Work Text:
What Jayce should be doing:
Holding him as long as he needs, lending heat if he can offer nothing else, their bodies pressed skin to skin until it becomes sweaty and claustrophobic, unbearably hot, but then they should still lie inches away, always in reach, and wake and sleep in unison. He should pet down his head and neck and whisper small comforts. It will be OK, it will be OK, it will be OK. That is all that he is required to say, and he has never before had a problem saying what is required. So what if he doesn’t believe it? He’s said plenty of things he didn’t believe.
He was waiting in that hospital, knowing while Viktor slept. Terminal . Inevitable death and decline. A downward slope ending in a bottomless pit. And there he slept, not knowing, leaving Jayce to receive the prognosis. Fuck modern technology, fuck scientific research: this was the power of the ancient plague, a godly reprimand for their pitiful attempts to master nature, their hubris. This was the price of all their glorious industry — why should Viktor have to suffer it alone?
In the hospital, Jayce was the one alone, sitting there with Viktor’s death in his thoughts while Viktor slept. Terminal . A destination in mind, a course already charted and embarked. Viktor would work until the end, until the last day. Then he would wake up one morning and instead of hauling himself to the lab, decide to lie there, strengthless, saying maybe tomorrow , and not even realizing that the last real day had come and gone, and all that was left was the bed. There was no more work to be done. Just blankets, and sweat-drenched sheets, and a rattling death gasp. A creeping, sneaking, drawn-out death. There would be deterioration. And hadn’t Viktor already deteriorated some, right under his nose?
He could scream about it. He really, really could.
Jayce noticed him knocking back pills with his water too often for comfort and refrained from commenting, noticed the tremor in his fine-boned hands, his mouth tight with pain, and could not find the nerve to violate his self-sufficiency.
He should offer support unwaveringly, and say the right things, and be there. He should pack away his rending despair for a later time. It does not belong to him; it is not his tragedy to claim. He should pretend not to be scared of blood and phlegm. He should hide his utter naïveté in the face of illness, having seen it only in glimpses – alleyway rat corpses with the flies buzzing ‘round – and then still always being able to look away to brighter, cleaner things. He should look, even though there is nowhere left to look away.
Instead, he flees. He finds excuses not to visit the lab, and micromanages council business, and takes care for his path not to intersect with Viktor’s slow daily shuffle from work to bed. There is no one to be angry with him besides Viktor, and Viktor can’t spare the time. Jayce is not strong enough to witness Viktor’s implosion, and so abandons him. Jayce can not lie, or pretend, or swallow his grief, and so stays away. He chooses guilt, the known quantity, the familiar evil, over an unknown that seems too massive to comprehend.
◉◉◉
It's a watery morning outside, a gray and bright dawn, and the birds are waking up, chattering to each other. He gets up and dresses, surrendering any hope of falling back asleep. He starts a pot of coffee and makes himself eggs, and he eats these alone at the table, staring out the window at the fog rolling through the streets.
Someone knocks on his front door.
His mind eagerly supplies the image of Viktor. Resting heavily on his crutch, coughing into the crook of his arm. Letting himself into Jayce’s home and folding into one of the uncomfortable kitchen chairs. Critiquing the sink piled with dishes, and Jayce’s low-effort breakfast. Not even a piece of fruit?
It is not Viktor.
Sky is there on the stoop, shifting nervously from foot to foot, her eyes red and puffy with recent tears.
“Oh,” Jayce says stupidly. He can’t mask his disappointment. “Do you want to come in?”
She accepts his offer of coffee and sits small and curled in his uncomfortable chair and apologizes profusely, Councilor Talis , for barging in so early and unannounced. She brings the mug to her chest, letting the steam hit her jaw. Jayce realizes she is not wearing a coat.
“It’s Viktor,” she says grimly. “I can’t take it anymore. I’m scared for him.”
A part of him is angry that she is the bearer of this message. He wants to remind her that he had first claim to this role she is playing. Sitting there with his coffee, tissues stuffed in her breast pocket, sweat-stained blouse.
He sighs. “And what am I supposed to do about it? If he wants to run himself into the ground–”
“That’s not what I mean.” Her voice goes low for the transfer of secrets. “I’ve seen what he’s been working on. It’s different. It’s certainly not legal.”
“What is it?”
Sky just shakes her head. “I don’t care if it’s as his friend or as a Councilor. You have to stop him. I can’t do it anymore.”
Her freckled face flushed, the worry stinking on her, the concern, because she’s seen and he hasn’t. He wants to lash out and defend himself against an unspoken accusation.
“By telling me this, you’re betraying his trust.”
“Well screw that. Screw what he wants.” Saying it pains her, as though the thought goes against a prime directive. Tears are welling up now, and she’s scrabbling at the pocketful of tissues, preemptively dabbing at the corners of her eyes. “He’s dying so he doesn’t care anymore. And when you went away, it just proved him right, that no one else should care either. He can’t fathom why I do. He’s going to kill himself thinking that it’ll make his life mean something.” Her lower lip quivers. “Fuck you. You fucking coward. The least you could do is see him now. When he’s dead you’ll tear your hair out wishing you had said goodbye.”
She apologizes profusely and leaves her coffee mug on the table, full, but with all the warmth leached out.
◉◉◉
The lab is empty, the lights are on. He can tell immediately that things have been moved, shifted, the familiar Hextech apparatuses shoved to the side and new devices installed in their places. There’s a tank with what looks like dried corn husks suspended in a gel solution. The hex claw is at work autonomously, welding something and sending blue sparks flying. New books. New stacks of papers. As if Jayce, and all they created together, were irrelevant.
“Sky?” Viktor’s voice comes muffled from the bathroom, breathless and strained. “I started without you.”
“Viktor?” Jayce is already crossing to the closed door.
He can hear Viktor breathing on the other side, he can hear the rustle of fabric, the shift of weight, something sliding against the tile, a potent dripping, Viktor leaning against the door, this flimsy barrier between them, the lock mechanism twisting ever-so-slowly open.
The door swings outward, so when Jayce yanks it open, Viktor kind of lurches out like a haunted house prop, breaking his fall with a shaking arm. His vest is gone, his shirt is wrapped around his waist and sodden with blood. The sweat shines on his thin shoulders, slicks his hair over his forehead. He coughs and a string of drool hangs out of his mouth, and he holds himself rigidly, one hand clawed on the floor and the one pressed into his belly.
This is the kind of thing Jayce wanted to protect himself from.
“Jayce. You’re looking well,” he says. With effort, he lowers himself to the ground and twists to lie on his back, groaning. “Um, long story short, my kidneys are failing.”
“Your kidneys?”
“Filtration is all it is. We’ve done filters. It will work, at least, I think it will. I just need help. I overestimated myself…and underestimated the pain.” His breath comes in spasms, his face is tensed and focused.
Jayce’s fear is settling cold in him, raising goosebumps. “What did you do to yourself? Stay here, I’m going to go get a doctor.”
“No!” he hisses. “Listen to me, Jayce. Get the— it’s on the sink. One is on the sink, the other on the floor.” Spit heavy in his mouth. Eyes lolling, but clear. “It needs to be done right now. Or I’ll die. If you’re too squeamish to do it, leave and send someone else who will.”
Someone else. There is no one else. Jayce feels himself start to helplessly shake.
“Jayce. Jayce. Listen, I will die.”
Jayce follows a smear of blood back to the bathroom, and sure enough there is a clear soft sack discarded in a puddle on the floor, the size of a fist, soaking in some of the red into its silicone membranes, glints of tiny mechanisms inside, a marvel of engineering. Its twin sits on the edge of the sink in a sterilized tray. On the toilet lid, a bloody scalpel. Fuck, it’s a lot of blood. Jayce reaches to pick up the artificial kidney and thinks better of it. He begins to cross the room and Viktor, craning his neck, watches from the floor.
“You’re leaving?”
“No.” Jayce says, exhausted. How could I? ”I’m looking for gloves. So you don’t die from infection.”
“They’re behind that stack of papers. Right there.”
“I’m assuming you’ve considered possible rejection.”
“It won’t reject. My immune system’s shot, there’s nothing left to do the rejecting.”
“And you decided the best place for this was the bathroom floor.”
“It was sterilized . To your left there’s the antiseptic. Use the rest of it, and hurry up. Infection and blood loss are racing to finish me off.”
“I’m not a surgeon. Please, Viktor–”
“Quickly. If I pass out I can’t give you directions.”
He washes and gloves like he really is a surgeon. He lifts Viktor from the floor, careful not to jostle him, and lowers him down onto the metal counter he’s cleared to be the operating table, peeling the bloody shirt-fabric away from the wound. The cut starts right below the stark ribcage, extending down to the navel, neat at first and then less so as Viktor’s hand presumably became unsteady. It’s deep. Jayce wipes it clean and probes gently with his fingers.
“Anesthetic!” Viktor chokes out.
There’s a few syringes, helpfully pre-filled, laid out with the rest of the surgical tools. Soon after Jayce injects the local anesthetic Viktor relaxes some. He tries again to touch the incision.
“Feel anything?”
“No.”
Carefully, Jayce spreads the incision open, the skin and fat and muscle, trying to identify anything that looks kidney-ish. There’s too much in here, too many different colors and textures for how insubstantial the body seems. The flesh easily parts, warm through his thin gloves. Don’t think about it.
“I—“ he swallows bile. “I don’t know what I’m looking at.
It’s all this wet viscera, bodily hot, pulsing, fragile, and there’s blood pooling, and he’s completely out of his depth. They dissected a frog in school and even with the teacher walking them through it, he couldn’t understand how all the soft, shapeless tissue worked with machine precision. His eye has been trained to study metal. Here there is nothing discernibly interlocking; he can’t see where the pieces start and begin, how they connect, or what they do.
“Viktor. Viktor .”
But Viktor’s eyes are closed and his head is limp on the table.
“Shit. Oh shit.”
There’s still a pulse in the boney wrist. Blood is still bubbling out, pumped by the still-beating heart. This is when Jayce should leave and get a doctor, a surgeon, anyone who can fix this, fix Viktor. He doesn’t know how Viktor’s artificial organs work, doesn’t know if they will work. He flicks through the anatomy book on Viktor’s desk and stains the pages red. Blood, the passing time made visible, materialized in the constant draining. The clock is ticking and there is no time, none at all. This isn’t a slow death; this is a death of minutes, of seconds, the thousands of painfully inert instants it takes Jayce to try and comprehend his choices, trying to make the correct decision. There is no correct decision. No time. No margin for thought. There can’t be much blood left in his body. Jayce sees, really sees for the first time the gash in Viktor’s chest, that it’s real, and mortally important, demanding of attention, oh fuck , and Jayce is complicit.
This is the only thing that could make him wish for the quiet, drawn-out death he was so afraid of, the kind of death that let him keep his hands clean.
“I don’t even know what a kidney looks like,” Jayce said.
And Viktor said, “Haven’t you ever eaten them grilled? Not bad.” And then, “Consult the book if you need to.”
At some point he stops thinking, and starts wielding the scalpel more like a butcher, cutting and cutting, hacking his way through with one goal in mind. He’s severing strings of tissue deep in the body cavity and hoping, praying not to hit anything vital.
“There’s three tubes to connect, Jayce. That’s not so much, is it? When you sever the aorta and vena cava you have to quickly clamp them, or I’ll bleed out. Then attach them to the color-coded ports on the implant. The third tube needs to go to the bladder. It’s quite simple.”
“Okay. Right. Simple. Color-coded.”
He pinches what he assumes are the major blood vessels between his fingers and can feel them pulse against his grip. With the other hand he affixes the new kidney, which kind of suctions on automatically, and then he lets go, slowly, watching the blood flow and flush the clear membranes. In a dish there is the lump of something he has removed, what he thinks is the diseased kidney, this kind of half-stuffed maroon sponge, smallish and desiccated.
“ And then?” Jayce asked.
“You sew me back up. Don’t worry about making it pretty.”
A harsh black-threaded stitching from navel to rib. Oh, it’ll scar alright, providing that Viktor lives to tell the tale. Jayce can’t feel Viktor’s pulse anymore past his own racing in his fingertips, but he can see Viktor’s chest rise and fall with breath. He is not a murderer. Not yet.
He’s done it. He’s done something. Jayce is suddenly lightheaded, reeling with it, the idea that maybe, just maybe, he has extended Viktor’s life and tangibly improved its quality. He falls to his knees and sobs with relief. Any outlet for this torrent of emotion would work, and crying comes the easiest. His mind is biblically flooding itself, attempting to flush out the memories of ripping open Viktor’s skin and reaching in and touching the places he has never touched in himself. Already, these volatile sensations are evaporating. He cries on the floor of the lab waiting for the black feeling burning in him to finally slink away.
◉◉◉
This time, Jayce stays by Viktor’s bedside until he wakes up.
“Welcome back.”
When Viktor opens his eyes and sees Jayce, he cracks a smile, and Jayce’s heart flips. He was scared, deep down, that Viktor still wouldn’t forgive him.
“You did it, Talis,” Viktor croaks.
“Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of one functioning kidney.”
“Thank you. Really.” Viktor clears his throat, sits himself up against the pillows. “I’m…glad you were there.” He fiddles with the IV in the back of his hand. “This is the strong stuff, isn’t it?”
Jayce laughs. “So now that we’re not on a time crunch — tell me how the hell this implant works.”
Viktor’s face lights up. He’s eager to show off his work to someone who will fully appreciate it. Jayce has missed this expression, when he’d arrive at the lab and find Viktor already there, bright and chatty with a new breakthrough.
“I can show you my notes later, but here’s the basic concept: we know the hex crystals can interpret bioinformation, and have taken advantage of this to create highly precise control interfaces with machines. Well, to get a functioning organ all you need to do is reduce the scale — the hex crystal shards act as an extension of the nervous system.”
Jayce considers this. “The runes and crystals interact on the same principles as organic chemistry so you’re shrinking it all down to the molecular level. Neat.”
“I have the Hexclaw programmed to laser-carve microrunes. Given the proper mechanical components these crystal shards can oversee any kind of bodily function we want them to. And unlike before, these functions are not strictly controlled autonomically. The host can interface with and consciously manipulate the implant if desired.”
“That’s incredible. I never thought of using Hextech that way.”
Viktor grinned. “With you on board again everything will speed up substantially — I should have enough time to get the Hexclaw calibrated for surgical precision before the next operation, and then start work on the liver next, I think, the lungs are proving challenging—“
“Next…operation? What do you mean?”
“The other kidney, of course.”
“But I thought you only need one.”
“To live, yes. There’s a reason people have two.“
Understanding hits him at once, a terrible blow.
“Wait, sorry, hold on, are you planning to replace your liver and lungs too? Viktor, for Gods’ sake, you almost didn’t survive this time and you want to—“
Viktor cuts him off sharply. “I don’t know how much you understand about my condition, but it’s systemic. Multi-organ failure. I am racing to put out the fires as they ignite around me. Did you think one new kidney is all it would take to fix this?”
“I- don’t know–” Jayce stumbles over his words, the fear that he thought he put to bed flaring again to life.
“This research is the culmination of everything I have ever worked for. A way to save lives in a real, direct way. Do you realize how this would revolutionize medicine?”
He’s so passionate, so rehearsed. He’s got all the justifications holstered at his belt. The rhetoric primed and ready.
“Not only the ability to cure, but to transcend human limitations. The more parts replaced, the more control. We could evolve past the need to sleep or eat, halt aging, augment ourselves to be faster or stronger.” He’s almost breathless with excitement, starry-eyed, his hands wound tight in the sheets.
Jayce understands Sky’s cagey-ness better now, the secrecy and hush of her early morning visit. Maybe it was a projection of his own mood, but from her vague warnings he expected fatalism, and the Viktor he found seemed self-destructive enough to fit the bill. He realizes now that the danger was mania all along, this high-strung energy, the edge of obsession that they both have teetered on together, Viktor having finally taken the plunge, drunk on his teasing dance with death, and all the more giddy for his narrow misses. He’s so piously driven, and yet hungry to see his name in a book. He fancies prophet as part of his job description.
Jayce starts tentatively, “I guess the question is… should we do those things? You know— just because we can?”
“Oh.” Viktor sags against the bed frame, his voice softened. “Of course. You have no idea what it feels like to be betrayed by your own body.”
Jayce just sees lines of the fat black stitches, lines crossing, carving him up, weaving a patchwork in his skin, till he’s more thread than man. If you do transcend these human limitations , he wants to ask, what do you become?
“Without the transplants, I’ll die anyway,” Viktor states, so solemnly, so tired. A steel finality to it all.
“You— Fuck .” Jayce grits out. He stands if only to do something, to take any physical action available. “I’m so afraid right now, you don’t even know.”
“You seem angry.”
His fists are clenched. “Well I’m scared shitless. You made me cut you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I could have killed you. Did you think about what that would do to me? I couldn’t imagine something more awful than watching you die, and you had to go and prove me wrong and shove me into a situation that was infinitely fucking worse.” His voice warbles uncontrollably. If he were someone else, there might be the threat of violence in his hands, in his stance, but he’s himself — so weak where it counts, crumbling under any paper-weight-heavy emotion.
“I never intended for it to go that way, Jayce.” Viktor says quietly. ”I wouldn’t force you into that position. I understood why you left, and I missed you, but I didn’t judge you for it.” He takes a measured breath. “That being said, I can’t order my life around your feelings. I have to continue my research for my own good, and for the good I know it can bring to the world.”
All the justifications, neatly lined up in a row, and Jayce wants to topple them. Viktor. He’s so infuriatingly graceful in his insistence to hurt himself. A cruel thought blooms in Jayce’s mind and gains traction – maybe what Sky was hinting at, a last ditch move beyond her power but well within his. He’s held a scalpel in Viktor and hated every second of it, but somehow now the chance at breaking that placid composure makes a metaphorical knife twist feel very worth it.
“You could be committed for this,” Jayce says.
“What?” Viktor’s eyes go wide, he’s so genuinely caught off-guard. Wounded. Like a caricature of shock.
“I’m sure the council would agree with me. The technology is so new, still too dangerous for human trials…”
“No, no.” He shakes his head,“You wouldn’t.”
“...and when they hear how I found you bleeding out on the floor, barely unconscious, attempting surgery on yourself – I think Sky would testify too. They’d put you in a nice padded room, no pens, no sharp objects…until the end came.”
“ Jayce .”
Jayce takes one of Viktor’s clammy hands. “Please give this up. I’m begging you. I’ll stay with you. I’ll drop everything else. I’ll be there like I should’ve been in the first place. You’ve proven the point to me; there are fates worse than death. Don’t make me witness violence against you. Don’t mutilate yourself, don’t sacrifice your body to experimentation. You’ll chop yourself to pieces for the sake of improvement, and there will be nothing left for me to mourn. Accept what is coming, please, I see that now, that it’s the best way, the only way. Do not fight, and make it easy, please. Make it easy on me, and I will be there.” He touches Viktor’s shoulder when he really wants to touch his face, and he says, “It will be OK.”
Viktor plucks Jayce’s hands off of him and says, “Leave.”
And Jayce, dutiful as ever, walks out the door.