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Jayce pulls the lever. Viktor’s lifeless body takes a breath.
-
“The guard told me you tried using your hair this time.”
Viktor’s frame is slumped on the chair, his shoulders hanging like his arms are disjointed. His hair is greasy. Hm. Jayce should probably get him to the bathroom soon. Viktor liked being clean before- well, before he died the first time.
Jayce allows his hands to linger longer in his partner's hair, before raising the scissors again. The sound of a snip echoes in the silence of the room and Jayce finds himself relaxing. Ever since the snowstorm that almost took his mother’s and his life, he never liked loud noises, the pressure against his ears. He misses this, being silent beside his partner, only disrupted by little noises like the tinkering of metal, the scratching of pen against paper, Viktor’s mumbling and muttering, his thinking hums, occasional cursing. Jayce has really lost sight in between the politics of Piltover. This serenity, this calmness - now with eyes open he can finally appreciate it. And to think he almost lost it.
Viktor doesn’t say anything. He stopped talking two days ago, only looking at Jayce with lips pressed into a thin line and eyes that track every one of his movements.
“Sorry for the chains. Can't risk you grabbing the scissors. I hope you understand.”
The handcuffs rattle when Viktor scratches at his wrist as if only now remembering them again. They jolt against the leg of the chair where Jayce has attached them. As far as Jayce understands it, he has more difficulties feeling anything in the metal parts of his body. It is the reason Jayce doesn’t feel guilty about having taken his blanket away after he ripped it into strings to hang himself. His body neck up is the only part of him that isn't invulnerable and Jayce is so grateful for the fact he only needs to check his head for any injuries Viktor might have caused to himself.
“I don't.” Viktor’s voice is raspy, caused by disuse. It is blank, resentful, spoken in the same monotone apathy he woke up with. It's okay. He will understand. Later.
“You keep trying to kill yourself, V.” Jayce jerks the scissors away when a shudder runs through Viktor’s body, and he breathes out when he realizes the depths of his paranoia. It is fine. Even if Viktor manages to grapple the scissors from his hands, Jayce can just revive him again. “I don't like seeing your dead body.”
“Then just let me die.”
Jayce sighs, tired of the old argument. He leans forward to wrap his arms around his partner. “Don’t worry. I'll fix you soon. Just- wait a bit longer, yeah?”
“Jayce.” Viktor doesn't move. He feels like a corpse in Jayce’s arms. No breath. No heartbeat. Body as still as a statue. So unlike the Viktor he knew, excited, unable to hold still sometimes. Only his slowly weakening body has kept him from moving constantly. Now, with a healthier body that doesn't look like it's about to be swept away by the wind, he is motionless and still. It's unsettling. Jayce doesn’t know how much of his partner he is currently talking to. “You can't keep me here forever.”
Jayce buries his face in his partner’s neck and takes a deep breath. It still smells like Viktor, familiar and oh so damn painful, like standing beside a blackboard and arguing over an equation, like falling asleep on a desk, Viktor’s hair tickling his nose. “I'll fix you.”
“I’m tired, Jayce. I'm not meant to be alive right now.”
Jayce only tightens his grip. “You're not supposed to be dead. I- I was the reason you were in that room.”
“We’re just mortals, Jayce. We aren’t meant to conquer death.”
Shaking his head, Jayce lets go to continue cutting Viktor’s long hair. He isn't a hairdresser, then again he’s sure Viktor doesn’t care about his hair right now. Besides, it's not like anybody except for Jayce and the guards see him. Jayce is cutting his hair short, shorter than he had it before his death, shorter than he carried it in years now. It's more reminiscent of how he looked the first time they met. How nostalgic, this image from the past. “You were the one who figured out how to use the hexcore. I only used your notes.”
“It killed sky.”
“And it saved your life! Over and over again!” Jayce sticks the scissors back into his bag and brushes the hair away from Viktor’s shoulders, his thighs, before grabbing a broom and cleaning the floor. Only when everything is spotless does he bend down to free Viktor’s hands, before grabbing his elbow and gently nudging him to stand up, leading him towards the bed. The sun shines through the bars he has quickly soldered to the wall after Viktor threw himself off a week after Jayce stuck him into this room to save him.
It is remarkable how empty a room can look after removing everything one can use to end their life. Jayce wanted to make the little room he has prepared for Viktor to be comfortable, to be a home, but it is hard not to make it look like a prison cell. The furniture is bolted to the ground, there are no books, no solid decoration, nothing that possessed hard edges and the walls have been padded after the time Viktor has bashed his head against them. At least like this Jayce doesn’t have to look at the bloodstain he hasn’t been able to completely remove.
Viktor sits down on the bed, hands on his lap. He refuses to look at Jayce.
There once has been a time his displeasure would have made Jayce recoil in guilt but this is bigger than his feelings, more important than making sure Viktor is content. Jayce doesn’t care if Viktor comes out of this hating him, as long as he comes out of it alive.
Jayce gathers the chair and the cleaning supplies in his arms and gives his partner one last smile. Even he can feel how empty it is. His eyes are dry and there are several nicks in his cheeks, between his patchy beard, from where he has uncaringly shaved, quick and imprecise in the anxiety that comes from being away from Viktor for too long. “I'll be back. I feel like soon I'll be able to find out what the hexcore did to your body.”
Viktor shudders again. His listless, blank eyes close for a moment and when he opens them they are filled with desperation. “I don’t like feeling like a test subject, Jayce.”
“I'm sorry,” Jayce says even if he isn’t. “You'll understand someday.”
“No. I don't think I will.”
Jayce rubs the back of his head. “You once told me not to ask for permission to change the world.”
A hollow laugh escapes Viktor’s lips. He looks to the side. There is a strand on his nose that Jayce hasn’t brushed away. It moves with his eyes, sticking to the eyeball, but he doesn’t wipe it away.
Jayce leaves. He locks the door behind him.
--
“Goodbye, Jayce,” Viktor said when he came out of the hexcore alive. He looked tired, beaten, but Jayce didn't care past the roaring in his ears. Years of partnership, weeks of living, sleeping in the lab to make sure his partner was okay and Viktor wanted to leave him just like that. Was it truly that easy to turn his back on Jayce and leave?
“Wait, you can't- don’t leave! Viktor, you can't-”
The door fell behind Viktor. Jayce was left heavily breathing, still reeling from what had happened, the spinning wheel of emotions. The relief at seeing Viktor awake, alive, had almost swept him off his feet, only to turn into confusion and betrayal and then horror at the realization that Viktor had returned changed.
No, Viktor wouldn’t leave like that. Viktor wasn’t as monotone, as emotionless as the man who had emerged from death. Viktor wouldn’t leave Jayce, wouldn't discard him like a broken toy. But that body was Viktor’s, healed, alive, able to walk without a crutch- without the illness that would have killed him had the bomb not preceded it.
Jayce followed him.
He had never had difficulties following Viktor, even now it wasn’t hard to catch up. Viktor was steering towards the balcony at the end of the hallway and Jayce slowed down again to walk further behind him. He probably just needed to blow off some steam, to take in some fresh air. He’d return. Jayce could allow him some time alone.
Viktor opened the door and stepped onto the balcony. He stepped onto the railing. It took Jayce too long to realize what he was doing. By the time his body kicked into gear, running towards the balcony, hand stretched out, it was already too late. Viktor’s body fell like a puppet cut off its strings.
“NO!”
-
It wasn’t hard to recreate the hexcore with all of their notes. It was like something was leading him, flashing visions in his mind, and if Jayce was a more religious man, he’d believe it was a god finally showing him mercy, a way to save his partner. He looked towards the bloody, dead body of his partner, laid down on the counter.
He pulled the lever and watched as arcane energy filled the room, Viktor’s body, watched him convulsing before his mouth ripped open in an ear-piercing scream as magic ripped through him. Viktor’s lifeless body took a breath.
-
Jayce hates this part the most. Viktor’s body is heavier now, augmented with steel and metal, his punches hurt, but Jayce is still stronger, has figured out a way to wrestle Viktor’s arms to his sides and carry him. Viktor is kicking the air, squirming in his hold, writhing as if he is in pain but Jayce only tightens his arms.
“Please,” Viktor says when Jayce carries him into their lab and forces him onto the surgical table. The cuffs snap easily around his wrist, then the other, pinning him down. He grabs Viktor’s ankles and binds them too, tight enough to keep him from moving. At last a metal ring snaps around Viktor’s forehead. He is panting, and Jayce wishes that one day he will see something different than fear and desperation from his partner. “I don’t like this- I don’t- please, Jayce-”
“I'm sorry,” Jayce says and someday he might mean it. Viktor isn’t meant to beg. He shouldn't be reduced to that, but as long as he will survive, Jayce will continue. He doesn't need Viktor’s forgiveness.
He shines a light into Viktor’s eyes, watches the iridescent colors dance. They look less bright than the day before. “Every time I revive you, it seems like the hexcore is stronger in you. I'm not sure if that's a good thing yet. It saved your life but- it's- it's changing you, V. Maybe I can find a way to keep the healing factors but get rid of the rest. You said once that it’s able to learn, right? And things that can learn can think. Do you feel different from before?”
Viktor lets out a dry sob when Jayce pushes a syringe into his neck, extracting blood. “You're the one who changed.”
“Because I refuse to let my partner kill himself?”
“You're not saving me, Jayce. You're refusing to accept reality.”
Jayce grabs a scalpel, powered by hextech and scoots his chair closer. He gently glides his fingers along the darkened calf. “Sorry. This might hurt.”
“It always does,” Viktor says. He looks too exhausted for tears. They have been there, the first time Jayce cut into him. It has almost been enough to make Jayce stop, to make him reconsider. Viktor never cried, and if he did he never allowed Jayce to see it. After the first time he never cried again, only watery, red eyes that felt like accusation.
Jayce cuts into him and runs a soothing hand over Viktor’s convulsing leg as it jerks in the restraints and he is murmuring apologetic words that always fall on deaf ears. A chunk of flesh falls onto the counter. Jayce picks it up and puts it into a container to study it later. Where metal took over flesh, Viktor doesn’t bleed. His metal skin doesn’t feel warmth or the cold, and yet he is able to feel pain. Anesthesia doesn’t work on him, neither do painkillers.
Jayce bandages him up, knowing it doesn’t do anything. He leans down to press a kiss to Viktor’s knee. “I'm sorry. Soon I'll figure it out, promise.”
Viktor doesn’t say anything.
Jayce turns towards his chest and carefully presses the blade underneath his ribcage. Every time he gets revived his heart looks different. The body underneath Jayce’s hands is shaking. Jayce murmurs soothing words, hoping his comfort can do something for his partner’s pain. He pushes the blade into his skin.
-
Viktor’s organs are a weird mix of metal and flesh. The first time Jayce cut him open he was more metal than he is now, and Jayce doesn't know if that's a good or a bad thing. He looks down at the open ribcage, held apart by clamps to keep it from stitching itself back together and he stops himself from holding Viktor’s heart in his hand, no matter how much he needs to feel his partner’s proof of life. The beating heart is fleshy, with metal veins creeping over it, moving with it. The human part is darkened, unhealthy, and it looks like the metal part is responsible for the movement, is keeping Viktor alive. He wonders if Viktor feels it, feels the foreign part of his body move his flesh, his muscles, the parts of his body too weak to survive on their own.
Viktor is convulsing underneath him. Jayce quickens his pace- as soon as he closes the wound, it will stitch itself back together. He cuts off a metal vein, scrapes at the hardened muscle and takes a sample of his metal bone, watching in fascination as new material grows over the patch he has taken.
“Sorry,” he whispers as he removes the clamps from Viktor’s ribs. They snap back with a squelching sound and Viktor howls, body writhing in their restraints. He is screaming, sobbing in pain, and Jayce shushes him, runs his hands over his chest in a soothing gesture. “I'm sorry. This won't be going on for too long. Just a little bit more, okay, V?”
Viktor weeps, eyes shut as his open lips tremble. Jayce folds himself over Viktor, presses his face into Viktor’s neck and keeps apologizing until his voice becomes raspy, until Viktor’s body repairs itself, until it looks like nothing happened again.
-
The guards alert him. He finds Viktor with a cut throat from a scalpel he has somehow managed to steal.
He pulls the lever. Viktor’s lifeless body takes a breath.
-
“Please,” Jayce sobs into Viktor’s stomach. Viktor is lying on the table, blank, colorful eyes staring up at the ceiling. “Please, I can't- I can't bear to see you dead again, please-”
“I can't live like this.” Viktor’s voice is thin and wispy like a breeze in the wind. “What kind of life is this, that you're so desperate to keep me here?”
“Why do you want to die so badly?!” Jayce yells. He furiously wipes at his eyes. “Why can't you just let me save you?!”
Viktor doesn’t answer. He doesn’t look at Jayce.
“Save me? This isn't a life, Jayce. You're hurting me. You- you're hurting me, Jayce.” A bitter grin crawls on his face. “You don't even let me go to the bathroom on my own.”
“Viktor, you tried to drown yourself in the bathtub. And then the toilet when I supervised your bathing time. I'm sorry I want to save your life!”
Viktor doesn't say anything. He doesn’t push Jayce off when he hugs him again, when he crawls on top of him to bury his face in Viktor’s chest.
-
Viktor refuses to eat. To drink. He tells Jayce his new body doesn’t need it. Jayce is stupid enough, naive enough, to believe him. Five days later Viktor crashes to the ground.
Jayce pulls the lever. Viktor’s lifeless body takes a breath.
-
“Open.” Jayce shoves a spoonful of porridge into Viktor’s mouth. Viktor chews automatically. His eyebags have disappeared along with his sunken skin. His blood the day before he died was concentrated and thick, now it is more normal again, however not quite the same as the previous time the hexcore has brought him back. Something is changing, and Jayce feels distinctly like he is running out of time.
Viktor’s eyes look past Jayce and Jayce reaches forward to press his cheeks open when he doesn’t open his mouth again. He thrusts the spoon into Viktor’s mouth, rougher than he wanted. “Chew.”
Viktor follows. He slumps forward when the bowl is cleared. “I'm tired, Jayce.”
Jayce runs his fingers through his hair. “I'll figure it out soon, promise. Just- please. Give me some more time.”
Viktor doesn't answer.
-
Viktor stops trying to kill himself. Jayce sees it as a blessing until he doesn’t.
-
Jayce’s fear gets confirmed. The power of the hexcore seems to be leaving Viktor and only his continued revivals keep its powers in his body. And without its powers his body is growing weaker and weaker.
“You realized,” he rasps out. Viktor is strapped to the surgical table in their lab, eyes almost golden now, their old color not as welcome as they once would have been. “That's why you stopped trying to kill yourself.”
“It’s speaking to me.” Viktor’s voice is exhausted, barely a murmur. “It's using Miss Young’s face. I don't know what it wants from me.”
“What- you didn't tell me-”
“Jayce.” Viktor looks at him and for a moment Jayce is frozen, bound by the spell of seeing his partner’s old fire. “You can't let it have me. I don't know what it wants but it can’t be good. Please. You promised me to destroy it.”
“Viktor.” Jayce’s voice is torn from his throat, almost painful. “I can’t let you die.”
“I would rather die than let it have me. Jayce. You promised.”
Jayce’s head feels like lead in his hands. He chokes on a sob. “I can't.”
-
There are whispers in his head in the night when he presses Viktor’s body to his, when he is desperately trying to sleep, exhaustion more a second skin now. They caress his mind, almost unintelligible, and the more he tries to listen the further they seem to stray.
He wakes up with Viktor’s fingers wrapped around his throat. Jayce doesn’t move, the bone-heavy tiredness sapping at his eyelids, pulling him further down. He is wheezing but it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t raise his panic. Viktor loosens his grip, lips curled in bitterness and anger.
“How cruel,” he whispers, “that I can’t seem to hurt you even after everything you’ve done to me.”
“Viktor,” Jayce whispers and raises his hands to frame his partner’s face. Viktor leans away from his touch, detangles his legs to lie back down. He is lying on his back, hands folded on top of his stomach as if preparing for a grave.
“Go back to sleep, Jayce,” Viktor sighs and Jayce follows, pulled back into oblivion.
-
“How is he?”
Mel’s presence is like a soothing balm in these rough times. Jayce lets her run a hand over his arm and he shudders, wanting nothing more than to fall into her.
“I think he's dying, Mel. And- and I don't know what else to do. He- he needs the hexcore to survive.”
“It’s not an all-cure then.”
Jayce knows Mel is thinking of how to use the hexcore for Piltover, how to save lives, how to better the world. He doesn’t care much for it but he can't begrudge her for it. It was one of the reasons he fell in love with her. Now it feels more hollow, their once mutual goal different. He only wants to save Viktor.
He steps away from her and gives her a tired smile. “I don’t know how the hexcore would react to a living human. To anyone other than Viktor. I think it chose him.”
“Only when he’s dead,” Mel mutters. “And it only killed animals you experimented on, yes? I trust you know how to continue. We need to know what it’s capable of. And Jayce?”
Jayce turns around to look at her. She looks concerned. “You two are okay? He’s… in good health?”
“As okay as we can be. As okay as he can be. He still prefers not to see anyone else.”
She nods, concerned enough for Viktor to look worried but not enough to seek him out.
He hasn’t told her about Viktor’s suicide attempts. About the way he screams when Jayce cuts into him. About his need to keep him alive, no matter what. In these times he understands the lengths Ambessa goes through to keep her family safe, and he refuses to let any of those thoughts drip from his lips. Not before Mel.
-
“What are you doing?”
Viktor’s voice is filled with trepidation, a fear unlike any Jayce has ever heard from him. He is jerking in his restraints, futilely trying to escape.
Jayce holds the hexcore closer, watching in fearful fascination as its tendrils approach Viktor, as if magnetized by him.
“Jayce,” Viktor begs. “Please, please don't, please-”
Jayce presses the hexcore to his chest. It gets absorbed before it touches his skin, lightning shooting through Viktor and Viktor screams, screams and doesn’t stop, vocal chords ripping out of him. His body explodes, stops in the air, ripped apart. Blood, veins, organs, skin made out of metal are floating, fingers still twitching, heart still beating frantically, before everything gets pulled together again, crashing into one body, and Viktor smashes into the counter, body twitching. The entire time he hasn’t stopped screaming.
His voice stops. His eyes are open, dead.
Jayce vomits on the ground, coughing until nothing but bile is left, and he crawls to the body of his lifeless partner, cradling it as he sobs into his chest.
-
Jayce pulls the lever. Viktor’s lifeless body takes a breath.
-
Viktor flinches back from him when he offers food.
“Please,” he mutters. “Jayce, I can't do this anymore.”
Jayce shakes his head, frantic. “Just- just a bit more. I can figure this out. I'll- I'll separate you from the hexcore and find out how to keep its healing factor, okay? Just- just a bit, yeah?”
“Jayce, this has never been about the hexcore.” He buries his head in his knees. “I can't anymore. Please, just- let me go. I’ve been dead for several months now.”
Jayce keeps shaking his head. “I’ll save you. Promise.”
Viktor only lets out a choked sob, scraping like sandpaper against Jayce’s shaky hope.
-
Jayce holds out a rope. Viktor looks at him with resignation.
“The hexcore only works when you’re dead,” Jayce explains uselessly. They both know but he wants to fill the silence, wants the charged air to disappear. “It- it seems to keep your body from dying for now but it also appears to shorten the time of decay. Before you could go two weeks before its power wanes, now it’s three days at most. And I don't know if I can revive you if it willingly leaves you.”
Viktor’s blank eyes rise from the rope to his face. There is a sneer on his lips. “If you want this, then kill me yourself.”
The rope in his hands is shaking. “Viktor, I can't, I-”
“Then let me die.”
A tear falls from Jayce’s eye. He swallows past the lump in his throat and falls to his knees in front of Viktor. Powerless, he buries his face in Viktor’s lap and holds him, hiding in the coldness of his metal body. “What is the most painless way to die?”
Viktor slumps, all tension leaving his body. He is shaking slightly. When he speaks, all emotions have left. “I want you to have my blood on your hands, Jayce. I want you to know what you're doing to me.”
Jayce nods. He is shaking when he reaches out. “I'm sorry,” he says and holds his partner’s face, cupping it in his palms. He presses his thumbs against his cheekbones, scratches at the hair on his nape and presses a kiss to his forehead. A crack rings through the room when he snaps Viktor’s neck.
-
Jayce pulls the lever. Viktor’s lifeless body takes a breath.
-
The time the hexcore gives Jayce dwindles. Viktor claims it feels displeased, that it wants him to do something he can't do. He looks too peaceful with that knowledge.
“We both fought so hard to keep you alive all these months ago,” Jayce says. He falls into bed beside Viktor and holds him close, needs to be by his side as long as possible. Once he neglected him, once there have been times in which he hasn't seen Viktor for days, too busy with politics, with a conflict that seems so far away now. Not again. Jayce will carve the feeling of Viktor’s body into his own, will imprint the sound of his voice into his mind.
He is hit with a deep yearning. He wants to know how it would feel, having Viktor breathe against him, wants to feel his warmth.
Viktor doesn’t push him away but doesn’t press closer either. He feels like a lifeless marionette in Jayce’s arms but Jayce will take what he gives him, will be happy for any crumb of affection, of permission.
“And it killed Miss Young.”
“It kept you alive. It healed you, Viktor.”
“At what cost?”
“There is no cost too high if it means you’re alive.”
“This is just your own guilt talking.” Viktor lets out a laugh, sharp and deprecating. “You've never cared about me like this.”
“I only realized when I already lost you. But that’s why I refuse to let you go. You're not leaving me again, Viktor.”
Viktor shudders. He doesn’t push Jayce away.
-
There is a break-in. Jayce finds the lab in a mess, papers scattered around, his hammer on the ground like someone tried to lift it. A window is open, a rope attached from where the thieves must have entered and escaped. On the ground is a pool of dust, the hexcore untouched and pulsating.
That night, when Jayce revives Viktor, his eyes shine in bright colors and his body is stronger, cheeks more filled out, eye bags less heavy.
And Jayce creates a new hexcore and stares at it for the entire night, watches as it swirls and beats like a heart, calling out to him.
He doesn’t tell Viktor about the pool of dust, about his suspicions. Viktor realizes despite, and his accusatory stare, his disgust, the nausea clearly written in the lines of his face are almost enough to make Jayce beg for his forgiveness.
“I didn't kill them,” he says. “There was a break-in.”
“And you still infused me with it.”
“I can't let you die.”
“Jayce.” Viktor wraps his arms around himself in a mocking imitation of a hug. “I don’t want to live off the lives of others. I’m meant to improve lives, not- not this.”
Jayce kneels before him and gently holds his face. He rubs soothing circles on his cheeks and presses their foreheads together. “A bit more time,” he begs. “Just a little bit. I'll save you. I'll save you, V.”
Viktor stays quiet.
-
Jayce kills him. Jayce holds him. Jayce revives him.
-
The hexcore’s energy drains faster and faster. It's not enough. It never is. Time runs through his fingers like sand and he wants to scream at the unfairness of it all.
In the dead of night he grabs a new hexcore and walks into the undercity. He waits for a group of thugs to attack him. He returns, leaving behind several piles of dust. He doesn’t know their names. Forgot how they looked.
He kills Viktor. He kisses him. He revives him.
When Viktor opens his eyes, the rainbow dancing in them, feeling much stronger than before, he looks at Jayce, sees the resolve in his eyes and he breaks into heaving sobs, so heavy they look like they are breaking his ribs on the way up.
“No,” he whispers, “no, no, no, Jayce, you can't- don't do this to me. I don't want this, Jayce, I can't- I can't-”
“I can't let you die,” Jayce says and holds him close. Viktor writhes, tries to escape but Jayce doesn’t let go.
“You killed people.”
“I can't let you die.”
“How much longer will this go on, Jayce?! How many have to die until you finally let go of this- this insanity?!”
“I can't let you die,” Jayce whispers.
Viktor screams in his hold, howls and sobs, cries and yells. Jayce refuses to let go.
-
Viktor becomes catatonic. Jayce has to feed him, bathe him, help him to the toilet. Viktor refuses to talk, to move, to do anything. It's too silent in the lab. Jayce reads him stories, academic papers, tells him about his research, about his day. Recounts funny stories from years ago when they were still partners. Viktor doesn’t react.
“The hexcore spoke to me,” Viktor says then one day, when Jayce washes his hair. He is looking at his metal knees, eyes unfocused and empty. “It wants me to do something I can't when I’m here. It knows I won’t. So it’s leaving me.”
Jayce wonders when it stops feeling like the ground is opening up underneath him. “What does it want?”
Viktor shrugs. He doesn’t say anything.
-
Jayce loses count of how many piles of dust he has behind him. There is no blood on his hands and yet they feel stained. The weeks the hexcore gave him turn to days again as time gets taken away from him, from Viktor, and he finds himself screaming at the glowing core in the lab, rage built in him unleashing as he grabs his hammer and tries to bash it in. It could save Viktor, could keep him alive, but it refuses to for some god forsaken reason.
Lightning shoots through him. The hammer falls behind. He crashes to the ground. The hexcore glimmers in dissatisfaction.
-
The whispers get louder, a screaming orchestra and he holds his hands over his ears, whimpers in pain. He wonders if it’s the ghost of the lives he took coming for him and he stumbles into Viktor’s room, crashing onto his knees as he curls up, moaning in agony. Viktor watches him passively and doesn’t move. Jayce stretches out a hand towards him, the need for comfort, for touch stronger than his pain.
Viktor keeps looking at him, eyes empty. Jayce is left shaking on the ground, as the cold grabs him, as the screams in his head raise in a crescendo.
-
Was it lives? Human lives to feed the arcane? Was it feeding on spirituality or was blood enough? Jayce tries to feed it animals. It’s less potent. Certain people seem to give it more strength than others. How many lives for Viktor to become invincible? To defeat death even when he yearns for it? How many until Jayce doesn’t have to worry he would disappear when he looks away? A body that wouldn't let Viktor die no matter what he tried.
One human gives Viktor one day. Then half. Then an hour. His skin is decaying, his cheeks hollowing, his body weakening. He can barely move the metal parts of his body. And yet he is smiling, relief in every part of his face as he feels death approaching.
“You can't leave me,” Jayce hiccups. He is holding Viktor’s hand, pressing it to his lips in a silent prayer. “Please, tell me what the hexcore wants, I’ll do whatever it wants, please, Viktor, please-”
“Let me go,” Viktor says. He gives Jayce a tired smile. “I am… thankful. That you love me enough to hold onto me. But this has gone too far already, Jayce. We’ve had good times. You've been my closest friend, my partner. But you need to let me go. Promise me. Your promises don’t mean much but I need you to promise me you won’t do anything stupid, Jayce. My life is forfeit and there is nothing you can do. I don't want this, Jayce. So please. Promise me.”
“I can't.”
“Then die refusing fate. I have long since accepted it. It’s peaceful once you do.”
“Viktor, I can't- I can't bear the thought of living while you’re gone.”
Viktor raises his hands, heavy, with the effort it would take to lift a carriage, and holds Jayce’s face. Jayce wants to kiss him but Viktor is so reserved, so skittish around him nowadays, he’s happy with anything Viktor is willing to give. Despite the blood on Jayce’s hands, despite the stains on his soul.
“Remember me as a scientist and a man who wanted to better the world. Not as- not as a science experiment. As a living dead.”
“I can't let you die.”
The grin Viktor gives him is mean, all edges and blame. “There's nothing you can do about it, Jayce. Let me die. It's the most dignified thing you can do, for me and for you.”
Jayce presses their foreheads together. He takes a deep breath.
-
Viktor dies that night from no outside cause. Jayce presses the hexcore to his chest. Nothing happens. Jayce goes to Zaun. He returns and presses the hexcore to Viktor’s chest. A small tendril of lightning shoots through his body. He’s still dead. Jayce walks through the city of Piltover. He returns and presses the hexcore to Viktor’s chest. It gets absorbed by his body. Metal crawls further up Viktor’s neck. He’s still dead.
-
Jayce steps into the hexgate hall, Viktor’s body in his arms and the hexcore in his hand. He gently lays him down and caresses his cheek. Like this he looks peaceful. He shouldn't. Viktor shouldn't embrace death so readily, so peacefully.
Jayce attaches the hexcore to the gates. He fires them up, directing the energy upwards. Underneath them. The hexcore glows, its intensity almost blinding him, and he holds his arms in front of himself, watching in awe as violet creeps into the hexgates. It grows and grows, energy building up.
For a moment Jayce thinks of Cait. His mom. Mel. He thinks of the people in Piltover, his acquaintances, everyone who supported him. He thinks of Vi, of the people of Zaun. He doesn’t regret it when the hexcore overloads the hexgates. Two shock waves shake the room, one above and one underneath, and he throws himself over Viktor when stones and dust crack above them. The hexgates scream as hundreds, then thousands of lives get taken, swallowed up by the arcane.
“Is this what you wanted?!” Jayce roars against the shockwave of sound, the cacophony of screams and cries that he must imagine; the hall was too far away from any human soul.
The hexcore grows and grows, dancing in elation as dust piles up in Piltover, in Zaun, as lives disappear. Jayce grabs it with his tongs, forcing it down against Viktor’s chest.
“Now give him back to me!” he yells. “I gave you everything! Give him back and leave!”
He strains against the force, doesn’t flinch when lightning snaps at him, when it tears at his skin, cutting into him. Viktor’s body twitches and Jayce laughs, he laughs and laughs, elation gripping him, relief so hard it makes him sob. Viktor is back with him. He didn’t lose him.
He laughs and cries as the arcane grabs at him, as it leads him towards Viktor, as it whispers into his ear, telling him to become one with his partner. Like this it is impossible not to follow.
-
Viktor’s lifeless body takes a breath.