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Dust billowed across the sweltering battlefield. Jayce stood atop a pile of bodies, a paragon, his eyes searching for opponents. Through the smoke Viktor stared back, gaze unwavering, not yet noticed by the other.
Here, he was reminded of his youth, studying every corner of Jayce as if he was to lose him. Viktor had thought that Jayce was a good man, but now all the blue tinged memories were scuffed and torn by Jayce trying his damndest to erase Viktor entirely from the record of his life. Viktor would never allow that,his very body attested to a man who refused to be forgotten. He’d worm his way like a stray splinter under Jayce's soft skin, his very presence tearing open a bright red gash that Viktor could point to as proof that he had once lived. He had lived hard enough to have carved an entrance right into Jayces rib and clawed his way right into Jayce's heart through the ragged opening.
A crow's flapping wings beat across the bridge. Now was not the time for his overly emotional ramblings about a time long gone. Viktor’s stare bore further into the monument of a man. Jayce’s ribs moved up and down. How odd, Viktor thought. Jayces adrenal glands were up in high gear, causing the slight tremor in his hands to affect the steadiness of his hammer, the clench of his jaw, increased breathing, and an unusual flicker in his eyes. All signs of panic. Viktors stomach sank, - something he would have to train out of his brain or surgically remove.
Removal steadily sounded more likely.
Viktor looked on, reverently, at the iconographic stance of the man before him. No wonder the topsiders had his face plastered on everything. Jayces stance reminded Viktor of the statue of Vander back in Zaun. He always thought that Piltover, as vain as it was, should have had something similar. Perhaps that statue would be the same shade of ivory that Jayce’s coat was, with the gold trimmings to match. As Viktor exhaled a laugh, his metal coated body squeaked. Jayce moved, his face cracked and twisted, and the enchantment was broken, Viktor had been seen.
Jayce turned aiming his hammer at Viktor, on cue the sun caught behind Jayce’s back.
Viktor squinted.
Jayce spat out,
“What are you doing here, Viktor?”
The hex claw whirred.
“Only what is necessary.”
A thundering blow was heard across the bridge, blue and orange bright like the sun and sky. With a cry Jayce was knocked off his pedestal, his body falling to the blood-slicked ground. He didn't shatter, but he did bruise. Viktor wished he had at least chipped, so then -- in some fucked up sense of the word -- he would finally have a piece of Jayce.
Viktor’s heavy metal feet thudded across the bridge, armor shining. The hexclaw whirred. Jayce got back up, his ribs screaming at him to lie back down as he leant on his hammer. Viktor was quickly approaching. If the man got involved in this conflict he would be hunted by enforcers, and if caught executed.
Jayce bellowed,
“Viktor, leave! Your sentencing was a mercy, after what you proposed!”
Viktors tinny voice projected from the mask, making Jayce's ears ring from the pitch.
“You want me to leave? After all that, defender! Was your bravado about protecting the city from an evil threat a bluff? I'm beginning to miss Piltover's beloved hero.”
Jayces nose flared and scrunched.
“This is a conflict between Zaun and Piltover, not between us. I am giving you a chance to leave while you can.”
Viktor began walking forward, Jayce taking a few steps back to match, the mercury hammer glowing brighter. They danced around each other. Viktors mask crackled with laughter.
“Jayce, what else have we ever fought about? Our very differences, the paths we walk today, are we not the posterboys of this war!”
I wish we weren't, Jayce wanted to say. But he didn’t. Everyone takes interpretations from silence, and Jayce had always been a mute. Jayce blamed it on his dad. Or rather he really wanted to blame it on his dad. The guilt might have eaten Jayce up already if he had a present father. If he had a present father, maybe he would even have healthy relationships, no people pleasing tendencies, no savior complex, and no suicidal ideation. Maybe he would have made different decisions. Maybe he wouldn’t be here of all places.
Maybe he could apologize.
Jayce, ever the fatherless, argued
“You can blame your illness on where you grew up, but not your moral failings! I will not make our fight everyone else's!”
Viktors posture hardened, his stride towards Jayce quickening. Viktor was pissed. Jayce should really stop blaming his father, and start seeing that therapist Cait recommended.
“Was it not the very nature of the undercity bred into my flesh and bones that leaked into my thoughts? The toxins of the river I played in seeped into my brain chemistry? Or was it the words, the thought under oppression that happened to create my morals?”
Jayce began to move forward, matching Viktors pace. The mercury hammer lurched into its melee form. Jayce felt his throat clogging, and his eyes water from the dust. He wished that Viktor didn't have to play in toxins where he grew up, he wished that Viktor didn't have to claw for the positions Jayce had handed to him. Jayce truly did, but any pity now would piss Viktor off even more. But what was Jayce to do? Fuel Viktor’s rage, spit hate and vitriol? It wasn’t gasoline but it was still alcohol.
Viktor's mask shone in the bright sun, scuffed and dented. Jayce's stained boots stick, tacky, to the bloodied floors. Jayce will lie in his bed at home, perhaps start some paperwork on his desk, and a flash of the light will dig the tacky stick of his boots to the floor back up. He will throw out the shoes, the pants, maybe the coat, then he will forget it all happened. He will not forget to scrub under his fingernails when he washes his hands. In the present flies are beginning to swarm, he can feel the blood under his nails curdling. Jayce's eyes move upward to meet Viktor’s. He had gotten even taller since he last saw him. How much of Viktor was metal, and how much was flesh and blood? Did Viktor still have a human face under the mask? Was his constellation of moles preserved?
All Jayce was met with was his own reflection in steel. Jayce looked like a mess, his hair was plastered to his forehead. His nose dribbled blood. Gross. His brand deals wouldn’t like that. He was going to break Viktor's nose, if he still had one.
Jayce felt the weight of the mercury hammer. Rolling it around in his palm as an oyster rolled a grain of sand in its mouth. Jayce might be a fool, but he knew a good opportunity when he saw it.
“If I were a modern Ship of Theseus,”
Jayce punctuated the pause with a swing of his hammer. Viktor lurched back, but not far enough, the swing catching him in the hip.
“I would probably be asking different questions.”
Viktor flailed and twisted in the air, his metal body crashing to the floor only a few meters away. Jayce switched his hammer back to ranged mode. Viktor drew himself up, unfurling like a terrifying tree from the earth, a tree of metal and hatred. The fall had cracked his mask, Jayce felt the snarl on Viktor’s face like a bullet passing through him.
Blam!
A fast shot of orange energy flew across the bridge, hitting Jayce dead in the shoulder, and with it he crumpled to the floor with a pained wail. The wound burned across his body, what the hell did Viktor put in that beam?
Viktor marched over to Jayce, reuniting them upon the center of the bridge. As Jayce writhed with pain, the last of Viktor’s ragged mask fell off. Viktor knelt down and harshly grabbed Jayce's face, his hands crushing Jayces jaw. In his haze of delirium Jayce writhed even further, whining from the pain.
“V, V, Viktor, please. Hurts, please stop.”
Viktor looked near sated, but Jayce knew the pain wouldn’t stop anytime soon. Viktor took his hand and pressed it into his dented armor. Viktor moved Jayces hand up further to press by his metal ribs. Jayce felt Viktor’s labored breathing with every machinated heave of his body. Viktors neck vents steamed.
“Viktor?”
“I want you to fully understand what you have driven me to, Jayce. You have forgotten about me; you have forgotten that I know you better than any pithy peonies up in that sparkling city you live in. You are adorned with so many of their glittering gold embellishments that you forgot who put you back together when you nearly destroyed yourself. Without me, hextech would not exist. And without you, the machine herald would have never come to fruition.”
Viktor gripped and gripped and gripped. Jayce was bruising like a fruit left out to rot.
“We both created different monsters, but I'll make sure I haunt you.”
Viktors eyes left Jayce's for a moment that felt infantasmal, Viktors nose flared, his eyes watered, but his sweltering gaze returned to Jayce.
“Jayce…I hate you.”
Viktor sounds so tender, soft even without the mask. Jayce wished the tone was wrapped around kinder words.
“Jayce, you hated me first. You pointed fingers first, you stopped listening first, you left me first!”
Jayce watched as Viktor pulled off the sheeting of his armor. Viktor popped open a panel on his machinated chest and plunged Jayce’s hand into his thoracic cavity. Jayce felt the slimy thrumming beat of Viktor’s heart within, nestled in between manmade lungs. Jayce wanted to crawl out of his own skin…. Viktor was right. Viktor was always right; Jayce saw the ghosts of his rightness on his ceiling in the middle of the night.
What might haunt him even more was Viktor’s beating heart in his hand. His artificial lungs breathing beneath his touch, the veined slimy texture brushing right up against the side of his hand. Viktors grip on his jaw tightened even further.
“This is why I cannot forgive you, Jayce. In the most literal sense my body failed me, and you kicked me out whilst it failed… but you would be holding my lungs if I wanted to speak of failure. You hold my heart because that was taken when you left me. Tell me, Jayce, can you feel it beating in your palm? Does it speak to you the same way it did when we floated amongst the stars? Does it tell you to rip it out of my very chest so I can be with you forever?”
Jayce looked from his hand to Viktor’s face. He had that inane glint in his eye, the one that made Jayce break into Heimerdinger's lab, the one that fascinated the hexcore, and the one that Jayce knew one day would consume him.
“V, I'm sorry.”