Chapter Text
The lab is dark when Jayce returns from the destroyed Shimmer plant, his hammer heavy on his shoulder.
His skull pounds with exhaustion and grief and the image of the child crumpled on the basement floor, gasping, falling silent. Stupid, Jayce was so stupid, to think he could fix Piltover and Zaun’s problems with – what, a single swing of his hammer? It is a tool, and it was never meant to be used this way, and if he’s being honest, Jayce isn’t sure he was meant to be used this way, either: as a vessel for violence. He wanted peace, not…blood. So much blood, he can smell it still, thick and iron…
Wait. As Jayce steps through the second set of doors – they’re open, why are they open – the floor of the lab is wet. The scent of blood is not a memory; it’s here, underlain by the sickly sweet scent of rot. Jayce goes still, eyes wide in the darkness.
In the center of the lab, a single light flickers dimly. The Hexcore, inlaid in its little alcove, sheds a soft purple glow, tiny tendrils licking off of it like wisps of smoke. Its glow is just enough to illuminate the two bodies laying on the floor before it, in a pool of blood.
Jayce staggers towards them, his own blood roaring in his ears. Objectively, he sees, he knows, the bodies are Sky and Viktor. But it doesn’t make sense. It can’t be –
Jayce falls to his knees, slipping in the blood, his hammer falling with a thud off to the side. There’s so much, splattered across both of the bodies, and by the light of his hammer and the Hexcore, a ghostly mingling of blue and violet, he sees Sky’s wide, empty eyes, her open mouth and her ripped-apart throat, the ragged edges of veins and arteries on display.
Jayce gags, reaches for her, falters – she’s dead. She’s the source of the sickly sweetness – the rotting thing. One of them, anyway.
He doesn’t want to turn around. Doesn’t want to see Viktor’s eyes, empty. When he does turn, he can’t quite feel his own hands as he reaches out. Sky is sprawled out on the floor on her back, her limbs in disarray, but Viktor is curled up in a defensive, almost fetal, position on his side, his head bowed in towards his chest, his arms and legs limply tucked.
Viktor looks so small – and inexplicably, he’s nearly naked; his clothes are tossed off to the side, just beyond the blood’s reach. He wears only his back brace and his underwear, which are as covered in blood as the rest of him. But he’s not wearing his leg brace, because…his right leg is not flesh, but a purple-gray metal the likes of which Jayce has never seen before…except, perhaps, in the Hexcore. Horror crawls up Jayce’s throat. The brace has fused with Viktor’s leg, if the placement of the bolts and bronze plates along it are any indication.
“Viktor,” he whispers, even his hushed voice too loud in the heavy silence. He holds Viktor’s hand and recoils – that, too, is made of that strange metal, cool to the touch, and when Jayce releases it, the metallic hand hits the bloodsoaked floor with a dull clang.
His other hand, though, is flesh, and when Jayce grasps Viktor’s jaw and lifts his chin with trembling fingers, that’s all flesh too, and – Jayce nearly sobs when he brushes his thumb along Viktor’s wrist and feels a pulse, weakly beating. Seconds between beats, but…they’re there.
Viktor is alive, warm, though not as warm as he should be – Jayce is already gathering him up into his arms, Viktor’s head lolling against his chest. Fuck, Viktor is drenched in blood; his face is splattered with it, his neck and chest are entirely crimson, half-dried streaks staining Jayce’s already fairly filthy shirt.
And yet, as Jayce searches desperately for the cause of the bleeding, he finds no wounds like Sky’s, no messy, fatal blow. Instead, he sees symbols carved along Viktor’s arms, shoulders, and chest…runes? They’re bloodied, fresh, but small, superficial. So, then…all the blood must be Sky’s. There was an attack, and Viktor was spared, but how, why?
Jayce is looking at a puzzle with too many missing pieces. Caitlyn would have already solved the mystery, but right now, all he can do is get Viktor out of here, to a doctor; well, maybe not to a doctor, Viktor dislikes doctors, though he’s never said so outright, and he hates the hospital, and if the doctors see his augmented limb and connect it to Hextech, they might ask questions that Jayce has no answers to –
…Jayce is thinking too much.
He forces himself to breathe until the thoughts slow; it’s almost impossible, with Viktor unmoving in his arms, the rise and fall of his chest terrifyingly slight.
But Viktor is still breathing, still alive, so Jayce can still fix this. And he will. He has to.
Jayce’s family has a doctor. He can get a message to her quickly, discreetly. He’ll take Viktor home, and she can treat him there, and when Viktor wakes up, if he wants to go to the hospital Jayce will bring him there; he’ll bring Viktor wherever he wants.
For now, he brings Viktor home.
*
Jayce manages to slip past three enforcer patrols in the early morning streets, clutching Viktor’s bloody body close, wrapped in the blanket Jayce keeps in the lab. They have a couple of hours until sunrise, and the darkness provides the cover Jayce needs to get them both to their apartment. It’s not a long walk, but every second feels stretched, and Jayce keeps checking Viktor’s pulse, keeps wondering if he’s imagining that it feels slower than before.
It’s a humble two bedroom, with a large living room that they’ve repurposed as a makeshift lab. The window seat by the bay windows is cluttered with papers and books. The sofa is a sleek green velvet antique, a gift from the Kirammans. Jayce can count on one hand the number of times he’s sat on it, but it is one of Viktor’s favored spots to sprawl on his especially tired days. The dining table — which is made of some absurdly rare wood and inlaid with mother of pearl — was a gift from Heimerdinger, and it’s hosted several painfully awkward formal dinners with him and the Kirammans, and many more comfortable dinners with Jayce’s mother.
Now, the table is covered in plants in varying states of decay. They’re Viktor’s — there are more lining the window sills in the kitchen, indestructible vines with silvery splotches on their leaves that Jayce has always liked. In his current state of weird, panicked clarity, he realizes that those pretty vines number among the dead plants on the table. Jayce’s gut twists. Didn’t Viktor love those plants? Why subject them to the Hexcore experiments…?
Jayce hasn’t been home lately, and he fears he’s missed too much. He can ask Viktor later. Later, after Viktor wakes up.
He carries Viktor to the bathroom and puts him down in the bathtub. The sight makes him swallow back a sob, Viktor’s head slumped back against the tiles, limp arm dangling over the edge, the porcelain smeared with red. Viktor does not stir as Jayce attempts to clean him off, first with a sponge and then with a slightly more proper bath when the sponge becomes so saturated with blood that it is unusable.
Jayce is nervous about submerging Viktor’s leg or hand, given their mechanical appearance, and he doesn’t want to damage Viktor’s back brace or spine by trying to take it off, either, so the result is awkwardly arranging Viktor in several inches of rapidly reddening water as Jayce carefully rinses him off. He rushes — the doctor will be here any minute — but he tries to be careful, and when he accidentally bangs Viktor’s knee against the side of the tub, he flinches, muttering an apology. Viktor does not react.
Jayce cleans the small carved symbols carefully and, after some debate, bandages them up. It’s odd, though; he swears they’re already scabbed over, much less bloody than they were less than an hour ago. He shoves the thought away. He needs sleep; he can’t trust his own brain right now.
At a certain point Jayce is forced to acknowledge that he has to take Viktor’s underwear off. They’re more saturated with blood than the sponge, and they can’t be comfortable, but Jayce still hesitates before finally, clumsily working the soaked fabric away from Viktor’s groin and down his skinny, splayed legs. Jayce doesn’t look, he doesn’t, at the dark patch of curls that’s revealed, except for a cursory glance to assess if there’s any wound there.
It’s not like he expects to see one – and he’s not sure what he would do if he did – but the grayish purple metal has crept all the way up his inner thigh, and Jayce swears that through the dark curls, the flesh there is tinged purple too, the color of a vicious bruise.
There’s a long, awful moment as Jayce kneels beside the bathtub, Viktor’s bloodsoaked underwear balled up in his fist, when he imagines the thing that did this, that killed Sky, looming over Viktor, snarling and dripping blood all over him, seizing him, hurting him. Jayce shudders and throws the underwear away.
“What happened to you?” Jayce whispers to Viktor as he bundles him up in a towel. He brings Viktor to his bedroom and stops in the doorway with a sharp inhale. Viktor’s room is…eerily bare. The bed is there, and the wardrobe, but Viktor’s room has always been cluttered with his newest projects, and there is no clutter here. No plants, either. The windowsills are bare. The bed is made too neatly. When was the last time Viktor slept here?
When was the last time he slept anywhere?
Jayce dresses Viktor in the first set of pajamas he can find. He doesn’t bother with underwear because he can’t find where Viktor keeps them, and he’s intruded far too much already. He wishes Viktor would wake up already, would lift his head and snap at him to stop being so handsy, to mind his own business, to stop treating him so delicately because I am not made out of glass, Jayce, you are being ridiculous. But Vikor remains limply unresponsive as Jayce tucks him into bed, just as someone knocks at the door.
It’s the doctor – who else would it be at this hour? – but Jayce is still soaked in clammy sweat by the time he answers the door. They exchange clipped pleasantries. She knows he wouldn’t have called her if it wasn’t urgent. As she settles at Viktor’s bedside and begins unpacking her bag, putting on her stethoscope, Jayce lets himself relax. She’s a good doctor. She will figure this out.
But as she examines Viktor, frowning over him for what feels like a long time, the doctor says, “This is very odd.”
Jayce leans forward. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t…” She purses her lips. “Your friend is ill, yes? The back brace implies a spinal issue, and given the bolts in the spine it is likely a serious and progressive condition—the pedicle screws are an extreme measure, I might add; I don’t know any surgeon in Piltover who would perform such a procedure like this, and this, ah, limb augmentation is equally out of my purview. He also looks rather ill; far too gaunt to be healthy, I suggest an increase of iron in his diet. But…Mr. Talis, the more worrying symptom here is that your friend’s heartbeat is impossible.”
“I—I’m sorry?”
“He should be dead,” she says, and her frown deepens when Jayce flinches. “I apologize for my poor bedside manner, Mr. Talis, I…I am tired, and I have never encountered this before. But your friend’s heart rate is, by my count, fifteen beats per minute.”
Jayce has never met a machine he couldn’t fix or improve, especially since Hextech was born. He can solve equations that drove other Academy students to breakdowns and wax poetic about pure and applied mathematics for hours. But he is not a medical man. “Does he have low blood pressure?”
The doctor stares at him. “He has nearly no blood pressure. Mr. Talis, below forty beats per minute is cause for serious alarm. Fifteen is an agonal rhythm.”
“And what…does that mean?”
“Directly preceding death, Mr. Talis.”
Jayce’s vision darkens at the edges. “No—no, there has to be something you can do—”
The doctor sits back. “I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Talis. His impossible heart rate of fifteen is, apparently, holding fairly steady. It does not appear to be decreasing and he is not in cardiac arrest.”
“So he can recover,” Jayce says.
“People do not…” The doctor sighs. “An agonal rhythm isn’t something one recovers from. Not in any instance I’m aware of. There’s also the matter of his body temperature, which is quite low as well — around eighty degrees, which is again impossible for a living human being. He does, somehow, seem stable for now, but Mr. Talis…all you can do for him is be with him. If you talk to him, he may be able to hear you, but his heart rate is too low to support consciousness; I’m sorry to say that he is not going to wake up.”
Jayce doesn’t believe her. She’s a good doctor, but she’s wrong about this. Has to be. “What happened to him, doctor?”
She shakes her head. “I honestly can’t say for certain. If he had heart issues already, I suppose it’s possible that a terrible shock caused an irreparable trauma. Or he could have been electrocuted, or inhaled some poisonous gas, or—overdosed on some substance, potentially…he is from the Undercity, yes? If these symbols carved into him were self-inflicted, perhaps he was in a, ah, strange state of mind.”
Jayce doesn’t appreciate her insinuation. “Viktor wouldn’t,” Jayce snaps. “He’s careful, and anyway he doesn’t—he’s not—there are no substances.”
“I understand.” The doctor gets up, packing her bag and looking at Viktor with an indecipherable expression. “I’m sorry I cannot do more.” She hesitates. “If it would be helpful…I know the funerary service that your family prefers, I could—”
“No.” Jayce’s nails are digging bloody half-moons into his palms. When he smiles at her it’s more like a baring of teeth. “That won’t be necessary, thank you. Goodnight, doctor.”
He doesn’t see her out.
“Wake up,” Jayce whispers in the silence after she’s gone. “I know you can. Forget what she said. You’re not dying. I won’t –” His breath rattles in his chest. “I won’t let you.”
He doesn’t leave Viktor’s bedside, even when his eyelids grow too heavy to keep open, and sleep overtakes him in a dark mist.
*
Jayce awakes with a bleary start in a dark room, hints of sunlight peeking through the gaps in the closed curtains. He’s in Viktor’s room, in a chair by his bedside…why…
“Jayce.”
Jayce’s vision focuses and he almost screams. Viktor is sitting up in bed, posture very straight, staring at Jayce. His amber eyes are wide and if Jayce didn’t know better, he would say they’re glowing. “Viktor,” Jayce stammers, and then as the memories flood back, “Viktor, fuck, you’re – the doctor said –”
Viktor’s head tilts. “The doctor?” His eyes narrow. “What is going on, Jayce?”
Viktor doesn’t sound like he’s dying. He sounds faintly bewildered and sharply suspicious and so much like himself that Jayce can do nothing except make a noise embarrassingly close to a sob and embrace him. Viktor is stiff in his arms. Jayce pulls back hastily, but Viktor doesn’t look upset, just…curious, and confused, his eyes wide and brow furrowed deeply, his lips parted.
“There was an attack,” Jayce whispers, “in the lab, and you – I found you, there was blood everywhere, and you wouldn’t wake up, and your heart, it was barely beating, and Sky – she’s dead, Viktor, her throat was gone, I don’t know what happened, what did this, how it got in, but it has to be some kind of monster –”
Viktor holds up a hand. It shakes slightly. “Jayce, you are not making sense, slow down — what do you mean, Sky is dead?”
Jayce tells him. Tells him everything he can think of mentioning, anything that will spark Viktor’s memory. Viktor listens quietly, his posture slowly drooping until he’s slumped back against the headboard, staring down at his hands: one flesh, one…not.
“Her throat was – ripped out?” Viktor asks, voice low, barely audible. Jayce nods and Viktor closes his eyes, shivering. “And her body – has it been – disposed of?”
“No,” Jayce says, stomach turning. “She’s…still in the lab.” Along with all of her blood. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Viktor’s eyes flicker back and forth under his eyelids, like he’s dreaming. “You did not go to the enforcers?”
“No, I – all I could think of was getting you out of there,” Jayce admits. “And…Viktor, the scene in there, I had no idea how to explain…it was like a slaughterhouse floor…” He shudders. “Viktor, what do you remember…? What did this?”
Viktor’s eyes crack open. He looks so tired, his gaze dull and distant as he murmurs, “A monster, as you say. I think – it was my fault, Jayce. I was…experimenting, with the Hexcore, and it…” Pain twists on his face and he turns away. “I think it – released something.”
“Released from…from the Arcane, you mean? Like, a creature made of…magic? How…”
Viktor shakes his head. “I don’t know, Jayce. It was a…a mistake – but if the enforcers investigate, if they somehow discover – it could shut down our research, Jayce. It could ruin us.”
“If we explain it to them, if you tell them it was a mistake –”
“They might listen to you,” Viktor says, “they will not listen to me. But –” He curls in on himself, chin resting on his knees, body still angled away from Jayce. “I – I created the Hexcore. Not you. If one of us must take the fall for this –”
“Don’t.” Jayce reaches out to him. “No one is taking the fall, Viktor; even if the Hexcore released something, you couldn’t have known.”
Viktor flinches away from his touch and Jayce tries and fails not to feel bad about it.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Jayce offers. “I should’ve been there, I could’ve…”
Viktor makes a soft, wounded sound. “No… no one should have been there…I…I was doing the experiment alone; Sky must have come in…”
Jayce exhales. He doesn’t scold Viktor for doing a risky experiment alone, for not waiting for his partner, even though that is one of their most important rules: do the dangerous shit together. “You don’t remember her coming in?”
Viktor is clutching his head, his fingertips digging into his skull with worrying intensity. “No…I was, as you say, ‘out of it.’ I remember…a darkness, howling shadows, surrounding me, and – blood, yes, there was blood, then – nothing.”
Jayce frowns and adds ‘demonic shadow wolf’ to the list of suspects. “So maybe Sky came in because she heard the thing attacking you…? But I couldn’t find any wounds, neither could the doctor. Except…there were runes, carved into your shoulders, and your hand, and leg are…different – did the thing from the Hexcore do that to you? But I don’t understand why it would kill Sky, but leave you…maybe you did something to it, banished it somehow, before it could hurt you too?”
Viktor goes still. Jayce can’t even hear him breathing. “Viktor…?”
“Please go, Jayce,” Viktor says in a small, strained voice, completely turned away from him and curled against the headboard now. “I – I am grateful that you – saved me. But I would appreciate…some space, right now. This is…a lot.”
“Of course, I – you should rest.” Jayce stands hastily, nearly knocking over the chair. He returns it to its place at Viktor’s desk – his strangely clean and bare desk – and goes to the door. “Let me know if you need anything?”
“Yes,” Viktor says listlessly.
Jayce hesitates. “About Sky, and the lab, what should I…
Viktor glances up, and his eyes really do look aglow, how odd. “Lock down the lab. I will deal with the rest.”
“What? Viktor, you need to stay in bed, not clean up a crime scene –”
“You asked me what you should do and I have told you,” Viktor says. “Do not put yourself in further danger for my sake, Jayce. And do not tell me what I need.”
Jayce ducks his head and swallows back the several protests on his tongue. Arguing won’t help Viktor feel any better. “I…okay. Sorry. Just…get some rest. Please.”
He leaves, but even with the door closed, he swears he can feel Viktor’s gaze upon him, piercing brightly.
*
Jayce locks down the lab, citing an incident with some chemicals, and assures anyone who asks that it is dangerous to enter due to toxic fumes but it will be cleaned up shortly, Everything Is Just Fine, and when an assistant from another lab asks about Sky, Jayce tells her no, he hasn’t seen Sky around, but she wasn’t in the lab when the incident occurred, so There Is Nothing To Worry About, Nothing At All.
He rushes back home, and there’s a trembling moment right before he opens the apartment door when he wonders if he will find the floor covered in blood, Viktor’s body lying lifeless and torn apart in his bed. If the monster from the Hexcore is still out there, will it hunt the prey that escaped it? And if it is — how can Jayce stop it?
But the apartment smells like the lavender candles Viktor likes, not blood, and Viktor is sitting on the couch, not dead, staring at the flickering candle flame on the coffee table. He’s wrapped in a dark blue blanket. Jayce’s blanket, he realizes with a start, from the lab last night — it’s probably got remnants of blood on it, it must be disgusting, and yet Viktor is wearing it like a robe over his pajamas. His hair is damp and smoothed back. He barely reacts when Jayce walks in.
“The lab is locked down,” Jayce says.
Viktor nods. “Good.” He pulls the blanket tighter around himself. “I am sorry I was sharp with you earlier, Jayce. I know you were only trying to…help.”
“It’s fine. How are you feeling?” Is your heart beating in a less doomed rhythm?
Viktor burrows down into the blanket, his gaze unfocused. “Hmm…hungry.”
“I’ll make dinner,” Jayce says, already heading to the kitchen. Has Viktor eaten anything today? Jayce is a terrible caretaker. He rifles through the cabinets. “Uh — how about pasta? With meatballs? I think we have some in the icebox from last week…”
“Pasta with meatballs sounds good, Jayce.” Viktor peers at him from over the top of the couch. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” Jayce puts on the water to boil and flashes Viktor a smile. “It’s been too long since we had dinner together at home.”
Viktor’s answering smile is small and close-lipped. “Yes,” he murmurs. “It has.”
*
Dinner is quiet. Or rather, Viktor is quiet while Jayce tries to fill the silence with anxious, meaningless babble. Some of it is actually important — he tells Viktor about the Shimmer factory, about Vi taking the gloves — but he can’t bring himself to say the most important things, which are, I killed a kid last night and My family doctor told me you were on your deathbed and now you’re eating pasta with me.
Eventually, Viktor excuses himself. He seemed appreciative about the pasta at first, and practically swallowed one of the meatballs whole, but as the meal went on, he began to pick at the pasta with less and less enthusiasm. It’s still abrupt when he stands and says, “I’m sorry, I am done. Thank you for dinner,” before fleeing the table with his half-full bowl. Jayce hears the clatter of the bowl on the kitchen counter, and then the uneven patter-thud of Viktor’s feet, the louder thud of the bathroom door, and then the unmistakable sound of vomiting.
Jayce sits at the table, his own appetite waning, his pasta nearly gone anyway. He frowns at the red sauce. It’s Viktor’s favorite kind, made by a merchant from Ixtal who only visits the market in Piltover twice a year.
Nausea isn’t an uncommon symptom for Viktor, but this sounds like…a lot. Jayce winces, eats his last meatball, and goes to the kitchen to clean up. He’s scrubbing the colander when Viktor pads around the corner and says in a quiet, painfully hoarse voice, “I think there is something wrong with my digestion.”
Jayce gives him a sympathetic grimace. “Yeah…do you want to try some soup instead? I think we also have that ginger tea you like, somewhere around here…”
Viktor blinks at him. “That is thoughtful, Jayce, but — I have had these issues before, ah, as a child, and there is an herbalist in the Undercity who remedied it for me then. They…will be able to help with this.”
To Jayce’s alarm, Viktor is walking towards the door and reaching for his cloak. He’s still in his pajamas, and shivering as if feverish. “You’re going now? It’s past sundown—”
Viktor shoots him a truly withering look. “Yes, thank you, Mamka. Perhaps you are not comfortable wandering the Undercity at night, but I will manage.”
“Viktor, that’s not —” Jayce holds his hands out, pleading, because Viktor is starting to glower at him the way he did on the bridge at the barricade, and Jayce doesn’t want to argue, he just wants Viktor to not die. “Things are bad right now, okay? Really bad. Silco and the Chem Barons are at each other's throats, Shimmer is in the streets, and who knows where Jinx is or what she’s doing — and now that thing from the Hexcore might be out there too? Wait until morning. Or — I can go with you. Let me go with you, at least.”
Viktor sighs and puts the hood of his cloak up. “I appreciate your concern, but it is unnecessary. I have had worse; I can handle myself.” He opens the door and pauses on the threshold, turning back to Jayce for a moment, haloed by the streetlamps behind him. “Get some sleep, Jayce. I will see you in the morning.”
And Viktor leaves, just like that.
*
Jayce does not get any sleep.
*
Viktor comes back at five in the morning. Jayce is at the dining table, on his fifth cup of coffee, tinkering uselessly with an old Hextech prototype, a stupid pair of goggles they could never get to work.
“Jayce,” Viktor murmurs from a few feet away, and Jayce almost stabs himself with the pair of pliers.
“How—I didn’t hear you come in,” Jayce gasps. Somehow, Viktor’s taken his cloak off and locked the door without a sound — he’s never been particularly stealthy with his cane, but…he’s not using his cane now, and he’s leaning casually against one of the dining table chairs, watching Jayce, one brow raised. He looks less gaunt than he’s looked in weeks, Jayce realizes. A bit of color in his cheeks. He also looks exasperated.
“Your eyes are bloodshot and your focus is clearly occupied.” Viktor clicks his tongue. “I told you to rest, not stay up fretting.”
“No one is fretting!” Jayce snaps as his bleary vision struggles to fix on Viktor. “But…you found the herbalist then? They helped?”
“Hm?” Viktor blinks. “Oh. Yes. They helped – a temporary measure, but one that I suspect will work again.”
“Good…that’s good.” Jayce rubs his eyes. “Ugh, I need more coffee.”
“You do not.” Viktor’s hand is suddenly on his shoulder, nails digging in slightly, and Jayce falters. Viktor’s nails have always been short, bitten to the quick, but they feel longer now, sharper. “I am serious, Jayce, go to bed. You have worried enough for the two of us – stress is a killer, you know.”
Jayce squints at him. “You think I can’t survive a couple of all-nighters? I’m fine, Vik – I’ve gotta be up early anyway to start cleaning up the lab, and –”
“No, no.” Viktor’s grip on him tightens. “Do not concern yourself with that. I made the mess and I will clean it up – and you will sleep.”
Jayce opens his mouth to protest, but his tongue suddenly feels heavy, his thoughts slowed. He squints harder at Viktor. His eyes – how are they so bright? Like lamplight…like his father’s forge, burning…
“Sleep,” Viktor says, and the forge goes out.