Archive of Our Own

Please, let me speak! As a lower house, my voice doesn’t carry much weight here. But as a mother—I have a voice that matters deeply. My son… isn’t in his right mind. His entire life, he’s chased an impossible dream. What he did was… foolish, and unwise. But he has a good heart. Please, let him come home. 

As moving as those words are, this is a question of safety. Our safety. If we allowed every madman with a touching story to go about their business unchecked, Piltover would plunge in chaos. We’d be no better than the undercity.

The young Talis might have an obsession, but he is not a madman. His intelligence could prove useful—

Professor Heimerdinger, were you not warning about the dangers of the arcane, a mere few minutes ago? Does the danger change simply because of the person trying to harness it?

I just—I merely would find it a waste of a great mind, one that could aid the city of progress, if it were to be shipped out like cattle. 

We have no guarantees that an accident like this one wouldn’t happen again. The words of a mother and a lunatic aren’t enough. 

I am not—

You are not to speak, Jayce Talis. 

Who is to say others with his same intentions wouldn’t pop up and try to aide him in this—in this suicidal research? It’s best to strike now. Make an example.

The boy made a mistake—

His mistake blew up a building! People were injured!

Settle down, gentlemen. Mr. Talis?

Yes, Councillor Medarda?

While Piltover has built itself on the backs of brilliant, ingenious minds, it cannot be denied that limits have to be in place. I may not agree with the choice of exile as a punishment, but you have crossed a line. Do you understand that?

…I do,  Councillor Medarda. 

Very well. Anyone else?

I will not have someone who trifled with the very thing that almost decimated my people run around unchecked. Jayce Talis cannot be allowed to remain in Piltover. 

I agree. He may be crazy, but that is no excuse. 

I disagree. Jayce is a brilliant scientist that could aid us in ways we cannot imagine, if he left his fantasies behind. 

We have no guarantee he would ever truly abandon them, Professor. 

He would. Isn’t that right, Jayce?

…I…

Jayce.

He doesn’t even answer! No. No, Professor. We cannot accept that. 

Today, we got the demonstration that the arcane is still something we are not—nor we will ever be—ready to utilize. The minds that try to understand it need to realize it’s a hopeless endeavor that endangers us all. I move that Jayce Talis be exiled from Piltover, and that he may never set foot inside its borders again. 

I agree. 

No! Please, I beg you—

Caitlyn! What are you doing?! Sit down, immediately!

Young Kiramman, this is not your place! Settle down!

I apologize on behalf of my daughter, fellow Councilors. Now, despite having seen firsthand Jayce’s genius, I agree that what happened today cannot be allowed to happen again. I move in favor of Councilor Bolbok’s proposal. 

…Alas. Very well, I move in favor as well. 

Let it be known I find this to be one of the most irrational and rashest decisions the Council could make. I’m sorry, my boy. 

Your input is noted, Professor. Good! We have reached a verdict, then. Young Talis, you will be escorted to your house by wardens to get your things… or what remains of them, and then will be exiled post-haste. Is that clear?

…Mr. Talis?

…Yes. Yes, it’s clear. I apologize. 

Alright. This meeting is over. Thank you, fellow Councilors. 

The Pilt roars, many feet below the bridge. Its waters shine with azures, light greens, deep blues, with bubbly white spray where the flow is at its most chaotic. Jayce often found himself there, when he needed to reflect or clear his head—he’d sit on one of the many golden benches, his sketchbooks in hand, and work on a particular equation or problem as the river bubbled underneath him. If it was something he could not figure out, he’d start sketching the city, with its high towers and shining walls. 

But Jayce’s eyes can’t seem to leave the marble pavement, today. 

His head feels stuffed full of cotton—every thought, every input, is slowed, as if felt through a thick barrier. He forgets to blink and to breathe, has to remind himself to do it, taking air in big gasps that seem to shake his whole frame. 

In his hand, he clutches a single little workbook so hard his fingers turn pale. His well-manicured nails dig groves into the soft leather, leaving indents he knows will remain. 

He strokes a thumb against the cover, over the name he wrote on there, and keeps staring at the smooth stone he’s standing on. And a frightening realization comes, one that leaves him frozen, as if he took a swan dive into the Pilt itself: this is all I have.

The thought is enough to snap him out of his state. His next heavy exhale turns into something halfway to a moan, an ugly sound that leans more towards a sob. His knees shake—he can see it in his head, the next few seconds where he’ll tip over on the ground, and probably start screaming. Screaming sounds like a good idea. 

Before he can, a high, wisely voice pipes up behind him. It sounds forlorn, an emotion he’s never heard from the old Professor. 

“Oh, my boy. I’m so sorry.”

Jayce slowly turns. His eyes are wide open, an almost manic and not-there glint to them. They flick around, as if trying to stave off the inevitable tears as long as they can. Jayce lowers his gaze to the Yordle, still in his Academy uniform and oversized goggles, and feels an irrational flare of anger that he quickly squashes down. Heimerdinger had tried to help. It isn't his fault. 

“Professor,” he says. It’s a rough word, barely above a whisper, but he can’t manage much else. 

Despite that, the Yordle seems gutted anyhow. He closes his eyes in grief and shakes his head softly. “Young ones,” he mutters, “they’re always so—so rash!”

Then his eyes find Jayce’s once more, and the extends his tiny hands to clutch one of Jayce’s ones. “I’m sorry, Jayce. You didn’t deserve any of this. To throw away such a brilliant mind, for a misstep that—”

He stops, shakes his head again. “The other councillors acted on impulse. They saw something they were not familiar with, and got scared. I apologize.”

With a faint nod, Jayce recalls Heimerdinger’s haunted expression as he told the Councillors of the arcane’s horrors. It certainly couldn’t have helped. 

Then a thought—he starts with a quick inhale, and clutches the Professor’s hands desperately. “My mother,” he asks, “where…”

Heimerdinger’s expression, if possible, shatters even more. “They’ll not let her through. Both her and the Kiramman scion, they’ve been trying to get to you, but… the enforcers are adamant.” He leans a little closer, and whispers: “I had to sneak around them to get to you. It was easy, mind you—most of them never look down.” 

Then he gives a little giggle, one that is miserably trying to clear the air around them. It doesn’t work, and dies quickly at Jayce’s anguished expression.

Jayce should probably say something. Every time he thinks about opening his mouth, though, the words seem to become sticky molasses in his throat, obstructing the airways and making it difficult to breathe. Heimerdinger takes pity on him. 

“You deserved none of this, Jayce. Do you hear me? You are one of the most brilliant people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in my many years, and I can tell a mind like yours doesn’t appear often, if at all. The Councillors know it, even if they can’t see it yet.”

Then he reaches a tiny hand into a bag slung over his shoulder, and takes out a slip of paper—rectangular, as big as Jayce’s palm. He extends it to Jayce.

“It’s… not much, my boy, but I was able to get you a ticket for the next ferry to Demacia. It’s a rough place, one that couldn’t possibly value your genius like we here, but—it was the best option.”

Jayce numbly grabs the ticket, scanning the words on it. 05:00PM departure. One-Way.

His hand clenches around it. “Thank you,” he hears himself say, but it’s nothing more than words. He doesn’t know if he means them. 

A sudden noise draws both of their attention to the end of the bridge closest to Piltover’s entrance—a group of enforcers is passing on patrol. Heimerdinger tenses, and hurriedly brings up a hood to cover himself. 

“Jayce,” the Yordle begins saying, “I…” 

What, Jayce wants to say, to demand, to scream, he wants to grab the Professor by his shoulders and shake him, wants to yell why didn’t you try harder to convince them, but he just stares down at him. 

Heimerdinger seems to deflate, lose courage. “It is best you go, my boy. I’m sorry. Goodbye.”

And then he squeezes Jayce’s hands, lets go, and turns around. He hurries to the bridge’s banister, sticking close to it to evade wandering eyes, and scurries back towards Piltover’s entrance. 

Jayce tries to bring his feet to move towards it, as well. They can’t unstick from the floor. 

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, staring at people entering and leaving the City of Progress. They move around him, occasionally shooting him odd glances that he doesn’t register. He feels the crumpled paper ticket in one hand, the dented leather sketchbook in the other—it creaks in a way that makes his jaw tick, his eyelids flutter. 

It is much later when he manages to get his feet to move. The ferry must have left at least an hour prior, if not more, but Jayce can’t bring himself to care. His first few steps are ugly and small, like a newborn fawn’s—he walks backwards, still staring at Piltover’s entrance. He feels as if the moment he turns, it’ll become real. The moment he turns, he’ll leave his mother behind, his life’s work, his dream of bringing a better future. They’ll all turn into smoke in his hands, like the smoldering remains of his laboratory. 

He stumbles a few more steps, and keeps hobbling until he’s near the bridge’s other side, still staring at the golden city. His eyes dart around frantically—the harbor is about ten minutes away from there, but he’s nowhere to go. Then he spies a stretch of grass starting from the bridge’s end, the one connected to the undercity. It circles around the entrance of the Lanes and gives way to a forest.

Jayce doesn’t feel himself move, but he knows that he does. 

The glade he’s found is small, and is placed on a natural overhang above the Pilt. The small forest just outside the Undercity stops about ten meters away from the cliff, giving way to small bushes and fallen tree trunks, now embedded in the grass from their age. 

It’s peaceful. The Pilt is still roaring, but it feels more distant. Jayce can see the bridge from where he’s standing, stretching in beautiful golden arches and uniting the two halves of Piltover. The people walking upon it seem small, now; little insects going back to their houses. 

Jayce sits heavily on one of the old trunks, feeling the wood creak and groan at his weight. He stares at the City of Progress in front of him, and wants to scream.

So he does. 

His yelling seems to leave his throat raw. He feels each sound crawl up his windpipe, as if tearing its way up and digging hooks inside of him. He almost thinks he’ll spit up blood, but nothing happens aside from his voice becoming hoarser and hoarser as he goes on. His face contorts ugly from the strength of each scream, eyes almost closing in frustration and—to his dismay—tears, ones that start falling down his cheeks. 

In a fit of rage, clenching the ferry ticket in his hand, he springs up and reaches the edge of the clearing, throwing it away from him and down, down, leaving the crumpled paper not to float gracefully, but to plummet straight into the Pilt. He throws his right arm back, ready to do the same with his sketchbook, but his muscles lock up.

He hates it. He wants to throw the very thing that had gotten him exiled as far away from himself as possible, yet he still can’t. His hands are shaking, his throat is hurting, and his grip becomes immeasurably gentle as he shifts his grasp on the little book. He’s crying in earnest, now—little hiccups and sobs that make his body shake, his hands tremble. Slowly, Jayce opens the sketchbook, and sees one of the little drawings he’s done of the hex gems—his signature stares at him from the bottom of the page. 

His knees give out. 

The grass under them would’ve been soft, if it had been on the other side of the bridge. Here, next to the undercity, it’s rough, dry, breaking under his weight. 

He closes the sketchbook and throws it behind himself with an angry flick of his wrist. His entire life, studies, career, gone—because of a mistake that isn’t even his. It was his house that blew up, yet there he is, never to step foot inside the city again. It isn’t fair. 

Jayce takes a rattling inhale, and tries to breathe slowly.

He sits there for what must be hours, days, or at least it’s what it seems to him. When his eyes feel drier, when his head feels quieter—like it did on the bridge before Heimerdinger came, as if filled with cotton—he looks down. He’s kneeling close to the edge. Really close.

Close enough he can see a few small pieces of rubble fall off the cliff and into the stream of the river below. Jayce counts; they fall for about six seconds. He wonders if he’d take that long. 

His exhales come out shaky, his head still feels oddly empty, and he struggles up to his feet. He kicks a rock off, watches it go down. Six seconds again. 

It’d be easy. Maybe the quiet in his head would follow him for the entire fall. 

“Must you do it here?”

His head snaps around, and noise filters in all at once. The roaring of the Pilt becomes almost deafening and makes him start—his head flicks back to the edge and he stumbles back, gasping. His heart is beating so wildly he can feel it in his throat. Eyes wide, he turns back towards the voice. 

It belongs to a man: skinny, almost frighteningly so, tall, with long limbs and pale skin. His slim face is framed by a short mop of brown hair, and Jayce finds himself staring at golden eyes, a high contrast from the washed-out tone of his complexion. He realizes—once he sees the man has an eyebrow raised haughtily at him—that he’s expecting Jayce to speak. 

He lightly shakes his head, as if to clear it from those last remnants of silence, and feels his expression scrunch up in confusion. “What?” he croaks out, voice still tender. 

The man’s raised eyebrow curves higher, and he takes a few steps towards Jayce—and they’re uneven, which is when Jayce notices the man is holding a cane in his left hand. His right leg is encased in a metal brace, one that creaks lightly as he moves. Jayce has the surreal instinct to step back, but the cliff’s edge so close behind him has glued his feet to the ground. 

“This is a spot I favor,” the man elaborates, his cane thumping quietly on the dry grass. “Not many know it exists—not that I know of, at the least,” step, thump, step, thump, “I’d like to not bring attention to it.”

Then he stops next to the discarded sketchbook, slowly crouching down to grab it. Jayce stares at him in confusion for the brief second it takes him to understand, and then scoffs in shock. “Are you—you’re asking me to jump from another place to not bring attention to here?”

The man straightens and gives a one-shoulder shrug, and starts thumbing the book open. “There’s higher buildings in the city. You’d know.” He nods towards Jayce’s body with his chin, at his clothes. Jayce looks down, at his Academy uniform and overcoat, the ones he’d done his trial in. He hadn’t even had time to change, and the perfect Piltovan white seems to stare at him in derision. 

A flare of anger and disgust surges through him, and he turns an incensed glare on the stranger. “What is wrong with you? You—”

“Is this yours?” the man interrupts, and Jayce notices his eyes as they scan his sketchbook: wide, flicking rapidly over the pages. He flips a few of them back and forth, and then raises his head to stare at Jayce, who frowns. 

“What?”

The man lifts the book in his hand, gesturing with it. “Did you write all this?”

Jayce looks at him a second longer, and feels his anger deflate. He sighs heavily, and falls down on the same tree trunk he’d been sitting on previously. “Yeah,” he exhales, and drops his head in his hands. “They’re just some—some drawings, it’s—”

“These are not just drawings,” the man interrupts, and Jayce notices that he has a strong accent; his t’s and s’s are sharper, more pronounced. He hears irritation in his tone. “This is trying to unite Elemental and Spirit magic through mechanical conduits—harnessing the reaction from—are these crystals?”

Jayce’s head snaps up again, and his eyes widen. He feels his pulse inexplicably quicken, and his leg jumps up and down. “You—you can understand that?”

The stranger’s eyes turn indignant, gazing at Jayce. “What, is that such an incredible shock for someone from the Golden City?” he snarks, striking the ground with his cane harshly. 

Jayce’s eyes widen, and he feels little trickles of shame coiling in his gut. “No!” he immediately responds, gesturing with his hands. “No, no, I swear! Just—basically nobody understands it in Piltover, so—it’s not because…you’re…” his voice starts fading out as the stranger’s eyes become even more and more incensed, his mouth thinning in annoyance. “From… the undercity…” Jayce finishes in an embarrassed whisper. 

Silence fills the air for a few, interminable seconds, and then the man scoffs and rolls his eyes, muttering something in a different language—Jayce might not understand it, but the tone doesn’t leave much room for imagination. He walks closer to Jayce, stopping before him, and gestures with his sketchbook once more. “Let’s try this again,” he starts, “you wrote all this.”

Jayce nods.

“And it is…?” the stranger asks, trailing off. For a second, Jayce still has the instinct to say it’s complicated, or you wouldn’t understand, and he squashes it as it forms—the man had clearly looked angry at his intelligence being undermined, and had been able to understand what Jayce had attempted to do. 

“It’s… like you said,” he answers, “I was trying to harness the arcane through science.”

“That seems broader than what I see here,” the man remarks, lifting his sketchbook. He starts flipping through it again. “You weren’t just trying, through the wide-ranging and nebulous concept of science—you conducted actual tests. You studied runes and their applications, and even found a conduit for the arcane itself.” He lowers his eyes to Jayce again. “You almost succeeded.”

At that, Jayce chuckles weakly. His mother’s face, unbidden, flashes in his head. My son isn’t in his right mind. “Yeah, no,” he replies, “I couldn’t figure out a way to stabilize the crystals’ reaction. They were too unstable to do anything with.” He drums his fingers on his bent knees, feeling the soft material. “Anyways, it’s all useless now.”

The stranger scoffs again, a sound that Jayce is getting accustomed to hearing. “Useless? And how, pray tell? This kind of science isn’t a ‘win-a-prize-and-be-forgotten’ kind of deal. It’s world-changing.”

I know that, he wants to snap, I know, but they don’t. They don’t get it. The vitriol in his head comes, once again, as a surprise. This time he lets it linger a while longer before smothering it. “An accident happened. The Council found my research to be… too dangerous,” is what he settles on, measuring his words carefully. The ugly sting of tears still sits behind his eyes. “I was—” the word dies in his throat, and he swallows drily. “Ah, exiled.”

He stares at his intertwined fingers, and begins scratching his right thumb with the other. He hears his heartbeat, loud and thunderous, and wonders how the other man can’t hear it. Then, a deep sigh fills the air, and the man’s cane lightly taps his boot, calling his attention. Jayce raises his head, and finds the stranger staring at him with a peculiar expression—it’s halfway to anger, but not quite; somewhat sad, but not compassionate. 

“The City of Progress has always been terrified of it coming along,” he tells Jayce, his tone less harsh. Despite looking a few years older than Jayce at most, he seems impossibly tired. “They adore the image of it, do not get me wrong—with their literal golden towers and Progress Days and what-have-you,” he continues, shifting his eyes to the city on the other side of the river. “And yet when someone who could bring actual change arrives, they cower in the shadow of mediocrity. Pah!”

He starts crouching down to sit, grunting as his brace creaks. Jayce instinctually moves to offer help, but freezes at the look the man shoots him. He folds his hands again and waits as the stranger lowers down on the other side of the tree trunk, extending his bad leg in front of him and laying his cane across his lap. The tree is long enough his cane doesn’t even reach Jayce, but it’s close, so Jayce studies it a second—it’s rough, clearly handmade, but done with a careful and experienced hand. 

The man sighs and gazes at the cliff in front of them, Piltover shining in the distance. “You would have changed lives. Why were you about to throw that away?”

Jayce inhales sharply at the reminder. He’d stood so close—metaphorically and physically—to the edge, and he thinks, for the first time, of what would’ve happened if the stranger hadn’t interrupted him. 

It terrifies him. 

“I…” he whimpers, “I just…”

At Jayce’s silence the man turns his eyes to him, and speaks again. “There are many ways of changing lives. People here try to do so every day—as much as they let us,” he says, a bit of venom slipping in the last sentence. “This?” he continues, flicking Jayce’s sketchbook back to him—it lands on his lap, open. “This would have been generational. But not everything has to be.”

Jayce slowly starts flipping pages. His eyes fall on a drawing he’d done months prior—a little doodle of a new cooking pot for his mother, she’d been complaining about the handles on her old one. 

She’d lauded about his great mind for days after—even more than when he discussed his studies of the arcane. He doesn’t blame her, a pot made from scratch is probably a much more concrete evidence of his intelligence than books upon books of research that has gone nowhere. He strokes his thumb over the drawing, and breathes deeply.

“You want to change lives,” the strangers resumes, and Jayce looks at him again. There’s a fire in his golden eyes, one that makes Jayce’s breath shorten. “You still can. They can take everything from you,” he declares slowly, tilting his torso closer to Jayce. “But your mind shall always remain yours.”

Jayce exhales a rush of air, and blinks multiple times. The words seem to resonate through his entire body—they burrow in his bones, carve themselves there. The man leans away again and straightens, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it wince contorting his features when his back cracks. 

“Thank you,” Jayce settles on saying, although it feels inadequate. Then, after a few seconds of silence, he offers: “My name is Jayce. Jayce Talis.”

He extends his left hand over the man’s cane, towards him, and the stranger lowers his eyes at it. Emotions pass through his eyes, ones that Jayce has not enough knowledge to interpret, and for a moment he thinks the man will leave his hand hanging there until he cramps. 

Then, and to Jayce it feels like a gift that is rarely given to others, he clasps his slender hand around Jayce’s. Despite his frailness, Jayce is shocked by how strong and secure his hold is—his hand feels rough, calloused from work. He nods in acknowledgment, and replies, “Viktor.”

Viktor lets go and brings his hand back to his cane. Jayce stares at him for a few more seconds, and when no further elaboration comes, he prompts: “Viktor…?”

The man just raises an eyebrow at him in question. 

“Your last name?” Jayce clarifies with a slight tilt of his head, and feels his expression wilt when Viktor’s eyes turn annoyed once more. 

“Do I look like I need one?” is his rebuttal, words harsh and heavily accented. Jayce quickly shakes his head, despite not understanding what has sparked the reaction. 

“No, no. Sorry,” he tells him, and his shoulders lower in relief when Viktor’s expression becomes placid again. 

Viktor shakes his head lightly, and then, to Jayce’s surprise, his lips lift up in a slight smile. A small exhale of air rushes from his nose, what would probably have been an actual laugh on anybody else, and Jayce feels as though he can breathe easier—like until that moment there had been a weight pressing on his chest, one he hadn’t even noticed, ever since his laboratory blew up. 

They stare at Piltover for a long while. Jayce hears the Pilt rushing under them, and behind them, in the distance, the sounds of the Undercity. He’d never paid much attention to them, never lingered long enough to, but he can hear voices intermingling, shouting above one another, and even laughter—the boisterous kind, the kind that shakes your entire body with the force of it. Not many in Piltover allow themselves that kind of laugh, especially in the Academy. 

Next to him, Viktor shifts his bad leg, rubbing his palm on his thigh in a soothing motion. He seems to steel himself, and then asks, “You want to help people. Yes?”

Jayce blinks at the question. “…Yes?”

Viktor shoots him a glare. “Are you asking me?”

“No, no—sorry. Yes, I want to.”

The other shifts the grip on his cane, tightens his hands around it. “You have nowhere to go.” 

It’s not posed as a question, but Jayce answers nonetheless. “Yeah,” he replies, swallowing heavily.

Then, Viktor looks at him: straight into Jayce’s eyes, as if trying to figure him out, or as if about to take a plunge into the Pilt himself. “You can sate your hero complex by assisting me, if your Piltovan sensibilities allow it,” he announces loftily, in a much-too-casual way to actually be so. His face is tense, his good leg jitters. 

Jayce stares at him, stunned. The tree trunk groans under their weight. “Are you—you’re offering me a place to stay?”

Viktor scoffs (and he does that quite a bit, doesn’t he), and rolls his eyes back towards Piltover. “You seem as if you’d know the difference between a wrench and a screwdriver, that’s all. And your ideas are… fascinating.”

Jayce feels himself warm at the compliment, and the weight on his chest lifts even more. Slowly, as if trying to pet a spooked Poro, he lifts his left hand and places it gently on Viktor’s shoulder. The man tenses, but doesn’t shrug him off.

“Thank you, Viktor,” he says softly, trying to infuse all his gratitude into the words: thank you for interrupting me, thank you for hearing me out, for believing in what no one believed in. 

Viktor seems to tense even more, awkwardly nodding in response. “Yes, well. You’re welcome.” 

Jayce takes pity on him and takes off his hand, and Viktor relaxes. Behind them, the Undercity framed in its glow, the sun sets, and Piltover and its golden towers get darker and darker in the distance. 

When Jayce was eleven years old, his mother had brought him to a botanical garden. The visit itself matters little in his memory, but what he truly remembers is the ending: they’d gone out on the rooftop of the greenhouse, and pollen and fallen petals had been dancing in the air, transported by the breeze. Jayce had stood there, inhaling the fresh scents intermingling all around him—they changed from second to second, never remaining the same. 

The air is completely still in the undercity. 

It is as if all the collective breaths people take, the smog, the odors, mix with one another to create a thick blanket—it has a weight, one that Jayce thinks will be able to crush him if he’s not careful. And it never moves or changes; there isn’t a single spot in the undercity where he can have respite from it. Each breath he takes, he can feel traveling down his windpipe. Firm like honey.

The first week of his stay there, Jayce gets sick. 

It happens a few days after meeting Viktor. The man brings him to his small home, a run-down house on the edge of the city.

("It’s down in the Entresol level,” he’d said, and Jayce had confusedly replied: “The different levels have names?”

Viktor had whacked his cane against his shins.)

The house is all made of metal and glass, with little wood, like much of the architecture there. Jayce suspects wood would just rot at breakneck speed, collapsing the structures on themselves. 

It doesn’t have many rooms. The main one, immediately accessed upon entering, is also the biggest, and functions as both a laboratory and a living space. Tables litter the area, all piled with papers and scraps of metal. A massive window covers the wall opposite the door, and overlooks a sprawling view of the Undercity. It’s always illuminated with bright neon signs, never still or quiet. 

Attached to the main room are a small, functional bathroom—it doesn’t have a shower or a bath, only a water basin that needs to be refilled each time—and a bedroom, and that is all. The bedroom is about half the size of the laboratory, and both he and Viktor manage to squeeze another small mattress in it. 

There is no bedframe, but then again, Viktor had to construct one for himself. They’ll probably get to it.

Jayce, for two days, doesn’t leave the house a single time. He spends his time staring at walls, shuffling from room to room, and trying not to scream every time he looks at his workbook. Viktor, for the most part, leaves him alone—probably a grace period before Jayce’ll have to start pulling his weight. 

Not leaving the house doesn’t spare his Piltovan constitution. 

Three days after their meeting, he wakes in the middle of the night, his throat stinging. He gives a weak cough to clear it out, and then simply doesn’t stop. Coughs rack his body, heavy and unyielding—he feels mucus in his throat, tears stinging in his eyes, and starts dry heaving from the strength of them. He bends over the edge of his bed, half-formed pleas trying to climb out in-between the coughing. 

Viktor—who Jayce has realized often does not sleep, or at least not in his room—opens the door haggardly, leaning on his cane, with his hair rumpled and eyebags heavy. 

Jayce feels an inexplicable embarrassment at being seen like this, vomiting bile and with tears in his eyes, and tries to hide himself by curling up. Viktor sighs from the doorway, and his cane thumps as he moves closer. 

“You lasted longer than I expected,” he admits in a whisper, and Jayce mumbles incoherently in response. He tries to hide his face, but his head is ringing, a faint sound that leaves him dazed. He feels a sudden warmth on his forehead, and realizes Viktor has placed the back of his hand there. He tries to move away, but Viktor clicks his tongue. “Stay still. You’re having a normal reaction to the Gray. The ones born here don’t have such strong responses, since we’re used to it since birth—but for others, it is a heavy blow.”

The words filter in, but Jayce cannot figure out their meaning. He groans weakly, and his eyes widen in alarm just a second before he vomits again. Viktor, somehow, has gotten a metal bucket, and places it under him. 

Words, again. “There’s nothing to aid this, you’ll have to sweat it out. Zaun will eat you alive. This is simply its first test.”

What comes after that is simply impressions of sensations. The roughness of the mattress under him, the coarseness of the blanket on top of him. He accidentally kicks it off a few times, but it always finds a way back over him. Fingers holding open his eyes to check his pupils. A bucket next to his bed, always emptied. The air around him is still, so still, it doesn’t move, and sometimes Jayce yells to see if it can move. They’re strangled yelps, or maybe names, he cannot remember—but there’s always a response. He can’t make out the responses either, but they all come from the same quiet voice. 

He dreams, and remembers parts of those. The Council stares at him, their faces twisted in expressions of contempt and anger. Cassandra Kiramman’s mouth contorts in a sneer, Heimerdinger says I’m sorry, while his eyes hold a different sentiment entirely. 

His mother kisses his forehead, and pushes him off the bridge.

A few times, Jayce thinks he must have died. That Viktor didn’t get to him on time on that ledge. That his brains have splattered all over the Pilt, leaving a red stain that is the biggest mark his life has ever had on Piltover.

Then he vomits again, and is reminded he still has a body.

Consciousness returns in slow increments. He’s able to hold thoughts for more than a few minutes; he manages to roll on his other side without dry-heaving; he manages to make out the words being whispered to him more and more. They’re all variations of breathe, and slowly, and again. 

At some point, he manages to mumble out a coherent response to them. He says, thank you, and the cool cloth dabbing his forehead freezes in shock. There is no answer, but that is fine.

He dreams of the council contacting him, of them saying they made a mistake. His mother embraces him and leads him back to the Academy. He wakes up, and the mattress under him is damp with sweat.

Days, or weeks, or months after, he opens his eyes, and does so with lucidity. He’s alone in the room—the only small window that shows the outside is opaque, caked with years of dust and fumes that leave the shapes outside unfocused and blurry. Neon lights stand out in the darkness, and his eyes ache when he watches them for too long. The bed in the center of the room—Viktor’s bed—is unmade. Jayce can’t remember the last time the man was there with him, but it must have been recently.

There is still a bucket next to him; it’s empty and clean, but a stale odor comes from it. No soap was used to clean it, only water, and the pungent smell makes Jayce’s nose wrinkle. 

With great effort, he heaves himself up to be seated. He closes his eyes when his head spins, and waits for the room to stop moving. The mattress is, to put it bluntly, disgusting. Sweat is soaked into it, stains of sickness cover it because of the occasions he probably couldn’t manage to reach the bucket, and the sheets are ready to be thrown in the garbage. 

Jayce eagerly stands up to distance himself from it. 

As soon as he does, he is hit by another wave of dizziness. He leans heavily on a dresser next to the wall, and tries to steady his breathing. It comes out in wheezes. When he tries taking a large inhale, his lungs seem to give out halfway through—there’s a rattle that scares him, one that makes him wonder if he’s worse off than he appears to be.

Once he feels steady enough, he stumbles to the door. It’s ajar, a sliver of light coming in from the main room of the house. And when he pushes it open, Viktor is leaning over a massive table covered in blueprints. 

The man is identical to how Jayce remembers seeing him last. His hair is shooting up in different directions, his clothes are rumpled, and his leg brace glints in the harsh lighting. The only difference are his eyebags—deep purples under piercing golden eyes. Jayce feels a pang of guilt that leaves him even breathless.

Viktor glances up from where he is hunched over his work, and his gaze quickly scans Jayce from head to toe. There’s nothing to be gleaned from it, and once his examination is over, he simply says: “Resilient,” in a quiet voice. 

Jayce shifts his weight from foot to foot.

“Uh,” he starts, and cringes at how rough and scratchy his voice sounds. “Hello.”

Viktor doesn’t reply, but his eyes don’t leave him, either. It makes Jayce feel uneasy, but he supposes he’s the one that barged into Viktor’s home, so it’s deserved.

“I… feel better now,” is what he settles on, and his stomach seems to twist in more and more knots. “So, thank you. Really. For… for helping me.”

Viktor, again, doesn’t move his eyes from him. Behind them, Jayce sees him calculate something—but what, he does not know. Finally, Viktor reaches an answer to his equation. He sighs, and as he moves his gaze back to his work, he mutters, “You’re welcome.”

Jayce’s mouth opens again, ready to spout out something else that will make him seem even more foolish, but his eyes catch on exactly what Viktor is reading—and he does a double-take.

“Is—” he starts, his voice becoming affronted. “Is that my notebook?!” he exclaims, and feels his feet move. He catapults himself next to the table, and then suddenly—stops. Viktor, sitting next to him, doesn’t raise his gaze from him. He flips to a different table, and Jayce feels as if the man is running his fingers over his insides. The lines of ink become his blood. The wrinkled pages are his ligaments.

It makes his heartbeat thump in his throat.

“What are you doing?” he asks, and the question is filled with indignation.

(Part of him knows he has no right to feel as such. The other feels Viktor’s fingers run over his veins as he follows an equation Jayce had written.) 

Viktor takes a few seconds to respond. There is no rush in his words. “Going over your research,” he ultimately says, and then falls quiet again. The man is not, Jayce has come to realize, one for verbose dialogues.

Jayce stammers, gaping like a fish. “You…” he begins, then stops. “Why are—” he starts again, then cuts himself off. At that, Viktor’s attention is finally diverted. He raises his eyes to Jayce, and his gaze is so sharp Jayce almost instinctually flinches back.

“You are a guest here because I am convinced your research will help. And I know you are aware of that. Did you expect me not to be privy to your schematics, to be able to contribute to them?”

His golden eyes solidify into brass. Jayce swallows, and tries to unstick his words from the roof of his mouth. The other man is, after all, right. It still makes his head spin. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, instinctually. “You’re right. Sorry.”

At his apologies, Viktor’s eyebrows scrunch a little. He stares at Jayce inscrutably, and then returns to the notebook. Whatever air had filled the room just then lifts, and Jayce feels like he can breathe more easily. 

Viktor’s responses are soft. They’re not quiet, he’s not trying to not be heard—it’s as if he knows that whenever he speaks, no matter how rare that may be, people will listen. “No apologies needed,” he says, and it doesn’t feel like reassurance. Jayce doesn’t think the man is built for it. “I only wanted to understand what exactly you were trying to accomplish.”

Jayce nods, despite Viktor not looking at him. He feels a little silly, standing next to a seated man that feels three times his size. He begins fiddling with his thumbs as Viktor flips another page. The man exhales an heavier breath out of his nose. 

“The principle of your main research is revolutionary, as I told you. It will not be achievable here, of course.”

Of course. Jayce feels what little air he had in his lungs get knocked out of him. He’d known his research on the arcane—on Hextech—was all but buried. Still, hearing it said in such a matter-of-fact way, it makes him mourn. Grief blooms inside of him, taking root between his ribs. It seems to weight him down. He wonders if Viktor can see it take shape inside of him. 

The other man pays it no mind. “But all the other things you had applied yourself to are worthy of note, clearly. While we may not be able to create your crowning achievement, I assure you—with my help, we will construct something that Zaun will not forget.”

It should feel monumental, and in some aspects, it is. Viktor is the first person to see worthiness in what Jayce had dedicated his life to, no matter what it is. It’s not magic. It’s not the arcane. But it is something that was born out of his hands, either way. 

Jayce tries squashing the roots in his chest. It doesn’t work, but perhaps he can pretend.

“Alright,” is what he settles on, and his voice is low, but not in the same way Viktor’s is. “Okay. We can… we can start work as soon as you want.”

Viktor’s eyes move back up again, to him. Jayce feels tiny, a spec of dust. The other man hums, and his nose scrunches up. For the first time since waking up, Jayce sees his gaze become more playful. “Not before you wash yourself,” Viktor asserts, and the jab feels so out-of-left-field that Jayce blinks, taken aback, and has to take a few seconds to realize. 

“Oh!” he finally exclaims, taking a step back in embarrassment. “Sorry, I—you’re right, I definitely smell… less than presentable.”

Viktor hums with what Jayce presumes is mirth. “Quite,” he replies, and then nods his head in the direction of the small bathroom. “There is a basin in there, and a steel bar. You can use those. After, get rid of the water and fill it again.”

“Yep,” Jayce says, nodding. “Uh, is there soap I could borrow?” he asks, and shrinks on himself when Viktor shoots him a glare. 

“There is a steel bar,” the man repeats pointedly, and Jayce finds himself nodding before the other has even finished talking. 

“Got it. Sorry.”

Viktor sighs again, and moves his eyes back to Jayce’s notebook. There’s a pen in his hand, but he’s using it to follow along his mess of a handwriting. He hasn’t written anything on the notes themselves, and Jayce feels a sudden burst of gratefulness.

“Some of your ideas are incredibles, others…” Viktor suddenly says, and then makes an eh sound. “Not so much.”

Jayce feels his brows furrow in response. “What?” he asks, the excuse me implicit in his tone. 

“Some of these are… insipid.” Viktor clarifies, the word taking shape with his distinct accent. “Solutions to problems that are not even problems in the first place. Why would you waste your time on these?”

Jayce stammers, words once again dying in his throat. What? 

“Um, I don’t…” he replies, “I don’t—know which ones you’re referring to.”

Viktor harrumphs, his face taking on a slightly exasperated expression. He quickly thumbs back to a page, and says, “This, here. Look. An automatic parasol that opens on its own when the temperature is high. Who would ever need something like this?”

You knew what exact page that was on?, Jayce wants to ask, but he knows the question would not be taken well. Probably. He shrugs his shoulders, remembering the half-assed doodle he’d done of the thing years ago.

“It was meant for… the people that want it,” is what he settles on, and he reprimands himself when his voice is a bit too defensive.

Viktor tsk’s, rolling his eyes skyward. “Oh, yes. Rich Piltovans with a stick too far up their asses to do it themselves, perhaps.”

Jayce gapes at the obscene language, and the casualness with which the man had delivered them. He doesn’t seem like the type, is what Jayce wants to think—but he is slapped with the realization that truly, he does not know what type Viktor is. He knows nothing of the man aside from what the other has shown him.

Maybe he is the type to swear like a sailor. Maybe he likes his coffee bitter, or maybe overtly sweet. Maybe he doesn’t like sleeping his bed. Maybe he hates Jayce and all he represents. 

He doesn’t know. All he can feel is an eagerness towards finding out.

“But, as I said,” Viktor continues, ignorant to Jayce’s realizations. “Most of what you’ve written here will be able to help. Truly help. I believe we will be able to arrive to something truly noteworthy, Jayce.”

Jayce. He likes the way Viktor says his name. It feels earned.

Viktor looks up to him, again. His gaze is much warmer, and a slight smile tugs his lips up. Lines form around his eyes, and Jayce finds himself staring at them. “Whereas Piltover was too scared to realize what you are, the undercity will never forget. I promise you that.”

There are thorns in Jayce’s chest. For a second, he feels them lighten.

He nods, unable to say much else. Viktor stares at him for a beat more, then nods as well, satisfied—at what, Jayce doesn’t know. Viktor tilts his head towards the bathroom again, a silent spurring that Jayce follows.

His feet move, and he stumbles towards the smaller room. Before he closes the door behind him, Viktor’s voice pipes up again:

“It is best that you remain in here, for at least a few weeks.” he warns. When Jayce turns towards him, he continues. “While you were indisposed, some… things happened. The undercity, it’s…”

For the first time since meeting him, Viktor seems to not find the words. Jayce holds his breath, transfixed by the sight.

“…Many things are changing.” is what Viktor settles on, and his voice is a mixture of awe, grief, rage, and a slight fear that leaves Jayce reeling. “I don’t know if for the better, or the worse. Just… remain inside, at least for a while.”

Jayce nods, and Viktor returns to his notes. He walks into the bathroom, and softly closes the door behind him.

There is no lock. The space is small, and dark. There’s a basin of water waiting for him.

Jayce stares at the wall in front of him. He pays no mind to his thoughts, he tells himself to do so later. 

And for a while, he cries.