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He awakes to the particular symphony of a fisherman’s dock, just after the day’s haul. Shouts surround him, the thud of crates and the wet slap of nets thrown onto wood, the scent of fish heavy in the summer air.
Jayce peels his eyes open, wincing at the harsh light of the sun, which cuts across his face through the slats of wood above him.
He’s beneath the dock then. Crumbled in a heap beside two unused barrels, his limbs slightly tangled in the net he is sprawled out on.
He struggles to free himself for a moment, his hazy thoughts slowly filing themselves back into order.
The wasteland of a world. The other Viktor. The prophecy for what was to come of his own universe, should he not step in and stop it-
Pain crashes through Jayce’s head as his body seems to flicker, an aftershock of whatever power had transported him here. He wavers on unsteady legs as he waits for it to pass, or worse, for it to come back-
But after a moment, nothing more happens, and Jayce accepts that it is gone. And in the absence of pain, one thought stands in stark relief, the only thought that’s ever in his mind these days.
Viktor.
He needs to get to him. To talk, to plead, to beg on his knees if he must- anything to make him see reason, to convince him to let the magic in his veins go.
He’ll do anything- he just needs to find him first.
He glances around, attempting to get his bearings. His eyes skim the skyline for the hexgates- he’s always been able to orient himself with them- but after a moment of blinking and rubbing his eyes, he finds he must accept a truth that seems so backwards that he can hardly process it-
Because the hexgates are nowhere to be found.
A sinking feeling begins in Jayce’s gut, pulling him downward like an unstopped drain.
This is not his universe. For a moment he fears the old mage had screwed up, has sent him to a world that was so close, and yet so far from the one he was needed in-
But, no. That’s not right. That Viktor had planned out every little detail. Had seen everything in the stars, had faced every possible ending.
If the other Viktor sent him here, then it was not a mistake. There must have been something he intended for Jayce to see, something he’d wanted him to fix-
But he doesn’t have time for that. He can’t right any wrongs here when his own world is on the verge of collapse.
Stupid mage, Jayce mentally curses, anger racing through him. To show him such visions of what is to come, only to send him on a detour? Whatever was the point?
He resolves himself to think on it later, once he’s back home, once things are mended as well as they can be. He silently apologizes to any soul he was meant to save in this world, silently washes his hands of the task- and begins to formulate his plan.
Except.. he isn’t sure how to get back home, not without the arcane. He’d never exactly intended to travel across the dimensions… but perhaps that won’t matter. At the very least, he should be able to recreate the anomaly with the hextech, or perhaps to build a sort of machine to replicate what the arcane had done-
Right. Need my hextech. First step on the list. And the more he thinks on it, the more right that it feels. Now that his mind has been opened to the possibilities, he’s certain he’ll be able to create some sort of portal. It will only be a matter of getting his hands on his own research- which should exist in this world, tucked away somewhere in his lab.
It’s a start, anyway.
His mind set, he begins his trek through the streets, hardly seeing where he is going as his thoughts race through possible equations, potential problems.
He’s so preoccupied, that it takes him a moment to realize he has absolutely no idea where to go- the streets, which look so akin to the ones he is familiar with back home, are not the ones he has grown to know.
His confusion only grows as he begins to note the shop names he passes. The street names. The land marks.
He recognizes none of them.
Nothing is where it should be, nothing is even remotely close- and he’s just about given up entirely when he finally comes to stop in a large square, and the sky is clear enough for him to see the looming upper city far above him.
Which means he is in the undercity. It’s no wonder he was so lost then- Jayce has only been down here once or twice before, mostly to gather supplies for his research, back when it was his own secret, independent study.
But this is the not the undercity that Jayce remembers. No. This town is bustling with activity and life, cheerful voices lilting on the breeze, happy squeals of children dancing through the air, gentle laughter shared between couples.
It’s like a mirror of Piltover. Jayce wonders what sort of backwards world he’s awoken in.
Maybe this is a world where we improved hextech without making it a monster. He ponders as he begins to make his way to one of the lifts, slowly gaining his bearings after stopping to ask one or two people for directions.
And the strangest part is, they are all painfully kind to him. No one flinches away at the sight of his ragged form. No one belittles him for knowing so little, for being a fish out of water down here.
There are no fights in the alleys that he walks down. No curses being shouted into the streets. No pickpockets to be on the lookout for, no clusters of addicts begging for scraps.
Everyone is so perfectly, painfully kind.
It’s marvelous. It’s nothing like Jayce had ever dreamed, nothing like he’d ever come to expect of the people of Zaun.
He wishes Viktor were here to see it.
——
It takes him the better part of the day, but eventually he finds himself on the outskirts of the Academy. Here, at least, everything is as he remembers. Which means he knows which entrances are hardly used, which doors are rarely guarded. He’s careful, as he sneaks his way in- but he’s learned to do this well, back home. Any time he wished to avoid the masses, to steal away from prying eyes. He has mastered the art of slipping into his lab unannounced, a skill he calls upon now.
And despite the fact that it has been months since Jayce has last been anywhere near his own Academy, his own lab- his expertise does not fail him. Before long he finds himself standing just outside the lab door, everything exactly as it should be.
Get in, get out, he reminds himself, his fingers hovering just above the doorknob. It would be best to avoid running into myself here. Just find the hextech, and run.
He takes a breath. Steels his nerves. Listens for any noise within the room- and when he’s certain it’s empty, he turns the knob.
And at once, his brief sense of optimism leaves him.
It had been misleading from the outside. Because while his lab is still nestled into the same spot in the Academy, still within Heimerdinger’s wing- the contents are entirely different. The layout is something Jayce cannot recall ever working in, the notes strewn across the tables bearing almost entirely Viktor’s hand- he begins riffling through them, confusion settling over him as he finds notes with Sky’s handwriting, but none of his own.
And on top of it, there isn’t a trace of hextech. No, he hadn’t exactly expected to find it just laying around- he and Viktor had learned the consequences of that, after all- but he’d at least expected to find notes of it, proof of its existence-
He’d been rather looking forward to seeing what this universe’s Viktor and Jayce had gotten up to with the hextech. But it appears he’s gotten it all wrong. There must be some other lab where they conduct their research, some other place tucked within the Academy-
The lights suddenly flicker on, sending a wash of ice down Jayce’s back- and in his panic, Jayce drops the pile of notes he had been flipping through. They scatter across the desk, a few of them lilting through the air until they land upon the floor.
“You know, the very least a person can do, if they insist upon breaking and entering, is to not make a mess while they are doing so.”
Viktor.
Jayce turns on the spot, his hands raised in quiet surrender. Panic races through him, though it dulls slightly when he sees that Viktor is alone. It would be much tricker to explain his being here, should the other Jayce be present.
In fact, the more Jayce thinks on it, the more he wonders if he can use his doppelgänger’s absence to his advantage. He only hopes that this world’s Jayce has a scraggly beard of his own.
And so he changes his tune, drops the fear and panic from his skin like a cloak, and plasters a smile onto his face.
“Viktor! I didn’t realize you’d be back so soon-“
“And who might you be?” Viktor interrupts, and Jayce’s mouth clamps shut. So much for that plan. “I don’t recall giving anyone else permission to lurk in my laboratory.”
Jayce straightens, resolving to tell a fragment of the truth- as watered down a version as he can. He isn’t sure there’s any other way to explain it, not without being thrown into prison for breaking and entering.
“Viktor, it’s me-“
Viktor cocks his head, his brow raised.
“It’s me Viktor, Jayce.”
Viktor’s skeptical expression only grows. Jayce realizes then, that he must look like a madman, his hair a tangled, matted mess, his beard unkept, his clothes dirt smudged and bloody. Of course Viktor doesn’t recognize him for who he is- he’s a far cry from looking his best. He begins to think of any way he can prove that it is him, any secret he can tell that surely Viktor would know, any tidbit of information-
“Is that name supposed to hold meaning to me?”
Jayce feels his heart deflate like a balloon. And suddenly, like a foggy mirror being wiped clean, he understands what he had not before- he had found no hextech because there is none. There is no trace of another Jayce because in this world, he and Viktor never partnered up, never resolved to change the world together.
This Viktor is dying, and doesn’t know there is a cursed cure lurking just out of his reach.
This Viktor does not know Jayce better than he knows himself. Does not understand the innermost workings of his mind, does not pick up on all his subtleties, all his minuscule mannerisms that give his deeper feelings away.
To this Viktor, Jayce is simply another stranger.
He fumbles to get his voice back. “No, I- I suppose it wouldn’t. I’m sorry about being here, I’d only meant to-“
“Wait a moment.” Viktor steps closer, his eyes narrowed, his gaze scrutinizing- and then his look becomes one of almost horror, his already pale skin whitening even more. “I do know you. You are the man who had been experimenting with magic, all those years ago- no?”
Jayce’s pulse quickens- though out of fear or excitement, he isn’t quite sure.
“Yes! Yes, that’s right-“
“You were exiled,” Viktor murmurs, circling him now, looking him up and down with a sort of disbelieving wonder. “And in your despair…”
Jayce recalls, with a sudden note of horror, what exactly Viktor must be leading up to. What would have been, in their own timeline, had Viktor not come to stop his foolish act.
“I killed myself.”
Viktor doesn’t flinch, though his eyes grow clouded. Haunted. “I was too late to stop it. When I arrived, you were already gone.”
His expression is vacant, as though he is seeing it all again- the twisted body, the lifeless eyes.
Jayce aches, for a moment, to know that he would have caused his own Viktor such pain if he had not been stopped. Foolish, foolish boy he’d been.
“How are you here? And don’t tell me you got better, because I was there for the autopsy.”
Jayce fumbles with his words, trying to work through just how much to reveal to this Viktor, how much he should know-
But again Viktor interrupts him. “Your magic…” Viktor frowns. “Don’t tell me that it worked, if not here then somewhere else?”
Jayce’s heart stops in his chest. He’d forgotten, just how damn clever Viktor is. How perceptive. Of course he would piece this together on his own. Jayce had been stupid to think he could convince him of anything other than the exact, honest truth.
The fight washes out of him in one great wave.
“Yeah. It did.”
Viktor halts in front of him, leaning his weight onto his cane. “You sound as if that was a bad thing. And judging by the looks of you-“ he gestures vaguely to Jayce’s worn and weary form. “I’d say it was not all you had hoped it to be.”
“You helped me, in my world.” Jayce smiles in spite of it all as he says it, a sad sort of expression that cuts across his face like a knife. “It was physically impossible for me to work out the kinks on my own. Hextech- that’s what we called it- would not exist without you.”
Viktor tips his head, seeming to consider as his nose slightly wrinkles. Jayce can’t help but note how endearing the look is on him. How endearing it always is. “I do not like that name all that much. It must have been your contribution.”
At this Jayce laughs, the sound half choked as it rips its way from his throat. “You know, you never told me you didn’t like the name in my world.”
Viktor shrugs, a smile easing its way onto his face. Jayce’s heart pangs at the sight- because despite being a universe away, this is still Viktor. Viktor with his hard won, beautiful smile. An expression that Jayce would frame on the walls of every art gallery if he could.
“Then your Viktor must not have been very honest, or perhaps he was afraid of wounding your feelings. I’d like to boast that I would never do such thing, but I suppose there is no way of knowing, now is there?”
“No. I don’t suppose there is.”
He thinks that they will leave it at that, and he’s just about to ask this Viktor if he may at least borrow some of his notes on anything transportation related- when suddenly, the man speaks again.
“I don’t suppose you could tell me some more?” His fingers reach to trace a shape drawn onto one of his notes, his expression far off and wistful. “About this… hextech?”
Jayce lets out a breath. Where on earth to start?
“It was… wonderful, while it lasted Vik.” The other Viktor seems to wince at the nickname, the slightest bit of tension rippling across his face, down his frame. “We created so much, helped the world become something great-“
“But then?” Like Viktor can sense the hesitation in his voice. The regret. The guilt.
Jayce sighs as he envisions it all. “But then it all crumbled. We… dreamt too big. We were foolish. The council got ahold of it, as did Zaun and… it destroyed everything.”
“What became of me?” Viktor asks it with a sudden sense of urgency. “Of my illness? Was the hextech able to help?”
Pain laces its way through Jayce’s veins, regret unfolding like the cruelest kind of blossom. “No… no, it only made it… so much worse, Viktor.” The words burn to say. To admit. To bear the weight of. Tears bite at the corners of his eyes as he remembers it all, as he thinks through everything he could have done differently, every way in which the world could have been just a little more fair.
Viktor doesn’t press him. Instead, a strange look passes over his face. Something distant. Removed.
“You lost your Viktor, didn’t you?” His voice is soft. Detached.
Jayce feels the pain of it all anew. The ache, that settled somewhere within his ribs the moment he learned of Viktor’s diagnosis, which only festered and grew the more it persisted, until eventually it was something new entirely.
“I-“ How to even begin to explain it? “In a way. Yeah.”
Such small words to encompass the loss that was Viktor. The darkness that Jayce had lost him to. The suffering his partner had to endure. The mistakes they both had made.
“You miss him.” It is not a question.
The ache in Jayce’s chest deepens, the snarling beast in his gut raking its claws over his heart. Tearing him not to ribbons- not to anything as delicate or beautiful as that- but to shreds, pieces of him fluttering about like ashes in the wind.
“More than I can bear.”
Viktor nods, seeming to process this information as he begins to pace the room once more. Deducing from it, conclusions weaving their way in his brilliant little mind.
“What were we?” He asks, the question catching Jayce off guard. “Back in your universe?”
He stumbles as he tries to put it into words- are there even words to describe what Viktor was to him?
He opens his mouth, intent to say he doesn’t know- but the words flow out on their own accord.
“We were… everything. ” His voice catches on the word, his throat burning like acid is being dripped down the back of it. “I think I loved you. No, love you. Er- not you, but my Viktor.”
The admission settles upon the room like a shroud. Though Jayce is surprised to find that he does not regret the words, only that he had not found them sooner, to say at a different time. To a different Viktor.
This Viktor pauses in his pacing, gazing out the window that overlooks the city.
“Did he love you back?”
Viktor turns then, sadness etched into his face. Jayce offers him a sad smile of his own.
“I’m not sure.”
Viktor nods, like this does not surprise him, that his other self would be so elusive with his feelings. And why should it? Viktor has always been many things, but open- vulnerable- was not one of them.
“Well,” Viktor begins, pausing to lick his lips. He seems to weigh his next words in his mouth before he speaks them. “If your Viktor felt anything akin to what I did when I first met you, when I saw you at the trial… when I saw your works… ” There’s a note of wonder in Viktor’s voice. Admiration. And something a little more. Something that almost sounds like longing. “Then I think there’s a good chance that he grew to love you as well.”
And oh how Jayce’s heart breaks at those words. He feels like he is suddenly made of glass, like one good shove would send him toppling and shattering to the floor, pieces of him scattering about in hazardous little shards.
“I’d like to think so,” Jayce whispers, choking on his own held-back tears. “It didn’t change much in the end, but even still…”
At this, Viktor moves to turn away. And Jayce isn’t sure why he does it- perhaps it is seeing another Viktor begin to walk away, so familiar to another lifetime he’s lived, another time he opened his heart only to have Viktor walk away while Jayce did nothing to stop it- he isn’t sure why, but he reaches out, yanking Viktor back by his arm.
“Help me,” Jayce suddenly cuts in, his hand an iron vice around Viktor’s wrist, his voice dripping with desperation. “Help me build hextech here, so I can use it to get back home.” He closes his eyes for a moment, weighing the words in his mouth. Not knowing how Viktor will take them. Knowing there will be no way to ensure it. “Help me, and promise to destroy it all after.”
A beat of silence. Jayce fears that Viktor will negotiate, that he’ll wish to see the effects of hextech for himself- he has always been too inquisitive for his own good, too sure of his talents. Surely this has been a mistake, a rash decision on Jayce’s part, a foolish, foolish error-
But Viktor’s eyes widen slightly in horror, before they settle into something determined.
“I will assist you- but as for destroying it after, you do not need to tell me twice. I have no intention of unraveling what has been built here in this world, for the people of the undercity.” He nods out the window, and Jayce follows his gaze, remembering, as he so often forgets, that Viktor is one of the undercity himself. That those people are his people. And that in this world, they are not suffering.
Viktor turns his gaze back toward Jayce, before gesturing down at his leg. At his chest. The only physical markers of the festering disease in his lungs. “Besides. I have long since given up on fixing what cannot be cured.”
It feels like a knife in the gut. A reminder of every way he has failed him. “I’m so sorry, Viktor.”
“Don’t be. I am content here, Jayce. I may not have had hextech, but I still invented quite a great deal in this world.” He smiles softly, a content, gentle thing. “I made my mark, just as I’ve always wanted. These people are happy, and as such, so am I.”
Jayce’s heart burns at his words, pride filling him like honey in his veins. All while regret bares its wicked fangs in his chest, guilt weighing down on him like a ton of bricks.
He walks over to the window, looking more clearly out upon the thriving city. He reaches out to touch the glass, but stops with his hand hovering merely a centimeter away. Everything feeling out of reach.
“This world… everything is so peaceful. All because we did not give them the tools to destroy it.”
He hears Viktor coming to stand beside him before he is there, so he shouldn’t be surprised when he feels the hand that closes around his shoulder- but still, he is. His muscles tighten in shock, so long since it’s been since someone touched him. So long since he’s felt the steady weight of Viktor’s casual touch, of his warmth-
Now that the initial shock has faded, Jayce is left desperate to soak in the comfort that Viktor offers with his touch, desperate to cling to this moment for as long as he can. Jayce keeps his gaze trained carefully forward, lest Viktor notice how his eyes glisten with unshed tears.
He misses his Viktor. So, so much.
“Hindsight is a pain,” this Viktor murmurs after a while, interrupting the silence as he looks out onto the bustling streets with Jayce. “But if you spend too long looking behind you, you’ll miss navigating what lays ahead.”
Jayce gives a sad laugh. He hopes Viktor is too distracted to see the tear that slowly runs down his cheek. “My Viktor was never so wise.”
At this Viktor snorts, giving Jayce’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Oh I’m sure he was. You just likely never listened.”
And isn’t that the truth?
——
The two of them work tirelessly. Relentlessly. Jayce doesn’t know if the time he spends here will be reflected in the world he returns to, but he doesn’t want to take any chances, not when things were already at the tipping scale when he had left.
He isn’t certain what he’ll do when he returns. He knows what he must do, but that thought is too painful for him to accept, too fresh to come to terms with.
Perhaps he can talk to Viktor, first. He resolves himself to try, anyway.
The days blend into a blur of writings, of equations. Of frustration and sort lived success. Thankfully, this Viktor proves to be just as bright as the one Jayce had left, if not more so for having worked so long on his own- but Jayce is still the only one with any knowledge of hextech between them, and the task is made more difficult by the fact that he is not attempting to invent something, but rather recreate that which was already made before.
It helps, that Viktor had secretly kept a piece of this Jayce’s hextech- not knowing the name, of course, when he’d nabbed it.
“You’ve kept it all this time, and never tried to turn it into something more?”
Viktor had merely shrugged. “I did, in the beginning. But it is truly a mystery without your notes and research. A key without a lock. I soon gave up trying to understand where you had been attempting to go with it.”
From there, it’s mostly an effort to recall past notes on Jayce’s part, with logical, editorial tweaking from Viktor. The tricky part comes after they stabilize the crystal- because while hextech is something that Jayce knows, dimension travel is not.
He nearly gives up, once or twice. Nearly accepts that it cannot be done in this world, or in any perhaps- at least, not on purpose. Perhaps the anomaly of the arcane is needed, a risk too big to breach into this world. Jayce cannot save one universe at the cost of another.
But it turns out, he doesn’t have to.
Miraculously, it is Viktor who finally cracks it. Never having created with hextech before, he looks at every new equation with fresh eyes, preexisting inventions not lingering in his mind, past decisions not weighing him down, shoving him into the box of predictability.
It takes them two weeks. Two weeks of tireless effort, of countless sleepless nights, silently working together like they’ve been doing it their whole lives.
Well. Jayce has. For the part of his life that’s mattered anyway. But he is surprised to see how easily this Viktor falls into step beside him. As if they are two halves to the same whole. Jayce and Viktor, Viktor and Jayce. Never meant to have been separated, destined to spend an eternity with the other by their side.
He thinks, perhaps, that that’s exactly how things were meant to be. How the universe had intended it.
If only they each hadn’t gone and muddled it up.
It’s bittersweet, when they finally get it to work. Because while Jayce knows he cannot afford to waste time testing it out, cannot stand another day of tweaking things, of thinking it over- he finds himself wishing he could do just that. Could somehow prolong his stay here with this innocent, uncorrupted-by-the-arcane Viktor.
But he can’t. The burn is terrible, but Jayce has been learning to live with it. To let it settle into his bones, make its home in the softness of his heart.
He gives himself no time for regret, no time for second guessing. As soon as their machine is complete he is plugging in the coordinates, adjusting the runes so that they reflect the one upon his wrist. His sigil of home.
Viktor finishes the calculations as Jayce readies himself, adjusting his coat (he’d changed back into his old clothes, not wanting to leave any trace of himself here) and grabbing his hammer. Soon, his existence here will only be a memory for this Viktor.
He wonders, as he finishes his preparations, why that thought fills him with such deep-set regret.
And then, it is time.
“Good luck, Jayce.” Viktor stands before him, waiting to pass off the crystal that will fully activate the machine. He takes a breath, hesitating before he speaks. “It was… a pleasure to finally be able to work with you.”
Jayce smiles, sadness creeping into his core. He has never been particularly skilled at goodbyes, though he knows this Viktor deserves one. Even if it aches, even if it burns.
“Thank you Viktor. For everything. It was wonderful, to get to invent with you again.”
And even though it aches to say goodbye- he thinks he sees it now. Why the mage had sent him here. He thinks it was a gift of sorts, a reprieve from all the hardships he has faced.
And a reminder of all he has lost.
He’s thankful for it, all the same. Even if it burns in his gut, to think of what could have been, even if it aches to have to leave this quiet, peaceful place, this wise and gentle Viktor- even if it tears a part of him in two, he’s grateful just the same.
He begins to turn, content to leave it at that- but a hand on his wrist stops him, a sharp jerk that turns him back around, his body slamming straight into Viktor’s, their faces only an inch apart-
Jayce’s eyes widen as Viktor kisses him, his lips slightly chapped and yet painfully soft.
Perfection.
Jayce has just a moment to close his eyes, to gently lean into the kiss, chasing down the warmth like a starving man, finally being fed that which he desires most-
And then Viktor is pushing him away, a faint flush to his cheeks, his hair slightly more disheveled than usual.
“Viktor, I-“
“For luck,” is Viktor’s easy reply. And Jayce hardly has a moment to process it all, because then Viktor is powering on the machine, and Jayce is scrambling to get to its center. Lest he miss his one shot at getting back to his own universe.
To his own Viktor.
God he wishes he could stay. But this Viktor is not his- is lacking every crucial memory that made them them.
And besides. His Viktor needs him. And just as Viktor once stopped Jayce from his fall- now he too shall stop Viktor from his own.
The machine whirs to life around him, energy flowing in currents that surround his body. The force of gravity lessens, his feet slowly leaving the ground as specs of blue cross his vision-
He can just make out Viktor’s face, a sad, soft smile that sets a fire in Jayce’s core-
And then he is gone. The world turns to shapes and colors, flashes and bangs and bursts of light.
And then Jayce is home.