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Zaun is beautiful today.
From his perch on the edge of a building, he overlooks a sea of dark buildings and trails of smoke and steam. The people are starting to wake up as weak streams of light struggle to reach Zaun, illuminating the cliff walls in brighter blues and purples. Occasionally, Viktor will spot a glimmer of gold or orange, a hint towards precious metals in a location too dangerous to excavate from.
The winter is biting and cold and Viktor wonders, not for the first time, how Jayce is doing. He knows from friends he’s made along the way that Jayce and his merry band of do-gooders are still wandering the streets after him. His husband has always had a strong aversion to the cold and becomes downright moody once it starts to snow. Snow rarely reaches this level of Zaun so at least he doesn’t have to worry about that.
Viktor knows she’s arrived when the Hexcore stirs. He must admit, the Hexcore does keep his face nice and warm- winters aren’t that bad anymore.
Jinx flops down next to him. He wonders how she does it- flop. How does one make concrete and metal look cozy and soft? He’s barely been here for ten minutes and his behind is already starting to hurt.
“Heya Vikkie,” Jinx grins. The modified, more compact Fishbones Viktor had returned to her a week ago sits against her back, poking Viktor as she moves closer to him. He’s glad to see that even though she’s still wearing the revealing outfit she always does she at least had the common sense to put an oversized coat on top of that.
Four weeks ago Viktor had been ready to kill Jinx. But after running into her too many times than he’d wanted, he came to realize that they’re similar. Children of Zaun, inventors at heart, chance, and opportunity favoring them differently. Viktor can imagine so very clearly imagine a different life where he could’ve run into Jinx at Zaun’s university or in the streets of Piltover, bonding over the fact that they both overcame social barriers to strive for greatness.
He doesn’t want to kill Jinx anymore….mostly. There’s still a sort of dislike that’ll always remain because the fact remains that she put his husband in a coma and killed people. But that’s not Jinx’s fault. Jinx is a very emotional person. She also can’t stand to have her mouth kept shut so within a day Viktor had her whole life story memorized.
And now the two of them wander Zaun together, killing the people who deserve to be killed, saving the people who need to be saved, making prosthetics, and fixing machinery when they can.
And honestly? It’s fun. He still longs for Jayce and his warmth but there’s more room for change here in Zaun. He’s been able to do more things that matter here than he has in Piltover.
Because his people are in Zaun. If he is to be their Herald then he won’t just play the role but make it his life. He can’t stay here forever but by the gods, he will make a difference before he goes back to the light.
“Hello, Jinx” Viktor replies, shifting his legs to keep the blood moving. “Did you end up running into your sister?”
“Yeah!” The girl beams. “I managed to get a hug before her girlfriend started shooting at me.” Viktor has to hold back a chuckle. It is in bad taste to find that situation humorous. Caitlyn’s mother had been killed in the blast and the councilwoman had also been at Viktor’s wedding. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm with which Jinx continues to ramble about the encounter makes a smile spread across his face underneath the mask.
“I also might’ve found my dad!” Jinx ends with a grin. Viktor slowly turns his gaze away from the dark Zaun view and blinks at the girl. Her pink eyes widen.
“Isn’t he dead?”
“ Weeeeellll,” Jinx swings her back up and pulls her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. A strange look crosses her face before she hides the lower half of her face behind her knees. “I’m not talking about dad dad, or but, like, pops dad, but The Big Man, the one who raised me and Vi and Mylo and Claggor…the first one I killed.” Her voice trails off into a soft whisper, brow furrowed. Viktor is prepared for her to start complaining about the voices, to grip her head, and start banging her palms against the sides of her head until Viktor grabs her wrists and pulls her into a hug.
He doesn’t have to do that this time. Jinx just looks sad and confused.
“I’m not really sure if you knew who I was but…he said my name. He said my name and then he didn’t kill me and then he ran away.” She takes in a deep breath, a lock of hair fluttering. “Y’Know that wolf thing that’s been running around? I’m, like, a hundred twenty percent sure it’s him because, you see, turns out the thing could talk and-” Jinx continues rambling about a monster that she’s pretty sure is her second father. Viktor feels slightly sorry that he immediately zones out once she starts ranting but it’s not like it matters to him - he didn’t come here to form friendships (too late for that) or grow connections with anyone. These introverted tendencies were something that he’d been forced to subdue thanks to being tied to the hip with Jayce but now that he’s on his own he has to get used to having something that isn’t, well, Jayce potentially being with him for the rest of his time in Zaun.
“That sounds…nice” Viktor forces himself to say. He remembers his own father’s words. “I will remember not to kill any giant wolves if I come across any.”
Although his armor keeps him from feeling Jinx’s hug, the action is still comforting and makes him feel warm inside. He thinks about his dad and how even without years of contact his hug had still made Viktor feel safe. He knows that Jinx hasn’t had an easy life so it must mean so much to find her dad again, regardless of the form he’s taken.
He thinks about it. If her dad used to be a man but is now a beast, then there’s only one person who could’ve done that.
“Jinx,” Viktor says. “I think I know a man who could tell us more about your father’s…predicament.” It might put him off-trail for a bit but Viktor is going to see Singed today. He remembers the pain that Singed’s mutation, Rio, had been in. To know that a person is going through that, someone who must’ve been good to make Jinx so calm and sad.
“Do you think Vi can come with us?” Jinx says, voice sounding lost and vulnerable. Viktor swallows and awkwardly wraps an arm around Jinx, hoping that the metal isn’t cold enough to be felt through her coat. Right. Sisters. Vi who is traveling with Caitlyn and Jayce…
Shouldn’t he let his own heart feel good again? Even though he’s doing actual good it came at the price of his relationship with Jayce. It resulted in the separation of him from the one truest to him. He feels a ping of sadness from the Hexcore. Our Jayce it seems to whisper. Maybe Jinx isn’t the only one who is lost in this dark world.
“Of course,” Viktor finally says. “I think I might do some good for you to meet my husband.”
He laughs at Jinx’s expression.
Elation. Joy. An eagerness to finally come face to face to his love and wrap his armored arms around him, bury his face in the crook of Jayce’s neck, only separating when the girls they’re with tell them to. Viktor walks down the streets of Zaun with Jinx, already knowing from a single contact exactly where the other group is. The Hexcore buzzes, making his smile under the mask grow larger. He can feel the Hextech energy in the air, regardless of the fact that it feels a bit…off.
When Viktor and Jinx finally enter the crumbling clearing where Caitlyn, Vi, and Jayce are, he expects maybe Caitlyn’s bullet pinging against his armor, Vi freezing upon seeing Jinx, and Jayce taking a few seconds to confirm that under the walking suit of metal, magic, and Hextech is the still-human Viktor before the other man runs to hug Viktor.
Instead, the two are greeted by a bloodbath.
It was a small group of men and women, armed with Hextech weapons and mechanic augmentations. Jayce thought it’d be an easy take down: he, Vi, and Caitlyn have had worse odds and had still come out on top. Yet this time some of their belts had small vials of purple.
But Jayce was scared. And that’s what led to his downfall.
He wants to, has to , use the hammer as little as possible. For some reason, there’s something different about it, even though it’s just like the Atlas Gauntlets that Vi wields, except in a different form and abilities. Yet he feels a strange hunger when he swings it, feels want when the blood starts to pour and covers the hammer and his skin and edges the corner of his mouth-
It’s frightening and entrancing. There’s a part of him that wants to see what will happen if he follows the hunger; if he embraces the temptation. Because he doesn’t know what comes next. What will happen when he licks the blood, swings just a bit harder, stares at frightened eyes before taking the life from them.
Just until I have Viktor back Jayce tells himself. All of this will be over once I have Viktor back and I can forget all of this ever happened, I can toss the hammer, I can sleep peacefully at night.
Their opponents have small vials of purple.
Jayce doesn’t swing the hammer in this fight, not really. He uses the blunt sides instead of the corners, fires shots of energy to form burns instead of bruises. And with that plan everything will be good, it'll be just fine.
“Watch out!” Jayce hears Vi exclaim and he stumbles back as a body collides into him.
“Hey!” Jayce shouts, letting go of the hammer to catch himself. His hands scrape against the ground sending little jolts of pain up his arms. With a grunt, he moves to shove Vi’s victim off of him so he can get back into the fight only to be flattened onto his back in less than a second, a deranged and bloody figure sitting on his chest, looming over him.
Drip, drip, drip . The hammer is no longer in his hand but his eyes still focus automatically on the blood that drips from the man’s half-flesh, half-metal jaw, poison green eyes gleaming.
“Funny guy!” The man giggles. “Funny funny so very funnyyyyyyy-” the man cuts himself off at the same time as Jayce’s breath. Something hard and cold smashes against Jayce’s face, against his partially open mouth. Something slides down his throat. His right hand brushes against the hammer and something shifts .
“ Funny” Jayce gasps and all he sees is a cruel world of purple and red. The man is laughing. Laughing. Funny, yes, this is fun. So. Very. Much. Fun.
His fingers feel different. They tingle and he feels so alive . The giggling man is off him with a single push, the hammer rises above his head, and that laughing face laughs no more. Jayce grins. He raises the hammer again, and again, and again. It’s cold today. Smash. Zaun is cold. Smash. He misses Piltover. Smash. He misses Viktor. Smash. He doesn’t notice that the fighting around him has stopped until someone screams. The blood is warm on his shirt, keeping him nice and cozy in the cruel cold. Jayce licks the blood from the corner of his mouth and lifts his gaze from the headless body and shattered ground. Staring through a loose lock of hair, he sees the horrified expressions on Caitlyn’s and Vi’s faces. Why do they look so shocked? Why is Vi scared? Jayce straightens and gently swings his hammer, entranced by the blood and the purple light that shines from the hammer.
“What the fuck,” Vi gasps. Her hand clamps around Caitlyn’s arm, the two stumbling farther from Jayce.
“Vi, what happened?” Caitlyn’s eyes are horrified, pupils dilated. Jayce distantly feels like something is wrong but he feels so good. What's supposed to be wrong? Nobody is telling him anything, so this must be right.
“Shimmer,” Vi says. “We have to knock him out. He’s not himself- shit, this is bad.”
And while his two friends continue to back away from him, Jayce can’t help but welcome the sight of his attacker’s buddies coming at him, tears and rage on their faces with purple in some of their eyes.
He does Zaun a favor: he paints it. He paints the street a beautiful shade of red, wondering how he never found a pigment as magnificent as this before.
“Jayce?”
Viktor holds an arm in front of Jinx, his other instinctively heating up to fire a stun-level energy blast. He has to remind himself to breathe because of all the things he had imagined happening, this was none of them. Bodies lay on the ground, most of them unmoving if not for a worrisome twitch. The clearing is covered in blood, pooling in craters made by Jayce’s hammer.
“Jayce?”
His husband faces him and Viktor can’t help but feel a slight bit of fear . He feels the Hexcore whisper worry and concern towards the other man that helped make it.
Jayce looks terrible. His clothes are ripped and covered in blood, veins bulging and glowing. His beautiful golden yellow eyes are no more, instead replaced by a vile shade of violet partially hidden by unruly hair. He’s hunched over, hands unnaturally elongated and tinged purple and black, wrapping around the handle of the hammer. The hammer….beautiful white and gold glowing with Hextech blue is no more. Instead, there’s little white and gold left, most of it hidden by blood and pieces of flesh. Gentle blue has been replaced by the same purple the Hexcore was before Viktor pushed it under his control.
Shimmer . Just by itself the drug is horrible but Viktor has seen what it does when combined with Hextech- he is living proof, after all. But he’d had runes and a controlled environment to ensure that only what he wanted to happen would happen. His poor, sweet Jayce…
“Jayce, love, what happened?” Viktor steps towards his husband, ignoring the frightened looking Caitlyn off to the sides. Vi stands besides her, pointing Caitlyn’s gun at Jayce. Jinx slinks behind him, a hand on his back. How to deal with this, how to indeed. Viktor scrambles to take his mask off, knowing that Jayce is in anything but in the right mind. He’s scared to see what will happen after this, how his husband will deal with the death and destruction around him and the lingering effects of the Shimmer. Jayce cocks his head to the side, blood and drool seeping from a corner of his mouth. The Hexcore shifts from mask form into a wrist guard, curling itself around Viktor’s arm, momentarily tightening as a show of reassurance.
This is Jayce Talis, the Golden Boy of Piltover, inventor of Hextech, defender of the peoples, and a husband. Viktor refuses to believe that just because of a drug Jayce would submit completely to the drug- there must be a reason he hasn’t attacked, Vi, Caitlyn, or himself yet.
Jayce blinks. The motion looks painful. Jinx whimpers behind him.
“Vik-tor?”
Viktor can’t help but wince at how terrible his husband sounds. He swallows and nods, taking note of the sudden tension that has blanketed the area. The collapsed staff on his back feels heavier than usual.
One step. Two step. He no longer feels the weight of Jinx’s hand on his back. Three step. Four step. Just like that dance Jayce taught him during one of their late nights in lab. It had been when they were still dating. Jayce’s hands had been covered in grease and dried paints but his grip was as firm as ever as he took on most of Viktor’s weight and guided the two of the across the room. “Trust me” he had said, and Viktor can only dare to hope that Jayce trusts him now. Viktor trusts his armor and all but one swing from that hammer could dent the metal and bruise his body.
“Hello,” Viktor says, tilting his head too far up. “I am sorry I lead you on such a wild run, dearest.” Jayce is weak for pet names, something Viktor learned after visiting the Talis household and hearing miss Talis use words like “honey” and “dear” to get Jayce to do all the work. “I think it is time for us to walk together again, do you not agree?” He raises a gloved hand and cups a blood-stained cheek and almost immediately after Jayce leans into it, breathing audibly growing heavier as tinted eyes go half-lidded.
“ Viktor” Jayce chokes, leaning forward and resting his forehead against Viktor’s. The skin is too hot, his voice too wet. Viktor wraps his arms as much as he can around Jayce’s enlarged body. He might have to have Singed help him in more ways than one- he’s not sure how long the effects of the Shimmer may last.
He hears Jayce struggle to say something but Viktor is quick to shush him, rubbing a hand on his back before carding his fingers through his loves hair. He can’t imagine what Jayce has been through, always a few steps behind him, chasing after a man who knows how to not be found.
“Sleep, my love. I will be here when you awaken.”
Jayce collapses against him and that’s when Viktor lets the tears roll down his face.
The Shimmer wears off completely in the middle of the night, a full ten hours later. Caitlyn remains in inn their staying at to keep Viktor and Jayce safe. By now, Vi and Jinx should be at Singed’s lab. Although Viktor feels like he should’ve gone with them he knows that staying here with Jayce was the right choice.
His armor sits in a pile at the side of the room and it was a small source of joy when Viktor learned that he has physically grown taller from the Hexcore’s healing. He sits in a chair next to Jayce’s bed, watching his husband’s chest rise up and down. It’s a cruel parallel to when Viktor had been in the hospital after his first time experimenting with the Hexcore.
Caitlyn told Viktor that Jayce hasn’t been doing so well as of lately. He has nightmares. He sleeps late and wakes up early. He doesn’t talk as much and sometimes when he fights he just seems different. And Jayce doesn’t look well, even after considering the effects of Shimmer. His beautifully tanned skin has gone pale after so long without sunlight. Deep shadows have made themselves at home beneath his eyes. His hair has grown longer and greasier, stubble and small, scabbed cuts dotting the lower half of his face.
“Worry doesn’t look good on you,” Jayce mummers.
“I could say the same about your hair” Viktor instinctively returns before realizing Jayce is awake and himself. Relief. “I’m sorry. How are you feeling, dearest?” The hesitation and knowing of what he did is clear on Jayce’s expressive, exhausted face. Still, he smiles just for Viktor. It’s a small, weak thing and instead of comforting Viktor it makes him feel even worse. Jayce loves him. Viktor loves Jayce but sometimes it feels like Jayce loves with everything that he has. While Viktor was off avenging Jayce and making sure that nothing like what happened that day could never happen again Jayce was roaming around a country completely foreign to him, not knowing the full story, not knowing if Viktor is okay, but yet he kept on going. He didn’t stay in Piltover, waiting for Viktor to come back.
Viktor is heathy, for the first time in his life. Coughs no longer shake his whole body. Blood doesn’t mix with his spit. Leg pain is nonexistent. He thinks this is what Jayce must have felt everytime Viktor’s condition hit. Even though his husband looks exhausted he’s trying to make himself look all right so Viktor doesn’t worry. Reaching out with his human hand, Viktor thumbs Jayce’s cheek, smiling softly as Jayce turns his head into the touch.
“I feel all right now that you’re here,” Jayce mummers into the skin of his palm, dry lips pressing a soft kiss. There’s a weight behind Jayce’s words but now’s not the time to push.
It’s time to go home.