Chapter Text
The rain came down in a steady, whispered drizzle, a fog that turned Piltover's gleaming surfaces to blurred smudges of silver and gold. Jayce stood beneath the overhanging eaves of the council building, his shoulders hunched against the damp. The city stretched below him, endless, its brilliant lights diffused by the mist, flickering like stars gone dull. Yet, it was no longer his city, it belonged to others now, those who had taken Viktor’s dreams and twisted them into hard-edged profit and whispered power.
By his side, a silent guard in sharp armor stood, a shadow that followed him nearly everywhere now. It was an arrangement the council had insisted upon, though Jayce loathed it. The guard was a precaution against Zaunites, they’d said, the same people who once looked to him with hope, those who now watched him with fury and grief. There had been threats, attempts, each one a reminder that the ideals he and Viktor had once dreamed for Piltover were slipping through his fingers.
Jayce sighed, bracing himself, and stepped through the council doors, his boots echoing on the polished marble as he walked. The great hall was all steel and glass, cold to the touch, though it shone as brilliantly as ever. Piltover’s council sat, their faces illuminated by the faint blue glow of suspended Hextech orbs, casting them in ghostly light. Discussions flared in hushed tones as he entered.
“-a new line of Hextech weaponry. We’ve drawn up preliminary designs for both suppression and tracking.” one councilor said, his voice as sharp as the gleaming devices they spoke of, displaying the designs with a flick of his wrist.
Jayce slid into his seat, yet his eyes drifted to the faint edges of Viktor’s notebook, which lay hidden in his coat pocket, and his mind drifted with them, carried away by the thought of Viktor's solemn, tireless gaze. “Progress without compassion is nothing more than an illusion,” Viktor had once said in a rare moment of anger. Jayce remembered that day, the way Viktor’s fingers trembled slightly as he’d placed down the prototype he was working on, unwilling to look at his own creation.
A councilor cleared his throat, casting a pointed glance Jayce’s way. “Councillor Talis, I trust we have your thoughts on the matter?”
Jayce blinked, dragging himself back to the present. “What?” he asked, his voice rougher than he intended, a raw crack in the polish of the room. The councilor looked at him with barely disguised disdain, and Jayce straightened, offering an apologetic nod. “My apologies. Please- continue.”
A sharpness glinted in the councilor’s eyes, a knife hidden behind courtesy. “We were discussing the next iteration of Hextech surveillance,” he said. “The security of Piltover demands more advanced methods of containment. Zaun’s resistance movements are… persistent, to say the least.”
Containment. He felt the word echo in the hollow spaces of his mind, rattling like chains. He could hear Viktor’s voice again, hear him rail against the kind of power that became its own master. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, he thought, gazing at the council’s faces, each one hard, distant, as though cloaked in the very armor they now sought to mass-produce.
A shimmer of blue light drew his eye, and he looked down at the designs for the new Hextech weaponry, its sharp edges gleaming, diagrams of components, cores. There was beauty there, he supposed, in the precision of the lines, in the ruthless symmetry of its design. But where Viktor had once drawn circuits that hummed with hope, these felt devoid of anything but calculation, a chill in place of a spark.
Jayce swallowed. A thousand thoughts spun through his mind, but Viktor’s words rang louder than all of them: “If we forget the people in this, Jayce, then we are no better than those who came before us.”
But who was left to hear? The council had no room for ghosts, and Viktor had become a relic of the past, a memory Jayce kept locked away like contraband.
The council meeting continued in the background. He stood, rigid, his gaze still fixed on the designs, but his thoughts were elsewhere. The echo of footsteps came suddenly, and then Mel's voice broke through the fog of his thoughts.
“Jayce.”
He turned, startled, as Mel stepped into his line of sight. Without waiting for him to speak, she gestured for him to follow her. There was a faint pull in her movement, something subtly urgent, and Jayce, caught off guard, found himself stepping away from the council’s artificial warmth and into the cooler hallways beyond.
“Everything alright?” she asked, her voice low, though it wasn’t the question that lingered in the air, it was the unspoken implication. The council’s room had been full of empty smiles and calculated moves, but Mel’s presence felt like a sliver of something real.
He glanced over at her, offering a tight, noncommittal smile. “Of course. Just… a lot to think about.”
Mel didn’t buy it. “It’s about Viktor, isn’t it?”
The question hung between them like an accusation, though she was careful to keep her voice gentle. Jayce’s stomach tightened at the mention of Viktor’s name, his friend’s name, so full of life in his mind, but so utterly distant in reality.
“Are you still… planning to go through his things?” she asked, her eyes searching his face for some clue to the answer. “The council’s pushing for it, the new scientists are more than ready to move in.” Her expression softened. “It’s been over three years, Jayce. But you’ve-”
“I know,” Jayce interrupted, his voice a little sharper than he intended. He forced his gaze to meet hers, but it felt like trying to look through a thick pane of glass, distant, distorted. “I’m working on it. It’s just… it’s hard.”
Mel stood there, silent for a moment. Then, she nodded once. “I’ll take care of it for now, if you need time. But the council's been breathing down my neck about it. They want answers.”
Jayce didn’t reply immediately, instead staring down at the smooth marble floor, where faint rainwater stains had begun to pool in the cracks.
He took a deep breath, then exhaled, finally meeting her eyes. “I’ll go. I’ll take care of it. It’s just… I haven’t been back there since...”
His words trailed off, leaving an echo that lingered longer than he intended.
Mel gave him a knowing glance, then turned to lead the way down the winding corridors, her boots clicking sharply against the cold stone as Jayce followed. The path ahead was clear, and he knew what was waiting for him.
The lab.
The place where it had all been so full of potential, so brimming with possibility. The place where ideas had once been exchanged in quiet nights of laughter, where Viktor had shared his dreams of something more, something that could have united both cities.
The door to the lab was the same as it had always been, like a barrier to the past. Mel paused outside, a lingering glance passing between them before she nodded once.
“I’ll be in my office if you need anything.”
Jayce stood there for a moment, staring at the door, his hand hovering over the cold metal handle, his pulse quickening with every passing second. He wanted to say he was ready, he wanted to say he was prepared to face it. But the truth was, he wasn’t. Not yet. Not after everything that had happened.
The last time he’d crossed that threshold, Viktor had still been alive, still standing beside him, still dreaming of the world they could build together. That dream, that partnership, had ended with a single, heart-wrenching choice, a choice he had made and could never undo.
He opened the door.
The air inside was stale, untouched by Piltover's progress. Dust clung to the surfaces, and the faintest scent of rust hung in the air. Jayce stepped inside, the door creaking behind him as he crossed the threshold.
It was the same, and yet so different. The machines were still there, the half-finished projects, the diagrams pinned to the walls, some of them yellowing with age. But Viktor’s presence was absent now, making it hard to breathe.
He walked past the workstations, touching the cool surfaces of the tables as if seeking some piece of Viktor to hold onto, something to prove that it had all been real. His fingers brushed against the spot where Viktor’s chair had once been. He couldn’t stop the memory from flooding back, Viktor’s hands, the way his eyes had shone with that quiet brilliance when he spoke of their shared future.
But that future was gone.
And in its place, Jayce was left with the tools, the schematics, and the haunting reminder of everything that had slipped through his fingers.
A bitter laugh escaped him, low and breathless. What was he doing here? What had he been holding on to all this time? There were new scientists waiting, eager to take over this space, to build the Hextech weapons that Piltover demanded.
But Viktor’s work… Viktor’s vision…
Jayce reached for the papers on the desk, scanning the notes, the sketches. There were ideas here, unfinished, perhaps even impossible, but they still clung to him. He couldn’t let them go. He wouldn’t.
Not yet.
And so, despite the weight in his chest, Jayce resolved to do what he had to do. He’d move Viktor’s things, clear the space for the future, but as he glanced back at the half-finished machines, something in him stirred, a flicker of hope, however faint, that Viktor’s legacy still had a place in this world.
Jayce's fingers hovered above the fragile papers, brushing against the faint edges of Viktor's sharp handwriting. Diagrams, equations, half-formed dreams, they all blurred together, smudged with the dust of three unkind years. His gaze lingered on the sketches of machines that would never be built, ideas that had died alongside their creator.
Three years.
The thought hung like smoke in his mind, choking him. Three years since Viktor’s voice had filled this room, laced with that quiet, unwavering conviction. Three years since they’d stood together, shoulder to shoulder, daring to dream of a world that could be better. But that world had never come to pass.
Instead, the room was empty, cold, and silent. The dreams had turned to ash, and all that remained were the scraps of a partnership that once promised to change everything.
Jayce sighed, running a hand through his hair, his eyes drifting across the lab. The machines stood still, their mechanisms frozen in time, like ghosts of Viktor’s mind, abandoned in mid-thought. They seemed to accuse him, their silence more piercing than any words could be. He closed his eyes briefly, hoping to block out the ache that stirred in his chest, but when he opened them again, his gaze fell upon it.
The Hexcore.
It sat in the corner of the lab, untouched but no less dangerous, pulsing faintly with its ominous violet glow. Jayce stiffened, his jaw tightening as his heart gave a dull, painful thud. The sight of it was a wound reopened, raw and searing. Viktor had begged him- begged him to destroy it, to end the experiment before it spiraled out of control.
But he hadn’t.
He had told himself it was for research, for progress, for Piltover. A thousand excuses, hollow and flimsy, crumbled in the face of the truth. He hadn’t destroyed it because he couldn’t. Not after Viktor had died. It was all that remained of his friend’s genius, the last spark of the brilliance they had shared. And now, every time he looked at it, the guilt twisted deep, carving jagged edges into his soul.
Jayce grimaced, forcing himself to look away, as though the Hexcore could see him falter, could feel the weight of his broken promises. His hands curled into fists at his sides, nails biting into his palms.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, though no one was there to hear him.
He turned his back on the cursed device and moved to the desk, Viktor’s desk. The surface was cluttered, a chaotic reflection of the man who had once worked here. Jayce ran his fingers over the scattered tools, the diagrams, the faint indentations left by hours of work and thought.
And then he saw it.
A box, small and unassuming, sat in the center of the desk. Its edges were worn, and it bore a label, the ink slightly faded but still legible. For Jayce.
Jayce froze.
The handwriting was unmistakably Viktor’s. Precise, deliberate, with that slight tilt that spoke of a man who thought faster than he wrote. He hesitated, his breath catching as if the box itself carried some untouchable weight. Beneath the label, a second line had been scrawled, softer, almost tender:
Everything you need to know.
His chest tightened. Carefully, as though the box might shatter beneath his touch, he picked it up. It was light, far lighter than he expected, yet it seemed to contain the gravity of a lifetime.
Jayce swallowed hard, his throat dry. He sank into Viktor’s old chair, the chair he hadn’t dared to sit in for three years, and placed the box gently on the desk before him. His fingers traced the edges of the label, Viktor’s words echoing in his mind like a ghost’s whisper.
For the first time in years, Jayce felt the sting of tears behind his eyes, threatening to fall. He blinked them away, his breath shaky, and stared at the box as if it might contain the answers to every question that had haunted him since the day Viktor had died. He read the label again, one word at a time, as if Viktor’s voice might rise from the silence to explain it all.
Holding the box, Jayce felt something he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in years: the faint, painful flicker of hope.