Chapter Text
They promised they’d finish it together, so they do. The aching not-sensation of the arcane screams along every atom of their beings as they hold each other close, together again in their final act. The world whites out.
And then it fades in again.
--
Jayce wakes up gasping, which is surprising for several reasons.
His hands grasp at his throat on instinct, as if his body can still feel the Herald’s hand around his neck, and he’s forced to sit up and cough violently before his mind can even begin to ask questions like,
How the hell are we alive?
We--
Viktor.
Jayce panics for a split second before his eyes fall on a small form covered with a familiar blanket. Viktor isn’t looking at him, focusing instead on the middle distance in a way that makes panic rise in his chest.
“Vik-” it comes out a harsh rasp, his throat still struggling to work properly.
Viktor turns to him then, a rare look of utter bewilderment spread across his sharp features.
“Where are we?” Jayce asks
The other man just stares at him, not seeming to understand that the question is directed at him. Forcing down his rising panic at his partner’s lack of reaction, Jayce looks for himself.
They’re on what must be a promenade of some sort. Along one side, a row of closed shops advertise their wares with faded signs, but along the other a wrought-iron fence forms a railing against a steep drop. Through the swirling design of the fence, he can see the stark white buildings of Piltover, but he doesn’t recognize the part of the city where they’re sitting now. He pushes himself to his feet, grimacing as his broken brace fails to support his bad leg, and limps to the railing.
It is Piltover, but it’s wrong. There are no Hexgates, and he doesn’t quite recognize the layout. It takes a minute to work out what’s truly missing from the city, but when he does, he feels all his shoved-down panic bubble to the surface.
There’s no one here
There’s not a single puff of smoke or steam from any chimneys or stacks, and not a single person is visible in the streets below. There’s no one, and he realizes as he looks that there hasn’t been anyone here in a while. The white stone buildings have been partially reclaimed by moss and ivy, giving Piltover an oddly soft look. When he looks more carefully, he can see that some of the buildings have been burnt and never repaired, forming black pock marks in the greenish-white spread of the city.
He doesn’t realize he’s panicking, breath coming in stuttered gasps, until he feels the weight of a hand on his shoulder. It’s light, cautious, but it’s enough to draw him back from the sight of this not-quite-ruined Piltover. When he turns, he’s met with the sharp golden understanding of Viktor’s eyes. He almost fails to notice that the arcane kaleidoscope of hues has left his partner’s gaze because all he can think is,
He’s in there
—
Jayce is in agony. He and Viktor are climbing down a series of staircases from the high promenade where they arrived and the pain in his leg has gone from being unfortunate to being nearly unbearable. It radiates up from his badly healed calf through his knee to his hip, forcing him to twist his body awkwardly to compensate with his other leg. His shoulders hurt from trying to maintain this awkward posture and from the iron grip he has on the railing.
Viktor is walking in front at Jayce’s insistence. He had tried to convince him that it was because his limp would slow the other man down, but the look he got in response made it clear Viktor understood that Jayce still doesn’t quite trust him. Jayce is trying to ignore both the sting of the unspoken accusation and the angry justification his pain-addled brain is formulating.
Would you still trust me if I tried to kill you?
No, never mind, don’t answer that.
He’d meant every word he’d said in the starry embrace of the arcane, but those had been the words of a man ready to die, bodyless and without fear. Now, back in his body still bearing the marks of the Herald’s hands and flooded with barely-ebbing adrenaline, he can’t quite let go of his self-preservation instincts.
To distract himself from all of it, and perhaps because he wants to add the shame of being a voyeur to everything else, he concentrates on putting one foot in front of another while simultaneously trying to map what he can see of his partner’s new form from behind.
Viktor’s right leg and left arm seem to have maintained their hexcore-induced lavender hue, but neither is glowing and whatever gifts of healing the hexcore might once have offered have clearly been revoked. He isn’t limping nearly as badly as Jayce, but the familiar twist to his leg has returned, causing his bare foot to land awkwardly with each step. It’s not as bad as it was at the end, when he turned to shimmer to fix what a brace never could, but he’s leaning heavily on the railing for support and he’ll need a brace and a cane again to walk properly.
His hair is still long, as it was in the commune, although it’s lost its white underlights and returned to its natural auburn. The skin that Jayce can see between the folds of the blanket is covered in spiraling purple and white scars like a ghost of the Herald’s skin. The same pattern covers Jayce’s visible skin, arcane white latticework peaking out from his shirt cuffs. It seems that whatever brought them here has burned out the corruption of the arcane, but not without leaving its mark behind.
--
They are making their way to the lab. Neither of them consciously intended it, but Jayce realizes where they are going as they pass landmarks that are the same in their Piltover: a statue of a councilor from a century before, a fountain sponsored by a long-forgotten university alumni, the bench where he and Viktor shared lunch on the few occasions Jayce could coax him out of the lab. It feels almost like home, if he ignores the utter silence and complete lack of people. As they get closer to the lab, the familiarity vanishes. Each building they pass has a red X painted over the door. Some have boarded windows, and the sidewalks are littered with broken glass and random detritus which Viktor with his bare feet is careful to avoid.
The lab, like all the other nearby buildings, has that same angry red X painted over the door. Jayce pulls up short as Viktor, still dutifully walking in front, hesitates on the threshold.
Jayce knows that he should hesitate too. His years of safety training are screaming at him that large hastily painted symbols of danger aren’t an invitation, but his years of ignoring lab safety and his desperate desire for something, anything he recognizes overwhelm whatever danger sense he ought to summon up in situations like this. He tries the handle first, almost stumbling when he finds the door unlocked. Inside, the foyer is cool and dark and he can hear the skitter of mice running for cover at their intrusion. Jayce feels almost safe at the evidence that no one else is here. There is a thick layer of dust covering the floor and the long-abandoned reception desk, and Viktor lets out a violent sneeze as the movement of the door disturbs it.
Jayce stares at him. He doesn’t mean to, but it’s the first sound the other man has made since they’ve arrived here and Jayce can’t help it, he laughs.
It’s just a small giggle, made wheezy by his abused throat, but it grows into a true laugh as all the tension of the day seems to break itself against this one absurd moment. Viktor stares at him for just a moment before the corners of his mouth tug into an almost-involuntary smile, and then he too is laughing. Viktor’s laugh loosens something in Jayce’s chest that he didn’t know was hurting. It doesn’t erase the panic and paranoia, but for the first time in a long time he feels like he has his partner back.
Before he can think better, he surges forward and gathers him in a hug.
He freezes for just a moment after wrapping his arms around the other man, his uncertainty belatedly catching up to his desire for contact, but then he feels Viktors smaller arms wrap around his back in response and almost dies of relief as they both melt into the hug.
“Jayce-” Viktor whispers after a moment “You’re too heavy”
“Oh,” Jayce responds stupidly, pulling back and realizing that he had been leaning most of his weight into Viktor’s slight frame to take some of the pressure off his leg, “sorry.”
He’s not sure what else to say so he starts toward the elevator, pausing only to ensure that Viktor is following him. His partner gives him a strange half-smile and limps along behind him.
The elevator isn’t working, which Jayce probably should have considered given that there have been no other signs of functioning electricity. They take the stairs instead, Viktor walking ahead again, because this time Jayce truly is falling behind. He’s all but pulling himself up the stairs by the railing and his shoulders are screaming at him for the abuse. Viktor stops periodically to look back at him but never comments on his slow progress. Jayce is more grateful than he knows how to express for this small mercy.
When they finally make it to the third floor and down the long hallway to their lab, Jayce is ready to collapse. Viktor’s limp is noticeably worse after the stairs, but he seems to be doing better than Jayce, or perhaps he just has the benefit of having learned to hide his pain.
“Shall we?” Viktor asks, trying for sarcasm but just sounding tired, as he gestures to the door of their lab which is adorned with an accusing red X of its own.
Promising, Jayce thinks sourly, and tries the knob. Like the front door, it’s open. Apparently, whatever happened here was bad enough that locks weren’t deemed appropriate protection.
Jayce shoves that thought to the side for later.
The lab is a disaster. In one corner, there’s a pile of destroyed equipment, a sledgehammer thrown haphazardly on top of the pile as though whoever had done the deed wanted to leave the evidence that the destruction had been purposeful. The rest of the space is taken up by toppled desks and stools and messily arranged piles of paper. Near the still-open window, there’s a metal trashcan full of half-burnt papers.
Neither of them acknowledges the change in atmosphere, but Jayce can feel his nerves screaming and he knows Viktor well enough to see the tension he’s trying to hide. They poke through the piles of paper half-heartedly, but Jayce doesn’t recognize most of what he sees. There are some mentions of hextech, but most of the scribbled formulas seem to be chemical syntheses or references to tests of live subjects. Even Viktor, in those final days before the council explosion when he was already using the hexcore on his own body, hadn’t been this advanced in his biological research. Jayce’s stomach turns over at the thoughts of live subjects and bright red X marks on every door.
He’s interrupted from whatever spiral he might have let himself fall into by the scratching sound of Viktor using a metal flint lighter to spark the flame of a bunsen burner. Jayce watches as he makes his way to the window, shuts it, and then places another bunsen burner on the counter beside it, attaches it to the apparently-still-working gas line, and lights that one too.
“What?” Viktor asks, catching Jayce staring, “It’s getting dark.”
It’s getting dark.
He counts the days by the appearance of light through the crack above him. Always the days, because the nights feel like years. He can sense them watching during the day, but at night he can feel them. Their empty eyes press in around him, their fingers clawing at his flesh, seeking a way inside so they can spread their infection. At night he lays and feels the pulsing of his leg, already infected, already contaminated--
“Jayce,” Viktor calls softly, from the far end of the lab “come look at this”
Jayce shuts his eyes, forces his breath out in a harsh sigh, and smooths out his features by sheer force of will.
Viktor is in the lab’s supply closet where he’s just made the only discovery that has ever mattered: their counterparts in this Piltover also have a bed tucked into the supply closet in their lab. Unlike their foldaway bed, it seems their counterparts were more concerned with luxury. They’ve built a double bed into the supply closet, clearly designed to fold into the wall but left out and unmade as though the occupant was roused from sleep.
“Do you mind if we share?” Viktor asks, carefully avoiding meeting Jayce’s gaze.
“Of course --”
Jayce starts, hesitating when he realizes Viktor is asking because he knows Jayce is afraid of him.
“I mean, If you want,” he continues, somehow determined to make things worse, “If you don’t want to I can always find somewhere else--”
“Jayce,” Viktor interrupts, “It’s fine.”
“Alright,” Jayce replies, because he can’t fathom how to respond in a way that won’t make a bigger idiot of himself.
The electricity of panic hasn’t quite left his muscles yet, so Jayce busies himself by checking the lock on the door and all the windows before joining Viktor, who has already crawled into the bed and tried to make himself comfortable. He’s still wrapped in that same blue blanket, a reminder of the last day they ever spent in their lab together. Jayce doesn’t have the energy to investigate the way his chest hurts at the memory.
****
Viktor watches Jayce sleep in what little moonlight that filters into the supply closet from the lab windows, relaxing by degrees as the lines of stress in the other man’s face even out and he almost looks his age again. His eyes trace the pearlized fingerprints that sit on Jayce’s forehead like a crown and the white spiderweb scarring that peeks out from his collar and cuffs, stark against his coppery skin even in the low light.
He wonders guiltily how much of Jayce it covers, if the scars across his chest will be unremarkable to him now when compared to all his new marks. He thinks of his own body, investigated quickly while Jayce’s back was turned, and the mottled purple-white scarring that flows over his skin like water. He keeps catching glimpses of his still-purple hand out of the corner of his eye, and each time he has to remind himself that it’s his arm and not some alien thing that’s attached itself to him.
He tries very hard not to think of Jayce in the same terms, but some small part wonders if this is really the same man he knew, the man who was willing to manufacture magic and defy death itself.
Jayce’s paranoia as they made their way through the abandoned streets of not-quite-Piltover had been almost understandable. Viktor could ascribe it to the whiplash of almost dying in the arcane and then waking up alive in an empty city where they didn’t belong. But he’d seen the utter terror in Jayce’s face when Viktor pointed out that it was getting dark. He’d watched as Jayce had checked the lock on the lab door no less than five times before shoving a stool under the handle for good measure before he would finally get into bed. At that point, he hadn’t even bothered fighting Jayce on the man’s insistence on sleeping fully clothed except for his coat and his boots.
The Jayce he had known had always been cautious, calculating even, despite how hard he’d worked to portray himself as the earnest Man of Progress that the investors and the public desired, but he’d never been afraid. Not like this. The part of Viktor that’s still the herald wants to reach inside the man beside him and pull out whatever is hurting him by force. The part of him that was forged in Zaun wants to find whoever did this to Jayce and break their bones one by one. The part of him that has already worked out that it must have been him wonders half-heartedly if the roof access door will be unlocked too.
—
Jayce wakes up screaming beside him at some point in the middle of the night. Viktor had finally managed some semblance of half-sleep and the jarring sensation of being pulled back into consciousness startles him badly. Jayce is already fully awake by the time Viktor realizes what’s happening, apologizing profusely and telling Viktor it’s nothing, to go back to bed. He curls up facing away from Viktor, very clearly not relaxing by the tension in his shoulders and the shuddering breaths that are gently shaking the mattress.
Viktor knows he’s not going to get back any semblance of sleep with Jayce lying there terrified beside him. He wants to reach out, but hesitates, uncertain of which of their old boundaries still stand and what he has a right to offer. When he’d touched Jayce earlier it had been on instinct, like flexing a muscle he had forgotten he had, but this felt different somehow, more intimate, beyond the bounds of their established dynamic.
But that dynamic was established two lives and three bodies ago, and Jayce is suffering now, because of him.
He reaches out, placing his palm between Jayce’s stiff shoulder blades. The other man flinches, but when he doesn’t pull away Viktor begins to rub small circles over the taught muscles of his back. Jayce relaxes slowly, letting out tiny sighs as Viktor gently massages his shoulder muscles, forming a repeated pattern as he moves from one shoulder to another, carefully avoiding the ridge of scar tissue in the middle of Jayce’s back. He’s only using what he’s started considering his good arm because the thought of touching Jayce with the other right now fills him with disgust. When he’s finally certain Jayce’s breathing has evened out for good, he pulls back and turns away, ignoring whatever sad part of his brain feels the lack of contact as a loss.
--
Viktor wakes up with Jayce wrapped around him, radiating heat like a furnace. He feels warmer and safer than he’s felt in a very long time, and briefely contemplates allowing himself to stay like this, just for a little while. Jayce looks so peaceful curled on his chest it’s like he’s a different person from the man who woke screaming last night.
His joints hurt though, and Jayce’s weight is twisting his body in a way that’s making it worse. Jayce insisted on sleeping on the outside of the bed, so even if he had the mobility to wiggle his way out of the other man’s embrace, Viktor would have to climb over him to get up. He has no choice. He nudges Jayce’s head gently with his shoulder, regretting it almost instantly when he startles awake with a look of pure terror.
“Shit, sorry V,” Jayce rasps, when reality erases whatever horror he’d occupied for that moment after waking.
He awkwardly extricates himself from Viktor’s body and swings slowly out of bed. Viktor doesn’t miss how fast his hand shoots out for balance as he tries to put weight on his bad leg. It looks like it’s going to be one of those days for both of them.
They spend the morning pillaging the supply closet and searching the lab. Most of the equipment is beyond useless but there are a few ancient cookies in one desk drawer and Viktor finds a duffel bag in the storage closet with a set of clothes and shoes in his size. The brown pinstriped shirt and tan slacks carry a strange bitter nostalgia. It feels almost like too human an outfit as he sheds the blue blanket that he’s worn for over a year.
He tries not to feel like he’s stealing his other self’s identity as he slides his leg into pants for the first time in a very long time. He doesn’t let himself think about the twist of his leg, or the fact that both he and Jayce are using every available surface as a crutch. He also very carefully doesn’t let himself think about how quickly Jayce shoves the older-than-stale cookies into his mouth and swallows them dry, eating like a man who’s being chased. He knows if he lets the weirdness of this in, if he truly thinks about it, he will lose his shit.
—
He loses his shit anyway.
“Come on Vik, we need water!” Jayce shouts, perhaps thinking that volume will step in for logic
“Which we can almost certainly find somewhere in this building!” Viktor shoots back
They’re both dehydrated, running on nothing but stale cookies, but neither is giving in. They’ve made all the discoveries possible in what they are considering their lab and now Jayce wants to go traipsing through Piltover looking for food and water, which Viktor has helpfully pointed out to be a stupid idea because they’re both barely walking and surely in a building full of laboratories there will be at least one container of one of the most common chemical substances on earth.
“Yeah, but we won’t get the lay of the land from here, what if there’s someone out there-“
“The lay of the-!“ Viktor sighs violently and lowers his voice to a normal volume “Jayce, you can barely walk”
“Vik I’m fine, I—“ Jayce begins, but can’t seem to find the right way to go on when Viktor levels the full force of his glare at him
He can’t believe he’s having this conversation. No, he can believe it, because whatever else Jayce is, he’s still a Pilt who sees every limitation as something to be forced through.
“You are not fine. You are holding yourself up with that desk and you won’t make it down three flight of stairs much less across the city to wherever you think you’re going to get the lay of the land, and even if you do, any water you find is going to be contaminated and you’ll have to bring it back --”
“Alright.” Jayce interrupts him
“Alright?”
“Alright,” Jayce scrubs his hands down his face and sighs “you’re right, my leg is shot, yours is probably worse, and I don’t feel like fighting, so alright.”
Viktor feels somehow like he’s lost the fight despite Jayce’s acquiescence, but he can’t work out how. As they start their search of the other labs, he can’t shake the feeling that all his old patterns with Jayce are misaligned somehow, like they’re two cogs with broken teeth trying and failing to mesh.
—
They search systematically, using a piece of broken glass to scrape a line on the doors of any labs where they’ve deemed their search complete. Most of the empty labs are much the same as the one where they spent the night; broken equipment and toppled furniture and not much else. Viktor scans the notes and equations on the scattered piles of paper and finds more of the same biological hextech research. He can tell Jayce is reading over his shoulder, but neither of them brings it up. Maybe he too feels that whatever sins their other selves may have committed are no more or less grave than their own.
In all timelines Viktor thinks bitterly.
Jayce finds his other self’s cane in the fourth laboratory they search, half buried beneath a pile of papers that both of them pointedly do not read. A part of Viktor wants to refuse it. It feels like an admission, that he needs it, and that he and this other Viktor are both guilty of the kind of hubris that leads to abandoned canes and empty cities.
Jayce gives him the same soft-eyes look he used when he caught Viktor standing at the lip of the drainpipe.
He takes the cane.
—
Jayce is antsy. They’ve searched all the labs on the third floor and still haven’t found water, and Viktor can feel the first bloom of panic growing in the other man from halfway across the room. He’s still using any available surface as a walking aid, but he’s started running his off hand through his hair and over his face in a way that makes Viktor suspect he wants to claw his skin off.
“Jayce,” he begins cautiously, “do you think we should split up?”
He looks at Viktor like he’s proposing Jayce face a firing squad.
“Why?” Jayce asks, tone clearly forced into something neutral against his will
Because you’re panicking and we’re running out of time before it gets dark
“ We can cover more ground if we separate,” he answers. “Let's go up a floor and we’ll both take different rooms”
Jayce looks at him like Viktor’s the one giving the orders to the firing squad.
“Alright,” he answers, turning away so his face isn’t visible.
Viktor is beginning to hate that word.
—
They split up at the top of the stairs, each taking a door on either side of the hall.
The silence is oppressive without Jayce by his side, so he fills it with the sounds of his cane tapping, of rustling papers and rifled-through lab supplies and tried very hard to think about anything other than the man in the lab across the hall.
Viktor doesn’t want to fight with Jayce, he just wants something other than the same limp ragdoll of an exchange every time they have to make a decision in this bizarre place. When they used to get into screaming matches over materials or manufacturing processes or even lab safety, Jayce had always at least been participating . This new, eternally agreeable Jayce feels like the man who was always busy at investor meetings or galas, like the man who was only ever half-present even when he was physically in the room, and Viktor is angry at the familiar sense of loss.
He’s angry at himself too for the selfishness of it all. He’s seen Jayce’s memories; remembers being brought back to himself by crawling inside his mind like a cancer and watching the other man’s suffering like some sick voyeur. He understands that Jayce must see this place as a sort of echo of the other Piltover, with its empty abandoned buildings and evidence of their guilt scattered across every available surface. He can list a thousand reasons why he should be gentle and patient and let Jayce do whatever he needs to survive this, but the part of Viktor that’s just barely surviving this too wants to shake the man and scream at him to give his partner back.
Viktor trips.
He curses, reaching to recover his cane, and then realization hits. He’s tripped over a pair of legs, although he almost didn’t recognize them as limbs at all. They’re a deep purple color, much darker than Viktor’s still-contaminated flesh, and covered in a kaleidoscopic shimmering web of arcane scarring. His eyes follow the legs up to their logical conclusion: a torso, curled in on itself and half hidden under the desk next to him. A small blue glow emanates from a Hexgem at the center of its chest.
A thousand minds spread out around him, a galaxy of selves all too full of suffering. He can take their suffering, cure it. He can take all the choices they’re drowning in and reduce them to nothing. He can take away their pain. He can heal them and heal himself and heal the world. He feels them flow through him, their sadness and suffering washed clean. Their selves dissipated to only the parts they need to be free. No more suffering. No more pain.
Viktor is screaming
The part of him that is always himself, the tiny grain of sand in the vast suffocating oyster of the arcane is screaming and screaming. The part of him that knows the pain is necessary, that the violence and messiness are as human as they are ugly and losing them means losing something so much more important than one life. He's screaming and he can’t stop, but he can’t stop himself either. It’s his hands, healing and hurting and slowly ripping the humanity out of everything around him. It's him, his darkest impulses for control like a black hole pulling the world into his orbit. It’s him, the body in the council room, the broken meat of a man who should never have lived that long. It’s him, a God, standing behind the only person who has ever mattered and preparing to turn his soul to ash.
Viktor feels the weight of someone crash down beside him, of strong arms wrapping around him. He feels himself pulled back against someone’s chest, hears soft pleading whispers in his ear.
Jayce, his brain registers, because who else could it be. He doesn’t fight as Jayce holds him, running his hands along Viktor’s arms in slow circles.
“It’s ok,” Jayce whispers in his ear. “It’s alright,” over and over again.
It’s not his mind whispers back every time
He lets Jayce hold him until his jackrabbiting heart settles into something close to the right speed.
“Would it help if I told you I found water?” Jayce asks, after what feels like an embarrassing eternity when Viktor’s breathing has mostly evened out.
“It might,” Viktor forces out
His voice feels rough and far away, another alien thing. If Jayce notices he doesn’t comment, instead extricating himself from behind Viktor and turning to offer his hand to help him up. Neither of them acknowledges the body. Viktor lets Jayce pick up his cane for him, lets him rest his hand against the small of his back as they walk, and tries very hard to feel worthy of such kindness.
—
Jayce doesn’t comment on Viktor’s silence as he boils the water for safety and serves it in chipped mugs. He’s found oats somewhere as well and hands Viktor a beaker half-filled with plain oatmeal, cooked over a propane burner he’s pilfered from the lab across the hall. After two days with only a handful of cookies to eat, it feels like a feast.
Viktor lets Jayce talk, filling the silence with an explanation of how he found the water and oats in a lab where their other selves were experimenting on live pigs. He doesn’t notice when the other man’s explanation trails off into silence until Jayce is suddenly beside him, his broad form casting Viktor into shadow.
“Come on,” Jayce says, “let’s go to bed”
It would be suggestive in another context. Instead, it feels like permission.
Jayce helps him into bed, setting him down like something fragile and gently easing his shoes and socks off. Viktor is aware he should be embarrassed but he can’t manage to care. He’s grateful when Jayce doesn’t suggest taking any more of his clothes off.
They lie in bed together, Viktor trapped by Jayce’s insistence on sleeping on the outside again. He faces the shelves of supplies, carefully labeled in his own hand, and tries not to let his body shudder as he feels himself collapse into sobs. He feels Jayce’s tentative fingers against his back and fails to muster enough self-recrimination to deny himself the comfort of the soothing patterns the other man rubs into his back.
He almost cries out at the loss when, after a few minutes, Jayce pulls his hand back but is instantly flooded with guilty relief when he feels Jayce’s warm body slot against his back.
“Is this ok?” Jayce asks.
Viktor can only nod.
He shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t let Jayce comfort him like this, after everything he’s done, but he doesn’t have the energy to argue so he lets himself be engulfed in the warmth of Jayce’s embrace.
--
Jayce wakes up screaming, clawing at Viktor’s chest. They’ve managed to stay locked together but have shifted in the night so that Jayce is once again curled around him, ensuring that they’re both startled awake by whatever prowls his dreams.
Viktor suspects it’s him.
He tries to comfort Jayce, but the larger man turns away with a whispered apology and lies so still that Viktor wonders if he’ll strain a muscle trying to hide his terror. Viktor doesn’t reach out. He lies in the dark for a long time, letting guilt seep into him like the grey used to seep through the streets in Zaun. Or maybe it’s him who’s the grey, seeping into everything he ever cared about and corrupting it. He’s too tired and stretched thin to get the metaphors straight.
Eventually, he makes a decision. Jayce’s breathing has slowed down enough that Viktor is reasonably certain he’s asleep. Carefully, he works his way out of the bed and over Jayce. He puts his shoes and socks back on in the moonlight streaming through the windows, grabs his cane, takes one flight of stairs, and only stops to catch his breath when he’s standing over the body under the desk. The faint glow of the Hexgem washes everything in blue, reminding him of that first night when he and Jayce had cracked Hextech and found themselves floating in Heimerdinger’s office.
He crouches down, hooking his cane over the desk, and crawls close enough that his head and shoulders are under the desk with the body. The panic from before still grips his chest, but he shoves it down. He can do this, for Jayce. He reaches forward, gently grasps the hexgem, and pulls it slowly from the desiccated chest.
He had worried that perhaps the gem was drawing power in some way from the body, but the glow never stutters as he separates it from its host. Some part of him is insisting that he should care who this person is, that he should consider that it might even be his counterpart, or Jayce’s. These thoughts are shoved into the ever-growing pile of things that can’t matter if he wants to succeed.
—
By the time Jayce wakes up Viktor has already rigged a rudimentary apparatus out of their broken equipment to hold the gem and started working out the equations they’ll need on a cracked chalkboard.
“Vik,” Jayce asks cautiously, “what is all this”
“If we want to get back to our Piltover, we’re going to need to generate an anomaly of a similar scope to the one that sent you to the alternate Piltover where you met the other me,” Viktor explains, as though it’s not obvious.
“And you want that?” Jayce asks, “to go back?”
“Of course,” he lies, refusing to turn from the blackboard.
“Alright,” Jayce replies.
Viktor refuses to flinch at the word.
They will return to Piltover, Jayce will be with people who love him, who can care for him. All the things that haunt him will be healed among his friends and family and all the people who can give him what he needs. Viktor doesn’t care what happens to him after that. He’d die a thousand times if it meant Jayce was safe.
He focuses on the blackboard, carefully writing out another rune sequence, and doesn’t let himself think about anything but the slide of chalk and the sensation of having a purpose again.