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Jayce was surprised when he heard a knock on his door. He figured he wasn’t getting many visitors, and he assumed a guard would have come up to announce if it was his mother paying him a visit.
Not that he should be surprised. He’d purposely been avoiding seeing his mom since arriving back in his Piltover.
He lifted himself up from his bed with a sigh, old and new bandages alike strewn across the sheets. “Just a second,” he called, quickly throwing on a pair of pants and reaching out to his hammer to help himself stand.
Jayce limped over to the door and pressed his head against it for a moment, taking a deep breath in. He really didn’t want to have a conversation with his mom right now. He especially didn’t want his mom to see him like this.
Maybe he could lie and tell her that he was sick. That he was really contagious with something and needed to be kept in quarantine.
“Jayce?” a feminine voice that was definitely not his mom’s called through the door and startled him out of his spiraling. “Are you busy?”
Oh shit, how long have I been standing there?
He awkwardly (and admittedly too fast and too nonchalant-looking to be natural) opened the door, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw who it was.
“Mel,” he breathed out, unable to stop the smile that spread across his lips. “Sorry, no I’m not busy. Was just redressing my bandages.” He glanced back towards his bed, back to the pile of gross bandages. “It’s a bit messy right now though…”
Mel followed his gaze and gave a small nod of acknowledgement. “I see. Would you like some help?”
“I don’t really need it, honestly. Not at this point,” he said, gesturing towards the fresh bandage on his leg, “but I would never say no to your company.”
A pleased smile crossed Mel’s lips as he moved so she could enter. Jayce had had her in his bedroom a few times before, but it never stopped the anxiety that gnawed at his stomach that she would see something embarrassing and laugh or grimace.
She moved to sit on the edge of his bed, looking up at him expectantly. Jayce leaned back against the door, closing it shut, and gave her a shrug. “I expect you had a reason to come though, that wasn’t just basking in each other’s presence,” Jayce said.
“You’re right,” she confirmed, meeting his eyes. “But come sit next to me regardless.”
Not having to be told twice, Jayce moved to settle in next to her. Even though they weren’t touching, he could feel an energy radiating off her that gave him a warm feeling. “So what brings you here tonight?” he asked, pulling his good leg up onto the bed.
Mel inhaled and exhaled slowly. “I wanted to apologize,” she said softly, turning to meet his eyes again. “I stand by what I said. You and Viktor were a wise investment.” She paused, as if to think for a moment, before offering Jayce her hand and he couldn’t help running his thumb over the gold marks decorating her knuckles.
“But I did not mean that to imply that you were not important to me,” she continued, squeezing the hand that now rested in hers. “You are, if that hasn’t been made clear before.”
“I know,” he sighed, brushing a piece of hair out of his face. He still wasn’t used to it being long. “We’ve both been through a lot these last few months. I’m sorry that I took that out on you.”
“But you were right,” she insisted, voice growing more adamant. “I haven’t made it clear before, and I want to remedy that.” Her eyes darted away from his, finally breaking eye contact.
“Especially… with what I wanted to discuss next.”
Jayce nodded, looking down at their entwined hand. “I think I know what it’s about,” he murmured. He took Mel’s other hand in his and returned her earlier squeeze.
Mel looked startled. “You do?”
“I can think of some things, yes, but please. Say your piece,” he assured. He ran his thumb over her knuckles again and she seemed to relax at his touch.
“Our time together has truly been special,” she started, eyes returning to his. She broke one hand out of their embrace to cup his cheek. “But I think we both knew it wouldn’t last forever.”
Jayce closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. He knew this was coming.
“I know,” he repeated, bringing his free hand to once again grasp at the one touching his face. He remembered what Viktor had told him about diverging paths, all those months ago.
“I’ve always been destined for a complicated path,” she continued. “I found peace in Piltover for a time, but I was foolish to think it would last.”
“You’re anything but a fool, Mel,” Jayce interrupted. He gently took her hand off and cupped both of them in her lap. “Nobody’s a fool for dreaming.”
“Perhaps.” Mel closed her eyes. “But the life of a Medarda is never simple.” She used her chin to gesture to the gold adorning her skin. “Even more so now than ever. And I don’t think me being in any sort of committed relationship would be a good idea right now.” Her voice quieted. “For either of us.”
Her grip on his hands got tighter and her eyes held an air of resolution. “I don’t love you any less,” Mel admitted, voice almost a whisper. “And I do wish things could have been different.”
Jayce stopped himself from flinching at her words. She’d never used the word “love" with him before.
“I just think that what I need right now is a friend, not a lover,” she finished, folding her hands back neatly into her lap.
Jayce nodded at her words. They stayed like that for a couple seconds, a comfortable silence falling between them.
“I think,” Jayce started, finally letting go of her hands. “I think that you have much more to worry about than what I think. Or how I’ll feel if we move forward as just friends.”
“I disagree.”
“I don’t mean that my feelings don’t matter,” he affirmed. “Just that there’s no universe where you’d have to worry about your friendship being of lesser importance to me than your love.”
“I am still sorry that things didn’t work out the way you… and admittedly I had been hoping.”
Jayce shook his head. “Please don’t apologize. I’m honored to be your friend. To be wanted in your life in any way.” He glanced down at the shard of crystal embedded into his wrist. “I don’t think I could give you the romance you deserve anyway right now.”
Mel chuckled. “You doubt your charms, Jayce. There are many others that have been swayed by it in the past.”
Jayce couldn’t help the small snort that made its way out of his mouth. “Oh yeah? Name one other person it’s worked on.”
Mel quirked an eyebrow up. “You’re kidding, right? Jayce, come on…”
“I’m serious!” He threw his hands in the air and gave an awkward laugh. “Most people here couldn’t stand me! They only tolerated me for Hextech.”
Mel just shook her head. “Not everybody. Not me. Not Viktor .”
He laughed again, but unease grew in his stomach when she didn’t laugh with him. His lips pursed into a small frown of disbelief. “Viktor was in his own world. A world I didn’t do enough to understand.” Jayce’s eyes flickered down, mentally tracing the sickly purple and green patterns growing out from his wrist. “Not before it was too late.”
“It didn’t stop him from loving you all the same.”
The words struck through Jayce’s heart harder than Mel admitting her love for him outright barely a few minutes earlier. “That’s…” He didn’t know what to say.
Mel patted her lap. On instinct, he moved to lay his head down as he always did when they were alone, when it was just the two of them conversing outside of business. She carded fingers through his hair as he processed her words.
Viktor loved me?
It took a few minutes for him to find his voice again. He stared off into the space of his bedroom, eyes glazing over. Memories flooded through his mind of every interaction he had with Viktor, every private conversation, every moment spent together.
His thoughts came to a halt when his eyes landed on a picture frame sitting on the adjacent wall.
Over the last six years, Jayce had adorned the wall with photographs. They marked every accomplishment, every important person in his life, every moment where he was so happy that he wanted to hold onto the moment forever.
His eyes were settled on the picture sitting smack in the middle. A picture of him and Viktor.
The picture of him and Viktor that was taken after the Council had officially authorized the continuation of his research into the hex crystals. After they had barely managed to prove their research was worth the risk.
Jayce in the picture was his usual pre-getting-stuck-in-corrupted-Piltover self, all toothy grins and crinkled eyes. Viktor, as always, seemed startled to be in any kind of spotlight– even one as small as a picture.
Viktor’s hair was shorter back then, his face less pale, but it was the same old Viktor.
Well.
What used to be Viktor.
He never noticed it before, but there was a butterfly in the shot behind them. The same type that he saw in the infected pit he’d fallen into, in a hextech-destroyed world.
The yellow-brown colors that once gave him hope in a situation devoid of it now reminded him of the path he was set on. Of the path that older version of Viktor had guided him towards.
“What does it matter?” Jayce finally managed to ask, the desperate, hopeless feeling he felt in the infected cavern crawling into his stomach. “If he loved me or not.”
Mel shifted his face to look up at her, an incredulous look plastered on her face. “Maybe to an outsider you two were nothing more than business partners. Co-creators to a revolutionary innovation that improved the lives of so many.” She gave him a light tap on his cheek. “But I was more than an outsider, was I not?”
Jayce closed his eyes again. “I told you. I’ve been confused about a lot of things recently. It doesn’t really matter.”
“What happened to Viktor might not be able to be undone,” she said, voice softening. “It doesn’t change how he felt. Or how you feel.”
The feeling of stinging reached Jayce’s eyes and he closed his lids tighter as if that would stop him from crying. “There’s nothing that can be done about it now,” he mumbled, voice getting watery. “It’s like I said: my partner died in that room.”
Mel stroked her hand through his hair again. “Oh, Jayce.”
Her gentle touch crumpled his resolve and he couldn’t stop the first tear from leaking out. And just like that, despite his resolve to not cry over Viktor again , the floodgates opened and more tears streaked down his cheeks.
Jayce didn’t know how long they stayed like that. Him, head resting in Mel’s lap and shoulders shaking slightly as he silently cried. Mel, never stopping the comforting caresses.
He couldn’t get the image of that yellow-brown butterfly out of his head. Had he really been so blind before?
It felt like an eternity before his breathing evened out again, and his tears stopped flowing. He sniffed one last time before slowly lifting his head off Mel’s lap so he could sit back up.
“What comes next?” Mel asked, rising from her spot on his bed. She smoothed the wrinkles on her robe out and looked at Jayce with those same expectant eyes that she had when she first sat down.
Jayce joined his hands between his legs solemnly. “What comes next is that we gather everybody and make one last desperate bid against Ambessa’s army and Viktor’s ‘glorious evolution.’”
“I will send word to the guards to rally all the houses.”
He shook his head. “I don’t mean just the Piltover houses. I mean everybody.” His eyes drifted to his bedroom window, the view showcasing the bridge that connected the undercity to the upper city. “What’s coming next affects everybody, not just us in Piltover.”
Mel nodded. “Then I will have word sent to the people of Zaun as well.”
Jayce gathered the old bandages on his bed as Mel made her way back to his bedroom door. She stopped to give him one last look.
“Thank you, Mel,” he murmured, looking up to see her go. “I’ll see you later.”
Mel smiled and dipped her head.
“Until later then, Jayce.”