to provide permanent peace, it's a little miracle to know other shapes of his existence give Jayce serenity. 

“Are you okay?” asks Jayce again, and Viktor would inspect the curve of his mouth while talking or admire the tension between his eyebrows if it weren’t for the warm, no, hot hands, trapping him in a prison of tenderness and sun. 

It’s warm . Jayce caresses his dressed arm with a purpose. Which? Viktor can’t tell, it feels like those fingers move with intention. Up and down, firmly petting his arm, expanding the heat until Viktor fears his flesh and bones may melt under the tender hand, leave him moldable and malleable around Jayce’s arms.

“I am,” he assures, amazed at utterance of his own voice. What a soft sound it is. A delicate thing dancing on his tongue. 

“What happened?” Jayce asks, squeezing his shoulder and Viktor finds himself without voice, the delicate thing vanishing on his tongue, shoot down by the warm. 

“Do that again,” He orders when he can find his voice again.

Jayce, beautiful but annoyingly slow in some occasions, does the complete opposite. He separates the hands from his shoulders quickly, as if Viktor were the one burning. 

Then there’s no choice but to take the matter in his own hands. A curious hand raises, fingers twirling in the air with anticipation before starting exploring the firm chest in front of him. 

Jayce exhales loudly, surprised (and with a look on his eyes Viktor can only describe as terrified ). Is there some cutting edge hidden in his nails? For a brief moment he fears he might have broken something, activated something that will make Jayce disappear in thin air or explode like a bomb. 

But he doesn’t move, Viktor neither, his pale hands petrified few inches close to the dressed chest.

And then he’s painfully conscious. Every one of the implications, all of the new things filling the space between them.

“Oh!” An implosion in his chest, his heart shrinking, embarrassment crashing against his ribs so roughly Viktor is worried he’s going to shatter, unable to hold the painful knots.

“I… How embarrassing,” his fingers play aimless, unable to decide if to go back or to go on. 

“It isn’t good to inhale reactants for so long, you know?” He tries joking, short laughs filling the air. Jayce looks like a dying man, one that has received multiple bullets and it’s close seconds to falling apart. 

And that’s what sails his choice. Fingers curl, nails sinking in the soft palms and white knuckles peeking out. 

He’s burning, in the worst of senses. It’s nothing like the tender and soft sensation that emanated from Jayce’s skin. It’s not like lying under sunlight, it’s like living inside of the sun itself, every inch of his skin feeling like it’s melting. 

Why? He asks himself again. Why did I do this?  He tries searching for an answer, looking at the broken bottles, a big pool of transparent liquid surrounding the broken pieces. The man of the yellow glass vanished on the floor.

Except he isn’t vanished, Viktor knows, they both wear the same uniform, same long fingers and prominent cheekbones. 

He is there; living inside his bones, breathing under his skin, like a parasite. 

Except that, what if and only if he has always been there? Taking nutrients from his metallic muscles and feeding from his vitality. What if (and only if) in the extermination of the whole humanity Viktor failed to annihilate the only one he cared about eliminating?

And in less than a second, his chest is too small to fit all the painful knots. But it’s also not his chest, he’s a complete invasor, trying to fit himself into that kin but failing at recognizing his own face. 

“Did something happen?” Jayce asks with a low voice, a hand flying over his shoulder as a silent offering.

“Yes,” he aggressively answers, Cannot Jayce see? The iron can bear great pressure and ignore big pains, but this delicate skin isn’t made to bear the pressure without bruising.

He tries to hide his desperation with an emotionless tone, but the trembling corner of his voice reveals his torn insides. “I was trying to use the pipette and I just couldn’t do it, so I… I thought it would be a good idea.” He breathes heavily, the knots going wild, creeping through his bones like snakes, twisting in his stomach. “Evidently, it wasn’t a good idea.”

“It’s okay Viktor, we will solve it. Why didn’t you use magic? Has something else happened?” And those words hit his chest like a cannonball, there is no way the thin skin and the breakable bones can the impact. 

It’s not about what he says nor how he says it. It’s about the words, how they exist and how they speak the truth. 

How could be he so stupid? Such an idiot. He’s horrified, why am I like this? He asks himself, trying to create an explanation about why his brilliant, sophisticated, smart and completely satisfied mind could not make another, any other solution to such an unimportant problem. 

The room feels bigger, the walls and roof expanding around him but it’s not enough , no matter how much the walls grow there’s nothing that can make him fit in that room. Why? Why dig up his past when he was so comfortable with ignoring it? He looks at the broken bottle, raging , cursing the moment when the first bottle fell from his perfect hand, cursing the moment the glass broke on the floor and set free all the demons he had buried deep in the earth. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he hears Jayce talking, far away from him, just an echo getting lost in the big room. 

“What’s important is that you’re not hurt,” he suddenly says, close, a clangor that resonates in his head even when Jayce stops talking. 

A big hand touches him, rough in appearance, but being so gentle Viktor takes some seconds in recognizing it’s him what those fingers are touching. 

He blinks, not knowing how to explain (or just to start explaining) the many invisible wounds he feels all over the body. The lungs that breathe bitter air, the lungs that expand against his ribs until it hurts, the skin that trembles due to the cold, the hands that want to hold the sun but are burning just by trying it. 

This body wasn’t made for this, for the strong impacts and the heavy loads. He got tired of licking his wounds long ago, and can’t explain how or when he started missing it. An effect of nostalgia or yearning, surely. 

“I didn’t have the chance to start my tests,” he mumbles miserably. His eyes follow the hand wrapping his shoulder, recognizing its touch until he can place it. It’s there, existing on his shoulder, holding, wrapping him. 

“We can do it later, let’s go rest,” whispers Jayce, his breath hitting Viktor’s cheek like sea breeze.

“I can do it,” interrupts Viktor, forcing himself to guide his eyes until they find Jayce’s face. 

It is a strange thing. Viktor has looked at it for long hours, he has analyzed the curve of the eyebrows and has counted the scars framing the lips. He knows that face, but Jayce must have done something new, because it’s like he’s seeing it for the first time. 

And he’s warm, and he’s close. Closer in ways Viktor is discovering, no , rediscovering. After so long, he’s surprised he remembers how to receive kind treatment. 

But what leaves him weak, staggering and dizzy, drunk with the feelings that run wild all over his chest it’s Jayce’s eyes. They have nothing in particular, they are a pair of eyes with big pupils and flat eyelashes. They are still tired, heavy with bags; but somehow, wearing a certain light that can only indicate concern. Maybe it’s the way his eyebrows twist, or how his thumb draws invisible circles on his shoulder. But for an awfully wonderful moment, Viktor makes a special discovery, that he cares .

He cares , Viktor realizes, he has always cared . It was always there, little clues every day. Jayce reading his notes like sacred writings, Jayce staring at his photo like he was under a spell, Jayce extending a hand to him at every chance, Jayce simply existing and providing love as if it was a second nature of his. 

It probably is. There’s no other explanation.

It’s terrifying, it’s surprising. He has gotten access to more knowledge and power he could have ever dreamed of, and what leaves him speechless is Jayce, who considers him worthy of banalities like caring, attention and love.

“You never said the laboratory smelled so bad,” he says instead, feeling like the pain still filters through his face. 

“I didn’t…” Jayce starts saying.

“And why do you stink?” adds Viktor, trying to redirect the attention to Jayce. This is a new dynamic, he’s usually the one offering affectionate hands. He being the one receiving attention almost hurts, like looking straight to the sun and… Oh , it has been so long since he looked at the sun.

“I just…” Babbles Jayce before exploding in an energetic laugh. Viktor doesn’t understand how he can laugh in a moment like this, when the whole room is the wrong size, when he’s trapped under this tight skin. How can he laugh? As if he were looking at pure magic instead of Viktor’s corpse, a body that should have stayed buried forever. 

“I’m sorry,” laughs Jayce, dry lips smiling. “Something else that bothers you?” It’s not a condescending question, Viktor finds himself laughing, surprised by the soft sound of his voice. 

“Your breath is awful too.”

They laugh, Jayce’s hand remains on his shoulder as if it has found a home there. It’s a nice feeling, an addictive one. Viktor wants to push against that palm, find a way where he can live there and joke with him until time breaks and the universe destroys itself. He wants to rediscover how it was to laugh until his stomach hurts.  

“I’m sorry, if I knew you were here looking so neat, I’d had a haircut.”

And once again, it’s not the way he says the words, or the way he looks while pronouncing them. It’s the words, this body isn’t made to receive great wounds, but Viktor didn’t expect his skin was so thin that even soft words could bruise it. 

“I’m not neat,” he spits, the words twisting like poison in his tongue. The words falling into his hands, his human hands, the hands of a scientist, they do not belong to him any longer.

“Why don’t we take the tests?” Offers Jayce and yes, tests, that’s why he made all of this. 

So they do, we is an exaggeration, Viktor acts jealousy towards his Petri dishes and every time Jayce is barely close to reach a bottle of reactant his vanity wakes up. “I can do it,” he insists, only accepting help when he cannot open a bottle. 

Besides that, he triumphantly celebrates every little success, his limb moving without permission, getting familiar with the procedure. His hands cup the Petri dishes with affection, like meeting with an old friend. For a moment the room doesn’t exist. It’s just him, the table with his science and Jayce behind him, doing sporadic questions, talking about theories, brushing fingers on his shoulder, little drops of sunlight that make the pipette tremble on his hand. 

And Viktor finally discovers the why , for this , the seconds that trick him to make him believe that nothing but these wonderful moments exist. 

When it ends, Viktor rediscovers disappointment. 

Facing the room, empty space, where once again he is like a parasite in that body of weak flesh and aching bones. He’s been high with satisfaction and the fall almost breaks him. While getting lost in the murk inside his mind, disquiet receives him and letdown embraces him. How is he supposed to continue once he has tasted such shining bliss?

Jayce’s voice crosses through the murks, a shy light dispersing the darkness. “Let’s go rest.”

Viktor walks the walls he’s walked so many times. Feeling himself lost despite knowing the way. 

It’s not until he lies down on the bed, his bed, that Viktor feels conscious of his own existence again. The mattress doesn’t deform under his weight, the mattress is soft, and two kind hands cover him with a blanket, tucking the textile under his chin. 

It's wonderful. How soft it feels against his skin. Viktor is sorrowful he renounced this. 

He squirms on the bed, until there’s not a part of his skin that isn’t caressed by the soft textile.

“Hey, leave some for me,” laughs Jayce, falling on the mattress like a dead weight. 

After an unfair fight, where Viktor reluctantly shrinks under the blanket grabbing it with all the strength his hands have, Jayce catches an edge of the blanket, lifting it up. Cold invades the warm space, and then Jayce is at his side, sighing while his body relaxes. 

“You didn’t tell me it was so cold here,” whispers Viktor against the blanket. 

“Today is especially cold,” replies Jayce from his side of the bed. 

His eyes are heavy, Viktor lets his eyelids blink slowly until his eyelashes are heavy with dreaminess. But when his eyes are finally surrounding to sleep, Jayce’s voice wakes him up.

“How… How are you?” His words wobble between them, unsure where to go. “I’m fine. Cold makes the articulations of my leg hurt a little, but I found some canned tomato soup, it was good,” he licks his lips, as if he were carefully crafting his words. “I’d have saved you some, water tasted sweet today too."

“I’d like to eat some soup with you,” whispers Viktor as revealing a secret. “Do you… Do you think we can find the ingredients to make sweetmilk?”

Jayce smiles, “yes, we can try.”

“I have missed it,” he whispers, pressing his face until his cheeks are all kissed by its soft protection. “I also missed this,” he admits, it feels like a deep revelation, one he shouldn't let go so easily. After all, how many implications does that phrase have? Serving his insatisfaction and yearning on his tongue for Jayce to taste it, to see it. 

Guided by a strange impulse, he adds: “And I have never done this before.”

“Cuddling? I had done it only with my mom,” Jayce laughs.

Viktor cannot help but join Jayce in his laugh. “No, no, I meant…” he tries saying while losing his breath, unable to stop when Jayce looks so genuinely confused. “Nevermind, it’s nice.”

Jayce smiles, blinking slowly while sinking in the blanket as if it were a quiet sea.

Viktor doesn’t know what; if his sunlight eyes or his fire touch, but the gentle warmness has ended up melting his metallic bones and there’s nothing between Viktor and his sensible heart. 

“It’s frustrating,” he spits, Jayce turns his face, his cheek on the pillow. “That I cannot have a body made for living.”

He blinks, “but you are made for living.”

Sarcasm drops from his mouth, “How can you tell?” 

Viktor doesn’t know if Jayce is trying to create a deep moment, or if he truly doesn’t end up understanding what is happening. “Well, you are here.” 

“Only because I sculpted myself into something made for living,” and he feels the weight of his leg moving the weak toes slowly. Today is a good day, the articulation feels strong and his movements aren’t slow, but good days are some of a limited account.

“You want to live, isn’t that proof that you are made for this?”

“It isn’t enough,” Viktor growls against the pillow, his eyes threatening with tears. “It’s never enough, when I was a scientist I wasn’t made for living, when I was the Herald I wasn’t made for science,” he takes a deep breath, trying to breath through the knot in his throat. “It’s never enough, I’m made for dissatisfaction, I keep changing just to find myself unsatisfied after a while.”

And, as the problem of his life was a simple equation, Jayce says as if it were obvious. “Then change again, until you find yourself satisfied again.”

“Do you even know what you are talking about?” And in an act of pettiness, Viktor presses his cold feet against Jayce’s legs just to see him complain. But Jayce does not move, he simply presses harder against his skin. 

“I do not, I haven’t ever been in a situation like this.” And Viktor realizes how strange it must be for Jayce. Finding a man in the laboratory made of flesh and blood invading his laboratory, finding his partner being replaced by a strange being. 

Suddenly, Jayce adds, with a light tone and sweet voice: “It’s my first time cuddling and all, be patient with me.” Viktor does not understand where the words come from, until he feels his own face wrinkled bitterly against his will, and only then can recognize the words as a humble try to calm down the soreness. 

“I must teach you then,” Viktor jokes, looking at a little nick in Jayce’s eyebrows so he doesn’t have to face Jayce’s eyes, the eyes staring at all his vulnerability. He has worked so hard into sculpting himself into something worthy of admiration it feels shameful to be looked at when he’s all weak muscles and sick bones.

“I’m a good student.”

And, when Viktor thinks Jayce is already asleep, his voice raises through the air, secure and confident as it wasn’t before.

“You can still find it.”

Shedding the sleepiness from his eyes, Viktor blinks until Jayce is a clear image in his eyes. “To find what?”

“Somewhere where you can remove the pain and have brief moments of happiness.” And the first inciting from Viktor is to defend himself, defend the work of his life, it’s not like that , he wants to say, I said I don’t regret it . But denying the truth it’s useless at this point. 

“Do you think I can do it?” Though what Viktor wishes to ask is that if Jayce with his justified rancor thinks he still deserves it.

“You’re halfway, now you are able to sleep on your bed, it’s a little pleasure I enjoy.” 

Viktor smiles, so wide he feels embarrassed and tries to hide his face on the blanket. Consciously, he knows Jayce is saying it so easily because it’s easy for him, who does not suffer the weights of his past and who will not suffer the weight of his next transformation. But then, he also knows nothing about comforting and Jayce still returns to him with his teary eyes and tired limbs to be taken care of. 

Therefore even when Jayce knows nothing about what he’s talking, when he suggests it’s easier to say than to make. Viktor knows he’ll return to him, just because even when he doesn’t know how to act, he always treats him with kindness. 

His fingers tickle, begging to reach the sunlight, to hold the sun against his palm. So his hand moves, the limbs wandering on the mattress until it reaches a place in between his and Jayce’s pillow. He leaves it there, a gentle invitation. 

And he’s afraid Jayce will reject it or worse, ignore it. Seconds pass. His muscles tremble, collecting enough bravery to lean back and act like nothing happened. His palm moves back, hand hiding in the darkness under the blanket. 

But even in the darkness, sunlight reaches him. 

Jayce’s hand wraps around his, and that causes Viktor a sensation on the middle of his chest and stomach he has never felt before. It’s nothing like his metallic muscles, where there were nothing but distant sensations resonating in his skin. It’s totally different, like his chest is the source of everything, his whole body tickling like if pure magic was running through his veins. 

It’s wonderful . Like he’s stealing every brief moment of happiness and consuming them all in one second. 

Jayce laughs, pure and raw , it leaves the air charged with a different kind of electricity. Viktor wonders what could have caused this miracle, he’s never heard Jayce laughing so freely before, he finds the answer when he realizes his lips open in awe, and he just can imagine the ridiculous expression his face has. Disarmed only with a touch. 

And it’s only when Jayce is asleep that Viktor cannot help but reflect that Jayce probably never expected caring about him would be such an inconvenience, and yet he still cares .

Chapter Text

While days pass Jayce has the most unexpected realization: He does not want to return home. 

He doesn’t know why, but he reflects deeply about it. He stares at the city through the window, an infinity burial grave, looking back at him. What could you miss from here? Almost says the city, a chorus made of human and animal fossils, when there’s nothing to miss here?

It’s gruesome, a disgusting thing growing from his insides and feeding from his energy and strength. He feels guilty, the worst of sinners, when he sees how hard Viktor works to find a solution. He feels worse than guilty, when Viktor succeeds ; when he takes his hand to guide him.

“Look at this, Jayce,” whispers Viktor in his ear, taking a Petri dish in his hand, the other one holding a tight grab around his chest. 

Viktor’s fingers; pale and bony, move in circles, extracting brilliant blue energy from the cells, from the Arcane. It dances around his knuckles joyfully, like if it were a silk ribbon Viktor can play with. 

“I understand it now, Jayce,” he breathes in his ear, taming the ribbon until it turns into a brilliant sphere. A pearl, made of magic and science, which he offers to Jayce as if it belonged to him.

“How?” He exhales while letting his hands raise until he can feel the sparkling energy of the sphere in his fingertips. He doesn’t dare to touch it, not directly, he prefers to use both of his hands to cup Viktor’s hand. 

It’s electrifying, though Jayce cannot differentiate how much is due to the magic and how much is thanks to Viktor.

Viktor exhales, his breath trembling and his grab tightens. It takes him too many long seconds to speak.

For a moment, he doesn’t hear the words, too distracted by tracing the curve of the palm, caressing the thumb and being gloriously satisfied when the hand trembles under his attention.  

His cheeks hurt from smiling. He knows Viktor is smiling too, because he's as obsessed with his touch as Jayce is with his. It’s hard to say if it’s an side effect of loneliness and missing the warmth of anyone (likely, thinks the most rational part of his brain), or is simply one of the effects Viktor has over him (also likely, thinks Jayce). 

Viktor’s words get tangled up among themselves and he rambles about chemistry, enzymes, and the magic that guides the whole process. While he’s explaining bonds between molecules breaking to create energy Jayce has the sudden desire to see his face, he needs it, to witness the passion and intelligence in Viktor’s eyes until he’s sure he’ll never forget it.

Jayce tries to turn around, but his eyes can only catch a glimpse of messy hair, the pretty face hidden on his neck. 

The brilliant sphere disappears as if it were made of sand, soft dust falling over their hands. Viktor keeps talking about processes and transformations, but Jayce can notice a break in his voice, a nervous note in his accent. 

Jayce exhales, recognizing that this is one of those moments where Viktor will hide his face if he has the chance. Jayce doesn’t end up understanding what is the reason behind that sudden and unexpected shyness, he has seen Viktor covered in power and gold and has seen him tired and warm. More importantly, , Viktor has seen his broken bones, his heavy limbs and sorrowful tears, and he has not been disgusted or scared by any of those, always extending a gentle hand to comfort the bleeding edges of his heart as if it was nothing. He thought that Viktor would allow himself to receive the same unconditional gentleness. 

But he doesn’t. Hiding his face under his hair, shrunken in the lab as if he could merge with the wall, and work as a shadow from there. 

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” says Jayce while holding that soft hand between his, silently fascinated by the way it seems to fit in his. 

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed, not with me,” he promises, Viktor exhales loudly again; as if he cannot endure having the air in his lungs, his warm exhalation hits the skin between his shoulder and his neck, and the layers aren’t enough for Jayce to not feel the warm breathing directly into his skin. 

And once again, he has the desperate need to see Viktor’s face, a painful hole growing in his chest, a void that should be filled with his eyes. Trying to feel the void, he guides the pale hand to his chest to press it against his beating heart, next to the hole. 

Viktor says nothing, breathing against his shirt still holding him with that titanium grab, as if he didn’t know how to let him go, as if he didn’t want to ever let him go.

Jayce wants to say something. To make Viktor understand that he doesn’t have to taste every moment of tenderness as if it were the last. To make him realize that care is not a finite source he needs to treasure, but simply an infinite gift where his only responsibility is to receive with open arms, allowing himself to receive it carelessly without it will never end.

But the words aren’t enough, any combination of syllables and consonants his mind can create looks like an awful translation to what his heart sings.

Overwhelmed with the desperate desire to transmit Viktor that he holds his hand , he raises it until his adoring mouth can bathe it with kisses. Viktor trembles , nervous and fragile against his back. Beautiful creature , who has forgotten how to act under the lights of tender adoration.

“Viktor,” he whispers against the white knuckles, but the only response he obtains is a louder exhalation. 

He looks through the window. The infinite burial grave welcomes him back, what would you miss? Sings the fossils in a chorus of screams. 

Inside his empty bones the melody resonates, what could I miss from here? Tired, broken, undone in irreparable ways. An infinite burial grave, where the man he once was is also resting many meters underground.

Lately, it’s not unusual for Jayce to find himself guided by the insects in his brain and the worms in his limbs. Stepping too close to the edge of the window. Taking out his body from the frames too much to what could be considered safe. Staring at the floor, contaminated with the Arcane, the litmus webs shining even with the lack of light. Would they hold him when his body impacted the floor? Like a hammock willing to hold his tired body. 

He doesn’t wish to die. He just wishes to discover how to exist between the sky and the ground, resting somewhere in between the edge and the fall, a space where he can sleep forever until there’s enough strength in his weak muscles to return home. 

Viktor tightens his embrace, “I almost forgot to mention the most interesting part of the energy reactions,” he whispers in his ear.

So he continues his rambling, whispering about diminute particles and moving atoms as if it were some kind of ancient legend. 

And while staring at the city, Viktor heavy at his back, resting on his shoulder as an affectionate cat. Jayce caresses his arm, recognizing it like the chain that keeps him tied to the edge. 

***

Viktor changes.

He changes a lot. Constantly. Awakening pale and soft and going to bed metallic and brilliant. Some days are the opposite. 

Sometimes Jayce has problems keeping up with his flow, swimming between human and mystic. In some moments he cannot hide the surprise when a purple hand touches him, or a little squeal when there’s a human face where the metallic one should be. 

The first time that happened, Viktor shrank embarrassed, long limbs wrapping around himself, sad eyes tied to the floor. 

At some moment, with his perceptive mind, Viktor must have realized it was a consequence of the new but constant seas of anxiety Jayce was into.

“Did I scare you?” Viktor says every single time.

“Eh,” Jayce hesitates, “just surprised.”

And every single time, Viktor laughs. Throwing himself to trap Jayce in an embrace, sometimes purple limbs searching for their  place around his body, sometimes pink cheeks resting against his shoulder. 

Viktor changes a lot. 

And most of the time, Jayce cannot help but stare, devouring with his eyes the curve of his eyes, the edge of his cheekbones, the shape of his face when he’s the Herald. It’s a constant display of beauty and magic. A fluid metamorphosis, man and deity, god and beast, muse and artist, nymph and monster. Jayce carefully creates a space in his mind for every angle, temples for every facet, a whole religion incrusted under his skin dedicated to the wonder that Viktor is. Wild and kind, that shouldn’t be possible, but somehow Viktor makes it real. That’s precisely why he deserves every offering Jayce is able to give (and more). 

But the more he stares, the more he perceives. If he paid less attention he wouldn’t be able to notice it, how Viktor’s fingers tremble over his skin or how his breath slows when they are hugging. Those are so brief details, that Jayce fears he might have been imagining it, a bad combination of lack of contact and Viktor’s beauty making the asleep desire inside him turn back to life. 

A terrible combination, one that makes Jayce’s hands adventurous. Risky hands descending through the curve of his back, reaching the waist, soft breath on his cheek and he can almost feel the ghost of a kiss. And something goes wrong, the spell ends, and Viktor escapes from his arms.

“Let’s go back to work.” He orders. 

It’s an exaggeration, Jayce barely works, tiredness is constantly concentrated in his bones, he has never felt so useless his entire life. He does little more than searching reactives and cleaning work material. Viktor, instead, floats around the lab dancing an individual waltz. The moments where he decides human hands are more useful for the work Jayce gives the cane up (another thing he can be useful for, at least). 

Jayce cleans every Petri dish three times, looking by the side of his eye he can see Viktor masterfully opening and closing bottles, balancing tubes and pipettes in his hands. 

The silence is broken mostly by him, trying to look interested and to feel involved in the process ( “what do you think about this?”, “are you hungry?”, “how would you do this?” ). Viktor answers them all patiently, returning every question with a little one of his own.

“We should go outside, take a little bit of sun,” says Viktor abruptly while stretching in slow movements. 

As if he could smell Jayce’s little motivation he adds: “I have a surprise for you,” he takes his cane, caressing the surface with adoration, “consider it a little gift.”

And there’s more motivation in the promise of time with Viktor than in the announcement of a gift, but Jayce simply smiles before following him. Walking side by side, leading to the balcony on the same floor. When they arrive at the balcony Jayce finds himself accompanied by the Herald, silent and metallic. 

“Does it hurt? The change?” Jayce sits on one of the chairs there, Viktor has insisted so frequently to take the sun there’s now two little chairs in constant waiting. 

His voice resonates as an old melody, “It’s uncomfortable,” he looks comically big seated, long legs folded in a small angle.  

“Why do it?” 

“It’s no new feeling,” His eyes made of stars are on Jayce, but he has the strange sensation Viktor is looking at something behind him. “I no longer fit.” 

Jayce opens his mouth, but there are knots inside his throat, words fighting to to be spoken but nothing is said. He stares at Viktor, his purple mask shining like amethyst, gold crowning his head. It looks like he exactly belongs there, like there isn’t a place in the universe he couldn’t conquer. A force of nature; attracted by his personal gravitational field, Jayce extends one hand to take the Herald’s.

At the end, he says the only thing that feels right of pronouncing: “We fit together.” Or what other explanation could exist for the perfect hold of their hands? 

Viktor doesn’t say a thing. Slowly, he turns his body around, tilting towards Jayce until he can see nothing but amethyst and gold. Their hands separate, only for them to get each other’s back. 

Jayce exhales. Yes , they fit. 

Against his forehead, there’s the smooth surface of the Herald’s mask pressing, exactly at the point where the mouth splits. A kiss , knows Jayce. And with his limbs filled with that new addictive and sparky feeling, he raises his head. Slowly, fearing Viktor might escape like a frightened animal at a fast movement. The coldness of the metal caresses his skin, until the caress transforms into a firm pressure against his mouth. 

Can he feel it? Or the layers of the metal cushion the tenderness too? If he can feel it like a strong touch or like a remote one doesn’t mind, because Jayce can hear the way his breathing stops.

When he goes for another kiss, Viktor’s turns around his face, his lips land on the mouth peeking out from his mask. 

***

Next day, when Jayce wakes up, Viktor’s human face greets him. 

He has changed a lot. 

His cheeks are covered in metallic purple, golden decorating his cheekbones. And the metal extends through his cheeks to his neck, from his neck to his chest, the blanket covers the rest. But Jayce swears he must be all amethyst and power behind. 

The weight of his eyes must have awakened Viktor, his eyelids blink lazily, his eyes are a galactic sea with stars dissolved. 

“What do you think?” Whispers Viktor with a smile, he almost looks shy, nervous. His voice is sleepy, hoarse and filled with a strong accent. 

“It’s truly surprising.”

“This isn’t the surprise,” a purple hand emerges from  of the blankets and Viktor rubs  with his fingertips. 

A loud yawn, and Jayce feels Viktor’s hand taking his. It’s still perfect. 

“Entrancing,” says Jayce, devouring with his eyes, the edge between skin and metal. “You are entrancing.”  Viktor fights against a smile.

“That’s a very partial description,” he accuses.

“I’m very partial towards you,” Jayce says with simplicity, wondering by the way the metal frames every one of his expressions. “How do you feel?”

“Good, it’s really nice,” the other hand gets out of the blanket, the fingers closing and opening, golden in the knuckles like brilliant rings. “I feel… Comfortable.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“It’s good,” Viktor affirms, his lips moving with uncertainty. “But there’s something that… Has been disturbing this new satisfaction,” he takes a deep breath. “I was dying, I saved myself. I broke the limits of mind and body and transcended them. But then I was limited again, how disappointing it is that complete satisfaction can never be found. And do you know what’s even more unsatisfying?” Jayce cannot guess, but he caresses Viktor’s hand to make him know he’s being heard. “That when the body isn’t a limitation, the mind is. I found myself trapped again, not knowing what to do, even with all the power I possess. How disappointing.”

“I’m very proud of you, you impress me,” And when Viktor looks at him without answering, Jayce explains: “You are brilliant, simply brilliant. It’s a pleasure to be with you.” 

Viktor smiles, his cheeks blushing. “I’m proud of you, very impressed too,” he smiles bigger, “and… completely entranced by you.” His lips open, but he takes long seconds before deciding to speak, “I… do not deserve you.”

“Everything. You deserve everything.” He promises withstrong words and a firm voice. 

But even with the strength of his conviction, Viktor doesn’t look convinced. “I fear I might not deserve this either,” he says while looking at his metallic hand. “Now that I find myself satisfied again I cannot help wondering about when this won’t be enough again,” his grab tightens on Jayce’s hand. “I just know it, how long will this last? When will I find something I cannot do and what will I do then?” His voice is submerged in pain, tense like a rope seconds far from breaking. 

Jayce doesn’t know what he’s speaking about. Desperately he tries to help, “you can… Adapt, change again.”

“Why?” Asks Viktor with a broken voice, “when the ending is the same, dissatisfaction and pain?”

“I don’t know,” Jayce admits, feeling how his metallic leg turns heavier. “But you don’t have to face that alone. You won’t,” he promises, soft and tender. “And even when the ending is filled with insatisfaction and pain, it doesn’t mean there won’t be happiness in the process, and that makes it worth it.”

“How can I do it, Jayce?” His galactic eyes are shining with tears, desperation encapsulated in his irises, screaming for hope. “Do I have to be quiet and count days until my leg fails me again, or a new disease appears or there’s just a new pain inside me?”

He looks at the roof, moving his metallic toes under the blanket, but unable to feel its soft texture on the skin. “But still you’ll never expect it.” 

There’s no sound in the air, when he turns around the head on the pillow, he finds Viktor silent and quiet, open eyes filled with questions. “I’m scared too,” spits out Jayce, the galactic eyes taking out the words from his mouth. “What will be of me when I return?” And everything he hasn’t been able to understand before is getting out of his mouth without permission, as fast he cannot completely understand the words.”

“What will be of me when I return? I want to return, but I haven’t thought about all the consequences of that. What will be of me? If I can return to the Academy, what will I do when they realize I cannot any longer stand long hours working in the laboratory? Or in the forge, what will I do when I’m no longer strong enough to be even a blacksmith? Everything I offered, my strength and resistance, is gone. What will they do with me when they realize I’m no longer useful?” He blinks, feeling the wet sensation of tears on his eyes. “I have given so much of myself to that place, to investigate, what will I do when they discard me because I no longer have any use? What will I do, Viktor?” His hand passes through his face with desperation, “I don’t have anything else to offer but hard work, what will I do when they notice I don’t have anything to offer?”

A quiet silence, Jayce can hear his heartbeat, he looks at the roof again, knots in his throat growing so big they threaten to choke him.

Blinking, he feels warmth tears running down his cheekbones, tracing a line between his helpless eyes and the pillow behind his sorrowful head. 

For a painful second, he’s conscious of nothing but his leg, suddenly all his nerves directed to the cold limb. And he still cannot feel it, but it’s like nothing else exists but the metal. He’s no longer in bed, his mind is at the edge of the building, staring at the floor and wondering how it feels to be between the sky and the ground.

Slowly losing himself in the silence, Viktor speaks. “You’ll tell them to fuck off.” He says firmly.

Jayce cannot help but laugh. He’s in bed. “To fuck off?” 

“To fuck off, go to hell, the one you like the most,” there’s a movement in the other side of bed, and in the frame of the white roof Viktor’s face appears like a savior. “If they cannot see more value in you than a working machine, then they never deserved you at all.”

“There are… Hundreds that can do what I do-” and Jayce wishes to continue with his ramble, about being from a lower house, about hard work, burned hands, and broken dreams when Viktor interrupts him, his eyes serious and deadly, an anger encapsulated in his pupils Jayce hasn’t ever witnessed.

“There’s no one like you in hundreds, thousands or billions of people,” over him, Viktor’s eyes turn beautifully golden, like thunder or explosive stars. A show of destructive range thundering over him. 

Jayce’s hand raises, tender fingertips caressing Viktor’s cheek. Rediscovering the path of his cheeks, tracing the thin like where skin and metal bend. It’s firm and smooth, warmth under his touch, different to body’s heat, more like the heat produced by an overheated machine. 

His cheekbones make his face look angular and beautiful, carefully cut by some divine knife. He looks like a fallen star, some kind of celestial body made of magic and beauty that has tripped over his bed. His hair has acquired a brilliant metallic shine, like polished iron, wild locks of hair with golden and silver interwoven. 

The fingers meet the hair, and Jayce doesn’t have enough time to get wondered by its texture before his hand finds its place cupping Viktor’s head. 

Viktor lets go an exhalation against his will, his lips opening in a silent request, an invisible prayer. 

Jayce, astonished and speechless, it’s just a man trying to fulfill his petition. His other hand pushes his torso up from the bed, so he can chase Viktor’s mouth with hypnotic devotion. 

Another loud exhalation, fearful and trembling. Jayce can feel only Viktor , Viktor and his smooth skin, Viktor and his breathing chest, Viktor and the wonderful chimera of beauty, destruction, and tenderness he is. As if he just entered into his personal magnetic field and there’s no other existing force but whatever spell Viktor put in him. 

Jayce can almost taste the magic and metal, sparkling and addictive on his mouth. He searches for more, more and more, starving of something he’s never tasted before. His thumb caresses Viktor’s hair. 

And then, he’s looking at his own hand, dissecting his moves, because in a fast move Viktor has broken all the points where their skins touched, and he’s out of reach. 

A celestial body, walking out of his orbit, bittering the air and breaking the spell. 

“I almost forgot,” whispers Viktor, his accent tangling with the words. 

Jayce stares at his hand, not even being able to recall the feeling of touching him. 

“I have something for you,” he says, but Viktor’s voice is dying in every word, as if the words were submerging in water until Jayce can only hear the ghost of his voice. 

He stares at his hand, at the rough calluses, at the pink cuts, at the tanned skin, trying to find some clue that it once held Viktor. 

There’s nothing, just the proof of hard work in the forgue welcoming him back. Viktor could have never existed for how easily he ran away from his hands. 

He stares, breathing dense air, oil creeping through his lungs, so dense, so viscous, Jayce feels his chest getting heavier, nailing him to the bed until his eyes stop looking at his hand to look at the ceiling instead. 

Breathing is hard, painful , Jayce realizes when he notices his own tears.

A heavy movement, and his hand falls over his face to clean his tears, like an impulse rather than a conscious action. With clumsy movements, rough hands do little to weep away the tears that keep flowing. 

Knuckles stumble one across the other, and there isn’t oil air any longer, because his hands cover his face and he can feel only the coldness of his skin and the trembles of his bones. 

“Jayce,” calls Viktor, voice like water cutting through the oil. 

Guided by a new desperate energy produced by the embarrassment, he dries his face with the blanket in a movement that feels pathetic, cleaning his nose when he doesn’t feel Viktor’s gaze over him. 

Despite the pain that comes with it, his eyes cannot stop looking at Viktor. Still a beautiful and magnetic fallen star, Jayce’s pupils devour him like there’s nothing else to stare at (and he’s the only thing worth looking at, even with the pain that comes with it).

Viktor’s mouth opens, but there is no hidden request between his lips, Jayce finds nothing but extended silence. There is a new pain in knowing that Viktor has nothing to say. 

“Jayce,” he repeats after a long time, though Jayce suspects he just talks for the sake of filling the air with empty words; and the air, filled with oil and water now the bullets of every letter Viktor pronounces. “Jayce,” even when his tongue holds the word gently.

He doesn’t talk, simply staring at Viktor, praying there’s something in his face (the desperation in his gaze, the pathetic look of his eyebrows or the bitter curve of his mouth) that makes him cross the room and break the distance he’s cruelly imposed.

But Viktor doesn’t raise his eyes from the floor, his pupils are cowardly hidden behind dark eyelashes. Jayce thinks loudly in his mind Look at me, dare to look, look at me, when Viktor opens his mouth to talk again he doesn’t raise his eyes, but Jayce still considers it a victory. 

“You never told me you were in such pain.”

Jayce does not answer, he just stares, at the bitter curve of his mouth, the coward’s eyes, the desperate frown of the eyebrows, the nervous ticks of his hands. He stares, at his desperation, at the almost visible nervous energy surrounding Viktor, his magnetic field reduced to waves of anxious energy. 

“Why did you never tell me?” For a single second the eyes raise, opal tormentous pupils looking at him. 

“Why did you never tell me?” Viktor asks with the voice covered in unexpected anger. 

He does not have an answer, especially because he’s surprised his pain has taken Viktor by  surprise, as if his pain were something hidden below the earth and not something shining in every movement, perpetually shown as a new coat of skin. 

“What?” Asks Jayce, Unsure of what he’d heard.  

“You never let me know you were in  so much pain,” he says again, his voice melting from anger to sadness, dancing among the compassion and the rage, not knowing where to be. 

“I… Viktor,” laughs Jayce with humorless laugh, closing his eyes while rubbing his face with his extended hand. 

“Viktor,” he repeats, like a prayer, though he doesn’t know what he’s asking for. 

“I wasn’t hiding it, Viktor,” Jayce finally responds. His shoulders are heavy, chains, regrets and all his demons holding from his back. When Viktor makes an anguished sound it just adds a heavier weight to his shoulders.

“I- I know!” Exclaims Viktor, though Jayce considers it more a defensive response than a genuine one. 

While Viktor entangles with his own words, Jayce has the realization that if he wasn't able to hate him before, when he turned his leg into steel and his dreams into shattered  pieces, he might be able to hate him now. How dares Viktor to allow him to create a safe place among his arms, just to destroy it? 

“I… I am sorry for not having noticed”, finally Viktor says, Jayce dares to raise his head to look at him, finding the pale face bathed in tears, transparent rivers over his cheeks running wild to his metallic skin, leaving a shiny path behind. 

“Lately, I have had many… realizations,” while walking to the bed, Viktor wobbles.

When Viktor sits on the most distant corner from him, Jayce says nothing. “While accessing divinity, I disconnected from humanity, as you know,” Viktor says, looking almost unsure of his own words. 

Jayce stares at him, the face pointing downwards but the eyes wide open so he doesn’t lose a movement from Viktor, a breathing of his. 

“And while accessing divinity, I never thought I would yearn for some parts of my humanity,” Viktor doesn’t look at him, his eyes are nails to his fingers on his lap, closing and opening, metallic clicks with every movement. “And now that I have reconnected with this humanity of mine, I find myself reconnecting with unexpected parts of this humanity.” 

“Like what?” Jayce asks, a daring rather than a genuine question. His hair is over his eyes, but that doesn’t stop him from staring, analyzing every movement, formulating hypotheses and theories about what drives Viktor to deny him his affection. 

Viktor takes a deep breath, he turns his face, finally daring to look at him. Jayce makes sure to not blink, not remove the eyes, so Viktor can read the dare inside his eyes, give me an explanation, give me an explanation . When his mouth opens, Jayce mirrors it. 

“You must be so sick of eating the same shitty food,” spits Viktor with genuine disgust.

“What?” 

“All that canned food is awful, there is no possible way you like that! Jayce, you must be so tired, so sick and so… Bored!” Explains Viktor, his eyes are again shining with unshed tears. 

His heart is still wouden due to the past rejection. However, the concern on those opal eyes works as a miraculous balm to the fresh wound. 

“There’s nothing to do here Jayce! You must be so bored, and the air smells humid and rancid, this bed is simply uncomfortable. I have put you through such big pain and it took me a complete transformation to notice,” Viktor silently cries, drowning with his own tears like a sad child. 

Jayce is speechless, his head raised by itself, following Viktor in his every movement, Viktor and his display of sadness, compassion, and empathy.

“And your leg!” Viktor adds in a broken sound, as if his chest were collapsing and he were losing all the air inside. “The pains, the things I must have made you live in your own body.”

“Viktor…” Murmurs Jayce, he’s feeling as if he weren’t awakened, he feels as if he were just returning from a deep hibernation, like a witness in the scene. 

Interrupting him, Viktor talks, his words getting tangled one with the other. “You don’t have to say anything, you don’t have to forgive me,” he cleans his cheeks, though Jayce cannot lose the way they drop like water from his metallic fingers. 

“I just wanted to make you know that I wanted to make your last day here better, so besides working on the method to return you home I also did this,” Viktor smiles, searching among the sheets for something Jayce hadn’t realized was there. 

Shily, Viktor extends it, his cheekbones turn rosier at every second, but Jayce cannot tell if that’s caused due to his crying or embarrassment. 

When Jayce receives the strange object, he loses his breath. 

An apple. 

With animal hunger, Jayce takes it to his mouth, tearing apart every piece of the green meat, the juice flows from his beard. It must look disgusting, but when Viktor looks at him with adoration he cannot bring himself to care. 

“I… forgot to offer you a piece.”

“It’s fine,” Viktor smiles, his cheeks are still red, a divine contrast against the purple metal. “I did it for you.”

Jayce cleans his beard with both of his hands. Not knowing what to say. 

Viktor fills the uncomfortable silence, “and there is so little sunlight here, you must be so sad.”

Inside his chest his heart is totally cured due to Viktor’s tender care. It beats loudly, ordering him to trap Viktor in his embrace and beg for a kiss, since Jayce deep in his chest hypotheses it could be his best source of vitamin D. 

He doesn’t know what to do, confused by the rejection but reading in every one of Viktor’s movements a petition to be held and hugged. Before he can decide what to do Viktor talks again. 

“But you’ll be home tomorrow, what do you plan to do once we’re apart?”

“Uh?”

“What do you plan to do once we’re apart?” Repeats Viktor, and Jayce’s heart falls from his chest, he cannot hear a beat. 

He wonders why Viktor allowed him to enter in his embrace if he had planned to remove it later, he wonders why Viktor has decided to kill him twice. First, by denying him his affection. Second, by denying him his presence. 

He opens his mouth, but he cannot bring himself to lie. Defeated and massacred, his mouth makes a last try: “I’d take you with me.”

Chapter Text

Viktor cannot look at Jayce. It’s as if his eye have forgotten how to see.

“You will publish this under your name,” he says, the power of his metallic cords vanishing in a trembling whisper. 

He feels Jayce’s eyes on him, staring, praying, questions and petitions hanging from his eyelashes. Viktor coughs, though he does not feel any discomfort in his throat. It has no effect against Jayce’s pleading eyes. Even if he doesn’t look at him, Viktor knows the frown between his eyebrows turn deeper. 

He knows it, he feels it on his back, Jayce’s silent prayers climbing through his legs, creeping through his back like ivy. If Viktor lets them take roots, flowers might bloom. So he coughs harder, trying to shut up Jayce’s wordless petitions, in his ears it sounds like a marching band out of tune. 

His will trembles, and in his weakness he turns enough to see Jayce, to succumb to his pleading eyes.

Happily, that does not happen, since in the last moment, where Viktor’s stormy eyes look at Jayce through the shoulder, he directs his crystalline eyes to the book Viktor gave him. 

When Jayce’s eyes aren’t looking at him, crossing him as thorny roses. Viktor is a little braver, brave enough to stare. Though his bravery doesn’t last long when he finds Jayce’s gaze  now jumping among the pages and steeping  with such sadness and concern it makes him turn around again. 

This time he does feel a deep discomfort from the depths from his throat, but it doesn’t go away when he coughs. 

Two coughs after and the irritation  hasn’t gone, Viktor concludes that despite his precautions, he has been crossed by the thorns. 

He spares a thought for something he barely considers, the quality of his work; more specifically, the possibility that it could be any other than of an excellent, outstanding quality. The more time Jayce spends reading his notes, the more Viktor considers the previously impossible chance that his work could be not good enough. 

It’s ridiculous, he knows, he knows . Because only with the power of his mind he has craved this broken world when his body betrayed him. There is no reason to believe that is a bad research, or even that he’s able to make a bad research. 

“What do you think?” He dares to ask after the silence has prolonged for too long and he cannot bear any longer to be balancing between the insecurity and the anger at Jayce for taking so long to react. 

Jayce doesn’t answer instantly. But Viktor hears his noisy breathing. It takes him three deep inhalations to finally speak.

“Viktor, this is… This is…” He says breathless, from his voice honey and caramel drips. “Impressive, when did you find space for this?” He talks fast, but Viktor is nothing but a careful listener for him. 

“I’m very efficient,” he says calmly, rejoicing in the calm that comes with Jayce’s admiration, warm honey melting the thorns in his throat. 

“You should resume it,” Jayce says softly, almost proudly, Viktor dares to believe.  

“Your research,” Jayce speaks again, it sounds like a worship; a vow, rather than a clarification. 

Viktor dares to turn, just enough to see the shapes his fingerstrips trace on the first page, Water cleaning through bacteria .

“Someone was interested,” explains Viktor, though he doesn’t know why. 

The truth is, that when one holds such a great power as him, able to synthesize, design, metamorphose and transform. Financial support wasn’t a worry. 

Jayce laughs, and Viktor gets so happily distracted with the sound. he doesn’t notice Jayce approaching him until his breath is on his ear. Out of the  side of his eye, Viktor sees how his mouth opens, and before he can conjure roses, honey, ivy or caramel Viktor speaks, cutting off anything that could flourish. 

“And there will be more people interested,” he says firmly, looking away, still not brave enough to look at his wizardly eyes. 

“I did some modifications, no… Upgrades ,” Viktor takes a deep inhalation before continuing. “In the first place it was only bacteria able to eat trash, a way to clean water. However, you need something else, it’s not enough to have potable water, you need to provide. Therefore, I… Started playing with it. I got inspiration from the Arcane cells, how do they reproduce so fast. They require a large amount of energy for such… So why if we could insert whatever that converts matter to energy in the Arcane cells to bacteria? And if we could pass from that chemical energy to an electrical one?” Viktor dares to look at Jayce, simply to admire his face bathed with wonder and amaze. 

“Before, it would have taken me years… Decades of research to accomplish such, but with the synergy between science and magic you have everything you need in your hands,” Jayce’s face dances a charming mix of amusement and awe, and Viktor finds his own voice dancing along. 

“Viktor,” interrupts Jayce breathless, Viktor’s eyes move by themselves, finding Jayce’s wide smile.

“Viktor,” he repeats, tasting the name, covering it with caramel. “That’s amazing,” he smiles, smiling as if his mouth weren’t covered with cuts, his lips broken. As if it didn’t hurt, Jayce extends his hands, open palms trying to reach him. 

And without contact Viktor can feel it, the ivy, the roses, everything growing uncontrollable over him. Without contact, he can feel the warmth of Jayce’s palms under his skin, melting the bones, molding the muscles. Viktor would like to let him, let his warmth reach him until he’s nothing but warm iron, growing plants sprinkled with honey. But Viktor cannot allow himself such reward when a whole world has succumbed under his metal hand, his irony will. 

“It is,” he agrees while going back two steps. “That’s why you’ll publish it, and you’ll fill entire cities with lights, machines or whatever people are interested in.”

Jayce blinks, slow, as if his brain is unable to catch up with the conversation. 

“Or you could make some modifications, of course,” adds Viktor, feeling his eyebrows frown while thinking, “hum, instead of energy bacteria could produce… Textiles, fill all the wardrobes! Or they could be used to synthesize medicine, of course, if the disease you wish to cure has enough interested parties to make it viable and-”

“Publish it under my name?” He suddenly interrupts, Jayce holds the book tight to his chest, as if he could save it in his ribcage if pressing enough. 

“Not only publish it, exploit it, make a use of it.”

He separates the book from his bosom, returning it to Viktor, who barely holds it with lazy hands. 

How does he dare? To reject his research like this, so openly and so cruelly. It’d be fine if he doesn’t want his name associated with his, but is the cruelty necessary? 

Maybe it’s well deserved , thinks Viktor, biting his own tongue besides he wishes to defend the quality of his work. 

“It’s yours!” exclaims Jayce. 

“And I wish to give it to you, since you’ll make good use of it and…” How else could I offset after all the pain I have caused you? Except offset  isn’t the right word, it implies he could ever do something with the same weight of all the pain he had inflicted. A maybe better word could be pay , since Viktor wishes he could provide something, anything , to give Jayce as much as he’s taken from him. Mournfully, Viktor doesn’t think that it would ever be enough, even if he gave his bones and ashes, to compensate Jayce’s pain (let alone the rest of pains he’s caused).

“ You deserve it, ” he ends up saying, satisfied with it because it’s true. 

Jayce loudly exhales, the corners of his lips try to raise up but it’s unsuccessful, leaving an uncomfortable grin instead. He blinks quickly, and his right hand raises to rub his temple. 

“Viktor, I…” He takes a deep breath, “I can do my own research.”

He quickens himself to speak. “I know! You are brilliant, Jayce. I know that, everyone should know that.” 

He dares to look at Jayce straight in the eye, despite the prayers overflowing his pupils are enough to make his voice tremble. “I’m giving it to you because you said you were scared of losing utility after returning.” He takes a deep breath. “So you’ll tell them to fuck off, whoever made you feel like you couldn’t exist as long as your physical strength weren’t for use. You’ll tell them to fuck off, then you’ll use this,” he approaches the book to Jayce, slowly fearing he might reject it. “To fill their cities with light, machines, trains, whatever they want to, whatever you want to .”

Jayce receives the book, but he doesn’t hold it as close to his heart.

“And they’ll love you,” concludes Viktor. 

“You deserve it,” repeats Viktor, the words taste sweeter than last time. 

The fingertips press against the cover, the tips turning white. 

“And what will happen to you?” 

Viktor is speechless, not because he didn’t expect the question or because he doesn’t have an answer. He does have one, clear in the middle of his brain: To stay here and rot with everything else. 

But he won’t say that, he cannot say that, one thing is to condemn himself to forgetness. Other one is to speak it out loud, to reveal his whole regret to Jayce. To admit he doesn’t know what to do with all the guilt plaguing his insides. 

“I’ll stay.” 

“Doing what? A new research you sent me once it’s finished?” He laughs, joyless and breathless. 

“I could,” says Viktor, despite the fact that he doesn't feel himself able to stand up for anything else but stare and mourn at the graveyard he’s turned the world into. He deviates his gaze, tactically avoiding Jayce’s eyes. 

“Then what will you do?”

“Why do you care, Jayce?” Viktor whispers, defeated. “Take that research, do something amazing from it, change the world, change your life!”

“And what about yours?” Jayce explodes, his hands fly through the air, “You want me to go back, change my life as if you aren’t the cause?” The notebook in front of his face, his fingertips taping the cover with despair. “Take the credit of a research, an invention that isn’t mine!”

“It could easily be yours!” Viktor pushes the book in Jayce’s direction, “You were the one who reminded me of this, you are the cause of it!”

Jayce laughs, surprised, “I didn’t do shit! I was asleep and then you gave me fruit!”

“Fruit that was developed with the water cleaned with this,” interrupts Viktor, “this is all for you. You are the reason this exists, that I considered it worth existing.”

Jayce blinks, his gaze wanders across  his face, from his mouth to his eyes, from his eyes to his hair, from his hair to his mouth again. 

“Then put me in acknowledgements.”

His mouth opens by itself, but nothing comes from his mind to say. He blinks, trying to dispel Jayce and his expecting eyes. 

“No,” after short seconds, he adds: “I don’t want to,” only so Jayce doesn’t have an argument against. 

Jayce laughs, this time for real. He must not be very happy with it, judging by how he tries to hide his laugh and smile behind his hands. 

“Then come with me,” says Jayce, he’s stopped laughing but his voice has a joyful tune. “Let’s go together, make something amazing from it, let’s change the world together.” 

Till this moment, Viktor has carefully avoided every one of Jayce’s approaches, too careful to not get cut by thorny roses or be kidnapped by wild ivy. So he’s surprised when in the smallest moment Jayce finds a way to reach him, taking his hand among his. 

“Let’s be partners,” he smiles, “lab partners.”

Jayce squeezes his hand, soft and tender, and it’s like he’s blooming from inside.

“I can’t,” he pulls his hand, freeing it from the cage of warmth and rough skin.

“Why?” Jayce says rawly, his hand following him. “Does the idea of being my partner disgust you so deeply?” 

As pulling the right strings, the trembling voice instantly makes him spin around. 

“No! I–There isn’t anything in the world I would like more than doing science at your side,” promises Viktor, extending his hands as an olive branch. Jayce takes them, but it doesn’t have a tender touch. 

“Then why do you refuse to come with me? Why are you so focused on separating us?” Jayce whispers, no sweetness, simply rotten honey and burnt caramel. 

Viktor reflects before answering, choosing carefully the words. But there aren’t words to explain Jayce how he feels deserving of only his regret. 

“How could I go with you after everything I’ve done?” He says after long and painful seconds. 

Jayce doesn’t seem to understand, his eyes wander through his face, until an idea must arrive to his mind, his eyes lighten up. 

“I’ll introduce you to my mom, and Cait too. You can stay at my house until you find a place to live if you want to and–” He rambles, caressing his hands. Viktor is defeated, totally massacred over the sweetness Jayce easily provides. 

“No, Jayce, it’s not about that,” he interrupts shily, happy when the caresses don’t stop.  

“How can I go with you knowing all the pain and destruction I caused? How can I try to be content knowing what I did?” He tries to step back, but this time Jayce doesn’t free his hands. 

“So you’re going to stay here and be miserable?” He asks, his eyes wandering through his face as searching for answers but not getting any. 

Viktor opens and closes his mouth multiple times before speaking, “It’s what I deserve.”

“Loneliness?”

“Regret! To feel my regret, to understand the consequences of my actions,” he explains desperately, not knowing why Jayce insists, why he extends his tender hand, though his is covered with blood. 

“It looks like you already know Viktor, why live through it alone?” He makes another try to get his hands, but Jayce’s grip doesn’t hesitate. 

“I have been unregretted for so long, and what I did was so terrible. I thought of myself as a God, I thought I could create myself to be one… But I’m not God, I’m just a disfigurement of one…”

“So why would you be deserving to be alone?” Jayce asks gently, his hand wandering from his hand to his wrist, from his wrist to his forearm. 

“And why would I be deserving of love?” 

“You simply are,” affirms Jayce, one his hands holding his elbow. “ I find you very easy to love.” 

Then he approaches, leaning towards him, slow and careful. 

“How do you know it’s love?” He murmurs when Jayce’s eyes are so close Viktor can count his eyelashes. “I found you lonely, cold, weak, and wounded… You relied on me, you might be confusing love with something else.” 

Jayce doesn’t instantly respond, he remains silent in what seems as a deep contemplation. 

“It feels like love for me, affection at least… Don’t you feel the same?”

Unable to lie, Viktor tries to redirect the conversation, “I was lonely too.”

He thinks the conversation might have finished, but in the last second Jayce’s eyes light up as when he has a wonderful idea.

“If what you deserve is loneliness and guilt…then what do I deserve? To miss you forever. knowing you’re sunk in self pity?”

Viktor is almost offended for the way his arguments have turned against him, if he weren’t so moved by the way Jayce insists in loving him as if it were one of his primal instincts. 

“I…” He wobbles, “No, of course not, but..”

When Jayce sees him defeated, one of his hand wander from his elbow to his arm, slowly pulling him into a hug. 

“Come with me,” he whispers in his ear. 

Through the side of his eye, Viktor catches a glimpse of the window, an open look into the world he made sure to emaciate until its ashes. 

So he pulls, escaping from Jayce’s embrace in a fast twist so there’s nothing in between the lifeless city and his eyes. He feels a distant burn in his eyes he hadn’t felt long ago. Staring at the destroyed city, he let the tears run wild and freely through his cheeks, wetting the soft skin and sliding on the metal muscles. Small sacrifices in order to pay his debt. 

He looks at the city without blinking so he won’t forget any of the ugly details. He doesn’t hear steps behind him, so he jumps in surprise when Jayce’s hand touches his shoulder. Fearfully, he expects him to say something, to do something to revive their last discussion. Then, Viktor realizes that a gentle hand is his way to keep up with his argument, that Viktor is loved, and he shows it by staying. 

He cries harder, this time caused by the gesture rather than the views. He feels terribly happy (and terribly selfish for feeling such) to have so many constant shows of Jayce adoration for him. 

While staring at the abandoned buildings, only inhabited by ghosts, Viktor finds out that a small part inside himself wants Jayce. Even though he might not deserve him he wants all the happiness they can get together, he wants to take it all, as if he didn’t already take enough. 

“You don’t know everything I have done,” Viktor whispers, a last try to push him away. 

He hears his exhalation behind him, Jayce moves until his face appears in front of the window, he's smiling. 

“Have you done something worse?” 

Viktor tries to shut his laugh down with his hands, which ends up being useless. 

Jayce’s laugh is the loudest thing in the room.