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When dust started to settle on the ruins, Jayce slowly opened his eyes, his eyelids heavy and the action painful. For a long time, his brain did not register anything other than the ringing in his ears, sharp and loud. The noise traveled in his skull, running behind his eyes, hiding under his brain before finally settling in his ears.
The second thing that Jayce registered once his ears had grown somewhat accustomed to the ringing, was heavy breathing. Though still a bit out of it, he could not deduce whether the harsh breathing was coming from him or someone else near him. Frowning, he looked down to see the curled up form of Mel pressed against his chest, his arms encircling her protectively.
Mel was staring at him, frowning and moving her lips. If Jayce had been more in the moment, he would have noticed the worry in her eyes. But as it stood, he simply ignored her in favor of getting up from the floor.
Stumbling around the uneven floor, Jayce caught himself with a hand reaching out to what once had been a chair. Now that his brain was forced to focus on his legs to keep him standing, Jayce could register more of his surroundings, namely, the incessant screaming coming from his right. The noise made him look around the destroyed room, searching for a specific person.
Councilors littered the floor, dead or unconscious, buried under the rubble or simply knocked out on the floor. Caitlyn's mother, Cassandra laid perfectly still on the floor a few meters away from him and Jayce rushed to her fallen form.
Though he knew it was too late, Jayce still tried to wake her up, shaking her shoulders and calling her name but it came back fruitless. The woman he had grown up with, practically another mother and the mother of his best friend, a remarkable woman, was gone. Laying on the floor, her features relaxed despite the violence of her death, Cassandra Kiramman looked ready to become a memory in the history of Piltover.
For a minute Jayce stood motionless, silently grieving and allowing a single tear to roll down his face before he found himself zoning out and his eyes roaming around the room once again. An enforcer was trying to free a screaming Salo from a particularly large piece of the ceiling, for some reason Jayce could not care less about the man.
It seemed like enforcers were everywhere in the room, helping councilors left and right but still, a face was missing. Jayce frowned as he focused on the bodies on the floor, had Viktor been helped out of the room?
His eyes scanned every corner of the room, every piece of rubble, every speck of dust until finally his eyes landed on a large broken piece of what once had been a pillar. The thing must have split itself in two amidst its fall but that was not the reason for Jayce's scream.
Feeling his body grow numb at the sight, Jayce screamed his name again, but just like Cassandra Kiramman, Viktor did not react to the voice of his partner. Without thinking, Jayce sprinted to him, sobbing at the sight before him.
Viktor was crushed under the pillar, his eyes wide and blank staring at something beyond the fallen ceiling, his mouth open in a silent scream, a grimace of agony twisted his sharp features. Jayce sobbed again, repeating Viktor's name over and over until it became one single sentence. He reached a shaking hand to lightly tap his cheek, hoping that the man would wake up and when he didn't, Jayce slapped him and screamed at him to open his eyes, open your eyes! Viktor open your eyes you can't do this to me!
But Viktor ignored him, his features remained stuck in that awful grimace and his head rolled limply on his neck with the force of Jayce's hand. It struck him as he stared at his best friend that even in death, Viktor still looked in pain.
Then, it struck him that Viktor had been hiding something from Jayce if the purple hand and purple leg were anything to go by, but that was the least of his worries as he stared at Viktor's corpse.
The more he stared, the more the body in front of him grew colder and in a sudden fit of adrenaline, Jayce shot up from the floor and tried to lift the pillar off Viktor's body.
No matter how hard he tried, the pillar didn't budge and Jayce screamed in frustration, hitting the thing over and over until his hands ached. And when his hands ached too much to continue hitting the cold surface, Jayce let his body fall to the floor and placed his forehead against Viktor's rapidly cooling one, whispering pleas and apologies as his right hand cradled the back of Viktor's head.
Stroking his partner's cheek and rocking back and forth, Jayce whispered reassurances, convincing himself that they were for Viktor and not for him. Jayce remained like that until a group of enforcers rushed to help him.
If he hadn't already been crying, Jayce would have cried at the sight of the pillar being lifted off Viktor and seeing his midsection almost split in half from the force and the weight of the pillar. He immediately fell to his knees and brought Viktor's limp body against his chest.
“Please.” He whispered, his voice wet with tears. “Viktor please. I need you, I need you, I need you so much, please.” A wail ripped itself from his throat and he squeezed the broken body tighter, whole frame shaking.
In a grotesque sense of humor, Viktor's head rolled back, the back of his skull almost hitting his own back from the force of it. His mouth was still wide open, the muscles on his face pulled taut and looking painful. Jayce only cried harder at the sight.
“Please.” He begged again but the word lacked the sense of urgency it had carried only moments ago. “Come back.”
But Jayce could beg until his voice broke, until his vocal chords tore themselves from his throat and he spat them out on the floor, still only the silence of the room would answer him. Viktor would remain limp in his arms, his face forever plagued with terror.
Maybe the worst part wasn't this, maybe the worst part was that Jayce hadn't been with him, that he had come out of this attack barely scratched. Maybe the worst part was that Jayce should have been under that pillar instead of Viktor.
The regret would hit him soon, along with the guilt. The regret of never reminding Viktor how important he was, how he deserved the title of Inventor of Hextech just as much, if not more than Jayce. Viktor was a brilliant mind, though he'd never dared saying it to his face, Jayce considered him a genius. Being in his presence always made him question his own intelligence, it was mesmerizing to watch Viktor work.
It was an honor for Jayce to call him his best friend and partner. It was a shame he knew that even his name will never be remembered, Viktor would be diminished to the title of ‘casualty’. But Jayce vowed to honor him until his own death, to say his name loud and proud anytime he talked about Hextech. He vowed that until he became old and crumbled under the weight of his age, Jayce would still talk about Viktor like he was his whole world, a flame extinguished before it could become a fire.
Aa Jayce hugged the cold and stiff body of Viktor, he was hit by the regret of never thanking him for saving him but most importantly, Jayce felt the blade of the regret of not being able to save him this time.