Work Text:
Bang!!
Jayce was blindsided by smoke before he even had time to flinch. His already foggy surroundings were obscured completely for a moment, and by the time the smoke had fell, Jinx had vanished.
No time. There was no time for wasting time. Jayce readied his hammer, charging it to full capacity. As his ears recovered from the explosion, he could make out the sounds the sound of rapturous laughter taunting him from the shadows. Panic. His eyes darted around fervently, twisting his body around and around as glimpses of blue hair teased him and raced away before he could pinpoint their location.
A gunshot.
With razor reflexes, he switched up a few notches and just like that, a forcefield beamed around him. Just in the nick of time: the bullet ricocheted off the field with terrifying force - it had been heading straight for his head.
Adrenaline riling now, he switched up tactics to offence, tracking Jinx’s movement with his ears. A few well-placed twists soon had him firing on all cylinders, sending gigantic pulses in her direction. But he was sluggish, the fabulous weight of the hammer bearing him down to painstakingly slow movements, and she was spritely, dodging and manoeuvring through the pulsations, sometimes with millimetres to spare, but dodging all the same.
Evidently, his bombardment had shocked her for a moment, for she briefly ceased fire. But not for long. Soon, a rhythm picked up, and she found intervals where she could slip in shots, missing him by a hair’s breath every time.
In a tactful moment fuelled by adrenaline, Jayce found his own place in their melody. A pattern emerged in his fingers, enabling him to snap deftly back and forth between long-range combat and forcefield defence. Oceanic flashes constantly glazed his vision. Bullets bounced everywhere. There was a yelp on Jinx’s side - evidently, she’d dispelled the possibility that bullets could come back to her. Her motions became more frantic - she tripped on herself, delayed fire, and he could hear her heavy breathing from a mile away.
Jayce was in the thick of it now. His ears thrummed with the combined effect of ringing eardrums and a pounding heart. His actions became frenetic, and as a result his accuracy wavered. Yet, simultaneously, he perspired with the full strain of keeping his fingers working, the frenzied routine engraining into his muscle memory - he didn’t even know where he was firing anymore. But he kept going, because one error, one tiny mistake-
“Ah!”
Whatever composure he had left disintegrated as a bullet shredded through the muscle on his thigh, burying itself onto the flesh. There was an unwanted shout of victory. On instinct, his hand fled to the wound, relinquishing his sound grip on the hammer and causing it to power down.
This was the perfect opportunity for Jinx.
The girl pummelled into him before he even had time to recalibrate himself, as he looked up to see a pair of gruff feet flying into his chest. The last of his grip and resolve dissipated as the force jerked him backward, sending him plummeting to the floor with a harsh scrape along the gravel for good measure.
Then, for some reason, there was a peculiar moment of peace. Somewhere not so far off, Jinx had clattered to the floor with her weapon, and the fall had allowed the sweep of exhaustion to overcome them both, just for a moment. He closed his eyes, allowed himself the sweet relief of a few gasping breaths, refilling his lungs of what she had knocked out of them. Blood pooled from his thigh onto the gravel, but he couldn’t care less. He was alive, for now, and that was what mattered.
So it was a matter of great disappointment to him when he heard the girl scrabble to her feet. He sighed, then groaned as he heard the vague sound of her kicking the hammer away. Getting up was pointless; his leg stung deep and was now very much out of commission thanks to her well-placed shot. His mind sprinted slow, fumbled around for an answer as he heard her lollop towards him, the singular indication of her approach being her own rasping breaths. His mind numb, his body became its own puppeteer, gradually reaching into his pocket and pulling out a golden flare.
In one swift movement, it was up in the air, ablaze.
She coughed, shrunk away, now her turn to be blindsided.
Stunned, Jinx swirled around, looked for something, anything to ground herself again. The smoke used in the flare was much blacker than hers had been, marring her line of sight, her eyes flitting desperately about for anything familiar to latch onto.
She expected to find Jayce. She didn’t expect, through the cloud, to hear the strident, clanging boots off the Enforcers swarming the scene, surrounding her and muddling her further. She didn’t expect to have to swerve out the way whilst covering her ears to block out the obnoxious shouts, that mingled intermittently with her own rising whispers.
She didn’t expect to spot Viktor, still a fair distance away, alone on a ledge, nor anticipated the sickening anxiety it would bring her as the danger of the situation sunk in like lead.
People were crowding, and she was half-dizzy now with emotive delirium. Despite that, her eyes fixed on him. In a futile act of frightened stupidity, she sprinted right through the band, jaw slackening in a fraught plea to warn him:
”Viktor!” she cried once, drawing no attention from his distant form. “Vik-!”
The hard slam of a crowbar across a her cheek had her out cold before she hit the floor.
Jayce watched her wiry body fall with contempt, fondling his leg and wincing repeatedly as an inept Enforcer fumbled with some tweezers for the hiding bullet. He cursed as the minute thing was yanked brusquely through his flesh, further damaging the muscle, but at least making him capable of walking again.
Instantaneously, he stood tall and dominant off of wall the he’d been reclined on, limping over to the unconscious teen with as much pride as he could while stuck with a ruined thigh. He rounded in front of her, leered over spread, tiny form with a scornful scowl, so potent that she would have melted to nothing from the anger behind it if she were awake.
“What do you want done with her?” queried a brave individual.
And he pondered it, really pondered it for a minute. Noting that she seemed to be semi-conscious (judging by the flutter of her eyelids, and the unsteady breaths through her parted lips), he contemplated her slinky body. He could, he thought, glancing over to the Mercury Hamer, kill her now and be done with it. No, that wouldn’t do. Far too savage for his liking, and besides, it would spoil his already mostly-lost reputation with the Council. So, what to do with her, then? Perhaps, if she had hurt Viktor as he suspected, he would like it if Jayce brought the girl begging to his knees. If not that, at least Jayce might be able to figure out what the hell had been happening these last couple months with her in custody. Either way, the ideas made him chew his lip in pleasure.
”Take her,” he commanded, revenge all sickly sweet pulsing through his bloodstream. “Get her handcuffed and arrested, and for God’s sake,” he added, at the severe recollection of a recent, bitter memory, “Get her gagged so she doesn’t talk so much.”
So that was that, then. Jinx, captured, after all that hassle. Viktor, almost his again.
As the girl was dragged away behind him, he gazed yearningly after the silhouette of his partner, which hadn’t budged since the beginning. He took a wavering breath, swallowing the preemptive lump that had lodged in his throat.
He marched toward Viktor like a king toward his destiny.
Metres. Mere metres between them.
Viktor hadn’t meant to be left alone.
It seemed dubiously unfair, after all, when him and Jinx had shared so much together in the past few hours. But after their heartfelt detour to The Last Drop, he felt overwhelmed with new purpose. Seedlings of new ideas were flowering in the crevices of his brain.
They were going to change to the world. Him and Jinx. They had the means to do it, and more importantly, no one was in the way of stopping them.
Hypothetically, at least. There were still logistics to be worked out: the demeaning presence of the Enforcers, the increasingly ruthless reign of the prodigal Sevika, or even just finding a name for the fantastic medicine they’d created.
And finding a more efficient way of extracting it. And producing it en masse. And doing so safely- point was, he needed to think, and he’d told Jinx as much.
“I know a quiet place!” she’d exclaimed excitably, before turning suddenly bashful. “I know a lot of quiet places, actually…”
There was sorrow in that, a legitimate reason of why she’d know of quiet spaces; in the past months, he’d come to know her brain was troubled, disquieted, tending to run rampant with delusion. No wonder she would want a place of silence and solitude - the two things naturally coincided.
So, they’d taken a lazy excursion, weaving languidly through the rooftops and remaining on the high ground for their own safety - they had enemies on both sides, after all. She had kept ahead, not out of condescension but more out of her own preference, lingering on certain spots and perches, and as such allowing him to easily catch-up and master his new leg mobility at his own pace.
He smiled at the memory, relaxing further onto the railings. They’d stopped at her recommendation, and he could see why: the opaque smog kept the environment around him manageable to the senses, sound penetrated nowhere, and the wretched scent of pollution proving motivation enough in itself to improve lives.
He’d let her wander away and drift into her own thoughts. It wasn’t a banishment; she knew he wanted to be left alone and was purely obliging his request. Part of him recognised it also had something to do with protection; since they’d come out, she seemed to peer around more than usual, not necessarily afraid but certainly perturbed. It was likely that, while she played spider in the metal city, she was keeping a lookout at this very moment, shielding his body and thoughts from any malicious eye.
She’d come back soon, he hoped. Though the time for calculation had been pragmatically utilised, it was also a scathing reminder of the long road ahead to success. It was, essentially, just the two of them, contriving a scheme to provide miraculous medicine to any and every Zaunite, at no superfluous cost. Not easy when you didn’t have a sufficient way to produce large batches, no funding, two mentally unstable scientists, and a whole lot of scrap metal but no advanced technology. Not to mention at least a dozen or so people wanting their heads. Great.
He pinched the bridge of his noise, washing the thoughts away with his own personal soap: Jayce - clean and bubbly, but sour when consumed.
And Viktor had consumed too much, gobbled the bar and spat it back out and slurped it back up again. Now, as a result, his heart was sick and sad and a little annoyed at itself for having the ludicrous idea to eat the soap in the first place.
Not his greatest decision in life. Perhaps even his worst. But he couldn’t help reflecting on it, especially when his revelations were beginning to mirror that of his previous work. Two scientists, with one big idea that would change everything. Of course he’d reminisce.
It was a genuine concern to him that him and Jinx might end in a similar way to him and Jayce, for like he said, the road was long, and it was hard to see if the end brought a blockade or clear skies. The first attempt had certainly selected the former, and he was unsure that this one wouldn’t end the same.
As if a shepherd over sheep, he took a wide look at his own life, then zoomed in on just Jayce. What had gone wrong? The question had been prevailing in his mind ever since the betrayal. True, both parties had made some reckless decisons apart from each other in those final months, but it had all happened so fast. He had figured if, maybe, he picked it apart and scrutinised all the tiny fragments, he could find one fault and label it the start of it all. And to some extent he did. Logically, there was a build-up of prejudice, miscommunication, and separation between them.
But what of the love? Even when they had disagreed, the love had always circled back round, waved its friendly flag as a reminder of something greater right before things got too curt or hurtful, bringing them back to that solid point of friendship that had survived the inevitable toil of eight years. True, maybe Jayce’s amicable love was lesser than Viktor’s romantic love, but it was love all the same.
Yet in the blink of an eye, it had vanished from Jayce. Viktor winced; he could still remember the precise moment that love had been wiped from Jayce’s steely face.
”I want you to go away!”
He squeezed his eyes shut, the railing rattling as shudders overcame him. He didn’t want to remember it. He never wanted to remember it, but it always came, in tall, prodigious waves, washing over him, choking him, drowning him in all the feelings of desolateness and emptiness and inferiority he’d felt that day.
He fought with the emotions a little, wrestled with the memory, and tried not to let more come. It was always pictured like this, always broken up by brief snippets of contentment and pleasantry, emphasising just how much he’d lost. Yes, maybe Jayce was only one thing, but Jayce had also been his everything. And the part he hated most was always the end, when he always re-experienced that same soul-crushing realisation that Jayce wasn’t coming back - that he was never coming back - with the same spirit-shattering intensity as he has all those months ago.
The waves kept coming, lapping over his face, soaking his limbs until they were heavy.
He’s never coming back. Jayce is never coming back. Jayce is never coming back! He’s never coming back, he’s never coming back, hesnevercomingback, Jayce is never coming back!!
Abruptly, he threw his fists down on the rail, denting it irreparably. Something had snapped. Out of all the times the memory had repeated itself over and over in his head, it had never brought the kind of acceptance. As the slam echoed through the smog, he threw himself back, yelled in defiance at the world and all it stood for, because God damnit it had hurt him enough already that absolutely nothing it could do now would ever hurt him again.
He gasped, sucked in a long breath, and tautly shook the rage from his head. His hands fell on his knees, and a kind of numbness swept over him, a dejected hopelessness with no feeling at all. Just nothing. Jayce wasn’t coming back. That was it. There was nothing for it now. He had Jinx (Jayce was never coming back) and the Hexcore (Jayce was never coming back) and a brand new future ahead of him (Jayce was never coming back), and there was no turning back now. He could comfortably give up on it all, settle into his new life, and Jayce was never coming back, and-
“Viktor?”
He froze. Shockwaves flooded his body, his mind short circuiting, posture tightening like a spring. That voice was not Jinx’s, not the raspy, childish chortle he’d became used to these last months, but gruff and light like-
No.
His body became zombified as his mind shut off, steering his neck muscles to cast a glance over his shoulder. A vague silhouette took form behind him, tall and burly and conflictingly recognisable. His heart throbbed. His feet rotated of their own accord, twisting his body all the way around, until he was facing the fog-beast in its entirety.
The creature approached apprehensively, colours glinting from a distance as the smog cleared way for a reunion. But not enough of it. There was still some ambiguity, still some unfathomable aspects, and yet, also unfathomable recognisability.
“Jayce?”
He didn’t even feel his lips move. His voice didn’t sound like his, coming out as a meek squeak wobbling with disbelief.
So much disbelief, and yet there his partner was, clear as day, revealed from the fog, a face of hopeful purity, and puppy-dog eyes bubbling with tears.
“Oh, Viktor!”
And just like that, Jayce wasn’t across the river anymore. Nor was he miles away, or even metres away, but right there in front of Viktor, on him, all around him, strong arms trapping him against that expansive chest. Just holding him. Holding him, holding him, holding him. There was no where to go, nowhere to run, nowhere to be except captured in those large arms that acted like a cocoon around his body.
Viktor’s hands, though, stayed rigidly at his sides, fists clenching and unclenching as an internal conflict roared. Every nerve was alight with shock, every fibre vibrating with something totally ineffable. Every part of him wanted to touch Jayce, and every part of him wanted not to at the same time.
Jayce must have sensed this, for he drew back hurriedly, gripping Viktor’s shoulders and gazing into his eyes in a search for some hint of translatable emotion. Jayce’s own pupils were tainted and swimming with tears, a swirling, marinading mixture of guilt and joy and misery.
”Oh God, I’m so sorry, Viktor,” he sobbed, swiftly tucking a strand of hair behind his partner’s ear. His hand lingered. “I-I-I tried to come back to you, I promise I did, but when I came back you were… gone.“
Gone. He sounded so broken saying it, as if he were the one who’d been shattered to pieces that day, and not Viktor. Maybe if the latter’s mind was in its regular state, he would feel bitter at this, but the numbness was only just subsiding, broken through by emotional overload, and tumbling through to the other side with nothing but a dull hurt. His stony mind had a single crevice in it, from which slipped out one prevailing question - the one that had been there ever since that day he’d been left bleeding on that bridge.
”Why did you do it?” he whispered hoarsely, and now the tears spilled from his eyes full and free, his first indication of emotion.
At the question, Jayce looked like a kicked puppy, but Viktor had no room left for sympathy in his stuffed closet of emotion. He wanted to know. He wanted answers, and he wanted them now.
”I- Oh, God, I don’t- I wasn’t-“ Jayce’s tongue stumbled, tripped, and fell over his words, his eyes flickering in panic as though he really couldn’t find a reasonable, direct answer. As if realising this, he appeared to change tactics, looking Viktor in the eye again. The hand that had been loitering on his ear now cupped his hollow cheek, and another came up to join it.
“I never meant to hurt you,” he pleaded, upper lip drawn up in a fabulous pout. “I-I was just so angry. I wasn’t thinking…” He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “I don’t even remember why I did it- does it matter? I just- I just missed you so much.”
Without warning, he pulled Viktor in for a hug, squeezed the bewildered man to his chest. Still, Viktor did not touch him.
It was then that he noticed the lack of a cane.
He pulled back, gripping Viktor by his forearms, astonished. “How… how are you…?”
”Everything changed when you left,” came the heartbreaking reply, guessing the end of the question before it came. Viktor’s gaze was downcast, tears dripping onto the floor, backing away step by step. When he finally looked up at Jayce, his pupils were melted gold. “I’ve changed.”
At his broken, strained voice, Jayce’s heart slashed in two. His whole face softened and weakened, and he attempted to reach out for Viktor once again, placing a hand on his shoulder in a more familiar act of affection.
“I know, V, I know.” At the term of endearment, Jayce drew Viktor closer to him, and this time he could’ve sworn the man leaned into his touch when his hand returned to his cheek. A memory drew him back to the heist in Piltover, that Viktor had apparently been involved in with Jinx. “You made some choices you didn’t want to, did some bad things. Me too. It’s okay.”
A silence; it endured dreadfully, both gazing into each other’s eyes.
”You really missed me?” Viktor finally asked earnestly.
”Of course,” Jayce appended viscerally, pressing his forehead against Viktor’s and wrapping his arms around the smaller man’s waist. “I missed everything. You’re my everything. I love you.”
The words were out of his mouth before anything could stop them, and as soon as they were, everything seemed to fade away. If the hemisphere of the world collapsed at that moment, if buildings began to burn, and humanity insidiously melted away from existence, they wouldn’t have known it. They would stay there, in their own defensive bubble, breath against breath, until they were the only ones left, and they would live.
”You love me?” Viktor breathed, his eyes wide as they could go, totally sceptical. As he spoke, all his life philosophy was falling down around him, destroyed with just three little words.
”I do,” Jayce confirmed, clasping Viktor’s face in his hands again. “I love your gorgeous voice. I love your fluffy hair that I’ve always wanted to touch but never dared. I love your little smile that you can only see if you really look for it. I love that you love drinking sweet milk three times a day, at the precise same times. I love that cute little mole on your cheek, and the other one right next to your mouth. I love how your eyes always look like they’re on fire. I love how you hate social events, but you come with me anyway, to make me feel better. I love your sarcastic sense of humour, and how it always makes me laugh, how we can just bounce off each other. I love how you pretend to be really closed off, but know how to be soft when it’s important. I love your theories, I love your passion, I love everything-I love you!”
Viktor was battling with himself, his mind and heart bickering like the old married couple they had become since meeting Jayce. All he ever needed, right here, and yet still so many questions.
“Why are saying this now, Jayce? You’ve had years to tell me.”
Again, that kicked puppy face. “Oh, Viktor, I was a fool. A blind fool. I always thought I would know love when I felt it, but then you crept so quietly into my life, and they always teach you that love is this big, gigantic epitome, and- I guess I thought it would be different to how it actually felt, and I just got so used to you being there. I… I kept distracting myself with all these other people, thinking that what I felt when I was with you was what best friends feel. But I was wrong. I know that now.” All of a sudden, he was trembling with sobs. “I knew that when I let you go. Y-you know… how they say in-in marriage vows? How death will do them part?”
Viktor nodded, his steely resolve faltering.
”That was how I knew,” he admitted, and suddenly this man, this same brute of a man who’d left Viktor broken on that bridge, was on his knees, begging, buried in Viktor’s chest.
”I felt like I was going to fucking die without you. What if I had fucking died without you?”
The majority of Viktor’s resolve flattened. Tentatively, not sure of himself any more, he began to stroke Jayce’s hair, started sobbing and snivelling like Jayce was. Only he had the power. He had the control.
Upon feeling the touch, Jayce peered up at Viktor, and the latter’s heart lurched. Even now, noise dripping with snot, tears coruscating his eyes, Jayce looked so beautiful.
Calloused hands crawled up Viktor’s waist, clambered up his shoulders and slumped upon them.
”Do you remember the day we first met? When we floated around in the academy building like we were the only people on earth? Did you love me then? I loved you then. Did you love me then?”
Viktor’s resolve was gone, flattened under the feet of Jayce’s words. “Yes.”
A harsh sniffle; both their voices were just feeble whispers now.
“Do you still love me?”
”Yes.”
The men rested on each other’s foreheads, their soaked faces gazing into each other. Jayce stood at full height again, and Viktor had never felt so small. Sobs came full and free between them, somehow highlighting the loveliness of each other rather than creating abhorrence. Viktor’s hands were sticks at his sides again, and Jayce’s hands were on his face, again.
”You’re so close to me, V,” Jayce whispered, as if afraid to break an unspoken spell. “I can’t tell what’s real. Do you really love me?” His hot breath was close enough to warm Viktor’s face.
”I do.”
”Say it.”
”I love you.”
”Again, please.”
”I love you.”
”I love you, too.”
If it were possible, their faces got even closer, lips ghosting over each other. Again, Viktor felt that powerful feeling, as Jayce stared at his lips with half-lidded eyes, desirous, wanting.
And then kissed him.
It was soft, tentative, hesitant, and more importantly, it’s lack of ferocity gave Viktor time for perspective. His hands remained evermore unoccupied, eyes wide open.
For a moment, he hastened his ear to the tiny part of him still squeaking for logic. For a moment, he considered whether it was worth tearing down all the walls he’d built around himself over decades in one swift motion. For a moment, he listened to all his mind’s objections, all his worries and woes for the future, and what it would mean, and what he was about to risk in exchange for essentially everything he’d ever wanted. Because Jayce was his everything, too; that was what made it so hurtful. What made it so difficult to give in now, when the temptation to hurt back was so palpable and intoxicating.
So why was there a part of him screaming to kiss back, to touch that handsome body, melt under those lovely puppy-dog eyes, to give in to love that he’d been craving since the dawn of his life? It was an opposing temptation of its own, screeching and yelling and imploring him to give in, just once, to the pleasures of the heart and not of the mind.
All this evaluation had occurred within a mere 20 seconds. Yet by then, Jayce grew desperate, pressing against Viktor’s thin lips with enough force to have the fragile man stumbling backward slightly. With his eyes still open, Viktor’s saw Jayce’s eyelids flutter and briefly reveal two entreating, begging eyes- oh, God, not those eyes.
Because Viktor had never been able to say no to those puppy dog eyes.
That did it. He reciprocated wilfully, pushing into Jayce with all the pent-up verve that eight years of yearning was certain to bring, permitting his eyelids to close, as he simultaneously allowed his hands to roam the vast breadth of Jayce’s chest. The latter took the cue, fervently tilting Viktor’s chin up to get better access to his lips and mouth. The hand leftover tenderly circled in the inner hollow of his cheek, caressed with specially reserved fondness the gorgeous mole just under his right eye.
Viktor was on Cloud Nine, and that was no exaggeration. His mind, that was normally bogged down by his afflicted body, was soaring high above the clouds until they were little puffs, mere specks in the grand scheme of the universe that had just been opened up to him. There was a hand in his hair now, one that tugged him coyly back to face Jayce’s blissful smile.
”Gods, you’re perfect…” he cooed, pecking Viktor’s second mole - the one just above his mouth - between words as a tease, before returning to his lips with ravage grace. One arm now had a protective grip around his waist, the other combing through his matted hair with so much affection it felt like euphoria.
And if only it could’ve stayed that way forever. If only Viktor didn’t hear the calamity occurring not so far away, heard profanities shouted across the smog. If only his stupid brain didn’t compute that the conflict was getting discerningly closer, didn’t remind him that he hadn’t seen Jinx in a while.
There was a kerfuffle behind them, near enough and violent enough to provoke concern. Hazily, Viktor slid one eye open - just time to see a pink-haired girl wrangling with an enforcer, switching between intimidating insults and hollering for Jayce's attention. There was another girl beside her, one he recognised instantly as Caitlyn Kiramann, hastily trying to enforce some kind of reason, but ultimately looking bewildered and mildly disorientated.
But that wasn't what made his blood boil, what made every once of him suddenly want to get off Jayce, what elicited such a feeling of protection that it overrided everything else in his system.
What made him furious, was opening his eyes just in time to see a battered Jinx dragged by her braids towards them, squealing and squirming in fear with her mouth muffled by a gag.
Traitor traitor traitor traitor traitor. Get off, get off, get off.
With all the strength in his body, he shoved Jayce back with pugnacious force, glaring at him incredulously. "What is the meaning of this?!"
All he got back was that kicked puppy face, again, for the third time. He was getting tired of it, now. What had just minutes ago been endearing was now obnoxiously irritating.
Anyway, if Jayce was going to provide an answer, he didn’t get the chance. The pink-haired girl had broken free of the enforcer now and honed in on him, her stance emitting hot bouts of radiated rage. She lunged for Jayce, teeth set, snatching him by the lapel of his gaudy jacket.
”You lousy sell-out! You fucked us over, didn’t you?!” As she spoke, she shook him vigorously as if to dislodge an explanation. A tiny fragment of her voice was laced with hurt as she spoke. Caitlyn was between them in moments, pushing them apart and halting them with the palm of her hands.
”Can everyone just calm down?” she advised, extricating the pair with firm conviction. “I’m sure Jayce has a reasonable explanation for this.” The expression she shot in Jayce’s direction suggested she didn’t fully believe her statement.
”I do, I do!” Jayce corroborated, gesturing to his partner. “Look! Look who I found! It’s Viktor!”
”So you just put my sister in handcuffs while you get your happy reunion?!” the pink-haired girl countered incredulously. “You bribed enforcers, why didn’t you say anyth-!“ she stopped, smirked and rolled her eyes, wagged her finger at Jayce accostingly. “Oh, okay, I see what you’re doing.”
“I don’t think I follow,” Jayce persisted, and Viktor shuddered; that coldness was hauntingly familiar.
The brutish girl scoffed. “You weren’t gonna say anything, were you? You never wanted to help me find my sister. You were just after your boyfriend.”
At this, Viktor’s eyes flicked swiftly between the girl and a petrified Jinx, now forced bluntly onto her knees and fixating her glistening, dolorous eyes upon him. Amidst his anger, something clicked in his brain, his eyes lighting on pink-haired girl in astonishment - suddenly everything made a bit more sense.
”You’re Violet. You’re Jinx’s sister,” he exclaimed, and it was only then that Vi seemed to mark his presence.
Unfortunately, Jayce caught it too. “How do you know that?”
The minute he spoke, he wished he hadn’t. Viktor fixed him with such an icy look, he physically felt his skin frost over.
”You didn’t answer my question,” Viktor reiterated determinedly. “What is the meaning of this?”
Now it was Jayce’s turn to look incredulous. “What isn’t, V? She blew up the council, for starters, and that’s just naming what she’s being investigated for.”
Ludicrously, Viktor got a shock from this information. It was strange: he’d always known it was Jinx who blew up the council, same as everyone else, but somehow, he’d never connected the dots between his friend and that crime. Perhaps it was because the lost teenager, who was so wonderfully tender with him, and who was actually much kinder than anyone else had ever given her the opportunity to be, was so far-fetched from the reckless, heartless criminal that such an offence implied, prevented him from associating that attack with her.
In any case, whatever upset this might of caused him was instantaneously washed away when her protests drew his attention to her, seeing her wet eyes full with complete and utter shame as she squealed muffled pleas. They spoke volumes for her guilt. Within seconds, his heart was hapless again.
”You don’t know her,” he said, watching her eyes flush with relief as he showed his understanding. “She was on a bad path. She just needs a little guidance.” At his words, Vi did a double take on Viktor, as if viewing him with a new lens separate from the one Jayce had fabricated for her.
”He’s right,” she enjoined, happy to to take his side if it meant defending her sister. “She worked for Silco, and I guess he cared for her. I think she cared for him. I saw it, kind of. And he’s right that you don’t know her,” she pressed on, preventing Jayce’s move to argue, “But I do, and because of that I know that one of my sister’s better qualities is that she’d do anything for the people she cares about. She did it once for me, and made a mistake, she did it then for Silco. She was doing what she thought was right.”
Vi was surprised at how easy all that had come out her mouth, though in reality she shouldn’t have been; she’d been rehearsing it for months, replaying the tea party in her head, and piecing it together into somethings logical based on what she knew from the past and what she’d observed.
This much she figured: that her sister cared for Silco, and that her sister would do anything for whom she loved, often with disastrous consequences. These things she combined, recognising with Caitlyn’s aid that Jinx followed the ideologies of her father-figure (as much as it repulsed Vi to say it) as a sort of side-effect, a consequence, to caring about him. Back in the day, Powder would have jumped off a cliff of Vi had asked her to; why would Silco be any different?
”Oh, come ooonnn,” Jayce groaned, grappling his fingers in his hair, a by-product of the muddling it had brought him to hear Viktor defending this same criminal that had stolen him away from Jayce. Furtively desperate, he turned to Cait, in his eyes, the only pragmatic person left in this situation. “Cait, you’re with me on this, right? That freak killed your mother!”
But whatever friendliness Caitlyn had still harboured for Jayce in these last months had flown away, and was hardened over by a clear repulsion, fuelled further by his manipulation of currently her most sensitive topic.
”That ‘freak’ is still a person, Jayce, and one my girlfriend here really cares about.” He flinched, feeling attacked at her authoritatively indifferent tone, as if she were overseeing a court case. “I don’t condone what she did. If Vi believes there is good in her - and given the appalling conditions these people have to live in - and what those conditions can force them into - I believe there is - then I am willing to put aside my…” Her stern voice wobbled a little, her face faltering and then hardening again in a second. “…personal affairs aside until there is a more appropriate time for a conversation to be in order.”
Jayce was thoroughly and debilitatingly baffled at this point, aggressively combing through his hair. On top of the interruption of the reunion with the love of his life, whatever connection he had left with his best friend was being incinerated by two immoral, Undercity girls. Any compassion that Caitlyn had left reserved for him in her chiselled face, was now displaced with a single, smooth slab of stony judgement.
”What happened to you?!” he interrogated, all his frustrations with her from the last couple culminating in a grand loss of temper.
”What happened to you?!” she retorted, flailing her hands in impassioned exacerbation. “Find your humanity! You sent enforcers here to terrorise innocent people until you got what you wanted, don’t pretend you’re not! Have you ever considered the complexities of these people beyond their criminal records? Or do you just generalise based purely on crime that your government caused, because they couldn’t give less of a shit that these people are living in poverty? I suppose you enjoy the bliss of wilful ignorance in your fancy house, because these people ‘brought it on themselves’ by performing the necessary crimes to keep themselves safe!!”
”They’re not all necessary crimes, Caitlyn!”
”Maybe,” she acquiesced. “But don’t you think their anger is a little bit justified when the government doesn’t give a shit, and enforcers hunt them like dogs for no reason other than some fucked-up power trip?” She paused, caught her breath, then sighed mournfully. “Where is the Jayce who wanted to help people, to bring them prosperity-?”
”-To improve lives?”
Viktor’s interjection stunned them all into silence. Even the bumptious enforcers who’d been bullying Jinx into submission over the course of her writhing, had stopped everything to gawk in shock at this frail man’s audacity.
Jinx, despite her welling eyes, looked on proudly.
Jayce looked the worst out of all of them, completely bewildered. “…V, I…I don’t understand…”
”What will change, Jayce?!” Viktor broke out viscerally, utilising all the reason that had been privately marinading in him over the course of the conversation. “Because we can go home today, and be in love, and pretend that this was just a little blip and everything’s beautiful, but what happens when our dream to improve lives is delayed once again? What happens when we have to wait another eight years to help people who are suffering now, who are dying now? What happens when you are so deeply rooted in your indoctrinated prejudices, that you bring yet more violence to my people with a wave of a hand? I can’t live like you, Jayce. I can’t sit up in a shiny house, my dream reduced to nothing, limitations at every angle. I can’t live with those limitations, Jayce. Not anymore. I have done,” he gestured animatedly, “more here in the last 24 hours than I ever have up there.” Suddenly, his voice became horrendously bitter. “I know what you were going to do, to the Hexcore…”
Like the venom from a scorpion, Jayce felt the retching nausea of guilt churn his stomach.
”Ahhh, so you know what I’m referring to,” Viktor denoted, smirking tauntingly. “You were going to destroy it, destroy the Hexcore, destroy everything, destroy our dream.”
”N-no…-No! It wasn’t like that!” Jayce was panic-stricken now, feeling repulsion at himself from the way Viktor was looking at him. “I-I-I just wanted to forget you, that’s all!”
”Oh, that’s all?” Viktor queried sarcastically, raising his eyebrows at the remark. He placed two hands melodramatically over his heart. “That makes me feel so much better, Jayce. I feel like I’m falling in love with you all over again.”
”Don’t you get it?!” Jayce screeched, toppling over the limits of his sanity. “It doesn’t matter! None of that political bullshit matters to me anymore! I have you, that’s enough, I don’t need anything else! Fuck it, I’ll do fucking anything to make you happy! Hell, I risked my ass coming down here! I did this for you, only you! So you can throw your facts at me if you want to, but I will never stop, I will never abandon you again.”
And just for a second, Jayce’s fingertips brushed down Viktor’s forearms, and he felt that eternal pang of love at the sensitive touch, the tiny affection imprinting the impassioned words in his heart as he looked up and down between Jayce’s hand and face, feeling all his resentment dissipating and his eyebrows loosening under the touch.
A shrill, muffled shriek pierced the air, followed by a yelp of pain as a crowbar slammed into a stomach. Everyone whirled around to look at Jinx, whose eyes looked as if death had been dangled in front of her face.
Jayce felt resentment flood his veins, sauntering over to Jinx and leering over her with an authoritarian, purposeful look.
“And what do you have to say about that?” he interrogated, brusquely yanking the gag from her mouth so that spittle flew out of her lips.
”He’s lying!!” she yelled vehemently, lurching forward against her captors. “And you’re right! You’ll be together for, what, a day?! And then he’ll realise that your dream doesn’t match up with his anymore, and run away again! He will tell you whatever you want right now, but he will never understand what we go through! He never has, you said it yourself!”
She was quaking, shivering with hysterical sobs. “What is he willing to do for you anyway?! Look at what we did today! Look at this!” Her eyes gestured towards his repaired limb. “I gave you this!! I gave you… everything…”
Her voice trailed off as on onslaught of sobs assaulted her, sending her buckling over so that she was just a ball on the floor, and Viktor felt the fraught coils of anguish strangle his heart. Because Jinx was right. Jayce had always made compromises for him, always said soon and later and fundamentally brushed their dream aside in favour of appeasing the masses. Never, until now, had he centrically cared about what Viktor wanted, and there was no guarantee that would persevere in the future.
Caitlyn’s phrase of ‘wilfully ignorant’ popped into his mind, and he felt a sick twist in his stomach at its truth. Because Jayce had known Viktor for all of eight years, and still circumvented his way around the dream, staying true to his prejudices and still disparaging people from the Undercity. And Viktor resented that he was exempt from that disparagement, and surely that would become all the more prominent with the addition of a relationship.
It was Viktor who had given everything. Viktor who had set aside his disagreement and went along with what the Council wanted, for Jayce’s sake. It was Viktor who had always been there in Jayce’s darkest times, whether mad or sad, scared or stressed, lifted him quiet literally from the brink of death and carried him through one of the worst times of his life.
Where had Jayce been for him when he was collapsing and convulsing on the lab’s floor? Off playing politics, pleasing everyone as else but him as always, proudly denying their dream in favour of corruption. Why had Jayce put off their dream for so long in preference for his own social ambition, when people so obviously needed help as soon as possible?
It was simple: he didn’t understand. For eight years, he never had, and he quite plausibly never would.
And yet, here was Jinx. Someone who did understand, someone who had made real progress towards bettering lives, and was willing and ready to do anything to achieve it.
Someone who had held him through his darkest hour, brought about by a person he never though it would be.
And yet…
”…If I go back,” Viktor addressed Jayce earnestly. “Promise me we will do anything to help my people. Promise me you’ll let her go.”
”Well, those are two very different propositions, but we’ll do what we can, within reason, I promise.” Jayce rubbed Viktor’s shoulder as confirmation, but it wasn’t yet enough.
”Within what reason, Jayce?”
”Within the betterment of Zaun and Piltover. And there’s the Council, of course.”
There.
There it was.
Tears. Pure tears. He’d so terribly wanted it to work. So terribly had wanted Jayce to just say he would do anything. But Jayce didn’t understand. Didn’t understand how badly he’d needed this since he was a child, and had watched his mother and father breath the last shaky breath of death, after nursing them for weeks with what little they had. Didn’t understand - probably wouldn’t even try to understand - how badly Viktor needed Jinx, how broken she really was. All he saw, and all he choose to see, was the evil and criminality, the only way for him to sleep peacefully on the fact that - for all his speeches and promises and charisma - he was doing nothing.
With that in mind, it was natural that Jayce took the silence and misinterpreted it entirely, denoting Viktor’s eyes on a huddled Jinx, and wrapping what he thought was a comforting arm around Viktor’s shoulders.
”Don’t listen to her, Viktor. It’s alright. She tricked you, didn’t she? She’s trying to trick you right now. You see that, don’t you? Don’t worry, after this, you’ll never have to see her again. We’ll have her executed, and-“
That was it. That was the catalyst for everything that was about to follow, for Vi springing into action like a vicious bulldog.
From there on out, it was chaos. Arms everywhere, grabbing and apprehending and dragging and every other form of manhandling that existed. Enforcers swarmed like bees, creating a mesh of pure confusion as blue uniform after blue uniform distorted one’s vision and disorientated even the steadiest of minds. A dreadful amalgamation of frightened yells, shouts and hollers were flung across yards of fog as people who cared about other people were wrenched apart by the groping hands and pandemonium.
“Ji-Powder!! Powder! God damnit, Powder!!!”
”Vi?! Vi! Where are you? I can’t see you!”
”Viktor!!! Viktor!!! Where are you, please?!”
”Get your hands off me, pig! Cupcake, where are you?!”
Only two voices didn’t ring out in the tumult: Viktor and Jayce’s. Viktor because his mouth was covered over by a hand that stifled his screams, and Jayce because he’d been whisked away by a band of escorts before any of the real danger had come about.
A gunshot sung out through the fog, which meant one of three things: either Jinx was free, Caitlyn was using self-defence, or an enforcer had opened fire. Assuming the former, Viktor went against his better nature, and bit ferociously into the enforcers hand, shocking himself when he tore through the fabric and tasted blood in the tip of his tongue. It worked, he was released, and he wasted no time bolting in the direction of Jinx’s doleful cries.
”Schastlivy klever, I’m here! I’m coming! Stay where you are, I’m coming!!”
But he didn’t get to her. An unnaturally strong arm pulled him sideways and down an alleyway, and he twisted himself despairingly against it.
“Hey, hey, cut it out! It’s me, it’s Vi.”
At this unprecedented turn of events, he fell limb, eyes setting on her and emanating his fear and confusion.
”I know a shortcut,” she whispered surreptitiously. “I-I think Caitlyn has Jinx. She should have. That’s what we planned.”
”Planned- what?”
”Shhh, would you?” she reprimanded, slamming him against the wall with unintentional force. She inclined her head to him. “Listen. You care about my sister, right?”
He nodded excessively.
”I don’t know why, and honestly I’m kind of suspicious about it, but after what you did today, I know she’s gonna need you. I might, too. Are you with me?”
More fervent nodding.
”Good, now come on.” She latched gruffly onto his hand and proceeded to pull him along. “We’ve got some ground to cover. Can you manage a climb?”
”I’ll manage anything if it means I can have Jinx back,” he told her sincerely.
She smiled at him, actually cast a smile at him over her shoulder. “That’s the spirit. Now let’s get moving.”
Never.
Never in a million years did Jinx think Caitlyn would save her from a pair of shackles.
She still remembered gunshot luridly, remembered the cataclysmically abnormal sound of chains shattering as a bullet whizzed through them, remembered how it had grazed her ear going past.
She panted against the wall now, head thrown back as Caitlyn heaved across from her, hands grasping onto her knees. Under any regular situation, Jinx would have never come this far with the sister-thief, but a sort of unspoken understanding had passed in a brief glance between them, giving off the impression that they needed to stick together for the time being.
They’d ran then, sprinted through the chaos with Jinx flailing after Caitlyn, braids flowing in the breeze. At one point, an enforcer had latched onto one, which Caitlyn punished with a swift blow of her rusty shotgun to their cranky helmet.
And now they were here, and the shackles were still too tight on Jinx’s wrists, and she was beginning to feel the returning sensation of paranoia that surrounded Caitlyn re-entering her system.
”Your sister will be here soon.”
Her utterance caught Jinx off guard. A lot of things today had caught her off guard. She was getting quite sick of it, to be honest.
She was just slipping back into her thoughts again, when she got a second shock of Caitlyn reaching out to her.
”Here, let me,” she offered, taking one of the shackles in her hands. Jinx recoiled immediately, sent her a sour look.
”I know you have your reservations about me,” the older woman tried. “But I assure you, I’m here to help.”
Jinx barely heard her. A frightful revelation had come to her.
”Where’s Viktor?”
In that moment, Caitlyn’s heart hurt for Jinx for possibly the first time ever, and she viewed a hint of the scared little girl Vi often described to her. Indeed, the way Jinx asked the question, like a lost child seeking their parents, most definitely had a childlike quality.
But there wasn’t time to think about that; Jinx had begun to shake uncontrollably, slumping against the wall and tearing up as the emotions suppressed by adrenaline in the last half-hour caught up to her.
”Easy, easy,” Caitlyn soothed, crouching down in front of her and deftly removing the shackles while she was distracted. It had been protocol back in her training days - keep the shackles on too long, and the suspect could get dreadful blisters.
But this was no suspect. This was a frightened young girl who was getting understandably emotional at the absence of an apparently dear friend.
”Viktor…” she lamented hoarsely, like a song of mourning.
”He’s with Vi,” Caitlyn reassured her, hovering cautiously over Jinx’s hand before settling for a knee instead. “She’ll be here soon, I promise. Vi’s going to give out a signal, and we’re going to meet her over there.”
It was fruitless to point to their emergency rendezvous; Jinx was shivering and upset. Comfort took priority, even if all Caitlyn could offer was that one hand resting on Jinx’s knee and a few sympathetic words.
Vi and trudged wearily among the grunge and filth. Their hands had released as soon as there was no longer a necessity for it, and they’d been walking on in a comfortable but urgent silence for the time being.
”We’re almost there,” Vi called behind her, pointing slightly upwards. “It’s just up there.”
Wordlessly, she hoisted Viktor up onto the military tower, and if she had any concerns over how fragile his arms were at that point, she didn’t show it, instead standing up straight and releasing a flare of fine pink pigment into the air.
There is a great flaw in the foundation of flares. That is, that while the person that needs to see it can view them, so can everyone who doesn’t, or even shouldn’t see it, can view them.
By now, the silence between them had gone past the point of being comfortable, and Vi filled it quite graciously.
”So… how do you know my sister?”
”She saved my life,” came the fond and immediate response. “I owe it to her.”
”I’m gonna be honest with you, that’s not what I was expecting,” she confessed, finally turning languidly on her heel to face him. “I thought maybe you were just another dickwad trying to manipulate her.”
”That’s fair.” He shrugged. “She is awfully vulnerable.”
”…yeah…”
Vi seemed suddenly downhearted, and Viktor was about to enquire as to if he had said something wrong, when a shriek emanated from the shadows.
”Viktor!!”
He swerved around instinctively, saw her careening towards him from several metres away, followed by a slower, more exhausted-looking Caitlyn. Disregarding Violet, he began bolting toward her, his heart swelling as he heard her delirious pleas and saw the glints of her tear-stained face.
”I thought I’d lost you! Are you going to leave me for Jayce?! Don’t leave me, please! I need you! I-“
Bang!!
There was a gigantic flash of blue light, temporarily blinding the whole party.
Then it faded…
Then there was Jinx…
Blood trickled from her mouth and nose…
Time warped itself. Vi screamed intelligibly (“Powder!!!”), voice breaking, dashing toward her sister, and cradling her before she hit the rough ground.
”No no no no no, Powder… Oh my God, Powder, what did he do? Oh God, Pow-pow, stay with me…” She cuddled her sister close to her chest, arms encapsulating her as she sobbed inconsolably. “Stay with me, please…”
On the other end, Caitlyn screamed unintelligibly, flung herself at Jayce (Jayce?!), knocking both him and the Mercury Hammer (Mercury Hammer?!) to the floor as she began unrelentingly beating on him, caught up in a moment of passion after covering up her emotions for the whole day.
All this Viktor watched happen in 30 seconds, but it could’ve lasted a lifetime for all he knew. In that time, all his brain could do was process one thing sequentially after the other.
Jayce. Mercury Hammer. Jinx.
It took two seconds to form a sentence.
Jayce hurt Jinx with the Mercury Hammer. Jayce hurt Jinx with the Mercury Hammer.
Jayce tried to kill Jinx with the Mercury Hammer.
Traitor traitor traitor traitor traitor.
Within a second, his brain computed all this, and then finally it rebooted and instinct and survival logic kicked back in. He rushed toward Jinx, skidded onto his knees.
The power had gone out of Vi’s arms now. She kneeled hunched over her sister, hands over her mouth and nose as she let out the most choked sounds Viktor had ever heard from a person. He wished he had time to care, but he didn’t. He was panting, experiencing nauseating grief, pulling Jinx close against his chest and cradling her there like a most precious object, whispering sentiments into her ear he prayed she could hear.
By now, Caitlyn had finished her throttling of Jayce and jogged over. Emotion out of her system, her level-headedness revived itself. With Jinx still pressed into Viktor as one of his hands now cradled the back of her head, she weaved her fingers through the embrace, and checked for a pulse at the base of her neck.
”She’s alive,” Caitlyn announced, eliciting a strangled sound from Vi. “But she’s having immense heart palpitations. She needs a doctor. Vi,” she tapped her girlfriend’s shoulder, “We have to go.”
She got only a weak nod in response, hoisting Vi up onto her shoulders.
”Viktor,” Caitlyn urged, more impatiently now. “We really have to go, now.”
He heard her. He did. But his body felt like lead as he cuddled her limp corpse in his arms.
A few metres away, Jayce had stood up, and he watched with heartbreak as Viktor sheltered the girl’s body.
And when Viktor looked up at him, Jayce felt the cold stabs of realisation plunge into him. He was fastened with a look of pure hatred, feeling the overwhelming sensation all at once that he had intruded into something he really didn’t understand. In a distraught impulse to somehow salvage this, he took one tentative step forward-
And was met by the barrel of Jinx’s gun, pointed exclusively at him, in Viktor’s hand.
The latter didn’t waver his gaze on his partner, not as he rose slowly, carefully. Not as he kept the gun locked onto Jayce, and certainly not as he said:
”I don’t want your fucking love, you don’t fucking love me.”
That was what froze him in place.
That was why he made no move at all to go after them, as Viktor shoved the gun into Vi’s hand and hooked his arm under Jinx’s legs, turning and carrying her away like his deepest treasure.
That was what let Jayce be dragged away by his escorts without fight nor resistance.
Only when the group were a fair distance away from Jayce, enough of a distance away from Jayce, that someone (namely Caitlyn) thought to voice what they’d all been thinking:
”She really needs a doctor,” she stated, and they knew the implication - that she need not just any doctor, but a skilled doctor. Apprehensively, she asked: “Should we… take her to Singed’s?”
”No,” came Viktor’s biting response, as he unwelcomely recollected both his own surgery and Jinx’s accounts of hers. “No,” he repeated stubbornly, “I think he’d give her a fate worse than death.”
With a large sniff, Vi piped up. “I…” she snivelled. “I think I know someone who can help.”
”You take the lead,” suggested Caitlyn, and Vi followed suite, still clutching tightly to her girlfriend’s hand as she walked. Caitlyn glanced at an evidently fatigued Viktor. “Can you manage her?”
At her question, he defensively tightened his grip on Jinx. Truth be told, there was nothing in the world right now that would even come close to separating him from her.
”No, thank you, I can manage,” was what he actually said, adding in a mumble to himself: “We’ve been sticking together for a long time.”
”…blah, blah, blah, Council… blah, blah, blah, irresponsible… blah, blah, blah, public image… blah, blah, blah…”
Jayce drowned out every word of Mel’s lecture. The words he’d always paid so much judicious attention to were nothing but babble to him now, a meaningless collection of vowels and consonants mixed together into something palpable. It was rude, he knew that, and normally he would’ve felt all the shame associated with it. But in reality, the day had harrowed him down to the bone, and he truly felt that there was not a single thing in the world that Mel could say to hurt him right now.
He felt invincible.
His mind was gloriously blank, clear of every thought that had ever existed there, and he was infinitely grateful for it. Frankly, if he had access to every living, breathing thought in his mind at this time, he would both psychologically and physically implode, and that was no hyperbole.
He paced dazedly down the corridor, Mel chattering uselessly away behind him, and took advantage of the fleeting joy the aesthetics brought him. It was no true happiness like that he’d felt today, but they made for a nice distraction, just like they always had.
Speaking of distractions…
He pushed into his room and lay his palms down on their round wine table. There was something he had to do right now, but he might as well have the common decency to let Mel finish talking before he started.
”…and I cannot believe you really thought it was a good idea to run after him like that.”
”I’m breaking up with you.”
Silence.
“…what?”
”I’m breaking up with you,” he repeated firmly.
She snorted. “No, you’re not.”
”I am,” he persisted.
At this insubordination, she scoffed irately. “You can’t break up with me.”
”Actually, I can,” he countered, swirling around to face and perching nonchalantly on the table. “I can do a lot of things I thought I couldn’t, it turns out.”
The facade dropped. “Where is this coming from?”
”I think if I told you that, I’d think I’d break your heart.”
”You’re half-there already,” she berated sternly. “Why the suddenness?”
”Well, it would’ve been cruel to do it this morning, don’t you think?”
”Oh… you’re serious,” she stated glumly, her face drooping like a lily as she pushed down onto the couch. “Why?”
Oh, boy, here it goes.
”Because I’m not in love with you anymore,” he divulged, maybe a little more curtly than he would have liked, but he was too far gone now. “Actually, I don’t know if I ever was. I think… gahhhh,” he grunted, rubbing the back of his neck timorously. “There’s really no good way to say this.”
”Well, at least you’re being honest. I can respect that,” she praised, but there was no mistaking the tremor in her voice.
“I really did try to find a way to do this that wasn’t going to hurt you,” he conciliated, approaching her and taking her hands. “I mean, I always knew it was gonna hurt you a little, let’s not pretend that, but you know… you’re a strong lady.”
A small smile. Good, that was good.
A long, deep breath through the nose. Potentially not so good.
“Is there another?”
He grimaced. Now for the complex part.
”Kind of…” he began. “I… I’ve loved him for a long time, actually. I just didn’t-“
”How long?” she snapped in, suddenly irate again.
He gulped. “Eight years.”
”Eight years?!” Abruptly, she yanked her hands away.
”It’s not what you think,” he backtracked rapidly, waving his hands placatingly. “I didn’t know I loved him- or, well, okay, maybe I did, but… I just kept distracting myself-“
”Distracting yourself?!” Mel was on her feet now, her pitch rising in elegant intensity. “Is that what I am to you? A distraction?”
”Well, no, but, yes, I don’t-“
She laughed then, laughed grimly whilst pinching the bridge of her nose. “I should’ve known. You golden boys are all the same, just reckless heartthrobs waiting for the next fool to come along and take the bait. You mean to tell me,” she poked his chest accusingly, “That I am toy to be played with and then discarded when I get a little bit broken? That I have my uses until I don’t work anymore, because I’m not the present you really wanted? That you’ve been using me?!”
”Hey!” he snapped back. “I didn’t know I was using you. I didn’t even know I loved Viktor, until-“
”Viktor?!”
Shit, he really shouldn’t have brought that up.
”Ohhhh, it all makes sense now…” she sighed, letting out a downhearted chuckle. Though her hand overshadowed her face, it could not disguise the tears welling in her eyes.
That amiable feeling of guilt came to say hello again. “Mel, I-“
”Enjoy your life, Councillor Talis,” she muttered coldly. “I hope, for your next partner’s sake, that you are not as reckless with their heart as you were with mine.”
And then she stormed out the door, slamming it. It was over.
And then Jayce slumped on the sofa, buried his face into his hands, and let the emotions of the day pervade him.