Work Text:
Viktor hovered over Jayce’s spirit in the Arcane, gripping his face through the golden and metallic porcelain puppet. Jayce was so confused and full of rage, the poor man. His emotions were hurting him so much. Whatever had happened to him since they last met had clearly left its mark. Why else would Jayce be so violent, go so far as to attack him and his followers?
But that was alright. Viktor could help him. Viktor could set him free.
“Come, Jayce,” he murmured, stroking against the edge of Jayce’s jaw as he struggled and snarled in Viktor’s grasp. “The Glorious Evolution is destined. Let us do this once again, as partners.”
Those striking golden eyes widened as Jayce gasped, his entire body freezing for a single, endless moment. Viktor had thought he’d known what would happen next. Jayce would understand, surely. He just needed a reminder of what they were, of what they could accomplish when together.
And on the slightest chance that he wouldn’t, that whatever had been done to him had changed him so much, then he would react instinctively with anger, an animal trying to bite the hand that feeds. And Viktor… Viktor would have to collar him, leash him. Bind Jayce to himself, so that they could always be connected as one. Lest he have to put him down.
He’d never expected golden eyes to shine with tears as Jayce stared up at him, rage, sorrow, resignation, and something Viktor couldn’t - wouldn’t - name all twisting his face into an anguished grimace.
“My partner… never called me that. Not once.” Jayce’s grip released the puppet’s wrist, coming up to cradle the porcelain face like he could see Viktor through it. Perhaps he could. “That you do now… means you’re not him. He really is gone.” Jayce’s voice broke. “My partner died in this room.”
Viktor couldn’t help but rear back in surprise, feeling the conduit loosen its grasp on Jayce’s face as it copied his movements. “What?” slipped out instinctively, something about the single word making his partner’s eyes widen with hope. The anomaly in Jayce’s hammer pulsed brighter in the corner of his eye, pulling Viktor’s attention towards it, but - No. He had to figure out what on Runeterra Jayce was thinking first. “I am alive, Jayce. More alive than I have ever been. Did you not name me as I entered?”
“It’s not you - not, not Viktor. Not fully, at least.” Jayce broke out of his loosened grip, whirling around to aim the hammer at him once more.
“Jayce -” Viktor paused, glancing at Miss Medarda to see her staring back at him in surprise. They had both spoken at the same time, both their hands raised cautiously. But whether it was one of their voices responsible or both at once, Jayce had paused, breaths heaving as he panted with a wild look in his eyes, bitter tears falling down his cheeks. Now that they were still, Viktor could see purple veins beginning to crawl up his partner's arm as the hexcore in his hammer thrummed louder with power.
Something was very, very wrong.
“Jayce,” Viktor spoke again at last, encouraging the puppet to slip off the council table and onto the floor, putting himself level with both Jayce and Medarda. A more vulnerable position, perhaps, but also hopefully one that would allow his partner to lower his hackles and actually listen to him. “Explain yourself, please. I want to know what you think has happened. Let me understand, Jayce.”
“No, it’s just - a trick. You’re trying to convince me, trick me. I can’t listen, I can’t -” the anomaly fluctuated around him again, different versions of Jayce outlined in a thousand different possibilities that even Viktor could barely follow. “You don’t understand. Don’t know what I’ve seen. What you’ve done and will do.”
“Then tell us, Jayce. You said what happened to you didn’t matter, but… it sounds like it really does,” Medarda coaxed, hands still raised and sparking with gold as she eyed Viktor warily.
“No, it’s not-” Jayce cut off, wincing and stumbling as reality glitched around him once more, though his grip on the hammer never lowered. “You’re just trying to manipulate me again. Everyone - I can’t -” He fell silent again, all but shaking as he stared wildly at Viktor, at Medarda, at the room itself.
“He’s hurting,” came a quiet voice behind him. Viktor half turned to see Sky, her now near-golden eyes - similar to how Jayce’s had changed, now that he saw them together - shining with concern as she held her hands clasped to her chest. “We can help him. Heal him of this heartbreak.”
“We can,” replied Viktor slowly, feeling his brow scrunch as his mind caught on the word ‘heartbreak.’ From what? Had Jayce had a falling out with Medarda? Then why would they be together now, but then there was the mention of manipulation... Nothing was making sense.
“He’s confused,” continued Sky, more urgently as Jayce’s heavy breathing and rapid glances became wilder. “We can show him. What you’re trying to do, how we can free him, free everyone.”
“Ehh, I think I might be the one who’s more confused,” muttered Viktor, wincing as a brighter pulse of light came from both the corrupted Arcane core in Jayce’s hammer and the hexcore inside his own astral plane. What - ?
“I went to another world, parallel to our own.” Viktor’s attention snapped to Jayce as he spoke abruptly, gruff and bitter as he glared at Viktor’s own manifestation. “A world of rubble and the crumbling corpses of your puppets. Where everyone - all of Piltover, all of Zaun, everyone - was gone. Dead. Like - Like a natural disaster, a city of fossilized ashes after a volcanic eruption. I saw lovers half decayed in each other’s embrace, the cracked bodies of babies in their mother’s arms, children and parents’ forms frozen as hexcorized steel, fleeing in terror from their doom - from you, Viktor.”
It felt like the world and time itself froze around him. Viktor could almost feel himself sinking, the arcane plane around him fraying. “I would never,” he whispered, voice barely carrying through his connection to the puppet, to - Huck. Its name had been Huck, and he’d been - scared. He’d been so scared when Viktor healed him. Terrified. But Viktor had made him better, had given him health and peace and perfection.
“You wouldn’t,” murmured Sky, drifting ever closer. Viktor’s gaze didn’t stray from Jayce’s earnest one, still wild with rage and grief and - something else. “You just want to help, that’s all we’re doing. We’re doing something great, something that will give everyone a better future.”
“Everyone?” Viktor repeated quietly, Jayce’s words ringing in his ears. When had ‘everyone in need’ became ‘everyone willing,’ and when did that turn into ‘everyone’ all on its own?
When had he forgotten the importance of choice?
“You did. I know you did, because - because you told me.” Jayce continued, making everyone in the room pause in shock. “You were still there, in that other reality. Alone in the only clearing of light in the entire city, at the top of the hexgates. You were - gods, Viktor, you were so much older.” Jayce’s voice was almost wistful now, a fresh sheen of tears across his eyes. Viktor wished he could wipe them away with his own hands, and then stumbled on that thought. That body had been imperfect, full of flaws.
So then, why did he miss it?
“You told me what happened, how the hexcore had corrupted your mind and convinced you to - to evolve everyone, to sacrifice them to the Arcane. And then I came back, and - it had already started. All those people in the commune, all those innocents - children, even - you’d already corrupted them. Tied their souls to the hexcore and brainwashed them. They’d have been better off dead.”
“That is not -” protested Viktor, but Jayce barreled on regardless.
“You told me to stop you, stop all this madness. And I will,” Jayce’s voice sank to a growl, hands clenching tighter around the hammer. Viktor shifted, prepared to dodge, and noticed Medarda had done similarly, hands raised in preparation to shield again, he assumed. But. He was beginning to doubt that force was the best method for this.
“I will,” Jayce repeated, voice breaking mid growl as he snarled even as the tears fell faster. “Because I promised you.” Viktor froze. Distantly, he could almost feel something shatter. “Promised you in that other world, promised you here, before everything went to shit.
I promised my partner to destroy the hexcore before it could hurt anyone else. I promised him to do something good instead of great. For the sake of our dream,” Jayce said. 'For the sake of us," Viktor heard.
The puppet’s hands lowered even as Sky placed a steady hand on his shoulder.
Suddenly, he wanted it off, and her far away from him. But - why? It was Sky, who he had killed, who had come to help him, who he owed so much to. Who - who encouraged him to heal all those people. Who had guided him to the commune in the first place, sending signs through the Arcane.
“Viktor, he’s wrong. Whatever he thinks he saw, it's wrong. Even if it is true-" It has to be true. Jayce doesn’t lie, can’t lie, really. "- it’s another world. It can’t be the same as us. Something else must happened.”
Well, there was one way Viktor could find out, wasn’t there?”
“Viktor, don’t -”
“Show me,” he said abruptly, the puppet straightening and relaxing to stand normally. Both Jayce and Medarda’s eyes widened. Viktor offered a metallic and golden hand to his partner. “Allow me to see what you have seen. Allow me to understand you, Jayce.” Like I used to, he didn’t say. Like that first day in the lab where their thoughts synced and flowed between them like electricity through the currents of a beautiful, brilliant machine.
“And how do we know it’s not a trap?” interrupted Medarda, tone wary as she glanced at a frozen Jayce, watching as reality warped around him in rapid flashes. It was building up to something, something important, life altering. Just as it had in the commune before Jayce shot him.
“You don’t,” Viktor said after a moment of quiet. “There is nothing I can do to convince you, but. Please. Trust me, Jayce. Just once more.” Sky’s hand tightened on his shoulder as she shook her head. For the first time since meeting her in the astral plane, Viktor ignored her.
Across from him, Jayce dropped the hammer.
Viktor’s eyes widened as Jayce staggered towards him, shaking and collapsing to his knees as he got closer, Viktor’s arms instinctively jerking up halfway to catch him if he fell. Instead, Jayce merely looked up at him, face calm and relaxed - not with peace, but resignation.
“Did you know,” his partner said quietly, “that sometimes, when you speak - it’s just your voice alone. No metallic overtone -” what? “-no echoing of a hundred voices. Just you.” He paused, golden eyes staring up at him tiredly. Viktor almost wanted to take a step back. “I’ve missed you, Viktor. This might be a mistake,” he acknowledged, glancing back at a tense Medarda before turning to Viktor again, “but. I trust my partner. And to whatever is left of him in there - I'll put my trust in that. One last time.”
Jayce’s eyes fell closed as he finished speaking, the silence heavy between them. Slowly, Viktor reached out, even as Sky began rambling urgently behind him, trying to pull him away. Viktor didn't budge. Her words washed over him in distant waves, as though from underwater. Pulses of shimmering, hypnotizing light swirled around him, but it paled in comparison to the pain in rings of gold.
Viktor wanted to know what had hurt his partner so, what had been so convincing as to make Jayce betray him. He was a scientist at heart, and he carried that fatal flaw with him. He always had to understand how and why something worked, all its delicate intricacies and intertwined pieces. He had once known Jayce inside and out - or at least, he'd thought he had.
He wanted to understand his partner once more.
And so, Viktor gently placed four fingers on the crown of Jayce’s head, and allowed the arcane to surge between them.
Jayce’s soul shone before them, golden just as Piltover always claimed. Viktor knew it was the same as every other, but it somehow seemed even brighter. He placed a gentle hand on the hazy outline of Jayce’s face, and allowed their minds to connect.
He never could have prepared for the jumble of scattered, glitching memories that surged over him. A tsunami of emotions that he had long since numbed himself too, suddenly hitting with more force than he ever could have braced for. An unrelenting onslaught of images of destruction and horror, one after another. His own face reflected back at him, older than Viktor had ever thought he could be, and full of more sorrow and regret than Viktor had ever felt himself.
Himself, saving a young boy who he could recognize any where, in any time.
But, there was more - more than he could have hoped to brace for, even with the forewarning of Jayce’s words. His partner had never mentioned what happened to him in that other world. Aftershocks of familiar agony rippled through Viktor as he watched Jayce flee in terror, watched his leg break beyond repair, hexcorization the only thing preventing it from necrotizing and decaying, rotting his flesh from the inside out while still connected to his very body. Jayce could have died then and there, alone and broken at the bottom of a ravine in another world entirely, and Viktor would have never known. No one would have. Instead, he could only watch as Jayce ripped through the meager remains of small reptiles and crafted a new leg for himself from the scraps of his weapon, crawling across Zaun and Piltover both just to meet Viktor.
Viktor, and his own corpse. A statue of white metal and porcelain, ridged in gold, steadily being overcome by moss and decay, crumbling away with a familiar hammer in his hands. Eternally kneeling in surrender.
Gone. Gone, because of him.
He had killed Jayce, even if in another time and world. He had killed so many, even in this timeline alone. And still, beneath all that wrath and grief, golden eyes looked at him with so much affection. So much love.
Viktor threw himself out of the memories, stumbling in the arcane plane as his connection to the puppet wavered and collapsed. He hoped Jayce was alright. Medarda was there, at least, and for once that was a reassuring thought. She would protect Jayce, if nothing else.
Slowly, Viktor turned to Sky - to what had been Sky, what was left with her - a sharp gleam in his own eyes as he glared. She stared back, lips pursed and a disappointed expression on her face.
“I think, Miss Young, that it is time for you to go.”
It was time, Viktor thought, to make a new path. One that would see him side by side with his partner once more instead of trapped with a cruel scientist and warlord on either side. On the edge of his consciousness, Vander’s brushed along his, bristling with rage and grief that could match his other half’s.
Viktor had helped bring the hexcore into existence. It was only right that he would be the one to end it as well. He would change the world, yes, but on his own terms. He had the distinct feeling that Sky, that the hexcore’s consciousness, did not approve.
It was a shame he had never been one to ask for permission.