Archive of Our Own

"There's no need to worry. These shipping lanes are perfectly safe. No Council vessel has ever been attacked along this stretch before," Mel says, confidently, about sixteen seconds before the first cannonfire impacts their hull.

The airship Innovation pitches and bucks beneath their feet like a wounded animal. Feet sliding on the slick, smooth wood of the deck, Jayce manages to get a steadying arm around Mel’s waist. He hauls them both upright and together, they stumble away from the railing that rings around the deck, and the endless, plummeting void on the other side.

“Pirates! Pirates spotted! Off the port bow!” someone screams, from somewhere in the haze. The clouds had settled in around the airship a few hours ago, thick as molasses and twice as sticky. With visibility this abysmal, it's no wonder someone was able to sneak up close enough to take a shot.

"Get eyes on the hostile vessel! Prepare to return fire!" the Innovation's first mate bellows. "And someone get the damn Councilors belowdecks!"

"First time for everything, I guess?" Jayce says to Mel, forcing a smile.

"I stand corrected," she acknowledges, prim and collected, despite the force of her grip on Jayce's arm.

They're staggering in the direction of the hatch that opens down to the gun deck when there is another muffled crack of cannonfire, like a distant peal of thunder. The ship convulses again and begins to list, one side of the deck dropping noticeably lower than the other. It's rapidly becoming nearly impossible to keep his footing.

"We're losing altitude!" someone shouts from the forecastle.

"Prep the landing gear! Drop the ballast! Get us out of range," the first mate commands.

Mel's hand goes to the pistol she's wearing, strapped to her hip. Jayce wishes, not for the first time, that he'd thought to bring his hammer with him, although he's not admittedly sure what good it would do him in a pitched airship battle.

A simple survey of Piltover's shipping lanes. The safest stretch of air above this half of the continent. With luck, you and Councilor Medarda will be back by the close of the month. It might even be boring.

Jayce should've known better. He's never had that kind of luck.

A massive black shape emerges through the gloom, sidling up alongside the long flank of the Innovation. There's a sudden sound, clear and high, like the call of a whistle. Blurry forms, shrouded by the clouds, swing from the pirate vessel. They land on the Innovation's deck, and the first gunshot splits the air, and the world around him descends into chaos.

Jayce makes a grab for Mel, but one of the sturdier Piltovan sailors has already grabbed her and is carting her away, through the throng of moving bodies. She tosses a look at Jayce over her shoulder and shouts, "I'm fine! Get to safety!" before being swallowed by the mayhem.

Jayce takes a single step toward the spot where she disappeared.

Before he can continue forward, a pirate steps in front of him, two and a half feet of naked steel glimmering in the pale half-light. Jayce ducks the sword's first strike by instinct alone. It is a very near thing; he feels the wind off the blade as it passes by his ear. 

Skin buzzing with the proximity, Jayce hauls off and punches the pirate in the face. The man reels back several steps, head tipped backwards, and Jayce spots the tattoo across the center of his throat: an open, staring eye, simply inked with thick lines.

Silco, Jayce realizes. This isn't a coincidental raid, or a bit of bad luck. Their ship was chosen on purpose - probably because of Jayce and Mel. 

It's the last thought he has before something heavy impacts the back of his head. The world erupts in a shower of sparks, like the byproduct of hot metal striking together in the forge. Jayce staggers forward, and something roughspun closes firmly around his vision, and then everything goes dark.

Jayce doesn't so much wake up as claw himself out from the bottom of a deep pit.

The hood or bag that had been secured over his head is gone now. When he cracks open one eye, the sky briefly dips and spins sickeningly above him before sharpening into view. Every inch of his body aches, but there's a sharper, more urgent sort of hurt issuing from his shoulders. He goes to move his arms, to push himself up off the ground, but meets a sharp tug of resistance. His arms have been tied behind his back.

"Ugh," he says, blearily.

"The Piltie's up," a rough voice growls, from somewhere above him. Jayce isn't exactly sure how long he's been out, but the clouds are still hanging close around them. Between the ache in his head and the haze, it's hard to make out anything beyond vague shapes.

One thing is obvious, though. This is not the Innovation.

The toe of a boot nudges him over and onto his side, none-too-gently. "Get up and get ready to meet the captain," one of the pirates snarls.

"Silco?" Jayce asks, his voice a little muzzy with disuse.

"As if he'd bother hiking way the hell out here for the likes'a you," the pirate replies. "Nah, we're takin' you to him."

"Oh," Jayce says, wondering if he might be about to throw up. He doesn't think he's got a concussion, but it's a little hard to tell for certain when the pirate ship's deck keeps bobbing up and down in the clouds.

There's a wordless shout. It comes from… somewhere, probably. Jayce's spatial judgement isn't very good at the moment.

"What was that?" the pirate who'd kicked him asks.

"Sure it's nothin'," another responds.

Then Jayce sees something impossible.

For a moment, he almost thinks it's lightning. The line of light cuts across the corner of Jayce's vision, lingering in the air the way the sun clings to your eyelids if you stare directly at it for too long. It's a bright, shocking green, sour as an apple.

An alarm goes up a split-second later, raucous and clanging. The noise pulses behind Jayce's eyes.

"Firelights!" someone shouts. "Firelights!"

"No fucken way they found us already," one of the pirates spits. "We ain't been gone from that Piltie ship longer'n an hour."

"They been followin' us," the pirate that kicked Jayce says. "Got some kinda new tech that does it for 'em, I heard."

"Who cares how they did it? Someone watch the Piltie, I'm gonna knock some heads."

Jayce awkwardly shoves himself up to his knees as the pirates around him scatter to different corners of the ship. He's been left with a single, pockmarked young woman with a mop of orangey-red hair. She has a deep, vicious scar running down the length of her face, from the bottom of her left eye down to her chin.

The pirate yanks a pistol out of the holster at her hip and points it at Jayce. There's a very slight tremble in her hands.

"They say you're a Councilor," the pirate says to him.

Jayce seizes on the opening with both hands. "I am. So if you let me go, if you bring me back to Piltover, I'm sure the reward–"

"Council ordered a raid on the factory where I was workin'," the young woman interrupts him, with a sneer that twists the scar on her face. It stands out against her freckles, a pale and shocking pink. "Said we was making supplies for Silco's fleet. Then, when an Enforcer left me half-blind with a defective tear gas canister, the boss fired me. Said I was a liability on the factory floor. Then I did start helpin' Silco, for real."

"I'm sorry," Jayce says. "That's not fair. None of it is. But you can still do the right thing, here–"

"The right thing," the pirate echoes, and when she laughs, there's no trace of humor in it at all. "Fancy that. Piltie Councilor, telling me to do the right thing."

She points the barrel of the gun directly at the center of Jayce's forehead. The slight shake in her hands has vanished.

"Could just kill you," she says, thoughtfully. "Say it was an accident. Back home, they'd call me a hero."

The pirate's finger tightens on the trigger.

Jayce squeezes his eyes shut.

Above Jayce's head, there is a sharp crack. Then, right beside him on the deck: a heavy thud.  

No gunshot comes. There is no pain, no spray of blood, no bullet in his brain.

Jayce cracks one eye open and looks around. The red-headed pirate is lying facedown on the deck a few feet to Jayce's left, eyes closed and mouth ajar, blood trickling from a new wound in her temple. She's still breathing, judging by the slow rise and fall of her shoulders, but she looks quite thoroughly knocked out.

There's a new shape standing above Jayce, their edges made watercolor-fluid by the fog. Jayce can just barely make out a series of vague impressions: a dark overcoat – a pale, white mask under a wide-brimmed hat – the glint of metal running along the narrow length of one leg – the shape of a cane.

"Well," a voice says, its tone made unnaturally deep and affectless by the mask. "This is interesting."

Jayce lifts his bound hands and says, "Please. If you're against Silco, we're on the same side. I can help fight."

"I do not doubt it," the figure says.

"Right. Yes. Good! Here, just let me–" Jayce begins, moving to stand up.

With a soft, high hum of metal, Jayce finds himself staring down the barrel of another pistol. His second, in as many minutes. He hopes he isn't making it a habit.

"I would not advise moving," the figure tells him.

Jayce falls back to his knees with a hiss of discomfort, mingled with helpless frustration. "Come on, look at me! I'm obviously not one of them!"

"I know exactly who you are, Man of Progress," the figure says. It's hard to tell for certain, with the mask's mechanical effect on their voice, but the words seem – strangely pointed. A little venomous.

"Hey, Gadget! Boss says we're dipping. You got anything worth bringing?" someone calls out, through the haze.

"You could say that," the figure (Gadget? Is that their name?) responds.

Another person appears at the first figure's side. Even at a distance, their hair is bright enough to make out through the fog: a shock of unevenly-cropped raspberry. Unlike the first figure, they don't stop a few feet away. Instead, they keep moving, dropping to a crouch close enough to look Jayce in the eyes.

Jayce recognizes this pirate immediately. Of course he does. It would be difficult to forget the woman Caitlyn broke out of prison in his name, a full half a decade ago.

"Hang on. No way," Violet says, peering into Jayce's face. "This is–"

"Yes," the first figure says.

"Isn't he the guy that–?"

"Yes."

"But, you–"

"Not now," the masked person says. They click their gun's safety back into place and step a little closer. Jayce can finally make out the details in their mask. Battered copper, carved with the narrow face and almond eyes of a fox. "Come with us or stay here," they tell Jayce, with a gesture toward Silco's airship. "Choose quickly."

Take his chances on a sinking airship, surrounded by enemies, or throw himself into the maw of an unknown beast and hope it doesn't bite him. It's really not much of a choice at all.

Jayce says, "I'll come with you."

Without another word, the masked person nods to Violet and turns on their heel, making for the pirate ship's wounded flank. Violet winks at Jayce and helps him to his feet, tugging a dagger out of her boot to slice through his bonds. His hands burst with pins and needles as blood floods back into his fingertips.

"Don't mind him," she says, tilting her head toward the masked man. "He's not much of a conversationalist."

Jayce shakes his head and rubs the underside of his wrist with the flat of his thumb, trying to work out the ache. "That's all right. Thank you for helping me."

The masked man walks to the edge of the upper deck, where a flimsy wooden rail holds back the open sky. He tells Violet, "I'll send someone up to get you." Then he steps onto the railing and hops over it, into empty air.

Jayce shouts wordlessly and stumbles several steps forward on instinct, one arm outstretched.

It's pointless. The masked man is already gone.

He stands there, frozen in shock and horror, until something hard impacts his shoulder.

Next to him, Vi is shaking with laughter, a hand repeatedly smacking Jayce's bicep. "The look on your face! Can't get rid of him that easy, Piltie," she says, between sniggers.

The wind is rising. It tears through Jayce's hair as he shuffles forward and closes his hands tight around the chipped, weathered wood of the railing. He peers over the edge, expecting to see nothing but dark clouds.

Directly underneath them, close enough that Jayce can pick out details on the deck, sails an enormous, deeply bizarre airship. It looks like it was cobbled together with a combination of scrappiness and sheer determination. None of the component pieces look like they fit together. The sails have been patched with mismatched fabric in multiple places; the towering mast is made from a smooth, honey-colored wood; the deck is mostly made from a puzzle-piece combination of steel and mahogany. 

Throughout the entire patchwork structure, Jayce can see a familiar, bright blue glow – along the helm, built into the wheel, at the bases of the swing guns. Somehow, this ship has been enhanced with Hextech.

All of that pales in comparison to the strangest feature of all. Growing straight through the center of the deck like some kind of bizarre fourth mast, is what looks to be a real, living, gigantic tree. Its sprawling branches drape over the ship, swaying in the high winds.

From the deck, the masked man looks up at Jayce, his eyes twin spots of copper light in the gloom. Then he turns and marches away, overcoat billowing behind him, until the cloudcover swallows him up.

"We're not jumping, are we?" Jayce asks Violet, hoping he sounds unflappable and brave and not at all like he's about to throw up over the airship's railing.

"Nope," Violet says. "Here, hold your hand up."

"Huh?"

"Just do it. Don't you trust me?"

"No?" Jayce says, baffled.

Violet considers this. "Well, that's fair. Do it anyway, though."

Jayce holds his hand up. Nothing happens.

"Is this some kind of hazing thing? Because I'm kind of having a bad enough day already," he tells Violet.

"Just give it a second."

Jayce gives it a second.

"Hey, come on," he begins, hotly, just as something grabs his arm and yanks him off his feet and into the air.

He shrieks. It's not dignified. He doesn't want to talk about it.

His brain immediately assumes that he's dying – flung out into space, careening toward the merciless earth. Instead, though, he finds himself hurtling forward, his feet placed on something solid, another body standing steadily just a few inches in front of him. 

He allows himself a single glance down, just long enough to understand that he's on some kind of hoverboard, leaving one of those trails of bright green light smeared across the sky.

"Who the hell are you?" yells the person who'd grabbed him, over the roar of the wind. They're also wearing a mask, although this one is significantly more bird-shaped than the first man's. When Jayce just lets out a helpless little yelp in response, they shake their head and say, "Never mind."

There's a whoop from somewhere to their left, and Jayce painstakingly forces his head to turn in time to watch another hoverboard shoot by. This rider is smaller than the one who'd grabbed Jayce, wearing an unmistakably catlike mask, complete with ears and whiskers. Vi is sitting on the back of the board, her legs dangling over the edge. She gives Jayce a cheerful little wave as they pass by.

Jayce deems this to be enough stimulation for the moment. He squeezes his eyes shut and does not open them again until he feels the hoverboard make contact with something solid. He stumbles off the board and doesn't plunge to his immediate demise, which is a pleasant shift in today's momentum. Then he blinks his eyes open and gapes around at the strangest airship he's ever seen.

If anything, it's even odder up close than it had looked from above. It has the bones, the essential shape, of any standard-issue vessel, but that's where the similarities end. There's the obvious – the actual, living tree looming up over Jayce's head, its crooked branches dangling over the deck like fingers on a massive hand – but that's only the first of the ship's impossibilities.

For one thing, the crew is shockingly young: the few sailors not currently wearing a mask look like they can't possibly be older than their early twenties. For another thing, the ship is somehow both utterly rudimentary and shockingly high-tech. It looks like someone took a child's drawing of an airship and enhanced it with the kind of cutting-edge innovations that you don't usually see outside military research and development. The whole thing glitters faintly with the unmistakable blue of Hextech.

Jayce turns on the spot in a slow circle, trying to take it all in.

"Is someone gonna tell me who this dude is?" asks the person who'd pulled Jayce onto their hoverboard.

"Slacking on Piltovan politics, Cap?" says the slight-shouldered rider who'd grabbed Vi. She pulls off her mask and clips it to her belt, next to an array of at least three different-sized guns. She's in her early twenties, blue hair tugged back into a single intricate braid, with a round face and a tell-tale, pinkish glint to her eyes. A Shimmer user, then – at least formerly. She grins at Jayce with too many teeth.

"I'm sorry, but can someone just tell me – where am I? Who are you people?" Jayce asks.

The person who'd grabbed Jayce removes the owl mask. Underneath is a face Jayce has seen many times before – on wanted posters, mostly, hanging up around the city of Piltover for the past five years.

Ekko, captain of the Firelights, looks much younger in person than Jayce had expected. He's wearing a long leather duster made from a battered, dark green leather. He's got a pistol holster on one hip, a simple wooden cudgel strapped across his back, and an oddly ornate antique pocket watch dangling from his breast pocket. He wears his white locs long, at least down to his shoulders, pulled into a neat ponytail and secured with a blue ribbon. He holds his mask out and one of the other Firelights – a tall Chirean with luminous green eyes and a shock of jet-black hair – swaps it with a massive tricorn hat in the same battered leather as his coat.

Jayce has been captured by two separate pirate crews in as many hours. That has to be some kind of record.

"So," Ekko says, setting the hat on his head and resting his hand on his hip, an inch or two away from the pistol holster. "A Piltie politician, then, huh?"

"Try Councilor," the blue-haired woman says, still smiling in a manner that somehow feels more threatening than if she'd had a knife to Jayce's ribcage.

"Interesting," Ekko says. "Captain's cabin in five." He levies Jayce with a considering look. "Do I need to be worried about you trying something stupid, Councilor?"

"No," Jayce says. Violet mouths something at him and he hastily adds, "Captain."

"Good," Ekko says. "Let's keep it that way. Jinx, come and help me with the inventory?"

"You got it, boss," the blue-haired woman – Jinx? – says, with a two-fingered salute tapped to her temple. Jayce vaguely remembers the name from Cait's stories about her Undercity misadventure with Violet, years ago. Jinx was Violet's little sister. She'd been working for Silco back then, if he recalls correctly.

"Captain's cabin, then, pretty boy," Violet says. She sidles up to Jayce and tosses a friendly arm around his shoulders. He knows it's probably the Firelight equivalent of tying his hands together, but Jayce will still take it. At least they aren't tossing him into the brig, or putting a bullet between his eyes.

Ekko's cabin is large and located at the airship's stern. Other than that, though, it isn't anything like what Jayce would have expected from a pirate captain's living space. It looks more like a workshop than anything. Its enormous, central table is covered in schematics and piled high with hand-written notes. Familiar tools for tinkering and metalworking hang neatly on a massive rack, nailed to one wall. There's no bed that Jayce can see, just a bunch of mismatched chairs and a single hammock, strung up like an afterthought in one corner.

The man who'd saved Jayce from death by point-blank gunshot is already waiting in the cabin. He's sitting in a huge wingback chair, set beside a massive set of windows that face out over the open air. When Jayce, Violet, and the Chirean enter the cabin, the man looks up and watches them silently. Unlike Ekko and Jinx, he hasn't removed his mask.

Without the clinging fog around them, Jayce can pick out details that he couldn't before. The masked man is far slighter than Jayce initially thought, the oversized coat and thick soles of his boots making him appear larger than life in the haze. He has an elaborate, coppery brace strapped around his right leg. It connects to a matching bronze vest, almost like a set of stays, that he wears under his leather overcoat but above the loose and mismatched layers of Zaunite clothing underneath. He has a white cane, run through with thin veins of Hextech blue; it's propped next to the chair within arm's reach, with the man's wide-brimmed hat draped over the handle.

For a wild, deranged moment, Jayce's brain judders to a halt and offers him nothing beyond a single name, repeated over and over again. It is a name that he has spent the last five years trying very hard not to let himself think at all. He very nearly speaks it aloud.

Then he reminds himself that plenty of people use mobility aids, and shoves the name back onto the shelf in the back of his head that he has methodically labeled DO NOT TOUCH.

"Oh? Actually decided to join us for this meeting? Wonder what's got you so interested," Violet croons to the masked man.

The masked man somehow manages to convey, I am deeply unimpressed, without speaking or moving or otherwise emoting at all.

The Chirean looks between Violet and the masked man and clears his throat. "Wait. Is this the guy that–"

"Sure is," Violet says, shoving Jayce into an armchair and patting him on the shoulder pleasantly.

"What the hell was a member of Piltover's Council doing aboard one of Silco's ships?" the Chirean asks.

"Getting kidnapped, mostly," Jayce says.

"Silco has been increasingly agitating for outright war, recently. I imagine publicly executing a Councilor would do the trick," the masked man says.

Without the howl of the wind, it almost sounds like he has a slight accent, under the chilly, robotic vocal modulation provided by the mask – but, no. That's just Jayce's imagination, running away with him.

"Oh," Jayce says, confronting his mortality much more seriously than he'd imagined he'd have to when he woke up on the Innovation this morning. "I… thought they were going to try and ransom me."

"Eh, it's possible," the masked man says. "Unfortunately, I think you're currently worth more dead than alive."

"Good to hear. Hey, anyone ever tell you that your bedside manner sucks?"

The masked man pauses briefly, and then says, "It's been mentioned."

The door to the captain's quarters swings open and Ekko and Jinx tromp in. Ekko turns to the Chirean man and says, "All right. Before we get to this nonsense. Scar, I'd like an encounter report, please."

Scar nods and straightens up out of his slouch, his shoulders squaring. In what sounds like a naturally soft voice, he says, "Aye, Captain. Enemy vessel was disabled. They'll have to land it within the next half-hour or so or risk falling out of the sky. The airship was carrying twenty barrels of unrefined Shimmer, which we destroyed. No fatalities on either side, although Javier's wrist might be broken. And, ah… we have a Piltovan Councilor, now."

"I will take a look at Javier after we're done here," the masked man says.

Ekko nods approvingly and then sprawls down across one of the mismatched chairs, dropping his elbows to rest on his knees. "Good. Now, what do we do with the Piltie?"

"Can we keep him, Captain?" Violet asks, making a kissy face in Jayce's direction.

"He's not a stray dog, Vi," Ekko says.

"He's not an ordinary Piltie, either. He's one of the most influential members of the Council," Scar points out, quietly.

"Not so much, now that Hextech has stalled out," the masked man observes.

That comment stings like a slap to the face. Jayce snaps, "We're not stalled out, we're working on beta testing new projects. Research and development."

"Of course," the masked man agrees. "Upgrades to the Hexgates. More efficient airship engines. Guns and bombs to protect your shipping lanes. The innovations of the common man, hm?"

Before Jayce can pull himself together enough to formulate a response to this, Vi clears her throat and suggests, "We could just bring him back to Piltover."

"Flying too close to Piltover would put the Sanctuary in danger," Scar says.

"We can drop him off within walking distance, then," Vi says, shrugging. "A little hiking never killed anybody."

"It's still a risk," Ekko says, consideringly.

Vi tosses her hands up. "Cap, I know he doesn't look it, but that bruised, water-logged, pathetic-looking guy is a Piltovan Councilor." ("Hey," Jayce says, wounded.) "Anything we do here is going to be a risk. Handling it this way might let us avoid a conflict with Piltover."

"We just could toss him overboard," Jinx suggests, her teeth bared at Jayce. It's the kind of grin that wolves offer rabbits, just before they tear out their throats. "Save us some trouble. Plus energy costs to fly back to Piltover. It's just economics, or whatever Piltover is always going on about when they raise our taxes and cut social programs."

The masked man says, "No."

There's a surprised beat of silence.

Eventually, Jinx says, "Okay, well, Gizmo's obviously biased. People with conflicts of interest shouldn't get a vote."

"Killing him will only create additional problems," the masked man says. "Right now, Silco is looking for any excuse to escalate. This would be handing one to him on a silver platter."

"I'm sure that's the only reason," Jinx says, inspecting her cuticles.

"Hey, now," Scar begins, pacifyingly.

There's a sudden burst of white noise. Jayce jolts, hand twitching for a hammer that isn't there, but it's just a small radio on Ekko's desk, hissing and crackling to life with an accompanying aura of a golden light. After a moment, an extremely familiar voice issues from the speakers, as clearly as if she was speaking from the adjoining room.

"This is Piltovan High Command, hailing the airship Sanctuary. Repeat, this is Senior Enforcer Caitlyn Kiramman of Piltovan High Command, for the airship Sanctuary. Captain Ekko, do you read?"

Ekko tips his head toward the radio. "Friend of yours?"

Jayce opens his mouth to respond, but it's Vi that says, in a much smaller voice than normal, "Yes."

Ekko unhooks a handheld speaker from the side of the radio and holds it up to his mouth. "This is Captain Ekko speaking."

"Oh, thank God," Cait says in a rush, immediately losing the stiff formality of her previous delivery. "Is Jayce there? Do you have him?"

Ekko hesitates, then says, "We have Councilor Talis, yes."

"Shit," Cait says. The radio static spits in time, as if agreeing with her. "Listen, Captain, you need to get him back here. The Council is making noises about a declaration of war."

"Surely rescuing one of your idiot politicians isn't grounds for war," Ekko says. ("Hey," Jayce says, again.)

"No, but kidnapping a scientist to force him to build weapons is. And, just an hour or two ago, someone slipped Councilor Salo an extremely thorough dossier with evidence that the Firelights planned to intercept the Innovation with that exact intention."

"That's bullshit," Ekko says, with real heat in his voice. "We didn't intercept the Innovation. It was one of Silco's Shimmer-ships. All we've been doing is cleaning up the Council's mess for them."

"I know that, and you know that, but nobody has ever attacked a Council vessel in what is supposed to be neutral airspace. And nobody has ever kidnapped a Councilor before. The public is furious. They want a demonstration that their government can protect them. No one will listen to me when I say you're innocent unless I have proof."

"And the best proof would be golden boy here hand-delivered to their doorstep, right?" Jinx says. "Great, sure. Nothing about that screams trap to me."

"It's almost certainly a trap," Cait acknowledges. "But it's the best chance we've got to prevent them from declaring war on all of Zaun. Not just its pirates. They'll march into the Undercity itself."

"What? That's insane. They can't do that," Jayce blurts out, before shrinking under the sharp look Ekko throws him.

There's a slight pause. Then, through the radio, Cait says, "Hello, Jayce. Be careful, all right? We need you back here in one piece." Then she adds, "Captain, please, believe me. If Jayce is not returned, unharmed, then Piltover and Zaun will be at war."

The radio heaves another ear-splitting crackle, and then falls dark and silent. Ekko lowers the handheld speaker away from his mouth and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Jayce nearly apologizes for the trouble, before remembering they're debating whether or not to chuck him off an airship, a thousand feet above the ground.

"Well, guess we're not dumping him overboard," Vi says to Jinx.

"We still could," Jinx mutters, with considerably less conviction than she'd had before.

Ekko sits back in his chair and tips his head, consideringly. His eyes glitter as he looks at Jayce. Watchful, like a bird of prey – like the owl he wears as a mask.

"You'll vouch for him while he's on board?" he finally asks the masked man.

"I will," the masked man replies, without pausing to think about it.

"All right. We bring him with us," Ekko decides. He turns to the masked man and adds, "Take him to the mate's cabin. He can stay there until we're back in Piltover. Also, if this is going to be a problem–"

"It won't be," the masked man assures him.

"Man. This is no fun. Can't we at least dangle him over the side by his ankles?" Jinx mumbles, as the masked man gets to his feet.

"No, thank you," Jayce says.

"This way," the masked man tells Jayce. He strides out of the captain's cabin without pausing to check if Jayce is following.

Jayce scrambles to his feet and shoots Vi a questioning look. At this point, she feels like the closest thing to an ally he's got.

She winks at him, then starts scraping mud out of her boots. Useless, thank you, Jayce thinks, in her direction.

When he emerges from the cabin, the masked man is already halfway across the deck. Jayce has to jog a little to catch up to him, falling into step just as they reach a wooden doorway built right into the base of the airship's impossible tree.

"It's - uh. A little unusual to see a living tree on an airship," he attempts.

"Yes," the masked man agrees. He opens the door and ignores the ladder inside entirely, hopping down to land with a muffled thump inside the ship's hull.

"You like to jump from stuff, huh?" Jayce mutters, electing to use the ladder, like a normal person.

The masked man doesn't bother answering, simply continuing to head purposely down the long hallway inside the hull. It stretches like a spine down the length of the airship, with doors set at uneven intervals on either side.

"Almost everyone sleeps together in the crew's quarters," the masked man tells him, gesturing down toward the opposite end of the hallway. "Ekko included. I'm taking you to the cabin that would ordinarily go to Scar, as the first mate. It might be a little bit dusty, but if you crack a window, I'm sure it will air out."

He stops in front of an unmarked door and shoves it open.

Inside, the cabin is dusty, as well as a bit sparsely furnished, but it's otherwise tidier by far than Jayce's apartment back in Piltover. A double bed hangs suspended from the ceiling, swaying minutely with the ship's movement. There's a small washbasin and a looking glass set against the wall, a trunk beneath the window for shoes and clothing, a tiny desk with a gas lamp in the far corner, and little else.

"It's nice," Jayce says, genuinely.

The masked man nods, like that was the right thing to say.

Jayce steps inside and looks around, touching careful fingertips to the wooden frame of the bed. It's rudimentary and clearly hand-fashioned, but very well-made.

It's finally beginning to dawn on him: he isn't dead.

He probably should be dead.

"I don't understand," Jayce says. He turns back to face the masked man, who's still standing in the doorway. "Not that I'm ungrateful, but… Why would you speak up for me, when the captain asked? Why take responsibility for a guy you don't even know?"

The masked man goes still. Under his overlarge coat, his shoulders square, as though he's bracing himself for a punch.

"I believe it was my turn to walk you back from a ledge," he says. Then he reaches up and finally, finally, lifts the mask off his face.

Viktor says, "Fair is fair. Don't you think?"

All of Jayce's carefully-constructed mental walls crumble. Scattered like dust in a hurricane.

He thinks, Viktor. Viktor. Viktor. Then his brain experiences a catastrophic systems failure, and he briefly stops thinking anything at all.

It's undeniably, incontrovertibly Viktor, but it's not Viktor as he was, the last time Jayce saw him. He looks… healthy. His eyes are bright and alert. His cheeks have color in them and just a little bit of fat. He's still composed from the same sharp angles, deliberate lines, but it's no longer the gauntness of terminal disease.

He has a new scar notched under his bottom lip, a fine feather-work of lines around his eyes. His hair is longer than Jayce has ever seen it, pulled mostly away from his face and secured back with a strip of black fabric. There's just a little gray growing in around his temples. Jayce never thought he'd see Viktor live long enough to go gray. To get wrinkles. 

He looks older. He looks beautiful. He looks comfortable in his skin.

He's alive.

Jayce catches himself on one of the ropes holding up the bed before his knees can give out.

"Viktor," he breathes.

Viktor's expression is deliberately, studiously blank. Jayce has no earthly idea what he's thinking when he replies, "Hello, Jayce."

"What is this?" Jayce asks, faintly. His ears are ringing. He feels strangely remote from his body, like his spirit has taken a step out of his skin.

"A pirate ship," Viktor tells him, missing the point in a way that feels deliberate. "Welcome aboard."

"A pirate ship," Jayce echoes, a little sharply. "I know it's a pirate ship. Why are you on a pirate ship?"

"Mostly because I'm their chief engineer," Viktor says.

"You can't be serious," Jayce says. There is an acid, sour burn beginning to rise from the pit of his stomach, up his throat, into his cheeks. "This is where you've been for five fucking years? Playing pirates with a bunch of Zaunite kids?"

"I'm afraid it's not a game," Viktor says, lifting one shoulder in a lopsided shrug. "I am quite authentically a pirate."

"You're quite authentically a massive asshole," Jayce snarls – not his finest work, maybe, but the circumstances aren't exactly positioning him at the top of his game. "You just fucking leave? Without a word? You steal our notes, you torch our lab, you up and disappear in the middle of the night–"

"Eh. They were mostly my notes, in fairness," Viktor says. "You weren't spending much time in the lab, at that point."

"Are you kidding me? That's all you have to say for yourself?"

Viktor raises an eyebrow. "What else would you like me to say?"

Jayce crosses the room and steps into Viktor's space. His fist closes in the lapel of Viktor's stupid overcoat. It's a little foolish, but he half-expects this whole thing to be some kind of hallucination. Something at the back of his brain imagines his hand will pass through Viktor like mist.

It doesn't. Viktor is inescapably, undeniably solid. Jayce can feel the heat from his body, even through the multiple mismatched layers of Zaunite clothing he's wearing. That, more than anything, makes this feel like more than a hypervivid variation on the same dream Jayce has been having for years now.

In his dreams, Viktor always has the clammy chill of a cadaver. This Viktor feels so warm under Jayce's hand, he thinks his skin might come away scalded.

Viktor's eyes slide down to look at Jayce's fingers, curled into the fabric of his coat, then tick back up to his face. His eyes, at least, are the same as they've always been – gold-touched brown, thick-lashed, sharply watchful.

Jayce gives him a tiny shake and says, "Say they're keeping you against your will. Say they tricked you into signing up. Say you know how worried I've been. You've been gone half a decade, Viktor. I thought–"

Just say it, he thinks, to himself. Say it, you idiot.

When the words finally come, he has to spit them out like a mouthful of poison. "You were terminal, when you left. I thought you must've died."

Viktor's hand closes around Jayce's wrist, holding him in place. The pad of his thumb presses against the frantic slam of Jayce's pulse.

"I'm not dead," Viktor says, gently, like he's pacifying a child throwing a tantrum.

That, more than anything, causes Jayce's anger to boil over. He feels like a banked fire that's been pointlessly smoldering without catching, for longer than he can remember. He feels like his heart is trying to force its way up through his throat and out of his mouth. He feels like he's one stiff breeze away from collapsing and dissipating, like a pillar of sand.

"No, I can see that," Jayce sneers, coldly. "You've been flying around out here, betraying our people, undermining everything we worked for, instead."

Viktor's composure finally cracks, one corner of his mouth ticking down, just enough to be visible. His fingers tighten around Jayce's wrist, clutching hard enough to ache a little. Something that might be triumph churns like seasickness in Jayce's gut.

"Our people," Viktor echoes, scathing. This close, Jayce can count the new scars on his face, the delicate lines around his eyes. Another for every year of his life that Jayce has missed. "Right. You know, I did think, after all these years, there was a chance you might have grown up a little. Good to know I overestimated you. Again."

Jayce gives Viktor a little shove, still clinging onto his coat. It ends up just sort of jostling him forward, putting their bodies even closer together. "You're going to lecture me about growing up? You? The man who ran away like a coward, the minute you disagreed with me once?"

"I wouldn't expect you to understand," Viktor says, icily.

Jayce can feel Viktor's breath, rapid and angry, against his cheek. His pupils are so wide, they nearly swallow up the gold of his irises. If Jayce tipped his face down, even a little, their cheeks would be pressed together. Their noses. Their mouths.

"Good, because I don't understand," Jayce says, and releases his grip, taking an unsteady step backwards.

Viktor steps away, too, his back bumping against the doorframe and halting his retreat. His eyes are blazing, his features fierce and angry. He's never looked at Jayce like that before. It settles in Jayce's veins like a shot of whiskey.

"For what it's worth," Viktor says, and then he takes a deep, unsteady breath and begins again. "For what it's worth, I really am… happy to see you again, Jayce."

Jayce squeezes his eyes shut and says, "Fuck you."

By the time he opens them again, the room is empty, and Viktor is gone.

Jayce spends the afternoon sitting with his back against the closed cabin door, staring at nothing.

It's perhaps not the most constructive of activities, but his partner is back from the dead. Only, he never died at all – he's just been flying around out here, spitting in the face of all of Piltover's laws on a Zaunite pirate ship. Going anywhere, anywhere in the world, except back to Jayce. 

His mind keeps circling the same three thoughts, gnawing on them like a starving dog with a bone.

Viktor is alive.

If Viktor is alive, it means he could have come to see Jayce, at any time in the past five years.

If Viktor could have come to see Jayce and didn't, it means he simply did not want to. More than likely, he hoped to never cross paths with Jayce ever again.

Even before Viktor set fire to their research and disappeared from Piltover, Jayce had known things were… breaking, between the two of them. After Jayce acceded to Mel's suggestion that they weaponize Hextech, it was like a thread had been tugged. The whole thing started to unravel. Jayce felt the strain, felt the distance, felt the fraying familiarity. Things that had once been easy suddenly felt fraught, jagged-edged. Sometimes, Viktor had looked at Jayce with wide-eyed confusion, like he was talking to a stranger.

It was fixable, though. Jayce had been so sure it was fixable. Together, the two of them could fix anything.

And then Jayce walked into the lab after one of Councilor Shoola's parties stretched into the early morning hours, and he'd found it smoldering and empty. Their notes were gone. The arcane crystals were missing. Everything Jayce had ever worked for, burned to the ground for a second time.

There had been a note left on his bedside table, in his apartment. The paper was held down with a washer rusted in a strange pattern, like splattered paint, if paint refracted and caught the light like an oil spill. In Viktor's neat, precise handwriting, it said, I'm sorry, and nothing else.

Viktor doesn't seem sorry. He doesn't seem like he's spent the last five years thinking about Jayce at all.

The sun is beginning to sink in the sky when a knock sounds at his door. Jayce rubs his face with the heels of his hands to make sure it's free of any final stray tears before shoving himself off the floor, turning around, and opening the door.

Vi is standing in the hallway, holding a tray of simple, hot food – a hunk of bread, a chunky stew, a mug of foamy wheat-colored ale. "Brought some grub. You're getting your own from now on, though, I'm not your damn butler."

"Thank you," Jayce says, maybe a little shakily, before adding, "Want to come in?"

Vi looks up from the tray and eyes Jayce over before whistling lowly through her teeth. "Wow. Chat with Viktor went that well, huh?"

Jayce huffs out a humorless laugh. He takes the tray out of her hands and carries it over to the cabin's rickety desk, tucking in silently. Vi watches him eat with a surprisingly serious expression. She waits until his plate is clean and his mug of ale is half-empty before saying, "I won't pretend I get how it is between the two of you, exactly, but I've… cared about a Topsider before, too."

"You're talking about Cait," Jayce assumes.

Vi scuffs at the floor with the toe of her boot. There's a reddish flush, high in the tips of her ears. "Yeah. I am."

Jayce waits her out politely, figuring that it's the least he can do, in exchange for the first food he's seen since this morning. He's taken another three sips of his beer by the time she continues.

"Does she ever – I mean, did she – has she talked about me, at all?"

"She told me what happened," Jayce says, carefully. From what Cait had told him about their prison break, Vi had been clever and fearless, cocksure and strong. He hadn't expected her to look this… shy.

Vi stammers, "And does she… I mean… Was she upset? About how we left things?"

Jayce considers this. "She told me you escaped Silco together and then met up with your little sister. She said she thought your sister believed you were dead, and that you both escaped with the Firelights. I think she might have been a little upset, but I don't think she was angry." He shoots Vi a wry little grin. "Usually, when Cait's pissed off, you can tell without too much trouble."

Vi's shoulders slump. Jayce thinks she might be relieved. "I had to get Powder out of there when I had the chance. She's my baby sister. I failed her, before. I had to take care of her, even if I wanted… Well. You know."

"Cait knows that," Jayce says. "I think she wishes it could've been different, but she knows."

Vi nods and sits heavily on the end of Jayce's bed. She kicks her feet and the whole thing sways a tiny bit side-to-side, like a child's playset. Then she says, "I think it can be painful to love a person who can never fully understand you."

Jayce downs the rest of his ale and asks, "How far away from Piltover are we?"

She gives him a sharp look, but allows the pivot back to firmer ground. "We're outside the range of the Hexgates, so at least a week. It might take a little longer if we run into any of Silco's ships. If there's an opportunity to disrupt a Shimmer shipment, Ekko's gonna take it. Guaranteed."

"Even with potential war hanging over our heads?"

"Especially then," Vi says. "You gonna be able to play nice with the Mechanical Marvel for a week?"

"We're both adults. I'm sure it will be fine," Jayce tells her, firmly.

She gives him a skeptical look but says, "All right, then. Try to get some rest."

And then she's gone, and Jayce is alone again.

He looks down at the empty mug of ale in his hand and wishes absently that he had another.

It is Jayce's intention to spend his week on the Firelights' pirate ship locked safely inside the first mate's cabin, with no one's company but his own. This plan lasts through his first day on board, and extends until approximately noontime on day two. Then the boredom gets to him, and he finds himself wandering out into the hallway.

As he explores, he lets himself linger over the airship's oddities. The hasty but loving woodwork, the slightly crooked corners, the quilted patchwork of different woods that makes up the walls and ceilings and floors. Everything runs through with thin veins of arcane blue, giving the whole ship a faint, barely-noticeable glow. Jayce traces his fingertips along the wall and feels the tiny fizzle and spark beneath his fingertips that he used to experience every day, in the Hextech lab.

Most of the Firelights are up on deck, working, but there are a few bustling around the airship's interior. Jayce spots Scar passing a baby with his precise coloring to another sailor. His large hands are very gentle on the baby's tiny head.

There is an open door right at the end of the hallway, all the way under the ship's bow. The room beyond the threshold was clearly originally intended to be an infirmary, but whoever is doctoring there, they seem to be using it more like a mechanic's workshop. Half-finished projects of varying complexity lay scattered on every table except for one low bench against the far wall, which has presumably been cleared for patient use. Prosthetic limbs, replacement joints, several pairs of eyeglasses, the coil of a Cochlear implant. Jayce takes a step into the room and peers more closely at one of the projects.

It's beautiful work.

It was unmistakably made by Viktor.

Everything in this room is Viktor's, in fact. The projects, the notes, the cot shoved into one corner with a threadbare pillow and blanket haphazardly tossed on top. The whole place has Viktor's fingerprints pressed into its very DNA. He might as well have signed his name on the door.

Jayce ducks out of the room immediately, furious at himself for the involuntary wave of pride and grief and affection that threatens to bowl him over, even now. He left you behind, Jayce reminds himself. He doesn't care if you live or die.

A head of copper-touched hair appears at the end of the hallway. Jayce and Viktor's eyes have time to meet, just for a fraction of a second, before Viktor is spinning on his heel and disappearing back around the corner.

See? he tells himself.

He still closes the door to Viktor's workshop gingerly behind himself, like he's handling something precious.

Up on deck, the cool wind hits him like an unexpected riptide. There's still a soupy quality to the air, a clinging hint of ozone, but the clouds have cleared, at least temporarily. The sky is a brilliant shade of blue, almost like the glow of the arcane crystals.

Jayce walks to the edge of the airship's deck and leans over slightly – enough to see the crawling expanse of the earth below them. They're passing over a chain of tropical islands, all near-glowing with the verdant green of living things. Jayce wonders, just for a moment, who lives down there. If they do things like declare war on their neighbors over a misconception.

Jinx is at the helm today. She's traded her bulky clothing and cat-shaped mask for a simple, white, cropped halter top, smeared in several places with what looks like axle grease. She looks young, relaxed. When she notices Jayce's attention, she smiles sweetly at him and flips him off.

It isn't until Jayce gets closer that he realizes there's another person at the helm with her. The kid is standing on what looks like an upturned fruit crate, holding onto the lowest two prongs of the wheel with a look of rapt attention on their face. They're unbelievably tiny, maybe eight years old, with patchy blue streaks dyed into their hair.

"Running a daycare?" Jayce asks Jinx, perhaps without much regard for the safety of his own limbs.

He's expecting threats of violence, at the very least. Instead, Jinx just scoffs at him and says, "As if. She's my co-pilot. Right, Isha?"

Isha nods firmly, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

"Most pirate crews don't bring kids along," Jayce points out.

"We're not most pirate crews," Jinx answers, snidely. "You think most pirate crews would bother to save your sorry ass? Ah, shit. Sorry, Isha. You think most pirate crews would bother to save your sorry butt?"

Isha removes her hands from the wheel to execute a few quick, sharp hand motions.

Jinx slumps over the wheel dramatically. "Ugh, fine, I'll put a fucking dollar in the swear jar."

Isha repeats one of the hand motions.

"Ugh, all right, all right! Three dollars!" Jinx complains. "Why are you so strict?"

Isha signs something: two fists, bursting outward. Jinx lets out a snort of laughter.

"What did she say?" Jayce asks.

"Says she's saving up to restock on fireworks, the little menace," Jinx says, rubbing her knuckles into the crown of Isha's head.

"I saw Scar with a baby earlier," Jayce ventures, judging Jinx to be in a good enough mood that she seems unlikely to stab him with something serrated. "Did everyone bring their families on board?"

"It's not like that," Jinx says, her expression sobering. "None of us have families waiting back home. We're all just the sorry leftovers."

"Leftovers?"

Jinx makes a diving motion with one finger and a low whistle, like the whine of a bomb. "When something explodes, there's the people right next to the detonation who get evaporated, but there's also all sorts of other people who get caught in the shrapnel. That's us." She pauses, clearly chewing something over, then points to Captain Ekko over by the forecastle and says, "That's why the boy wonder down there named the ship the Sanctuary. After we stole it from Silco, obviously."

"You're refugees," Jayce says. He looks around the crew again, at their obvious and jarring youth, at the cobbled-together sinew and bones of their airship.

He wonders who Jinx is thinking of, when she talks about a bomb exploding. He wonders if it's Silco or Piltover that lit the fuse.

On Jayce's third day aboard the airship Sanctuary, they spot one of Silco's Shimmer-ships, headed toward them on a collision-course.

Just as Vi predicted, Ekko grins like a maniac and gives the order to board.

Jayce makes his way to the deck and watches as the Firelights hop onto their hoverboards and streak toward the approaching ship like the fall of a meteor shower. They call back and forth to each other, a whirlwind of green light and joyful shouts. As far as Jayce sees it, they're flying directly into potential death with grins on their faces. How can someone be utterly fearless like that? What kind of heat creates steel that strong?

Someone small steps up to Jayce's side. He glances down. Isha looks back up at him. Her unruly hair has been wrestled into two stubby little pigtails – a mirror image of the twin braids Jinx is wearing today.

She reaches up silently and offers him a hand.

For a moment, Jayce thinks, Finally, someone with the sense to be afraid. Then she gently squeezes his fingers, and he realizes that Isha isn't seeking reassurance from him; she's trying to comfort him.

He hasn't seen Viktor, among the Firelights that have crossed over to the Shimmer-ship. Not that he's been watching for him, but, well. He hasn't seen Viktor. That's all.

The Shimmer-ship is considerably smaller than the Sanctuary – a dark and narrow thing, built for moving through the skies quickly and unseen. As they inch closer, Jayce can see the Firelights landing on its deck, like flies swarming the flank of some massive beast. 

An alarm goes up, metallic, like pots and pans clanging together.

One gunshot sounds, then another.

And then the Shimmer-ship is swallowed by a series of kaleidoscopic explosions, frothing and bubbling up in a riot of orange, turquoise, lavender, green. Isha gives a wordless little cheer, tugging at Jayce's hand and pointing excitedly, as if to say, I did that!

Jayce spots a blot of blue at the Shimmer-ship's helm. Jinx has taken the wheel and is steering the ship closer to the Sanctuary. They're near enough that Jayce can pick out details on the deck – bodies fighting, occasional bursts of multicolored sparks, the furious shouting of the boarded pirates. Someone tries to sneak up on Jinx from behind and, before Jayce can shout a warning, she materializes a gun from somewhere and shoots the pirate in the leg without so much as turning around.

A shout goes up from somewhere around the center of the Shimmer-ship's deck.

"Hostages! They've got hostages!"

Jayce freezes, automatically guiding Isha away from the railing and stepping between her and the approaching ship. He can see Vi moving through the throng, supporting someone's weight, their arm flung around her shoulders.

"This guy's injured!" she shouts, and that's when Jayce sees the blood. It's soaked through his pant leg below his left knee, shining dark and slick under the midday sun.

"Don't look," he tells Isha, looking desperately around for a way to help. There has to be something - a bridge he can drop, a ladder he can toss across, a spare hoverboard without a rider, something, 

One of Silco's pirates ducks around a Firelight and swings at Vi with a billy club. With the man in her arms, she's not fast enough to dodge the strike; it catches her in the shoulder with a horrible crack, and she shouts before going down to one knee.

There's a long length of sturdy rope dangling from one of the tree's towering branches. He's seen kids taking turns holding onto it, pushing each other's backs, each daring the next to swing closer and closer to the edge of the airship.

The Shimmer-ship pulls up along the Sanctuary's starboard side. They're flying in tandem, keeping pace, like a pair of lovers walking arm-in-arm.

The pirate takes another swing at Vi. She drops the injured hostage onto the deck. 

Jayce Talis, the dumbest man alive, thinks, Fuck it. Then he grabs the rope and takes a running leap.

For a moment, gravity vanishes. It's a little bit like that moment in the lab, when he and Viktor made Hextech work for the first time – suspended in space, weightless. Then it all returns in a dizzying rush and Jayce is falling, his arms and legs pinwheeling gracelessly.

He hits the deck of the Shimmer-ship and manages to keep rolling with the force of his momentum, likely narrowly avoiding a dislocated shoulder. He hops to his feet just a few yards away from Vi and the pirate she's grappling with, hoping that whole maneuver looked smooth and intentional and not like he just crash-landed in an accidental heap.

The injured hostage is lying on the deck at their feet, feebly trying to push himself away from the fight.

Vi tosses a look over her shoulder and shouts, "You're crazy, Piltie!"

"Yep!" Jayce agrees, breathlessly. Then he squares his stance, winds up, and punches the pirate in the face.

Jayce feels it under his fist as the pirate's nose breaks. They rear back, going cross-eyed, before collapsing backward onto the deck, senseless.

"Decent right hook," Vi comments, panting. She claps a hand on Jayce's shoulder and gives him a little shake. "Thanks for the assist."

"Anytime," Jayce yells back, over the roar of the battle around them. He stoops and collects the injured hostage into his arms. The man's face is going worryingly pale, the rhythm of his breathing uneven. "This looks bad. He's losing way too much blood, Vi. What happened?"

"One of Silco's morons got a little trigger happy in the hold – bullet ricocheted and went into his knee, I think."

Jayce starts to roll the man's pant leg up. He gives up before he even reaches mid-way up the shin. The blood has adhered the fabric to the man's skin, crusting into a thick glue.

"This is..." he begins. This might not be survivable, he means to say, but the words won't seem to leave his mouth.

"We need to get him to Viktor," Vi tells him.

"Viktor? He needs medical attention. Viktor isn't a doctor."

"He needs Viktor," Vi says, firmly.

From the Sanctuary's deck, one of the Firelights has tossed across a flimsy bridge made from rope and planks of wood. They've secured it to the Shimmer-ship with iron hooks, buried into the hard wood of the deck.

Under normal circumstances, Jayce would hesitate before entrusting his continued existence to a few pieces of hemp and some knots made by a bunch of teenagers. These are not normal circumstances.

He adjusts his grip on the hostage and barrels across the bridge, back onto the deck of the Sanctuary, without stopping to let himself think.

"He's down in the–" Vi is calling after him, but Jayce is already sprinting to the door at the base of the tree and kicking it open, jumping down into the hull. It takes his eyes a minute to adjust to the much lower light inside, so he runs half-blind until he reaches the open door of Viktor's workshop.

Viktor's bent over one of his workbenches, wrench in hand, his hair falling out of its low ponytail in loose waves around his face. He looks up when Jayce enters, and the wrench falls onto the table with a metallic clang.

"Put him here," Viktor says, indicating the bench in the back – the only surface in the room that's clear of odds and ends. While Jayce sets the hostage down, Viktor secures his hair back tightly and cleans his hands in the workshop's deep, square sink. "What happened?"

"Bullet to the knee, Vi thought."

"Femoral artery could be a problem. Hold him down, I need to get the leg cleaned off before I can get the bullet out."

Jayce places his hands on the man's shoulders and breathes slowly through his nose as Viktor slices the hostage's pant leg off, peeling it painstakingly away from his skin. Underneath, the knee is - a mess. More wound than skin. Jayce has to look away or risk throwing up.

"You're all right, Jayce. Just another minute," Viktor says, fiercely. He tosses open a nearby cabinet and reemerges with a vial of mercury-silver liquid and a shining syringe. He yanks up the man's sleeve, dabs the skin of his inner forearm with a cloth thick with the nose-burning stench of alcohol, and injects him with the silver liquid. The man thrashes, just once, and then slips down onto the bench, going still.

"Thank you," Viktor tells Jayce, businesslike. "Out, now."

"Don't you need help?" Jayce asks, feebly. 

"No," Viktor says, sharply, before looking up from the injured man and meeting Jayce's gaze with a slightly softened expression. His eyes have the sharp, intent look that Jayce once knew better than his own reflection. It's the kind of expression that always makes Jayce feel like Viktor could do anything in the world, if only he wants it enough. "You've done your part. Let me do mine."

"Okay," Jayce says. "Okay."

Viktor turns to his patient. Jayce sees himself out.

Vi finds him a few minutes later, slumped against the wall just outside the closed door to Viktor's workshop. The injured man's blood is caked on his hands, staining the front of his shirt.

She settles into place beside him, silently pressing her elbow against his. That's all.

It's enough.

Jayce forces himself away from his impromptu vigil some interminable amount of time later. Viktor still hasn't emerged from the infirmary, though Jayce isn't sure if that's a good sign or a bad one.

He washes his face and hands in the basin in his room, then pokes around the hold until he finds a Firelight willing to lend him a change of clothes. After changing, he looks at his reflection in the little mirror hanging above the washbasin. Between the dark earth-tones of the asymmetrical Zaunite clothing and the few days' worth of a beard that's grown in on his cheeks, Jayce barely recognizes himself. Maybe the extended stay on a pirate ship is rubbing off on him – he's starting to look the part.

Feeling a little more like a person with the blood scrubbed from his skin, Jayce heads up to the deck, hesitating only briefly outside the still-closed door to Viktor's workshop.

On deck, Ekko, Scar, and Jinx are clustered near the wide trunk of the Sanctuary's tree, their heads tilted closely together. They look up when Jayce appears through the door in the trunk, three sets of eyes with identically watchful expressions.

"Well, look at you. Finally decided to get some fashion taste, I see," Jinx says, approvingly.

Jayce casts her bright purple crop-top a skeptical look. She sticks her tongue out at him.

"Heard you helped Vi with our hostage situation," Ekko says. He gives Jayce another long, considering stare, then nods, looking very nearly approving. "Thank you. You probably saved that man's life."

"I'm not so sure, Captain. He looked pretty bad when I left him with Viktor," Jayce says, cautiously.

"If he's with Viktor, then you saved his life," Ekko tells him. "You'd better get some food and rest. But first, if you've got a second, there's something I want you to look at."

He nods to Scar, who passes him a battered copy of the Shimmer-ship's manifest.

"Do you know an Enforcer named, uh…" Ekko checks the cramped lines of writing scrawled onto the manifest. "Julien Pascal?"

Jayce thinks about this. "Oh! Yes. He's a shift supervisor at Piltover's northern port. He runs inspections and approvals for pretty much every airship that leaves or enters the docks."

"Well, here's his signature, approving passage for a ship with a hull full of Shimmer, Shimmer, and more Shimmer," Ekko says, passing Jayce the manifest. "Looks like your shift supervisor's on the take, Councilor."

Jayce looks at it. Then he looks at it again.

"It could be a forgery," he finally manages to say.

"Could be," Ekko agrees, in a tone that makes it clear just how plausible he finds that explanation. Jayce can't blame him. It's not like he believes himself, either.

"It's not like it's that impossible. Marcus was on Silco's payroll for years and none of you losers realized," Jinx says, shrugging.

"If there was an epidemic of Enforcers working with pirates, I'd like to think someone would have noticed by now," Jayce says, perhaps a little defensively.

"You ever stop to think maybe the problem isn't someone noticing?" Ekko asks, flicking his fingers sharply against the manifest. "Maybe the problem is that everyone already knows the Enforcers are crooked, and nobody in a position of power gives a single, solitary shit."

"I give a shit!" Jayce says, aghast.

Ekko sighs and reaches up to rub his temple with his fingers, like this conversation is giving him a migraine. "Look, Jayce. I just watched you jump onto a hostile airship and risk your life to help some Zaunite guy you don't know from Adam. I think you're a good man, and I want to believe you. Do you understand why I can't?"

Jayce says, "If this is true, then everything I've been fighting for, my entire adult life, has been a lie."

Ekko looks at him steadily and says nothing at all.

Jayce is nodding off, his back propped against the corridor's slanted wall, when the doorknob rattles and the lock clicks and Viktor finally surfaces from the infirmary.

Jayce jerks awake immediately, leaping to his feet.

Viktor looks up at him with a perplexed crease between his eyebrows. He looks exhausted. Even in the weak light provided by the ship's lamps, Jayce can see the faint purplish bruises under Viktor's eyes, although they're nowhere near as prominent as they had been, five years ago.

"Get lost on your way to your cabin?" Viktor asks him.

"Is he okay? The hostage. Will he live?"

The confusion on Viktor's face evaporates. "Oh. Yes. I had to amputate the leg a few inches above the knee. It will be a difficult recovery period, but he will live."

"You saved his life," Jayce says, collapsing back against the wall in sheer, unmitigated relief.

"You saved his life. A few minutes longer, and he would have bled out before I could stabilize him."

Jayce presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until he sees stars.

There was a time when he told Viktor everything, a time when sharing ideas and thoughts with him was like an essential extra step in Jayce's own cognitive processing. Impulse to feeling, feeling to idea, idea to Viktor. Even now, his instinct is to drop to Viktor's feet and press his face into his thighs and tell him everything: how overwhelmed he is, how frightened, how the world feels like it's balancing on the edge of a knife.

He manages to swallow almost all of it back. Everything, except for: "An Enforcer signed the Shimmer-ship's manifest." 

Viktor's expression is unreadable. He says, "Mm."

"That means an Enforcer – a top-ranked member of Piltover's law enforcement – knowingly authorized hundreds of pounds of the world's deadliest drug to leave from a Piltover port."

Viktor says, "So it seems."

Jayce shakes his head. "Viktor, listen to me. Silco is working with – I mean, I don't know exactly how many, but at least some of the Enforcers! They're on his payroll! Why don't you seem upset by this? For corruption of this scale to go unnoticed… we're talking about the biggest scandal in Piltover's modern history. This is a complete travesty of justice, and totally anathema to everything Piltover is supposed to stand for, and… and…"

Viktor looks at Jayce, and looks at him, and looks at him.

"You knew," Jayce says, with dawning horror. "You already knew."

"I knew," Viktor agrees.

"For how long?"

"Since the day I joined the Firelights," Viktor says. "Or perhaps earlier. Since Silco's first airships launched. Since the battle on the bridge that killed Vi and Jinx's parents. Sooner, maybe. I don't know."

"You could have told me!" Jayce cries. "Gotten me a message, somehow, even if you didn't want to see me. Or – or someone else, on the Council, if it would really be that awful to… I mean, Mel would have listened to you."

Viktor sighs, like Jayce is being extremely tiresome about this whole thing. "The Council already knows, Jayce."

Jayce is drowning. There's water on all sides, closing in. The pressure in his lungs keeps building and building. It's been building for days, since the second Viktor took off his mask and looked into his eyes.

"That's not true," he whispers.

Viktor waves a hand. "Eh, maybe not all of you. But I believe it would not be too challenging to puzzle together. If someone had a head for puzzles."

Dark water in his mouth, in his throat, in his lungs.

"I didn't know," Jayce tells Viktor.

Not unkindly, Viktor says, "I find that difficult to believe."

"I'm not lying to you. I've never lied to you."

A tiny ripple of frustration passes across Viktor's face. "If that's true, then, even after all these years, you're still nothing but the Council's useful puppet. You're still letting them pull your strings."

It would have hurt less if he slid one of his scalpels between Jayce's ribs.

"That's what you think of me?" Jayce asks.

When Viktor just gives him a silent, wide-eyed look in response, he turns on his heel and walks back to his cabin, slamming the door behind him.

Sleep eludes him for hours. When it finally closes in around him, he dreams of a fleet of blood-soaked Shimmer-ships with Piltovan manifests. He dreams of an empty hospital bed and a burning lab.

He dreams of a gasket spattered with arcane color, left on his bedside table, like it never meant a thing to anyone at all.

Jayce wakes the next morning to a note stuffed under his cabin's door. It says, I'd like to apologize, if you'll let me. It's unsigned, but Jayce knows the handwriting better than he knows his own.

For a moment, he thinks about ignoring it. He's thirty-four years old, though, not a pining teenager nursing a wounded ego. He doesn't know if it's possible to fix the remains of his relationship with Viktor. But then he thinks about leaving it there, getting off this airship at the end of a week, never seeing Viktor again, and his stomach turns a backflip. The decision is made for him.

He dresses in another spare set of Zaunite clothing and tries to finger-comb his beard and hair into order, the best he can. He goes to the galley for breakfast and makes faces at the truly appalling amount of sugar Jinx dumps into her tea. Then he makes a fresh cup of coffee – one sugar, extra milk – and heads down to Viktor's workshop.

The door is ajar when Jayce arrives. Viktor is standing next to a blackboard, furiously scribbling notes with a stunted little piece of white chalk. His hair is loose around his shoulders and just a little wavy.

Jayce knocks on the doorframe. Viktor jumps and spins to face him. He's wearing a pair of thin, copper-rimmed glasses. Jayce wonders when he started needing them.

"Oh. You came," Viktor says, like he's honestly surprised.

Jayce holds up the mug of coffee. "Truce offering," he says.

"Oh," Viktor says, again, a curl of warmth twining around his tone. "Well. Come in, then."

Viktor takes the mug from Jayce's hands and blessedly does not remark on Jayce's impeccable memory of his coffee preferences from half a decade ago. He sips it gingerly, thumb rubbing an anxious little circle on the handle.

Eventually, he says, "That's not what I think of you."

"Hm?" Jayce asks, looking away from Viktor's work-in-progress, on the blackboard.

"You asked, yesterday. If I really thought you knew about the collusion between Silco and the Enforcers. I do not, and I apologize for suggesting that I did. It was untrue and needlessly unkind."

Jayce picks at the fraying hem of his borrowed tunic. "Thank you for saying that, but I… I don't know. You were right. It seems obvious, in hindsight, that the problem wouldn't be fixed just because one corrupt sheriff died. I guess I just – hoped. Like I always do. I keep hoping, like an idiot, even when it's pointless."

"I have always admired that about you," Viktor says, quietly.

Jayce blinks. "Even when it's idiotic?"

"Perhaps especially then."

Jayce hesitates, and then asks, "Viktor, why are you not dying?"

Viktor sets the chalk down on the edge of his desk. It immediately rolls over the side, shattering in two as it hits the floor. He mutters a quiet curse.

"I keep doing that," Viktor tells Jayce, stooping to pick up the pieces. "Forgetting that the room is moving under me. Can't seem to break the habit."

Jayce gets there first. He scoops the chalk shards up and dumps them into the small dustbin at the end of the chalkboard.

"Viktor," he says. "Please. How are you alive?"

Viktor sighs and dusts his hands off. He's not really looking at Jayce, eyes tracing along the half-finished equations. "It's not a very pleasant story."

"Tell it anyway."

Viktor touches his fingertip to the chalkboard, smudging away one of the numbers. "It was simple, in the end. I just replaced my lungs," he says, eventually. "They're robotic now. Along with my right knee and a segment of my spine. If you've noticed Vi and Jinx have some… colorful nicknames for me, that's why."

Jayce says, "Oh."

Viktor continues, with the determination of a man who's ripped off half a bandage and is determined to finish the job cleanly: "Dr. Singed helped with the operation itself, of course, but I drew up the schematics and I built the replacements. Oh, ah – Singed was my Undercity contact. I was visiting him the day I was detained at the bridge checkpoint, if you remember that."

"Of course I remember that," Jayce says. 

"Right, well," Viktor says, pulling a replacement stick of chalk out of his desk's top drawer. "The disease was concentrated in the soft tissue of my lungs. I'll never be a strong man, and I'm still prone to catching colds, but the replacement solved the immediate issue. I am no longer dying – at least, not any faster than anyone else."

Viktor says it so casually, Jayce can almost believe it to be as easy as he makes it sound. The replacement, simple as swapping out a hearing aid or a contact lens.

It isn't simple. It's the miracle Jayce prayed for every single night for half a year, desperately begging for help from a god he didn't believe in.

Words aren't coming.

Viktor isn't dying. Viktor left him. Viktor isn't dying.

Viktor knew he wasn't dying and still decided that he wanted to live the rest of his life without Jayce.

"I see," he says, eventually.

"I know it all sounds very… alarming," Viktor says. He's still not looking at Jayce. His eyes are fixed on the blackboard. He hasn't made a single new mark on it in minutes. "Disgusting, even. But the lungs work pretty much exactly as organic ones do, minus the tissue decay, of course. And it was really very safe, as far as procedures go, and it did save my life–"

"Disgusting?" Jayce says. "Do you seriously think I'd care about something like that? Viktor, I would've lit the world on fire if it kept you alive one more day."

Viktor drops the new stick of chalk. This one shatters, too.

Jayce turns and walks out of the room before he can do another stupid thing, like rip his still-beating heart out of his chest and shove it, bleeding, into Viktor's hands.

On Jayce's fifth day aboard, the Sanctuary sails into a stormfront.

The call goes up around mid-afternoon. At this time of day, the light in this layer of the atmosphere should be so bright it's blinding. Instead, the whole world goes dim as the sun lowers itself under the swelling clouds, bubbling up along the horizon line like livid, blackish blisters.

"This'll be a rough one," Vi tells Jayce, with a cheerful pat on the shoulder. "Might want to hole up in the cabin with an empty bucket, Councilor."

Jayce's mouth is open and moving before the rest of him can catch up. "I want to help, if I can."

Vi tosses him a blatantly skeptical look.

"Look, I know I'm not a sailor, but I'm used to lifting heavy things and I've got four functioning limbs." Jayce wiggles his fingers in demonstration. "Let me help, Vi."

"It won't be fun," Vi warns him.

"I know that," Jayce answers.

"Like, it's gonna be really, really unfun."

"I know. I'm ready."

It is, in fact, really, really unfun.

Jayce expects the stormfront to come on gradually, the way rainstorms begin on the ground, a few stray droplets turning to a deluge. But the clouds simply loom larger and larger and larger, until the storm opens its maw and swallows down the Sanctuary in one massive gulp.

The airship pitches and tosses and convulses beneath their feet. Jayce had expected to be able to run around securing cables, lifting ballast, helping with tasks. Instead, he clings to his assigned section of the rigging and does his level best not to be flung out into empty air.

The rain is sharp-edged and stinging, half-crystallized into ice, and it batters at every inch of his body like a thousand tiny fists. His hair and clothes are soaked through almost instantly, clinging to his body in freezing clumps. The Firelight securing the sail beside him, a tall teenage girl who moves like she hasn't quite grown into her height yet, looks just as miserable.

From where she's clinging halfway up the mizzenmast, securing a length of rope to the sail, Vi looks down at Jayce. In the darkness of the storm, with the deluge around them, he can just barely make her out. That thick, dark eye makeup she wears is running in messy smears down her cheeks. Over the roar of the wind and the hiss and spit of the sleet, she whoops a laugh and shouts, "That's it, Piltie! We'll make a pirate of you yet!"

"This sucks!" Jayce shouts, before rainwater fills his mouth and he has to shut it again.

"I warned you!" Vi hollers back.

The airship heaves to the starboard side, sending Jayce's feet skittering across the slick deck. Around them, the clouds light up in a single, white-gold flash. Jayce feels a wave of static spark across his skin, raising the fine hair on his arms and the back of his neck.

He barely has time to blink the spots out of his vision before the air splits with a monstrous crack of thunder. The sound rings in the hollow base of Jayce's throat.

The teenage Firelight beside him says, "Oh, fuck," just loud enough to be heard above the screaming of the storm.

"We got lightning!" Jayce hears Ekko announce from his post beside the helm. "Adjust course! Three degrees port!"

"Three degrees port!" Scar echoes, and the crew gives an answering cheer.

Jinx tilts the wheel. The airship tips sideways again, with an almighty groan of wood and metal. Jayce manages to wrap a length of rope around his forearm a few times before he loses his footing entirely.

"Attaboy!" Vi calls down to him, pumping one arm.

Another flash of lightning erupts around them. This one is close enough that Jayce can actually see the bolt itself, forking fractals like cracks running through ice. It slices through the air and impacts the upper branches of the tree. Sparks fly, and the leaves begin to smolder, although the rain blessedly prevents fire from catching.

There's a bubble of turbulence that bursts beneath them. The world tips abruptly, everything in the universe tilting and tilting and tilting toward the Sanctuary's port side. 

The clouds look like a solid wall beneath them, hard and unforgiving.

Jayce's makeshift rope harness holds.

The teenage Firelight beside him loses her grip and falls, plummeting toward the railing and the sky and the end of her young life.

There isn't time to think about it. Jayce doesn't know what he would have done if there had been. He just acts: he releases his own rope and lets the downward momentum of the ship drag him along, his upper arm scraping painfully across the soaking deck. He makes a grab for the girl and manages to get a hand around her upper arm. Then he reaches his other arm out for anything, anything, anything.

He manages to snag that same loose stretch of rope that he'd used to cross to the Shimmer-ship, only the day before. "Grab onto the rope!" he screams, close as he can get to the girl's ear. She nods frantically and does so, both of her hands closing around it, the skin stretched so tight across her knuckles that it cracks. Another Firelight is working the mast nearby, and he reaches down to help, securing another length of rope around her waist to hold her in place.

Lightning flashes. Thunder bellows. The ship bucks. The rope slips out of Jayce's aching hands.

He falls.

The storm yawns around him. Every direction seems like it leads to nothing but open, endless sky.

He hits the railing hard, feels something extremely unpleasant give a nasty little pop inside his chest cavity. He hears the wood screeching beneath his weight. It bows and buckles and starts to give.

A pair of arms close around his waist.

Jayce wheezes as the force of the grab forces the air out of his lungs. His boots scrabble for purchase on the bending rail, his hands groping blindly for the arms around him. Thanks to sheer, stupid luck, he's able to plant his feet on the solid stretch where the railing and deck meet and shove upwards with all his might, launching both himself and his savior backward just as the Sanctuary sinks back to fly levelly.

Jayce hits the deck with his shoulder and an arc of pain issues down his arm. His savior collapses beside him, a narrow, bedraggled shape soaked through by the storm.

Jayce would have expected Vi, if his brain had been functioning enough to expect anything.

The person next to him, gasping for air, forehead pressed against the deck, is Viktor.

Once again, there isn't time to think about it – and Jayce isn't sure if he could think right now, even if he tried. Instead, he lets himself move by instinct. He rolls over and covers Viktor with his body, bracing himself on his elbows, which are planted on either side of Viktor's head.

Viktor blinks up at him, the rain battering against his face, looking young and terrified and lost, like he can't quite believe his own eyes.

Jayce opens his mouth, but words seem to have deserted him. Silently, he folds himself over, tucks his face into Viktor's neck, and waits.

It's difficult to say how long the storm lasts after that. Minutes, maybe, or a hundred thousand interminable hours. Eventually, though, the rain takes mercy on them and lets up, dissipating into a cold mist as quickly as it had arrived. From the helm, Ekko calls out, "We're through it! Open skies ahead!"

"I'm losing feeling in my legs, you giant lump," Viktor mutters, right beside Jayce's ear.

Face burning, Jayce jumps off Viktor and falls backward, coming to a seat with his legs folded up to his chest. He presses his forehead against his knees and forces breath into his lungs, trying not to let himself remember the feeling of being swallowed by the sky. Or the feeling of Viktor's arms around his waist. Maybe especially that.

There's a drumbeat of rapid-fire footsteps approaching them from across the deck. Then Ekko's voice says, loudly, "How monumentally stupid can one Piltie be?"

Jayce looks up from his knee-pillow.

Ekko looks just as disheveled as the rest of the crew, if not more so. His locs have fallen out of their usual neat ponytail and are hanging loose around his shoulders. Rain drips from the bottom of his green overcoat, pattering against the deck.

"What were you even doing on the deck during a storm? If you're dumb enough to die on my watch," Ekko begins, before taking a tremendous breath in through his nose and out through his mouth, as if to shore up his own mental strength.

"He saved my life, Captain," the teenage Firelight pipes up, quietly. She's standing a little bit behind Ekko, hands chapped and bleeding from clinging to the swing-rope. She gives Jayce a nervous little smile and adds, "Thank you. Um. Sir?"

"Since we just faced down certain death together, I'm pretty sure you can call me Jayce," Jayce says, forcing himself to his feet and offering her his own hand.

"I'm Aisling," she says. They both wince through the handshake, and then laugh a little.

"I need to take a look at you. I think I heard at least one rib break when you hit the railing," Viktor tells Jayce, rising to his feet with a look of stiff and painful dignity. His cane is lying on the deck a few feet away from them, half-jammed under a well-secured crate; he visibly winces when he reaches down to grab it.

"I'm fine," Jayce says.

Viktor says, "Hm," and then reaches out and pokes Jayce in the abdomen.

The pain is akin to taking a head-on, bare-knuckle, full-throttle punch. Jayce doubles over with a wheeze. Viktor looks deeply unimpressed.

"Infirmary. Now," he says, before turning and marching toward the door in the tree's trunk, his cane thumping against the deck like a punctuation mark.

Jayce follows meekly.

Aisling, for some reason, gives him a little thumbs-up and a mouthed, Good luck!

Viktor doesn't speak a word to Jayce as he tapes up his ribs and feels around his shoulder for a dislocation. He goes through the motions with clinical focus. The entire time, Jayce holds himself as motionless as humanly possible, acutely aware of both Viktor's proximity and his own naked torso.

He can't seem to figure out what to look at. His eyes keep snagging on Viktor like a hangnail catches fabric.

Viktor hadn't bothered to change into something dry before barking at Jayce to take his shirt off, so his clothes are still sodden and clinging. There's more weight on his body than there had been for all the years that Jayce knew him. He's still not a large man, but Jayce can no longer make out the spiderweb shape of his bones beneath his skin.

His hair drips onto the already-soaked collar of his shirt. His eyes are a sweet and honey-touched brown in the half-light of the infirmary.

Jayce thinks he might be going insane.

"There," Viktor says, stepping away. The air between them bites with an unseasonable cold. Jayce almost tells him that he wishes he'd come back, before biting down on his tongue nearly hard enough to draw blood. "I think you'll live, hero. No more acrobatics, though. Ribs have a tendency to heal slowly."

"You saved my life," Jayce tells Viktor. A stupid observation, but it's just about the only thing his brain is capable of processing right now.

"Somebody has to, if you're going to keep throwing yourself into danger like a fool," Viktor mutters.

"Why?" Jayce asks. "Why risk your own life like that?" And then he adds, because he can't seem to stop himself from pressing down on the wound: "I thought you were done with me."

Viktor frowns. "If I wanted you dead, I would've let Jinx toss you overboard the first day we picked you up," he points out.

"Not wanting me dead and nearly throwing yourself off the side of an airship to save me are two very different states of being, Viktor."

"Is it so unimaginable to think I still care about you?" Viktor asks, a note of annoyance in his voice.

"Yes," Jayce says.

"Yes?" Viktor echoes. "All right, well, let me disabuse you of the notion. I do care about you. Your safety and happiness matter to me. Is that what you hoped to hear?"

"Why the hell did you leave me, then?"

Viktor stares at him with that same wide-eyed expression he wore after he saved Jayce's life. He's still close enough to touch.

Jayce stupidly wishes he was wearing a shirt for this conversation.

"You left me," he repeats, much more quietly. "You left me behind."

Viktor hunches forward, parabolic, like he's trying to make himself smaller. His face turns away from Jayce. "I know. I do not regret it," he says.

"Then why–"

Viktor covers his face with his hand. The words are muffled by his palm when he says, "It would have destroyed me. Using Hextech to build weapons. I would have come to resent you. To hate the thing we made together. I couldn't do it, Jayce. I needed to leave while I still loved you.”

Jayce cannot move. He cannot breathe. The span of his universe has narrowed to this: Viktor's eyes, his hands, the downward slope to his shoulders.

I loved you, I loved you, I loved you.

"That's all," Viktor says, and then he walks out of the workshop and leaves Jayce alone.

After the afternoon has deepened into a scarlet-stained sunset, a knock sounds at Jayce's cabin door.

There's a tiny part of him that half-thinks it might possibly be Viktor, but when he opens the door, Vi is standing in the hallway. The makeup has been entirely smudged off her face and she hasn't bothered to reapply yet. Without it, she looks oddly round-faced and young. Like just a few of her sharp edges have been blunted.

"Captain wants to talk with you," she tells him.

"Oh. Right, okay," Jayce says, hoping his tone sounds unremarkable.

Ekko is already waiting inside his cabin when they arrive, along with Scar, Jinx, and Viktor. Jayce experiences an itch of deja-vu, remembering the first few moments he spent as the Sanctuary's passenger. The energy feels different today, though, somehow simultaneously less hostile and more tense.

 Scar inclines his head toward Jayce in a respectful nod. Jinx wiggles her fingers at Jayce in a wave; he can't quite tell if it's meant to be friendly or threatening. Viktor meets his eyes, and then looks away and doesn't look back.

Ekko nods for Jayce to take a seat. He does so, letting out a tiny, pained hiss of breath when his cracked rib issues a complaint.

"Look," Ekko says, without preamble. "I can admit I might've misjudged you. When we picked you up, I assumed you were just like the rest of them, up in your gilded tower. Willing to get rich and ignore the problems right under your nose. You've saved two lives since coming aboard my ship, though. You went out of your way to help even when you didn't have to. That's something I can respect."

Jayce shifts a little uncomfortably in his seat and says, "Thank you?"

"Don't thank me," Ekko says, sharply. "I didn't bring you here to kiss your ass. I'm saying, I misjudged you. And I think you misjudged me."

He walks around to the front of his desk and leans back against the edge, fingers drumming on the smooth tabletop.

"I'm not a pirate because I like this life," he says, leaning forward. Jayce finds himself instinctively shifting to mirror the movement, carried by the tide of Ekko's intensity. "I stole this ship and I made myself a captain. Why? Because while Silco was running his drugs and Piltover's Houses were selling weapons to the highest bidder and everybody was inching closer and closer to outright war, nobody was looking out for us. Regular people, hardworking people, Zaunite people. Nobody had our backs. Not the chem-barons, not the sky-pirates, and not Piltover's fucking Council."

Jayce thinks about Isha. Aisling. Ekko, Jinx, Scar, Vi. Viktor. The injured hostage, whose name he still hasn't learned. A shipful of forgotten people, forcibly carving themselves the space to survive.

He says, "I know."

"You know something? I think you do, now," Ekko says, like he's surprised by his own opinion. "I just want you to understand what you're going back to. Even when we get you back to your Council chambers and your fancy white jackets and your dinner parties. It's not going to change, Jayce. War is profitable. More profitable than peace."

Jayce shakes his head. "I don't believe that. I can't believe that. And you wouldn't still be fighting if you believed that, either. "

Ekko opens a hand, palm-up, toward the sky. "What do you suggest, then, Councilor?"

"We could try and change things," Jayce suggests. "Fight for Zaunite seats on the Council, proportionate to the population size. Root out the corruption in the Enforcers. With your help–"

Ekko clicks his tongue. "Reform. Incremental change. I don't know, man. Sometimes, I think the whole thing's rotten. Maybe it all has to be torn out by the root. Maybe that's the one thing Silco got right."

That feeling of standing on a knife's edge returns to him. Only now he can look down, and see that the only thing waiting for him on either side is another blade. Sharpened steel, all the way down.

"More violence, then, And when you're fighting to tear out the roots, what happens to your regular, hardworking people?" Jayce asks.

Ekko sighs. He closes his eyes. He's younger than Jayce was, when Mel asked if they would consider weaponizing Hextech. Younger than Jayce was, when he proposed to the Council that they use it against Silco.

Younger than Jayce was, when he lost Viktor forever.

"I don't know," Ekko admits.

"There has to be a way," Jayce says, quietly. Fervently. "A way to fix things. A way to help that doesn't get more people killed."

"Maybe there is," Ekko says. Then he stands up and turns toward the window, staring out at the sky. "I just don't see it."

On Jayce's seventh and final day aboard the airship Sanctuary, Ekko calls the crew to a halt after dinner and lifts a bottle of booze above his head.

"It's been a rough week, but we survived it!" he shouts. "Let's fucking party!"

For all their efficiency and determination, Jayce has never seen the crew work so quickly. Before he can so much as blink, the deck has been entirely cleared of obstacles. Jinx and Isha hang little multicolored lights around the masts and the branches of the tree, casting the whole ship in a prismatic glow. Up toward the Sanctuary's forecastle, a few of the Firelights gather with fiddles and drums and start to play an upbeat song that Jayce doesn't recognize. A cheer goes up around the crew and they begin to sing along, so clearly it's well-known to them. Based on the lyrics, Jayce thinks it's some kind of drinking song.

Jayce takes the flagon of ale that Aisling presses into his hands and settles down to watch the party bloom like a flower around him. The Firelights take to dancing with the same joy that they display in their piracy, whooping and stomping and swirling in dizzy circles. Ekko sweeps Jinx into a surprisingly adept, spin-heavy variation on a dance Jayce learned in his etiquette classes. Vi pulls Isha onto her shoulders and jumps up and down in place, totally off-beat from the music.

For the first time, Jayce lets himself think about it: just how much he likes these people. The easy delight they take in everything, from basic ship maintenance to mealtimes to close combat with angry opponents. The freedom in the way they laugh and smile and work, despite the difficulty of their circumstances. Their bizarre ship, with its arcane enhancements and its patchwork hull and its living tree.

He'll miss them.

They've changed him.

Across the dancefloor, Jayce spots Viktor, seated in semi-shadow. Isha approaches him and signs something to him. He smiles, face softening, and signs back. Then he looks up and over at Jayce, and his expression becomes a little wicked. He signs something else, and Isha turns around to look at Jayce before marching across the dancefloor with a terrifyingly determined glare.

Jayce looks at Viktor with a frantic expression, but Viktor just smiles wryly at him and turns back to his drink.

Isha comes to a screeching halt in front of Jayce and holds her left hand out flat. With her right, she extends her first two fingers and sways them above her left. When Jayce just blinks at her, she does it again, a little more forcefully.

"Oh! You're asking me to dance?" Jayce realizes.

Isha nods. Jayce mimics the sign, a little questioningly, and she curls her right hand into a fist and bobs it, twice.

"I'm not a very good dancer," Jayce warns her.

Isha scrunches up her face at him. She makes a pinched hand near her nose and then flings it out, like picking something up and tossing something away.

"You don't care?" Jayce guesses.

She grins at him and holds out a hand.

Jayce lets her lead him into the crowd of dancers. He's a little worried she'll expect something like the two-step Jinx and Ekko are doing, but Isha just grabs his hands and starts bouncing up and down, mimicking the motion Vi was making earlier. Jayce bursts into laughter and starts bouncing, too. Vi calls out her approval from across the dancefloor and sprints over to them, joining in exuberantly as a little beer sloshes out of her mug and onto the deck.

Jayce loses his grip on the situation from there. Somehow, he ends up spun from Firelight to Firelight, carrying Isha on his back, poorly teaching Aisling how to waltz, getting spun around and dipped by Vi like he barely weighs anything.

The music and the ale combine in his veins to create a sort of weightlessness, like any moment, his feet could lift off the deck and he could take flight. None of the Council parties have ever felt like this. Jayce didn't even know he could feel like this.

Jinx is leading him around the floor in a raucous swing dance when there's a tap at his shoulder. They pull up short and Jinx twirls Jayce once under her arm, leaving him facing Viktor.

"You're terrible at this," Viktor informs him, straight-faced.

"You're worse," Jayce replies. "Remember that time in the lab, Sky asked you to show her how to waltz, and you two broke–"

"Do not remind me," Viktor interrupts, emphatically. Then he shifts his gaze down at the deck below their feet, holds out a hand, and adds, "I could sway back and forth in place for awhile. If you would be interested."

"Oh. Sure, okay. That's fine," Jayce says, a little faintly. "We can just–"

He steps forward and slides an arm around Viktor's waist, his palm resting at the curve just above the small of Viktor's back. Then he places his other hand on top of Viktor's, where it's holding onto the handle of his cane.

Viktor reaches up and places his free hand on Jayce's shoulder. His fingers curl into the loose fabric of Jayce's shirt. He's so close, Jayce can see the chapped lines on his lips, the barely-there hint of freckles on the bridge of his nose.

"Forgive me, Jayce. I keep saying everything wrong," he says, quietly.

"It's okay," Jayce tells him. "Not like I'm any better."

"No," Viktor agrees, smiling just a little, around the corners of his eyes.

"Hey, shouldn't you at least pretend to disagree with that?"

Viktor's smile spreads to his mouth. "Why lie? We both know it's true."

Jayce clicks his tongue teasingly. "This apology is terrible."

"Ah? And who says I was attempting to apologize? Perhaps I came over here to insult you on purpose."

Jayce grins. "Did you?"

Viktor says, "Partially. Maybe. I don't know." He takes a breath and adds, "I suppose I just wanted to be close to you."

Across the ship, the frantic pace of the band's song begins to slow. Jayce fights the impulse to drop his head down onto Viktor's shoulder, to press his face into the graceful line of his throat.

"It's hard to believe we'll be back in Piltover tomorrow," he mumbles. "Up here, everything feels so… remote."

Viktor stops moving abruptly and says, "Jayce, I would like to speak with you. Privately. If you're amenable."

Jayce straightens up automatically, a little curl of anxiety seizing in the pit of his stomach. He'd thought things were going better, that maybe they'd reached some kind of détente, but… "Oh. Right, sure. Uh… do you want to go to my cabin?"

"Yes," Viktor says, firmly, and he turns around and starts walking before Jayce can even finish processing the answer.

Viktor can be incredibly quick on his feet when he puts his mind to it. Jayce only fully catches up to him once they reach the cabin door.

Viktor hesitates in the doorway, shooting Jayce a sideways, searching look. Jayce steps past him and says, "Well? Come in."

Viktor shuts the door behind himself as he enters. Jayce isn't sure what to think about that. Is he expecting another shouting match out of this conversation? Then Viktor crosses the room and hops up to sit at the foot of the bed, his fingers going automatically to massage his braced knee.

He's looking anywhere in the room apart from Jayce again. Jayce would normally consider this a bad sign for the rest of their conversation, if it wasn't for the fact that he'd been wearing the same expression when he told Jayce he'd once loved him.

"I've had so much to say to you," Viktor says, gaze still trained at his legs. "This whole time, all these years, I kept thinking of things. They'd come into my mind at the least convenient times. In the middle of an equation, in the middle of stitching someone up. Oh, this is what I'd tell Jayce, if he was here. Now, I can't seem to put words to any of it."

Jayce wavers a little, then sits down on the bed, too, leaving an extremely polite and reasonable amount of space between them. A serious-conversation amount of space, not an I've loved you for so long, I've forgotten what it felt like before amount of space.

"Can I ask you something?" Jayce says. 

Viktor nods. "That would be easier, perhaps."

In the end, it's a little bit like jumping off the airship, or throwing himself into a thunderstorm. He just can't allow himself time to think before he leaps.

"I'm really sorry, but I have to know before I go," Jayce says, softly. "The past tense, Viktor. Did you mean it?"

A crease forms between Viktor's brows, right above the bridge of his nose. So much of Viktor's expressiveness has always happened in his eyebrows. It's a silly thing to feel fond about, but Jayce has always loved Viktor beyond reason. Some things don't need to make sense.

"What past tense?" Viktor asks him.

"Yesterday. When you said you loved me, before you left me. Are you – when you went, did that – is that over, now?"

For a moment, Jayce thinks Viktor is going to brush the question off. Demand they change the subject. Maybe even storm out of the room again. Instead he just sighs, and pushes a tired hand into his hair, and says, "I'm too sober for this."

"I could go get you another ale," Jayce offers.

"Ha-ha," Viktor says. He sits quietly for another long moment before saying, "Jayce. I could live a hundred lifetimes and never stop loving you."

Something in Jayce's chest shatters and collapses and rebuilds itself in a single, explosive moment. He says, a little desperately, "You never told me."

Viktor shrugs. "There seemed to be little point to it, other than self-flagellation. It was obvious to me that you didn't feel the same."

"You needed to get your eyes checked, then," Jayce says, hotly.

Viktor finally looks up from his knees. He tips his head and observes Jayce measuredly, with the sharp-eyed stare that he always wore when he was trying to solve an impossible problem. Finally, he says, with a scientist's skepticism: "You're saying you had feelings for me, too."

"I'm saying I've been in love with you since we were twenty-four," Jayce says.

"That's absurd," Viktor says, with genuine bafflement.

"You saved my life," Jayce tells him. "You brought magic back into my world. You showed me impossible things were possible, if I worked hard enough, if I really believed in them. You've been the center of my universe since the day I met you."

The crease in Viktor's brow deepens with something very much like pain. His eyes close tightly for the span of a heartbeat. His lashes are shockingly dark against the purple-tinged, nearly-translucent skin just beneath his eyes.

"I betrayed you. I abandoned you. I ran like a coward. You said so yourself," he finally says.

"I betrayed you, too. I was a coward, too," Jayce says, swallowing hard against the sick feeling that rises in his chest. "I knew that Hextech weapons were a line you wouldn't cross. I should never have even considered it."

"If you'd asked me, I would have done it," Viktor admits, his voice unnaturally even. "That was why I had to leave. If I stayed, if I let you ask, I knew I'd eventually follow your lead. The way I always did."

Something burns in Jayce's eyes. It takes him a moment to realize that it's tears, spilling over and onto his cheeks.

"It's not an excuse, I know, but I… I felt like everything was falling apart around me," Jayce says. "It was all just – too much. The Council was so fake and so cold and I was so fucking terrible at politics, Viktor. To this day, Mel is one of my best friends in the world, and I know she really did like me, but I know she was using me, too. I just felt so lonely and overwhelmed, and I kept disappointing Mel, and I kept disappointing you. And then the first attacks from Silco's ships – and then you collapsed, and – God, Viktor. I kept imagining myself without you, and it felt like the world was ending. I needed you more than ever, and I was losing you."

Viktor's gaze is very serious. He gently reaches up and smudges a tear off Jayce's cheek with the calloused pad of his thumb, cupping the curve of Jayce's jaw in his palm. "I felt like you lost interest in me, when Miss Medarda made you a Councilor. Like we were walking down different paths, and every time I looked up from my feet, you were further and further away."

"I'm sorry," Jayce says.

"I know," Viktor says. "I am, too."

"I love you," Jayce says. "I loved you the whole time. Every second of it, Viktor, for all of my life, I've loved you."

Viktor's thumb finds the soft spot just beneath Jayce's ear and rubs a careful circle there.

“We never seem to get the timing right,” he says, and Jayce knows he's thinking about the moving ship, the closing miles, the coming dawn. There's a tiny smile on his lips when he says, "Perhaps in another lifetime, Jayce Talis."

"We could pretend," Jayce suggests, sliding his fingertips along the curve of Viktor's cheekbone, into the loose curls at the nape of his neck. "Just this once, we could pretend we did. Pretend it's possible for us."

Viktor's eyes close under his touch. When he says, "What would be the point?" his voice is thinner than normal. More air than sound.

"Well, for starters, I could do this," Jayce says, and he shores up all the courage he has left, and he closes the distance between them to kiss Viktor on the lips.

He needn't have worried. Viktor responds immediately, his hand sliding into Jayce's hair, his mouth opening against Jayce's own. He pulls Jayce closer, closer, like he's trying to press their bodies together until they fuse. Jayce kisses him back frantically, heedlessly, without any particular finesse.

Viktor's tongue is whiskey-hot in Jayce's mouth. His nose presses into Jayce's cheekbone. Jayce can taste his own tears on Viktor's lips, the memory of golden ale, the sweetened tea he'd had before dinner. Viktor's hands are trembling as they smooth down Jayce's back, palms pressed flat against the slope of Jayce's shoulders, like he's trying to memorize the shape of him.

When their kiss falls apart, becomes an unsteady rain of shorter, gentler touches, both of them are breathing hard. Jayce leans back to look, and Viktor's pupils have gone so wide, there's nothing but a sliver of gold ringed around the yawning black.

"That was pretending?" Viktor asks him, his narrow, clever fingers sliding down the length of Jayce's arm, pausing at the soft inside of his wrist, where his pulse frantically slams against his skin.

"Was it okay?" Jayce asks him.

The look on Viktor's face is heartbreaking when he says, very quietly, "Probably not. But I still very much want you to do it again."

Jayce kisses him again, gentler this time. Without the fear and the hunger. Viktor returns the kiss, then tips his head to chastely kiss the corner of Jayce's mouth, right above his dimple.

"What do you want from me, Jayce?" Viktor asks, the words pressed against the high curve of Jayce's cheek.

"Anything," Jayce says. "Everything."

"This is going to hurt," Viktor warns him.

Jayce says, "Be gentle, then."

Neither of them are talking about sex.

Viktor kisses him hard in response. This kiss is different, too – not frightened or urgent or gentle, but something else entirely. And when Jayce pulls Viktor onto his lap, runs his palms up the knobby length of his spine, he says nothing at all except for, "Jayce."

Jayce wakes up with the bedclothes tangled around his legs. Viktor is standing by the window, face tipped toward the sky, wearing one of Jayce's blankets draped around his shoulders like a cloak. The sunlight turns his hair to burnished bronze, lit from within, like cooling metal from the forge.

When he hears Jayce stir, he turns to look at him and his expression softens into a sweet but fleeting smile.

"Hi, there," Jayce says, reaching for him.

"Good morning, Councilor," Viktor replies, allowing Jayce to twine his arms around the narrow curve of his waist. He smooths the hair off Jayce's face, trails careful fingertips down his cheeks, along the new growth of his beard. Then he says, "Welcome back to Piltover," and the bubble pops.

Jayce watches Piltover approach from the Sanctuary's deck, just above the bowsprit. The city grows steadily from a speck on the horizon to a vast and shining sprawl spreading out below them. Jayce had expected to feel a profound relief upon seeing Piltover again, a return to desperately-missed safety. Instead, he finds himself nursing a complicated sort of grief.

Ekko falls into step beside him, gloved hands tucked neatly behind his back. He's in his full captain's getup, complete with the billowing coat and the oversized hat.

"We got word from the Council this morning," Ekko tells him. "You're expected on the outskirts of the city. We'll have someone bring you down on a hoverboard and drop you off. You'll have to walk the rest of the way. That a problem?"

"No, Captain," Jayce says, and then he smiles and nudges Ekko with his elbow. "Thanks for the lift."

"Yeah, well, guess I'm glad we didn't throw you overboard, after all," Ekko says, companionably, before adding in a sharper tone, "Still think you're an idiot, though."

"Of course," Jayce agrees.

Vi's voice calls out to them from somewhere around the base of the Sanctuary's tree. Jayce turns away from the expanse of Piltover below them to watch her approach the bow with a hoverboard in each hand, shaking them like Jayce is a stray cat and she's trying to tempt him over to her with treats.

"What do you think? Wanna try it?" she asks, with a grin that makes Jayce think he should probably – definitely – say no.

"Hell, yes," Jayce says, reaching out for a board.

"That's the spirit," Vi says, jostling Jayce with her shoulder. "It's easy, you'll see. Sort of like riding a bike, except for the fact that it's not even a little bit like that and, if you fuck up, you get splattered on the ground like a bug."

"Don't remind me," Viktor's voice interjects, from behind Violet.

Predictably, Jayce's stomach swoops. Viktor is back in his overcoat and thick-soled boots, his fox-shaped Firelight mask hanging from a clip on his belt. He glares at the hoverboards like they're a pair of live, venomous snakes, poised to strike.

"Are you coming down with us?" Jayce asks him. He's not sure what he's feeling. Relief, maybe, and joy. And something else, something as large as the sky, something that's threatening to swallow him whole.

This is wrong, a tiny voice at the back of his brain is whispering. You're making a mistake. Haven't you already done that enough?

"Someone has to keep you two from setting yourselves on fire, somehow," Viktor is saying, with a casual flick of his hand. "I will be riding with Violet, though. If you crash that thing, I refuse to go down with you."

"Fair deal," Jayce says, and then he allows himself one final indulgence of an impulse: he pulls Viktor into his arms and gives him a single, tight squeeze, pressing his face into Viktor's hair for a single, fleeting second.

Vi muffles a laugh into her fist. Jayce takes the hoverboard from her and studiously avoids meeting her eyes.

He steps onto the board and feels it power up beneath his feet in a buzzing little shudder. At the slightest shifting of Jayce's weight, the board swims a few inches upward in a soup of bright green light.

"Thank you again, Captain," Jayce tells Ekko. "I hope our paths cross again."

"You really are crazy, Piltie," Ekko says, but he's grinning. "Guess I'll hope that, too."

There's a technique to it, undeniably, but it turns out that the hoverboard is simple enough to use. Jayce lets instinct take over as they speed from the Sanctuary down to the green expanse of the ground below them, and the silver-touched suburbs of Piltover's sprawl.

Jinx had piloted the Sanctuary as low as she could without needing to fear cannonfire from unseen ballistae, so it's a quick trip back to earth, all things considered. Jayce lands first, on a quiet street close to the spot where Piltover butts up against the open ocean. The air here smells like dampened salt and the sick-sweet brine of rotting seaweed.

Just a moment later, Vi lands, too. Viktor stumbles off the back of her hoverboard, getting his feet and cane firmly planted on solid land with a look of relief.

"Is it seriously that bad? You helped build this thing, Tin Man," Vi says, laughing.

"All the more reason to leave riding it to somebody else," Viktor responds, primly.

The whole escapade is almost too easy.

It is too easy, in fact.

Jayce brings it on himself, really. He is just allowing himself to think, All things considered, this whole week could have gone a lot worse, when a voice behind them says, "Freeze, pirate scum."

Vi and Viktor go instantly, hauntingly still. It's the stillness of life-long practice, the kind of stillness that you learn when you're still wrapping your young head around language. Old habit, Viktor once told Jayce, when an Enforcer unexpectedly stopped them on the street to ask a question and every muscle in Viktor's body seized up.

"Councilor Talis?" the Enforcer says, as Jayce slowly turns around. "I've been sent by the Council to collect you and deliver you home safely, sir. Please step over here."

There are fifteen of them, at least, all stepping out from behind the nearby houses. All with their guns pointed steadily and unerringly at Viktor and Vi. Too many to fight, certainly.

Would Jayce fight them, if he could? Is that the kind of person he is, now?

Jayce raises his hands beside his head in a gesture of surrender and says, "There's been a misunderstanding. These people saved my life."

He might as well have said nothing at all. None of the Enforcers lower a weapon. Nobody so much as blinks.

Jayce raises his voice. "Do you hear me? They saved me. They should be given awards, not treated like this."

The lead Enforcer, her shining badge pinned to her lapel, says once again, "Councilor, please. Step over here."

"This is ridiculous. You can't punish them for rescuing me."

"They're pirates," the Enforcer informs him, like she's commenting on the weather. "Even if they've done a single good deed, that's still a hanging offense."

"Jayce," Vi says, next to him. "Do what they're asking."

Jayce turns to look at her, expecting to see anger, bravado. The familiar slice of her sharpened edges. Instead, she looks frightened and a little bit sick, her eyes flicking back and forth between barrels of guns like she's trying to keep them all in her field of vision at once.

"They're going to arrest you," Jayce tells her, in a fierce whisper. "Try you, execute you. And you want me to let them?"

"I want you to keep this from turning into a bloodbath," Vi hisses back. "Live to fight another day. That's how it goes. Tell him, Viktor."

Viktor says, "Jayce. Some battles cannot be won."

Jayce does not step over to the Enforcers. But he does lower his hands.

The Enforcers are not gentle as they clap Vi and Viktor in irons. Jayce stands in stony silence as they yank them away. Despite Vi and Viktor's request that he let this happen, he nearly hauls off and punches an Enforcer in the face when they try to take Viktor's cane. As it is, the look on his face is enough for the Enforcer to think twice and let Viktor keep it.

When it's over, when Vi and Viktor are gone, when Jayce is left on the outskirts of his broken city with nothing and no one at all, he allows himself a moment of mingled horror and despair. Aimless and enormous fury, too big to sit inside his skin. Most of all, he feels like a mourner beside an open grave: here lies the city that raised him, the city that saved him and his mother when they needed it the most, the city that nursed them back from the razor-edge of snow and ice and starvation.

You were kind to me, he thinks, to the Piltover of his childhood. Why can't you be kind to them, too?

Then he shoves it all aside, turns around, and goes to pay a visit to Caitlyn Kiramman.

Two days after Vi and Viktor are arrested, Jayce steps into the expansive, endless corridor that makes up Stillwater Hold's death row.

In the forty-eight hours since he's been back in town, he's sloughed off the version of himself that flew with the Firelights. He looks like a Councilor again, like a representative of the Academy, like a son of Piltover's storied Houses. Cream-colored suit, freshly-shaven face, neatly-trimmed hair. It's like the Jayce who leapt over empty sky and bare-knuckle brawled with a pirate and danced with Isha and saved Aisling's life never existed at all.

The guard who'd greeted him at Stillwater Hold's wrought-iron entrance saluted smartly and called him sir. Jayce doesn't feel like a sir anymore. He's not sure what he feels like, really.

"You've got ten minutes, Councilor," the guard is currently telling him. "I'm sticking my neck out for this, so, if you're gonna smack him around, do it where the marks won't show."

Jayce says, "I understand."

For the first time, on the other side of the cell's tarnished bars, Viktor reacts. He is sitting on the floor with his legs tucked up against his chest. His head lifts off his knees. Their eyes meet through the bars and Viktor's face does something funny. A ripple of annoyance, maybe, replaced by a profound and bone-deep relief.

The guard doesn't seem to notice. He's still talking to Jayce.

"Heard you two used to be partners," he continues, before spitting in Viktor's direction. It hits the ground a few inches away from Viktor's bare foot. "The traitor. After everything this city did for him. I won't blame you if you get a little rough."

Viktor looks utterly exhausted. His hair, usually soft and fine as sand, is a knotted, matted mess around his shoulders. There's a bruise smudged on one of his cheekbones, like spilled ink. He still has his cane, but there's a feather-fine crack running up one side, like someone used it to hit something, hard.

Jayce briefly and vividly imagines burning the entire building down, before getting himself back under control.

"Thank you," Jayce tells the guard, stepping through the open cell door. It clangs shut behind him with a very final sound. Like the tolling of a death-bell.

The guard says, "Give me a shout when you're ready to leave," and steps away, turning his back on the cell like he's demonstrating his discretion.

Jayce forces himself to walk over to Viktor, to stand there with his back straight and his face impassive. Running to Viktor's side and collapsing to his knees would spoil everything. Every atom in his body wants to, though.

"Jayce," Viktor says, quietly. His voice is low and rough with disuse. "What is this?"

"Weren't you listening? Needed to give you a piece of my mind, before you head to the gallows tomorrow," Jayce says, loud enough for the guard to easily hear, out in the corridor.

Viktor gets to his feet. Some of the exhaustion is bleeding out of his expression, replaced by a rapt sort of attention.

"Very well. Do your worst, Councilor," he says, lifting his chin defiantly.

Jayce swings a fist. It connects with the wall just a hair's breadth from Viktor's side. Jayce hears something crunch in his hand, pain exploding out from his knuckles and issuing up his arm like a lightning strike. Viktor doubles over as though he'd truly been struck, with a convincing oof of pain. One of his hands comes up to grip Jayce's wrist, Viktor's fingers sliding down his forearm and cupping around his fist, as though attempting to hold him in place and prevent another punch.

Jayce opens his aching fingers and drops the multitool he'd taken from his lab that morning into Viktor's open hand. A screwdriver, a wrench, a knife, a miniature welder, all in one tiny, Hextech-enhanced package.

Even a normal person could probably break out of prison with a tool like that. Viktor could build himself an airship from scratch and be gone by morning.

"You pirates will get what you deserve," Jayce says loudly, hoping against hope that it doesn't sound to the guard like he's about to burst into messy tears.

Viktor no longer looks calm. He looks split-open, agonized, like the punch really had caught him in his ribcage. His hand clutches around the multitool, knuckles blanched ashen-white, until Jayce sees blood start to seep up from between his fingers.

Jayce leans forward and tips his head toward Viktor's ear. "Cait will meet you at the northern guard station at two-fifteen this morning," Jayce breathes. "She'll wait as long as she can, but it would be better to be as close to exact as possible, if you can manage it. She'll get you out of here and into the Undercity. Be careful."

When he pulls away, Viktor is staring at him with enormous eyes. Jayce can feel the look as if there's physical force behind it, as if Viktor is trying to burn an indentation of Jayce's face into his retinas.

"You're a fool, Jayce Talis," he says, wonderingly.

"Maybe, but I'd rather be a fool than a puppet," Jayce answers.

A surprised tear spills over, onto Viktor's cheek. Jayce wishes he could wipe it away with his thumb, the way Viktor did for him. Instead, he steps back with what he hopes looks convincingly akin to a sneer of disgust.

Perhaps, in another lifetime, Viktor had whispered, their first and only night together. He'd felt so solid in the circle of Jayce's arms. Vibrant and warm and alive.

I love you, Jayce mouths. Then he slams a fist on the bars and shouts, "Guard! Let me out. I hope I never see this pirate bastard again."

He leaves Viktor standing there in his cell, blood dripping from his fingers, the key to his escape clutched inside his hand.

Jayce doesn't let himself look back.

When his mother knocks on his bedroom door the next morning, Jayce is already awake, and has been for hours.

Rather than returning to his apartment, he'd spent the night in his childhood bedroom. Viktor had never been here in all their years of partnership, although Jayce had imagined it, sometimes. Introducing him to his mother, showing him the place where he'd grown up, letting him peel back the layers and the years until the core of him was exposed to the light.

Rather than opening the door, Jayce keeps his seat on the windowsill and waits. His mom eventually opens it herself, like he'd expected her to. They'd never been a knocking household when he was growing up. He's a little surprised she thought to do it at all.

"I thought I heard you moving around in here," his mom says. "Don't you know what time it is?"

"You're awake," Jayce points out, taking the hand she reaches out to him.

"Well, I'm not a growing young man."

Despite himself, Jayce breathes out the ghost of a laugh. "I'm thirty-four. Hardly a growing young man."

She pokes his bicep with her free hand. "Yet you're still always getting into trouble. Explain this to me, hm?"

Jayce squeezes her fingers, gently. "I must've picked that up somewhere."

"Bah. Your father's family, of course. My side has never been anything but well-behaved."

Jayce laughs again, a little louder this time.

His mom sinks down to sit in the window beside him. She smooths her hand over his knuckles and says, "The pirates that kidnapped you… They escaped from Stillwater in the middle of the night. Their pictures were in the paper this morning."

"I see," Jayce says, closing his eyes against the tidal wave of relief that sweeps over him.

His mom says, "Right. I bet you do. I noticed you didn't break into my household until late last night. Close to midnight, wasn't it?"

Jayce heaves an awkward, forced laugh. "I was taking a walk. Getting some fresh air."

"Jayce. One of the pirates was your boy. Am I wrong?"

"My boy?" Jayce echoes, too startled to keep up the pretence. "He was never my boy, Mama."

"Well, he was all you talked about for ten years. Viktor this and Viktor that. Ay, you'd think that man hung the stars in the sky, the way you went on about him."

Jayce blushes. "That was a long time ago."

"Hm. So you don't feel that way anymore?"

Jayce considers denying it and deems it pointless. He's already been well and truly caught.

"No," he admits. "I love him."

His mother shakes her head, clicking her tongue quietly. "Well, he's already left you once, and you became an absolute terror about it. Moping around for years and years. Are you going to let him slip away from you again? Did I raise you like that?"

"Mama, he's a pirate," Jayce says, for the lack of anything else intelligent to say.

"Oh? And that's enough to stop you? What kind of resolve is that, Jayce Talis?"

Jayce slumps down in his seat. "I saw things, when I was with the Firelights. Things that made me realize… I don't know. I feel like I've been messing everything up, for so long. Like I've been walking holes into the floor, but the path is all wrong." He hesitates, then adds, "I sometimes think the only way to start doing good is to do it out there, with them."

"Oh, Jayce," his mom says, pressing a gentle hand against his cheek. "My little spitfire. You take unnecessary risks. You make unsafe decisions. You're going to drive me into an early grave. And that's the way you were forged, hm? You cannot change a metal's makeup by pressing it into a different shape." 

Jayce tips his face into her palm, closing his eyes. "You're saying I should go? Run off and join a pirate crew and follow the man that broke my heart?"

"I'm saying you'll do what you always do," his mom tells him. "Something very foolish and very brave."

"I love you," Jayce says.

"You're my boy," his mom says. "No matter where you are in the world, you'll always be my boy."

Jayce finds the Sanctuary exactly where he expected it would be. The Zaunite airship docks are significantly smaller than the ones in Piltover, more ramshackle little parking spots than anything else, but it's the only way pirate crews can get in and out of the area without dealing with the Enforcers. They've never been able to shut the docks down, no matter how many times the Council tried.

Although, with what Jayce knows now, he wonders how true of an effort that really was.

Jayce approaches the Sanctuary's berth carefully, half-expecting someone to stop him as he nears. But the Firelights who spot him just grin and wave in greeting, a few shouting his name in recognition.

He reaches the bottom of the gangplank and looks around, but nobody tells him off, so he climbs up and onto the airship, this time of his own free will.

The crew on board is a beehive-hum of moving, working bodies. All of them, apart from a single person, sitting with his back against the tree's sturdy trunk.

Jayce approaches slowly, his fingers twisting in the strap of his bag. He hopes against hope that he sounds confident and casual and not at all like his heart is trying to batter its way out through his ribcage when he finally speaks.

"Slacking off?"

Viktor's eyes open. He looks up. This time, there are no bars between them.

"Jayce?" he says, as though he can't quite believe his eyes. As though he thinks he might be dreaming.

Jayce should know. It's the same way he said Viktor's name, just a few short days ago.

"Guess the escape plan worked?" Jayce says.

"Yes. I got us both out of our cells using your tool, and Miss Kiramman took us the rest of the way," Viktor says, lifting his chin toward the stern. Outside the door to the captain's quarters, Jayce spots Cait and Vi. They're standing very close together, two fixed points in the froth and boil of the working crew.

Vi's hand is running up and down the length of Cait's arm. Cait's smiling harder than Jayce thinks he's ever seen her smile before.

"Huh," Jayce says. "How about that?"

"You knew she'd help us," Viktor says. "I admit, I wasn't sure I believed. She's always been so committed to her job."

"Caitlyn joined the Enforcers because she wanted to carve a path outside of her mom's shadow," Jayce says, and then he beams over at Viktor. "Piracy is about as far from being a Piltovan Councilor as it's possible to get. Or so I hear, anyway."

Viktor looks down at the bag slung over Jayce's shoulder. "So you hear," he repeats. It's very nearly a question.

Jayce fights the urge to duck his head under the weight of Viktor's scrutiny. “I was hoping you might have some space on the crew. I guess this pirating stuff is pretty hard work. Thought you might need some extra hands.”

A slow smile is breaking like the dawn across Viktor's face. "You'd have to ask the captain, I'm afraid," he says, with a faux-professional tone.

“And what about you?” Jayce asks, stretching a hand down for Viktor to take. “Would you have space for me?”

Viktor puts his bandaged hand in Jayce's and allows Jayce to pull him to his feet. "You really are a fool. Piltover’s golden boy wants to become a pirate? What will people think?"

"I don't know," Jayce admits. He holds Viktor's hand between his own and bows to press a kiss to the gauze wrapped around his knuckles. "But I think I'd be the luckiest man in the world."

Viktor's expression goes fierce and intent. He reaches up to cup a hand around Jayce's neck and yanks him down, pressing a firm kiss to his lips.

"Yes, then," Viktor says. "If you're asking, my answer is yes."

"I love you so much," Jayce says, pressing fleeting kisses against his mouth, his jaw, his eyelid, the tip of his nose.

"You're too soft-hearted to be a pirate, Jayce Talis. This is going to be a disaster," Viktor says, but he's still smiling.

"I'll work on my snarl. I'll come up with nasty nicknames for people. I'll start to carry around those little tiny guns that fit in your boot."

"Ah. That sounds like a terrible idea."

"Ooh! Do you think Ekko would let me get a cool mask, like yours?"

Viktor laughs. Truly, fully, with his entire body.

Jayce sobers and touches Viktor's face, his tone softening. "I know we have messes to clean up," he says. "I know we have a city to fix. Let me help you try."

Viktor's eyes light up. Possibility, endless and burning, spins like the stars around Jayce's head.

Viktor kisses him again and says, "Well, then. I suppose we'd better get started."