Chapter Text
Jayce gasped to life with his chest slumped against a wooden table and scattered notes beneath his hands.
In a jerking manner, he pushed himself off of the desk, leaning into the backrest of a chair. With a shaking hand, he ran it through his hair–a familiar gesture to calm whatever nerves he managed to gather. His eyes skittered over the scene before him. The sight was far more domestic than whatever recent events transpired. Perhaps as peaceful as the early days of hextech.
A lingering fear made his lungs inflate and deflate too quickly. It was a broken attempt to fall into a natural rhythm. At the realization, Jayce took a slow exaggerated breath, feeling his scattered mind slowly slot into place. His mind was fuzzy, a whirlwind of emotions clashing against his senses. The instinctual thoughts of wrong, wrong, wrong roared in his head.
He was not supposed to be here.
His mind was a mess, but he knew that much.
Sucking in another deep breath, Jayce tried to rally his clearest memories. It was… difficult to wade through this fog. Trying to recall the recent past was like trying to recall a dream. A slippery snake that knew every trick to slither around his grasp. Although some returned in snapshots; clear moments that contrasted the blur of emotions and actions which smeared together like a watercolor painting.
He had to fight off Viktor from reaching the Hexgates. Yes, he remembered painstakingly pulling out every individual crystal with the hope of stalling any amount of time. Only for that hope to be swept away by the shock that came when Viktor reinserted every crystal in only a few smooth movements.
And… and Viktor had his hand around Jayce’s neck. Ready to beam the ever-living hell out of Jayce. Oh god, was that how he died? Had he broken his-
No. No. Jayce managed to dodge, and Viktor didn’t follow his head with the intent to vaporize Jayce. He kept his aim steady on the roof, melting the metal before bursting through it and throwing Jayce to the side.
That was the end. He knew it, deep down. It was the epicenter of the corruption in the alternate reality. Although, by that point, perhaps the other reality was just this reality’s future. The realization had struck and sunk into him like a rock hitting the surface of a body of water. And there was nothing else he could do, but let Viktor win. That was when he broke his… his promise.
Expect… except that’s not true either.
He could see his familiar signature at the bottom of each page on his desk. He blinked, eyes narrowing at the observation. He had broken that habit after Viktor joined his side in research.
He couldn’t remember. He wasn’t sure if there was anything left to remember.
He could vaguely recall using the last of his efforts to bring any sort of humanity back to his old partner. Expelling his true thoughts out into the open of whatever abyss he hung within. He had to. It was the only way to display his admiration for Viktor’s perseverance. His admiration for Viktor. Blemishes and everything that made Viktor so Viktor.
But he felt himself be lulled into the hivemind, his conscience slowly fading. He was fighting a losing battle.
Then… then before he knew it, another Hexcore from god knows where had entered their sights and broke the clutch Viktor had on Jayce’s soul. Another chance. He couldn’t fail this time. Thankfully, Viktor finally lifted his detached veil, asking him the easiest question Jayce had ever heard: Why do you persist? But his words couldn’t possibly answer it. He had to show him. Yet, Viktor pushed him away again. Except Jayce knew better than to leave now. It started with them. It was bound to end with them too. So against direct orders, he remained.
Remained as his rune binded to Viktor’s palm. Remained as the arcane began to surround them. Remained after the warning volt of pain jerked his hand away from Viktor’s. Remained even though fear surged within his veins… because Viktor wasn’t going to do this alone.
Jayce huffed. He remained like the dirt under his nails.
Now, nothing made sense. Because now he was in uncharted territories. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wasn’t supposed to still be somewhere. Especially somewhere without Viktor.
He stared blearily at his hands. They were clean. Far too clean for someone who had just experienced the brutality of war. Less calloused than he remembered too.
Had he managed to reverse time?
A ring broke his train of thought and his head snapped up. Jayce hoisted himself from the chair, ignoring the small wave of vertigo that accompanied the action, and his brows knitted together before a second ring intruded his hearing once more. His eyes widened as he hastily searched the room, trying to locate the source of the pestering noise. His gaze latched onto a funny-looking instrument that sat on the edge of a nearby table. As it rang, the whole system shuddered, making the handle that sat on the pedestal of the base vibrate. Enticing him to pick it up.
Before he could do so, the noise ceased all on its own.
He carefully watched the device, unsure of what to do. Thankfully, he didn’t have time to dwell as it began to ring once again. Warily, he grabbed it and stared at the handle, idly wondering if this was the wrong course of action.
Then… it began to speak.
“Hello?”
Jayce startled. An object… speaking? Except that muffled voice wasn’t just anybody. He pressed it against his ear, he needed to be sure.
A posh accent crackled through the handlebar once more. “Hello? Jayce? I brought the equipment you left at my parent’s place.”
Was this a message? Should he reply or would he look foolish talking to nobody?
“Hello? This door isn’t going to unlock itself, Jayce.”
“Cait?” he helplessly asked.
“Yes, can you hear me?” He heard her huff and shuffle around a bit. “Mother replaced my old phone in favor of the most expensive one she saw. I swear the damn thing never works properly,” she said in exasperation.
There was silence for a moment. Caitlyn mentioned her mom like it was nothing. As if it were as light as a feather and not the sinking stone that had previously weighed her down.
“Cait, what happened?” Jayce unthinkingly said. All prior theories flew out the window. He needed to know. Did they win?
A noise of confusion sounded from the object grasped tightly in his hand. “What? You aren’t making any sense. Just open the door, I can’t carry this shit forever.”
There was a click followed by absolute silence. Not the white noise that had enveloped the other silence. A pure silence.
“Cait?” he asked the object again. “Caitlyn?”
No response.
He put the handle down on the table, hesitant about everything that transpired. Before he could decide on what to do next, a pounding reverberated through the room. Someone was intensely knocking on the door. He froze. He couldn’t be sure if this was Caitlyn. It could be anyone. If only he had his hammer around…
“Jayce, open the door before I drop the equipment that costs an arm and a leg!”
Okay, scratch that. Perhaps he could be fairly sure.
Jayce threw open the door and a struggling Caitlyn greeted him. Before he could offer to give her a hand, she shoved the box into his arms. As he juggled the hefty supplies, Caitlyn stomped inside, shutting the door.
“Took you long enough,” she said as she stretched her back.
Jayce blinked after her and placed the box down on top of the main desk, unconcerned that it pressed down on various small stacks of notes.
She looked… fine. Which was supposed to be good. But he remembered meeting the eyes of a woman determined to keep her city safe. He remembered the wrung-out and tired features of her face. The faint dark circles under her eyes told a story of sleepless nights dedicated to planning any sort of defense against the imminent attack. He couldn’t say that he looked any better, but the person before him lacked any of that burden.
Caitlyn was staring at him. Oh, because he had been staring. Whoops. His eyes darted away at the fact that he’d been caught.
“Are you all right?” Concern laced her voice. “Rough night?”
Something else was different about her too. Something exceedingly off.
“What are you wearing?” he incredulously blurted out before he could catch the thought from leaving his tongue.
She pulled back, nonplussed. Her brows knitted before looking down at her clothing. After a second, her expression smoothed out into a glare.
Yikes, if looks could kill.
“Hilarious,” she said, unenthused. “Look, I know you gave me this hoodie, but who raised you? Commenting on a lady’s clothing? I still don’t understand how you’ve managed a girlfriend before me.” She shook her head before releasing a small snicker.
Now he was even more confused. He would have absolutely not given her that article of clothing. He had taste. Class even. Additionally, the Kirammans were known for their sophistication. The elite status had no place for whatever this hoodie was.
Except now she was looking at him like he was the crazy one, so he figured it would be best to drop it.
“So,” Caitlyn picked up the conversation as she moved over to an unoccupied chair. Lowering herself into it, she continued, “How’s the research going? Guessing it hasn’t claimed your sanity just yet.”
Jayce watched her. Nothing about this screamed familiar. He should probably strike time travel off his growing list of theories then.
“Uhm,” he began, a sudden feeling of sickness began to wash over him. “Good,” he replied, being expertly unhelpful.
She shot him a curious glance. “Really? The last I heard, it was going pretty terribly.”
Jayce swallowed and meekly rubbed the base of his neck. Vaguely, he noticed his hair was much shorter. The last time he could recall it being this short was during his time serving as Councilor.
What he said next had to be cautious and deliberate.
“‘Good’ as in it hadn’t gotten any worse, I suppose,” he supplied.
That appeared to suffice as Caitlyn nodded along to his words.
“At least there’s that.” She tilted her head and plucked a gear from off of the desk, half-heartedly fiddling with it. “Sorry that it took so long for me to return your stuff. My parents wanted to make a few rest stops on the way back from the tournament even though I told them you were waiting.”
Ah, must be an alternate timeline, his mind spontaneously provided. Jayce approached her but didn’t exactly know what to say. He was never the best at improvised decision-making. It would probably be best if he fessed up now, that way he wouldn’t dig himself into a deeper hole. If only Viktor were here. Sure, he hadn’t been by his side for a while now, but that never stopped his yearning for things to just return to the way they were. Especially now that they reconciled. Somehow, the wound felt deeper.
Why wasn’t he here, anyway?
Driven by emotion, he grabbed Caitlyn’s shoulders. She flinched at the motion but didn’t shove him away.
“Cait… you gotta listen to me. I know this is going to sound unbelievable–”
“Not the first time you’ve told me something like that,” Caitlyn muttered, her gaze trained on the wild look in Jayce’s eyes.
“It–the situation I’ve been thrown into… It remains theoretically improbable.” Jayce’s grip on her shoulders loosened as he noticed Caitlyn’s pinched expression. Dropping his arms, he drags a hand over his face. “But, I have reason to believe this isn’t my reality.”
Caitlyn stared at him.
Jayce met her stare with just as much intensity. “Cait–”
“Another reality? Really Jayce? I mean, you’ve spun many tall tales, but nothing to this degree.” She gestured toward him with her hand.
Was that supposed to sting? It somewhat did, to be honest. Even when the Kiramman Clan turned their back on Jayce, Caitlyn never followed suit. But then again, if he’s correct, this isn’t his Caitlyn. The one that he watched sprout from a pocket-sized girl into a proficient marksman.
Jayce rubbed his hand along his arm defensively. There he noticed the sleeves of his shirt were a spitting image of Caitlyn’s. He was wearing a… hoodie. No wonder she thought he was joking. He glanced ruefully at Caitlyn but said nothing.
She let out a resigned sigh. “Look, I get it. The university is threatening to revoke your research grant, but that doesn’t mean make eccentric claims with the hopes of winning them back.” She then put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. “And you know you always have my family and Mel if things go south,” she said in a much lower tone.
It didn’t make him feel any better.
“You don’t understand,” Jayce started. “There’s a chance that the… the arcane sent me here–”
“Uh-huh–”
“And if that’s the case, then the stakes are unfathomably high–”
“Sure–”
“This isn’t just about me either, Viktor… my partner is at the center of it all–”
“Partner?–”
“And I just got him back-”
It was clear he was on a roll, no bother stopping him now, and Caitlyn appeared to understand. As he paced the small room, he made grandeur gestures to fit the narrative he was weaving. Every so often his spectator would throw in a “Jayce” between pauses, which Jayce would decidedly ignore. Until, well, he ran out of steam and was gasping for breath after the slightly nonsensical speech.
“Jayce,” she repeated once more.
“What?” Jayce spun around to face her, finally snapping. “Can’t you see I’m trying to explain the predicament?”
“Look, I think you got yourself all wrapped up in your work. I know I always pursue a trail when it’s hot, but maybe that piece of advice doesn’t apply here. It might be best to take a step back and return with a clear head,” she suggested. Caitlyn looked uncomfortable, which sent a barb of anger through Jayce’s chest because how could she not believe him?
A memory of Viktor and his first night working together flashed through his mind. He had told Jayce that they need more than promises. It was proof that had gotten them somewhere. But he didn’t have any proof here. Hell, he didn’t even know where here was.
Jayce breathed deeply through his nose. Looking around, this room couldn’t be any bigger than his first-ever workshop.
Caitlyn continued to watch him as though she was expecting a rebuttal.
Instead, Jayce nodded and sat down on a nearby futon. The dampened nausea from when he first awoke was slowly intensifying. With a sigh, he pressed the palms of his hands to his forehead.
Hearing Caitlyn’s chair squeak, he craned his head up and watched as she lowered herself by him.
“Jayce,” Caitlyn said. She shifted uncomfortably and started chewing on her bottom lip. She somehow sounded more concerned when she said: “I know you’ve had a rough couple of months.”
His heart lurched, and for a minute, he couldn’t speak.
“Don’t you dare accuse me of making this up, Caitlyn, you can’t–”
“I’m saying, you’ve been trying to persevere ever since your mother’s passing. But you’re only out here because the university has been pressuring you into finishing your research. Honestly, it seems to me you’re only surviving out of pure spite and academia.” She slid a hand over her mouth and let out a tired sigh. “I’m sorry things haven’t been… easier for you.”
Something hot and sharp flared in Jayce’s mind, the beginnings of a headache. However, it died down as he fully grasped what she said regarding his mother. Dead? Had he heard her right?
Jayce’s stomach sank. He wanted to be sick.
His throat closed tightly with the remnants of something he couldn’t quite feel.
After several seconds of Jayce failing to respond, she cast him a sidelong glance. “I don’t know what’s going on in that big head of yours, but I can always tell whether a storm’s brewing. Maybe you are on the edge of a breakthrough… but it’s not worth this strain,” she finished.
He looked away, searching the floor of the room for anything noteworthy.
“I’ll be in town for the next couple of days,” Caitlyn said before awkwardly patting Jayce’s thigh. “If you need anything, don’t be afraid to call.” Then she slung her arm around his neck and pulled him close. “I really mean it. I swear if you put this project over our friendship…” she trailed off. The sentence was slightly threatening.
She pushed herself off of the futon and began to walk toward the door.
As she tugged the handle, she glanced back over her shoulder. “Goodnight, Jayce.”
He cleared his throat. It took a couple of tries before he could manage a weak, “Goodnight,” back.
From the moment he woke up earlier, he had a bone-deep exhaustion weighing him down. The talk with Cait only furthered that feeling, but afterward, a flood of questions, thoughts, and worries began to swirl around his head like he was caught hang-gliding in a hurricane. He was tired. God, yes, he was inexplicably tired, but he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep anytime soon. So, as a compromise to sleep, he paced the lab.
As he tried to come up with an explanation for why he was brought here, he lazily scanned the spines of various textbooks on a bookshelf pressed to a wall. When he went through them all, he moved on to the next thing. Honestly, the notes scattered around the room were a disaster. A jumbled timeline of confusing physics filled every paper. For some, he blankly stared at them, trying to make sense of the work that was no doubt his. Despite the confusion, it provided a well-needed distraction. A new world with new kinks to work out.
Reading them was well enough, at first. But as he read and then reread his familiar handwriting, he began to have some doubts himself. It was like losing his sense of direction. By the time he was finished, he questioned his whole life. Was any of it real? Was the love, the loss, the misery a figment of his sick imagination? If that was the case, why? Why only be granted these memories and not his true past? Why was he unable to remember any of this research?
He didn’t know how long he holed himself in the lab. Trying to piece together an evolution of quantum mechanics that didn’t ever seem finished. Although it appeared, from what he could tell, the latest note had been about a hypothesis regarding quantum tunneling. A simple equation, including not a single number, sat at the top of the page, like a heading. But the notes expanded on each symbol, acting like fractals: unfolding into an underlying equation that only introduced more symbols, which in turn revealed their own foundations.
It was hard not to get carried away with whatever he had been studying.
Like a repeat of the prior day, he woke up to his face pressed against the desk, except this time, there was no fear. No confusion. Just a resigned obligation to continue where he had left off in studying his notes.
The more he learned, the more this past life of his made sense. It appeared there was a combination of sciences: interdisciplinary. The end goal for this had yet to be disclosed, but from what he gathered, there’s a large basis in ontology. When a waveform collapses in a person’s observation of reality, it should collapse into only one outcome. That cat was either dead or alive. It could never be both. But from what Jayce had read, all possible outcomes do indeed happen, spreading into an ever-evolving tree. Each branch represented a universe.
As he acquainted himself with this new knowledge, a pit in his stomach began to form. It grew deeper and deeper in the fertilizer that was isolation. It definitely wasn’t as unspeakably terrifying as the corrupted reality the Hexcore threw him in, but it felt crushingly lonely nonetheless. Except… could he trust his own judgment, especially now? Surely the past thirty years of his life weren’t a lie, but all evidence provided suggested otherwise.
A remote scientist slowly growing mad after the death of a loved one? Pretty sure he had heard that one before.
And maybe what Viktor–or whatever Viktor embodied–said was a nod to snapping out of it. Your eyes won’t lie when your mind is open. Had reconciling with Viktor opened his mind to see the truth that is reality?
Jayce stared intensely at a note in his hand, this one had stumped him since he had first begun to scan through the research. His jawline tensed as frustration crept into his expression. Slowly he lifted the mug in his nondominant hand to his lips.
Knocking broke his train of thought and he jerked the mug. Unfortunately, he was unable to avoid spilling coffee all over his pants.
Before he could wipe the mess off of his pants, a jingling was heard outside the door. Slowly, the door slipped open and a familiar face greeted him.
“Mel?” he asked, incredulous. “What are you doing here?”
Her eyes filled with relief as she caught sight of him.
Dragging a hand across her face, she warily replied, “What am I doing here? What’ve you been doing here? You know, I’ve been trying to get ahold of you through your cell, so when you stopped answering, I went to check your apartment. Surprise, surprise, this was left there,” she sighed and held up another device of sorts.
Jayce squinted at her, not recognizing the term “cell”. In the back of his mind, he also noted that he did have an apartment. That’s good, he was worried that the futon was intended to act as a long-term bed.
She slid up beside him and pulled him out of his chair and into a hug. He froze before thawing and copying the gesture. It was… nice. After taking refuge in this lab with no outside contact, he missed the physical aspect people brought. Although, he couldn’t help but yearn for a different embrace. One so vivid and groundbreaking that he still couldn’t be sure if it truly occurred.
She then handed him the device she had previously shown off. “Don’t lose it again,” she murmured. Then, she briefly paused, staring at his jaw. “Are you… Are you growing stubble?” she asked in disbelief.
The question made Jayce pause from tinkering with the foldable instrument he was given. He glanced over at her. The memories of a time when he took pride in his hygiene as Councilor, except now, he wasn’t quite sure if he could count those as memories or illusions. It felt like it all blurred together, anyhow.
“I’m… trying something new,” he settled on, a distant look passed over his face.
She grabbed his face and he let out an innate yelp. Her eyes jumped around the lower portion of his face as she inspected him, invoking a heightened feeling of self-consciousness.
“All right,” she finally said, letting go of his chin. “I can see the vision. If executed just right, you might be able to pull it off.” She nodded to herself.
“Thank you…?”
Her gaze slowly focused off of him and onto the surrounding mess of metaphysics.
“So this is what you’ve been doing? Considering you’ve spent all this time away from me, you better have some lofty news to make up for it.”
Jayce sucked in a breath. “Yeah, so… about that. I had a slight… Well, how should I put this? A slight setback.”
“Is that so?” she hummed.
He raked a hand through his, albeit, messy hair. “How familiar are you with quantum ontology?”
Her eyes neatly knitted together, clearly caught off guard. “Frankly, you’ve only mentioned it a couple of times, but never dug deeper than its proposed medical purposes. Why?”
He collapsed onto the futon and Mel elegantly copied the action.
“It’s about time we dig past the surface,” he gravely replied.