Chapter Text
It all seemed to happen at once. He supposed when you were making your final attempt at bringing down the evil dictator that controlled the city, it would.
Jayce heaved a sigh of relief as Caitlyn’s bullet shred through Urgot’s neck. The haunting, red eyes flickered as the weight of his grey metal torso slumped down with a screech and a thud, not even its numerous legs having the strength to hold its weight anymore. He fell to the backdrop of the clouded, ashen sky, and the tarmac road that would take them to where its Creator resided; high up on the hill next to the city, to best view the world from. The last thing on the path.
It was done. Finally, the thorn in their side, the resistance specialist, had been taken out. They were one step closer to their goal.
One step closer to him.
Sarah Fortune stepped up to the center. Her hair, red as fire, billowed out behind her, the beret she wore on her head doing little to keep it tame. She raised one hand in the air to signal them to wait, a pistol still in each hand instead of secured in their holsters.
The sigh of relief became a bated breath as they waited for her all clear. Caitlyn got the monster, yet their commander was still tense. Was the flickering light not a sign he was shutting down?
Before Jayce could register what was happening, Fortune had both guns poised. Not a second later Urgot’s stomach was open and a drill had fired out to claim her. It connected with her stomach, piercing deep with a bloody squelch, before the chains began to turn, dragging her towards the wheels grinding. Certain, brutal death.
Yet, Commander Fortune didn’t struggle. She leaped up with a fierce snarl instead of digging her feet in, allowing the pull to gain momentum as it brought her closer. As soon as she was in range she started to fire.
It couldn’t have lasted longer than six seconds between her feet leaving the floor and the final bullet in the metal coffin. As she reached touching distance one of her shots caused a shoulder cannon to explode. The noise was jarring. The light was blinding. The cloud that erupted from the explosion covered the commander and their enemy completely.
It took another six seconds for the smoke to clear.
Urgot had no flickering light. There were dents all over his outer shelf from the barrage of bullets from the Commander’s guns. One half of his face had a crater in it from his canon being taken out.
Up against him, half embedded in his stomach, lay Commander Fortune’s partially mangled body. Eye open, jaw slack. No movement. The drill that had pierced her stomach and through to the other side, ensuring her torso had fallen victim to the grinder that it dragged her towards.
He’d seen victims of Urgot before. Chewed up remains, some unrecognizable. But their unstoppable commander, with half a mission still left?
“Sarah…?”
They watched Katarina approach with a timidness that Jayce had never seen from her before. She dropped to her knees in front of Fortune, hanging out of Urgot’s stomach as if put on display. She dropped her knives to the floor and reached out.
“Sarah, please…”
Jayce shut his eyes for a moment to compose himself as Katarina shook the lifeless body of her closest friend.
“Sarah…!”
Caitlyn’s shoulder bumped against his own. He looked down to see her fixed on the scene ahead of them with a wetness round the edges. They stood in somber silence as Katarina’s sobs for attention fell on deaf ears.
It was a terror inducing roar that broke through the atmosphere. It sent a shiver down Jayce’s spine, forcing his body into fight or flight mode. His grip on his hammer tightened as he raised it off the floor.
“We have to keep moving,” Caitlyn said. Her voice was exceptionally steady given the tears forming in her eyes. “I won’t abandon the Commander’s plan.”
She was right. They were so close. He was beyond the building just ahead, but…
“That was Cho’Gath,” Jayce said. “I’d recognize that sound anywhere, yet…?”
Illaoi had a firm scowl on her face as she confirmed his suspicions; “it was different somehow. It is deeper.”
“Caitlyn is right. We cannot get sidetracked.”
Singed’s voice took Jayce by surprise. It always did. He would sneak up behind you, silent until he spoke. One unnatural, synthetic red eye that always left Jayce unsettled.
“Kat,” Caitlyn tried to speak softly to the woman, now silently hunched over in front of the bloody mural with her long, scarlet hair hiding her face from view. “We need to move before-?!”
But before had already passed. They turned as the sound of pressured steam released over the ledge to their left that looked across the rusted city. Jayce couldn’t believe his eyes as the arms of the beast came level with his feet.
“He’s…”
“He’s grown,” Caitlyn whispered. Jayce wasn’t sure he’d heard her sound so scared. Not since she was a child.
She was right. It towered over the buildings around it, double their size, and the red vents where its eyes would be locked on them. The top of its bulky, metal frame must have come in line with the side of the cliff where their battle had taken place - if not a few inches higher. He knew that Cho’Gath was growing, getting bigger, but to have grown to such a size… what had they been feeding it? How much had they been feeding it?
Jayce raised his hammer up, twisting it to long range mode, and slid his foot out to position himself in front of Caitlyn.
It was unnecessary. As he moved, Katarina rushed passed them in a flurry, an agonizing cry of fury tearing its way out her throat as she threw herself off the ledge and towards the maw of the beast.
The sense of stillness disappeared as quickly as it came. Yorick’s feet slammed into the ground as he ran after their frenzied comrade. Illaoi acted quickly, heaving a breath as she exerted what control she could over Cho’Gath.
“Go!” she barked, brow furrowed in concentration. “We will help Katarina!”
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Jayce was there to help Fortune face off against the Creator, not…
“Here,” Singed approached him, pressing a device to his chest. “I had developed this device to help stop Viktor. The Commander felt it was too risky, however…”
The commander was dead.
“…You are the only one who could get close enough to him. You must attach it to his person, and press this button. I will remain here. We cannot let Cho’Gath level the city.”
“On my own?” he choked out. “I can’t-?!”
“You must. This is bigger than your history with him, Jayce. Lure him into a sense of security. Get close enough.”
His history. Their history. The hours they had spent in each others company. The time and effort and affection that had been put into that history. The parts of his past that he tried not to think about, yet never left his mind. The joy that had melted with the increase in arguments. His desperate attempt to help Viktor save his body only to…
But the Creator wasn’t Viktor. That Viktor had left him long ago. He never saved the man he loved. He only persevered the body to make way for the man he hated.
Jayce took hold of the device, grit his teeth, and nodded.
“I’ll go with you,” Caitlyn said as Singed took a step back. “I’ll find a good vantage point to watch from. I’m not letting you go it alone.”
Jayce met her eyes; fierce and determined. Still wet around the edges. Still a little too wide from the fear. He grasped hold of her shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
——
The walk up felt too long and not long enough all at once. Part of him almost wished that Urgot had not been the final creature between them and Viktor, so that he would have more time to delay the inevitable. The device from Singed weighed heavy in his palm as he turned it over and observed it; it was unlike anything he’d seen before. The usual steely metal that made up their technology was missing, replaced instead with something sleek and black. Gone were the sharp edges of Singed’s usual inventions. Instead, this… thing was all curves. There was one edge, shaped in such a way that Jayce felt it may have been a single piece of a bigger item.
It wasn’t completely devoid of Singed’s fingerprints. On the edge he expected it to slot in to something else, the something else was replaced by a gunmetal cube, two red wires exposed. A late addition to something that looked so foreign.
He wasn’t sure what it would even do. He didn’t question it when Singed had handed it over, but on closer inspection, he could see why Commander Fortune had been so dubious.
“What do you plan to say to him?”
Jayce grimaced at the question. Refused to meet Caitlyn’s eyes, despite feeling her watching him Continued to observe the strange device to distract himself. “I… don’t really know. I never planned on speaking to him. Commander Fortune was supposed to do this. Not me.”
“I know it isn’t what we expected. You can’t go in there with nothing.”
He heaved a sign. “I know, I just don’t know what to say. Where to start. I haven’t spoken to him since he walked out on me when I refused to help him build Kog’Maw. Not that he needed my help.”
“I don’t think anyone blames you for avoiding him, Jayce.”
“Maybe they should.”
The words hung heavy in the air between them. It was a conversation she had tried to have with him before. Before he joined the resistance. She would visit him at his lab and attempt to softly coax his emotions out of him as he locked himself away from the world. Ashamed he hadn’t the foresight to stop the man before he became the monster.
Caitlyn drew to a stop. He finally found it in himself to turn and face her. To meet her icy blue eyes that softened on him.
“If you could pick just one thing you wished you’d told him, what would it be?”
Three words sprung to mind, but filled him with shame. With the sting of rejection. The three words he had said to try and convince him to stay in the first place. The last thing he had said before Viktor walked out the door without ever returning them.
“Maybe you should start with that.”
He frowned at her. As if it would hide his embarrassment. “I never said anything.”
She rolled her eyes. “You didn’t have to. It’s written on your face.”
His oldest friend. His little sister. She knew him too well. She cared too much.
“Cait.”
She looked up with those same, too soft eyes.
“Promise me you’ll take the shot, if you get it.”
“Of course!-”
“No,” he pressed closer. “No matter how my talk with him goes. Even if you think I’m going to win something. Promise me.”
She pulled her lips into a thin line. She nodded.
They finished their walk in silence.
——
It wasn’t how she imagined this scene playing out. Usually when she was taking stock of the battlefield, she was looking at more than just two people. It felt empty. Hollow. Out of all the people who deserved to make it this far, she wasn’t sure she was one of them. Yet, here she was.
Jayce always provided an excellent distraction for Caitlyn. It was hard not to notice him when he walked into a room. Even if time had dulled his enthusiasm, it was hard to subdue the charm that rolled off him when he greeted you. He was always louder than she was, and it worked well for them. Gave her a chance to survey their surroundings. A chance to find a vantage point to best conduct her work from, while he captured the attention of whoever he needed, secure in the knowledge that she was close by.
Viktor’s lab had been a large building filled with a whole lot of nothing. She supposed when you replaced all your human needs with machine, a lot of worldly comforts became obsolete. Where she would have art and decoration, he had counters with monitors hooked up to mechanical hearts.
It was in one of the large, open rooms they found him. Enough space for a dock that held a half finished creature. The skeleton of a Kog’Maw. Another one of the wretched things. Such a large room promised her a raised balcony; a place where you could work on a higher place of the creature and a place where she could find a position in the shadows.
As she raised her rifle and braced it against her shoulder she found her grip tighter than normal. This plan filled her with nerves. Commander Fortune always insisted on sticking together. It felt so wrong to be separated. It really just showed how much they all relied on her that as soon as she was gone they fell apart.
She positioned Viktor in the cross-hairs of her scope and attempted to get a better feel for his state. Not that it was easy with such a stationary, robotic face. She refused to give him an inch when it came to Jayce, yet her view wasn’t clear. Even if it had been there was uncertainty causing her to hesitate. There was no guarantee that a clean shot would kill him. She didn’t know how much of him was left as human. He was different to when she first met him, in the lab with Jayce as she dropped off food for them to share, skin pale and eyes glassy. Now, there was no sign of skin for the wires and metal plates, and where there once were eyes now sat red voids matching those of his creations.
She didn’t know what he’d done to himself to ensure his survival. She had never known him well; he had been a man on the periphery of her life. Jayce’s partner, nothing beyond an acquaintance to her, but she knew him well enough to know he was smart. To know that he knew she was there, and he knew she was an ace shot.
Jayce moved into her view as he took steps forward. He moved closer to Viktor than she would have liked. He was speaking as he did so, but Viktor didn’t even flinch. She saw the device Singed had given Jayce still clasped in his left hand, waiting to be used. Get close to him, Singed had said. Activate it and place it against him.
Singed clearly didn’t believe they could just kill Viktor. But Sarah…
The Commander had. Caitlyn trusted her implicitly, and if she hadn’t approved of whatever experimental device Singed had, then neither did Caitlyn. She wasn’t comfortable with the idea of Jayce having to wield it. She wasn’t comfortable with Jayce being that close to Viktor.
Jayce finally came to a stop. Barely a few feet away from Viktor. There was pain etched into his face as he finally stopped speaking, eyes darting about Viktor’s face looking for something there that he just couldn’t find. Caitlyn held her breath as she waited for it to come. An answer that he deserved. A response that he deserved. She wished more than anything that in this moment, he would be given in.
She had wished for it all those years ago, visiting Jayce in his old lab as he continued to waste away, barely surviving after Viktor had left him, that he would be given some kind of sign. That the universe would bless him with the answer he needed to keep going. That she could do something to sooth the open wound ripped into his heart.
‘I still…’
She shut her eyes tight for the words that followed. The three words he wouldn’t admit to her. The words she knew he was keeping in. The words that Viktor didn’t deserve.
When she opened her eyes again, Viktor started to move.
He walked slowly. Deliberately. Closing the gap and coming fully into Caitlyn’s view. She had hoped Jayce would find what he was looking for, but the open arms that Viktor moved with were not a gesture of peace. As he moved, so did the arm on his back, starting to spin as it hooked over his shoulder and targeted on to Jayce.
Jayce activated the device in his hand. Reached out to press it against Viktor, who snatched his wrist as he leaned in. The arm continued to spin and picked up speed, and the device in Jayce’s hand began to flicker and warp unnaturally as it released sparks into the air. Viktor didn’t have lips to read. Caitlyn didn’t know if he responded to Jayce.
She didn’t care if he had. As soon as the panic started to spread on Jayce’s face, she pulled the trigger. She wasn’t going to wait for the laser to activate. She wasn’t going to wait for Singed’s strange, increasingly unusual device to do whatever the fuck it was supposed to do. She refused to let Jayce fall.
The sound of the bullet piercing metal rang through the air. The arm spinning faltered. Her vision of the scene became obscured as the device let out a deep, swirling field that encompassed the area her scope was covering with sparks continuing to flicker dangerously.
She lowered her rifle to look at the scene from the distance, fear’s grip clutching round her heart as she waited for something to happen.
By the time her gun was lowered the field had cleared, taking Jayce with it.