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Jayce’s eyes were wide, even as the debris in the air clung to their wetness and stung brightly.
Dead?
The councilors couldn’t be dead, they were the pillars of Piltover, the highest of the high…
The corrupted that touched the stars; the untouchable.
How could this have happened? Peace was so close, the hope of it, every brush with the new vision of the twin cities had been a glorifying rise in his chest, but now it had been stripped from all of them in an instant.
He stared at the unseeing eyes of counselor Kiramman, crushingly alone after Mel was tugged away from Jayce into Ambessa’s panicked and adamant regard.
Thank fucking god Mel was unharmed… her wide, frozen gaze was still replaying in his mind.
But Kiramman… fuck- the woman and patron who had always been so kind to him was splintered into lifelessness, her constant poise rendered nothing underneath scorch marks and ash.
Oh god what would Caitlyn do… images flashed through his mind of the poor girl’s face blown in disbelief, chin quivering, the same child he had consoled many times what now felt ages ago.
The idea made his hands feel icy.
Oh Cait..
But something else, bigger, was a gaping hole in his mind, sapping his worry and coiling it into a ball of gnawing fear. He managed to tear his eyes away from the counselor beneath him to scour the desolation. It was horrendous, immaculate marble crushed and stained ashy grey and spattered in blood, air so thick with dust it seemed to settle like a shroud over the shell-shocked stumbling through it.
But suddenly his gaze caught- the dark, spiked hair that could only belong to one person. Fear ignited in his chest and his thoughts seemed to catch, like a wrench that slighted a gear and caused the whole machine of his mind to scream to a stop.
No… no…. everything in him wanted to deny, to deny, to push away the vision before him… his partner, lain across the shattered stone with his mouth agape, an enormous pillar settled across his entire midsection. It was something akin to a horrifying Renaissance piece, something too ruinous and devastating to have truly happened. Jayce’s breath began to speed up as fear sank its claws into his lungs.
On autopilot, he stumbled to stand, tripping over the outstretched arm of counselor Kiramman but not stopping to think before running to his partner.. to Viktor…
His voice was high, cracking and breaking and fraught with nerves wound down to twine. “Viktor- Viktor! Are you alright?”
Oh it was all so wrong.. so wrong… his partner didn’t stir, didn’t even twitch, the parts of his face and extended arm not obscured by the stone frozen in the vision of an agonizing sculpture, his vigor synchronous with the inanimate marble that framed him.
Jayce swallowed a bees nest of roiling fears, and before he even processed what he did, his hands were reaching beneath the pillar and grasping the dull-edged stone. The detailwork served as a fucked grip for trembling fingers as he traced it for the best point of purchase. Echoes of formulas and equations whisked past in his thoughts, barely comprehended as he rushed to adapt and account for them—point of most mass..estimated weight of the obstacle.. optimal support points….He braced himself, exhaling a stuttering breath before heaving upward, his entire back taut like a bowstring.
Vaguely, fearfully, his mind flitted to Atlas, buckling and straining underneath the weight of the heavens every second of every hour of every day, and for a moment if felt as though he was getting a horrifying taste of the pounding fear and blade’s edge between balance and destruction. The only motivation, the mind-numbing fear for Viktor, the unarticulated thought that maybe his lab partner, his.. that… it really couldn’t be..
….Fuck he had really underestimated the weight of solid stone. His legs trembled under the sheer mass pressing down on his shoulders, threatening to crush him down at any err. A strangled scream was snuffed into a groan beneath gritted teeth as he shifted his feet and continued to push, focus narrowed to a scalding point of desperation. Now, the pillar rose steadily beneath his arms, menacing mass just a breath away from crashing back down but within his control. It was restrained only by the celerity afforded to him by the norepinephrine surging through his system, which was all the more sickening… to feel so blazingly alive beside his partner who seemed altogether devoid of it.
God please please let Viktor be okay….
Finally, exaltedly, Jayce heaved the pillar to the side and disregarded it as it struck the floor a few feet away from them with colossal force, billowing clouds of debris into the surrounding air.
He choked on a sob that finally bubbled up at the relief. “Viktor! Viktor please please-”
Jayce stumbled forward until he sank to his knees before Viktor, his thoughts now a blank so bright it scarred his vision like an afterimage. He blinked it away along with the distorted lens of gathered tears. His voice wavered one last time before fading out. “Viktor please-“
His lab partner was lain like a marionette with its strings cut, sunk into the ground with a sickening unnaturalness. Viktor’s academy uniform was stained a grey so dark it was almost black, searing burns even darkening parts of his face, the gorgeous sharpness of his features. His eyes were closed, absence of golden brown making the scrapes and scratches ripped along his skin stand out all the more against the dull surroundings. His limbs hung in some mockery of a dance, stretched over debris with horrifying stillness.
Fuck fuck shit shit shit…What should I do - what- check-
Fear was making Jayce’s mind feel like he waded through honey, painfully slow to his awareness. His hands suddenly seemed too heavy, too large as he fumbled to reach for Viktor’s neck, fingertips pressed against the soft tissue to feel for a pulse.
Nothing.
Before he knew it, the dam in his mind broke and the horror of reality smashed into him like a wave. Bile rose in his throat, scalding his tongue as he gasped for breath, huddling over the form of his partner. Tears were dripping from his cheeks and down his neck now- but he could barely feel it, everything was scalding, his cheeks, the air, so palpable he thought he might explode into a writhing mound of viprous fire like those he melded in the forge. His hands scrabbled at Viktor, feeling his face, the rough, cold skin, the dark sticky substance clumped in his hair, the inflamed scrapes and bruises marring his star-pale skin. Jayce was heaving, hands shaking and breathing coming in ragged gulps as desperation seeped from his muscles to his mind. “VIKTOR! VIKTOR ANSWER- ANSWER-“
A sudden touch on the back of his shoulder made him snap forwards, head whipping to stare behind him, into the younger Medarda’s fearful face.
Mel’s hand was outstretched alone in the air now, but she held it there, eyes wider than he had ever seen as they flew over Viktor’s form and then back to Jayce. The gold smattering on her cheeks was half-obscured by ash, but the parts that weren’t seemed to glow through the half-light. Her eyes settled back on Jayce’s face, lips parted, taking in the manic fear radiating off of him in waves. The depth of her fear was only betrayed by her quivering breath as she gave him a look that seemed to say, silently and excruciatingly laden with emotion,
Jayce. I’m so sorry.
Jayce tightened his lips, feeling like a writhing mess of unrestrained emotions next to her as he sent back his own wordless message.
I can fix this. I know it.
Her brows lilted upwards in silent concern, tears making tracks down her cool skin and trailing dark violet eyeshadow in its wake, startlingly gorgeous against the horror of everything else.
But his attention snapped back to Viktor, before too much time could elapse and as a sickening realization threatened to crash over him.
He.. he was still okay… he was okay, he could save him.
Jayce’s thoughts were blazing past him now, leaving searing patterns in the inside of his skull.
He clawed at viktor’s shirt, if… he could… he could resuscitate.. maybe.. his movements seemed dimmed compared to the bestial pounding of his heart, ear-splitting and powerful. His crazed hands managed to remove Viktor’s shirt even as they stilled over this new sight. Runes, scarlet and infected, littered his skin, his shoulders, his legs…
No time no time…
Jayce fumbled to place his hands in the form his mother taught him, just in case, the interlocked palm and thumb… a strong press deep just underneath the ribcage.
But his stomach sunk, icy beneath his burning skin. It wasn’t right… Viktor… the pressure was wrong, his bones were fucked fucked…. Jayce’s touch moved to cradle Viktor’s torso, the strong, metal brace, but it wasn’t right. This Viktor’s back was limp beneath him, ribs jutting in ways they shouldn’t underneath Jayce’s hands. Even as his gaze shifted toward the damage he could tell. Bruising blossomed cold masses beneath his skin, reaching around the entirety of his stomach. His brace was splintered in places, caving downward with horrible force into his chest.
He heard a quiet gasp next to him, the kneeling form of Mel Medarda a salve thrown onto the festering, scalding wound of Jayce’s emotions.
Oh fucking god no please no…
The bile suddenly overpowered him and he curled to the side, throwing up into the rubble, contents of his stomach scorching past his lips until he felt sweat and tears as the only cool against the flame of his skin. he couldn’t contain anything anymore, wracking himself as he looked back to Viktor. It couldn’t be, it really couldn’t…
His hand…
For the first time Jayce registered the pulsating purple and mesh of sinew on Viktor’s hand and thigh, the sickeningly familiar glow pulsing from inside it. It computed in his mind before he could comprehend it.
His gaze flew to Mel, just for a second, meeting her solemn green stare as the idea washed over him.
The hexcore.
He didn’t need to think anymore, and Mel nodded silently, indecipherably, even after his mind was already made up. His willpower diverted to a single mission. He gathered the corpse of his partner in his arms, cradling him as softly as he could as he scrambled to his feet, barely processing anything else as he ran full tilt away… toward the lab…. even as he felt the horrifying unnaturalness of cold skin against his and the disconnection in Viktor’s very core.
He needed to save him.
He couldn’t do this without his partner.