Archive of Our Own ^beta

With that thought in his mind, he became aware of a physical sensation, aware for the first time in what felt like countless centuries of his own body. A terrible cold had hold of every fibre of his muscles, clenching them tight against his will. He tried to move but to his shock his hands were bound.

He tried desperately not to move too much, not to open his eyes for fear of someone seeing. He needed to keep calm, assess the situation.

He waited for what was likely minutes, if that, but it felt like hours regardless. 

Not a sound. Nothing bar the whistle of a biting breeze that forced it's way deep into whistling cracks.

He took deep breaths in an attempt to find anything remotely familiar in the scent of the place. The smell was one of damp, harsh, soil and snow. It wasn't enough, identifying the smell didn't tell him anything. He allowed the bare minimum of a parting between his eyelids, letting slivers of vision through. Once he was sure no-one was there he allowed for more. But still not full, and certainly no movement.

A cave.

He'd guessed it, but to see it and confirm without a doubt that that was where he was was bewildering.

How alien it was to him now, he'd lived in a city for the majority of his life. Too preoccupied in progress and politics to find the time for nature. What's more was that this wasn't some undercity cave, it was missing the typical hallmarks of scrap metal, bones, and filthy shimmer run-off. This was just an ordinary cave... There was no way this was anywhere remotely near Piltover.

Where am I?

He tried again to separate his hands, not too hard, just enough to try to gain movement in his arms, it was futile. The binding didn't seem terribly tight, but he dared not use the kind of large  movements it might take to lose them.

He resorted to continuing his assessment of his situation but looking down left him even more confused as all of his senses finally caught up to him.

He was buried in something, it was hard to see for the dim light, night was descending quickly.

But he though he recognised the smell, pine? And evergreen for sure. But was he really buried in a pile of branches? They were soft, cypress perhaps. 

Why did non of this make any sense. Who had him held hostage? Why here?

The last thing he remember was holding Viktor close, putting their foreheads together and desperately trying his best to remain stead fast, with all of the energy and power of the souls trying to force them apart.

He was expecting death. So what the hell was this?

He realised yet more perplexing that his skin felt sore and scratched. He'd been stripped of his belongings. His bare skin being scratched by the various twigs.

Movement caught his attention, he became as still as he could manage, leaving that sliver of vision he had obtained. It was difficult to see as the dark grew deeper and deeper.

The figure that had appeared at the cave entrance stumbled in.

A knife.

In the figures silhouette he caught sight of the sharp object held in the its hand.

He could feel his own heartbeat rocking his ribcage, he was defenceless and he'd never felt more like it in his entire life.

Whoever it was stumbled deeper into the cave, which as caves go, was sizable, and surprisingly level, like a large stone igloo, it's domed ceiling must have been largely sheltered from the breeze as it was littered with stalactites. 

The sloped floor was not so lucky, the breeze had forced the minerals to form smooth larva like waves instead.

Jayce held his breath as the figured clumsily made it's way into the centre, where it promptly tripped and collapsed to its knees. Jayce's eyes were beginning to adjust, but still it was nearly impossible to make out much more than shapes against the pale rock of the cave.

The person took a moment, cradling itself it seemed, occasionally unfurling and rubbing it's hands together before repeating the process.

While Jayce watched, the figure seemed to shrink, its form slowly sliding to the ground. It's movements getting more and more sluggish. He watched as it grabbed at something that glinted briefly in the dim light of the low sun set. He could hear the tearing of fabric.

The person was nearly fully laid down now.

Without warning, a flash of light and a sharp clacking sound. Jayce blinked in surprise, but quickly regained his composure. The figure struck what he had thought was a dagger with the metallic object again, and this time Jayce saw the sparks fly. With every flash of light he was able to take in more and more of his surroundings. In the middle of the "room" was a pile of sticks and tinder, maybe four metres from where Jayce was.

Another flash, a slim waist. Another, a leg, caged in metal. Another, a metal and leather brace encasing his torso, which was visible as he had seemingly lost his shirt.

Viktor.

Panic was settling in, it was taking all of his concentration to steady his breathing. He hoped the breeze and the whistling of the wind through the cave would mask the sound. But he was certain it must have sounded like just another drum in a Piltovan parade.

Loud and unavoidable.

He's human. Is he? How? Why am I tied up. Was I wrong? Was his 'realisation' a ploy too? Was I just tricked into giving in to his revolution.

Fear and adrenaline gave way to anger, tears flooded his vision making it impossible to see. How had he been so naïve? He cursed his blind desire to have his partner back, how quick he was to be manipulated.

Minutes passed with the slow clacking sound getting slower and slower. Eventually he caught movement from his downcast teary eyes.

I can't let him see I'm awake. The moment he leaves I have to make a break for it. My legs aren't tied at least.

Viktor dragged himself over to Jayce, his legs limply following behind him. He was too close now, still impossible to see, but Jayce could hear him. Feel his presence almost, more like the absence of a portion of the empty space around him.

He was close enough now that Jayce could make out skin better, the man's arms held no resemblance to the creature his friend had become. His pale fingers reaching out towards Jayce.

His heart near stopped, those familiar finger tips the key to his control. Much closer and Jayce was going to have to act. Give up his fly-on-the-wall act.

"Jayce-" it was said so softly but was heavy with the weight of exhaustion. He'd heard it said that way before -years ago it seemed- by Viktor's bedside as the man awoke from his incident. Jayce grit his teeth, determined not to let on that he was conscious now.

" I-I... You need to wake up Jayce, I can't start it..." the energy had near completely dissipated as the sentence trailed off.

The man dragged himself away once more, laying again with his back to Jayce. 

Ages passed, Jayce was desperately trying to decide what his next cause of action could be. He could make a run for it, but in this weather, with his clothes in bundles next to Viktor, he didn't stand a chance.

Night was deep by the time the frail man achieved a tiny steady glow.

He kept his hand close to the flame, shielding it from the breeze as it grew. Soon enough a steady flame began, Viktor shoulders slumped.

And quietly he murmured to himself with the slightest hint of relief.

"We did it, Jayce..." his familiar accent ladened onto every word... Especially the name. 

Jayce couldn't think, he was so wrapped up in his own contradicting theories that he was struggling to keep a  straight narrative.

Is this his Viktor? The one from his timeline? Was Jayce possessing a different Jayce, who had also tried to stop Viktor from world annihilation? Had those version of him Failed too? Was that why his hands were bound? Because he was the enemy?

Then why did Viktor want him to wake up? And what did he mean: "we" did what?

He looked over, not caring anymore whether Viktor noticed his eyes were open as he glanced viciously in the man's direction. Last he saw, Viktor's back had been to him anyway. 

His heart skipped a beat, his anger melted away like snow on hot coals, replaced instead with shock. 

"Viktor!" he yelled as he burst out of the odd pile and managed to wrestle his hands free of their binds. He dived to the man's side yanking the unconscious man's arm out of the fire in one jarring motion. 

Viktor's eyes flickered open in surprise, but quickly scrunched shut again with a hiss of pain as his reddened fingers splayed out in a claw like display of the pain that no doubt shot through them.

"Agh-" Viktor gasped as he pushed back from the fire clutching at his left wrist.

"What were you thinking?!" Jayce demanded.

Looking around for anything they might be able to wrap his hand in. The damage wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, but it was enough that the top layer of skin of his left fingers would be sensitive for a fair while, Jayce had had many a burn working in the forge. He was no stranger to these.

That's when he saw it, the discarded "binding" wasn't a binding at all, it was a shirt. Viktor to be precise... He looked outside at the knee deep snow, a trail nearly as deep  lead all the way to the entrance for as far as he could see, across the visible fields. His lips parted in shock as he reassessed the situation one final time.

The shirt wasn't a binding, it was a wrap, to keep his hands warm. The nest of evergreen was just that; a nest to keep him warm, piled onto what looked like a makeshift sled, with a jutting out, more flexible, branch tip possibly used as a rope to drag said sled. His own clothes where bunched up near the fire, ready to be laid out and dried. Currently they were soaking and partially frozen.

And in his arms lay a frail man, a fraction of his own size, bare chested and frozen to the touch. His lips tinged blue. His hands a chalky white.

No wonder he hadn't felt a thing as the flames had licked at his limp hand.

Flashbacks to his mother's hands that night in the tundra had him snatching up both of Viktor's and pressing them against the no doubt warmer skin of his own bare chest.

Viktor's body curled away from the pain of it.

Jayce paused in renewed shock, Viktor's neck and traps where torn to shreds.

"Viktor..." He said breathlessly "What is this?"

No reply came, he glanced down in time to see the Man's pupils roll back up behind his eye lids as he slumped into Jayce's lap.

Exhausted. Jayce mused.

In one fluid motion Jayce had the man draped in his arms, the vast majority of the weight seemed to be in the various metal braces that seemed to hold him together. Jayce felt sick as he laid Viktor on the make shift nest, grabbing the "rope" of the sled, he pulled it closer to the fire. 

Once he had situated Viktor close enough his vision starts swimming, he made his way to the entrance and looking across at the path he'd spotted before, it's beginning far to far away to make out, He steadied himself on the cave entrance, promptly throwing everything he had up. 

He leant his full weight on to the solid rock wall as he choaked and gaged till there was nothing left.

One he was sure he was done he, perhaps ill-advisedly, grabbed handfuls of snow to wash his mouth out. His teeth stung with the cold. Eventually he came back to Viktor's side, laying out the clothes on the side of the sled closes to the fire. 

Jayce looked at the scraped and tore up bruising along the man's shoulders. 

"Why didn't I wake up? How did you do it at all?" it seemed obvious to him that the bruising was a result of someone who could barely stand up on his own... Drawing a sled of useless meat along with him with the branch/ropes clawing at his exposed flesh.

Jayce reached down, fingers tracing some damage on the leg brace that had gone unnoticed. But as he did his finger brushed the trouser leg underneath. It was dripping wet, particularly still defrosting as the fire worked is way in. 

Jayce cursed and quickly set to work unclasping the leg brace before struggling helplessly to peel the sodden fabric from the man's skin. 

Eventually he managed to gently wrestle the garment free, wringing it dry as best he could before hanging it along side the other's. 

Once everything was prepared he laid down next to Viktor, man handling his extremities in such a way that he could sandwich them between themselves, to gradually bring their temperature up. With all this movement the man didn't stir once... Too many times Jayce checked for a pulse, not really sure how he hadn't moved yet. 

At some point Jayce had started using their bed of branches to feed the fire.

And when he was sure the fire was well fed, and would be for hours, and with not much else to do, he let sleep claim him again. 

He woke to the sound of heavy, uneven panting. His eyes flew open to find Viktor, covered in a layer of condensation struggling against an immense pain, the cause unseen to Jayce. In a panic Jayce cast about for the cause. A nightmare?  he wondered, for lack of anything else. But soon enough he realised the man was desperately trying to straighten his affected leg. The man's teeth sunk into his own forearm, eyes tight shut. 

"Whoa whoa, slow down Viktor! Take it easy, you've got time." He said as he shuffled back, making room for the man. 

It would have been helpful had he known what exactly was wrong with Viktor's leg. He only partially understood the symptoms, but they'd rarely been in extreme situations together so it was no surprise he hadn't thought about what trouble could come of locking the man's leg in a closed position. 

He cursed himself for his lack of curiosity, determination. The few times he'd asked about it Viktor had become closed off and less than forth coming dismissing his questions as irrelevant and merely idle curiosity, "I'm not a machine, Jayce. I won't be studied." He would say. So, soon enough... Too soon in fact, he'd eventually stopped pressing the matter.

He felt terrible now, seeing how much pain he'd caused, but he also wasn't under any illusion that it hadn't been necessary

As far as he could tell the chalky white skin had all but faded. Leaving in its place, equally pale skin, just not quite so devoid of tone.

The panting was soon replaced by uneven rattling breathes as Viktor paused his attempt. 

"I'm sorry Viktor, I needed to get you warm." Jayce explained in a soothing tone. 

There was no response. Instead the man's sunset eyes flickered across the now low flames. 

Jayce took it as a prompt and carefully fed the fire more of their bed. Crouching by it's side to gently bring it back to life, once it was up and running he glanced at his partners face again.

His heart felt it before he did and he sucked in a sharp breath before snapping his head away from the sight. 

This wasn't the first time he'd seen Victor's face in the light of a fire... Only this time was real...Wasn't it? 

The silence was long and heavy.

"Where... Where are we?" Jayce finally asked.

"I'm... Not sure." came the reply. More silence.

"How far?" Jayce prompted simply. Eyes trained on the flames licking at the black abyss.

"Until what?"

"How far did you have to bring me to get here...How long was I out? Why did you wake up and I didn't? You could have died if-" He bit his lip. He could feel the emotions welling up. If he'd been unconscious for hours what were the chances of him waking up when he had? Of being in time to see his friend nearly burned to death.

...His friend? 

"On the bright side, you would have had something to eat when you awoke." Viktor reasoned, that familiarly dark, humorous, tone a drawl now but Jayce could hear the slight smile tugging at the other man's lips.

"I think... I am likely more resistant to the side effects of the Arcane." Viktor reasoned, the words chosen carefully, the sadness in his tone could be felt. "In another scenario, I too may have been unconscious, I would not have survived.... I fear." 

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry about all of this, and how useless I was just now."  Jayce lamented as he gather Viktor's now dry clothing. His shoes still needed time, but everything else was perfectly fine.

He walked over to Viktor, who had carefully propped himself up now on his elbow. Jayce stole glances at the man as he laid the clothing beside him.

" I... I don't really understand how you - "

"Look human?" Viktor asked, the corner of a brow raising slightly as he did. Jayce nodded.

"I'm not sure." the man's eyes glossed over, lost in thought. "I was selfish, I'd used the last of my will power to tell you to go. So when you stayed-" he cast his gaze down, a guilty gesture. "-all I wanted was for you to live, Jayce. I was conscious in the void. I could feel our essence being torn apart. I desperately willed for you to live, I had this-this sense that-" He took a deep breath. Calming himself as his emotions rose. He took a moment before continuing. Jayce took a another to watch the shadows dance across his familiar features. "That I could shape the essence, I tried to remember what you looked like, but for the life of me I had no clue. Not how you used to look anyway."

Jayce, panicked slightly, in a less than humble display of vanity. He felt at his face. He recognised the grooves of the wrinkles, the arch of his brow. the ridge of his nose. He couldn't find any noticeable changes.

"But I kept seeing it. How you looked when you looked at me-" Viktor continued in a dreadful, broken whisper "-a recurring nightmare... of the look on your face as you told me that what I'd done was my own obsession."

That was it, that was what he meant... Viktor had tried desperately to remember what he'd been like before, the Jayce who had spent endless nights in front of the Arcane pod. His hair, that was now long and tussle as it had been in the courtroom, wasn't cropped like how Viktor should have known him.

"And then... When it came to choosing me... All I wanted was human. I couldn't pick a time, I couldn't pick and instance. I didn't care. So long as it was human."

Jayce walked over, knelt in front of the man, still laying in amongst the evergreens on the sled.

Carefully, gently, he picked Viktor up by the arms and sat him up-right careful to keep his leg at the 90 degree angle the man had so far achieved. Viktor could barely keep his head up from exhaustion, he watched Jayce from beneath full, dark lashes. He'd seen this face before. His breath caught gently in his throat. The difference was so stark that Jayce cursed himself yet again for his inability to notice the decline. This Viktor's cheeks were much less hollow, his skin a more even tone. The shadows under his eyes weren't gone, but they weren't nearly as present.

But then it dawned on him, the time line of this form was out of sync. He looked how he had when they'd met, but when they'd met he hadn't had any of the braces, he'd just had his cane.

Was this how Viktor saw himself? Did he, too, fail to noticed the hollow appearance of his later years. And then there was his chest. Jayce's vision flipped, his eyes struggling to focus as nausea swept into every organ he had. Yet again he stumbled, Viktor catching his elbow to steady him.

"Jayce?" he asked tentatively.

Sprawled across his partner's chest was an expanse of paler, glassy skin. Scar tissue. Viktor glanced down at himself, realising immediately. He snatched up his shirt and fastened it to the top quickly.

"Calm down, Jayce." He urged. "It's fine, I'm fine!"

Jayce could barely hear, his own blood thunder in his ears, he couldn't breath, vivid flashes of his best friend suspended by cords the slight look of surprise as he's seen Jayce initially, maybe he'd thought Jayce had taken him up in his offer. The pleasant expression was short lived. Jayce had felt that same hatred, his inability to realise that Viktor didn't have a clue. He'd gone there with conviction, told himself his Partner was long gone, that he'd become a creature already, capable of murder. He'd been able to rationalise his own actions that way. But the realisation now that the whole time, particularly before Jayce had... Killed him. Everything he'd been doing was indistinguishable to the naked eye, from "good". He hadn't killed a monster that day... He'd killed his best friend, under the misguided opinion that he was already well aware of what the hollow shells really were.

He could hear something, far away, someone calling his name, he was getting lightheaded now, on the verge of passing out.

I'm dying, I can't-. I can't breath. I'm-

Out of nowhere his vision went bright white his cheek stung. But the sudden change brought him back to his senses. His breathing slowed, his palm finding his reddened cheek, his eyes coming to rest on the figure knelt in front of him. 

Sweat drenched Viktor's face, his teeth clenched, his own nails digging into his bad leg. 

Jayce was dazed, he shook his head slightly from side to side, Viktor understood the silent apology and slumped back against the sled. Gritting his teeth at every movement from his leg.

_____

They both finished getting dressed in silence. At some point, once it was light out, Jayce braced himself against the cold to collect as much dry wood as he could, it wasn't too difficult, the area they had ended up was surrounded by trees, much of which had long since fallen down. And while the land was covered in snow, it seemed to be mostly maintained by the cold. As opposed to constant blizzards. So the wood was largely dry.

He'd helped Victor create a backpack of sorts for the wood collection, made of bent branches tied together with strips of whatever fabric the could scrounge together without much impact to their own warmth.

As he wondered back, with full stack of wood he tried to make sense of where they may have ended up.

He'd kept glancing over at the distant trail that had ended at the mouth of the cave, but he'd failed to make out where it began. 

He was astounded, the cold was terrible, even now fully dressed he was struggling. And somehow, Viktor, despite his physical limitations had managed that distance, dragging what would have been far more than his body weight and for how far, Jayce couldn't tell. 

But he recalled how exhausted the man had been. He must have been running purely on will power. 

He's always had that in abundance Jayce thought wistfully as his eyes traced the faint line in the snow. 

He made a second trip later that day for food, he'd managed a surprising amount considering the circumstances. 

They agreed that just in case it was dumb luck they would ration the food regardless. 

Once he got back, finally settling in across from Viktor, he couldn't take his eyes off of the man. 

He hadn't moved much all day, he'd tried to help out here and there, but the pain was written across his face. Now he sat, tinkering with his leg brace. 

The silence was unfamiliar, Jayce sat with his knees up to his face, arms wrapped around his legs.

He hated it.

It wasn't so long ago that they would be in their lab for days, barely saying anything, but it had been comfortable, productive. 

This felt like they were both dying to speak, to break the oppressive atmosphere, but neither could.

"Can we start again?" Jayce asked, nearly a whisper as it left his lips. 

Jayce woke not long after, he couldn't move. He was so lost in what he'd just witnessed, his limbs felt heavy. He could feel that his breathing was shallow, that he was having to really concentrate on each breath to make them deeper.

He felt claustrophobic, as though the stone slab was still pinning him down.

Slowly he managed to move his legs, he sat up, the bed they had made was rough, but it worked, it was about a meter off the ground and stacked to the brim with the whatever this plant was that Jayce couldn't for the life of him place. Some soft evergreen, Cedar?.

He twisted to face the man behind him. 

"Viktor?" he whispered.

"Hmm?" Came the reply.

"Can we talk?"

That seemed to get the man's attention. His demeanour was typically cold and unapproachable these day, though Jayce felt he was successfully chipping it away bit by bit, to reveal the warmer, more energetic Viktor he had come to know.

"What is it Jayce?" he asked, propping himself up on his elbows. His hair, short as it was when they first met, was tussle now, strands cutting into the shape of his face, framing it nicely. Nicely?

"I... I keep having dreams. Except, I'm not so sure they are. They feel more like...memories." He navigated the explanation carefully.

"Go on?" Viktor prompted cautiously. "Memories of when? You, as a child? Do you have many gaps to fill?"

"No me." he studied the man's face, searching for a reaction. "You."

"Me as a child?!" He was sat bolt up right now. "You didn't know me as a child Jayce, you weren't even in Piltover. You certainly weren't in the undercity."

"What?" Jayce said, his tone comedically confused. "Who said anything about a child?"

"You did."

"What? No I didn't?"

"Hmm, you might be right, come to think of it." Viktor mused, "I'm not sure where I got that from, I was half a sleep, I think." the man's lower lip jutted out ever so slightly as he pondered the thought process.

Jayce shook his head "Anyway, what I'm saying is, the dreams I keep having, I think they might be your memories."

The mans eyes darkened. His expression deadly serious. His hands clenched into white knuckle fists.

"Which ones."

"Well answer me this one thing honestly, and I'll know." Jayce turned to him fully, he didn't want to risk missing even the most macro of tells. "When the bomb hit the council room, did you help save me." Jayce held his breath. He wasn't sure how many more dreams he'd have, but if he could get Viktor to prove just this one right, he could assume they were all real. Not very scientific, I know.

There was a tense silence. It was almost confirmation in itself. But Jayce needed more.

"I don't know. I blacked out when the explosion -"

"Stop, Viktor."

"Jayce... Don't make me do this."

"Do what?" Even Jayce wasn't sure that he was talking about.

"If I confirm this for you, you'll take everything you see as fact, out of context." the man explained, his tone verging on desperate. "I don't know what you're seeing, I don't know why either. I want to tell you things in my own time, I want the privilege to omit details I can't bring myself to face just yet. If you use this knowledge, to-to try to trick me. I don't know... I need time to think. I can't think straight, can't form the thought."

Should I not have brought it up? I don't think that would have been good either...

"What have you seen so far?"

Jayce considered what to say, should he tell him? Is there anything he would want me to have missed?

"I...I've seen three things so far. The carriage ride to the Innovator Competition. The part where I asked you to help me at least." Viktor was blinking more than usual, Jayce wasn't sure if he'd imagined it, but he could have sworn the man's face had changed shades slightly. "I saw the moment you saved my life, in my apartment. For the record, I didn't remember getting angry at you at all, that part is a total blank in my mind. I think because of the adrenaline maybe." He clarified, becoming red himself. 

"And then lastly, the moment the bomb hit..." the silence was like a smog, making it difficult to breath. 

"How much? Where did the vision end?" Viktor asked. 

A flash of the scene cut into Jayce's recollection "If you must choose, take me. But keep him safe." he recalled. He also recalled the faces of ever enforcer who actively passed him by... 

"The memory seemed to stop just as you threw the slab, you check your leg." he though about it for a second. "And then-then I figured you lost consciousness." Viktor seemed sceptical at first, but slowly nodded. 

"That's right. Then I wake up in the lab." He mumbled. 

Victor locked eyes with Jayce then, search for something "Will you tell me, please? When you have one of these... Visions." 

"Sure" Jayce agrees. He does mean it, whether he always will, will depend on the memory...

"If you ever see my memories, I hope you never see how I carried you to the lab." Jayce said as he cringed at the thought. "With your spine the way it was. Which, for the record, I didn't know about. I just found that out now."

It was Viktor's turn to be confused. 

"When you carried me?" he asked. 

"Who else was it going to be?" 

"I guess I thought maybe a group of enforcers on your orders. I think I assumed I was beyond saving, or the resources were spoken for with the councillors. And at some point, you lost hope and tried to use the... Hexcore." He explained. 

"That sounds... Much calmer than I remember. If I'm honest, once I found you, I tried my best to help where you were, I grabbed one of the medics, they basically told me you were a lost cause. I don't even think the fires had stopped before I was sprinting out the door with you. I'm sorry to say, but time wasn't really on my side." Jayce had picked up a bit of greenery, picking and shredding at it subconsciously as he worked through what he'd wanted to say. 

"I always wondered whether you thought I sat there and pondered whether I should use the Hexcore for hours, eventually deciding to break our promise and began some long winded operation. It wasn't like that at all, I basically threw you on the table, rushed over to the desk, I'd seen your hand, your leg. I-I knew you would have made notes, I just wondered if I'd even be able to make sense of them in time. But when I looked back, from across the room the core was already reacting, and so were you. I couldn't think straight, I already knew I wasn't going to understand the research in time. I picked it up, brought it closer, I hadn't exactly meant to let go, but it was impossible to hold onto. I lost my grip, and the next thing I knew was that the core was embedded, and you were stable. After that, as it seemed to grow, eating away at the metal around it, I built the pod. Tried to mimic what I thought might have been healing runes. But from the moment I opened the door, to you fuse-... To me fusing you with the hexcore... I doubt a minute passed." It was a long winded explanation, but Jayce had wanted desperately to explain it better than he had done previously. 

The man didn't seem to know what to say, he seemed to be trying to process the information. Jayce on the other hand wanted to lighten the mood, if at all possible. 

"You know, I tried to barge the lab door open with my shoulder... I can't guarantee it wasn't your head that did it though." Jayce glanced at his partner, in time to see his expression, previously consisting of a raised eyebrow, slowly relax to something softer, creases forming at the corners of his eyes as he chuckled to himself, by the time he made eye contact Viktor had fully embraced the smile. Jayce had his own grin sprawled across his face.

--------

Mid day was fast approaching, they hadn't fallen back to sleep after Jayce's rude awakening. Instead they had started final preparations for the journey to the nearest light they recalled seeing, and by late afternoon, just as the sun was dangerously low in the sky, they came to the first houses. They all seemed dark, uninviting, one or two had a faint glow in the windows, but nothing that seemed to be interested in welcoming visitors.

Viktor was really struggling at that point. Pale and gaunt as he had become, he was desperately trying to keep pace with Jayce, and Jayce was desperately trying to slow enough for him. But without stopping, that was looking less and less doable... 

"Viktor, we can stop, even if it's for a short break. The longer we keep this up, the longer recovery will be. If we stop now we just save ourselves time down the line." 

"But if we don't find somewhere now, Jayce, we may not find anywhere before nightfall. There's no telling if there is even such things as lodges here. Let alone if they will open their doors when night falls. And even still, we have no form of currency!" At least he's got some energy in his tone now... All be it to shout at me. Jayce thought grudgingly. 

"Then let me carry you. Just a short way, as soon as we get to something promising, I'll put you down in good time." Jayce assured the man, certain that he didn't want to be seen as weak or fragile by anyone, especially not random people who could see them as targets. 

And it was true, there was nothing weak or fragile about the man, he was by far the strongest person Jayce had ever met. But even as strong as he was, he could still use the help. 

"I-I don't even know how you would-" "without me looking ridiculous"? Jayce was aware of his concerns, there was obviously no way the man was confused as to whether Jayce could carry him. It wasn't like he hadn't had the experience...

"You could get on my back?" Viktor didn't seem amused in the slightest. 

"No I couldn't." He said in such a final tone. "Obvious, ridiculous, nature of it aside, I can't do that... My hip, it doesn't... Not right now, anyway." 

"Then I'll carry you how I did before." Jayce concluded. "Our stuff will go on my back, and I'll carry you."

Begrudgingly , Viktor didn't even say yes, his answer was in his silence and his 'Do what you have to do' rigid stance, not making eye contact. Jayce slung what he could on his back and gently came up behind Viktor, sweeping him off his feet in one fluid motion, careful not to manipulate his leg too much. Last time he'd done this- after the explosion- he'd come to the sickening realisation that as he had searched for a solid grip, his hand easily wrapped around the diameter of Victor's thigh. He was pleasantly surprised to find that it couldn't now. He was relieved, it must have shown on his face, Victor's expression was one of confusion. Colour had returned to his face in the form of a blush. 

"What?" He grumbled simply. 

Jayce began walking, eyes on the path ahead. 

"Last time I did this, my hand could fit easily around your thigh. I glad that it can't now." Jayce explained. 

Victor traced a slender finger up his own thigh absently. The other hand seemed to clutch at the fabric over his chest, catching a fistful of it. 

"What happened to 'There's beauty in imperfection'"  Viktor said, his voice was so low and quiet Jayce almost missed it. His eyes darted to Viktor's face. 

"There is, there always will be. It made you who you are. But there's no amount of beauty I wouldn't swap for your happiness. For you to have a life without pain, I'd -" He swallowed hard. He didn't know how to finish it, anything he said would sound dramatic. He would have meant it though, whatever had come out... Instead he left it open ended. 

 It was dark, but Jayce could tell it wasn't overly late. He was rambling to Viktor about whatever nonsense came to mind, reminiscing mostly. For a while Viktor had been indulging him in conversation. But he'd since gone quiet. Only when the man's arm fell limply from its perch and to his side, dangling in the air, did it become apparent that the man had fallen asleep some time ago Jayce looked down at him in shock. A suddenly unwanted overlay of a memory hit him like an explosion. Suddenly the man was covered in deep lacerations, his torso and leg brace a charred and broken mess. The skin of his arms burnt. His discoloured leg glowing faintly purple in the dim light. Covered in dust and blood from head to toe. 

Jayce stumbled to his knees, just barely managing to not drop his partner, panic was building up a debilitating pressure in his throat as it seemed to close. 

"Viktor, please you-you can't fall asleep, not in my arms, I-" he desperately tried to lay the man down as gently as he could, but he was loosing his grip on reality. He freed his arms of the man and clawed at his throat, something had gotten caught around it, he could feel it, he couldn't breath. When his fingers met no resistance he had a vague sense of realisation that the thing mustn't have been wrapped around his throat, he must have swallowed it and that's why he was choking. He fell on his back, his legs pushing out in a frenzy against his will, trying to find purchase on the floor beneath him.

"I can't-I can't breath-" he couldn't even hear himself. He was quickly loosing any sense of what was going on around him. 

He could hear something, it was underwater, but it was there. He thought it sounded like... Shouting? Who knows... His vision, whatever he had of it anyway, was fading.

He was miles under water, he was sure of it. Each word he though he heard sounded like they were shouting him from the depth of a lake, bubbly and muffled.

An age could have passed, Jayce couldn't tell, he had no concept of where he was, the only sensation he was sure of was his imminent death. 

 "ayce! JAy-... Yace! JAYCE! You have to breath Out! Please, Jayce!" He felt a new, cold pressure holding the sides of his face. "Jayce, please, breath out with me." His eyes drifted to the lips of the figure above him, mimicking a breathing shape. The figure attempted the same instruction a few times before Jayce could even half register that they were asking him to copy them. When they formed a whistling shape he tried to breath out... It lasted a painfully long time until the lips relaxed into a inward breathing shape, Jayce followed suit. Realisation trickled in around him. They were on the floor, the cobbles digging into Jayce's spine. Viktor knelt by his side, leaning over him. They stayed like this until Jayce's breathing had returned almost entirely to normal, he had stopped taking instructions and was managing on his own at that point.

He was sapped of any shred of energy. He was shaking and exhausted. They stayed there as Jayce collected himself, slowly sitting up when he felt he could. Once he had fully calmed down, Viktor tilted his head so that he could look Jayce in the eyes.

"What happened, Jayce?" he asked so softly, his voice quivering slightly.

"I-I'm sorry Viktor, you-you fell asleep, something about the way you looked - I - I panicked. You had all those cuts, the burns - I -" Viktor wrapped his arms around him. It was so rare for his partner to be the one to initiate  it. Usually it was Jayce instigating the hugs, the shoulder touches.

"I'm fine, I'm not hurt.. You-... You saved me, Jayce." if there was a hint of forced gratitude, Jayce missed it, instead he embraced the gesture, wrapping Viktor in a hug nearly bigger than himself, it seemed. the man felt so small in Jayce's arms. 

Jayce soon broke away, wiping his face on the back of his hand. 

"Did I hurt you?" he asked, pressing his thumb and forefinger into his eyes in an attempt to clear them of whatever fog they still held. 

"If by hurt, you mean, did I wake thinking that the bedroom floor was caving in? Then yes." Viktor replied as he climbed to his feet, offering his cane as a hand-hold, to help Jayce to his. 

"Are you ready?" The brunet asked. After a moment of building up the will power, a Jayce nodded affirmatively. He grasped the cane gratefully and hoisted himself up. 

He was wrong, he sank like a lead weight, his legs felt numb, like they hadn't fully come back to reality yet. 

"Hold still, we have time. There's no rush." his partner assured. Not what you were saying earlier.

Gradually his strength began to return to him, and they slowly continued walking along the dark road. The sharp clank of the cane hitting the cobble stone echoed into the night. 

"Do you.... Have these attacks often?" Viktor asked, eyeing him from his peripheral vision. 

Jayce was silent for a long time. 

"They're getting worse. I don't understand it, I'm not stressed, I don't know why I'm acting like this. I was was dealing with it better in the middle of it all!." He explained. Frustrated tears threatening to cascade from his eye. "I mean, it started in the alternate world. But I wasn't this bad. I could function at least... " he finished in a whisper.

He could tell his friend had more questions. But was trying his best not to ask them.

"First it was smaller things, just memories really. Nothing special. But slowly, as I got more sick, they were more like hallucinations. Which they probably actually were." He reasoned. "I-I would see you, and Mel. In the light of the fire, it's like the flames would create you. Except, you had no eyes. And then, after that, when I came back... " He realised almost too late that explaining the rest would mean bringing up the hollow vessels of Viktor's commune.

"When you got back-?" Viktor prompted. Jayce blinked wearily. 

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, when I got back, they got worse. Now they are getting ready bad. Half the time I don't even understand what triggers it." He diverted. 

"But just now, that was because I fell asleep in your arms?" 

"I guess so, this one wasn't too difficult to figure out. It was your arm when it fell, I guess it reminded me of the way it looked after the explosion..."

Viktor didn't turn to face him, but he measured his tone carefully. 

"Frequently, trauma doesn't present itself while you're in the situation, it's when you no longer are that is manifests. The mechanisms you built for yourself, to survive the hell you faced, have no outlet now. The anger, the adrenaline, the reflexes. They are still their, reacting to things they recognise. But in these less extreme scenarios, they are responding exponentially, they can not differentiate between the two, Jayce." Viktor turned to look at him, all the while they maintained their reasonable pace in the cold, crisp night.  "The safer you feel, the less these mechanisms will understand their place. The more frighteningly they will twist the mundane. It will get worse, before it gets better. For as long as you have need of me, I will be here to help you through this, Jayce" Viktor promised. 

A tear threatened to spill from Jayce's eyes, he faced away quickly, biting his lip and screwing his eyes shut. Worse than this? I don't know if I can-

"Jayce! Look!" Victor exclaimed. They had suddenly come to the other end of a long bend in the forested path and Jayce spotted what it was the man must have seen. A small village centre with a few shops past their closing, but to the side, on the left there was a barely lit inn of sorts, and a woman just out side emptying a pale of some unknown substance down a nearby drain. At there very least if this was a different world, evolution had looked the same here as it had on theirs. This was a promising sign. Speaking of signs. The large wooden sign swaying lightly in the breeze had the works "Mountain Pass Inn" in bold carved letters.

"What's more, they speak our language." Jayce pointed out gesturing to the lettering. 

Viktor looked overjoyed.

"Shall we?" He prompted.

It was quiet. He watched ribbons of golden sunlight dance through the room, made visible by the dust floating in the still air. The place was warm, almost uncomfortable. He blinked wearily, not yet fully awake. He was missing something, something crucial and the sickly haze was clouding his ability to think. His eyes fell on a neatly made bed. 

A flash of the dark apartment from his dream interrupted his thought process. It's cold architecture of metal and marble a stark contrast to this rustic space. He flinched in response. He watched in his minds eye as the blood crept out onto the fallen drawing, the paper's fibres drawing the stain closer to the charcoal line work. 

Jayce shook his head, trying to banish the memory. His movements were slow and sluggish. His limbs felt heavy, like lead again. The first real movement he achieved was in his arms, though they felt numb as he tried to push himself into a sitting position. He failed. Instead a breathless word escaped his lips. The piece of the puzzle he'd been missing. The piece he couldn't see. 

"Viktor." He tried to call, but it was barely more than a whisper, as his eyes darted around the room. He could feel the now familiar sensation of a panic attack wrapping around his throat.

"Is right here." The gentle accent was beyond welcome, though the man sounded slightly confused. 

Jayce turned to look at Viktor. He was sat at the end of the couch wearing his academy uniform once again, his left arm lounging on the back of the headrest, towards the middle. His right hand supported a pen and scrap of paper that was balanced on the arm of the chair to his right.  His legs, crossed at the knee, were absent of their usual outer brace.

To Jayce's surprise his own legs were resting on the man's thighs.

He fumbled an apology. Still dazed, he managed to sit up. He ran a hand through his hair before leaning heavily with his elbows on his knees, holding his head in his hands as he tried to compose himself. Viktor looked unfazed.

"In my defence, when I sat down, you were taking up only three of the four seats." he said. Jayce looked over to the man from the corner of his eye. 

From this angle, with the light pouring in from the parted curtains behind them, Viktor's irises seemed to glow, pools sunlight through whiskey. This, coupled with the warm hue the light added to his skin, gave Viktor an ethereal look. Divine even. In the literal sense of the word.

Jayce was still trying to settle his breathing, his body was struggling to make sense of the contrast between this slow haven, and the desperate, cold darkness of his dream. Viktor's memory. He corrected himself. 

Realisation dawned on his friend. The man's expression fell, replaced instead by something akin to fear, apprehension perhaps. 

"Are you alright, Jayce?" He asked, discarding the pen and paper, both of which promptly fell to the floor. "Another memory?"

Jayce was finally getting his bearings, but even still he couldn't answer, he didn't know where to begin, or more importantly, what to omit. He nodded, the gesture was small but it was enough. Viktor, who only moments ago had exuded confidence, seemed to shrink into the corner of the couch, suddenly unwilling to take up space with his usual confidence. He grew still, his nails digging into the blanket Jayce had discarded. 

"Can I ask-" 

"No." Jayce didn't mean for it to come out as harsh as it had. "Not right now, Viktor, I'll tell you. But I need to calm down first."

He didn't know what to do with half of the information he'd gathered this time around. A big part of his anxiety in that moment came from learning that the memories could be subjective. 

They had to be. He thought to himself, That distorted depiction of Viktor in the reflections is the furthest thing from accurate. Jayce wouldn't entertain the idea that he'd been just that unobservant before. Maybe that could have been the case, but the thing that stopped him fully subscribing to that theory was Viktor's eyes. It wasn't physically possible for their colour to be that different. They hadn't had a single hint of their true colour, so of course it must have been Viktor himself who was wrong. It brought more questions than answers, and he was dreading all of them.

Furthermore, learning that Viktor had collapsed long before the diagnosis and just hadn't told him made him furious. 

Who found him that time? Had anyone? Did Viktor really just pass out, blood pouring from his lungs and what, he just went to work the next day? Jayce remembered the time period now. Viktor certainly hadn't been absent at all before the deadline. 

Could he really be that stupid? Jayce thought bitterly to himself. 

Should Jayce just explain the memory start to finish and ask Viktor to explain himself?

No, that didn't seem like the best way to go about things. He wanted to tackle it in well thought out chunks, bit by bit, so as to avoid glossing over topics. 

And then there were the matters that had Jayce really stumped. Most of what he'd seen was in the past now; Viktor didn't seem to be sick as far as they could tell so that wasn't his currently dilemma... His current concerns were a mix of a few things. Both of which Jayce had no experience with;

Firstly, how could he get Viktor to see himself as Jayce did? 

He glanced at the man, he couldn't wrap his head around these night and day versions of Viktor. Did he see himself like that now? Or was it reserved for the peak of his illness? How could Jayce find out? "Describe yourself" was hardly going to cover it. 

Secondly there was the other matter. It was something that was potentially still relevant, if it was true at all. Jayce felt like he could see potential hints of it across all of the memories now. In fact, looking back at them... They were hard to ignore. But questions nagged at him, his own self doubt eating away at what seemed so clear now. Was it even true? Was it Jayce's imagination somehow? Was he looking too much into things that were just unrelated? If he asked and he was wrong, would Viktor view him differently? He didn't want to lose his partner, he knew that much at least. But then, if he was right... What would he, himself, do? 

The slender man hadn't moved a muscle, waiting with bated breath for Jayce to do something, anything probably. When no such thing happened, the man closed his eyes, his brows furrowed, he turned away slightly. 

"Do you still-" Viktor paused, he really seemed to be struggling for the right words, Jayce had never seen him like this. He made to reach out to the man, to reassure him that he did want to talk about it, and certainly would before the day was out, he just wanted a little time.

"Are we still... Partners?" the question came out of left field, Jayce was blindsided. He placed his hand on the man's shoulder, gently encouraging him to face Jayce. 

"What? Of course we are, it's nothing that- I just want time to think. That's all. But it's nothing that would make me think badly of you." He tried to be as reassuring as he could. Viktor's eyes darted between Jayce's own, searching for a hint of anger? Hatred? Fear? Jayce couldn't be sure. He still didn't know all that Viktor had done, but then would Jayce even really associate it with Viktor, if he'd done it after the arcane had hold of him?  

"Then what, Jayce? Why not tell me now?" the man pleaded. 

Jayce sighed, but he needed to keep his resolve. If he fumbled this, he risked everything. 

"Come on, we'll find some food and we'll visit that farm. I want to talk to you properly, and I don't want to just blurt it out, or get it wrong." Jayce tried to explain. 

Viktor looked no less stressed, but he seemed to be somewhat more inclined to leave it be for now, reassured perhaps that Jayce wasn't already packing his things and tossing them out the window. 

"I can't... " 

"You can't? What's wrong? Your leg?" Jayce had noted he wasn't wearing his brace, he had hoped that was an indicator that he was doing better. 

"The strain, it's... caught up to me now that we've slowed down." Viktor explained, a hand subconsciously massaging his hip joint. "The day after is ordinarily the worst. But tomorrow, I hope that it should be better." the man bowed his head, his shoulders slumped slightly. 

"Hard to believe, I'm sure, but my mobility... It is much better than it used to be. It's just that, we've been doing a lot-" The words felt like a thinly veiled version of "I'm not usually this difficult." 

Jayce thought about all of the unhelpful comments and the ladened on pity that the man had been subjected to since they arrived, even partially by himself to an extent that he felt guilty for. His own faults aside, the family meant well, but Jayce knew the last thing Viktor wanted was for people to define him by anything that he viewed as flaws. It was part of why he thought they'd got on so well in the beginning. Jayce hadn't mentioned it, there was no need to, they were  wrapped up in their ideas. If Viktor had wanted to talk about it he would have, and so long as it wasn't posing any issue for his friend, Jayce didn't feel the need to talk about things that didn't make the man happy. 

Tell me that isn't why he isn't wearing his brace. Tell me he just doesn't need it right now. Jayce begged. He'd never known Viktor to handicap himself to reduce attention, but then, for all Jayce seemed to know Viktor could have needed the brace for years before they actually made it. For all Jayce knew he had been avoiding it for fear of being judged. More and more the memories made Jayce question what he knew of his friend. Not just on an event level, like things he'd done or things that had happened. But on a personal level, how the man viewed himself was becoming a painful one.

"I remember what I said in the astral plane. I meant every word." Jayce gave the man's shoulder another reassuring squeeze before standing up. "Sit tight, I'll go look for something to eat."

He scooped up Viktor's pen and paper, it looked like a parts list and a quick sketch of the specific part that they would need to fix the boiler. 

That could work.

He felt bad that it wasn't even about the boiler that he was thinking, he was trying to devise plans to bring up sectioned of the memory he wanted to ask about. 

It was a far fetched idea, there was a chance Viktor wouldn't even entertain it. But it was the best he had. He passed Viktor his things, and quickly snatched up his clothes. Barely noticing they had been nicely folded and put at the foot of the bed for him. The fitted black and red shirt smelt amazing as he pulled it over his head, aside from that and the fact that he had his pants back and they fit far better than Kaff's old ones, he barely noticed anything else as he rushed out the door.

He briefly delivered some food to Viktor, and before the man could so much as thank him Jayce was out the door again.

Unfortunately after that Jayce found himself wrapped up in helping Kaff. Which he could hardly say no to, with how kind the couple were being, but he did feel bad about hardly interacting with Viktor, who was currently confined to their room.

Kaff had given him a heavy overcoat and a pair of sturdy leather boots that extended to the knee, which were much appreciated as they waded through last night's heavy snow fall.

They made their way to a back room in the inn that had an external entrance. It seemed to be a storage unit of sorts. 

"Not seen your friend today." Kaff said, piling yet another box into Jayce's arms, Jayce moved his head to the side to talk to the man, past the boxes currently obscuring his vision. 

"The journey took its toll on him, unfortunately. Rather than push it, he's trying to speed up the healing process. I can try to get him down for dinner though." Jayce suggested. 

"Well, I don't want to be a bother. Just thought it'd be nice, he was asking about the farm and that..." the man trailed off. 

Jayce raised his eyebrows softly, seeing the old man try his best to word "I enjoyed talking with him." in any other way was both adorable, and a little sad. 

"I'll see what I can do, Kaff." Jayce assured the man. "About the farm, Viktor took a look at your boiler yesterday, he says you have machines up at the farm that we could use to fix the boiler. Potentially, that is. We're going to take a better look today." Jayce explained as Kaff guided him out the doorway, making sure to catch the more precariously balanced objects. 

"Fix it?" the man asked incredulously. 

"Viktor identified the issue yesterday, he's drawing plans up for it as we speak. Though, he could do with more paper if you had any." 

"More paper..." the man mumbled to himself, clearly not thinking about paper what so ever. "Well... Well then, what are you two? Engineers?" he asked. Jayce chuckled. 

"We're a little bit of a lot of things. He'd call himself a scientist though, I think." Jayce ducked under the doorway of the next building along that Kaff guided him to. It looked to be a workshop of sorts. Jayce looked around in awe. It was small, nothing spectacular, certainly nothing as complex as you could expect to find at their lab. But it smelt like home to him; iron, fuel, and oil. 

"I would say we're inventors. A mix really of science and engineering." he placed the boxes down in the corner, and slowly he moved around the room. The tools were mostly rough versions of what he was used to using, the smell of rust was unmistakable. But given the state of the place, the workshop was surprisingly well stocked. 

"Our next issue was going to be tools, but looking at this place, we might just have everything we need right here. If you don't mind us using it." Jayce announced excitedly. Some of his youthful wonder returning to his voice. Though, he still recognised the rough edge he'd developed in the alternate world. It was a dull overtone that chipped away at the excitement he would have once felt. 

"Boy, if you can fix that boiler, you can have it!" the man half joked.

"Who's workshop is this?" Jayce asked as he opened various cupboards, taking mental stock of their contents. 

"It belongs to our two eldest, well, all of 'em if they took an interest." 

Jayce stopped riffling through the contents of one of the draws, he looked around, there were a few unfinished projects laying around, any of which would have put the two eldest well within the bracket of "people who could have fixed the boiler easily." 

"Oh? Did they not... Get the opportunity to look at the boiler?" He asked, trying to be tactful. 

"Fat chance, hard to do when you're fix feet under." the old man said gruffly. He used his blunt demeanour as a shield, that much was very obvious. Jayce's shoulders fell, he sighed quietly to himself. 

"I'm sorry to hear that." 

"No need, they died brave. I've no doubt about that." the old man cleared his throat pointedly "Just a couple more boxes, then we should be about done. You can help Martha with dinner next if you wouldn't mind. Then maybe we can look at popping to the farm before it gets too dark. If you're up to it o'course." 

Jayce took the hint, they finished moving the boxes from the inn to the workshop, mindful, via Jayce's own direction, not to block off important aspects of the room that Viktor and himself could make use of. Which also sadly meant moving some of the older boxes that were already there, which took up more and more of the daylight. It was nice to see that they even had a forge of sorts, far smaller than Jayce was used to but hardly different in the grand scheme of things. 

The sun was setting by the time they got back inside, Jayce's hands were frigid, his fingers swollen with the cold. 

They dusted off their shoes and hung their over coats up as they walked in. 

"Jayce, go ask Effy if she's some arty stuff for the lad." Kaff called over his shoulder as he disappeared into the kitchen.

Jayce bounded up the stairs in a few good strides. 

"Effy!" he called out. She came running down the corridor, non too gracefully. 

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Where would I find art supplies, do you know?"

"Art supplies?" She said with a disgusted look on her face. "What'ya want that for?" she asked.

"Do you have have any? Paper is the main thing, but colouring pencils and charcoal would be appreciated." Jayce tried his best, but there was just no way Effy had any clue what he was talking about, and she quickly lost interest in the conversation.

"She wouldn't know art stuff if you threw a box of it at  her head, lad. What do you want it for anyhow?" Martha asked, as she pulled herself up the stairs.

"You wouldn't happen to have any would you? We're hoping we can help out with the boiler, but we typically need things to plan with." Jayce explained, while true, they certainly didn't need coloured pencils for that.

"Help out with the boiler?" She looked confused "Well, come with me and we'll see what we've got." she said as she bustled past him, down the corridor to door at the back.

The room she lead him to was dark and cold, no windows to speak of, and of course there were no lights. Jayce struggled to see anything.

"See now, this is the lost and found. Anything as ain't collected come three weeks after checkout, goes in here. If I remember right-" She started digging through a pile. "Tried givin' 'em Effy when she was little. Too busy playing with the dogs to care. Here we are!" they walked out into the corridor and into the ambient light of the setting sun, cradled in the woman's arms was a large leather satchel, the long handle made it ideal for throwing over a shoulder. The contents were astonishing. High quality art supplies, three unused sketchbooks, a set of graphite pencils, an extensive collection of soft pastels that, importantly, had all the colours Jayce needed. And a set of willow charcoal sticks.

"Would you mind if I borrowed these?"

"Have 'em son, they're of no use to us!" she said as she locked the store room door and waved him away.

"Thank you again." Jayce called over his shoulder as he made his way back to their room.

Walking in, the room was bathed again in a warm glow from the fireplace, it was like walking into a dream. Viktor was stood at the foot of the bed, his cane dangling from the crook of his elbow as his eyes seemed to scan the wall behind Jayce. Glancing to his right he could see that the man had been decorating. His piece of paper was absolutely covered in notes and was pinned to a massive sheet of old fabric that Viktor had draped off of various wall fixtures to create his own makeshift white board. The fabric had various diagrams and notes etched roughly into it. 

"Jayce," He greeted as Jayce walked in. "Would you join me? I want to be sure I haven't missed anything in the boiler room. I was... Less than sober during my diagnosis."

Jayce let the door click closed quietly behind him, but he stayed leaning on it. He wanted to take in the scene, if he didn't know better, this could easily have been the day  they met. The lighting was right, Viktor didn't look a day over twenty-four. He lacked the weary appearance of his later years, and he seemed to have been right earlier. Now that he'd had time to rest, it was obvious that his leg and back's condition had been reversed. He stood taller than he had in years. 

Jayce wanted nothing more than to embrace Viktor, how had they gotten this lucky? At best he'd hoped to die along side his partner. But now? Viktor was free of the disease that had threatened his life, and he had more of his mobility back? What had Jayce possibly done to deserve all these wishes coming true? 

"Jayce?" Viktor asked cautiously.

"Hm?" Jayce asked in a daze.

"The boiler. Will you join me?" Viktor repeated, his tone less certain. 

"We can go now, if you'd like? Kaff said he'd take us to the farm too. After dinner perhaps." Viktor glanced out the window, the last of the sunlight was quickly fading. 

"I have no problem working in the dark." Viktor concluded. While he reached for his list from the wall, Jayce moved past him, over to the couch. He set the bag down but produced the best of the three sketchbooks. 

"I brought you something too. A present." 

Viktor looked around cautiously. Jayce held out the sketchbook. Viktor's eyes lit up. 

"Where did you get this?" He asked as he limped over, he didn't immediately take the book, instead his slender finger tips traced the beautiful embossed pattern on the cover. Jayce flipped it open, presenting the quality paper. 

"I asked Martha if she had any paper we could use. She remembered this in the lost and found." He explained as he motioned for Viktor to take it. 

"Thank you, Jayce." The man said as he flipped through it. He moved over to the bed again, laying his scrap paper out he quickly started making a much more coherent rendition. 

"Once you've finished, we'll take a look at the boiler again." Jayce suggested.

Soon enough they found their way back to the boiler room, at the sight of it Viktor did his familiar awkward lip curl. 

"I hope it looked like this before I got to it." He joked. 

The room was in a sorry state, that was undeniable. the room was deeper than it was wide, with the contraption taking up the majority of the back. Jayce had collected a handful of tools from the workshop, which he set to one side as he pulled up a stool for Viktor. The man sat down, already engrossed in the scene before him. 

"Where should we begin?" Viktor mused. "I'm confident the issue lies with this part. But for it to have failed in the first place, I wonder if it's indicative of a flaw earlier in the system." 

Jayce was stood just in front of Viktor. 

Jayce glanced over his shoulder at the machine as he took his jacket off, laying it on the counter behind his partner.

"I'll check regardless." Jayce assured, his fingers making quick work of the fastenings of his black and red dress shirt. He shrugged it off, struggling a little with the tailored fit. The movement caught his partners eye. Now that Jayce was almost looking for it, for some sort of confirmation, he cursed himself at how less than subtle Viktor must have always been. Jayce easily caught the slight shocked expression that briefly inhabited Viktor's face, the involuntary parting of the man's lips as his gaze flicked across Jayce's arms, moving briefly to his chest before he turned back to focus on the boiler. 

Jayce shook his head at how blind he'd been. But he couldn't help the small smirk that played at the corner of his lips. 

They worked together to disassemble what they needed to of the boiler, the issues had almost certainly been the piece they identified yesterday. But they caught a few areas that could potentially fail in the near future. 

Jayce walked over to Viktor's sketchbook. Pouring over the various improvements the man had penned for the boiler. 

"You say the machinery at the farm should have everything we need for this?" 

"Not exactly. We can guarantee the elements of the first page. The second is for if we have more time and resources." Viktor called over his shoulder. 

He was elbows deep in the dated machine, taking the lead now that the larger sections were removed, and access had become more limited. 

Viktor placed a few more objects on the floor with the others. He'd long since changed into someone's old clothes, not wanting to ruin his ordinary outfit. They were both covered in thick black oil. They set to work cleaning what they could, fixing what was salvageable, and setting aside what was not. 

"Do you have a time frame?" 

"For what?" Viktor asked. 

"For how long you want to stay here." 

Viktor thought about it for a while. 

"No. But before we move on, we need to find some way of generating an income. We won't get far without currency, Jayce. This may not be our world, I've seen no evidence of it yet. We don't know what to expect." 

"At the very least Piltover and the Undercity seem to be in the same state." Jayce said, as he focused on removing the usable parts from the broken pieces. . 

"Oh?" 

"It was something Martha said, she mentioned that the people of the undercity had some of the worst health. Which, would at least suggests that they have it no better here than they did before." Jayce explained. 

Viktor was quiet for a long time.

"My goals haven't changed. I want the people of the undercity to have better lives, Jayce." Viktor explained. "I just... I need your help. I couldn't do it on my own." it was nearly a whisper. Jayce put a reassuring hand on the man's shoulder. 

"We're in this together. My place is by your side. I know that now. Together, I think we can do this." Jayce assured. Viktor looked hopeful, it was the expression Jayce had hoped he'd see the first time, when Viktor had emerged from the pod. 

"Right, you two!" They both nearly jumped out of their skins at the woman's voice. "-it'll be a quick bath today, foods nearly ready as it is. Use the small tub to get the worst of it off then the bath to finish up." she ordered. 

Jayce assured her they would and quickly got to neatening up their work space. 

In the bathroom Viktor brought out the questionable powder again, it grated on Jayce's skin as he tried his best to scrub the worst of the black oil off of his arms and everywhere he could reach of this torso. 

Viktor was having a much easier time of it, he only had to roll his leaves a little higher and scrub his arms. Jayce wondered whether he should have sacrificed a shirt himself. 

They took turns bathing again, Viktor going first as before. Jayce stopped his own water from fully boiling so as to make his turn a little faster. 

"The boiler is intriguing, it isn't standard. I believe it is someone's personal solution." Viktor mused as he dried his hair. Pouring over the notes he'd made thus far.

"It probably is." Jayce agreed. "Their two eldest were mechanics."

"Were?"

"He didn't go into detail, but they must have passed away. By the looks of the workshop, I would say a few years back at least." Jayce kept it brief, for lack of any solid information to pass on.

They both made their way to the dining area when they'd finished, which was in record time considering the state they'd been in.

They chatted for a while, explaining their plans for the boiler, Jayce had brought his own notebook to the table, which even Viktor seemed to have thought was a bad idea as he glanced between Jayce who was busy taking his notes, and Martha who's lips were pursued into a thin line. 

Jayce however, remained oblivious. 

"Well, if you don't need the second harvester until summer, then we can use parts from that. Keep it localised to just the one machine, if we can. Anything we use we'll make a list of, in case we don't get the chance to replace them ourselves." He said as his scribbled a list of various parts from the machine that they would be harvesting. "We can take a look at the other vehicles too while we're there, see if there's anything that may need fixing before they need turning on." 

"Well, I'd appreciate it!" Kaff declared, leaning in to take a look at the paper. Suddenly both their plates were swept from under them. Kaff and Jayce's expressions of disappointment were mirrors of each other. Viktor cringed for them. Effy laughed. 

"Oh? You weren't done?" Martha said, mock concern coated every word. "Well then act like it!" she shoved their plates back to them, they both finished in a hurry. 

Soon Viktor and Jayce were bundled into the back of a wagon, a duffle bag of tools secured between them. 

They were both dressed in hand-me-downs now, assured that whatever clothes they went in were going to be beyond salvaging. 

The journey was rough, they were lucky enough to have the full moon on their side, but it did little to help with visibility. The journey was a long one, the Inn was long gone now as they passed over hills, the terrain evening out in such a way that they could see distant clusters of lights where villages and towns had formed. They's long since given up trying t communicate with Kaff, the man was sat at the front, guiding the horses, the noise was just too much to combat. Jayce leant over, closer to Viktor's ear, the man leant to catch what it was Jayce was trying to tell him. 

"If the mountains are that way, Piltover is somewhere over there!" Jayce called out, the wind whipping his voice away. Viktor frowned, looking in the direction Jayce was pointing, he leant back in.

"How do you know?"

"Martha! She said, if we'd come from the opposite direction, she'd have thought we'd come from Piltover." He explained. Viktor likely caught less than half of his words, but it was enough at least to get the gist of what he was saying, the man nodded. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, he had that apprehensive look etched into his expression again.

Jayce shook his head, even in this lighting he could still make out the colour of Viktor's eyes. It wasn't vivid by any means, the cool hue of the night neutralising colour, but the pigment was still there to some extent. A bathroom light in Piltover was hardly going to be much harsher. Jayce just couldn't get that image out of his head, and how inaccurate it was. 

Before long they were at the farm, pouring over the vehicles. They were all in dire need of maintenance. It was becoming increasingly obvious that, at least as far as the farming machinery was concerned, it wasn't lack of knowledge that was the issue. 

Jayce suspected the true culprit was likely a form of depression. An inability for the old man to bring himself to do the maintenance, he reminisced about his son's who would usually help him, how good they are with the farm. 

It was the present tense that concern Jayce... It was dawning on him that the couple had likely lost all of their children one way or another. It wasn't uncommon outside of places like Piltover, but these folks also weren't poor. Whatever had happened was nothing short of a tragedy, and poverty wasn't it.

Yet the man seemed so reluctant to acknowledge them in the past tense. 

Viktor and Jayce shared similarly knowing glances whenever the man would mention one of his sons. 

After far too long they had what they needed, most of the vehicles had had what maintenance they could do in the time they had. It was just some last little things left to do before they could head back. The light from the machines had helped massively but it didn't make the work any less cold. Jayce and Kaff were replacing some of the lights on one of the machines. 

"Kaff, did you have the bulb?" Jayce asked, balanced precariously on the hood. It was quieter in here, but the wind still whistled violently through the missing or broken slats.

"Bolocks. I've left it on the bench. Viktor, lad! Grab that bulb would you." Viktor went to collect it for them as Jayce finished rewiring the broken side. 

"Hold this for me?" Jayce asked, gesturing to the units protective housing. Kaff held it steady, aware of the delicate nature of the already rusted hinges. Neither of them noticed when Viktor arrived at the foot of the vehicles steps, a good meter or two below them. 

He tried to get Kaff's attention, but the old man was locked in. Eventually Viktor resorted to raising his voice slightly. 

"Kah! The light you asked for." Jayce and Kaff turned to the man, looking equally confused. 

"Where'd you hear that? My sons are the only ones as call me that." 

Viktor looked confused. 

"Your son's are the only ones to call you by your name?" 

"No-No, I mean, you called me Kah, just now." The old man said, as he took the light from Viktor. 

Jayce's partner raised an eyebrow, looking over to Jayce for confirmation. Jayce's breathing was shallow, he struggled to fill his lungs, a nagging feeling he'd been having all day was finally manifesting itself as an idea. His eyes were locked on Viktor. He painfully dragged them away. 

"Hm? I heard Kaff. Your son's call you Kah? Where did the F's go?" Jayce diverted as he took the light from the old man. 

"You heard 'Kaff' ? Oh, sorry lads, I think old age's playing tricks on me." He chuckled sadly. "Came about when they were just young'uns really, our oldest had started sayin' 'Mah' bit of a mix of Martha and Mah for mother at a guess. But then, he started calling me Kah, like Mah and Kah. I guess he taught the young'uns when they came along!" he said through a sad smile. 

Viktor had long since gone quiet, he stayed that way until they got home and back to the boiler room.

They were alone, working on the machine. 

"Did I say Kaff?" He asked, mid task. 

"Hm? You're still thinking about that? I heard Kaff." Jayce responded. 

"That... Isn't true. You both looked confused." 

Jayce sighed. "I barely heard you to begin with. You could have said Kay for all I knew. He heard what he wanted to. He lost them years ago, he's still grieving." Jayce concluded, taking Viktor's task from him.

Viktor reluctantly let the matter rest for the moment.

The job lasted far longer than Jayce had expected. He soon found himself taking more and more 'breaks'. Frequently those breaks were interrupted as Jayce jolted awake moments before toppling off his stool.

Martha brought them refreshments before declaring that she'd be going to bed, and that they should pause until tomorrow. 

They graciously accepted, assuring that if they got too tired they too would sleep. 

The atmosphere got lighter as the night progressed, Jayce was grateful for the change of atmosphere. Reigniting his energy for the job at hand. They worked as a team to reassemble the boiler. But eventually it was just too much, Jayce declared that he at least would be napping in the corner. And that Viktor should consider doing the same. But just like the old days, Viktor was far too absorbed in the task at hand.

"Wake me if you need anything." Jayce muttered, his eyes solidly closed as he did. 

____________________

The smell of cooked pork and the sound of giggling children woke Jayce. He flinched at the pain in his neck as he tried to move. He'd slid down the wall at an odd angle in his sleep. The room was warm, the hum of the boiler was relaxing, in a nostalgic sort of way. Jayce blinked in surprise, Viktor must have finished the job himself while Jayce slept. Speaking of Viktor, he looked down, resting on his chest he could see the back of a familiar mop of hair. He was grateful he'd kept his shirt on this time. 

"Viktor?" He asked, moving gently to a seated position. Propping the man up on his shoulder, a slightly less awkward position to find himself in. Viktor stirred a little, but he didn't wake.

Jayce noticed a blanket, that they hadn't brought down with them, had been draped over them both. He wrapped the smaller man in it and made to pick him up. He paused a moment, realising that last time he'd done this, it really hadn't gone well. He rationalised that there must have been certain conditions that that specific scenario had met to cause his panic attack. He reasoned that this would be different. It was daytime for one. Secondly, Viktor was looking much more peaceful. He picked the man up, trying to force more of a seated position so that he looked more relaxed rather than unconscious. Quietly he took him upstairs, he was surprised to see that the bar wasn't empty, there was a diverse bunch of people he had never seen before already populating it's stools and booths. He tried his best not to be noticed as he took Viktor to their room. 

He laid the man down in the bed, making sure to  keep him comfortably wrapped in the blanket, partly so that the oil and engine grease didn't stain the covers. He wrapped the pillows in the scrap fabric Viktor had been drawing on the day before. He took the man's shoes off gently. 

He re positioned his friend once last time to make sure he was comfortable. Kneeling on the bed he took the man by the waist with his right arm, and supported his head with his left. He shifted him more central on the mattress.

Jayce paused once he was sure the man was comfortable, he ran his fingers through Viktor's hair to remove it from the man's face. Pausing for a moment to admire the black smudges that littered his skin.

What am I doing? he blinked wearily, untangling his fingers from the brown locks, and stood up.

He quickly made his way out of the room, and was soon met with Martha who threw her arms around him. 

"We can't thank you enough, honestly. Look at him, look how happy his is." She walked him to the balcony, as if on queue Kaff must have landed a joke because the whole bar erupted in laughter. Kaff himself was beaming from ear to ear. 

"As much as I'd love to take the credit, I fell asleep before we finished. I woke up and it was running." Jayce said as he leant on the banister, drinking in the atmosphere. 

This. This is what Viktor always wanted, the smaller, more meaningful changes that real people could experience. One stupid boiler and these people have their whole lives back.

"We'd like to repay you, for your hospitality -" Jayce began

"Listen, Jayce. We could house you two for the next one hundred years. It wouldn't be enough. You'll never know how much this meant to us." Martha assured, patting the hand that was planted on the banister. 

"In that case, I have a favour to ask." 

Kaff and Effy helped Jayce set up the little booth in the sunniest corner of the bar. Effy had offered to write the sign, but it had gone so poorly that Martha accused her of sabotage and sent her to play with the dogs. 

Instead, Jayce wrote it, though he asked Martha for help with pricing, stating he wasn't even sure which currency they used, not fully knowing where they were exactly.

He went to collect a bunch of tools from the workshop, cleaned two sets of them up, grabbed a bunch of go-to fixings and headed back. 

It wasn't long before he had his first customer. It was classed as a 'Small' job, as specified on the sign. Nothing major, just readjusting the tension and lubrication on a prosthetic that had been moving sluggishly for some time. It didn't really require any fix or any cleaning, which kept it in the "maintenance" bracket. The addition of lubrication as a finite resource kept it from being in the "Extra small" bracket. 

Jayce was on his fifth customer when Viktor came over, looking very unsure. 

"Jayce? What is this?" He asked. 

"Our job, for the foreseeable. Until we're comfortable with moving on." Jayce explained, holding up a small tool kit he'd gotten together for his partner. 

Viktor tilted the sign his way, his brows furrowed. 

"You wrote this?" He asked, an eyebrow raising. 

"I had Martha help with the pricing. I'm at least self aware enough to know that I probably shouldn't be setting costs." 

"Neither should she." Viktor lamented, promptly rewriting the sign and replacing it. He'd shaved off a decent chunk from each of the lower tiers. 

Soon folks that had been at the bar for hours, had read the sign and moved on, we're approaching the booth with various lower tier requests. The first customer Jayce had served that day laughed. 

"Where were you a couple hours ago?" He asked Viktor sarcastically. Jayce almost made to offer the man his extra money back. But was cut off by a quick wave of Viktor's hand as the man sat down. 

"That was the morning rate." Viktor stated without missing a beat. The customer chuckled into his bottle before taking another swig.

In no time at all Viktor had tripled their profits, he seemed to be enjoying the work, but had tactfully repositioned himself and Jayce so that he could tuck himself into the corner of the bay window, and Jayce could sit front and centre to charm the customers. 

It started to quieten down a little, during one of the lulls Jayce slid over to sit closer to Viktor. 

"What do you think? Is this something you could enjoy, for now at least." 

"For now." Viktor confirmed. Jayce didn't need him to elaborate, he knew his partner well enough to know that he loved fixing things, but that his ultimate goal would have to be world altering. 

When the bar was fully populated and the traffic to their little booth had properly died down, Jayce started "locking up" so to speak, namely closing the area off with an ornate screen Marth had salvaged from the lost and found. 

Jayce motioned for Viktor to come with him. 

"Where are we going?" the man asked, confused. Jayce didn't elaborate, but assured him he'd like it. 

Soon enough they were at the workshop, which Jayce had spent part of the morning scrubbing and tidying in anticipation of Viktor's visit. The place had scrubbed up nicely. The random boxes were well and truly hidden, the tools had been restored as best he could in the short time frame. And all the surfaces had been stripped of grease and grime.

Viktor's eyes lit up as they walked in, the man's cane clicking on the solid stone floor. 

"We can use it for as long as we're here." Jayce explained, leaning on the door and letting his partner drink in the sight. He was as nosey as Jayce, immediately riffling through draws and cupboards. While he looked around. Jayce wheeled in the first "Large" job they'd gotten thus far. It appeared to be some custom mobility rig that had lost power for some unknown reason. 

It took an hour from diagnosis to completely fixed, and that included sourcing the parts. With the two of them working in tandem, what couldn't they do? 

The workshop didn't have heating however, and this was still the middle of winter so they soon found themselves retreating inside, with Jayce briefly letting the customer know that the job was complete. 

They opened up shop again, not so much to take customers, more so because it was now a section completely reserved for them. 

Martha came over soon enough, a tray in hand she set a couple of drinks down in front of each them. And quickly caught Viktor by surprise with a smothering hug. 

He looked like a wild street cat being caught in an embrace. Glancing at Jayce for assistance. 

"Name it and it's yours lad. We'll never forget this." she seemed unphased that he hadn't so much as moved a muscle since the hug began. 

"It- It was the least that we could do, given the circumstances." Viktor assured awkwardly. 

Martha finally broke off the hug, pushing Viktor's drinks closer to him and nodding in his direction, her lips tight and her chin creased in her attempt to keep her act together, but her eyes betrayed her. Grateful tears threatened to spill over before she left to return to the bar.

"Not so bad is it?" Jayce asked, a grin pasted over his face. Viktor looked attacked. 

"Perhaps I should retire to our room." The man mumbled. Jayce laughed, pulling him back into his seat. The next few hours rolled away, no-one really bothered them. The occasional customer came and went. They were several drinks deep and Jayce hadn't realised just how close he was sat to his partner, but it was hard to hear the man over all the noise. He hoped this was a one off, he couldn't see Viktor wanting to sit down here for long if this was how loud it was going to be. The sun had long since set. 

"Should we head up stairs?" Jayce tried to call over the racket. 

"What?"

Jayce tutted, he quickly leant so close he could feel his own breath on the man's neck. 

"Should we go upstairs?" He said again, leaning away to catch Viktor's response. The man's looked startled. But he about managed a nod. Jayce closed up shop again, being sure to collect their pouch of coins. As they passed the bar Jayce gestured to Martha that they were going to go to bed, he hoped she understood he was saying his good-nights. She quickly grabbed a whole bottle of some of that liquor Viktor seemed fond of, as well as two clean glasses, and scooted over to an empty part of the bar, insisting Jayce come grab the offerings. He accepted them awkwardly.

They made it to the room in one piece, they'd had to wade through a sea of grateful folk they had helped first, but they were safely in the room now. 

With the door closed the sound proofing was impressive. 

"I didn't realise it was going to be so loud." Jayce apologised. His ears ringing. 

"If you think that that is loud, you wouldn't last a day in the undercity." His accent was heavy again with the drink. Jayce found it interesting the sorts of things that made Viktor's accent really come out, not that he's lost it at all, but certain Jayce assumed it had become more mild with the years he's spent in the company of the Piltoven elite. He poured the man another drink, opting to drink out of the bottle himself.

Viktor made light work of the glass, moving to stand in front of the new board of ideas, the draped fabric now being used as a sort of pin board. Picking up a pen and getting straight to jotting down whatever ideas he'd had during the day. 

Meanwhile Jayce removed his own shoes and set their tool boxes down beside the fireplace. It didn't take long before he had the fire fully stoked. He sat down heavily on the couch, he propped himself up with his elbows on his knees. The bottle limply clutched between his finger tips. He hung his head, only vaguely listening to Viktor's explanation of what he thought of the jobs they'd been presented with thus far. The man had his notebook splayed out, pinned open between his slender fingers. Jayce however, was lost in thought. He considered his dilemma from yesterday; If he was right about Viktor's feelings towards him, should he bring it up? What good was knowing going to do, and if he was wrong and that wasn't what Viktor wanted, why was the thought of that so much more painful than the alternative?

What do I want? He drunkenly asked himself. Glancing up at the man. He thought about the month's he'd spent in hell. He'd contemplated a lot, trapped in that cavern. He'd thought about the things he was willing to lose. 

Some nights he'd imagined losing Mel, he'd imagined he'd be heartbroken, but as long as he had Hextech, as long as he'd had a mission maybe he could have survived. He thought about his mother, if she'd passed a way, as one day he knew she would, if he had a mission, had Hextech, he would make it. 

But Viktor? Every time he'd imagined losing him completely, the whole world had felt empty. He'd had that same deep-water, oppressive dull feeling, the same void he'd felt dragging him under that night, before they'd met, the night he'd stood on that ledge. What would have been the point? He'd spent so much time with the man that everywhere he went would have been a curse, an excruciating reminder of who wasn't there. He had thought about his mission then, in that context. Hextech? It would have been meaningless to him. If someone had told him all he had to do to have Viktor by his side, happy and well, was destroy Hextech. He'd have single headedly razed the Hexgates to the ground, right there and then.

Slow on the draw, maybe. But he was no idiot. If that wasn't love, he'd never know what was. 

Whether Viktor felt the same way was another matter. Jayce needed to know the answer, it was eating away at him. He'd felt it these past few days specifically; his inability to fully concentrate. Second guessing every glance that came his way. His leg was bobbing up and down in his anxious state, he tried his best to summon some sort of courage. Anything would do. 

Apparently he opted for the liquid kind. He took far too generous a swig. Dragging his gaze from the floor, it settled on his partners back as the man was turned full away from him. 

"Viktor." He didn't like how it sounded to his ears, too animalistic. Too much like the tone he'd developed in hell. He pressed on, rising to his feet as he watched the man tense up. The small room made it easy to clear the distance, he stopped short of his friend by a foot, if that. 

"If I'm wrong,-" he began. Viktor turned slowly. "- stop me. If I'm right-" at that his hand found the back of the man's neck, tilting his head up so that their faces met. In the same motion Jayce's other arm drew the man in closer. There was little resistance as their lips met, Viktor's brows furrowed as he closed his eyes, relenting to the embrace. There was a sort of desperation in the smaller mans restraint, his hands hovering at the back of Jayce's neck, his nails brushing hesitantly on the skin there. Jayce felt that had the man allowed himself, he would likely have had fistfuls of Jayce's hair by now. The breaths that escaped Viktor's lips came out in shaky, stuttered bursts between kisses.  Viktor broke away momentarily to more substantially catch his breath. The visible sliver of Viktor's eyes fixated on Jayce's lips, he leant back in, his lips parting slightly in anticipation. Suddenly Viktor's eyes snapped fully open as he seemed to come to his senses. He stumbled back, pushing hard on Jayce's chest, resulting in Jayce taking, at most, a step backwards. Not dissimilar to the moment they'd shared in the astral plane. This was different though, Viktor looked furious, his dishevelled hair falling across his fiery eyes. He snatched the bottle from Jayce's hand and threw it at the dresser, it was a miracle it didn't smash as it hit the dresser and landed upright in the wood pile. 

"Viktor-" Jayce pleaded, his hand reaching slowly out towards the man. Unsure of what had startled him.

"You'll regret you did this!" Viktor declared, his accent heavier now for the anger that brought it out. The desperation in his voice just broke Jayce. "-When you're sober." the man continued. 

Jayce paused, shocked at the insinuation. 

"No, Viktor. This- this isn't-" he took a step forward, Viktor seemed to shrink back in response. Jayce stopped abruptly, taking a step back to give the man space. 

"My...My timing's bad. But this- I'm not drunk-" Viktor's expression twitched incredulously. Jayce sighed. "Well, I am, but that isn't why I'm doing this."

Jayce gestured weakly to the bottle. "That-... I was looking for courage." Jayce tried to explain. Viktor glanced at the bottle. 

"You might be lucky. You might forget this by tomorrow." Viktor muttered angrily. Jayce felt defeated.

"I don't know what to say. Are you angry because of how I feel? Or because of how I told you?" Jayce pleaded. 

"How you feel?" The man's tone was mocking. Jayce had expected a lot of reactions, mocking wasn't one of them. I really should have done this sober... "I've been by your side for years, Jayce. You didn't love me then. What makes now any different? Lack of an alternative?" The man snatched up his cane, turning towards the door. He sighed deeply, trying to compose himself. "Go to sleep Talis, before you do something you'll regret."

Now it was Jayce's turn to be angry. 

"Alternatives for what?! What do you think I'll regret?" His voice was raising dangerously in volume. They we lucky the sound downstairs was as loud as it was. 

"Me! You will regret me, Jayce!"

Any anger, any annoyance was instantly sapped from Jayce, he felt his expression go from an almost snarl straight to drained disbelief.

"What?" he breathed. 

Viktor simply sighed, his own energy having dwindled. He reached for the door knob. Before Jayce even registered it, his own hand slammed the door above the man's head, keeping it closed. 

"I haven't regretted you yet." He almost growled the words. "If I was an honest man, I'd tell you I don't even regret the Hexcore. I hate what happened. I hate that I took away your will, I hate everything up to the point that you got this second chance. But I'd be lying if I said that this right now, wasn't everything I wished for. If I was honest, I'd tell you I've spent every night since I woke up in that cave, trying to regret it. Trying to tell myself I'd do it differently, that I'd let you die." Jayce flinched at the thought. "If I was honest, I'd tell you- given the chance, knowing how it ends- I'd do it all again. But I'm not. So maybe-" he released his hold on the door. "Maybe I'd have to be drunk to tell you that."

Viktor didn't so much as turn around, though his shoulders dropped a little. Some of the tension dissipating. "Tomorrow, Jayce. A day to change your mind... You can pretend this didn't happen. It will go back to the way it was before, I won't bring it up." Viktor said, his voice a hollow monotone. 

The door clicked open. 

"I don't need a day, I've had years." Jayce begged "If you think I'll forget regardless, answer me this; I was right, wasn't I?"

Viktor paused in the doorway. But inevitably he left without saying another word.

Jayce collapsed onto the couch, cursing the way he'd handled it. Had he not been drinking, would Viktor have believed him, no questions asked? Or would he have found just another reason to doubt it.

Jayce was a mess, he couldn't stop the tears that burned streaks down his face as he replayed the moment over and over in his head. He pressed his fingertips to his eyes in frustration, a headache swept in like a painful fog. 

Time passed, Viktor still hadn't returned. Jayce had calmed down somewhat, due in no small part to a lack of energy, as exhaustion clawed at his consciousness. 

He stared into the flames, and bit by bit his mind focused more on the moment before everything had imploded. The kiss was a haze, but the sensation of it stuck with him. He traced his thumb subconsciously across his lips. He could still feel the nails at the back of his neck. Exhaustion was taking over every cell in his body. It wouldn't be long now before he was out like a light. I'm not imagining it, if he didn't love me too, he wouldn't have stayed so long. That has to mean something? Right? 

Jayce was an absolute state, still wearing the clothes he'd been wearing yesterday, his long hair begged for the teeth of a good comb, he didn't care. The clock above the cold fireplace in their room had suggested it was past eleven in the morning. He'd overslept spectacularly, and waking up it was obvious Viktor hadn't returned.

He rushed out the bedroom door and down the corridor, passing the balcony and nearly throwing himself and Martha down the staircase in his hurry. They were lucky Martha was built of sterner stuff. She caught him by the arm, stopping him in his tracks.

"Eyy! Slow down lad-!" She began, her tone light, as you would if a little kid accident ran into you. But as she took in the sight she glanced nervously over her shoulder and immediately started shoving Jayce back up the stairs. "Nope, absolutely not."

"Martha?" Jayce asked, confused and more than a little frustrated. He needed to find Viktor. This, whatever it was, a waste of time. He was trying his best not to snap at her, but he wasn't in the mood.

"Get back in there!" She said in her best aggressively motherly whisper and she shoved him all the way back to his room.

"Martha, please, I need to find Viktor-"

"I'll bet you do." That caught Jayce off guard. He calmed down enough to be confused.

"What-What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's supposed to mean; the lads been up since ungodly o'clock. Long before we were at least, and we've been pulling teeth trying to figure out why he looks like he just lost his whole world. Come to find you looking like the cause! Would you look at yourself son, you look a mess." She said taking a step back, shaking her head disapprovingly as she took in the sight. "Now, I don't know what you've done, but turning up to your apology looking like this isn't putting your best foot forward. I'll tell you that much for free!"

Jayce was stunned, the audacity.

"Why is it automatically my fault?" He demanded.

She was a trooper, she didn't get angry that he was answering back, she just looked at him knowingly.

"I've seen a lot of arguments in my time. The one who manages to sleep is typically the one who caused the fuss to begin with."

"Your logic is flawed, and secondly, how is turning up looking like I've had a nice refreshing beauty sleep going to look on the scale of 'I don't give a shit' to 'this is tearing me apart.'" Jayce countered.

"Watch your tonged with me, Jayce." she scolded. "I'm not saying you don't have a point. But son, if the booze had anything to do with the mess you're in, you reek of them. Get a shower. Get dressed. You can use ours down the hallway I'll bring you a change of clothes, save your boy seeing you before you're decent."

Jayce took a few shaky breaths, he dialled back his attitude as best he could, blinking in shock. What was he doing? This was outrageous behaviour, certainly to be directing at this incredible woman who they owed so much to already. 

"Martha, I-I'm sorry, I don't know wha-"

He felt a reassuring hand on his arm.

"I know, son." She lead the way. "That's another thing. You think it was going to go well if you'd had that tone with him?"

She showed him to the ensuite attached to her and Kaff's bedroom. She took his clothes to be washed. The bathroom was beautiful and homely, with a wonderful rustic aesthetic to it, with it's natural beige walls and it's darker live-edge wood furniture. 

The hot water worked wonders on his sore muscles. The soaps found in various dishes all smelt incredible as well. He tried to relax, it should have been effortless with all these luxuries, but he felt himself slipping every time he tried. He was anxious to see Viktor, to see an expression on the man's face that wasn't so painful.

It was Kaff who brought him a clean change of clothes, in the end.

"Thank you Kaff, I'm sorry about all of this. Do you know where I can find Viktor?" He said as he buttoned up the dark shirt that was somewhat too small for him. He opted to roll the leaves up to avoid the cuffs looking an inch too short.

"He doesn't seem best pleased, you know. I was down before my old lady. Come down round 4am, near caught him sobbing. Made my presence known, made like I'd heard nothing. Never seen someone collect 'emselves so quick. Heart breaking, lad. It really was." Kaff said.

Jayce sighed, it was his fault he'd been drinking, but that wasn't the issue here. The issues was Viktor's own assumption that Jayce was going to walk back what he said. That it was all some drunken lie. Yet here Kaff and Martha were, trying to none-too-subtly tell him he needs to apologise. It's not that he had anything against apologising, typically he owned up to his mistakes, but this wasn't a mistake, he didn't need to apologise, he needed the man to see that Jayce valued him beyond their work together. To see that someone could love him for more than his worth to them.

Maybe if he'd noticed how Sky had felt, maybe he would be more open to the idea that he is desirable.

And there it was again, the cursed black mirror version of Viktor from the memories flashing to the forefront.

Is that it? Was I seeing them as two separate issues when they're just one in the same?

"Thank you, Kaff." he said as he took his leave.

He made his way down the corridor, turning to his right, reaching the landing he stopped at the balcony that overlooked the main floor of the Inn. 

The bar was already quite full, luckily not nearly as full as it had been the night before.

He descended the stairs, pushing through the crowd as politely as he could, making his way to the corner booth, situated in the far left bay window. The screen was pulled aside and there were various disassembled projects scattered about the table. As expected Viktor was sat in his usual corner, tucked away from prying eyes.

Jayce stood there a moment, he could see that the man recognised his presence. Slender finger tips picked up one of the commissions and without so much as a glance in his direction they held it out to Jayce. Jayce glanced at it momentarily, at some point the device appeared to have come apart, and the job now at hand was to fix the damage done by the customer's failed attempts at putting it back together. An easy fix, if a little time consuming. Jayce ignored the offer.

"It's the next day."

"I didn't say 'the next day' I said 'a day' to change your mind." the man reminded him.

Jayce grit his teeth. "Put a time to it." at that Viktor turned his head toward Jayce, still not looking at him, but it was enough to see him. Viktor looked tired, the whites of his eyes were a raw red. Jayce sighed, he slumped onto to the bench opposite. "Put a time to it, or I will."

"Midnight." Viktor proposed, as he tinkered with whatever he had in his hands.

"You won't be awake by then. Eight." 

Viktor slid a project over to Jayce, a sort of indicator that the time was acceptable. It was a deal. Jayce leant back on the cushioned bench, he put his feet up on the corner of the table, crossing his legs at the ankles. Martha had long since given up telling him not to.

They worked in mostly silence for hours. They turned over project after project, a stack of boxes forming at the head of the table, all labelled and time stamped. Meanwhile his partner seemed so reluctant to look in his direction. It was painful. Jayce found himself asking Viktor to pass him things he didn't need, or asking mundane questions in the hopes that the man might glance up out of habit. He never did.

Eventually an older gentleman arrived at their table, hat in hand looking between them shyly. His face was flushed from the cold of the outdoors. Viktor flicked his wrist in the direction of the potential customer's shoes, it was a subtle move that only Jayce would have noticed, to anyone else it could have been mistaken for him adjusting the grip he had on his tool. Jayce made a similarly minute movement to acknowledge the observation. This was going to be a big job... The man's shoes were not made for walking on anything other than the polished floors of some high society club. But they, along with his pressed trousers, were drenched and caked in mud.

"Boy am I glad to see people such as yourselves." The man said sheepishly.

"To what do we owe the pleasure?" Jayce asked.

The older man, possibly mid sixties at a guess, told them of an incident he had had a few miles away where by his car had stopped for no apparent reason. And how he'd had to walk over the fields to get here.

"We don't typically travel for jobs-" Jayce let the sentence hang slightly, waiting for what he knew would come.

"I'll pay double! Triple even." Jayce caught the brief raise of an eyebrow from Viktor. He understood it to mean "That was quick." Jayce would have to agree, he knew where it would go, but he thought there would be a little more push back at least. Jayce put on a display of umm-ing and ahh-ing, eventually agreeing to take the job. He assured the man that they would be out shortly if he wanted to go get something to eat.

Jayce stood up, arm outstretched to his partner.

"I'm not going." Viktor said incredulously.

"Of course you are, I'm not going on my own now am I." Jayce assured.

"And set my leg back another week? Eh, I'll pass."

Jayce looked entirely unimpressed. He'd just managed to lock himself into a horrible job, and now he couldn't even have company?

"Doesn't that pose a potential issue, if I'm not back by eight?" he pointed out, he was only mildly concerned that he would upset the man. He was still more than a little annoyed himself that Viktor even thought it was necessary. Of what Jayce could see of his partners eyes, they seemed to dull. 

"Tell me now, remove the potential." Viktor said, the monotone had returned. Jayce just sighed, he grabbed the jacket Kaff had leant him and was out the door in maybe five minutes. 

He started following the man the way he claimed to have come. He stopped, quickly realising that there was no need, if the old man was right and his vehicle was where Jayce thought. It was likely in a small little crop of houses they had passed with Kaff on the way to the farm, meaning the man had essentially made a massive loop to get to the Inn. 

"Sir. If you'd follow me." Jayce tried his best to maintain his sickly sweet public demeaner, but he was more than a little frustrated with the man already. He'd never heard such meaningless ramblings, at this point he was surprised the man had made it this far. He seemed to have the awareness of a three year old child. 

They trudged through thick mulch, after the very first hill the man looked amazed. 

"Well I never! That's my vehicle! We got hear so fast, time does fly when you have someone to talk to." Jayce was tempted to walk away right there and then. 

Get your act together, it's not this guys fault you're in a bad mood. he scolded himself. 

"Doesn't it just?" he said as cheerily as he cod muster. 

Jayce did what he could there and then, but it was becoming more and more apparent that he would need the workshop. He straightened up, assessing the distance he might have to push the machine. 

He couldn't push it over the hill, if he got it stuck he'd be in even more trouble. His eyes traced the road that curved around to the left of the hill. He sighed... It was going to be a long day. 

The sun was setting as he approached the village, the old man hadn't stopped talking the whole time. Jayce constantly had to remind the man to steer. 

"I think I might be able to manage the rest of the way, Ed." Jayce declared as they made it into the courtyard. "You get yourself warm, I'll find you once it's done." 

"Oh, well, I wouldn't want to just leave you on your own now!" 

"Really, Ed. It's no bother, my partner will be here shortly. Thank you for all your help!" With that the man trotted off to the Inn, while Jayce tackled the challenge of steering the thing to the back where the workshop was situated, as he approached he spotted Viktor opening the bay doors. He was properly back to form now, Jayce noted. The cane was added support but the man wasn't exactly putting all his weight on it like he'd been doing since the cave. 

Jayce was drenched as he pushed the vehicle from behind. As he passed Viktor, who's eyebrow was raised in what Jayce felt was likely a "You get what you asked for" type of tone, Jayce grunted out a quick "We agreed on triple." 

Viktor smirked, closing the doors behind them once the vehicle was properly situated.

Jayce stood up straight, stretching his back as he did, the ache was unreal. His lower back was on fire, much like his calves. He promptly took his shirt off and wiped away the excess sweat. His hands were a mess, his trousers clung to him with how soaked and muddy they were. He threw the shirt on one of the desks and slumped into a stool. Trying to catch his breath. As if on queue, just as he was lamenting the feel of his desert-dry throat, a mug appeared before him, the contents looked to be tea. He gratefully accepted the drink, which was gone in seconds, a small grace that it was even cool enough to drink. He set the mug aside, at which point he heard it being refilled. 

"In all this time, did you determine the cause." Viktor asked. Jayce could hear the satisfaction in the man's voice. 

"Did you always like to see me  suffer, or am I just now noticing?" Jayce asked, defeated. Viktor chuckled softly to himself and made his way to the other side of the room. He disappeared around the corner for a second, coming back soon after, a little slower this time, a bit more of a struggle. Jayce sat up a little straighter, wondering what the sudden change of pace was about. Tucked under the man's arm that wasn't using the cane, was a large wooden bucket of water. Jayce quickly stood up and took the water from the man.

"What's this for?" he asked running his finger tips through the silky smooth liquid, it was warm still. 

Viktor looked the man up and down. Still not meeting his eyes, or even looking at his face for that matter. 

"I'll let you figure that out." he said as he gestured to a pile of clothes and a towel. 

Bathing out of a bucket, if Piltover could see me now.

He started with his face and hands, moving ten to his torso. It was bitterly cold, it took everything he had not to quit right there and then. The was reminded of the ice cold streams they'd collected water from in the mountains. Bathing had been unbearably cold there too. This had to be better than that.

In the meantime Viktor was very pointedly facing the opposite direction, he noticed. The man had popped open the hood and was buried in his work. 

Jayce took the opportunity to remove his trousers and use what was left of the water to scrub his legs and feet down. 

While cold, he did feel much better for being clean, no where near as clean as if he'd had a shower, but it would do for now, especially since they would still be working on the vehicle, so it didn't need to be perfect. He got dried and dressed and made his way over to his partner. 
They were quite sure they knew what the issue was, so they got to work. Time passed, the devised a plan as to how they might go about it.

"I mean, with access being as tight as it is, we don't have a lot of options." Jayce mused as he assessed the engine bay.

"It may be easier to reach from below. I would have an easier time than you." Viktor proposed. Jayce glance at the rusted the axle stands.

"Too risky, you're not going under this thing."

"Then we'll need to remove this-" Viktor said, less then enthusiastically as he place a hand on a section of the machine that was situated above the problematic part.

Jayce walked around, leaning over the engine bay for a better look. "I don't think so. From this angle, I think you might be able to reach through, if we just had a wrench long enough, you could undo it from here, access for taking it out is much better on the other side. it's just undoing it that's the issue."

Viktor processed the idea for a moment, slipping his arm through the small gap Jayce had found. 

"It could work." He mused. 

"What are our options?" Jayce looked around the room, he wasn't immediately seeing anything long enough, or even anything that they could quickly jury-rig to achieve the extra length. Viktor was busy assessing what he could, engrossed in the machine.

"Jayce, there should be a wrench extender of sorts in the third draw down, by the window. Get that for me?"

Jayce quickly located the draw, but initially tugging on the handle resulted in very little movement. The more force he applied the less it seemed like it was going to move.

"Now, Jayce!" Jayce glanced back, Viktor was doing what he could, he was leant so far in that his bad leg wasn't even in the floor anymore, and his good one was threatening to go the same way, he was on his tip toes as he leant in. Jayce looked back at the stubborn draw, brows raised.

"Are you sure this is the draw?" He was met with an incredulous look that said "Do I look stupid?" Jayce snatched up a chisel from the work bench and finally managed to pry it open, he snatched up the extender, which was very obviously hand made, and handed it to Viktor. Jayce was just glad he'd managed to open it, while Viktor worked at that Jayce went to see what damage he'd done to the workbench, he felt a little guilty as he ran a finger along the damaged draw front...It was painted shut. Likely by accident some time ago. Jayce felt that gnawing feeling building up again, he glanced in Viktor's direction. The man hadn't seemed to notice. Jayce quietly shut the draw.


_______________

It was just past five when they had the thing up and running, taking just shy of an hour. As promised Ed paid three times the going rate and was on his way. 

They had done very well these past few days. As out of touch with money as Jayce typically was, Viktor assured him that they were well on their way to any goals they had of making the journey to wherever they went next.

They took turns bathing, they'd been offered a private upstairs bathroom now that downstairs was constantly occupied. 

Viktor came back from putting their earnings away in their room.

Jayce was in the process of trying, again, to offer Martha some sort of rent. She would have none of it. Eventually Jayce was happy to see he seemed to have worn her down. 

"You know what son, you're right." She looked between the two, Viktor seemed hopeful that she was finally coming around to their way of thinking. "I think you owe me, about half your profits-" 

It was a blow, but ultimately fair. 

"-Kaff! Get the till!" She called over her shoulder. "O'course, only fair then that we owe you half of ours." She had such a wicked smirk on her face. 

Viktor and Jayce's faces fell, immediately the two of them were caught up in declining the trade. Kaff came over with the stacked till in hand. 

"Here ya go, Petal." he said as he handed her the tray. 

"The boys say they owe us half, thought it only fair we trade. Half theirs for rent. Half ours for the use of our business back." 

Kaff, nodded taking a drag from a pipe he had in hand. "Sounds about right!" He declared. The same "we've won" glint mirrored in her husband's eyes.

"Understood." Jayce relented. His hands going up in a resigned sign of forfeit. The older couple broke out into hearty laughter as they walked off congratulating each other on a game well played, placing the tray back in the till. 

"That went well." Viktor muttered. "I see you're no less easily manipulated." 

Jayce looked at his partner, he could feel how unimpressed he himself must have looked at the sly dig. Not that Viktor would know, he still had yet to look at Jayce all day. An achievement if anything, what with them having to work together on many of the days projects. 

The next couple of hours passed largely uneventful in nature. There were many familiar faces. Folks would come up to thank them for all their help. Others would stop by to chat. Jayce and Viktor seemed to have become something of local stars it seemed. Viktor didn't speak much, you couldn't have confused it with shyness mind you, the man exuded and air of confidence as he sat expertly finishing project after project. People didn't seem upset at all by it, they seemed to have quite quickly learnt that you could get his attention if your questions had some depth to them.

Their booth was a sort of U shape, situated in a bay window. Today Jayce sat at the bottom of the U with his back to the window, while Viktor sat to the right of Jayce, his back leaning against a thin section of wall that hid him from the rest of the Inn. 

From across the room Jayce heard a squeal. "VIKTOR!" out of nowhere a young girl, maybe eight years old, ten at a push, sprung at the man, her father closely following behind. 

She wrapped her arm around his neck, promptly kneeling on his bad leg. Jayce watched in bewilderment as Viktor flinched badly with the pain, hand flying to his hip as he just as quickly schooled his expression. 

"Miss. Jenny. " The man greeted. 

"Dad says we have to go in the morning, but I wanted to make sure I said goodbye." 

"And-?" the father prompted. 

"Oh! And thank you very much!" Now the pieces were starting to fit together as the girl held up a fully mechanical prosthetic arm. The form was crude, clearly a model she already had, but there were elements of newer additions that far surpassed what was previously there. These must surely have been Viktor's doing. This revelation came with the understanding that the girl had only thrown one arm around Viktor's neck, for lack of having the other. Her right arm had been amputated from the elbow down and it was this arm that currently had a prosthetic. Her left arm however, had been amputated just below the shoulder, she didn't have anything for that. No doubt it was a more difficult fix...

"I'm glad I could help." Viktor said, a kind smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. His eyes softer than usual. "Just a moment." He told the girl, she moved to stand with her dad. They waited patiently as Viktor located what it was he'd been looking for. A long slender box, which he opened in front of them.

There, resting on a cloth, was the most incredible looking piece of machinery these people had likely ever seen. Jayce flinched away, unnoticed by anyone, his breath caught in his throat as he tried desperately to calm down. His hand flew to his mouth to quieten his breathing. At first glance he'd seen the boxed prosthetic as a gold and white design. Now he could see that it was largely made of steel. No gold, or white. 

"May I?" Viktor asked the two. The dad looked shocked, the girl looked amazed. She took a step closer, moving her shoulder to be closer to him. The man delicately attached the new piece, attaching and adjusting the straps. A solid leather shoulder pad gave the design stability. Instantly she tried to move her hand and to her surprise her new hand responded in perfect sync with what she intended. It was written all over her face how thrilled she was. This was miles ahead of her other prosthetic, which had limited movement and could achieve basic grasping motions. Where as this new piece has the entire range of motion that a normal hand would have. 

The Dad leant over as she ran off eager to experience her new arm. 

"I-I don't think I can afford something like that Viktor." The father admitted quietly.

"No need." Viktor said dismissively. He went on to explain. "The prosthetic will last, there are mechanisms within it's core that can be activated with ease to expand it as she ages. Though she will likely grow out of it eventually." 

The father looked besides himself, he pulled Viktor in for a hug, tears streaming down the man's face. Again Viktor looked like a startled street cat.

"I-I wasn't finished. She must take the arm off at night. It is far stronger than she is, and she isn't used to it. She could cause harm-" 

"I understand, thank you! I won't forget this!" He declared. Quickly rushing off to find where his daughter had gone.

Jayce couldn't hide the admiration he felt for the man. How Viktor smiled slightly as the girl ran around the Inn, picking just about anything she could hold up, just for the sake of it. Jayce looked down at his own hands. 

"I suppose you charged them did you?" Jayce joked.

"It was my free time. Besides-" Viktor said as he swivelled the sign around to face Jayce. "It's not our policy." 

In bold letters;

Necessary prosthetics are maintained free of charge.

Jayce smiled sadly at the sign.

And I built weapons.... 

"What's wrong, Jayce?"

Jayce glanced up, unsurprised to see the man wasn't even looking at him. 

"How would you know if anything's wrong, you haven't so much as looked at me all day." Jayce shook his head, trying to bring his tone back a little. "I was... Reminded, that the only things I seemed to build consistently were weapons...Every time." he closed his eyes.

"You didn't start out with weapons, Jayce. Even among the more notable inventions, the gauntlets were built for the miners." It seemed a life time ago. How innocently they'd wanted to help people with HexTech... The wave of nostalgia hit hard. 

"Do you think the Arcane corruption started even back then?" 

"What do you mean?" Viktor was guarded in his question. Jayce knew he didn't like talking about it, but at the same time, they both agreed they would at some point. The things they'd kept from each other. That had to start somewhere. "The HexClaw, even back then it reacted to the gem stone. Didn't it?" 

"In my hands, yet again..."Viktor lamented.

"The last thing I made with HexTech, were those weapons." 

"I recall." Viktor didn't sound angry at all, he sounded deeply sad. Those designs, after all, had been what Viktor saw the second he stepped out of the pod. A glaring sign saying "Look, I betrayed you again."

Jayce's eyes stung with unshed tears, he closed them. He'd learnt his lesson now.

He hated that it took an alternate dimension to get him where he needed to be. But he acknowledged that it was something he was prone to, he'd gotten better, he was sure of it, but it was deeply routed in his learning style. He had to experience things for himself before he could fully understand them... Clawing his way out of the undercity had given him a perspective he never could have gotten any other way. If years by Viktor's side couldn't do it, there was no other way.

But those weapons still exist, out there somewhere. He didn't think the the people would get the HexGates working, not without Viktor and himself. But the weapons would survive. Maybe not the gauntlets, but how typical that the one thing he'd made that wasn't a weapon would likely be the only ones decommissioned. 

But why were those his legacy? Not a single miner ever touched those gloves either, so what they were originally made for was irrelevant. 

To say he was surprised when he felt a hand guide his own to some sort of metal structure, would be an understatement. With how careful Viktor had been all day to keep his distance. 

Jayce didn't immediately open his eyes, instead opting to observe the contraption with his finger tips first.

"Not everything you built was a weapon." The man reminded him. His finger tips brushed over warm fabric. Jayce's eyes flew opened, he looked down to see his fingers were exploring  a section of Viktor's outer leg brace.

"You're wearing your brace?" Jayce hadn't even realised, he must have put it on after his bath. But why? Wasn't he doing fine? Jayce was still subconsciously running his fingers over the metal until he accidently brushed the man's inner thigh, resulting in a sharp intake of breath and Jayce's hand being swatted away. Viktor's breathing was left uneven and he looked startled. Jayce caught the glance Viktor made towards an old grandfather clock in the corner of the room. It read quarter past seven. Jayce started packing their things away. He took Viktor by the arm, encouraging him to stand.

"What? Where are we going?" he asked innocently.

"Were going upstairs. It's almost eight." Jayce pointed out. Instantly the light seemed to fade from the man's eyes, he made no more comments, instead he retrieved his cane from where it rested on the wall, and slowly he made his way to their room, which upon reaching he simply sat on the bed, in front of the fire place and stared into its abyss. 

Martha must have lit it some time ago, the room was warm.

Jayce took his usual seat on the couch. They didn't say anything. The only noise was the cracking of the fire, the occasional pop as the flames found hidden air pockets to explore in the wood. 

As the time crawled by, he could see that Viktor was becoming more and more nervous. Glancing at the clock above the fire place. The time hit seven-thirty, and still Jayce hadn't uttered a word. He was leant forward, forearms rested on his knees. 

His gaze was fixed on his friend, eyes narrowing slightly as he looked up through his eyebrows, the muscles of his face taut with a quiet but undeniable intensity. His frustration was palpable, a simmering disapproval that hung in the air between them. He didn’t speak, but the message was clear: He wasn’t backing down, no matter what. It was the kind of stare that said "I meant every word."

Viktor couldn't help but glance at him now, he was quietly panicking. His eyes darting from the clock to Jayce and back. 

The time ticked by, minute by minute. 

"Jayce," Viktor breathed, as it crept closer and closer to the hour, as if trying to remind him he had something to do. 

"You're the only one running out of time here, Viktor." Jayce pointed out, his tone determined, and a little intense.

Jayce could tell when the last seconds were coming up, not by looking at the clock but by watching as Viktor's eyes widened, a tear silently cutting a silver line down the man's cheeks. As it must have hit the hour Viktor's gaze fell. Replaced now with disbelief. Jayce was trying to maintain his own composure, but Viktor's expression made it difficult. This was the face of a man who had waited years for this, likely deciding a long time ago that he would never see the day. 

"What now, are you going to give me another extension?" He asked sarcastically as his hands pushed off from his knees. He made his way around the bed until he was stood in front of the man, he knelt down to maintain eye contact. Making sure now to soften his expression. 

"You hadn't thought this far ahead had you?" 

"Yes. I had." Viktor corrected. 

"What happens next, in your plan?" Jayce asked. 

"We pretend like nothing ever happened-" 

"I mean in the possibilities where I don't take it back." Jayce cut him off. 

"There are none." 

"That isn't very scientific. The chances are never zero." Jayce reach out a hand, using a thumb, he wiped away the latest tear.

Viktor moved into the touch, scrunching his eyes shut, his brows furrowed. Jayce leant in, placing his forehead against the man's. 

"You haven't answer my question yet-" Jayce whispered in a low tone, there he let a slight pause hang in the air, only momentarily. He had a theory he wanted to test, he thought he might have noticed it before but this would be the deciding factor. Jayce was hardly some fresh faced novice, he knew what he was doing, so when he added an almost growl to the next word, he was well aware of what effect he was going for. "-Viktor." 

It had worked better than expected, never before in any of the encounters he'd had over the years had he ever actively seen the effect his voice had had on them, so the sight of Viktor's pupils becoming instantly blown out in response was intoxicating. It took him by surprise, so when their faces met he almost didn't register it. 

He leant into the kiss, placing a knee on the bed between the man's legs for support. He wrapped an arm around Viktor's waist and pulled him in closer. 

Familiarly hesitant fingertips danced at the back of his neck, clearly knowing what they wanted to do, but some uncertainty was stopping them. Jayce let it be for now, wondering if there would come a time where his partner would give in. 

Eventually Jayce caught one of the man's wrists. 

"What's wrong?-" He said breathlessly, breaking off the kiss. He leant in so that his lips were just below the man's ear, he let them brush against the visible pulse in the man's neck as he finished his sentence "What are you waiting for?" 

The hesitation was gone, instantly dashed against the rocks. One of the man's hands dragged its nails across his scalp, harder than Jayce expected, leaving fiery lines where they had been, landing much further up than Jayce anticipated and grabbing a fist full of what could have been considered Jayce's fringe, had it been long enough to make such a distinction. The other hand claimed a handful at the base of Jayce's skull. He'd have described the next motion as yanked if it hadn't been so smooth and sensual. But suddenly he was facing the ceiling, he could feel lips tracing his carotid in such an artful way so as to avoid dampening the sensation with too much pressure, this was just the right amount to stimulate the nerve endings, before finding their place at the top of the artery where the corner of his jaw met his neck. The man's tongue glided hard against the pulse for a moment before retreating as Viktor drew the skin in with measured suction. 

The small moan that escaped his own lips was unavoidable, indecent, and did nothing to help his situation. The sound his moan had elicited from Viktor was hard to describe, it was like a harsh "tch", but came with the air of "Fine, have it your way" is it Jayce had asked for something. So when he felt the man standing up, his grip on Jayce hair being used as a sort of handle or leash, Jayce followed the motion obediently so as to not lose his hair.

Any illusions of control Jayce thought he had in the situation were dashed as Viktor manipulated him until his back hit the wall, only releasing his hold once one of his hands had finished with the buttons on Jayce's shirt. 

Jayce had his ability to move his neck again. He was flustered and finding it difficult to catch his breath as Viktor's hand travelled up his back from his waist his nails dragging against the skin, planting kisses all the while on Jayce's neck. His knees felt weak already, if he didn't do something soon he was sure he was going to collapse. Viktor eventually came face to face with the taller man his eyes once again fixated on Jayce's lips, where he hesitated once more. 

It was Jayce's turn, he discarded his own shirt, grabbed the back of the man's neck, pulling him in until their lips met, his other arm wrapped around Viktor's waist, picking him up with ease and laying him, non too gently, on the bed. 

He tried briefly with the buttons but it just wasn't his forte. He took the sides of the man's collar in either hand and in less effort than he thought it would take he'd ripped several of the top buttons off. Enough at least so that he could plant kisses down the man's sternum, being sure to just as lovingly plant kissed on the brace that adorned the man's torso. .  

Something about what Jayce had done set the man off, the kisses got deeper and more frenzied. The man's nails tracking a line down from Jayce's abdomen to the muscles of the Adonis belt. The scratches weren't hard, again they were just enough to stimulate the nerves. Though he was quite sure the same couldn't be said for the ones on his back. The tips of Viktor's fingers disappearing just beneath the waist band of Jayce's trousers as they followed the pronounced V of the muscle there. 

Jayce gasped into the man's mouth, he found himself involuntarily curling into the touch, a subconscious attempt to forced the fingertips deeper under the waistband. 

At this point they were a mess of tangled limbs; Jayce was facing up towards the man, laying sideways across Viktor's lap, his free arm twisted behind him to support some of his own weight away from the bad leg. His other hand tangled a little more gently in his partners hair. Viktor was sat up, legs pinned under Jayce, his slender back arched towards the larger man, their lips locked together, parted slightly to allow for Jayce's exploration. His left arm outstretched to reach Jayce's abdomen, his fingers tucked into the waistband. His right hand tangled roughly in the man's hair.

So when the door swung open there was little they could do but freeze.

They watched in horror as Martha's back had forced the door open, no doubt due to her hands being full of steaming hot plates of food. She turned quickly around, eyes locked on the food so as not to spill anything.

"Right, you two've skipped tea at twice now, so-" she stopped dead, eyes wide as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. "So I'll just leave these here for you." She said sheepishly as she placed the plates down on the dresser and quickly retreated out the door again.

He felt Viktor's hands retreating, he wanted to complain but the sudden intrusion of the woman had both spiked his adrenaline and simultaneously caused it to crash dramatically, leaving him absolutely exhausted.

Looking up at Viktor he could tell he felt the same. Viktor's wide eyes were still locked on the now closed door, lips parted slightly in disbelief.

Jayce collected himself, being more considerate now as he sat up, trying to not crush the man's legs.

"Maybe we'll call a rain check on this." Jayce suggested, planting a parting kiss on the side of Viktor's face, just above the left side of the man's lips.

"Thirty-something years and that's never happened to me. The moment it's you and now this?" his partner looked like he was going through some sort of existential crisis. "What now? We have to see them tomorrow!"

Jayce chuckled, shaking his head.

"It's not going to be as bad as you think. I've been caught a couple times, my mom never mentioned it. At worst there'll be a lot of awkward silence."

Jayce grabbed the plates from where she'd left them.

"She's right though, not only have we not eaten since god knows when, the way I understand it, you haven't even slept." Jayce pointed out as he handed Viktor his plate of what appeared to be a roast dinner. Viktor leant back against the headboard resting his head defeatedly on the wall. They sat in mostly comfortable silence. Jayce wondered if a Viktor was also running over the last hour in his mind, assessing the new things he'd discovered about his partner. Jayce certainly was.

"I think I see why you hesitated. But I'd prefer to know for sure. " Jayce said, laying down and setting his empty plate aside, propping himself up on his elbow so that he could watch Viktor.

"What?" his partner asked, his voice already tense.

"Your hands, they hesitated both times."

"Is that so?" Viktor was using his fork to delicately move items around on his plate. Looking for a distraction no doubt. "So why do you think they did then?" he prompted, Jayce could see how tense he was.

"I think... You weren't sure how I'd react."

"You're not wrong." Viktor set aside his own meal, not even half finished. "I am no Mel Medarda. The... Contrast... I feared would be too great."

"What? What's that supposed to mean." Jayce asked, it was his turn to be on edge now.

"Well, physical... Assets aside. Gentle isn't really my... forte?" Viktor explained. "I saw what you said as an... Invitation to show you a little bit more about myself than I originally planned." 

He was glad Viktor moved away from the physical differences. He'd had about all he could stomach of the man comparing himself to Mel. Reminded bitterly that he still had yet to discuss the dream, despite his promise. But this was more in line with what he'd guessed. Jayce's previous encounters had been largely vanilla, difficult to find anyone in Piltover who would be willing to explore much more. Not to say the didn't have their own... quirks? Just that they were far more likely to pay for the pleasure of indulging them, rather than lose face with a fellow elite.

Typical then that it was likely going to be a Zaunite that would show him honestly like this.

Then I'd dawned on him, though he'd tried to distance himself from the memories. 

"The council room... And at the HexGates."  Viktor moved a little uneasily, more than a little uncomfortable all of a sudden, it seemed.

"It was, after all, me controlling the creatures...I, seemed to have... Utilised one of my more questionable habits. Though I promise I did everything in my power to keep a level head tonight. To avoid... Things that could cause you distress." 

Distress... What a way to word it.

"I can't... Control what sets me off..." Jayce said as he buried his face in the pillows. They smelt of Viktor. He took a deep breath, he could feel tears prickling at his eyes yet again, he let the linen sap them away. He hadn't had an attack in days, maybe since they'd gotten here, He'd gotten close, but it hadn't been as full blown as the ones he'd had before. But he wasn't gullible enough to think that meant he was cured. He suspected what they'd seen already was just the tip of an insurmountable iceberg, one who's roots they had yet to discover. 

He felt the man lay down besides him, he felt fingers gently curling his hair between themselves.

"I know. But I'm not about to test the waters. Certainly not without your prior consent." The man's voice sounded like honey, his accent dripping off of every word. Jayce took hold of Viktor's hand, still not looking at the man. And guided it his his own throat. Viktor became as stiff as a board. His hand pinned flat against the pillow.

"Try?" Jayce asked. He'd rather know, in advance, if he might have a bad reaction to it.

The hand slowly dragged itself out from under Jayce. A kiss was planted on the back of his head.

"No, Jayce. Not today."

Exhaustion mercilessly snatched his consciousness away from him. He didn't dream that night, not a good dream, nor his usual bad ones. There was nothing, peace perhaps? Maybe there was peace. 

It was still dark when Jayce awoke. For the longest time now he'd woken up to a welcoming golden glow each morning, this came as a surprise. He was dazed, not yet fully conscious. He reached out, trying to find the curtain to pull it aside, but his arm met with nothing, falling instead through thin air. He tried again with the other, in case he'd fallen asleep facing the other side of the couch this time. Again his arm passed the point it should have had their been a wall, he lowered it slowly until the back of his hand came to a halt on a warm, soft surface. He explored the strange material with his fingers, trying to determine, in his half-conscious state, what it could be. It was soft and gave way slightly under pressure, up until he felt something solid, a disk of metal embedded in the soft surface. He frowned, moving up he found another disk. A row of them.

There was a light groan from somewhere by his side.

"Jayce?" the voice came from the darkness, far closer than expected. But as he spoke the smooth surface seemed to move under his finger tips. His spine. embarrassment hit Jayce like a brick. 

"Viktor! I'm sorry. I was half asleep, I thought I was still on the couch." there was some shuffling, then a pause.

"What?" Viktor said blearily.

"It doesn't matter, I didn't mean to wake you, it's early still." Jayce said awkwardly. He'd explain properly in the morning.

"Are you alright?" Viktor asked cautiously. 

"Get some sleep, I'm fine." Jayce chuckled nervously. 

Jayce lay back down, it was pitch black still, there wasn't even enough light for his eyes to adjust to anything. He fumbled with the duvet a little, and brought it up over what he hoped were Viktor's shoulders. He laid on his back, his arms crossed under his head. 

"Jayce?" Viktor sounded odd, his voice shook, filled with uncertainty.

"Hmm?" Jayce asked, brows furrowed.

There was no answer, the man's breathing seemed to have settled.

Jayce closed his eyes.

"What are you doing?" it was a desperate whisper. Jayce was instantly alert.

"Viktor?" He asked of the dark, hands quickly flying out in what he hoped was his partners direction, quickly identifying the man's shoulder, finding the sides of his face.

He glanced about, it was too dark to see. But he couldn't hear anyone else either. Who's he talking to?

Another groan.

"Jayce?" The tone was one of concern and confusion, but it lacked the urgency it had only a moment ago.

Viktor's tone switched again to something that sounded like excruciating pain.

"Please, Jayce! Stop! I'm begging-!"

"What? Stop what, what are you talking about?" Jayce was panicking, he didn't know what was going on, but he quickly removed his hands from the man's face.

"Jayce?" his partner asked, absurdly calm for how desperate he'd sounded just moments ago.

"Stop, Jayce! You can't keep doing this!"

Jayce had no idea what was going on, he grabbed a fist full of the duvet and blankets and ripped it off of them. Something was causing the man excruciating pain. A night terror?

Jayce ran his hands down the man's legs, there was nothing concerning there, his lower brace seemed to be in place, nothing broken, nothing that could be hurting him.

Another excruciation yell, mixed it seemed with a desperate sob.

"Let me go!"

Jayce wasn't even touching him. That was it. He quickly tumbled out of bed.

"Viktor, it's okay, it's a nightmare!" he tried to reassure as he fumbled for the light switch.

He just about found it when the most devastating, heart wrenching, scream echoed through the night. He hit the light and turned quickly back to face his friend. Who was sat there, looking scared and confused. But silent. His lips pursed in concern.

And yet... Jayce could barely hear himself think over the screams still a constant to his ears. It wasn't like it was one continuous scream either, it was broken and desperate, sometimes stuttering with mixed in sobs.

Jayce fell back against the wall, he pressed his palms to his ears, but nothing helped.

What is this? Between screams the man was calling his name, begging him to stop. This wasn't a memory, it had never happened. An alternate universe? Was this the memories of some other Viktor dying at the hands of a Jayce doing what he himself could never do?

He felt sick, he curled into a ball, his forehead rested on the ground. He couldn't hear himself breathing, couldn't hear the room around him. He was just staring wide-eyed at the floor. He was vaguely aware of someone trying to get his attention in the real world.

He wanted this to stop, he couldn't bare it anymore, he never wanted to hear Viktor like this.

By the time it stopped Jayce was done. He couldn't move, he felt numb.

If anyone was looking for a new form of torture, Jayce had a few recommendations. He rose unsteadily to his knees

Viktor was there, by his side, eyes filled with concern.

"I-I don't know what to do..." Jayce managed, he was lost.

"What was this?"

"I don't know, I'd say a memory, but it wasn't something that I know happened, it was just auditory... An alternate universe, maybe? But there's no way, no way any version of me could do that- Not to you. I could never-" he trailed off.

"Figments, Jayce. A false memory. It-It wasn't real. " The man said, helping Jayce to his feet. 

"It couldn't be fake... It sounded too-." Jayce mumbled. 

"But it didn't happen. That's all you need to remember."

Jayce nodded slowly. He felt numb. It was like trying to function after a long illness. He felt weak, shaky, dazed. But worst by far was the ringing in his ears, he was sure he was imagining it, but he felt like he could still hear those world shattering screams. Viktor found him a shirt. He didn't remember putting it on, but he must have done. 

Suddenly they were sat at the bar, he had a glass in front of him. 

Seemed like water.

They were at their booth. He had a project in hand, no clue what it was. 

"-so then, I like, dropped it and this part just fell off. I got all the pieces but like I would have put it back myself but I didn't wanna break it." 

Jayce blinked, a girl was there, she said something about her problems. It was sunny. Hadn't been like that before. 

He was in the bathroom, his hand on the tap but he hadn't moved it, his hands were wet. Cold. Almost air dried. Must have washed them. He looked up, meeting his own eyes in the mirror.

He looked empty, he couldn't make out an expression on his face. He felt his eyes losing focus again. He could hear his breathing. Hear droplets echoing off the ceramics. He couldn't move. Didn't know how. 

A knock came at the door. He took a deep breath, and swung the door open. He smiled and apologised for the wait. 

"Jayce! Would you mind helping me here, in the kitchen?" Martha's voice rang out. He found his way the the beautiful rustic room, it's vaulted ceilings and stone interior made the kitchen feel like he might have found it in some ancient castle. 

"At your service!" He smiled. It didn't touch his eyes. 

He heard the heavy wooden doors close behind him. 

"What's wrong, son?" Martha asked gently. He felt his smile immediately give up, his eyes unfocused against his will. He was looking right through her. He cast his gaze to the floor, steadying himself on a nearby counter. How would he even explain this? He was beginning to doubt that these were memories at all. Part of him felt like they were being shown to him on purpose. Someone, some other entity was choosing what and when he saw things.

"Doesn't matter." he answered, even to his ears he sounded like a machine.

"I does." She said sympathetically. "This... Isn't about last night? I can't apologise enough about that, I'd have knocked-" 

Jayce laughed lightly, he felt a little more present. "No, it's not that." He said as he rubbed the back of his neck awkward. He felt like he was pantomiming emotion. She seemed to have locked on to something she could talk to him about, anything to break him out of the cycle. 

"You devil you!" she said slyly, hands on hips. "When I asked you the other day, you acted like you didn't have no clue what I was talkin' about!" She nudged him with her elbow. 

"Hm? Why, what did you ask?" He had no clue what she was on about now, let alone then. 

"Oh, give over!" she laughed. "Can't very well deny it now, not after that!" 

Jayce was genuinely looking at her like he had no clue. She seemed to pick up on it.

She looked perplexed. 

"I asked, the day, when you got here, whether you two were together!" she explained. 

"What? When was that?" He asked, genuinely curious. "Regardless, what you walked in on, that was it." 

"That was what?" 

"Us, the beginning." 

"No? That right then?" 

"Yes." He assured, an awkward smile tugging at his lips as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"Oh no! I'm sorry lad, well I've really fumbled that one. You're saying before that you were-" 

"Friends, lab partners." 

She took one look at him, shook her head. "Nope, I don't believe that for a second!" she said as she turned around grabbing a large kettle of hot water off the fireplace and pouring it into the clothes washing tub. 

"What? It's the truth! You remember the day he seemed upset, and everyone was blaming me?" 

"Ri-ght..." she said slowly, waiting for whatever revelation he was going to bestow upon her. 

"The night before, I asked him for his answer. I was drunk so he didn't believe me, that's what upset him." Jayce couldn't help but feel a little high and mighty having revealed that. Though he did wonder whether that was technically something Viktor might have wanted to keep between themselves. 

"Oh..." she said sheepishly. 

"Oh." Jayce agreed. 

"Well... I stand by what I said, your drinking was the issue, like told you!" 

He rolled his eyes, laughing as he turned to grab some of the dirty washing for her. 

She gave him a knowing smile, squeezing his arm encouragingly. 

"Good to see you smile again, Jayce."

He wrapped her in a hug he would ordinarily have reserved for his mother, he sighed at how much he missed her, but having this lady here... It meant the world to him. 

"Thank you, for everything." 

"You're welcome, son." she said as she rubbed his back. 

"Should I be concerned?" that accent, it could drive a man insane. 

Viktor was stood in the doorway, an eyebrow raised.

"Not my taste lad, I like 'em skinny." She didn't miss a beat, winking suggestively at Viktor as she turned to continue washing the clothes. He looked like he regretted the joke.

Viktor walked over to Jayce, he seemed to be scanning his face for something. Signs of life, probably.

"We... Have an invitation."

"An invitation? To what?" Jayce asked.

"Drinks, I believe."

They walked out to the bar, across the room it seemed that everyone had joined together, several of the tables had been put together. As they approached the group erupted in various different greetings, gesturing for the two to sit at one end of the tables. Viktor secured himself a seat somewhere with an easy escape route, Jayce sat to his side, at the head of the table. He was surprised to see that crowd knew what the two liked to drink. They started the night with the usual wave of gratitude, but as time went on they were treated just like any other member of the group. Except for the fact that their drinks seemed to be largely paid for by everyone but themselves.

As the night quietened down the two men were invited to the far corner to a smaller group that had branched off from the original. Many of who were sat around the edges of a beautiful room, on stools over looking two pool tables.

"We're drawing up matches, are you two playing?" a man in the far corner next to the chalk board asked.

"I don't even know if I know the rules." Jayce admitted.

"Don't worry, we can teach you two! It's not a problem."

Jayce looked to Viktor, who shrugged in response.

"Sure, we'll play."

Jayce was several bottles deep, he could see the folks around him getting wholesome enjoyment from his failure to grasp what they were saying.

"So you're saying, if I hit the yellow first, the only thing I can hit is the yellow?" he asked.

"Well, basically yeah but if you pot a yellow first, after that the first ball you hit has to be yellow, but it can bounce about after that and it's fine."

"Right." Jayce agreed.

"And if the Black is pot, before the last of the colours, we lose?" Viktor asked.

"Well, the last of your own colours, like yellow. But there can still be red on the table."

"Shall we practice for two, and the third we will count?" Viktor suggested, everyone agreed. And soon the energy had shifted to adopt a sort of competitive edge, but the over arching theme was still just rowdy enjoyment. Many a cheer would erupt with every pot. Jayce messed up rules he was quite sure he'd never heard. Sceptical that people were making them up as they went. But aiming wasn't too bad. He went to sit next to Viktor during his opponents turns, this was the second practice match.

"How's your match going then?" Jayce asked. Viktor gestured to the indicator.

"I'm yellow." he was behind by two.

Jayce chuckled, he was neck and neck with his, though it seemed to be going faster than Viktor's.

They both finished their practice matches.

"Jayce." Viktor said quietly.

"Hm?" Jayce asked, leaning in.

"Suggest a bet, the next loss buys a glass for the winner." Viktor instructed him. Jayce shrugged he didn't question it.

"What about a bet? For our first game" Jayce asked of the room. "The loser buys the other a drink?"

Everyone seemed to enjoy that as an idea.

"You two went one-one!" one of the men reminded him.

"The first was a Fluke." he assured them. The laughter filled the room in with such a uniquely wholesome feeling.

They both promptly lost their games.

"Not your best plan." Jayce noted as Viktor came back from ordering his opponent a drink.

It rolled around to their turn again.

They readied themselves.

"You makin' any more bets, Jayce."

"Shall we say, a bottle? Of choice." Viktor interrupted.

There was many an "ooooo" from those who had assigned themselves as spectators.

One of the men stood up, the best player among them. Jayce laughed, and announced his resignation as a player.

It was silently agreed by the group that they wouldn't double up on games this time, opting instead to watch Viktor vs the crowned Champion.

"Just cause you helped my kid, doesn't mean imma go easy on you, a bottles a bottle mate." the guy joked. A young boy ran to sit in his mother's lap, Jayce recognised the handy work on the boys prosthetic leg. 

"A bottle of our choosing, that is. " Viktor reiterated.

The bald man glanced at the top shelf of the bar.

"Bets a bet." He said with a devious grin plastered over his face.

It was the man's turn to break, he did so with ease, potting three before handing the reins to Viktor.

Who handed Jayce his cane, stumbling slight as he made his way to the table. Likely opting to use the table as support for now.

The way Viktor's slim waist curved as he leant over the table was down right unholy.

The place erupted into cheers when Viktor potted two of the balls, he missed the third, handing the cue back to his opponent.

Who promptly potted another two.

"You're making this too easy, Viktor!" the man laughed.

Viktor raised an eyebrow, taking a sip of his pure gasoline. He glanced at the clock, it was late. Past what they usually would have stayed up till.

"We can leave it at this. For tonight." Viktor said quietly to Jayce as he set his drink down.

He limped over to the table, something about the way he leant had changed, was it deeper? Was he closer to the table? Jayce couldn't tell. But his movements certainly seemed more deliberate now, But all of a sudden the whole room was on the edge of their seats. One by one all five of the yellows were secured. 

All that remained was the black. Viktor glanced around the table.

"Far Left corner." He said, loud enough for the onlookers to hear, the whole room erupted into laughter as some realisation of sorts dawned on them, many of the spectators slapping Viktor's opponents on the back in mock sympathy. 

"You've been played, mate!" one man declared.

Jayce was confused, Viktor hadn't  made the shot yet, but everyone had gone wild regardless. Viktor made the shot look easy. 

The bar erupted in applause and everyone filtered back toward the front. 

"Eyy, I knew you were up to somethin', seen it on your face!" One man said, a grin plastered on his face, slapping Viktor on the back harmlessly. 

Viktor's opponent was red faced, currently lamenting the price of the bottle Martha assured the man Viktor would like. 

Viktor accepted the bottle gratefully and indicated that he and Jayce should go up stairs. They made their way, Jayce wishing folks a good night as they acknowledged them. 

Viktor's opponent quickly caught up with them, Viktor raised an eyebrow he seemed to be on guard slightly, as if waiting for the man to have an issue with him. 

"Good game, you had me there!" The man said, extending his hand to Viktor. Cautiously Viktor shook it. 

"Well played." Viktor offered, who smiled and wished them a good night.

They got up stairs, Jayce stumbling through the door. Earning himself a little chuckle from Viktor. They both collapsed onto the couch. Jayce felt more exhausted now than on days where they did more work.

Viktor had his head back, rested on the back of the couch. His eyes closed, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"So you can play pool? I didn't understand what everyone saw before you made the shot." Jayce asked, as he poured them both a drink. Viktor's smile grew. Eyes closed still. Jayce nudged his finger tips with the glass, which he took. 

"It was when I called the pocket."

"This is my first time playing." Jayce reminded him.

"Typically, you wouldn't do that in a low level game. There's no need. Certainly you wouldn't be the first, if you'd never played."

"So you let them know you hustled them?"

Viktor just smiled. Taking a sip from the glass, he sat up. Turning to Jayce he explained.

"My being good at pool is the least surprising thing here, of course I am. To hustle is a requirement in the undercity. More surprising is that you were so bad. You're an engineer, Jayce. Angles? trajectory? You should be better." The man joked.

"You hustled people as a kid?" Jayce asked, eyebrows raised.

Viktor frowned.

"What?" he asked.

"As a kid, when you lived in Zaun."

He was quiet for a moment, processing what Jayce had just said.

"Do you know how long I lived in Piltover, before we met, Jayce?"

Jayce thought about it, he'd never asked, but he'd always assumed Heimerdinger noticed him around the same age Jayce arrived in Piltover. Maybe a little older.

"If I met you in your twenties, twenty three? I always thought maybe you were around my age when you came, ten? Eight, maybe? And that Heimerdinger noticed you in the undercity."

"Ten?" Viktor said incredulously.

"Or eight?" Jayce offered.

"And you recall the Professor spending a lot of time in the undercity?" Viktor asked sarcastically. Viktor looked stunned, he laughed lightly in his bewilderment. "I was nineteen. I had lived in Piltover three or four years before we met."

Jayce was besides himself.

"What? But then, how-? How did you get into the academy?" Jayce asked, suddenly very interested in this rare lore drop.

"My parents, they left me money they had saved for years, to buy a uniform. With that, I snuck into the academy, I attended lessons until the professor, Heimerdinger, realised I wasn't supposed to be there. He offered me a role as his assistant. A mercy, when the alternative was exile."

Jayce was speechless.

"What? Where did you live? You can't have come back and forth every day, and you wouldn't have been able to apply for accommodation?"

"You know where I slept." Viktor said leadingly, waiting for Jayce to make his own deductions. He thought about it for a moment.

"The alcove? Overlooking the undercity? No. You can't have?" he asked, his shock evident.

"And yet." the man shrugged, taking another sip.

Jayce shook his head, an amazed smile on his face. "You got into the academy by breaking in?" he reiterated.

"Isn't that how we met? How else would a 'poor cripple from the undercity' manage such a thing?" it was a rhetorical question.

"And your parents helped you? I've never seen... Are they still-?" he asked cautiously.

"Dead? ... Very much so." Viktor sighed a little at that, it was clear he'd loved them dearly.

"What were their names?" Jayce asked softly. 

"Their names are Ivana and Jarek." He said with a wistful smile. He drained his glass. "Miners, in the fissures. They built an air system, to cycle oxygen into the mine shafts, and The Grey out. The death toll halved overnight, due to their innovations. Even more tragic then, that I would be their legacy." Jayce wanted to say something, he was sure that they would only have been proud. The things Viktor did of his own free will were ground breaking. And how far he'd come, against the odds.

There was shuffling, he looked over to Viktor. 

"What is this?" Viktor asked, holding up the leather satchel that he must have found by the side of the couch.

"Art supplies, it's where your notebook came from, here-" Jayce said, taking the bag from him, Jayce carefully pulled the contents out, laying it out between them neatly.

 "You can draw can't you?" Jayce asked, Viktor raised and eyebrow.

"Frequently, it's my blueprints we use-"

"Those are technical drawing, I'm talking about sketches." Jayce clarified. "Humour me, we'll both draw something."

Viktor sighed. Sitting straighter. Setting his glass down besides the couch. Jayce handed him the spare sketchbook.

"Anything?" Viktor asked, flipping to the first clean page.

"Not exactly." Jayce said, opening the case with the pastels, which he now realised were divided into soft and oil. "We're going to draw you."

At that Viktor looked up, suddenly sceptical.

"What is this, Jayce?"

"Humour me? Draw yourself as you look now. You don't get to look in a mirror. I'll draw you twice, the way you look now, and the way you looked before-... Before the hexcore. Importantly you have to use colour."

"Jayce-"

"Please."

He sighed again, regardless he picked up a stick of willow charcoal.

"You have to try, Viktor."

Jayce made use of his impeccable memory, he chose two. For his present day memory he chose the morning Viktor had been sat on the couch when he'd awoken, the day he'd had the dream. And for his past version he chose to replicate the drawing from his old note book, but he decided to refine it, to get it closer to what he'd remembered of the man as he'd sat there, with the addition of colour he could capture the light he'd aimed to with the chalk.

The paper was a mid-tone grey, which helped.

Jayce could have drawn Viktor now, the way he rested his head on the knuckles of his free hand. The light of the fireplace dancing across his skin. He was breath taking regardless. 

Eventually Jayce had finished his second sketch and Viktor seemed to be less drawing and more just fretting over the picture.

Jayce figured it had been long enough.

"I've finished both of mine, you must have finished yours."

"Perhaps." he muttered, shrugging. Jayce held out his hand, motioning for them to swap at the same time. Viktor turned the page back one. Jayce did the same.

"You were only drawing one." Jayce reminded the man.

"I preferred the second." Viktor said simply.

Hours had passed by the time they exchanged books. The art work his partner handed him was hauntingly beautiful. Better than Jayce had imagined, but at the same time, it was dreadful. Here in front of him was concrete proof of that nightmarish vision he'd seen in the flashback, beautifully rendered [see: "Scarlet and Gold" by Daniel Gerhartz] but terrible in it's depiction.

It was a portrait from the shoulders up, his head tilted slightly down and to the side. His eyes looking up at the viewer. They looked right through you. Their depth that of a void, they held all of the man's suffering and left no room for his beauty. 

It was coloured as Jayce had requested, and exactly what he expected had happened. The man's irises were a murky brown, light didn't reach them. Their undeniable amber hue nowhere to be seen.

The cheeks were sunken, dramatically. The skin tone wasn't just pale it was ashen, the bruising around his eyes in violent contrast to his pale skin... This could have been a corpse. He looked up to see Viktor, his fingers hovering over Jayce's drawing so as not to smudge it. 

Jayce's own style had a strong focus on light and, conversely, shadow and how it brought depth to the beauty of reality.

[see: "Anika at sheppherd." by Scott Burdick] his depiction had the piece of paper on the arm of the chair, casting a beautiful, soft bounce -light on the right hand side of the man's face. He too had drawn Viktor looking at the viewer, but like before the difference was night and day. Here Viktor's eye colour had been caught in the dramatic beam of sunlight, illuminating it as it had that day. There was still depth, an abundance of it; it had the sorrow, the years of hardship in the deep bottomless shadows of his pupils, the darker tones of his eyelids, and the chiaroscuro effect of the whole piece. But everything else set offset it. In the light in his eyes you could see the same passion as when he spoke of science and innovation. The scene in its entirety, from his notes - though unreadable here, Jayce knew to be notes on how to give a family their life back, shone the desire to make the world a better place, and the belief in himself that he could. Confidence seeped from the man's pose; from his raised brow. The arm draped over the back of the chair. The legs crossed at the knees. The fingertips elegantly interacting with the pen and paper.

"This... This isn't -" 

Jayce turned, holding out the case of pastels. 

"Pick two colours for your eyes." he instructed. 

Viktor continued to trace the drawing with his fingers. 

"If you think it's this, Jayce. The error lies with you."

Jayce presented the tray more forcefully. Reluctantly Viktor picked two. 

"I used these." 

Jayce picked his own two, he stood up setting the tray down and offered Viktor a hand. Viktor sighed but got to his feet, letting Jayce lead him to the mirror.

"How-" Jayce took Viktor's pastels from him, standing behind the shorter man as they stood in front of the mirror, he delicately drew two swatches just under the corner of the man's right eye, planting a soft kiss on the other side of his face as a sort of apology for the graffiti. He looked vaguely annoyed. "-is that, in any way, accurate?" Jayce asked. The colours Viktor had picked were no where to be seen on the mans face. Made obvious now by their proximity to what they were supposed to be depicting. 

"In case it wasn't obvious enough." Jayce continued  as he used his own two colours to add a matching swatch below the opposite eye. 

Viktor leant forward, looking from one to the other.

There was no way he couldn't see that Jayce was correct here. It was a matter of fact.

"Maybe, up close, and in this lighting-" he began as he turned back around. Jayce was stood far too close, a set up for his point. His head tilted down, their noses nearly touching. 

"I suppose you remember me being this close a lot, back then?" he asked. "But you're right, from a distance they look a little different. They look like that." he said, pointing to a whisky glass that sat in front of the fire, the flames behind the liquor turned it into a rich, reddish, liquid gold. Viktor watched as the glass threw light across the hearth, his eyes full of melancholy.

"What's this about, Jayce. Enough games."

Moving over to sit on the bed. Jayce gestured to the sketchbook in the man's hand.

Viktor carefully flipped the page to the next drawing. He quickly closed the book again drawing a shocked breath in harshly with realisation. Jayce told him to open it again. His tone serious.

The sketch was more detailed than the first time he's dawn it, but the highlights and shadows were distinct in their similarities. Jayce hadn't omitted anything of the man's ill health, every element was still here, but unlike Viktor's memory of himself these elements weren't the only things there. They weren't exaggerates, nor were they the things that defined the man. His physicality was beautiful, his aura captivating. 

"The memory..."

"Your memories are subjective. Your vision of yourself is... Twisted. Not even I recognise it."

"Subjective?" the man murmured. Letting himself process the concept. "How much did you see?" He asked. 

"I saw what my illustration did to you. I saw how familiar you were with the page..." He said sadly. 

Viktor subconsciously twisted his foot to be more every angled he stood a little straighter. It wasn't nearly as much of a task now. After all, it was this image of Viktor that the drawing had been based off of. As he'd designed it before the decline got too bad. 

"The dream ended with you collapsing. For a second time, in your room." He shook his head. "You came in the next day, I'm sure of it. Who found you? Why didn't you tell me?" he was trying not to get too irritated, but his guilt at not paying enough attention was getting to unmanageable levels.

His partner ignored the questions, still running a finger along the lines. 

"I kept the picture, incase you wondered. I thought it beautiful, I'd ruined it, sadly." 

"Viktor." Jayce reminded him to stay on track. 

"Nobody found me, Jayce. Who would? Do you expect I got a lot of visitors?" 

"But this was before your collapse in the lab! Maybe we could have-" 

"Done what, Jayce? You think I didn't know, you think I needed a prognosis to tell me I was dying?" The man walked over to his original notebook, taking a folded page from deep toward the back pages, he tossed it to Jayce. Who promptly unfolded it: a sketch. On the page was a man sitting on the ground, an arm casually leant on his right knee that was tucked up to his chest. The other tucked under the mans slender frame and out of sight. At the top of the page the drawing stopped short of the man's eyes, leaving instead everything from the nose down. Above the left of the man's lip was a familiar beauty mark.

The artistry was yet again incredible... But Jayce couldn't seem to focus on that. Because drawn into the image was something of a window through the skin and past the muscle. It looked closer to a medical illustration, but wasn't quite as matter-of-fact, what with the figure being posed. The lung not hidden by the leg, as seen through the window, was disfigured. Eroded. What looks like lesions ate away at its surface. Moving up the image the window continued, the lining of the airways had similar lesions, and moving towards the nasal cavity the pattern are the same. The flesh looked shredded.

"My diagnosis came as a surprise to you and you alone. Those of us who spent our lives in the fissures came to understand our disease early on." He paused, his tone became less urgent, more despondent. "The bodies, discarded at the bottom of the ravines, they decomposed quickly... And-and left little to the imagination, Jayce." Viktor sad down besides his partner. His eyes seemed lost in the flames of the fireplace, but it was evident he was seeing something else. Something far away. "I-I wanted to do more than those before me, to change lives for the better. To join the corpses, remembered for the difference I would have made. In this new world, I hope... Maybe..." Jayce placed a hand on his shoulder. 

"You will change the world for the better Viktor, they'll remember you for that. No matter what, I'll make sure of it. No more hiding, it'll be your name they recognise."

"I don't want it to be me, I want it to be us." The man insisted.

From somewhere downstairs they heard Martha shouting.

"Effy, don't forget to knock! Do you hear me?"

Viktor quickly turned away from the door, scrubbing at the marks on his face. Effy promptly failed to knock on the door.

"Dinner's ready!" She declared as the door burst open. Jayce snorted out a laugh.

"Thank you Effy. Do you mind doing me a favour?"

"Depends what it is, duh." She said as she skipped over to them.

"Right." Jayce agreed. "If you could pick any of these colours, what colour would you say Viktor's eyes are?" She promptly pushed the mans forehead up with her grubby paws, Viktor did little to hide his grimace. Looking back and forth from the pastels she picked one that perfectly showed the colour. Jayce scuffed up her hair.

"See you could be an artist yet." He declared. Pointedly motioning to Viktor that she'd chosen the same colour he had. 


______


The dining room table was once again stocked with the most incredible looking food.

"Isn't it late?" Jayce asked as he took the seat they'd designated for him. He sat at the head of the table nearest the door, with Viktor on his left, his back facing the door itself. Kaff sat at the other end, Martha sat to Jayce's right. And Effy sat wherever she landed.

"We'd have eaten earlier but somebody was too busy scamming folks." She said light heartedly.

Viktor looked up as he sat down, his expression far too innocent, his hand gesturing to himself as if to say "What? It couldn't have been me?" Martha chuckled as she dished out the meat.


They spoke for ages, Kaff trying to get Viktor to reveal the secrets of what he did to be as good as he was at pool, "Mathematics" Didn't, apparently, count as a real answer.

The conversation turned to Effy as she'd left to go to bed. 

"So, I'm right to think Effy's your granddaughter?" Jayce asked.

"Yup, we took her in from our third born. They'd moved up to Piltover when she was just a new maybe a year or so old. They'd been scammed, the both of them. Some merchant claimed to have a business in Piltover, said they wanted to hire our son. We told him something didn't look right. Next thing we heard about it, one of our oldest haf found him and his wife in Zaun. They were out of their minds. Poor Effy playing in a mouldy basement on her own. Those two; unrecognisable-" 

"Shimmer!" Kaff butted in. Martha nodded.

"They'd gotten hooked, our son didn't even remember he had a kid." She shook her head, her eyes filled with grief. "A miracle Effy was even still alive. We immediately dragged the three back here, but we didn't know what shimmer was back then. Still don't know what it is now! But as the effects wore off, they got more and more sick. We had a doctor stay here but he didn't come form Zaun, he didn't know what to do....Our Son's wife recovered, but he... He didn't make it." She paused a minute, composing herself. "'course, after that his missus couldn't cope. Ran out in the night, never looked back. We've seen her here and there haven't we Kaff? She looks well, won't meet our eyes mind. Hasn't seen the kid since."

"Was my fault. Should'a done more. Found another doc." Kaff muttered harshly between loud chewing. 

"Come on Kaff, stop that. You know it wasn't." She shook her head. "One by one we lost all of 'em. After our third, Tayal, died, the two youngest had it hard. They'd been closest with him. Our youngest, Roe was sickly. Always had been. Roe and Tarus had the same illness form birth but for whatever reason Roe got it worse. Tayal had always looked after them, the the two oldest having moved out. Kaff, grab the picture will you?" She said, gesturing to Jayce before continuing. " 'bout three years ago the two youngest went to look for a cure.-" Kaff passed Viktor the photograph to pass to Jayce. " 'cept, they never came home. We called our eldest two, Kay and Bran, back. Asked them to see if they'd heard anything. They hadn't." She took a long pause there, taking a few calming bites of her food. but whatever it was was too much. Tears spilled over her plump cheeks.

"So- So I asked them to look for their brothers!" She burst into a sob that she tried desperately to suppress. " They found em at first, they were healed, helping out in - in some sort of sanctuary they said. But they found it awful strange. Said they were gonna stay a while, see what was up. And-and that's when the war-" Kaff quickly stood up. Rubbing his wife's back reassuringly. 

No.

Too late Jayce turned to Viktor, he could see the man was devolving. In his shaking hands was the picture of the five boys, stood with Martha and Kaff. 

"I-" Viktor began, Jayce instantly dug his nails into the man's bad leg. Viktor flinched but looking at Jayce, or through him, it was hard to tell. He dropped the picture, which Jayce was quick to catch. Placing it safely on the table as he stood up. Martha had calmed down, a sniffle here and there but she was looking now at Viktor in confusion.

"You alright, Son?" She asked.

"I-" he stood up, the chair fell to the ground behind him. That was it, Jayce had to do something. He was on his feet in seconds, grabbing hold of the smaller man.

"Sorry, I should have said, we drank too much, he wasn't feeling well. I thought food would do him some good." Jayce blurted out with practiced ease.

"Oh here-" Martha said standing up. "Let me-"

"No, no, you enjoy your dinner. I can handle this, thank you, again." Jayce assured the couple.

"I'm sorry-" before Viktor could continue Jayce manhandled him out of the room, dragging him to the upstairs bathroom. He quickly slammed the door shut behind them. Viktor promptly collapsed to the floor. He just about crawled to the toilet basin before he threw up.

"Jayce, what -what have I-"

"Stop! Stop it!" His whisper harsh and hurried. "You haven't done anything. It was the Arcane. It used you. This is a second chance, Viktor.  These people have seen you for who you are, and they love you. Can't you see that? What good would it do to tell them what happened. The elements of you that existed was still trying to help. Why attribute the worst of the Arcane to you? You don't blame the river for carrying pollution, you blame the people who polluted it." 

"I- I remember them, seeing their faces I- I can recal-"

A knock at the door had Jayce quickly grip the man's face, clamping his mouth shut. The force of it slammed Viktor's back up to the side of the bath, he flinched. 

"Not right now, sorry!" He called out.

The door swung open, Martha was stood there, Viktor's cane in hand, her face fell.

"Jayce! What the bloody hell do you think you're doing. Get off him!" She said as she charged in, slapping him with the back of her hand. Jayce took one more look at the man, who's eyes were filled with tears. Jayce shook his head slightly in warning, begging him not to say anything. Before he released the man's face and stormed out of the bathroom. As he walked, he wondered how much of this viciousness was him, and how much of it was learned behaviour; a residual from his time in hell. He used to be sweeter, he was sure of it, he used to try his best to be reassuring as opposed to resorting to these thinly veiled threats.

He stormed right out of the building, slamming the workshop doors open. Well... this method of coping was certainly familiar to him at least. He fired up the forge, and set to work. On anything really.

He thought bitterly that he was being an idiot. He was here, trying to dissipate his anger, meanwhile if Viktor really did tell them, for all he knew they might turn on him. Out him to the people in the Inn, for all he knew they were organising a public execution this very moment.

A while passed and he could sense someone was behind him. He quenched whatever it was he was working on and spun around. There stood his partner. His own anger melted away at the sight of the man.

"So?" He asked gently.

"I didn't tell them." Jayce sighed, a little relieved.

"But I can't stay." 

Jayce looked up, nodding sadly. 

"You're right. Give us until the end of the week, and we'll-"

"Not we."

"What?" Jayce could barely form the words. The air had been fully knocked out of him.

"This confirms it. We're in our world. You're world. Where I am the monster, and you the hero. I will hold you back no longer." 

"Hold me back? I made you a promise!" Jayce dropped his tools, walking over to his partner he held him by the waist. Placing his forehead against Viktor's. "You said so yourself; 'I don't want it to be me, I want it to be us.' You think I want any different?"

Viktor slipped out of Jayce's grip.

"The undercity needs salvation, Jayce. You can't do that with me, so you must do it without. This is more important than both of us."

"I don't know how! That's why I need you. Perspective was never my strong point. There's still so much I don't know, and there's no one else that can show me." He was breathing heavily now. "Only you." He hoped the words resonated with his partner. It seemed to have done the trick. He seemed unsure. A doorway to doubt, a foot hold for Jayce to convince the man. 

"How? A life of hiding in the shadows?" 

"Some of the people we've met have come from Piltover, not one of them recognised you or your name. At a guess... Piltover is trying to erase your existence. Distance itself from you like it did the alchemist, Dr. Revik. We could use that to our advantage, as horrible as it sounds."

"How?" Viktor said quietly, more to himself. But Jayce took this as a good sign, a sign that some part of Viktor was still willing to try.

"I can convince the council, I'm sure of it. I'll bargain with them. I'll fix the hexga-"

"What? Jayce!" Viktor took a step back in disgust. 

"Yes, Viktor. Because the more I think about it, the more I think that we can do hextech safely. In fact, I don't just think we should. I think we have to." Viktor was shaking his head, looking at Jayce like he didn't recognise him at all. "Do you know where I got those crystals from? A merchant. Black market. Later Piltover sourced them for us. But they came from abroad originally. We may have been the first, but we won't be the last. We need to learn now, everything we can about all of it. No more missteps. No more oversites. And I believe, with your knowledge-"

"My knowledge? I know nothing-!"

"Yes you do. I believe you remember everything, whether you want to admit it or not. Tell me I'm wrong." Viktor was silent. "Then tell me you don't think there's a way. Tell me, based purely on fact, as a scientist, that there is no way to harness the Arcane without it infecting things. Without it developing it's own agenda." there was silence still. 

"Piltover needs you, needs us, to prevent what comes next. To use Hextech for the greater good, while keeping those who would abuse it at bay. That's something I can't do on my own." Jayce finished. Viktor seemed lost in thought. He looked broken.

"We can do this. I know we can, together, as Partners again." Jayce tried to pour as much emotion as he could into his proposition, to make the man understand he wasn't just being risky. He wasn't just disregarding everything they'd said before. Wasn't he the one that said they needed to destroy hextech? He was trying to show that now that he had all of the facts, he wanted to keep it. This was an evolution in ideals, not the opposite.

Viktor looked apprehensive. 

But he let Jayce approach him, let him place his hand on the small of his back, and lead him to the Inn after locking up.

___________

They got ready for bed in silence, both no doubt deep in thought. 

Viktor was largely despondent as Jayce held the man close, twisting a lock of Viktor's hair between his fingers. As he'd seen the man do countless times to sooth his own nerves. He watched as the fire dimmed. Barely more than a glow left. 

"Do you think it could work?" Viktor whispered. 

"Trust me." Jayce said in an equally soft whisper of his own. "The end of the week, and we'll leave for Piltover."

He was met with silence, he watched as the man's eyes drifted closed, in time it seemed with the dying embers. The light was gone, the man asleep. But Jayce couldn't. He still gently played with the man's hair, the room pitch black now as it had been. He was lost in thought, trying his best to plan for what lay ahead. Viktor moved in his sleep, he was facing Jayce now, his hand accidentally coming to rest on Jayce's face, Jayce held it there. He watched the man's peaceful expression as the moonlight- Moonlight? Jayce turned to look at where the window was, the heavy blackout curtains had turned that whole side of the room into the impenetrable Void that Jayce recalled of that morning. He glanced back at Viktor, the man's face was very obviously being illuminated by cool blue light. As Jayce moved he realised the light seem to. He picked up the man's hand to move it aside so that he could investigate, but there it was, the glow changed it's direction. Jayce turned the man's palm around and there, imbedded in Viktor's palm, was the otherworldly blue glow.

The Hexcrystal.

Looking closely, Jayce could have sworn he could make out the crystals shape through the man's palm. The glow was localised.

This wasn't just fused into the man's hand, it was embedded. Careful not to wake him, he gentle applied pressure to the area, in soft circles so that he could feel it. And true enough he could feel the object through the man's skin. It was deep.

It was impossible for Viktor to have not noticed this. 

What did this mean, what could they do with the crystal? Could they do anything, did it have enough power? He'd had the shard in his bracelet for the better portion of his life. He'd needed more than that to make the first device. But obviously, in the right hands, it could potentially have it's uses.

Not the right hands. His hands. Viktor's.

It was still hard to process that Viktor was the mage who'd saved him and his mother all those years ago. It was jarring. But could it really be this Viktor though? Were there others fighting for the same end, from different timelines, travelling between world to correct their mistakes?

Jayce couldn't lay still, there was certainly no way he could sleep.

He carefully climbed out of bed, taking a bunch of candles from a caddy in the wardrobe he lit a mass of them, found his notebook and got to work. He started chronicling everything up to this point, any significant detail that included his partner. He searched for anything that he could use to rule out his Viktor. But the more he went through all the details, the more he was sure; it had to be him. 

He'd laid out all of his work on the ground, his own makeshift board. He lit more candles, trying to illuminate the area as best he could without disturbing the man sleeping only a few feet away.

He was reminded of his time in the ravine as he scrawled his notes sometimes across separate pages, which would make little sense outside of this arrangement. 

He stood up, observing the web he'd created; a mixture of equations and timelines.

It was him. He had no doubt. 

With this new certainty, he thought about the beautiful field the mage had brought him to. Was it intentional? Jayce had always seen it as a way for the mage to show him that magic could be used for good, having brought them from one harsh, unrelenting scenery, to the exact opposite. He looked over to the bed, Viktor looked peaceful. His lips parted, his eyes not fully closed, as Jayce had come to learn was natural for the man. Jayce smiled affectionately at him. He glanced back to his work. He'd deviated slightly, now he'd started writing up equations that they'd previously been unable to solve. 

He gathered together the notes pertaining to Viktor vs the mage, his back slid down the wall as he came to rest. Flicking through the pages. 

If anything were to happen to Viktor- he didn't want to finish the thought process. But the writing was on the wall. If they don't succeed... Specifically, If Viktor doesn't figure out time travel, dimension travel. Piltover is lost. Without that there would be no going back to save Jayce, no alternate universe travel to show Jayce the error of their ways, and no instance where Viktor is shown the truth if what he was a part of.

Potentially whole realities would crumble. 

Jayce stood up, carefully he moved to sit on the bed next to the sleeping man. He brushed strands of cropped hair from away from his partner's eyes.

Why is it always him? Why are the heaviest burdens always on his shoulders?

Looked back at the remaining pages on the floor. They were things Jayce had jotted down as he'd remembered them. There was no rymer or reason to it, some came from what he remembered of things they'd written on the blackboards, some from the margins of his original notebook, others were new ones that he had written in the cave. 

With Viktor's deeper understanding of the Arcane was it possible they could surpass these hurdles? If Jayce was right... Viktor would be required to live to an old age, all the while with this fate hanging over his head. But that didn't mean it had to be all bad. Jayce was determined to give the man a life he could be proud of. That he could be sure his parents would approve of. He wouldn't let Viktor live that long in suffering.

He needed to find something to occupy the man, something they could work on together. Regardless, it all hinged on Jayce being able to convince the council. He'd worked along side those self serving degenerates long enough to know that whatever pretence of morals they were trying to display would soon melt away the moment Jayce would offer to fix the gates for them. Now... If they'd somehow figured out how themselves. That would be a far worse issue, though he was quite sure that whatever damage was caused at the top if they'd managed to fix that, it would only take Viktor and he a few moments at the base of the Hexgates to dismantle their efforts, beyond the people's understanding.

He tried to take his mind off of that for the moment, he was getting too wrapped up in hypotheticals.

He knelt back down, scribbling more unsolved runic equations down.

He jumped a little as a ghostly white hand delicately kidnapped one of the papers nearest the bed.

Along with a discarded pen.

"Why aren't you sleeping, Jayce?" the man asked.

"I couldn't get settled, too much on my mind." he glanced at Viktor's left hand, the one he knew had the crystal in. But the glow seemed to have gone now. He glanced away. "Long trip ahead of us. And we still don't actually know where we are.

The arm that had kidnapped one of the equations draped back down off the side of the bed, the paper and pen tumbling from it's grip.

"This can wait, you need sleep." Viktor said as he propped himself up on his elbow.

Jayce collected the discarded equation. He scanned the paper.

He'd solved it. Jayce was stunned, he looked up at the man with wide eyes.

"You like to pretend that the creature I became after the Hexcore had nothing to do with me. That I was merely a passenger or that I 'died in this room' but you misunderstand. I was present, I believed those actions to be my own. I told you once, that I had 'so many breakthroughs to share with you.' This was true. I wasn't just waving my hand around and making magic. I was studying the Arcane."

Jayce couldn't help but flinch at the quotes, they rang in his ears, but if anything, it just proved his point. It was the same words, but the tone was different, he didn't sound... Hollow, as it had done.

"So, you can solve all of these?" Jayce asked, purposefully ignoring the argument. His partner sighed.

"With time, I would imagine so."

"What about healing magic?"

"A... Crude form. One I began before-" the man didn't finish his sentence. But Jayce recalled the metallic augmentations he'd discovered after the blast.

"The... The metal, is that a bi product the the healing magic? Can it be avoided?"

"I wasn't-... Healing myself. What I was doing was closer to alchemy, Jayce. I was exchanging the deteriorating flesh and replacing it with an Arcane and metal alloy. I do believe that that isn't the only way. I believe the answer is in the runes themselves. I chose wrong, I-I didn't have time to look for a better way."

Jayce assessed the other equations with this solved element, looking to see if it would unlock anything else. He moved pages around that he thought may relate.

"Jayce." It was barely audible, not helped by the fact the man had turned to face away.

"Viktor?" He asked, climbing to his feet. He started moving around the bed to where he could be closer to his partner.

"A pen and paper, also." The man instructed. Jayce brought over what the man asked for.

He was laid on his front, propped up on his elbows. It was odd seeing him without his back brace, more so because it was now possible to see all of the metal nodes running up the his spine.

He took the paper and pen from Jayce and began to make some sort of list. Meanwhile Jayce ran a hand along the man's back. Smoothing out the built up tension with his thumb. 

"That's -... Distracting." He heard the man say, his breathing heavier than it had been, if Jayce's ears were to be believed.

Jayce huffed a short laugh, leaning down he planted a kiss just under the man's ear. He frowned and leant over Viktor's shoulder to see what he was writing. It was a list of names.

"What's that?"

On the left the list was as follows

The list on the right was split in two: 

"You tell me. Don't you like games? You have me play enough of them. With every dream you have I play another one."

Jayce sighed. Point taken 

"So... I have to work out what separates them?" he asked, Viktor shrugged as he climbed out of bed. Grabbing clean clothes as he did.

"Piltover vs Zaun?" was Jayce's immediate thought. 

"And I suppose you were good friends with Ekko at your school? Perhaps Ambessa was your teacher." Viktor mocked, a slight laugh as he did the buttons of his trousers. 

Jayce tutted in frustration. Looking closer at the list. Noticing now that Salo also appeared on the wrong list for that to be the divide. 

"You aren't doing very well, Jayce. This isn't even the task." 

"Fine, if this isn't the task, give me a clue." 

Viktor plucked the list from his hand and placed it on the top of the chest of draws. His left hand working to hold up his torso brace that he hadn't managed to fasten fully yet. He quickly scribbled a header of some sort. Folding it he turned back to face Jayce. He seemed to have lost his confident swagger all of a sudden, something about finally looking at Jayce had made the man falter. He subconsciously tucked the paper behind his leg, his lip seemed to quiver slightly as his gaze dropped to the ground. 

Jayce stood up, and walked over to the man, stopping far too close. Jayce put a hand to the torso  brace, to secure it himself. He wrapped the contraption around his partner, securing the fastenings one by one to the nodes on the man's spine, he took the opportunity to embrace Viktor reassuringly with one arm, while he worked with the other. Coming around to the front he released his hold on the man and started tightening the leather straps at his waist, adjusting them as needed.

Viktor kept his head down. Jayce didn't move to take it yet, but he could see that the paper was getting more and more crumpled as Viktor's resolve wavered. 

Jayce finished the adjustments. 

"Were you done with the paper?" He asked gently. His partner glanced uncertainly at the sheet, eventually he held it out to Jayce, who accepted it slowly. Along with a pen for some reason. 

"The task... Is you have to put my name on the list." 

Frowning Jayce flipped the page open and there, above the Right hand list, written in bold letters, was one word. 

Shimmer

Jayce's brain cycled through ten different responses, he said none of them, he was trying desperately to remain calm. Viktor had trusted him enough to give him this much, he really needed to not get this wrong. He leant against the chest of draws to steady himself. He could feel his partners eyes on him, waiting for something. Disgust? Anger? Confusion? Disbelief? Jayce hoped he'd schooled his expression but he was sure some of those emotions were at least faintly visible.

"The fissures-?" he began. 

"No." 

"Before we met?" Jayce asked. Every muscle in his body tense. 

"... No." Came the quiet reply. 

Jayce couldn't help it, his legs gave way, he landed heavily to his knees. Viktor hadn't moved an inch. 

"Why?" Jayce asked, he tried desperately to go for a curious tone, he missed and hit devastated. 

There was no response. 

"When? Why didn't I-" Jayce paused. Why didn't I what? Notice? Care enough to see? How is it I can't pinpoint a time where he might have been using Shimmer? What, like I couldn't notice-

"I wanted to tell you, Jayce. I would have. I-I needed your help. But-" 

Jayce stood up, quietly listening to his partner. He placed a hand at the man's lower back. He couldn't be stood in front if him, he didn't trust his own expressions.

"Why didn't you?" he didn't say it harshly, it was a genuine question. He wanted to understand. 

"It was the way you looked at me, what you thought of the people of the undercity. All you saw were enemies, addicts, and monsters. But you were looking at me." 

Jayce was besides himself, when had he given that impression? He knew he'd failed countless times, but their goal had always been to help the undercity. He himself had fought for their independence, they almost had it-

Suddenly a flash of a memory. He hears coughing, it rocks the person's frame. When they open their eyes they are looking at a blood soaked handkerchief. They put the stained cloth away, their attention drawn to the crutch that Jayce was very familiar with. Something about the handle catches their attention, specifically. The viewer's gaze shifts to a man approaching from the distance. Before Jayce even had time to register who it is, Viktor calls his name. 

"Jayce! What is this?" 

He sees his own face. He's never seen himself look so wildly angry. Not that he'd never been, just that he didn't typically have a mirror. 

His eyes, wide and dangerous. 

"Do you have any idea how this looks?! I order a blockade and my own partner violates it!"

"You... Ordered this? Why?"

"There are people down there, who are hell bent on destroying us! What were you doing?" He hears the bitterness in this tone, the accusation in his question. 

"I was consulting a friend about our quandary. I told you I knew someone!" 

"Well you didn't say they were from the undercity!"

"What difference does that make?"

"What difference-" He sees his balled up fist as he tries to contain himself. "They're dangerous!" he looked unhinged. In retrospect, re-living this moment was painful. He'd quickly learnt his lesson, but what did that matter? From Viktor's point of view this was all Jayce understood him to be. And with Jayce's new understanding now that Viktor had spent the majority of his life in the undercity, unlike what Jayce had assumed at the time. It was no doubt that much more heart-breaking. Of course the friend would be from the undercity, he'd been in Piltover for four years by the time they met, he didn't do well with socialising. Unable to come to terms with the meaningless day to day chatter necessary for most friendships. So he'd likely made no friends in that time. Then after meeting Jayce they spent almost all of their time in the lab. So of course he wouldn't be close to anyone in Piltover.

"I'm from the undercity."

The memory shifts. They're in their lab. Viktor seems distracted, glancing occasionally at Jayce who's sat with his legs up on the desk.

Viktor picks up his crutch. He seems unsure but eventually he seems to start twisting the handle. I didn't... I didn't make it so that could come off?

"Jayce I- I wanted to talk-" Viktor begins but is quickly interrupted by a loud bang of a door opening and the sounds of several sets of metal boots. Jayce hears himself great the intruders and he stands. 

"Mel! Thanks for fetching it." 

Viktor quickly tightens the handle of the crutch and almost throws it aside before turning to face them. 

He watches himself greet Mel with a quick kiss as she instructs the group of enforcers to place an object on Viktor's desk. She sends them away.

Viktor seems bewildered. He looks back at the object.

"Viktor-" Jayce says as he comes to stand to the man's left. "is far better than I am at this, Mel."

Viktor's gaze falls on the grenade.

Jayce in the vision turns his attention to his partner.

"I tried taking it apart and it nearly killed me. But this is what Marcus found, it matches the graffiti found in our lab when the crystal was stolen. Whoever made this has the crystal. We need to figure out if they have the capacity to weaponize Hextech." 

The rest of the memory played out as he recalled. But the overtones were obvious... This was yet another example of Jayce choosing to facilitate violence against a people he didn't understand. Entirely ignoring that fact that Viktor was sat right there. His constant use of "us" made him nauseous, like he was trying to slice Viktor away from the undercity. He'd noticed it first on the bridge. It wouldn't have been a stretch to think that the Jayce of the past was one stupid move from saying something dumb like

"Yes, but you're one of the good ones."

The memory ended with the line that was burned into Jayce's soul.

"There is always a choice." he'd clung to it in the ravine, tried desperately to shape his new ideals around the passion his partner had poured into those words. This idea that there would always be a better way, one that would avoid conflict and offered peace, and equality. Instead of oppression and violence which Piltover, and Zaun, so frequently resorted to.

He was dazed when he came to. He had no idea where he was.

He tried to push up from where he was. He heard a slight grunt from somewhere just above him.

"Careful." it asked him softly.

He stopped, tried to get his bearings. He was lead down  facing the floor it seemed, except his head was on Viktor's lap. The hand he'd tried to push with was wrapped around the man's slender thigh, just between the brackets of the brace. Jayce could feel that the man's other leg, mercifully his good one, was fully pinned under Jayce's weight. He must have collapsed when the memory started. He got to his knees, but he still felt too heavy, He rested his head on the man's shoulder panting heavily against his neck.

"The bridge-" he just about managed to say.

"The memory you saw was the bridge? What after that?" Viktor asked, he seemed surprised, socked almost. It was odd that he seemed to know for a fact that there would be something else. Or even that "the bridge" was enough for him to know what Jayce meant. 

They'd been to the bridged a number of times, it's wasn't just that once. 

"Next-Next I agree to make weapons with Hextech."

Viktor seems to contemplate that for a moment.

"Jayce, steady yourself." Viktor instructs. Jayce tenses up, still in that same position with his head nuzzled into the side of the man's neck.

From the corner of his eye he see Viktor reaching for his face, Jayce almost pulls away but Viktor holds him still. As soon as the fingers make contact with his face he's thrown into another memory.

It's one of the Kiramman's luxurious drawing rooms, in a corner surrounded by mounds of expensive, decorative paper is a beautifully adorned tree. The fireplace is obscenely large and casts a beautiful glow. Looking around the room Viktor, and by extension Jayce, sees; Caitlin, Cassandra, Tobias, his own mother Ximena, Mel, and Himself. Along with many faces Jayce didn't remember, a flock of young children run around, nearly knocking over several priceless ornaments. He seeing himself calling for them to slow down.

Viktor seems to be sat on one of the smaller couches, furthest from the action. A hand full of the guest leave for the dinning room, leaving just the core group remaining.

Mel looks uncomfortable, this would certainly be a setting unfamiliar to her, with her own family being less than warm. The price of being Noxian royalty, not necessarily in the literally sense.

He sees himself foraging under the tree for something, he turns around, an ornate white and gold box in hand, it's flat and rectangle in shape. He walks over to Mel as Viktor watches the two.

"For me?" Mel says.

"Who else?" He hears himself ask with a chuckle. She opens it, and there are a set of beautifully hand crafted, golden braid ornaments. She accepts them gratefully and rewards him with a kiss.

Viktor turns his attention to Ximena as she is collecting up discarded paper. The last remaining kid crying to her that he's lost his toy.

Ximena tries to reassure him that it will be there somewhere, likely among the rubbish.

"Viktor! I wasn't sure when to give you this, it's not exactly a present. And don't get your hopes up, it isn't fun either." Jayce explained nervously, trying to dampen expectations to avoid disappointment.

"What? You've run out of hair jewellery for me?" Jayce sees himself roll his eyes. 

"Just stay there a second." He dips out of the room.

Mel walks over.

"Viktor." She greets. 

"Councillor." 

"You can call me Mel, you know? I call you Viktor after all." 

"Ehh, your options are... Limited." 

She sits beside him, on the edge of the seat, posture perfect as always.

"You look as uncomfortable as I feel." she says. 

"Thank you. " Viktor says his tone sarcastic.

"I merely mean... This situation; is it as alien to you as it is to me?" Jayce was surprised to see her talking so openly. He wondered if it had anything to do with the golden champagne flute caught between here adorned fingers.

"To find common ground with me... You've had too much to drink." Viktor joked. The man's eyes are locked on the door where Jayce had disappeared. "You and I have very different experiences, though I suspect we may have seen the worst of both sides." he continued.

Mel glances at Viktor before sighing and resting her elbows on her knees. 

"I've known luxury all my life, but love? That is new to me." Mel explains, her eyes fixed on her signate ring, which she plays with tentatively. "War, oppression, it's all my family knows."

"Conversely, I once felt loved. But the flip side of your coin, cut this short." His voice isn't accusing, these are two people expressing the hardships of opposite scenarios.

Viktor shifted in his seat. "Tell Jayce that you're uncomfortable, you can spend the rest of the night in each other's company, Councillor." 

Mell doesn't answer, her eyes also locked on the door where Jayce left through, Viktor and Mel's expressions mirrored. 

"Do you feel loved now?" Mel asks. It throws Jayce for a loop.

"Sorry?" Viktor asks, confused.

"I-I can't tell how he feels about you, I suspect he sees you as a brother. But I see the way you look at him." She goes quiet for a moment. "Does that hurt?"

"You misunderstand-"

"I don't think so. Typically, in my line of work. I'm rarely wrong."

At that, Jayce sees himself barge back in, a long object roughly wrapped, cradled in his arms.

"Getting along?" he asks, his eyes moving between the two.

"Quite, he was telling me embarrassing stories about you. Honestly, I had no idea. If only the council knew." Mel joked. "I think I'll go and speak with Cassandra, the stress seemed to be getting to her." She says. Jayce motions to give her a goodbye kiss, which she seems to miss as she saunters out of the room.

Jayce turns to Viktor. A questioning expression plastered over his face. 

"eh, don't ask me." Viktor says, with a shrug

Ximena comes over, a frown on her face. 

"Jayce! You couldn't wrap it? What is this? Your dirty blanket?" she says as she tweezers a blue and red fabric between her fingers. 

"Mom, I didn't have time, it wasn't originally going to be a present like this, but I finished it in just time, so." Jayce the observer couldn't help but focus on his mother as he watched, he missed her more than he could say. Right about now, she may have lost hope. Three years was a long time to lose a son. 

"Next time, dear. I'll make sure he gets you something proper, and wraps it nicely." Her accent warm and familiar as she leans down and kisses Viktor on the cheek. 

Jayce kneels down in front of the man. Presenting him the gift. "Oh uh, I'm not giving you the blanket, just the stuff inside." he chuckles. 

Viktor moves the blanket aside, and there in amongst the folds are two objects. One a beautiful crutch with red and gold accents, the other some sort of metal contraption. 

"You started wearing a leg brace didn't you? Well this one, specifically because it has this shoe housing, should offer twice the support as well as keeping your leg straight. I can change it too if I've gotten the measurements wrong. See-" Jayce watches as his other self grabs the brace, he starts by helping Viktor to his feet, he instructs the man to place his foot in the shoe shell and then he clasps the object around the man's leg. Starting with the calf, and then moving up to the thigh. 

Jayce would shake his head if he could. He can see that Viktor is white-knuckling the entire interaction as Jayce manhandles the his's leg, not in a painful way, but clearly not engaging a single braincells. Viktor tries to take a step back, growing more uncomfortable by the second. Jayce remembers perceiving it as the man falling, or becoming unsteady, he watches himself quickly grab the man's wrist and inner tight to steady him. He hears the sharp intake of breath from his partner. 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you, I thought you were falling. All done now though. How does it feel?" 

--------

"Jayce?" he hears someone call. "Jayce!" 

He's fully on the floor now. He groans, using the bed frame to hoist himself up. His eyes feel dry. 

"What was that?" He asked in a daze. 

"A theory. I didn't mean for it to go on so long though. What memory did you see?" 

"The holiday, at the Kiramman's." 

"I tried to show you a nice memory at least." 

"A nice memory? Why in the nice one do I still seemed to be upsetting you?"

"Upsetting me? No. I don't think so?" 

"What do you mean, show me?" Jayce asked, delayed in his realisation of what the man meant. 

"I can show you visions, ti would seem. Whether it's only you, I have yet to determine." 

"How?" 

"I believe it stems from a strong desire to show you something, to impart an understanding. The connection breaks the moment our skin is no longer in contact. Though I didn't realise this, I thought it would be my hand again, which is why the memory was longer than anticipated."

"It still doesn't explain the rest of the visions. The first one I had you weren't even in the cave."

"I don't know why you have those. The types of dreams you have... I would never-" Viktor shook his head, but his expression said "I couldn't have? Could I?" 

Jayce stood up, helping Viktor to his feet too.

"Enough experiments for the moment. We can look into that later. Right now I want to talk."

"You do that, frequently in fact." Viktor countered. His eyes looked sad, or something past that. Past sad, like he expected the next words they shared to be their goodbyes. 

"You're right, I don't want to talk, I want you to. There's something about Shimmer I'm not understanding. People take it for a reason and I haven't engaged with that at all. So tell me, tell me why you did." 

His eyes looked far away, like he was looking off into some distant land. He wasn't seeing the candle lit room they were stood in. 

"Organic matter cannot survive such a violent transformation." 

"The plant." Jayce nodded, remembering their conundrum. 

"Humans are intolerant to change. Evolution happens slowly, over time. But... Time, was something I didn't have." 

He moved away from Jayce, limping over to the window, he pulled the curtains aside. Propping himself up on the corner of the couch, his elbow resting on the deep wooden windowsill. There was a faint warm glow, the sun was rising.

"To survive what I was about to do, I had to be less than that. Less than human. Shimmer would help me achieve this. I became something else. Something that could evolve. The... Friend I conferred with, I didn't know at the time, but his name was Dr. Revik." Jayce tried not to react, to hold in any reaction he might have had. But the fact that Viktor had found the missing Alchemist... Things were starting to fall into place now, and Jayce was besides himself with all of the questions he had swimming around in his head. 

"I'd met him once before, as a child. For months I'd helped him, thinking he was trying to save this-this creature; Rio. In retrospect... I think I may have been there at the... Conception of Shimmer. Saving Rio was of no real consequence to the doctor."

He went quiet, but the weight in the air told Jayce he wasn't done. Jayce tried not to move, he was barely breathing for fear of reminding Viktor that he isn't someone that shares openly. He didn't want to scare the man out of explaining more. The man ran hid fingers gently threw the morning dew that clung to the cold window pane.

"If-If I'd stopped at that first time... I think I could have lived the last few weeks of my life.. Happy, perhaps? Maybe I could have told you what I'd done, maybe together we could have figured out how to translate the discovery into something that could cure my disease. For that one day, I didn't need my crutch. For the first time in my entire life, I could walk unaided, I went to the docks. Ran from one end to the other. You wouldn't understand how that felt. The wind on my face, caused by momentum." He shook his head, tears traced glowing lines down his face as he looked out of the window, his eyes scanning the streets below. But his expression twisted before Jayce's eyes, contorting into something close to rage. Maybe beyond that. 

"Greed. Desperation. Humanity." the tears were bitter now. 

He turned to Face Jayce, eyes locking onto his. 

"I wanted more. Everything I was I would have traded. What began as just my leg, I would have let it take me in my entirety. If I was going to be the only casualty, and in its place would be left: time? An abundance of it? I would have given everything I had." Jayce had never seen him like this. Jayce stayed his ground, but he wanted to move. He could hardly tell if he wanted to back up, to run, or to embrace the man. "I returned to the lab, I carved the runes on everything I wanted replaced. If I could have reached my organs I would have. All I could do was pray it took those too. But when I went to use the Shimmer, as before, there was nothing left. The means by which I could survive, gone... it mattered little to me, I started the transition. Either I was successful and I would be... Cured. Or I wasn't, but what would I care? I wouldn't be there to know the difference."

"Viktor..." Jayce whispered breathlessly. Looking at the man, realising that in some other scenario, in some other timeline, Jayce would be making weapons, raiding the undercity, killing a child, and he would come back. Looking for his best friend, his partner, as he had done. And the man wouldn't be there. He'd have died, in some fifty-fifty experiment. 

"So, instead of waiting for me, waiting for us to make the next steps safer, you just flipped a coin?" Jayce asked, incredulously. 

"I didn't flip a coin, Jayce. I made a choice. Death was the only outcome." Jayce frowned in confusion. If death was the only option, how had he survived? "For the transformation to be successful Shimmer was a requirement. Not an option." 

"Then, how-?" 

"Sky." 

Jayce was surprised he was getting such honesty from the man, not in his wildest imagination did he think that by asking about shimmer, he was going to discover her fate too. He felt sick, unsure of what to expect.

"Sky? What-what about her?" 

"As the price of my transformation, I sacrificed her life to the Hexcore. She born the consequence of the transition. The equivelant exchange that alcemy demands. She... She turned to ash, in my arms." 

"You sacrificed-?" Jayce grit his teeth and stormed over to the man, snatching his wrist up he placed the man's hand to his chest, his loosely buttoned shirt allowed for skin contact. "Show me." he growled. 

"No." Viktor responded defiantly.

"You're a liar, Viktor. Blaming yourself for her death doesn't bring her back. I hope I see that vision one day. Because I don't believe for one second you hurt her intentionally. I think I'll find out she died accidentally. Worse; I think I'll find she died trying to save you. Like a hero. And in your self loathing you're going to erase the memory of what really happened. You'll reduce her memory to just some poor victim of your struggle to survive."

Jayce shook his head, exhaling slowly in an attempt to calm himself. He almost tossed the man's hand aside. 

"I don't want every day to be a fight, I'd rather we got straight to the point. This back and forth with you, it's exhausting." 

"There's a lot to unpack, Jayce... This. Us. Was never going to be easy. But I thought you knew this... Should I have given you that extension, after all?"

Jayce tutted in disgust. Grabbing his jacket of the couch. 

"Come on, I wanna go for a walk. A short one, see if we can catch the rest of the sunrise. After the weekend there's no telling what might happen. Or where we'll end up."

They'd somehow managed to get to the top of nearest hill before the sun had fully risen. It cast the most incredible glow across the fields. Some of which, particularly the lower ones, had clouds of morning fog settled at their bases. The change of scenery helped to clear the tension they'd built up that morning, it  fell away quickly after the amusing struggles that the knee deep snow had presented on their way. Once the sun passed the horizon and the sky assumed it's ordinary blue hue Jayce recommended they take a walk to a nearby wood, small as it was. The whole time they'd been there they had barely left the inn Jayce wanted to at least know what some of the surrounding looked like before they left. There was no guarantee that they'd come back again, after all. 

It was still winter, but the weather was far milder today than it had been in a long time. They were entertaining each other with stories of some of the weirder projects the inn guests had paid for as they walked down a well worn path through the wood. Viktor was doing great, his leg didn't appear to be giving him too much bother. He stood tall, as he had when they first met. Jayce absently tried to recall the progression from here, how many years had it taken for the man's leg and spine to get to the point it had been in the end? Was there a way that they could halt it's progression? He shook his head, he tried to think of something else, anything would do, so as not to dampen the mood. He smiled as he looked around, trying to engage with the scenery. The trees where familiar, they had similar ones in Piltover. He was reminded of the short walks they'd taken around the academy gardens whenever they'd hit a block or a lull in their projects. Whether that was waiting for parts, or needing to clear their heads to get passed various equations. 

Looking around, Jayce was surprised to see that there was a beautifully carved bench right in the centre. To its side, at one end of the bench was an old tree stump. He though he remembered Kaff talk about one he'd carved out for Martha, one they used in the summer when the weather was warmer. He hadn't expected to find it though.

He lead them to the seat, he sat down, but he had Viktor stay standing, positioned between his knees. 

"I want to run one more test." Jayce asked of the man stood before him, leaning with both hands on the top of his cane. 

"What?" Viktor asked cautiously. 

"Cycle through short bursts of memories, try to change them while you show me-"

"No, I-" 

"Please. And the whole time I'm going to try to break the connection. It's something I've struggled with. If I have a flashback in the middle of a situation there's nothing I can do. Yesterday was a warning, it can happen when I'm awake now." 

Viktor seemed to relent, but as he reached out he quickly stopped. 

"Wait. I-I want to write memories down." 

Write them down?

Jayce passed him his notebook, which he'd brought with him for when they would take a break. Viktor quickly drew up a list. 

"Take note of what you see, Jayce." 

Jayce prepared himself, taking deep calming breathes. The lighting was soft and beautiful, with the sunlight filtering in through the leaves and making them glow a beautiful, bright, emerald green. In contrast, the light that filtered through Viktor's hair gave it a golden glow one that produced the most appealing bounce light on his face, a look Jayce would have drawn in a heartbeat had he had his supplies. 

Jayce took hold of Viktor's cane as the man passed it to him, his slender fingers laced into the back of Jayce's hair, gripping handfuls of it tightly. Jayce felt goosebumps instantly cover his body. 

"Well, I mean we could always postpone-" Viktor looked unimpressed at Jayce's willpower. Suddenly, and without warning, Jayce was thrown into a memory. 

For a while the memory is consistent, Jayce and Viktor are speaking to Heimerdinger. Nothing special, some hypothesis that would be highly expensive to test so they wanted a second opinion to see if it was worth it. But the memory kept jittering, failing to switch. Meanwhile Jayce tried his best to find some sort of trigger that could pull him out. The memory managed to change. 

It was Viktor helping Jayce's mom with dishes. 

"You should come by more often, The both of you!" She says sweetly, there is melancholy to her tone. Sad, no doubt, that she didn't see her son quite so much those days. 

Jayce had to remind himself he had a goal here. The scene was struggling to shift too. 

Some party, one thrown by the academy perhaps. It begins with Viktor limping over to where a very wasted Jayce is sat. 

Jayce looks up, bleary eyed. When recognition hits, he smiles. 

"Viktor!" He says as he moves over a little, indicating that Viktor should sit by his side. Jayce seems to notice he's shaking. He huffs out a short laugh. "I guess I'm too drunk, I can't even feel the cold. But you're shaking like a leaf." Viktor glances at his own hands, they shake terribly. But large fabric is quickly draped over the smaller man's shoulders. It's Jayce's jacket. Jayce meanwhile is talking about something meaningless. Probably how tired he is of the disingenuous conversations everyone's having. He hasn't noticed that Viktor has taken the jacket off and has folded it into a pile between them. His hand still tucked into its folds. 

The disembodied Jayce is still trying his best to break the connection. 

"So, where were you?" the memory flickers, more violently than before. 

Oddly he can still hear the music, but it sounds muffled, like there are several walls between it. 

The memory snaps back, Viktor seems to be admiring Jayce's face, which has a red flush from the alcohol.

It's violently ripped back to the muffled version. 

"Hey! Hey you!" 

Viktor turns around. He has his crutch here. So whenever this is, it's after that holiday. There's a group of three people, dressed in the academy colours, first years by the looks of it. 

"Yes?" Viktor asks, clearly bemused, and a little annoyed. 

The front man steps ahead of the group, he looks as though he could be related to Salo but he seems more athletic. The jock of the family perhaps. 

"I'm so sorry! It's my own fault really. But I just didn't catch your last name." the way the man says it is so sickly sweet.

"It's Viktor."

A short burst of a memory takes over, he's looking up at Jayce as he introduces himself in the moonlight of Jayce's broken apartment. He seems desperate to stick to that, but ultimately the memory snaps back to the corridor. 

"Oh! My apologies, I thought that was your first name." 

"When you have only one, they are one in the same." Viktor says, his voice devoid of emotion, bar the annoyed undertones that Jayce picks up on. 

"You don't have a last name? Oh that's right, I did hear someone say you're a trencher! But honestly that can't be right, can it? Of course, I didn't believe them for a second, don't you worry. You don't smell that unbearable." The kid is stands in front of Viktor now. Jayce can feel his own anger bubbling up. He'd met all of these people, to him he'd felt they were annoying boot lickers. Constantly buzzing in his ear about whether he would tutor them. 

"And besides, trenchers can't apply to be in the academy." The kid sneered. One of his female friends chimed in. 

"Well, it's obviously isn't it. Talis keeps it around as a pet. A slave more likely." 

The last girl makes herself known. 

"Do you wash his dishes and things when he's working? Is that why he keeps you here?" 

" 'and things' more likely. You know how the saying goes, 'If you catch a trencher in Piltover they never got there for free.' And we all know, that the only way to make money in the Undercity is to be a whore. So how much is Talis paying you? Is it by the night, or the hour?" Viktor grips his crutch a little tighter at the insinuation. 

"Eww, you're making it angry!" one of the girls cackle. 

The vision gets ripped back to the party for a split second but seems to have difficulty pulling away from the other scene. Jayce sees himself, oblivious as he was, chatting to Viktor about the beginning of his idea for the Atlas Gauntlet. But right there and then, if it was just this moment, Jayce could imagine why the man might have chosen it. Jayce only had eyes for him, the only one in the room who could grasp his ideas and build upon them. 

"If we could isolate the runes that cause anti gravity, we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with weight." Viktor suggests. 

"And if we could recreate the force field from one of our earlier tests, the gauntlet could help miners survive tunnel collapses!" Jayce exclaims, his eyes alight with the possibilities. 

But the memory claws it's way back to the corridor. 

The first year is slowly moving past Viktor, who tries not to turn his back to him, but now his concern is with the two girls behind him that he no longer has line of sight on. The clipping of heels on the marble surface draws his attention, it sounds like one of them is fast approaching. He turns just in time to see her snatch away his crutch and within the same second his legs are kicked out from under him. 

He hits the back of his head hard against the solid stone wall. His vision fully distorts, it was odd to see, because as a spectator it was easier to see the distortion. But as Viktor he wouldn't have been aware enough to see it. 

He regains consciousness quickly. The girls are giggling as the man does a victory lap around what he believes is an unconscious man. He isn't even looking when he raises his foot above Viktor's head, ready to stomp down with as much force as he can. 

Viktor quickly swings for the man's other leg, shielding his own head as he knows the man will inevitably land on him. It takes effort not to react when all the weight lands on his legs. He quickly does what he can to reach for the man's head, the girls somewhere behind him gasp with shock. The first year is facedown, pushing himself up in his daze. Too late. Viktor manages to get behind the man, both still on the floor. With one hand he grabs a fistful of the man's overly styled hair and yanked his head so far back that the noises that escape the man are terrible as he tries to breath with his windpipe bent at an odd angle, and then with Viktor's other hand he puts so much pressure on the sides of the man's neck that the indents even make Jayce uncomfortable. One of the girls takes a step towards them, the look Viktor must have given her as his head snaps up in her direction is enough to make her retreat back to her friends side. 

The first year quickly goes limp. Just as quickly Viktor released his grip, makes sure that man's airways are unobstructed and checks he's breathing. Clearly satisfied that he's only passed out Viktor rises to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall. He stumbles a few steps towards the girls. They back up in horror.

He takes a couple more, they scurry back some more.

He stops to take a shaky breath, his hand going to where his head hit the wall. It comes away bloody.

He curses. Takes another step forward the girls who promptly stumbled over themselves in their attempt to get away. 

Whatever composure the man somehow still had dissolves. 

"The cane!" he shouts at them. One of the girls looks shocked as she realises she's still holding it. She throws it at him and they both sprint away as fast as their heeled shoes will allow. 

Viktor sighs, fetches his crutch and starts makes his way to... Their lab?

There had been nothing elegant about the fight, no grace to it, it wasn't like watching some trained fighters. But there was experience, that much was certain. Jayce felt like suddenly so much of the Machine Herald's fighting style made sense now. Viktor had always been at a disadvantage, yet he'd lived for nineteen years in a place that Piltover, with all their armour, feared to tread. He'd hardly been the only Zaunite to escape being mugged, attacked, and beaten. But as with everything he'd designed a way in which he could survive, likely through trial and error. And this is how he'd done it. The neck was vulnerable no matter who you were and so long as you got there first and controlled their movements it didn't take a lot of strength to do what he just had. Even small amounts of pressure to the arteries either side would incapacity most anyone quickly. 

Why that had translated into his relationships... Well that was a question for another time.

The vision is desperately trying to drag itself elsewhere, Jayce catches flashes of his old apartment, flashes of the bridge in better times, a sunny day with Jayce and Viktor trying to explain to a faceless enforcer why one of the bridges has to close for repairs. Jayce coming to sit with Viktor at the alcove on a particularly sunny afternoon.

But it soon crawled its way back.

He'd found his way to the bathroom attached to their lab. By the time the memory resumes, he's standing in front of the mirror as he assesses the damage. The whole side of his face is entirely caked in Blood. He quickly fills one of the sink basins with warm water, carefully washing the blood away. Once it's reasonably clean he holds a towel to the wound. He hoists himself onto the counter, positioning one of their long-arm mirrors behind his head so that he can see what he's doing.  There's a nasty gash that splits the skin. He's careful to have his towel handy as he alternates between mopping the blood and using his hair to sinch the cut closed by tying opposite sides of the slice together. After a while he carefully uses a clean section of the towel to draw out any of the remaining blood from his hair, he uses a clean one to dry it. Looking in the mirror he seems to play with his appearance until he looks presentable. Being sure to makes certain that a section of his hair is hiding the wound. In his dazed state he seems entirely unaware that one of his pupils is far more dilated than the other. Regardless, once he's satisfied he cleans up, emptying the basin that is now impossible to see into for all of the blood. He does an impressive job cleaning up. But there are tell tail signs that something isn't right, mid action he'll start a new section, forgetting to complete the previous one. Suddenly there's a knock at the door.

"Viktor, my boy!" comes a familiar voice.

Viktor freezes, glancing at the mirror, he's still wearing his blood soaked clothes. In his hands are equally drenched towels.

"Ehh- Not right now, Professor!" He tries to sound casual, the door clicked open. Viktor freezes, Heimerdinger is stood there, his small arm reaching up for the door handle. 

"My dear boy..." Heimerdinger whispers as his wide eyes dart around Viktor's appearance.

"Professor." Viktor greets awkwardly before moving past the man. He disposes of the blood stained items in the disposal shoot located in the kitchenette, before removing his shirt and doing the same. He wets a paper towel and wipes the dried blood away that had seeped through the linen. Once he's done as best he can with a paper towel and an audience, he puts on a clean uniform. 

"Viktor... We found the young lad-"

Viktor stops mid way through opening the door to the lab, and there, stood behind it, are a group of three enforcers. His immediate reaction seems to be to be flight as his body turns slightly away for the group. But he soon collects himself, he grips the cane tightly, hiding it closer to himself. He bows his head. 

"Before I go. I would like to speak with Jayce. To explain, and to say my goodbyes." He says simply. 

"Goodbye? Heavens no, my boy! Damius Salo was forthcoming in how he came to be in the state we found him.-" Viktor opens the door a little more, there's something of a crowd forming around the corridors, no doubt wondering why enforcers are knocking at the laboratory door.

Heimerdinger pushes past Viktor's legs to stand before the enforcers.

"A witness has informed us that the young man did not act alone, and that there were two young ladies with him. I've come to ask their names." Viktor's gaze comes to rest on two girls stood a little ways away as part of a group of onlookers. They look terrified. In an instant, one word from Viktor, and their whole lives dissolve before their eyes. 

"Ladies, Professor?"

"Viktor... These are very serious crimes that must be dealt with accordingly." Heimerdinger cautions.

"I remember only the two of us. Salo, and I." With that he pushes past them, clocking with some annoyance the disgusted looks he receives from one of the enforcers.

--------

Suddenly Jayce could move again. He'd slumped on the bench, Viktor looked unimpressed.

"You weren't even trying."

"No, I was, I just got a little distracted, that's all."

"I can't do it. I can't focus. I spend too much energy trying not to think of things I didn't want to show you."

"Please, I need to learn. I'll make you a deal; the things I see while we're doing this, I won't bring them up. You can talk to me about them if you want, but otherwise-"

Viktor shook his head. It wasn't a 'no', it was exasperation.

"It's midday, we should head back. Make what money we can before everyone settles in for the night. Everything we can scrounge together before the weekend should be helpful." Jayce said as he reached into an inside pocket of his jack. He produced a knife that Kaff had given him, and carefully he started carving the tree stump.

"Jayce?" Viktor called, he'd started walking, not realising Jayce hadn't followed. 

Jayce heard the man approach. 

"What are you doing?" Viktor mused, leaning over his shoulder just as Jayce rubbed the last of the shavings off of the "r" in 'Viktor'. 

There, on a patch of the wood where the bark had long since fallen away, Jayce had carved the words:

Jayce 

&

Viktor

Viktor sounded beyond fed up as he scoffed, grabbed the scruff of Jayce's collar, and pushed him off the bench. Jayce stumbled to his feet. 

"Talis; the Scientist. Councillor. The War hero. Thinks writing the name of the Arcane Herald, responsible for the deaths of four of their sons, on their parents own tree, will be appreciated."

Jayce cringed a little at the concept. He hasn't really thought it through.

They arrived back at the inn, greeted with a bowl of warm food.

Customers came and went, the folks who remained now at the inn were almost entirely made up of people who had been their since the reopening. Everyone knew everyone by name, Jayce greeted many as he would family.

A few hours into their 'shift' so to speak, Jayce had gotten more than one hint that Martha was upset with him.

"I'm taking a break Viktor, I'll see if there's anything I can help Martha with." he seemed curious, but ultimately didn't ask any questions. Jayce found Martha folding laundry in her room. 

He knocked on the door. She was smiling as she looked up to greet whoever had knocked, only for the smile to fade away, replaced with a sour, pursued-lips expression as she spotted Jayce. 

"So, I'm not wrong in thinking you're upset with me?" Jayce asked. 

She scoffed loudly, aggressively folding clothes and slamming them into their respective piles.

"I - I can't even-" she was fumbling for the word, but she seemed to be struggling to put them into a coherent thought process. 

Jayce thought about how Martha had found them, of course for anyone walking in it had looked bad. It probably was, but Jayce had justified it because the alternative was so much worse. 

"About yesterday-" he began. 

"No! Don't you 'about yesterday' me! You can't charm your way out of everything! Jayce, never in my life has Kaff ever dreamt of handling me like that, nor I him!" Her homely rural accent somehow made the telling off worse. "I was sick to my stomach all night thinking about it. I didn't sleep a wink! He's head over heels for you and you're going to treat him like that?" She was besides herself, her voice raising with every sentence. 

"And look at him today! Like nothing happened. Is that how often you do this to him?" she shouted.

"No, Martha, that's not-" 

"Not what? Not what it looked like?  Don't be so bloody ridiculous, Jayce! I could make the biggest misunderstanding in the world and it wouldn't change the fact you had that man pinned, on the floor, crying his heart out. He couldn't even tell me why!"

Jayce just hung his head, how could he explain?  'by the way, I had to aggressively shut him up because he was going to tell you he killed your sons. Don't worry though, it wasn't him, it was his corpse. Hope that clears things up'

"You have a disgusting temper, Jayce. And if feel sorry for Viktor, he deserves better." 

He was silent, there's wasn't a lot he could say, he'd almost certainly been too rough with Viktor that night, but the alternative was unthinkable. He hated the angles his actions were being viewed from. He hoped Viktor hadn't seen them that way, but there's was no explaining to the couple, not without making them hate Viktor. This was the better of two bad situations. 

"When I told Kaff what happened, took every grain of good in me not to let him at you. Pray you don't see him today." she nearly spat the final sentence out as she barged past him, shouldering him on her way. She yanked her door open, holding it expectantly. "Get out."

As he got to the door, he paused. 

"We're... Leaving. This weekend, I think. Please, you're upset with me, but I'd like his last memories of this place to be happy." 

She looked shocked, devastated almost. Similar, Jayce thought, to how he imagined a mother would look when their son announced that they'd be moving out. Instinctively she grabbed at his forearm, she seemed to want to say something, but Jayce understood. Whatever it was she wanted to say, she'd wanted to say to the version of him she knew before. But with this new idea of him, how could she, without seemingly excusing his behaviour. She took her hand back, it trembled violently as she covered her mouth, her eyes flooding with tears as she closed the door behind him.

As Jayce left her room, he passed Kaff in the hallway, immediately the man became concerned, pushing past Jayce to check on his wife. 

We should have gone yesterday Jayce thought selfishly. 

He joined Viktor again, who immediately handed him several small projects. Updating him on the various happenings that occurred during his absence. 

His partner seemed oblivious to his low mood, he hoped to keep it that way.

In their U shaped booth this time Viktor was sat at the bottom of the U, his back to the bay window, while Jayce was to the left, ready to greet new customers. 

A little later, Martha came over to their table, a basket in hand.

"Right lads! Take your pick." She leant over their table, displaying the baskets contents. There were beautiful artisan chocolates that looked so out of place in the homely Inn.

"What?" Viktor asked as he leant over.

"Take your pick! A couple that left this morning-you remember Fria and Jacque? Left them for us when they checked out."

Viktor raised an eyebrow, plucking one out that looked like it could have quite safely been dark chocolate. The others were a bit more ambiguous. 

"Thank you." He said gratefully.

Jayce glanced up at Martha, waiting on extra permissions. She nodded subtly. He took the smaller, less interesting-looking chocolate from the back.

"Is Kaff here today?" Viktor asked.

"He is indeed! Just been busy is all. You need him for something?"

"No, I merely wondered." Viktor explained.

"I'll see where he is for you." Martha assured. He didn't complain.

Meanwhile Jayce fielded various requests. Mostly trivial things, quick repairs that took hardly any time. Occasionally if it was going to take a little longer Jayce would pass it to Viktor so that he himself could continue taking on quicker projects. 

A slight que had formed now.

"What can we do for you?" Jayce asked, his customer service voice wasn't so different than the tone he'd taken when he had to re-organise the "trade disputes" back in Piltover.

The young man told him of his family heirloom, a pocket watch, that had at some point been dropped. Jayce took notes, agreeing to sort it. Meanwhile a young boy dived into the U shaped booth, crawling over to Viktor.

"Jenny said I should ask you about it!" the boy declared.

"About what?" Viktor asked kindly. The boy held up his arm, like the little girl, his was a prosthetic from the elbow down. This one seemed to be in particularly poor shape, what should have been a thumb swung limply from its hinge. Viktor set down what he was working on, the boy struggled to take the prosthetic off, Viktor helped him with it.

"Thanks, sir!" the boy exclaimed, elated as he ran off to another young kids side, she showed the boy her own prosthetic leg that Viktor had improved. Jayce had asked Martha quietly at the time, why there were so many little children with prosthetics. She'd explained that there were a mix of reasons, one big one was that there were some villages that had to migrate seasonally. So in the summer they lived in the mountains, but come winter they would have to make the journey here. And sometimes, especially with younger and older folks, if the village misjudged the timing, they would fall victim to the cold. With young children often bearing the brunt of the adults decisions.

Next up was a lady, she was covered in tattoos, most notably a large depiction of what Jayce assumed was Janna on her chest, just below her neck, and another notable tattoo under her left eye, it looked like black lightning, or a crack running from her eye down the length of her cheeks. She looked, upset, or despondent, Jayce couldn't tell. Maybe a little bit of both. 

He tried to ease his tone, something less superficial. A young girl clung to her hip. 

"What can we help you with today?" Jayce asked. 

"Do you fix things?" She asked, her tone monotonous.

"We try our best." Jayce assured. 

"Like what? What do you fix?" Her tone was so odd, her eyes were distant too. She seemed to be staring right at the window, though there was some chance she was looking at Viktor. But Jayce assumed she wasn't really looking at anything. 

"Well, we fix all sorts, what would you like fixing?" Jayce asked. 

"Show me." She said. 

Jayce looked a little confused, but he reached over to the stack of fixed items waiting to be returned to their owners. 

"Things like: watches-" he opened a box with a watch in. "equipment-" The interaction had gone on long enough that it seemed to catch Viktor's attention. The man looked up, Jayce didn't really pay any attention to the man's reaction. He was too busy sifting through boxes. 

"People?" His heart skipped a beat, her tone dripped with despair and all of a sudden Jayce felt like an explosion had gone of in his ears. Everything seemed to have slowed down, he watched as Viktor doubled over so fast that his head collided with the table, hard. Jayce's ears rang. He couldn't hear anything. He spun around to face the woman, smoke rose from the barrel of the gun in her hand. He watched in horror as she began to pull the trigger a second time. He threw himself at her. He heard the glass of one of the top windows shatter as he managed to push the gun up.

Soon enough the whole Inn was in uproar. Several people tackled the lady, dragging her away from the booth. 

Jayce couldn't think straight he spun around, grabbing the table, he used brute force to drag it out of the booth, flipping it away and letting it tumble to the floor. He fell to his knees in a hurry in front of his Partner. Behind him the woman screamed with all her might. 

"MURDERER! IT KILLED MY HUSBAND!" She kicked out with all of her might. "Murderer!!" Her screams were soul shattering. Jayce didn't know what to do, he wanted desperately to stop her from elaborating. But here his partner was, still doubled over. 

"Please, Viktor, are you hit? Where?" he whispered desperately. 

"Don't you people see?! He's the Arcane Herald! Everything in Piltover, in Zaun, it's all his doing!" 

Jayce managed to get the man to sit up a little straighter. He seemed disorientated. He was looking at the prosthetic in his trembling hands. It was shattered, the bullet had smashed it to pieces. 

"I'm sorry..."He muttered, his eyes unfocused. He looked around the room. His eyes landing on the father of the young boy who's arm lay in pieces in his hands." I-"

Jayce shook him. 

"Please, Viktor.-"He grabbed the man's head, putting their foreheads together, his own eyes welling with tears. Trying to get the man's attention."-are you hit? Where did the bullet go?" Viktor didn't seem to understand him at all. Jayce heard footsteps fast approaching, he nearly swung at whoever it was without even looking. But they fell to their knees to. They grabbed the prosthetic and tossed it as side. It was the young boy. 

"Sir! Sir, are you alright?" he asked.

That was enough it seemed, to get the whole inn moving. 

"I'll get Martha and Kaff!" one lady yelled as she sprinted out the door. 

The boys dad was by their side, with Jayce's help they straightened Viktor up. There didn't appear to be any blood, but the front of the man's shirt was shredded. 

The boy's dad frowned, glancing nervously at Jayce. But Jayce looked equally confused. 

"YOU SEE?!" Viktor's attacker yelled. "It's not even human! It doesn't even bleed!" 

"You be quiet!" a man from across the room shouted at her. 

"He's from Zaun! I am too! I'd recognise him anywhere, he played God and we paid the price!" She sobbed. 

"Why do you get to live?! Bring my husband back! Bring my daughter her father back!"

Martha and Kaff had just barrelled into the building when she'd made that revelation. 

"What's going on?" Martha demanded.

"She's shot him!" a kid shouted, already in floods of tears, pointing in Viktor's direction.

Kaff rushed over, Viktor's breath was coming out in weak wheezes. 

"Come on Son, where'd it land?" 

The tattooed lady turned, as best she could, to look at Martha. 

"You have to listen to me, he's a Zaunite, he left to work in Piltover, when he came back he pretended to cure people! He turned them into mindless machines! And then, when the Noxian arrived, he turned them into an army of machines, made himself into a god. My husband died trying to stop him! You have to believe me." She sobbed so a hard she was struggling for breath. 

Martha had gone white. Kaff stared at Jayce, his lips parted in shock. Jayce looked away, he couldn't bare to see their faces. 

"Sheriff... Detain them both. Take them upstairs upstairs, while we get both sides of this. We're still a civilised society. We don't just gun folks down." Martha said quietly.

Jayce panicked as the sheriff grabbed Viktor under the arm, hoisting the man to his feet. Jayce lunged for them but was quickly grabbed from behind but two men twice his weight despite being a clear head and shoulders shorter than him. 

"No, please!" He begged. As he tried his best to struggle out of the men's grip. Failing that, he kicked against the wall, sending himself backwards, slamming both of the locals into the seats. He managed to get free of their grip. He dashed forward towards Viktor as two men dragged his partner up the stairs, Viktor seemed to have lost consciousness by that point.

Jayce was instantly tackled into the wall by three other men. One placing all their weight against his chest, while the other two grabbed an arm each. He managed to toss both of the men on his arms away, and shoved the third with his new found freedom. 

He was leaving destruction in his wake, at least six people were scattered on the floor. He stumbled forward, towards the stairs. 

"Vik-!" he called out. But a hand slammed over his mouth, an arm around his neck. He was in a headlock. He saw red. He almost threw his new attacker until he spotted that it was Kaff. The old man's eyes were locked on his own. But it wasn't anger or rage, it was a silent prayer. A prayer that Jayce would stop. Jayce brought his his eyebrows up at the centre, pleading silently with him. He thought he caught a slight nod from the man. His own energy dissipated quickly. 

"Right Kaff, we'll take him to the sheriff. Effy!" Martha declared. She nodded at a man who seemed to have been more of a local, as opposed to just a passer through. The man nodded and made his way around the bar, taking Martha's spot. 

Kaff and Martha took Jayce up stairs, with the direction they seemed to be going, he could have sworn they were headed to their own room. The second he rounded the corner he spotted Viktor, unconscious, on the bed. He broke free of their grasp and sprinted to the man's side. Falling heavily to his knees. 

"Viktor! Viktor, can you hear me?" 

The two men who'd brought him in looked white as clean linen. Kaff and Martha closed the door behind them. 

The one Jayce had identified as the sheriff said quietly;

"If-...If he's not the Arcane Herald. Why doesn't he bleed?" 

That brought Jayce to his senses, in his panic he quickly tore at the man's shirt, ripping it clean open. And there, low on the man's sternum, was the shattered, mangled remains of the man's torso brace. It was Kaff that gasped, he had to turn away, his waved a pattern in the air, a religious gesture Jayce wasn't  familiar with. 

"What's going on, Jayce." Martha asked cautiously. It was clear she desperately wanted to rush to Viktor's side, but it likely hadn't escaped her notice that Jayce had not once denied the allegations. 

Jayce was trembling, he managed to contain a sob as he leant down, he lightly kissed Viktor's cheek before pressing his forehead against the man's. His partner didn't stir.

Jayce turned to face Martha and Kaff. 

"It's - It's complicated." He said quietly. 

"We've got all day, son." Kaff said cautiously. "Forget the short story, we want answers." 

"I-I don't even know where to begin." 

"You just took down a bar full of grown men, made 'em look like bowling pins. You can start by taking a seat." The Sheriff instructed. Jayce looked around, trying to think where would be best place for him to sit. He made his decision. He scooped his partner up into his arms. Everyone braced themselves, but Jayce didn't try to run. He sat back down on the bed, his back against the headboard. He drew his knees up as much as he could while having Viktor draped onto his lap, the man's head rested on his chest. He held him close. Kissing the top of his head gently. He could see the second man that had brought Viktor upstairs seemed to have a long barrelled gun. A shotgun perhaps. If what he said now caused this man to shoot Viktor, he wanted to be sure he himself didn't live long enough to see the man's corpse for a another time.

"Do you know about HexTech?" Jayce began. 

"Some, only what-" Kaff choaked up. "only what I remember Roe told me about." 

"And the Arcane?" 

"The Arcane is something we're more familiar with than most. The mountains are teaming with Magic." Martha explained. 

Jayce closed his eyes. 

"What about Councillor Talis?" Jayce asked. 

"The Defender of Tomorrow?" the sheriff asked, clearly surprised at the mention. Jayce frowned the what? Martha seemed to pick up on his expression. 

"We know of him." She clarified. 

"Well, he and his partner invented HexTech as a way of harnessing the Arcane. It was a versatile energy source that could be moulded to hold its own properties, like anti gravity, healing-if we could have figured it out-"

"We?" the fourth man asked.

"...We: Jayce... Talis, and Viktor of the Undercity." The whole room stirred. "We wanted to bring HexTech to the people, we made the hexgates at the councils request, but what we really wanted to do was help the people of Zaun. Bring equality through innovation. He, Viktor, never waivered from our goal. But during the progress day speech one of the crystals was stollen. With that, in the right hands, someone could have made a weapon. Piltover panicked, I panicked. I made things worse, in the hopes of dismantling the the problem I made hextech weapons myself. Viktor had begged me not to, told me there was another way. But I didn't listen, too self absorbed to see the damage I would cause." he sighed, opening his eyes he looked at Viktor's face, then more carefully he watched for breath. He was relieved to see that the man was still breathing. 

"He'd grown up in the fissures-" Jayce began. Martha made a face as if to say 'I knew he did!' 

"-and as a consequence... He was dying. While I was trapesing around the undercity trying to rule with fear, he was desperately looking for a cure, he wanted more time. More time to make a difference. More time to bring about the Zaun he'd always dreamed of. To make lives better for the masses. He created a form of hextech he called the Hexcore. It wouldn't do any good to explain that now, but in the end, he was sure there was something wrong with it. It seemed to be evolving, dangerously so. He made me promise to destroy it. He'd worked out that it would cure him, but he thought it was too dangerous. He didn't trust it. He was willing to die to rid the word of this device. 

Separately, with his help, I made a deal with the man who lead the undercity. We agreed on peace. No strings attached." Jayce held Viktor a little tighter. 

"We held a council meeting, we'd just unanimously voted for peace. But it was too late, they had weaponised hextech. After myself, of course."

"The Piltover terrorist attach; four? five years ago...?" The forth man mused. 

Jayce shook his head. 

"Not for us. For us, it was about one, two years ago. But he and I, we were in the explosion. He... He didn't make it." all four sets of eyes locked on the man now. "I managed to resuscitate him, but it wasn't enough. I didn't have another option, I couldn't let him die. So I took him to our lab. The Hexcore seemed to be reacting to him... I did the only thing I could think of at the time... I used it. I fused him with the core." He shook his head.

"Then, at the memorial there was another attack. I'd promised Viktor I wouldn't make any more hextech weapons, but I folded easily when faced with a threat that big. By the time Viktor came out of a coma, weeks later, he was... Different. Colder. But he still had his ideals, he was disgusted with what I'd done and he left. He must have sensed he was...Different. The hexcore, I'd come to find later, had granted him some sort of link with the Arcane, from his perspective he suddenly had the power to-" He glanced at Kaff and Martha, he tried to put more of his own body between them and his partner. "-to cure... People, illnesses. To heal injuries." Kaff couldn't contain himself any longer, he turned away, sobbing into his hand as he faced the corner. Martha looked about ready to follow in his footsteps.

"Did-did he heal our sons." Martha asked.

Jayce looked at them with all of the sympathy in the world.

"He would have thought he did. But in the meantime, I'd been sent to a different dimension by the Arcane, it was an alternate reality where I could see what was happening for what it truly was. The Arcane was using him, twisting his ideals and turning them into a subtle way of imposing it's will on them... He-he did meet your sons, it's what he realised at dinner, up till that point though I swear, we didn't even know if we were in our timeline, our dimension. For us it's only been a few weeks."

"What happened to them, what did healing do?"

Jayce closed his eyes again. Readying himself for the impact of hundreds of metal pellets.

"He healed them, they wouldn't have had whatever illness they had as children. But even though they were still there, their memories in tact... The things that made them human would have been gone. A twisted, extreme version of Viktor's own view of 'imperfections'. I believe he knew he was removing their illnesses, but I think subconsciously he was removing more than that, things that made them human; Fear, jealousy, anger, hate. Anything that could have a negative connotation would be removed. But he couldn't see it, the Arcane was hiding aspects of what it was going from him. After he healed them... I-I don't think they were really alive. But what cemented it was... when I killed Viktor myself, I'd escaped the alternate reality with a clear goal. To stop the destruction I saw, he had to be stopped. But the people he'd healed,they were connected to him and they died too."

Kaff sobbed uncontrollably, Martha couldn't contain her own despair.

"Once I did that, once I killed him, the Noxians, they must had a way to bring him back, or maybe he'd been on the brink. But what I has successfully killed was Viktor himself, what was left of him, outside of... An astral plane. I'd removed any sense of him, any ability for him to differentiate between reality and the Arcane's lies, I'd taken from him. All that was left in this reality, was the Arcane Herald. Walking around in his corpse." He looked back down at Viktor, thankful, regardless of the outcome here, that he'd been granted this opportunity to see his friend like this, happy, healthy. One last time. 

"And in the end... I lost, I gave up. I got so far but I didn't manage to change a thing. The Arcane Herald took my soul to the astral plane, and after all of that. It was only then that I realised, that Viktor wasn't gone. He was being lied to. Imagine-" he looked up at them desperately "-after all these years running the inn, helping all of these people. Giving them shelter, food. Imagine one day someone comes to you and tells you, this was never really an inn. The rooms are cages, the food is poison. And in an instant, all around you the walls turn to steel, and up to that point everything had been a lie. That was what it was like. Something happened, a crack formed, enough that I could show him the truth, and immediately he made the decision to sacrifice himself to release all those he could. He wanted me to go, to live but- but I couldn't. Not like that."

It had been a long tale, he hadn't explained everything in detail, he didn't have the time. But he hoped they understood. He needed them to. 

"So... At dinner, and after that-" 

"Yes. He tried to tell you, but I stopped him. I don't know how we're alive right now, it wasn't our intention. But-But to me, it's a second chance for Viktor to do the things he always wanted, to save Zaun. To help people, in more meaningful ways than he could before. Like I know he can and will, given half the chance. But the only person he has is in this world is me; the one who's literally killed him again and again. That's all he has. I'm selfish, the last thing I wanted was for the two people who met him as himself to change their opinion of him based on the things I'd done to him. So I begged him not to tell you."

The two looked at each other for a moment, Kaff nodded, some unspoken conversation between the two. Martha collected herself, wiping her tears away she bustled over to Jayce. Grabbing him by the sides of the face. 

"Listen to me carefully, Son. We don't blame either of you. What's happened is a tragedy. Did you make mistakes? Of course you did, it's what makes us human. We believe what you've told us. We trust you. Never forget that. But lad, you have to make us a promise now." Martha glanced at her husband, he'd started ripping things out of the wardrobe for some reason. 

"Whatever happens next, you have to make him believe you, we'd tell him ourself but we've no time. You have to show him he's loved, two people who should think the worst of him want nothing more than for you both to succeed. Do you understand me, Jayce?" he nodded, he didn't know where this sense of urgency was coming from. If felt like something was about to happen but he couldn't understand what. 

"And one more thing, Son." Martha said as she wrapped them both in the warmest hug he'd ever had. "I'm sorry for the way I treated you, I didn't know. There are people who go their whole lives dreaming of being as loved as he is by you. I hope you both live long and happy lives together. I know it's going to be tough, but you've already been through hell, the both of you, what happens next will be pale by comparison." Martha hurried to the wardrobe. 

"Psst." she whispered into it. Out of nowhere Effy appeared, she was covered in soil, cobwebs, and dirt. On her back was a duffle bag.

"Got 'em both their tool boxes, ran a collection too while I was at it." she said, holding up a their sack of coins from the days commissions, it looked to be twice the size now.

"And the clothes?"

"Yup, and them's fancy clothes as they was wearing when they got here. Nice and clean. Couple changes to, mind you, reckon I grabbed one of your dresses-"

"Oh shove over, now, sack the place. Do it quick, Effy." Martha ordered. Like a whirlwind Effy collected everything from around the room, their leather satchel, some candles, all their notes. Everything, in less time than Jayce would have thought to check the draws. When she finished she came to stand in front of Viktor. Her eyes big, tears building at the edges. 

"And he's not-? As in, he ain't-?" she said, trying her best to be blunt, to avoid the alternative. 

"No, Effy. He ain't dead." Kaff said, flipping the unconscious man's shirt open to reveal his broken brace. "The gods are on his side. Come on Jayce, we're gonna have to work together with this one." Jayce stood up, he was guided by the old man to the wardrobe, which he could now see was a passage, with the first part being a ladder to a lower level. 

"Now, I just hope he's as light as you make him out to be, lad." Kaff grumbled. 

"What if you and me go down first Kaff, that way it might be easier, strong'un lowerin', then we just have to grab him." the sheriff recommended, taking his jacket off in preparation. 

Kaff agreed and the two men quickly scurried down the ladder. Jayce walked to the edge, assessing it now it was obvious it was going to be a struggle, the ladder wasn't fit to hold them both. Martha quickly came over to him, she wrapped her arms around them both. 

"Having you two here, it's meant the world to us. The boys, all of them, they would have loved you two. And Kaff, I think you've given him a new lease on life. May we meet again." She said as she kissed Jayce on the cheek, she reach over to Viktor, Jayce bent his knees slightly so as to give her a better chance at reaching him.

"You're loved, Viktor." She whispered to the man as she kissed him on the forehead. The man's stirred at the touch. "Mah?" he seemed to whisper. 

Her eyes went wide before she broke into the saddest smile Jayce had ever witnessed. 

"Always." She said as she hurried them down. The feat of strength Jayce had to display to get his partner down to the other men without just dropping him was something else. The sheriff tried to do his best to help, but ultimately it was more like an eighty-five-fifteen percent split of the work load. 

Effy crawled past Jayce like a spider, Viktor's cane tied to her back with a rope, their duffle tucked securely under her arms.

Once at the bottom Kaff held out his hand to Jayce, who shook it, before Kaff seemed to have given up entirely and wrapped him in a hug. 

"You'll tell the lad I said goodbye, won't you?" the man said, his voice trembled. "I'd have loved to have one last chat with him."

The sheriff passed the unconscious man back to Jayce, Kaff wrapped his arms around them both. He pulled a way, wiping his face he put his forehead to Viktor's before chuckling sadly. 

"I seen you doing that before, figured it might've been meanin'ful to the lad." he smiled as he ruffled Viktor's hair, tears quietly running down his face.

"Its been a pleasure, Jayce. We'll remember you two till we got no choice in the matter."

"You have Viktor's list? Of parts, for the farm machines?" Jayce asked, having just remembered. The old man chuckled, it seemed a world away now. But he nodded. 

The sheriff had long since climbed back up, Kaff has a foot on the ladder when a faint word escaped Viktor's mouth, his eyes trying their best to open. 

"Kah?" the old man tried desperately to hold back his sobs as he climbed to he top.

"Don't still be here when he wakes up, he might not be so willin' to leave that woman in her state. And Effy? You come home in one piece ya hear?" 

Jayce knew what the man meant, if Viktor caught sight of the lady who'd shot him, Jayce feared his partner would let her try again. 

Jayce could hear them reorganising the wardrobe, now that Kaff was out of sight. 

"Come on big Bro! We gotta be quick. And quiet." 

He looked over to their guide, she held a small gas lamp up to her face. They moved through ancient stone tunnels, far older than the building appeared to be. 

They got to a specific section quite quickly, Effy signalled for him to be extra quiet. She pointed to what looked like wood above them. To his surprise it seemed to be the floor of the bar. Suddenly a commotion caught his attention. 

He paused as Effy did, they watched through the cracks in the floor board as Kaff, Martha, the Sheriff, and the fourth man descend down the stairs. Jayce motioned with his head, asking if they should carry on, Effy shook her head, pointing to her ear she then gestured a little further, there was a heavy wooden door.

we have to wait for the noise to pick up? he cursed their luck.

"Well? It's him isn't it? He really is the Arcane Herald? He can't be trusted in a cell, we have to kill him now!" the woman shouted.

Martha walked past her slowly, she swung the bar door open, situated herself behind it, picked up a glass shed previously been drying, and continued where she left off.

"The thing is, love." She seemed to look at every one of the other people in the bar in turn. "We just... Don't know who you're talking about." In one of the most bizarre displays of power Jayce had ever seen, all of the patrons seemed to turn around one by one, and in that instance sound resumed as though nothing had ever happened. As though Jayce and Viktor had never been there. The woman's face seemed to melt in her devastation as she realised, not only had she failed to avenge her husband, all of these people were going to pretend like it never happened. Her shriek started out silent, like she couldn't regulate it enough to form a sound, but when the noise erupted it was so devastatingly brutal Jayce thought he'd never sleep again without the sound in his head. She couldn't even engage with her crying daughter. She looked lost. Jayce quickly followed Effy away from the noise. Viktor's eyes were beginning to open, slowly, but surely.

They walked for a time, it seemed like forever but it likely didn't make it to an hour, but at this point even Jayce was struggling. Eventually the tiny corridor seemed to open up, the light from the gas lamp no longer touched the walls. The little girl ran around a rectangle of about 3 by 5 meters, lighting wall mounted lamps. There was enough light now to get an idea of what was going on. There was a small single bed against one wall, against the other were barrels stacked to the ceiling. And in the middle, a fire pit with some old dry wood, covered in webs.

Effy laid the duffle bag and the cane down by the side of the bed. Jayce laid Viktor down too.

Jayce turned to the little girl, she'd been staying strong for so long, acting far more mature than she should have to be. But he could see it plain as day now, her big eyes were glassy with unshed tears.

"I'm-I'm gonna miss you guys, you know? " She said through a sniffle or two.

Jayce knelt down in front of her. "Not as much as we'll miss you. I guarantee it. You're one of the bravest people we've ever met Effy."

"Yea?" She said as the tears finally started to roll down her cheeks.

"Without a doubt."

She threw herself into his arms. He held her tight, letting her be the first to let go. She tiptoed over to Viktor she reached behind her neck, undid the clasp on her necklace, and leant down, placing it around the man's neck.

"It's 'cause, if he wakes up, he might not believe we said good bye, you know?" she sobbed into her sleeve.

"Effy, if the necklace means a lot to you, keep it. I'll make sure he knows." Jayce said, rubbing her shoulder. She shook her head.

"It does mean a lot to me. That's why I want you guys to have it, but I only got one. So you're gonna have to share." She gave Viktor a hug, as carefully as she could, before standing up.

"I gotta go home now, you won't be able to stay here long, once the snows start to melt this place gets all flooded. And I grabbed you what food I could find, but it'll be gone soon." Jayce nodded.

"Thank you, for everything. Get home safe, okay?" Jayce said, giving her one last hug. She seemed too choaked up to speak, so she just nodded. She waved goodbye as she disappeared into the darkness. It wasn't long before Viktor started to wake up fully. Jayce rushed to his side.

He was unbelievably grateful that Viktor was finally conscious. The man tried to sit up, but immediately gasped in pain. Eyes flying open. 

"Carefully, careful." Jayce said, helping the man sit up instead. He propped him up against the wall. Viktor seemed to be looking at his hands as if expecting to see something.

"Viktor?" Jayce asked, the man's breathing seemed to have become laboured.

"His arm..." the man managed as after some time.

That's right, she shot through the kids prosthetic.

"I-I know. It's broken, but Viktor. You remember the boy? He didn't seem to care, he just wanted to know you were okay. It might have helped save your life too, that, coupled with your brace. They stopped the bullet. They saved you."

"I-... I don't think so." Jayce found that the way he said it reminded him of when the man hadn't known if he was cold or not, it had that same inflection. "I think... It merely delayed the inevitable." His accent clung to ever word, but there was a noise Jayce didn't recognise, a bubbling sound almost.

"What?" Jayce asked. He thought he saw something fall from the man's face, but his head was down, so it was hard to tell in the dark light. Jayce put a finger under his partners chin, it felt wet, he tilted the man's head up and there, in front of his eyes, was something straight out of a nightmare he'd had in the alternate universe, at the bottom of the ravine.

In the dim light Viktor could have been missing a portion of his lower jaw. In reality the blood was just pooling out so thick it was a hard to tell.

"Viktor?" 

"What? Why? What happened? You you were fine!" Jayce exclaimed.

Viktor ignored him, he seemed to shake his head slightly, eyes unfocused as he looked around the room.

"Where are we, Jayce?" He asked, there was no energy to it.

"I-I don't know, but Viktor, if you know what this is please, tell me. We have to do something." 

"What did you do? Are Kaff, Effy, and Martha safe?" Viktor asked, ignoring Jayce completely.

"What? Of course they are, they helped us get here."

"You told them it wasn't true?" Viktor's jaw clenched, his brows furrowed.

"The opposite. I told them everything and only after that did they help us. We can talk about it later, Viktor please-"

Viktor was frustrated, that much was obvious, but relented slightly- if only to get Jayce to stop pestering him.

"This... Isn't armour, Jayce. I think, maybe my sternum shattered. Some of my ribs, too."

"But- before you weren't bleeding-" When he sat up? Jayce pressed his palms to his eyes, willing himself to come up with something, anything, that could help. It didn't matter how it happened, he just needed to think of something. The crystal.

"Healing magic, if you-"

"Stop." Came the short, blunt reply.

"Stop? Stop what? You're losing too much blood-"

"Stop. Stop this-" Viktor gestured weakly, the universal sign of 'eveything.'  "You say you've learnt your lesson, if that's true... Let me go. Don't bring me back again."

"What?" Jayce could hear his own blood heartbeat in his ears. "But there's no reason for you to die now, saving you isn't going to cause some terrible incident. We're going to get your life back, Viktor. You're going to help people. We both are." Jayce said as he tilted the man's head up to face him. "You said so yourself, all you wanted was to be human, when you brought us back, that was what you were aiming for. Why give up now, it doesn't make sense-" 

"You think I would have brought myself back? After everything I'd done?" Jayce couldn't read the man's expression, he thought he might have looked disgusted, but he couldn't understand why. It wasn't like anything else brought him back, and he'd already said it was him that brought Jayce back, unless he was suggesting that it was his subconscious, in which case it's still him, deep down.

"I don't understand -" 

"When I chose to die, when you promised to destroy the Hexcore, I believed you. I chose to die when I didn't stop you in the sanctuary. I chose to die when I returned the souls. And every time you find a way to bring me back."

"Bring you back? When I used that Hexcore? We talked about this. I'm sorry I did that, I swear I didn't know what would happen-" 

"The Hexcore-" the smaller man scoffed, like that somehow wasn't what he was talking about. Jayce grit his teeth, his jaw clenched. 

"And I didn't bring you back in the sanctuary, the Noxians did. Listen, we can talk about this later, for now-" 

"There won't be a later! If you've learnt anything, you'll let me go, now, Jayce! You promised to finish me off and you couldn't even do that-" 

"Finish-? I blew a hole right through-" His hand flew to his own mouth, he felt nauseous. He glanced at the glassy skin visible now as Jayce had rendered the man's shirt near useless. He tried to calm himself down. 

"Jayce, this is our timeline. Like I'd planned. Without me, you can return to Piltover, to Mel. Without worry. There would be no need to hide-" the man's face twitched in pain, he leant over,  producing the most wretched gargling noise from deep in his chest as a sickening amount of blood and bile cascaded to the floor. Jayce hadn't seen this much blood since the bridge after the attack. He'd see dead enforcers that had lost less. He was trying his best to stay calm, to stay on track. If he was right, he need to convince Viktor, he couldn't do anything without his help.

"Mel? Viktor stop, I don't want that, I would trade and easy peaceful life for a full life with you any day. I'll explain it all later, we don't have time-" Jayce snatch up his partners hand, the on he knew had the crystal. "You have the crystal, I know you do, and I think you know how to use it. You can heal yourself -" 

"What did you learn, Jayce? In all this time, if you're still trying to force me to live." He pushed Jayce away, leaning further over the side of the bed, allowing for blood to pour onto the floor as opposed to fabrics of the duvet. "I - I can't do this. Already, the first people we meet, miles from Piltover. Their lives are in ruin because of me. And you want me to believe they just forgave me? I'm not you, Jayce." Jayce ignored his thinly veiled dig, yet again, at his trusting nature.

"I-I don't just want you to live, I want you to have a choice-" Viktor scoffed viscously, turning now to face Jayce. Tears streaming down his blood stained face. 

"Choice? Choice is false. I've made many, they never seemed to matter, I didn't chose to be born in the fissures, to be riddled with disease. I chose to ban the creation of Hextech weaponry. You made them still. I chose to die instead of use the Hexcore, you didn't listen. I chose to die for what I'd done, to disappear into nothing after restoring you. You wouldn't let me."

Jayce didn't know what to say, he had no idea what the man was on about, didn't let him disappear? They went together, Jayce didn't stop him. 

"I do want you to have a choice here, and I'll respect it. If you choose to die here... I'll let you-" I'll come too, I can't see you like that again. I can't lose you another time. "But I want you to have all the facts first. So that you can make your decision based on them-" 

"Facts... Of course." Viktor barely seemed to be able to hold his eyes lids open. But he reached out for Jayce's face, for a moment Jayce almost let him. Thinking it was some attempt at a goodbye, but he realised almost too late - he was going to share his memories. To lock him in stasis. Jayce tried to pull away but he was too late, the man's finger tips made their connection. 

The transition was far more violent then it ever had been before.

But the memory itself seemed... Oddly calm, there was no sense of urgency. There was very little sense of anything at all. It reminded him of the astral plane, but... Lighter? Almost like being in a cloud of star dust. The vision didn't move naturally, it seemed to float, not like swimming, there was no struggle. Where it wanted to go it went, where it wanted to stop it did. 

In front of it was a denser cloud of light, it almost looked like a figure. Jayce didn't have the same awareness in this memory as he had in the others. He felt like he was clinging on to what scraps it allowed. Like trying to stay awake when you can feel that one of your eyes is fully closed, and your head it falling. Jayce thought weeks might have gone by, he was absently watching the scene unfold, it felt like he had all the time in the universe and he was content to spend it like this. Like he was watching the sand from an hour glass. When he thought to tune back in to the main event the denser light seemed to be developing a stronger shape. 

His attention drifted again.

The perspective never seemed to stop, it was in constant motion, slow for the most part, drifting around the shape. The vision had no form of its own, but Jayce felt like sometimes he caught what looked like a hand, a slender one, drift in and out of form. It seemed to reach for the cloud of light, he wondered if it was these hands that shaped it slowly over time.

More time passed in the tranquil existence, tuning back in Jayce could have sworn the light looked almost human now. It had the figure of a man, or it seemed to. 

He was slightly more curious now, but it was still difficult to care. Nearly impossible to judge time, even more difficult to stay focused. More weeks went by when a patch of colour caught Jayce's attention, he looked back. The Intermittent ethereal hands seemed to be smoothing out elements of an arm, but the hand attached to this new shape had colour now. He recognised his own scars embedded in it's skin. 

Is this... Me?*

He looked up at the figure, and true enough, now that he felt he was more... Aware? He could tell it had his stature. But he still struggled to maintain his focus and soon he was lost to apathy again. 

He felt years pass by before he regained control of his focus. The cloud, who's perspective he was looking from, seemed to have slightly more form than before. The hands he'd only thought he'd seen were nearly a constant now. Though they were still only silhouettes of light. The cosmic sculpture at it's finger tips seemed all but complete now, Jayce couldn't see what was left to make. Oddly, he felt like the things eyes were watching the entity as it floated around. They didn't move so much, but he could tell they were at least aware. The cloud silhouette ran it's thumb along the sculpture lips, tiny indents appeared that previously hadn't been there, looking at the additions he recognised them, but he'd hardly have noticed had they not been there.

The cloud seemed to float backwards a little, to admire it's work, to assess if any changes needed to be made. Jayce was overwhelmed with an emotion that seemed to be coming from the entity. 

It was like... A mixture of Happiness, a sense of achievement, and melancholy. It floated back to him, and lovingly placed a hand to the side of its face. 

"I-I will miss you, Jayce. I'll never forget what you did for me, but I want you to be happy. To live a full life, as a hero. If you miss me at all, I hope you make it brief." The voice was strange, like it was being recreated with a thousand beautiful instruments. It didn't come from anyone direction.

He watched his own eyes, the sculptures eyes, move slowly to follow the entity. They seemed devoid of emotion, unless perhaps curiosity was present. A window seemed to appear behind the sculpture. The entity turned around for the first time in these three years and there before them seemed to be what looked like a distant start, yet it was within arms reach. Like an optical illusion. 

The entity reaches out for it, seemingly the final piece of the puzzle, Jayce gets the feeling that it must be his soul. But the fingertips stop short, it glances back, surprised to see that the sculpture of Jayce has its own hand wrapped around it's ethereal wrist. 

"Jayce?" Viktor sounds odd, his voice shakes, filled with uncertainty.

W ait... I've heard this before.

"What are you doing?" Viktor whispers desperately. He looks at his arm, colour seems to be returning to it, but the way the ethereal entities fingers are splayed out, and twitching tells the disembodied Jayce that this is too quick, this isn't soft and gentle. The work that took three years for Viktor to compete is being forced on the man in seconds. 

"Please, Jayce! Stop! I'm begging-!" The entity, Viktor, can't complete the sentence. Jayce doesn't experience the pain, but he senses it conceptually. It feels like every atom that is created is being set on fire. Viktor as a whole begins to take shape, the colour becoming skin from where Jayce has hold of it. 

Viktor desperately turns back around reaching for the soul, but he can't get to it. 

"Stop, Jayce! You can't keep doing this!" he manages to stutter out between desperate, anguished screams. 

"Let me go!" he says as he strains even more towards to glowing object, something of an environment has formed around them, almost out of the same cloud that the two of them once were. They're stood on some sort of platform, Viktor desperately pushing against it with his feet, trying to gain a foot hold he can use to get to this soul. He glances down at his own legs as they seem to gain colour, he spots the sculpture Jayce's reaction. It seems confused. It tilts it's head, like it's forgotten something. Suddenly Viktor's right leg collapses. The pain in the scream that follows is sickening. The man watches as a brace forms like a cage around the limb. He claws at it as it does, but nothing seems to stop it. 

Viktor looks up at the emotionless voids that are Jayce's eyes. He glances at his own wrist, still caught in its clutches, as it seems to fully complete itself, it starts to wrap the fabric of the academy uniform around itself and just as it finalises the sculpture seems to take a step back towards the window. Dragging Viktor with him. Viktor grits his teeth and in one good pull they hear his wrist snap, momentarily drawing it's attention causing it to loosen it's grip. Viktor dives back towards the soul, just manages to snag it when he's snatched back in. Viktor's wrist seems to heal quickly, the sculpture, that now looks undistinguishable from Jayce, now has the man facing him. One hand pulled above his head, the other pinned behind his own back as the sculpture holds him tight. Viktor glances up at the hand pinned above his head. Jayce does the same. They watch as Viktor releases his grip on the soul,  it tumbles down towards the sculpture, but when it makes contact it seems to disappear, instead the man's eyes glow unbelievably bright, they cast beams like you might expect a search light in fog to. He blinks. His eyes focus, he look straight at his partner. 

"Viktor?" he whispers in disbelief. 

The memory shifts without explanation. It seems to go through a montage, the most consistent images throughout are of Jayce. His smile. His laugh. His eyes. Various unprompted embraces. The memories faulter slightly. Jayce gets a glimpse of the real world.

Viktor's dying.

The man's grip is losing strength. He's having to quickly re-establish the connection, throwing Jayce back into the montage. 

There's even audio that comes with no visual. It's of the things he says to Viktor while the man's in his coma. The near-confessions Jayce almost made daily to his partner. Before 'coming to his senses' and deciding against it. 

Jayce- the current Jayce- needed to break free, he had to, if he couldn't he'd have just sat through the "Life flashing before your eyes" moments and done nothing helpful. 

That was it, a slight flicker in the memories as the man accidentally broke the connection again. But this time Jayce was ready, he snatched at his wrist, making sure to grab only the fabric. 

"Suicide by locking me in your memories? No one ever said you weren't creative, Viktor." Jayce growled through clenched teeth. "But now it's my turn-" He reached over, careful not to touch the man's skin he snapped the necklace off his partners neck. The man seemed to recognise it. A frown forming. 

"I did tell them everything. She didn't think I'd be able to convince you that they really did forgive you, she gave you this as proof. A kid, Viktor, barely ten years old, knows how stubborn you are. They believe in you, they want you to do what you were born to do: save Zaun. Make the world a better place." Jayce sighed... He knew now what Viktor had been hiding since day one. The man had already given up, he was trapped here by Jayce, yet again. "I do want to give you a choice, and I'll honour it. But I need you to understand; these people knew you, they saw you for who you really are. They forgave you. They understood it wasn't fully you... But that isn't the only reason, there's more. No matter what way I look at it-" he foraged for his notebook in the duffle, laying the pages from this morning down. "It isn't some 'alternate universe Viktor' that saves Piltover. That saves me as a child. That takes me to the alternate universe. It's you, every time. If you die, I can't tell what happens to the timeline. But I *will* let you, if that's what you want." 

Viktor took the necklace, Jayce made certain not to let the man touch his skin. If these were going to be their last moments, he wasn't going to miss a single second. Not again. 

If he chooses to... Leave. I won't be able to go with him here. We can't let Effy find us. I'll take us back to the mountain. I don't want to see him-. I can't see him like that again. It's fine... Just for a day or so. It'll be quicker than it was getting here, I won't need supplies. Don't make me- I'll dump what I can't carry somewhere along the way. We'll go to the cave...

"Pass me a knife... Jayce." 

Jayce tensed up, but did as he was told. 

"Hold-" the man closed his eyes, shook his head. 

'Hold me?'

Jayce brought the man closer letting him rest on him like the back of a chair. 

"Jayce...." He said weakly. "Undo the front of my brace, carefully." Jayce was shaking like a leaf. Once he'd undone some of the clasps on the side he reached to the front, where the nodes there attached, he carefully undid them. He almost thew up and had to pause when he felt the centre of the man's chest dip slightly. 

"You have to hold it out, away from my organs." the man could barely string the sentence together he sounded so tired. Jayce did as he was told. Pinching a node between his fingers, with them being attached to the bone somehow, they made holding the structure in place easier. What he would have done had they not been there he didn't know. 

Without warning Viktor began carving symbols into his flesh. Jayce tried not to look away, but it was unbearable to watch. Once he was done there, with a trail of symbols leading down from the base of his neck to his solar plexus, he brought the blade to his hand, the one with the crystal in. He seemed to try to cut into it but he couldn't muster the will power. The crystal was far deeper than the symbols he'd created. 

"Jayce, please, in my palm there's -" Jayce cut him off. 

"I know." he said through grit teeth as he used his free hand to grab the knife from the man. He kissed him on the back of the head, readied himself so that no matter how the man reacted he wouldn't cause him to faulter in protecting the man's organs. 

He stabbed the knife deep into the man's hand. Earning himself a near concussion as Viktor head flew back with the pain. 

Jayce held the man closer, planting desperate reassuring kisses to the side of the man's neck as he dug into Viktor's hand with his fingertips. There. He pinched what felt like a solid, sharp object and pulled it out. True enough, it was the crystal. The rune still carved into its surface. He felt Viktor go limp in his arms. He'd passed out.

"No, no, no, no. Come on!" Jayce begged as he managed to wake the man again "You can do it Viktor, I know you can." His partner held out his injured hand, Jayce placed the crystal away from the new hole. Viktor took deep steading breaths. The crystal began to float, as it had done all those years ago when the mage had begun his spell. Viktor's pupils seemed to take on a blue glow that got brighter and brighter it wasn't long before the whole room was awash with it. His other hand hovered over the injury. 

Jayce could feel that the structure below his finger tips was stabilising, it seemed to support itself better. Rather sickeningly Jayce watched as definition seemed to return to the lower section of Viktor's rib cage. So much more had been broken, that Jayce just hadn't even seen.

And suddenly the glow was gone. 

Jayce didn't want to move. He barely wanted to breath, he just lay there, in the quiet. Listening to Viktor's breathing, his steady heartbeat. 

Hours crawled by, Viktor's eyes opened slowly. They'd returned to their beautiful colour, made all the more vivid with them being lit by fire light again. 

He didn't say anything for an excruciatingly long time. Eventually he sat up. He took some slow, deep breaths. Nodding slightly to himself. Jayce closed his eyes, relief washed over him. He sent a silent prayer to whoever might be listening. 

"You look, unimpressed." Viktor said. 

"Do you blame me? You look like a sacrifice gone wrong." the smaller man was absolutely covered in blood. The dim light exaggerated the contrast, but Jayce was quite sure it would look no better in full daylight. Viktor smiled slightly at the joke. 

"No, don't do that." Jayce said, shaking his head. It was nightmare fuel, the pale skin, the smile, those teeth, covered in his own blood. He look like something out of a Noxian fairytale his mother had read to him when he'd told her he was absolutely old enough to hear it. Before promptly failing to sleep for the next three weeks.

Time passed, they didn't speak. Each of them waiting for the other to decide what to say. 

"Did... Did you decide to live because you want to... Or are you going to chalk this up as another one of mine?" Jayce asked eventually. 

Viktor didn't answer, he'd picked up Jayce's notes, the conclusions he'd come to that lead him to believe Viktor was the mage. 

"I'm aware that I blame you too much, Jayce." He said distractedly as he flipped through a few pages. "It stems from a sense that I have no control - Or that others have more - over my life. Despite what I say...I know that it wasn't you in the astral plane. Like the Arcane Herald, it was you without your humanity."

"I don't really understand what happened there, I don't know what that was." Jayce admitted. 

"Our essence was scattered and fused. But, likely due to my proximity with the Arcane, I quickly regained consciousness. For three years I separated us, reconstructing you to the best of my abilities. I had hoped to send you back to our timeline, so that you might join your loved ones. I would have sent you to them directly, to remove the risk that loneliness could bring. Loneliness that would come of arriving in an unfamiliar land without company." the man had set aside the notes, and was now looking at the sketch Jayce had made of him at the height of his disease. 

Jayce looked at his own hands, found small insignificant scars Viktor couldn't have know about. A small one on his palm where he'd burnt it in his father's forge. "It took three years to make me, and I don't see anything out of place... Were there... Consequences, of what I did to you."

The man's expression softened, but it softened in a bittersweet way. 

"There are... Discrepancies." Viktor subconsciously messaged his leg. "I still have all of my scars and markings you couldn't have known about. So it seems that some of the process was automated. But I don't know what you did to my lungs, I-... I Can breath now. As I said before, the taste of blood is gone-" he paused, glancing at Jayce. "Well, not at present."

Jayce sighed, shaking his head at the poor joke. 

"But, the pain in my leg and back, they are unfamiliar to me. Stemming, I think, from your lack of understanding as to what my ailment was. " 

"What?" Jayce asked, sitting a little straighter. 

"I believe the better solution, to figure out what this is, would be to ask you what you thought was wrong with me." 

"I-I'm not sure." 

"Guess, Jayce." 

"I guess, maybe I thought a birth defect, something to do with your tendons, and your muscles." 

Viktor considered this for a while, nodding absently to himself. 

"My condition was a neurological disorder, a by-product of a genetic mutation. Making it difficult for the nerves to send signals to my muscles. Over time, this caused muscle weakness, particularly in my leg and foot. The disorder was progressive. Had The Grey not taken me, it wouldn't have been much longer before I was wheelchair bound." Viktor twisted a tuft of hair between his fingers. "Ironic that you called it beautiful when you seemed to know so little about what 'it'  was." he muttered, more to himself it seemed. 

Jayce put his head back against the stone wall, sighing. He had no idea how he was going to claw his way out of this one. 

"I think I was more referring to the struggles you overcame, the perspective it gave you. The parts of your personality that built off of that, that wanted to improve people's lives because of it. Those struggles made you who you are. You wouldn't have been the man I met without them. The man I admire." Jayce watched as the man contemplated that. Jayce felt terrible that he's understood so little of Viktor. Hated how much he was having to discover now, so many years after they'd met. 

"Viktor?" The man looked up. "We need to do something about your face at least. Give me a minute, and stay here." Jayce said with a grimace. Viktor raised an eyebrow, one more instruction away from pointing out he's a grown man, no doubt. Jayce picked up a seemingly clean bowl from a table nearby, tucked away in the corner of the room, and started down the tunnel. His goal was to find an opening if possible, to collect some clean snow.

Jayce walked further down the tunnel, making sure not to get lost. Eventually he found a small section that seemed to have an offshoot, with a ladder leading to a hatch. Jayce tried to be as careful as he could but the thing was frozen shut. Eventually he managed to pry it open. He was surprised to see that the hatch opened up nestled into the landscape, buried in the woods. He was lucky that the out crop of rocks that this was disguised amongst had allowed for snow to fall through. He collected as much as he could, compacting it so as to fit more, before returning to the room. 

He heated the water as best he could, but it likely did very little to take the chill off. Viktor took his own ruined shirt off, folding it so that the contaminated sections were away from the clean ones, he dipped it into the water and began wiping his face. Jayce gently took the makeshift cloth from the man, who was currently sat on the stone floor his back against the bedframe, and slowly tilted the man's head back to look up at him as he knelt either side of the Viktor's legs.

It'd started out as genuinely helpful, Jayce told himself. But as most of the blood was removed from the man's face, and he found himself loosing focus, his thumb, that was wrapped in a thin layer of the wet cloth, spent more and more time slowly fussing over the man's lips. His gaze fixated on their unique shape. It wasn't until Viktor spoke that Jayce even realised how close he'd gotten, as Jayce felt the man's breath on his skin. 

"If we make it to Piltover-" the man whispered. "And if you somehow convince the council... What will we be?" 

Jayce blinked away whatever trance he'd been under. 

"What?" he asked, not sure what the man could be on about. 

"Would we be Partners, as before. Or... Partners, as we are now?" Jayce hated how uncertain Viktor sounded about the second option. 

"What's that supposed to mean? What would change? Why would it change?" He asked, trying to stifle his irritation. 

"Mel, Jayce. She will be there, three years is not so long to wait for the one you love." 

Jayce stared at the man blankly. 

"What?" he asked, dumbfounded. 

Now it was Viktor's turn to be irritated. 

"I'm quite sure you remember her-" 

"Of course I do, but we weren't even together the last time we saw each other." Jayce shook his head "That's right, I don't know why you would know that." he tried to think what the best way to explain it. 

"Not long after you left, Heimerdinger, Ekko, and I found the anomaly. I spent... Maybe a year there. But I think, around the same time, something happened to her too. That moment in the council room was the first we'd seen of each other. We weren't the same people. What we recognised in each other as the parts that were together, where the parts we grew out of. I was no longer the same naïve man I had been-" Despite what you seem to think. Jayce thought frustratedly. "- I no longer needed that sense of approval. And she no longer valued the Medarda legacy, she didn't need an investment. What we had was built on the things we no longer were."

"If you've changed so much, wouldn't that logic apply also to me, that you aren't someone I should recognise?" Viktor asked quietly. 

"No, the parts you knew of me didn't need changing. You knew the version of me I wanted to keep. The scientist, determined to make a difference."

"Those were always your better qualities." Viktor said.

"I thought so too. It's what I meant even back then, before I could fully leave the other parts behind. My place was always in the lab, with you."

Viktor allowed himself a smile, leaning closer to Jayce. Jayce wrapped an arm around the man's waist, picking him up and gently laying him on the bed. 

"That's the last time I want to hear you question it, Viktor. I'm not playing this game every time you don't understand." he said as he kissed a trail along the man's jawline and finally arriving at his lips. 

It wasn't like the first time, there was less urgency to it, if Viktor had wanted more, it was obvious he just didn't have the energy for it. Even the typical hand in Jayce hair didn't have the same fight it once had. It was more there out of habit at this point.. Eventually Jayce broke it off, smiling at Viktor. Jayce sat back mindful not to crush the man's thighs, Jayce ran his fingers through Viktor's hair, removing it from the man's face.  Viktor's breathing was heavy, his pupils blown, but he looked desperately tired as he propped himself up on his elbows.