Chapter Text
Jayce swallowed the air as if it were the first and last breath he'd ever taken.
Behind his eyelids, flickering colors burned his retinas, irregular geometric shapes twisted into one another, perspectives in which he could see not only his reflection, but his limbs, his bones, his very soul.
He had brushed against the rune, and the rune had brushed against him.
Beyond his sight, darkness.
Yet, he could feel his labored breath rising and falling rhythmically in his chest—he wasn't suffocating. His limbs were wrapped in a comforting warmth, not torn apart by his dead body. He was alive, not dead.
But where was he?
Jayce squinted. He had been wrong. It wasn’t just darkness. He saw a familiar ceiling. His fingers were gripping a familiar sheet. On the bedside table, a familiar lamp flickered on.
What was he doing in his own house, in his own room?
Sure, it was his room, but not exactly his room. His desk had never been this neat—usually buried under projects, proposals, and packages to sign. And if he shifted his gaze left, he was struck by an unsettling emptiness, because the shelves that once held the various trophies and medals he'd won throughout his career were strangely dusty. Not to mention the walls—without the old posters of famous wizards throughout history, the room resembled more of a prison than his childhood hideaway.
Then he noticed the weak sunlight struggling to seep through the blinds. He didn't usually sleep during the day. Too many possibilities were wasted, he said.
But these differences from his memory weren’t what mattered. The question pressing on his mind, crushing every other thought, was: "What am I doing here?"
Maybe that’s why he ignored where Heimerdinger and Ekko were, the dull pain in his leg, and the general exhaustion of his spirit. He sat at the edge of the bed, shirtless as he often slept, and began to strain his brain, his breath still ragged.
He rested his hand under his chin, thinking; he immediately pulled it away, frightened by the presence of a beard he didn’t remember growing.
His first theory was that he had fallen into a coma after his rune adventure, and that weeks, months, even years had passed. Yet he wasn’t in a hospital, but in the warm comfort of his own home.
His eyes dropped to his hands, and he lost his breath. They were trembling slightly, as was his pulse; he compulsively turned his wrists, horrified, and with a jerking motion, he checked his arms, up to his shoulders.
He was covered in scars.
A wave of nausea hit him, and he pressed his arms to his stomach. His wide eyes fixed ahead, trying to make sense of the cuts, his brain now reduced to mush.
What had happened to him?
"Jayce?"
A sweet voice, followed by soft knocks on the door, healed the little spirit that kept him alive. He struggled to swallow back the bile rising in his throat and croaked:
"Mom?"
The door opened, and for a second, Ximena appeared as a shadowy, almost angelic vision to his eyes, accustomed to the dark. But as soon as her face became clear, she revealed herself to be a simple woman, with a welcoming face, marked by the remnants of a life full of smiles... and wrinkles Jayce hadn’t noticed before, hints of a troubled past.
"There you are, sweetheart," she began, smiling so cautiously it almost seemed like a warning. "How do you feel this morning?"
Jayce buried his face in his hands. A nightmare. Or a dream. His home, unrecognizable. His mother, unrecognizable. His very self, unrecognizable.
"I don’t feel like myself." He muttered, rubbing his eyes, with no intention of explaining any further.
It was lucky he kept his face hidden in his palms, avoiding that half-strange face and confronting a possible past through the marks left on his body, because he missed the mother's heartbreaking, defeated expression—a despair that lengthened her face as her body often suffered similar disappointments.
"Don’t be so melodramatic," she tried, trying to lighten the situation, "We all have our dark days. But you'll always be you, no matter what."
Jayce sighed, not in the mood for encouragement. His mind was torn between the familiarity of what he felt and the oddities he noticed. He wasn’t built for these ethical conflicts. If he had someone who resembled his mother, in a room that resembled his, in a body that resembled his, he might as well pretend they were his.
"...Sorry, Mom," he finally admitted, forcing a polite grin. "Bad night, that's all."
"It’s getting late," she murmured, forcing a smile onto her cheeks. "Why don’t you get out of this darkness? It’ll do you good. At least put something under your teeth." From the serious tone she used, it was clear this was a script repeated every day, with less-than-positive outcomes. But she would never give up on her son. Never.
Jayce raised his gaze to her. Honestly, that sudden awakening had taken the wind out of him, but he couldn’t say no to that already weary face in front of him. And besides, he needed to think, and to think, he needed energy and time. "Maybe I'll feel better after breakfast."
Like a magic incantation, those words lit up Ximena's eyes, and for the first time that morning she smiled genuinely.
It didn’t last long. In an instant, that smile twisted into a grimace of unexpected fear, just as Jayce attempted to rise from the edge of the bed.
"Careful, darling—"
Too late. He gasped, a sharp pain jolted his right leg, involuntarily contracting his muscles; it shot through him like an electric current, burning his flesh on its way to his brain, turning into intense, pervasive, chilling pain; with a hiss, he threw himself back onto the bed, digging his nails into his skin, trying to sever the connection between the aching limb and the rest of his body.
"Jayce..." his mother rushed to him, wrinkling her nose at his pain and the foolishness of what he had just done. "What did the doctor say? We're not there yet in your rehabilitation, you know."
Jayce gasped, staring at her like an alien.
"Don’t... don’t lose hope, dear. You get a little better every day. I know it’s hard."
How many times had she repeated that speech, terrified her son never believed her?
"Let’s go to the kitchen. It’s going to be a beautiful day. I promise you."
Jayce never took his eyes off her. Not while she grabbed something from the side of the dresser; not while she sighed with every phrase she didn’t even believe herself; not while he pulled back, balancing himself on the bed with his arms.
"Here you go, darling."
Jayce stared at her, dumbfounded.
In her slender hands, a cane.
His reaction was spontaneous, an awful concoction of his brain boiling between the excruciating pain still pulsing in his temples and the horror of that sight that hit him like a bullet to the forehead. He doubled over and vomited onto the floor in front of him.
His mind was clouded. He didn’t feel his mother’s comforting touch, or her worried exclamations, or the hurry in which she tried to clean.
He only tasted the bitter in the back of his throat. The humid breath. The sting in his eyes. The cramps in his leg.
And then pity. Pity for that woman, who in pure desperation clung to that hope, perhaps climbing on mirrors, found each time she looked at her son; she transmitted it with a brief, but meaningful, smile.
"Mom," Jayce then said softly, breaking the tension in his muscles to lift his face toward her. "Don’t worry. I’m fine."
It was hard to believe those words, his voice so weak and congested, his face twisted into a pained grimace; but mothers know how to notice even the faintest gleam in their child's eyes, a window to their soul that made her hold her breath—something in her son had changed.
"I need a shower," Jayce then said, rubbing his face with his hands; they trembled, almost refusing to grip the cane to reach the bathroom. What other choice did he have?
He swallowed, and in a second, he was on his feet.
Ximena didn’t comment on his initiative, or his awkward walk with the cane; she was dazed by that unfamiliar novelty she saw in him.
Once locked in the bathroom, sitting in the shower, he slowly undressed, almost morbidly.
He let the hot water run over him, hunched over, with his wrists turned upward.
Self-harm. Who would have thought? For some reason, he expected the scars to still hurt; perhaps at that moment part of his subconscious wanted it that way.
Frowning as he was, he couldn’t distinguish astonishment from confusion, getting lost in the almost labyrinthine length of those cuts, brushing his fingers over a pain he couldn’t remember, a memory he could only fabricate. What had he felt, while blood ran down his arms, as warm as the tears of a desperate cry? Perhaps, from his past self, a gloomy feeling had remained deeply rooted in his soul—it wasn’t like him to hide beneath disgust such fascination.
He traced with his gaze the paths carved into his arms, some deeper, some more extended, and his eyes always led him to a center, where he had inflicted the most anguish, almost like he had tried to dig to the bone: usually, at that spot, the blue gem embedded in his leather bracelet used to shine.
Despite the fact that it turned his stomach, he couldn’t, and wouldn't look away from the spectacle. It told a gruesome story: abandoning that magical relic meant losing all hope; but to end up hating it?
He had lost himself.
A shiver ran down his spine; the water had long turned cold, but he had ignored it. To leave meant to face that reality once again.
Eventually, he had to pick up that cursed cane and confront that life. Perhaps his mother was worried he was drowning?
He hadn’t had the courage to look at his reflection yet, and he delayed the inevitable. What was he afraid of? Seeing someone else, or seeing himself? He shifted his weight to one side, holding himself up with the cane, swallowed, and with a quick motion revealed his true self.
If it hadn’t been for the wall he leaned against, he might have taken ten steps back; instead, he took a few forward to scrutinize the person up close. His shoulders were hunched, his frame small and gaunt, sagging toward the healthy leg; where his cheekbones had once been were now dark, pronounced hollows, which accentuated horrified eyes, though hidden beneath an unkempt beard and streaked with wet hair sticking to his skin; scars traced his arms, shoulders, back, hips, and to a lesser extent his legs, like a patchwork ragdoll; a gray pallor tormented his face, making him appear almost corpse-like. These were his first impressions—looking back, the situation was far less drastic, but in that moment, Jayce thought he was a walking dead man.
Could it be him?
Actually him?
Him?
He slumped into his chair, exhausted. Beyond the shock of this sudden deterioration, what tormented him most was how he had no idea how Jayce Talis, the Councillor, the Man of Progress, could have fallen so low; and what tortured him even more was the need to find out.
He was about to tear his hair out, to bash his head against the wall, to curse his own reflection, yet... he didn’t hate it. He hated the change, he hated the situation—but as he growled at himself, his knuckles turning white as they gripped the sink, he realized how primal and unjustified his reaction was. No, he couldn’t hate such a familiar reflection.
It reminded him... of Viktor.
He felt deeply ashamed of the vehemence with which he’d treated himself.
Viktor...
He had wallowed in his despair long enough. It was a pitiful situation, yes, but giving up was out of the question. He couldn’t quit before he had even started.
But where to begin? To escape that hell, he first needed to figure out where he was; after that, he hoped the road home would reveal itself. For now, he could count on his mother, and then...
Viktor.
He could save him.
He was frowning, but not from pain, from determination; he gripped the cane with renewed respect, not out of obligation, but out of passion; he walked with chest out and a deep breath, not to stall but to act.
He dressed in his best clothes tucked away in the wardrobe, which to his dismay turned out to be the dusty Academy uniform—a little too loose, but he couldn’t afford to be picky.
He was just missing one thing. He took a deep breath: if he knew himself well, he hadn’t thrown it away, he couldn’t have. He crawled under the bed, biting his lip as he swept his arm across the floor until...
Bingo.
He struggled to rise, leaning heavily on his cane; in his hand, he held the bracelet with the gem. He ran a thumb over the relic... it sparkled. The same sparkle reflected in his eyes, and for the first time since he’d been thrust into anguish, a nostalgic smile spread across his face.
He immediately put it on his wrist; he couldn’t stand those scars. They tormented him.
When his mother saw him stand tall in the kitchen, it wasn’t the broken man she had been cleaning up after anymore—she thought she was hallucinating a ghost from the past.
“Jayce?” She gasped, blinking, “Are you... okay?”
“As I said before,” Jayce answered calmly, sitting down at the table and resting his cane beside him, “I’m fine. Actually, I’m a bit hungry... what’s for breakfast?”
Ximena lost her breath for a second, eyeing the portions she had prepared. She was clearly caught off guard; in fact, she hadn’t expected Jayce to leave his room for the rest of the day.
“Um…” she stammered, quickly plating a simple egg toast, “Here, eat this, I’ll make myself another.”
It’s true - while another egg sizzled in the pan and her son ate contentedly, her gaze was lost in the distance, her mind elsewhere. But it could only be this way: the marble block that had oppressed her for years was crumbling, a light warming her chest and brightening her smile. She didn’t throw herself into his arms crying just because she no longer believed in miracles and didn’t want to cling to false hopes; but she allowed herself, even if just for a second, to believe that her son, her treasure, was returning to his old self. She hadn’t been entirely wrong.
It was time for Jayce to discover a bit more about... well, everything.
He got straight to the point. “Hey mom,” he mumbled, chewing the last bits of his breakfast, “I’d like to visit Viktor. Have you heard anything from him lately?”
Ximena furrowed her brow, flipping the egg in the pan. “Viktor?” She hesitated, shaking her head slightly, “Mmh, that name doesn't ring a bell. Viktor... who is he, darling?”
A piece of bread got caught in Jayce’s throat, and he started coughing violently. “Viktor,” he repeated, his voice slightly broken. He wanted to go on: the genius inventor, his savior, his partner, the person with whom he had spent hours, nights, whole years... But those words dissolved on his tongue as his mother kept shaking her head.
Well, there went every plan in a burst, taking part of his determination with it. “Oh,” he murmured, darkening, “He’s... a friend.”
“A friend?” His mother sat down calmly at the table with her plate, tilting her head slightly. “I’m... happy you’ve met someone. It’s not every day you mention friends.” Jayce could sense the caution in her words. He figured it out himself: it was pretty hard to make friends when you never left your room.
But the spark of hope still burned inside him. He clung to the second person he hoped he could rely on. “So...,” he started, driven by desperation, trying to weigh his words, “I have to... I need to see Mel. Mel Medarda. I need her opinion. Damn it, anyone from the Council would do.”
Ximena’s nerves pushed her back against the chair. Maybe she’d celebrated too early—her son seemed to have crawled out of the catacombs of depression only to touch the peak of madness.
She let out a breathless laugh, masking her skepticism. “Jayce, dear... you can’t just meet the Council on a whim. They’re very busy people. And you... well, you’ve been through a lot.”
Her mother spoke in euphemisms, but the message had been clear from the start: this version of Jayce wasn’t the respected inventor he knew.
Did that mean... he was alone in the world?
What had he endured?
What kind of failure had he become?
Jayce felt suffocated, oppressed by that reality that, piece by piece, weighed on his chest.
He swallowed loudly, slowly placing a hand on his mother’s shoulder, more for his own encouragement than hers. “I may have been through a lot...” he said with a deep breath, “But can’t a man dream?”
Dream. A word Ximena hadn’t heard her son say in years. A term buried with that bracelet. The same bracelet she now stared at, puzzled, on the wrist that was gently caressing her.
Her throat rasped before her voice finally escaped. “…Of course, a man can dream. I just thought... after your accident…” She no longer knew what words to use.
She recognized her son, but he no longer felt familiar. “You were so different just last night…”
She gently cupped Jayce’s face in her hands. She rubbed her thumb across his cheek, causing a small, instinctive chuckle.
She saw it.
His soul.
It was him.
She was overwhelmed by that vision. She closed her eyes and pulled away, as if burned by the touch of that living skin. “What do you intend to do?” she spat, folding her hands in her lap.
Good question. Jayce wasn’t sure either.
“I... have no idea what’s changed, but I’m going to—” and he stopped, pondering his options, “—find myself again.”
Such poetic words. Maybe he truly believed it.
Ximena sighed. How could such a sweet feeling be tainted by such bitter fear? “Jayce, you’ve always been an ambitious boy, and overnight that ambition has, so to speak, bloomed.” She looked up, and her son noticed a desperate glimmer in her eyes.
“Just... I beg you. Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed again. Have your dreams, follow them; but remember, please, that you’re not just a reflection of your successes.”
Jayce tilted his head slightly, confused, and was struck by the woman in front of him.
“I hope I taught you that failure isn’t the end.”
The harshness in her tone melted into pleading pity. “You’re so much more—you're a kind soul, a resilient man, but most importantly, you’re my son…”
She squeezed his hands as if it were the last time she could feel his warmth.
“As your mother, and I’ll always try to be here for you, but—” she stopped herself to hold back a sob, looking away from the person she loved most but who caused her the most pain.
Jayce was petrified.
Where was this going?
“…I wouldn't survive... if I saw you again on the verge of death... by your own hand.”
A punch to the stomach.
Jayce Talis had tried to take his own life.
Deep down, he had known it from the start. He had known it from his pitiful state, from his mother's sad kindness, from the abandoning his most important prize. He had known it from that elegant cane.
His eyes reflexively dropped to his wrists, weaving the depressing narrative of his heartbreaking existence—he had already read it in the shower, over and over again, but hadn’t believed it.
He had known, but refused to understand.
He squeezed his mother’s hands in his, the tears from the woman burning into his heart.
“I won’t do it again,” he murmured.
He wasn’t that Jayce. He could do it. For his mother.
“It’s a promise.”
He stood up abruptly, unable to bear the conversation any longer. Unfortunately, he forgot his disability; fortunately, he managed to awkwardly hold onto the table.
“I need some fresh air,” he spat, then rushed toward the door.
“Jayce!” She scolded him, leaping from her seat; the boy not only stumbled like a drunkard, as if he hadn’t used his trusted cane in years, but also had the audacity to venture outside alone, when the sunlight had rarely and reluctantly touched him in all these years? “Where do you think you’re going, young man?”
“I have to find someone.” Jayce didn’t even look back to say goodbye, throwing himself outside. “I’ll be back.”
What impulse of her soul kept Ximena from rushing to her son, she didn’t even know. Every nerve in her body was on edge; it was a conscious decision not to go to his rescue. She had already regretted blindly believing in her son’s promise.
Outside that house, Jayce swallowed the air as if it were the first and last breath he'd ever taken.
In the air, a pleasant hum.
He turned around, stumbling over his own feet like a fawn that had just learned to walk; the elegant houses of Piltover loomed and oppressed that naive spirit in this land.
To keep from losing himself, he searched for a reference to the West; he let out a gasp, and if it hadn’t been for the cane, his knees wouldn’t have held his weight.
Where the Hexgate used to stand, elegant and imposing like a beacon of progress in the sky, now lay a humble, simple, and miserable airship dock.
Hextech was never history.
Jayce Talis had failed in his dream.