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call out my name in the middle of the night (Arcane, Jayce/Viktor)
Title: call out my name in the middle of the night
Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends
Characters: Jayce/Viktor
Rating: Mature
Word Count: 4,671
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Multiverse, Hallucinations, Hand Jobs
Challenge: Year of the OTP 2025 @![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
yearoftheotpevent
Prompt: major character death
Summary: Viktor is too late to stop Jayce from stepping over the edge. Failure pushing him to the point of obsession, he struggles to complete hextech on his own. Years later a visitor arrives bearing the face of the man who haunts his life.
Notes: Inspired by this beautiful and heartbreaking piece of art bykidovna that sunk its claws into me the moment I saw it. Please give them some love! Content warnings: suicide, mild blood/gore. Title taken from "Imaginary Friend" by ITZY.
Read on AO3.
There is a man standing on the ledge of a half-destroyed apartment building. The sky above is somber, stars hidden behind dark clouds in the distance. The man’s life is in ruins around him, just like the rubble of the building.
Nobody stops him.
The man jumps.
The hour is late. Far later than the good citizens of Piltover would call proper. But Zaun never sleeps, and neither does Viktor. The images come on stronger when he sleeps. Better to stay awake, and to work.
But the work is frustrating him almost as much as the bad dreams tonight. It should be working, he thinks, glaring at the half-assembled prototype and various notebooks strewn across his workbench. Why isn’t it working?
He scowls and drags his hands back through his unkempt hair in frustration. It’s getting long; he should probably cut it. He’s been thinking that for several years now. He never finds the time.
Viktor’s life back in Zaun has been nothing but work—work to keep himself alive, to earn the coin that keeps him sheltered and fed, and work to keep Jayce Talis’s hextech dream alive. Neither have done Viktor any favors. He knows how it must look to those who once knew him. A promising career at the Academy. Colleagues and acquaintances. A life in Piltover. All gone, with nothing left but a handful of notebooks and a singular obsession.
An obsession that is leading nowhere but an early grave. Maybe that’d be preferable to this. Maybe then he could finally sleep.
He pushes the failed prototype aside and scrubs his hands over his face. What is he missing? Why can’t he get this? He’d had hope, in the beginning, when he’d eagerly devoured Jayce Talis’s notes, inspiration sparking an explosion of ideas in him. But the outpouring of insight had stemmed to a trickle before eventually stopping altogether. No matter how many times he rereads the journals, rewrites the equations, reworks the runes, his progress has stalled.
Maybe any further breakthroughs he could have made had died on that pavement with Jayce Talis.
He sees Jayce that night as the other man steps off the ledge. Jayce begins to turn his head, as if he’d heard a noise and is trying to investigate. It’s too late.
Viktor nearly trips in the rubble scrambling over to the edge, eyes wide in horror as he peers down at the pavement below. He knows he should call for help, but his voice sticks in his throat. Legs suddenly weak, he stumbles back from the edge, dropping Jayce’s notebook.
Time slows as he makes his way out of the apartment and back down to the ground floor—too slow, always too slow, why couldn’t he be faster—finding his voice at last once he reaches the street. He shouts for help, but there’s no one around to hear him.
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Jayce is dead when Viktor reaches him, head smashed on the pavement, arm twisted at an odd angle. The smell of blood makes Viktor retch and he staggers away from the body, trying to breathe normally.
His shouts eventually draw an enforcer to the scene, and from there everything becomes a blur. The body—Jayce, not a body, a person—is taken away. The enforcers question him about what happened; Viktor can’t even remember what he says. At some point he must have returned to the apartment, because when he finally gets home, still in shock, he has Jayce’s notebook and the bracelet he’d left behind with the letter addressed to his mother in his hand.
He should turn in for the night and continue his work in the morning. He’s not making any progress like this. What was that quote about insanity and doing the exact same thing repeatedly while expecting different results?
He boots up his prototype one more time, aligns the panels and gears, twists the right knobs. He’s tried so many runes in so many combinations, but he keeps coming back to this one—the rune carved into the crystal he wears around his wrist at all times. It has to be this. It has to mean something that Jayce had this rune set in a bracelet that he couldn’t bear to take with him over the ledge. It has to mean something for the science.
The prototype flickers to life with whirs and sparks. There’s the grinding of gears and, for one brief, heart-stopping moment, a shimmer of blue. Then the lights and the sounds and the grinding all sputter and die, just like every other time. Viktor swears and swipes a wrench off his workbench, the tool hitting the ground with a clatter.
There’s an echoing noise from the other room, like a bell ringing somewhere far away, then a thump. Someone breaking in? Though Viktor doesn’t know who would bother breaking into the dilapidated old building that doubles as his home and his lab. Some kids on a dare, maybe. Still, Viktor grabs the handheld light from his workbench, his other hand going to the knife he keeps hidden in his crutch, grasping the handle.
A man stumbles into the room, half hidden in shadows. He’s carrying a weapon of some sort, a twisted hammer nearly as large as he is.
“Don’t come any closer,” Viktor says, gripping the knife handle tighter. “I’m armed.”
“Viktor? Is that you?” The intruder stumbles closer, the hammer dragging behind him rather than being brandished.
Viktor frowns and lifts the hand light higher. “How do you know my name?”
“V, oh, thank God.” The man is close enough to see in the dim light now—dark, shaggy hair, an untrimmed beard, clothes dirty and torn, a tarnished brace on one leg. Something about the man’s voice sends a prickle of fear down Viktor’s spine. It’s…familiar.
“I probably don’t look the same over here right now,” the man continues, “but Viktor, it’s me. Jayce. Jayce Talis. You have to believe me.”
Viktor stares at the man in front of him, this phantom, unable to speak.
“I can prove it,” the man goes on undeterred by Viktor’s silence. “I can answer anything you want.”
His voice fades out, the words no longer reaching Viktor’s ears through the shock. A new voice cuts in.
“This one’s new. Are you seeing doubles now, Viktor?”
Viktor doesn’t have to look to know who’s talking. Jayce Talis, looking just as he had when Viktor last saw him, stands to the side of his workbench, impassively watching the scene unfold. Blood coats the side of his head, his neck. Viktor’s mind has always spared him the worst of it—the broken bones, the gore, the smashed skull—at least in his waking hours.
The man before him is still talking, finally catching on that something is wrong. He steps forward, and Viktor presses back against his workbench.
“Viktor? Viktor, what’s wrong?”
“You’re not real,” Viktor whispers. “You’re dead.”
Viktor often wonders what it was that slowed him down that night. He’s replayed every moment in his mind over and over again, trying to determine what he would do differently given the chance. He wouldn’t stop to adjust his brace no matter how much it was digging into his ankle as he walked. He should’ve cut through the alley behind the barbershop instead of taking the long way around. He shouldn’t have paused to fish the journal out of his bag and flip through it at the bottom of the stairwell.
In the end, it doesn’t matter what he would change, because he can’t change anything. The fact is that he was too slow to stop a tragedy from occurring. And now he has to live with that. He’s long resigned himself to the truth that for him, there’s no such thing as a happy ending.
Viktor had seen it happen. Felt Jayce’s lifeless body with his own hands. That’s how he knows the man in front of him right now cannot be Jayce Talis.
“Viktor, I’m not dead,” the new hallucination of Jayce Talis is saying in front of him, but Viktor is barely paying attention. “I mean, this version of me—”
“What do you think happened to him?” the old hallucination of Jayce Talis drawls. “He looks worse than me.”
The new Jayce—Talis, maybe he should call him—takes a step forward, staring at him like he’s the ghost. “Viktor, what happened? Your hair, this place…”
He sets the hammer down and keeps moving forward. With Viktor backed up against his workbench, there’s nowhere left to go. He tightens his grip around his knife handle again, debating whether he should dodge left or right. Talis presses forward, and then suddenly Talis is hugging him, the arms wrapped around him solid and warm. Real. Viktor drops his light back on the workbench.
“You’re dead,” he whispers. He can see Jayce over Talis’s shoulder, can see the blood. “You can’t be here.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” Talis says, holding Viktor tighter like he’s afraid something is going to take him away. “The Anomaly, it’s— I’m meant to be somewhere else. But I had to find you—this universe doesn’t have hextech?”
Viktor is speechless, arms hanging limp at his sides. Talis seems like he’s half talking to himself as he continues, “Of course, if I’m dead then maybe we never—”
He stops talking when Viktor, as if in a trance, lifts his arms and wraps them around Talis’s shoulders, holding him tight as he confirms for himself that this is real. That Jayce—some version of him—truly exists and is in front of him right now, a flesh and blood human he can touch.
Torn between wonder and incredulity, he doesn’t notice at first that Talis is starting to tremble in his arms. There’s a sharp intake of breath, then dampness against his neck.
“Is he crying?” Jayce asks, a sneer on his bloody face.
Viktor frowns and tightens his arms around Talis almost protectively. It’s one thing if Jayce is cruel to him. He deserves it, after all, for being part of the events that led to his death. But this man in front of him is Jayce himself. He doesn’t deserve any of it.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Talis is repeating, face pressed to Viktor’s neck. “It’s been so long…”
Viktor has a million questions: so long since what? Where did Talis come from? What’s with that hammer? Why is he hugging Viktor? How is he here? But the one he asks is,
“How are you alive?”
Talis straightens up but keeps hold of Viktor. “It was touch and go for a while there,” he says somewhat ruefully. “I thought if the busted leg didn’t kill me, the damn lizards would. But I made it out and—”
“No,” Viktor interrupts. “The day you were expelled from the Academy.”
Talis falls silent, watching him. His hand slides up Viktor’s back and Viktor shivers. A dead man should be colder, he thinks. Talis’s large hands are warm even through his shirt.
“You were there,” Talis says softly, like Viktor should know this. Like this isn’t the most shameful moment of Viktor’s life. “You saved me.”
Ah. So this Jayce is just as cruel as the one in his head.
When Viktor doesn’t say anything, Talis lifts his hands to cup Viktor’s face. “Viktor…what happened here? Why aren’t you at the Academy?”
“I couldn’t stay there,” Viktor says. “Not after what happened.”
Talis studies him, his face serious. “I jumped.”
Viktor can’t parse all the emotions in Talis’s expression. Regret, maybe. Sadness. Disappointment, but Viktor doesn’t know of who, himself or Viktor.
“They wouldn’t let me continue your research anyway,” Viktor adds. When he’d realized he couldn’t stay in Piltover after everything, he’d stolen as much research as he could and he’d run. A whole lot of good that had done—ten years later and he has nothing to show for it.
“So you’ve been here all this time?” Talis looks around at the cluttered, dimly lit room. “Working on hextech?”
“Failing at hextech,” Viktor says, bitter. He eyes Talis’s fallen hammer. “I take it you succeed in…wherever you came from?” To be honest, he still isn’t entirely sure this isn’t another hallucination. Maybe he’s unconscious on the lab floor and this is the final creation of a dying mind.
“We did,” Talis says. He’s still holding Viktor’s face, still crowding him back against the workbench. Still looking at him like he’s afraid to let go. “Together.”
Things finally start to click into place.
“Aw, that’s cute,” his Jayce says, standing at the far end of the workbench as if he’s been there the whole time. Viktor doesn’t even blink; he’s used to Jayce coming and going. “A world where you and I solved hextech together. I wonder what you did wrong in this one that you weren’t allowed to have that?”
Viktor first sees Jayce again three weeks after the incident, when he falls asleep at his desk late in the evening. His work and his sleep have both suffered greatly since, and while Heimerdinger had been understanding at the start, Viktor knows people’s patience is wearing thin.
He wakes in near darkness, office lit only by the dim light of his desk lamp, and he rubs a hand over his face as he lifts his head from the arm he’d been using as a pillow. Across from him, Jayce Talis’s bloody face stares back from the other side of the desk.
“You’re looking rough,” Jayce says. Viktor jerks back so sharply his chair nearly tips over.
“You can’t be here,” he says, mostly to convince himself. “You’re dead.”
Jayce shrugs. “That doesn’t seem to be stopping me.”
Viktor rubs his eyes, trying to banish the specter from his sight, yet the vision remains.
“At least I gave myself a break before going mad,” Viktor mutters under his breath, dropping his hands from his face.
Jayce glances down at the notebook laid open on the desk before Viktor, the journal that Viktor had stolen from Heimerdinger’s office when he'd decided to go talk to Jayce. He'd read it multiple times by now, trying to learn more about the man they'd sent to an untimely death.
“Not much of a break,” Jayce remarks. He looks exceptionally relaxed for a man with blood dripping into his eyes. “Have you solved it yet?”
Vaguely aware that conversing with a hallucination is crazy, Viktor closes the book. Jayce stands so abruptly that if Viktor hadn’t already known he wasn’t real that would be proof.
“You should do it,” Jayce says, reaching out to put his hand on the cover. “Complete hextech. You owe me.”
Viktor’s stomach churns. He stares at Jayce’s wrist; he isn’t wearing his bracelet.
“Why are you hesitating?” Jayce demands. “What else do you have to show for your life?”
Slowly, Viktor reaches out and reopens the notebook. He doesn’t see Jayce for the rest of the night.
“I still don’t know why you’re here,” Viktor says to Talis, ignoring Jayce’s taunts.
“I’m trying to fix my mistakes. Seems like I’m good at making those.” Talis’s expression is grim. “I’m not supposed to be here, the hextech in my world, it’s— it’s not good.”
“What do you mean, not good?”
Talis shakes his head, bringing his other hand up to cup Viktor’s face with both hands now. His gaze is sharp, pinning Viktor in place as surely as if he’d held him down.
“What’s happened?” Viktor presses, like this isn’t the most physical contact he’s had in a very long time. “If you tell me I can avoid it here—”
“You can’t,” Talis snaps. “You can’t avoid it. You have to leave it be, Viktor. Hextech, magic, all of it.”
There’s a tremble in Talis’s hands again, fingers unsteady where they frame Viktor’s face. It’s only then that Viktor notices the crystal embedded in Talis’s skin, surrounded by multicolored webbing. A corruption of the arcane. Viktor reaches up and grabs Talis’s wrist, trying to get a better look. The rune on the crystal is different from the rune on Jayce’s bracelet that he wears on his own wrist.
Viktor feels sick. Has he been looking in the wrong place all this time? Was Jayce’s rune not the right one at all?
“Viktor, look at me,” Talis says roughly, though his hands are gentle as he tilts Viktor’s head back up to meet his gaze. “You have to stop working on hextech. You need to move on with your life.”
There’s something crumbling inside him. He can feel his heart jackrabbiting in his chest. Useless, useless. All this work and nothing to show for it. Proof of his failure staring him in the face. Is he nothing without Jayce?
“I can't,” Viktor whispers. “I can't. It's all that's left of you.”
Jayce leans against the workbench beside him, watching the scene with clinical disinterest. “Don’t you cry now too,” he says.
Viktor ignores him, rubbing his thumb over the crystal embedded in Talis’s wrist. Talis shivers at the touch, cradling Viktor’s face in his big hands.
“Hextech is nothing but trouble, trust me. You’re better off without it.” The implicit ‘without me’ hangs in the air around them.
Viktor tightens his grip around Talis’s wrist. “You don’t know me.”
Talis smiles at him, but there’s a sadness in his eyes Viktor can’t decipher. “I know you, Viktor. I’ve known you longer than either of us realized.”
The broken thing inside Viktor fragments a little more. He wants that, more than anything he ever has before. More than cracking hextech. How many times has he poured over Jayce’s journals, committing each line to memory? Every equation, every note, every doodle. Every brilliant idea now etched permanently into Viktor’s mind, right next to the images of Jayce’s body on the cold, hard ground.
“He’s not talking about you,” Jayce says, leaning in close to Viktor to study Talis’s face. “You can see it in his eyes.”
“Shut up,” Viktor mutters, gaze flicking to the side.
A flicker of hurt passes over Talis’s face. “Sorry?”
Viktor’s gaze immediately snaps back to Talis. “No, not— Not you.”
There’s still confusion in Talis’s expression, but at least the hurt look is gone. He studies Viktor quietly, a small furrow in his brow, and lifts one hand from Viktor’s cheek to card his fingers through Viktor’s hair.
“I’ve never seen you with hair this long,” Talis says almost wistfully, curling the ends of a few long strands around his fingers. “It looks pretty.”
“It looks like you don’t take care of yourself,” Jayce counters. He’s still at Viktor’s shoulder, practically leaning his bloody head against him.
“Stop it,” Viktor snaps, and the furrow in Talis’s brow deepens.
“Viktor?”
“Stop it,” Viktor repeats more firmly to Talis this time, bringing his hands up between them as a barrier. “You don’t know me, you know some other Viktor. You don’t know what I need or what I want. And I don’t— I don’t know you.”
The last of the thing in his chest crumbles to dust as he speaks, leaving him hollow. Maybe he’s been hollow this whole time and just never realized it. What’s been keeping him going all this time? Regret? Guilt? It couldn’t possibly have been hope.
He flattens his hands against Talis’s chest and pushes, but Talis doesn’t move. He’s looking at Viktor seriously again, one hand on his shoulder, the other still tangled in his hair.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly, so solemn and tender it hurts Viktor to hear. “I’m sorry I left you here all alone.”
There’s heat in the corners of Viktor’s eyes, shameful tears welling up. “Not alone. I see you all the time. Everywhere.”
Talis’s arms are around him again, holding him tight. “I’m sorry. I can fix this. I can—I can fix this.”
“How?”
Talis gives no response and Viktor clenches his eyes shut, trying to hold back his tears.
“Hextech is the only way,” he murmurs. “If I can complete his vision…maybe I’ll finally have peace.”
Hands on Viktor’s face once again, Talis gently wipes away the tears that Viktor hadn’t been able to prevent from falling. “It’s not worth it, V. I’d give up hextech a thousand times over for another chance with you.”
There’s vital context missing from that statement, Viktor is sure, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t even care that Talis isn’t talking about him. All that matters is that he fists Talis’s jacket in both hands and pulls him in by the lapels, catching Talis’s mouth against his own. It sparks something in the empty cavity of his chest, a desperation that blooms brighter than anything he’s felt in a long time.
It must spark something in Talis too, because after a moment of shock he moans and wraps his arms back around Viktor, pushing his tongue into Viktor’s mouth without hesitation. The edge of the workbench digs into Viktor’s back as Talis presses against him, deepening the kiss with a needy fervor that has Viktor reeling. Nobody has touched him like this in so long and he whimpers into Talis’s mouth, the sound swallowed by the slide of Talis’s tongue against his own.
He’s on the edge of frantic as he shoves his hands under Talis’s jacket and runs them over his chest, then down over his waist to his hips. Talis jerks forward, rocking against him, and Viktor can feel something hot and hard pressed against his stomach. He fumbles for Talis’s pants, working them open and shoving a hand inside, any hesitation or sense of shame replaced entirely by wanting.
He hears no protest from Talis, drawing a low groan from him as Viktor’s hand slides along the length of his cock, freeing him from his clothing. Precome collects at the head and Viktor uses it to slick the way as he moves his hand, his grip not quite smooth enough. Talis hisses and bucks into Viktor’s hand, clearly not caring how rough Viktor is. He grips the edge of the workbench with both hands, slumped forward with his head on Viktor’s shoulder, panting raggedly as he watches Viktor stroke him.
It’s almost surreal to be touching someone who both is and is not Jayce Talis like this, and Viktor bites back a gasp of disbelief that sounds half like a sob. The sound spurs Talis into action, however, his hands shifting from the workbench to Viktor’s hips, then to the buttons at the front of his pants. He’s barely half hard but Talis spits into one hand and then wraps it around Viktor, stroking him slowly at first, like he’s afraid to hurt him, and then picking up speed to match Viktor’s rhythm once Viktor hardens under his touch.
Talis braces him with one arm against the workbench, keeping him upright as his legs begin to tremble. Talis’s breaths are coming heavier, his cock twitching and leaking more precome in Viktor’s hand, and after a few moments longer he bends down and presses his forehead to Viktor’s.
“Viktor,” Talis moans, and Viktor’s breath hitches at the way his name sounds coming out of Talis’s mouth with such reverence. “Viktor, please…”
Viktor doesn’t know what he’s asking for, but he tries to give it to him all the same, reaching for Talis’s wrist and gently pulling him away for a brief moment. Talis whines at the loss, but Viktor ignores him, lining up their cocks before he wraps Talis’s larger hand around the two of them. Talis doesn’t need to be told twice to start stroking them together, and Viktor moans and rocks his hips instinctively into the tight heat.
The movement makes Talis grunt and tighten his grip, and he brings his other hand up to cup the back of Viktor’s head, cradling him far too gently as he captures his mouth for another searing kiss. A full-body shudder goes through Viktor then and he thinks he might be crying again, overwhelmed by the onslaught of sensation. He blindly grasps at their cocks with one hand, trying to help Talis get them both off.
“I’ve got you,” Talis is murmuring over and over in between kisses, shifting his grip so that their fingers are entangled as they pump their hands in unison over their aching erections.
Neither of them last much longer after that. Talis reaches his climax first, trembling against Viktor as he comes apart, and Viktor loses the fragile thread of control he’d been clinging to soon after, muffling his cries against Talis’s shoulder. They hold each other through it, not letting go once the moment has passed.
Eventually Viktor lifts his head and Talis leans against him, temple to temple, beard scratching at Viktor’s cheek.
“I don’t think I can stay much longer,” he whispers. “I can feel something calling me.”
Viktor closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, composing himself before he straightens up. His shoulder aches where his crutch has been caught under his arm all this time, his leg protesting with equal irritation. Talis steadies him with a firm hand on his shoulder, the other carefully tucking them both back into their pants. Viktor grabs a rag from the bench and offers it to Talis to clean his hand, then does the same when Talis is done.
“I’m going to figure out how to fix this,” Talis says. “I promise.”
Viktor smiles, small and sad. “We’ll see.”
There are wisps of an ethereal light beginning to appear around the room. Talis cups Viktor’s face one more time, rubbing his thumb over Viktor’s sunken cheek. Then he steps back, legs unsteady as he stumbles over to his hammer and grips the handle. The light picks up, swirling now, and an eerie ringing pierces the silence in the room.
“Jayce?” Viktor calls out. The name feels strange on his tongue, so long out of practice saying it. “I hope you get that second chance with your Viktor.”
And then Talis is gone, not a glimmer of arcane light remaining.
“Well, he seemed sweet,” the unmistakable acerbic voice of his ever-present companion pipes up.
Viktor chokes back the anguish that rises in his throat. He’d hoped that somehow, against all evidence, this Jayce would have disappeared with the other one.
But he’s never had that kind of luck.
There is a man standing on the ledge of a half-destroyed apartment building. The sky above is somber, stars hidden behind dark clouds in the distance. The man’s life is in ruins around him, just like the rubble of the building.
Behind him, the air crackles and sparks, the fabric of reality twisting like a kaleidoscope. Something grabs him by the collar of his shirt and pulls him backwards. He stumbles back, the force of it landing him on his ass on the ground.
Another man is there, tall and imposing. He's cleaned up since the last time he was here, hair and beard neatly trimmed, clothes new and whole, brace sturdy and polished. A spiderweb imprint of someone's fingers span across his brow like a glowing crown.
“Don't waste this,” the man says, haloed by the light of some strange anomaly that seems to fill the space of the entire room.
And then he is gone, the light and color and crackling uneasiness in the air gone with him.
“Am I interrupting?” a voice says from the door, unsure.
The man on the ground turns his head, looks at this newcomer, recognizes him from earlier today. Recognizes the book in his hand and the look of hunger in his eyes, the need to know, to discover. To create. The newcomer crosses the room, tucks the notebook under the arm that leans on his cane, and holds out his free hand.
Jayce Talis clasps the proffered hand and gets to his feet, buoyed by hope. Viktor's hand is warm in his, slender and calloused. The ledge feels a thousand miles away.
Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends
Characters: Jayce/Viktor
Rating: Mature
Word Count: 4,671
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Multiverse, Hallucinations, Hand Jobs
Challenge: Year of the OTP 2025 @
Prompt: major character death
Summary: Viktor is too late to stop Jayce from stepping over the edge. Failure pushing him to the point of obsession, he struggles to complete hextech on his own. Years later a visitor arrives bearing the face of the man who haunts his life.
Notes: Inspired by this beautiful and heartbreaking piece of art by
Read on AO3.
There is a man standing on the ledge of a half-destroyed apartment building. The sky above is somber, stars hidden behind dark clouds in the distance. The man’s life is in ruins around him, just like the rubble of the building.
Nobody stops him.
The man jumps.
The hour is late. Far later than the good citizens of Piltover would call proper. But Zaun never sleeps, and neither does Viktor. The images come on stronger when he sleeps. Better to stay awake, and to work.
But the work is frustrating him almost as much as the bad dreams tonight. It should be working, he thinks, glaring at the half-assembled prototype and various notebooks strewn across his workbench. Why isn’t it working?
He scowls and drags his hands back through his unkempt hair in frustration. It’s getting long; he should probably cut it. He’s been thinking that for several years now. He never finds the time.
Viktor’s life back in Zaun has been nothing but work—work to keep himself alive, to earn the coin that keeps him sheltered and fed, and work to keep Jayce Talis’s hextech dream alive. Neither have done Viktor any favors. He knows how it must look to those who once knew him. A promising career at the Academy. Colleagues and acquaintances. A life in Piltover. All gone, with nothing left but a handful of notebooks and a singular obsession.
An obsession that is leading nowhere but an early grave. Maybe that’d be preferable to this. Maybe then he could finally sleep.
He pushes the failed prototype aside and scrubs his hands over his face. What is he missing? Why can’t he get this? He’d had hope, in the beginning, when he’d eagerly devoured Jayce Talis’s notes, inspiration sparking an explosion of ideas in him. But the outpouring of insight had stemmed to a trickle before eventually stopping altogether. No matter how many times he rereads the journals, rewrites the equations, reworks the runes, his progress has stalled.
Maybe any further breakthroughs he could have made had died on that pavement with Jayce Talis.
He sees Jayce that night as the other man steps off the ledge. Jayce begins to turn his head, as if he’d heard a noise and is trying to investigate. It’s too late.
Viktor nearly trips in the rubble scrambling over to the edge, eyes wide in horror as he peers down at the pavement below. He knows he should call for help, but his voice sticks in his throat. Legs suddenly weak, he stumbles back from the edge, dropping Jayce’s notebook.
Time slows as he makes his way out of the apartment and back down to the ground floor—too slow, always too slow, why couldn’t he be faster—finding his voice at last once he reaches the street. He shouts for help, but there’s no one around to hear him.
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Jayce is dead when Viktor reaches him, head smashed on the pavement, arm twisted at an odd angle. The smell of blood makes Viktor retch and he staggers away from the body, trying to breathe normally.
His shouts eventually draw an enforcer to the scene, and from there everything becomes a blur. The body—Jayce, not a body, a person—is taken away. The enforcers question him about what happened; Viktor can’t even remember what he says. At some point he must have returned to the apartment, because when he finally gets home, still in shock, he has Jayce’s notebook and the bracelet he’d left behind with the letter addressed to his mother in his hand.
He should turn in for the night and continue his work in the morning. He’s not making any progress like this. What was that quote about insanity and doing the exact same thing repeatedly while expecting different results?
He boots up his prototype one more time, aligns the panels and gears, twists the right knobs. He’s tried so many runes in so many combinations, but he keeps coming back to this one—the rune carved into the crystal he wears around his wrist at all times. It has to be this. It has to mean something that Jayce had this rune set in a bracelet that he couldn’t bear to take with him over the ledge. It has to mean something for the science.
The prototype flickers to life with whirs and sparks. There’s the grinding of gears and, for one brief, heart-stopping moment, a shimmer of blue. Then the lights and the sounds and the grinding all sputter and die, just like every other time. Viktor swears and swipes a wrench off his workbench, the tool hitting the ground with a clatter.
There’s an echoing noise from the other room, like a bell ringing somewhere far away, then a thump. Someone breaking in? Though Viktor doesn’t know who would bother breaking into the dilapidated old building that doubles as his home and his lab. Some kids on a dare, maybe. Still, Viktor grabs the handheld light from his workbench, his other hand going to the knife he keeps hidden in his crutch, grasping the handle.
A man stumbles into the room, half hidden in shadows. He’s carrying a weapon of some sort, a twisted hammer nearly as large as he is.
“Don’t come any closer,” Viktor says, gripping the knife handle tighter. “I’m armed.”
“Viktor? Is that you?” The intruder stumbles closer, the hammer dragging behind him rather than being brandished.
Viktor frowns and lifts the hand light higher. “How do you know my name?”
“V, oh, thank God.” The man is close enough to see in the dim light now—dark, shaggy hair, an untrimmed beard, clothes dirty and torn, a tarnished brace on one leg. Something about the man’s voice sends a prickle of fear down Viktor’s spine. It’s…familiar.
“I probably don’t look the same over here right now,” the man continues, “but Viktor, it’s me. Jayce. Jayce Talis. You have to believe me.”
Viktor stares at the man in front of him, this phantom, unable to speak.
“I can prove it,” the man goes on undeterred by Viktor’s silence. “I can answer anything you want.”
His voice fades out, the words no longer reaching Viktor’s ears through the shock. A new voice cuts in.
“This one’s new. Are you seeing doubles now, Viktor?”
Viktor doesn’t have to look to know who’s talking. Jayce Talis, looking just as he had when Viktor last saw him, stands to the side of his workbench, impassively watching the scene unfold. Blood coats the side of his head, his neck. Viktor’s mind has always spared him the worst of it—the broken bones, the gore, the smashed skull—at least in his waking hours.
The man before him is still talking, finally catching on that something is wrong. He steps forward, and Viktor presses back against his workbench.
“Viktor? Viktor, what’s wrong?”
“You’re not real,” Viktor whispers. “You’re dead.”
Viktor often wonders what it was that slowed him down that night. He’s replayed every moment in his mind over and over again, trying to determine what he would do differently given the chance. He wouldn’t stop to adjust his brace no matter how much it was digging into his ankle as he walked. He should’ve cut through the alley behind the barbershop instead of taking the long way around. He shouldn’t have paused to fish the journal out of his bag and flip through it at the bottom of the stairwell.
In the end, it doesn’t matter what he would change, because he can’t change anything. The fact is that he was too slow to stop a tragedy from occurring. And now he has to live with that. He’s long resigned himself to the truth that for him, there’s no such thing as a happy ending.
Viktor had seen it happen. Felt Jayce’s lifeless body with his own hands. That’s how he knows the man in front of him right now cannot be Jayce Talis.
“Viktor, I’m not dead,” the new hallucination of Jayce Talis is saying in front of him, but Viktor is barely paying attention. “I mean, this version of me—”
“What do you think happened to him?” the old hallucination of Jayce Talis drawls. “He looks worse than me.”
The new Jayce—Talis, maybe he should call him—takes a step forward, staring at him like he’s the ghost. “Viktor, what happened? Your hair, this place…”
He sets the hammer down and keeps moving forward. With Viktor backed up against his workbench, there’s nowhere left to go. He tightens his grip around his knife handle again, debating whether he should dodge left or right. Talis presses forward, and then suddenly Talis is hugging him, the arms wrapped around him solid and warm. Real. Viktor drops his light back on the workbench.
“You’re dead,” he whispers. He can see Jayce over Talis’s shoulder, can see the blood. “You can’t be here.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” Talis says, holding Viktor tighter like he’s afraid something is going to take him away. “The Anomaly, it’s— I’m meant to be somewhere else. But I had to find you—this universe doesn’t have hextech?”
Viktor is speechless, arms hanging limp at his sides. Talis seems like he’s half talking to himself as he continues, “Of course, if I’m dead then maybe we never—”
He stops talking when Viktor, as if in a trance, lifts his arms and wraps them around Talis’s shoulders, holding him tight as he confirms for himself that this is real. That Jayce—some version of him—truly exists and is in front of him right now, a flesh and blood human he can touch.
Torn between wonder and incredulity, he doesn’t notice at first that Talis is starting to tremble in his arms. There’s a sharp intake of breath, then dampness against his neck.
“Is he crying?” Jayce asks, a sneer on his bloody face.
Viktor frowns and tightens his arms around Talis almost protectively. It’s one thing if Jayce is cruel to him. He deserves it, after all, for being part of the events that led to his death. But this man in front of him is Jayce himself. He doesn’t deserve any of it.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Talis is repeating, face pressed to Viktor’s neck. “It’s been so long…”
Viktor has a million questions: so long since what? Where did Talis come from? What’s with that hammer? Why is he hugging Viktor? How is he here? But the one he asks is,
“How are you alive?”
Talis straightens up but keeps hold of Viktor. “It was touch and go for a while there,” he says somewhat ruefully. “I thought if the busted leg didn’t kill me, the damn lizards would. But I made it out and—”
“No,” Viktor interrupts. “The day you were expelled from the Academy.”
Talis falls silent, watching him. His hand slides up Viktor’s back and Viktor shivers. A dead man should be colder, he thinks. Talis’s large hands are warm even through his shirt.
“You were there,” Talis says softly, like Viktor should know this. Like this isn’t the most shameful moment of Viktor’s life. “You saved me.”
Ah. So this Jayce is just as cruel as the one in his head.
When Viktor doesn’t say anything, Talis lifts his hands to cup Viktor’s face. “Viktor…what happened here? Why aren’t you at the Academy?”
“I couldn’t stay there,” Viktor says. “Not after what happened.”
Talis studies him, his face serious. “I jumped.”
Viktor can’t parse all the emotions in Talis’s expression. Regret, maybe. Sadness. Disappointment, but Viktor doesn’t know of who, himself or Viktor.
“They wouldn’t let me continue your research anyway,” Viktor adds. When he’d realized he couldn’t stay in Piltover after everything, he’d stolen as much research as he could and he’d run. A whole lot of good that had done—ten years later and he has nothing to show for it.
“So you’ve been here all this time?” Talis looks around at the cluttered, dimly lit room. “Working on hextech?”
“Failing at hextech,” Viktor says, bitter. He eyes Talis’s fallen hammer. “I take it you succeed in…wherever you came from?” To be honest, he still isn’t entirely sure this isn’t another hallucination. Maybe he’s unconscious on the lab floor and this is the final creation of a dying mind.
“We did,” Talis says. He’s still holding Viktor’s face, still crowding him back against the workbench. Still looking at him like he’s afraid to let go. “Together.”
Things finally start to click into place.
“Aw, that’s cute,” his Jayce says, standing at the far end of the workbench as if he’s been there the whole time. Viktor doesn’t even blink; he’s used to Jayce coming and going. “A world where you and I solved hextech together. I wonder what you did wrong in this one that you weren’t allowed to have that?”
Viktor first sees Jayce again three weeks after the incident, when he falls asleep at his desk late in the evening. His work and his sleep have both suffered greatly since, and while Heimerdinger had been understanding at the start, Viktor knows people’s patience is wearing thin.
He wakes in near darkness, office lit only by the dim light of his desk lamp, and he rubs a hand over his face as he lifts his head from the arm he’d been using as a pillow. Across from him, Jayce Talis’s bloody face stares back from the other side of the desk.
“You’re looking rough,” Jayce says. Viktor jerks back so sharply his chair nearly tips over.
“You can’t be here,” he says, mostly to convince himself. “You’re dead.”
Jayce shrugs. “That doesn’t seem to be stopping me.”
Viktor rubs his eyes, trying to banish the specter from his sight, yet the vision remains.
“At least I gave myself a break before going mad,” Viktor mutters under his breath, dropping his hands from his face.
Jayce glances down at the notebook laid open on the desk before Viktor, the journal that Viktor had stolen from Heimerdinger’s office when he'd decided to go talk to Jayce. He'd read it multiple times by now, trying to learn more about the man they'd sent to an untimely death.
“Not much of a break,” Jayce remarks. He looks exceptionally relaxed for a man with blood dripping into his eyes. “Have you solved it yet?”
Vaguely aware that conversing with a hallucination is crazy, Viktor closes the book. Jayce stands so abruptly that if Viktor hadn’t already known he wasn’t real that would be proof.
“You should do it,” Jayce says, reaching out to put his hand on the cover. “Complete hextech. You owe me.”
Viktor’s stomach churns. He stares at Jayce’s wrist; he isn’t wearing his bracelet.
“Why are you hesitating?” Jayce demands. “What else do you have to show for your life?”
Slowly, Viktor reaches out and reopens the notebook. He doesn’t see Jayce for the rest of the night.
“I still don’t know why you’re here,” Viktor says to Talis, ignoring Jayce’s taunts.
“I’m trying to fix my mistakes. Seems like I’m good at making those.” Talis’s expression is grim. “I’m not supposed to be here, the hextech in my world, it’s— it’s not good.”
“What do you mean, not good?”
Talis shakes his head, bringing his other hand up to cup Viktor’s face with both hands now. His gaze is sharp, pinning Viktor in place as surely as if he’d held him down.
“What’s happened?” Viktor presses, like this isn’t the most physical contact he’s had in a very long time. “If you tell me I can avoid it here—”
“You can’t,” Talis snaps. “You can’t avoid it. You have to leave it be, Viktor. Hextech, magic, all of it.”
There’s a tremble in Talis’s hands again, fingers unsteady where they frame Viktor’s face. It’s only then that Viktor notices the crystal embedded in Talis’s skin, surrounded by multicolored webbing. A corruption of the arcane. Viktor reaches up and grabs Talis’s wrist, trying to get a better look. The rune on the crystal is different from the rune on Jayce’s bracelet that he wears on his own wrist.
Viktor feels sick. Has he been looking in the wrong place all this time? Was Jayce’s rune not the right one at all?
“Viktor, look at me,” Talis says roughly, though his hands are gentle as he tilts Viktor’s head back up to meet his gaze. “You have to stop working on hextech. You need to move on with your life.”
There’s something crumbling inside him. He can feel his heart jackrabbiting in his chest. Useless, useless. All this work and nothing to show for it. Proof of his failure staring him in the face. Is he nothing without Jayce?
“I can't,” Viktor whispers. “I can't. It's all that's left of you.”
Jayce leans against the workbench beside him, watching the scene with clinical disinterest. “Don’t you cry now too,” he says.
Viktor ignores him, rubbing his thumb over the crystal embedded in Talis’s wrist. Talis shivers at the touch, cradling Viktor’s face in his big hands.
“Hextech is nothing but trouble, trust me. You’re better off without it.” The implicit ‘without me’ hangs in the air around them.
Viktor tightens his grip around Talis’s wrist. “You don’t know me.”
Talis smiles at him, but there’s a sadness in his eyes Viktor can’t decipher. “I know you, Viktor. I’ve known you longer than either of us realized.”
The broken thing inside Viktor fragments a little more. He wants that, more than anything he ever has before. More than cracking hextech. How many times has he poured over Jayce’s journals, committing each line to memory? Every equation, every note, every doodle. Every brilliant idea now etched permanently into Viktor’s mind, right next to the images of Jayce’s body on the cold, hard ground.
“He’s not talking about you,” Jayce says, leaning in close to Viktor to study Talis’s face. “You can see it in his eyes.”
“Shut up,” Viktor mutters, gaze flicking to the side.
A flicker of hurt passes over Talis’s face. “Sorry?”
Viktor’s gaze immediately snaps back to Talis. “No, not— Not you.”
There’s still confusion in Talis’s expression, but at least the hurt look is gone. He studies Viktor quietly, a small furrow in his brow, and lifts one hand from Viktor’s cheek to card his fingers through Viktor’s hair.
“I’ve never seen you with hair this long,” Talis says almost wistfully, curling the ends of a few long strands around his fingers. “It looks pretty.”
“It looks like you don’t take care of yourself,” Jayce counters. He’s still at Viktor’s shoulder, practically leaning his bloody head against him.
“Stop it,” Viktor snaps, and the furrow in Talis’s brow deepens.
“Viktor?”
“Stop it,” Viktor repeats more firmly to Talis this time, bringing his hands up between them as a barrier. “You don’t know me, you know some other Viktor. You don’t know what I need or what I want. And I don’t— I don’t know you.”
The last of the thing in his chest crumbles to dust as he speaks, leaving him hollow. Maybe he’s been hollow this whole time and just never realized it. What’s been keeping him going all this time? Regret? Guilt? It couldn’t possibly have been hope.
He flattens his hands against Talis’s chest and pushes, but Talis doesn’t move. He’s looking at Viktor seriously again, one hand on his shoulder, the other still tangled in his hair.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly, so solemn and tender it hurts Viktor to hear. “I’m sorry I left you here all alone.”
There’s heat in the corners of Viktor’s eyes, shameful tears welling up. “Not alone. I see you all the time. Everywhere.”
Talis’s arms are around him again, holding him tight. “I’m sorry. I can fix this. I can—I can fix this.”
“How?”
Talis gives no response and Viktor clenches his eyes shut, trying to hold back his tears.
“Hextech is the only way,” he murmurs. “If I can complete his vision…maybe I’ll finally have peace.”
Hands on Viktor’s face once again, Talis gently wipes away the tears that Viktor hadn’t been able to prevent from falling. “It’s not worth it, V. I’d give up hextech a thousand times over for another chance with you.”
There’s vital context missing from that statement, Viktor is sure, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t even care that Talis isn’t talking about him. All that matters is that he fists Talis’s jacket in both hands and pulls him in by the lapels, catching Talis’s mouth against his own. It sparks something in the empty cavity of his chest, a desperation that blooms brighter than anything he’s felt in a long time.
It must spark something in Talis too, because after a moment of shock he moans and wraps his arms back around Viktor, pushing his tongue into Viktor’s mouth without hesitation. The edge of the workbench digs into Viktor’s back as Talis presses against him, deepening the kiss with a needy fervor that has Viktor reeling. Nobody has touched him like this in so long and he whimpers into Talis’s mouth, the sound swallowed by the slide of Talis’s tongue against his own.
He’s on the edge of frantic as he shoves his hands under Talis’s jacket and runs them over his chest, then down over his waist to his hips. Talis jerks forward, rocking against him, and Viktor can feel something hot and hard pressed against his stomach. He fumbles for Talis’s pants, working them open and shoving a hand inside, any hesitation or sense of shame replaced entirely by wanting.
He hears no protest from Talis, drawing a low groan from him as Viktor’s hand slides along the length of his cock, freeing him from his clothing. Precome collects at the head and Viktor uses it to slick the way as he moves his hand, his grip not quite smooth enough. Talis hisses and bucks into Viktor’s hand, clearly not caring how rough Viktor is. He grips the edge of the workbench with both hands, slumped forward with his head on Viktor’s shoulder, panting raggedly as he watches Viktor stroke him.
It’s almost surreal to be touching someone who both is and is not Jayce Talis like this, and Viktor bites back a gasp of disbelief that sounds half like a sob. The sound spurs Talis into action, however, his hands shifting from the workbench to Viktor’s hips, then to the buttons at the front of his pants. He’s barely half hard but Talis spits into one hand and then wraps it around Viktor, stroking him slowly at first, like he’s afraid to hurt him, and then picking up speed to match Viktor’s rhythm once Viktor hardens under his touch.
Talis braces him with one arm against the workbench, keeping him upright as his legs begin to tremble. Talis’s breaths are coming heavier, his cock twitching and leaking more precome in Viktor’s hand, and after a few moments longer he bends down and presses his forehead to Viktor’s.
“Viktor,” Talis moans, and Viktor’s breath hitches at the way his name sounds coming out of Talis’s mouth with such reverence. “Viktor, please…”
Viktor doesn’t know what he’s asking for, but he tries to give it to him all the same, reaching for Talis’s wrist and gently pulling him away for a brief moment. Talis whines at the loss, but Viktor ignores him, lining up their cocks before he wraps Talis’s larger hand around the two of them. Talis doesn’t need to be told twice to start stroking them together, and Viktor moans and rocks his hips instinctively into the tight heat.
The movement makes Talis grunt and tighten his grip, and he brings his other hand up to cup the back of Viktor’s head, cradling him far too gently as he captures his mouth for another searing kiss. A full-body shudder goes through Viktor then and he thinks he might be crying again, overwhelmed by the onslaught of sensation. He blindly grasps at their cocks with one hand, trying to help Talis get them both off.
“I’ve got you,” Talis is murmuring over and over in between kisses, shifting his grip so that their fingers are entangled as they pump their hands in unison over their aching erections.
Neither of them last much longer after that. Talis reaches his climax first, trembling against Viktor as he comes apart, and Viktor loses the fragile thread of control he’d been clinging to soon after, muffling his cries against Talis’s shoulder. They hold each other through it, not letting go once the moment has passed.
Eventually Viktor lifts his head and Talis leans against him, temple to temple, beard scratching at Viktor’s cheek.
“I don’t think I can stay much longer,” he whispers. “I can feel something calling me.”
Viktor closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, composing himself before he straightens up. His shoulder aches where his crutch has been caught under his arm all this time, his leg protesting with equal irritation. Talis steadies him with a firm hand on his shoulder, the other carefully tucking them both back into their pants. Viktor grabs a rag from the bench and offers it to Talis to clean his hand, then does the same when Talis is done.
“I’m going to figure out how to fix this,” Talis says. “I promise.”
Viktor smiles, small and sad. “We’ll see.”
There are wisps of an ethereal light beginning to appear around the room. Talis cups Viktor’s face one more time, rubbing his thumb over Viktor’s sunken cheek. Then he steps back, legs unsteady as he stumbles over to his hammer and grips the handle. The light picks up, swirling now, and an eerie ringing pierces the silence in the room.
“Jayce?” Viktor calls out. The name feels strange on his tongue, so long out of practice saying it. “I hope you get that second chance with your Viktor.”
And then Talis is gone, not a glimmer of arcane light remaining.
“Well, he seemed sweet,” the unmistakable acerbic voice of his ever-present companion pipes up.
Viktor chokes back the anguish that rises in his throat. He’d hoped that somehow, against all evidence, this Jayce would have disappeared with the other one.
But he’s never had that kind of luck.
There is a man standing on the ledge of a half-destroyed apartment building. The sky above is somber, stars hidden behind dark clouds in the distance. The man’s life is in ruins around him, just like the rubble of the building.
Behind him, the air crackles and sparks, the fabric of reality twisting like a kaleidoscope. Something grabs him by the collar of his shirt and pulls him backwards. He stumbles back, the force of it landing him on his ass on the ground.
Another man is there, tall and imposing. He's cleaned up since the last time he was here, hair and beard neatly trimmed, clothes new and whole, brace sturdy and polished. A spiderweb imprint of someone's fingers span across his brow like a glowing crown.
“Don't waste this,” the man says, haloed by the light of some strange anomaly that seems to fill the space of the entire room.
And then he is gone, the light and color and crackling uneasiness in the air gone with him.
“Am I interrupting?” a voice says from the door, unsure.
The man on the ground turns his head, looks at this newcomer, recognizes him from earlier today. Recognizes the book in his hand and the look of hunger in his eyes, the need to know, to discover. To create. The newcomer crosses the room, tucks the notebook under the arm that leans on his cane, and holds out his free hand.
Jayce Talis clasps the proffered hand and gets to his feet, buoyed by hope. Viktor's hand is warm in his, slender and calloused. The ledge feels a thousand miles away.