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Jayce is strong, but he has his limits.
He’s running as fast as he can, pushing his body beyond what it should allow. He can’t go on forever, not like this. His muscles are burning tight and the stale air whips past his face, stinging his eyes as he stumbles away from the thing that is chasing him.
The thing. Engulfing him in shadow, presence overpowering. Jayce keeps his eyes fixed ahead but he can hear its footsteps, slow, metallic and effortless on the stones behind him. No matter how fast he runs, no matter how hard he pushes, the clinking of those light footsteps stays even as ever.
The streets of Piltover are completely still and Jayce feels like he’s ripping through spiderwebs of stillness in order to run at all. The air is thick and stagnant when he drags it through his open mouth.
The gold facades on the buildings are faded into a tarnished bronze, reflecting the victorious sun onto the ivory-marble surface of the strange statues surrounding him. Overgrown with unnatural lichen, each frozen in a perfect state of agony. Jayce stumbles through them.
He tries not to think about the fact that all of them are facing forward, clawing with open hands and gnarled jaws. They’re looking at him, he thinks, in a flash. Staring at him with wide bright faces and torn skulls. Blank and tormented eyes.
The footsteps fall closer this time and Jayce pants, surges with new, fear driven vigor. Every fiber of his being burns. His vest isn’t allowing his chest space to rise and fall.
“So much haste,” he hears, punctuated by a hissing ‘tsk.’ The voice is clear, the man behind him is close. Jayce feels his chest pulling at his lungs, legs threatening to give out. “So much fear .”
In his periphery Jayce sees a spindly, gentle finger caress the chin of one of the statues. The leaden footsteps behind him stop and his body, despite his mind's will, stops with it. Finally gives out. Time slows and his eyes are caught on the man’s hand, the sight of the figure demands attention, drawing light towards him like a black hole.
Jayce stumbles to the ground and skins his knee on the cobblestone streets, roughly tumbling over the sidewalk. He screws his eyes shut. This is it- this is how he dies. He’s sure of it. Never in his life has he felt so certain of anything, but this sense of all-consuming dread, this must be it.
When Jayce doesn’t die, he opens his eyes.
The thing-the man- that was chasing him seems completely entranced by the twisted statue. Still. As if Jayce isn’t even there. The thought bothers him, and then the fact that it bothers him bothers him even more. ( A bit egotistical, don’t you think?) A familiar voice in the back of his mind whispers. He ignores it, heaving himself up to his bruised elbows.
The figure is obscured by a heavy indigo cloak, head bowed. His hands are dark and machine-like, both pristine and horrifically messy against the untarnished skin of the statue. The exposed flesh-sinew is twisted and thick. Like gnarled tree bark. When he runs his fingers along the bridge of the screaming face's nose, Jayce expects the darkness to smudge. Expects it to stain. It doesn’t. The man drops his head to bow against the statue’s temple and sighs.
“Suffering.” He whispers into the statue's ear. Jayce hears the voice in his own. “If you could end it, would you?”
The man sounds like Viktor. Jayce's arms feel too heavy to move at his side, his heartbeat frighteningly frail. If he stops thinking about breathing he’ll stop breathing altogether.
The man- Viktor- slowly slides his hands down the frozen body, lets his arms drop loose at his side and takes a step towards him.
Each step seems to slow time. Each imperceptible muscle twitch, every bundle of neurons firing in Jayces brain seems to stop altogether as he stares through his panic up towards Viktors face. His partner pulls the cloak’s hood away from his eyes and-
…and he’s not Viktor- he can’t be. His eyes are pale and hollow, his cheeks sunken and withered purple, the same stained, mechanical, darkness that covered his hands. His lips tighten into a forceful look of disgust, or maybe pity. He gestures to the silent city. “Jayce, this is the true power of The Arcane.”
He takes a deep breath, lifting his face towards the golden sun. It shines on the metallic bits of his sinewed skin. Gets trapped in his grey eyes. Viktor admires the city, gazing blankly at the lifeless ruins. Then, as if one of Jayce’s ragged breaths has had the audacity to break his perfect spell, the man’s eyes lock on his own and his grimace returns.
The strange version of Viktor reaches down to touch him, slowly, as if bearing his palms to a rabid animal. Despite every bundle of nerves in Jayce’s body telling him to move he feels locked in place, caught in a gravitational orbit. He isn’t his body anymore, he’s a passenger, caught in the vacant air between him and his partner. “... can’t you see? Your hand forging the gears of the future?”
“Jayce,” He sounds breathless, almost reverent. The hand hovers over his shoulder. Jayce’s eyes dart between the hand and those pale, dead space eyes. The hand. Dead space eyes. His chest heaves, the world narrows.
“You will do so many great things.” The pads of Viktors sinuous fingers brush against his neck and-
“ Jayce. ” Jayce startled awake and shoved at the hand on his shoulder, scrambling backwards into the arm of the couch. He wasn’t sure if he screamed or not. A bottle of amaretto rolled out from the crook of his elbow and shattered on the ground.
Images flashed in his mind: sinuous fingers, dead fingers, dead space eyes, frozen statues of agony , Viktors sharp voice, pitying gaze-
Jayce grabbed at his temples and shook his head violently. He felt himself shudder, watched his body shake as if it wasn’t his. ‘If you could end it, would you?’ Dead space eyes. ‘So much fear’. Thick tears smear over his open mouth. His throat began to form another scream.
SNAP
“Jayce.” Viktor said sharply. Jayce gasped, suddenly aware. His face stung from the shock of the slap. “ What has gotten into you?”
For the first time, Jayce let himself breathe. He lowered his trembling hands into his lap and looked around. He was on the couch in their lab. The hexcore shifting over the desk cast a blue-white glow over the room, not harsh, but bright enough to illuminate the scene. Viktor stood over him, weighting his cane. One hand gripped a scotch glass and the other hung limp at his side, palm red. His hair was messier than usual, loose strands hanging over his face and neck. Welder's goggles hung around his neck and his hands were dirty with the soot of a soldering iron. Of course. Still working, at whatever hour it was.
He quirked an eyebrow, clearly expecting an answer. Jayce knew him well enough to see the thick lattice of concern beneath his apparent anger.
“I’m sorry, I just…” Jayce dragged a hand down his face, tender, where Viktor had slapped him. His eyes drifted to the broken glass on the floor. To the remaining liquor spilling out onto the tile of their lab next to Viktor’s bare feet.
He winces. “Shoot- I’m sorry about that- let me-” Jayce stammered, going to stand up and do something to fix it. Humiliation stirred in his gut. God, what was wrong with him? Was he going crazy?
Viktor steadied him with a firm hand on his shoulder. Jayce flinched away from the touch.
( Dead-space eyes, machine hands, the true power of the Arcane, tree-gnarled fingers) . Viktor’s frown deepened. “Slow down.”
His partner stepped away from him, withdrawing his hand. He gingerly stepped over the shards of glass on the floor and- carefully- sat on the opposite end of the couch nursing his drink. He stared into it, rattling the last few melting ice cubes. “Nightmare?”
Jayce sighed, flexing his hands into fists to try and shake the tremor. “Yeah. Yeah, nightmare.”
They sat in silence for a moment and Jayce let the context of the night before roll over him like a warm rain. An evening in the lab, a bottle he’d been saving for a special occasion, an occasion that ended up being tinkering and talking into the late hours of the night. He remembered Viktor making fun of his ‘topsider’ taste in alcohol and pulling out his own flask of something strong enough to knock out someone twice his size. Jayce could smell it even now.
Pieces were missing from there. Choppy moments, each drowned by a haze and the warm smell of booze.
So then, he must’ve passed out on the couch. There was a blanket still draped over his shoulders, one he didn’t remember pulling over himself- had Viktor done that, or was he really just that wasted? He was inclined to believe the former, because if he had the sense to grab a blanket he probably would’ve had the sense to set down the bottle, or take off a few layers.
Regardless. He closed his eyes and let himself imagine the peaceful scene. Leaving Viktor to some comfortable silence to continue his work, disrupted only by Jayce’s few (“ incredibly loud”) snores. Faint tinkering, the buzzing soldering iron and the tinkling sound of fine precision tools.
And then he imagined himself ruining himself. Twitching, then sweating, then shouting, demanding attention even in his sleep. ( A bit egotistical, don’t you think?)
He sighed. Viktor glanced over.
“You were in it.” Jayce said softly, kneading his thumb into the palm of his hand. “My nightmare. Not- not exactly you. But he looked like you, just different.”
Viktor hummed. “Different how?”
Jayce hesitated for a moment, looking up to meet Viktor’s curious gaze. “Terrifying. Different in just about every way. I’m not even sure you were human. You were…”
He trailed off.
“...I was?”
“You were saying things.” Jayce swallowed thickly, remembering the tone of that Viktors voice. Not quite human, but distinctly him. “About our hextech. About me. The city, it was wrong, but you- you just kept saying it was perfect.”
He hadn’t meant for it to come out so forcefully. Viktor took a stoic sip of his drink and nodded. Prompting.
“It was abandoned, I guess. Just overgrown, decaying and twisted . Too goddamn still.”
The corner of Viktors mouth twitched into a wince at his language- not that he didn’t use far stronger words far more frequently. Jayce knew cursing was unlike him.
“It was all wrong. And the people, god, Vik, the people.”
Viktor gave him a sympathetic tilt of the head. “Dead?”
Jayce grimaced. “No- well- I don’t know. Frozen, like statues and- and they were in so much pain .” His voice cracked. The agony, the embraces of the lifeless people, the horrific detail of their final moments. Jayce’s hand fell out of his lap and onto the couch cushion. Viktor reached out and put his hand over it. Gentle and firm at the same time.
“And you were saying that I did this.” Jayce whispered. “That I had- that this was all part of the Arcane, because of our hextech. You said that I had started it. And you were proud.”
Viktor squeezed his hand. Jayce felt tears prick at his eyes again and suppressed his rising adrenaline telling him to run or fight or scream. Instead, he crumpled forward over his knees and squeezed back. “Viktor, it felt so real.”
The hexcore spun in the corner of the room, impartial and mechanical as ever.
Jayce turned his head over his arms and stared at it. He watched the runes shudder past, the core spinning so fast it seemed to be moving imperceivable slowly. It flickered, shook, and the pale blue light bathed him.
It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real, it felt terrifying. He half expected to roll up his pant leg and see his knees skinned from the cobblestone streets, or to turn back to Viktor and see his golden eyes washed out and grey.
He knew Viktor was still staring at him. Calculating, measuring, or maybe just expecting him to say more. He didn’t have more to say. The spent hours of the night had caught up to him and he wished that he’d had the foresight to put the bottle of amaretto in a safe place before he’d passed out.
Jayce turned back towards his partner, meeting his softened gaze. “Can I have some of that?” He whispered hoarsely, gesturing towards the glass in Viktor’s free hand.
Viktor glanced towards the glass, hesitated but passed it over, thin fingers holding the rim over Jayce’s open palm. “Be careful. You had quite a bit of your-” his nose wrinkled- “drink of choice earlier.”
“I know,” Jayce sighed. “Thanks.”
Another beat of silence, but this time, Viktor didn’t seem keen to let him stew in it. He clicked his tongue again, looking at the shattered bottle on the floor. “Eh, if there is one good thing from this night perhaps it is that you won’t need to finish that.”
Jayce felt his usual retorts flutter weakly in the back of his mind- ‘ that was aged’ , ‘ at least it doesn’t taste like motor oil’, ‘maybe i’ll get another one to spite you’, but they all died before he could consider letting them reach his mouth. He took a sip of the undercity liquor and grimaced. It didn’t go down smoothly, catching on every rough hollow in his throat.
He coughed. “Fuck.”
Viktor’s thumb drifted over his hand. “It was just a bad dream, Jayce. You know that.”
“But what if it wasn’t? What if that was you, somehow?” Jayce insisted, voice pitching into something nearing a whine. “What if it was- what if what Heimerdinger said was true? What if I really did cause… that.”
( Apocalypse, he doesn’t say)
The question hung heavy in the air. Jayce knew it made him sound childish but he couldn’t find the sense to care.
“Then we will destroy it.” Viktor said matter-of-factly. Intensity set behind his eyes.“If, after study and consideration, you sincerely believe that this could… do what you saw.”
“End the world.” Jayce insisted
“End the world,” Viktor repeated, “If you believe our hexcore will end the world then we will stop our research.”
Jayce passed back the glass. Viktor took it. “But for now, think. Our hextech will save lives. Jayce, you are drunk. You are tired.”
“And you aren’t?” Jayce asked with a soft smile.
Viktor smiled back, taking a small sip. “I can handle my liquor better than you. I’m saying you should sleep. We can talk tomorrow.”
Jayce surrendered, uncurling himself from his knees and stretching out on the couch, feeling his muscles ache with the beginning of soreness and hangover. “You’re right.” He admitted.
“I know.” Viktor nodded curtly and set the glass down on one of their many note-covered desks.
He shouldered his cane and rose, sparing a glance back towards the couch. “Now get some sleep, Jayce.”
“I will.”
Jayce loosened the top few buttons on his vest and pulled the blanket over himself, trying once again to get comfortable. Now that he was lying still the buzz of alcohol sent him reeling.
“Sweet dreams.” Viktor said with a warm edge of irony, side-stepping the glass on the floor and beginning to walk, slowly and surely back to his desk. The unevenness of his footfall was familiar and immediately comforting.
The confident, leaden weight of that thing in his nightmare could not have been Viktor. Jayce was sure of it.
Still, through bleary, squinting eyes from the couch, watching the man slump down in front of the hexcore and lean his cane against the table set a resolution deep in his gut. As the light cast sharp shadows over Viktor's face, washing out his golden eyes into a pale, (dead space) grey, Jayce made up his mind.
Jayce Tallis had made enough mistakes.
He would not make another.