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They don’t have much time for a goodbye. Jayce has been urging her to leave as soon as he could find her, helping in packing the things she can’t bear to part with despite him being needed elsewhere because Jayce is her son and he will always do his best to prioritize her when it matters and gently wraps her hands in his as they start to shake.
Ximena looks up then, really looks. At Jayce. At her boy. Who has aged so much in the months he had disappeared, whose eyes that were once filled with so much brightness it spilled easily become tempered. His hands are always rough, a sign of labour. Once, when he was just starting the family trade, he had held hers just like now, grinning and giggling excitedly. They’re going to look like yours, mama.
“Oh, my boy,” she hugs him and she can feel him stilling.
It rips her heart at its seams, wondering what happened that he is so easily spooked by his own language of affection. But Jayce doesn’t pull away despite the sudden tensing and instead, he hugs her back. He is quiet, something pangs in her to see him so muted, so… burdened. Like another man had taken away her son but she knows this is Jayce. The very same one who had held onto her when he didn’t have friends, who fixed her prosthetic fingers, who looked happy whenever she visited with hefty amount of food in containers.
“I’m sorry, mother,” Jayce says softly. “I can’t explain everything, but I need you to be safe,” he smiles. Or tries to. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It’s… So much is happening and the Noxians are coming… and I…” He never changes in this when he is at a loss, going for the mumbling or rambling.
“… and Viktor?” She has to ask.
The shock is still there, the confusion too. Viktor. The young man who had sat with them at her table. The one person who Jayce had always excitedly spoken of. That one man who had treated Jayce better than most. She could remember the memory of seeing them, how she hid a sigh at how Jayce didn’t seem lonely anymore, didn’t seem so frustrated or confused with nobody around to truly understand him. Viktor had been kind, a good man underneath the guardedness, treated her with so much respect and remembered her birthdays, helped her around the house when he visited and nodded along when she reminded them to rest and eat.
Jayce’s face cracks at that and she is so ready to let him sob into her shoulder but Jayce only sighs weakly, blinking away the mist in his eyes, before he looks down. “It’s my fault,” he says. Resolute like he has been repeating it over and over all by himself, “I didn’t know how in pain he was and I… I realized all too late by then.”
There is more. She knows it. The matter practically hanging in the air. But the streets are bustling with people leaving their home, their life, behind for the airships or the countryside, and Jayce is spending precious minutes with her instead of going back to the Hexgate to plan their defences. She may never understand the grand scheme of things and as a mother, she has long come to make her peace with it. Children are often going leave their parents behind, mothers are often planting their feet a little to the back so they can go forward.
So, she just hugs him again, tightening it to emphasize everything that are too complicated to be said, and rubs his cheek, kneading the baby fat that no longer exists which had made Jayce whined when she teased him like this. Her baby boy had grown up so fast and now, he is heading into war.
“Be careful, Jayce,” she smiles and Jayce widens his eyes at that, the corner of his mouth trembling slightly before he turns to grab her suitcase. He offers her a hand as they go down the stairs, stays with her even when there are a couple of enforcers that could shield her from the influx of people in the street to the carriage with Kirammans’ sigil on its doors.
“Please take care of my mother,” Jayce tells the enforcers and the driver. “Keep her safe.”
They salute at him, swearing to do so. He nods then, returning to the window where she leans outside from. Ximena fixes his collar and his jacket out of habit, feeling the difference between his old clothes and this. More metal, more solidness, like armour. War. Her baby is going to war. Her sweet Jayce.
“Mom…” Jayce’s voice pulls her back. “They’re going to take you out of the city now.” He has a hand on her arm, gentle and soothing, yet also slowly pulling it away. Neither of them knows what else to say, what can be said that they both could bear.
“Take care of yourself too,” she finally chooses to say. “Return safe, alright?”
Jayce just smiles. Doesn’t answer. She kisses his cheek and forehead. Putting all her wish and good luck into them. The carriage starts to move and Jayce watches until it disappears at the corner, towards a different route than most citizens are choosing, somewhere more discreet and better to reach the airships. Jayce stands until the dusts settle from the carriage’s track, then after closing his eyes for a moment, he turns. Makes his towards his own carriage that will take him to the council room. The enforcer keeps her eyes on the road, never once glancing his face which is tilted away from everything, fingers covering it.
There are other pressing matters to focus on.
---
Another meeting is done and the war table is piling up with another set of maps. This time about the logistics for the battle, how to spread resources and ammunitions, get the medics in time and evacuating the wounded, and the way they could perhaps set up the hextech for more than just a cannon but for quick teleportation for those previous things.
“Jayce,” Mel’s voice has him looking up from a paper he is hovering over.
“Yeah?” He rolls his shoulder, feel his neck muscles popping. Mel’s eyes linger on it for a split second and he hikes his collar higher, the bruise from metal fingers still has not disappeared completely.
“Everyone is taking a break. You should too, you can’t run on an empty stomach.”
He purses his lips. “Just a few more minutes, Mel. I promise.”
She slightly frowns, but decides to let it go. Caitlyn is waiting for her by the door, raising a brow when Jayce doesn’t follow suit yet Mel places a hand on her shoulder and she too leaves him be. The room is silent now, saved for the sea breeze that rustles a couple of papers, brushing against the cup that he keeps sipping from. A cup that is slowly running out of tea.
When the last drop is gone, Jayce holds it and stares. As if willing it to refill again. But it keeps being empty and he pushes himself to stand, slightly wincing at the sudden jolt in his left leg from how long he hasn’t stretched it. He leaves the room, walks through the hallway while rereading the folded message he is keeping in his pocket.
His mother had safely reached the designated address. Somewhere far, far away with a couple of enforcers to guard her and move her if things spread or went awry. She had settled comfortably and was resting from the sudden evacuation. Jayce takes a deep breath, pockets the message back. It lifts a little bit of weight off him. That his mother is safe and sound. That the only family he has would live if Jayce had anything to say about it. It has to be enough; his mother always understands where it truly matters and she is strong, she has been through worse, she can weather this through with or without him. Jayce had wished to be as strong as her when he was a child, after all.
He makes his way down the stairs, gripping the handrail as he goes. Takes longer to arrive at the floor where the kitchen is located. Or at least, what makes up to be a kitchen.
“Hey, pretty boy,” Vi greets and of course, she uses that nickname. “Finally peeled your ass from the chair?”
Jayce hates to admit seeing her smug face is very much welcomed, but it does. Any familiar face is. “I’m not. Just… here to refill my tea.”
She rolls her eyes. “You topsiders with your tea,” she scoffs, but it doesn’t always demean. It’s just how Vi is, he has come to learn. Part of her charm, he supposes.
He is about to shake his head when a kitchen staff passes them both with a box that smells of warm meat and steaming potatoes. She gives them two wrapped of those, smiles, and moves on. Vi takes them with a grateful grin.
“What? I’m holding your portion for you, don’t worry, I’m not going to steal it.”
“Wasn’t thinking about that,” Jayce says, pouring the tea from the hot kettle. He knows Vi catches the way the runestone in his wrist gleams under the light, but Vi doesn’t really say anything. Only shrugging away.
It’s odd. To sit on a bench to eat with Vi beside him. She takes up a lot of space, owns it despite not making an effort. Solid and strong. She wears a jacket that is a little too tight on her, probably Caitlyn’s. She hands him his meal while she already digs in.
The food sits warm on his lap, smelled of pepper and butter. No wonder. He takes the fork and stabs the meat, scoops the peas too. The moment he puts them in his mouth, his throat does that constricting reflex ever since he returned from that place. The taste is alright, good even with the limited ways the kitchen can whip something up, but something is wrong with him from how long he had been trapped down there. It is miles, miles better than the corrupted bugs he had to eat, its slimy guts and green blood coating his tongue and stuck between teeth. Yet his mouth refuses to fully close, to just pushes them down.
He keeps picking at the food, long after Vi has finished hers, making a show of taking tiny bites of the potatoes at least. In the end, however, he gives up. He can’t take another mouthful without coughing and he is already draining his tea again to cover for it.
“Here,” he hands the plate to her.
She looks to it then to him. “You’re not hungry?”
Jayce just lifts his cup. “I’m still full, and anyway, I have this.”
“Going on a liquid diet here, pretty boy?”
“I’m just not hungry yet.”
“Alright, fine,” she takes the plate. “Thanks,” she then adds.
He nods, clasps his hands around the cooling cup. Tongue hitting teeth, calming the acid building in the back of his throat. Jayce kneads the space between his brows, eyes closing with an inhale. Vi glances at him, but if she notices how his shoulders droop more slightly, she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she inhales the meat and potatoes, eats every last pea, and scrapes gravy off the bottom.
Jayce lets her take his cup, peeks between his bangs at her. “Eh, just let me do it,” she shrugs as she stands, “As thanks, you know, for the gauntlets. Saved my skin more than once.”
Huh, Jayce blinks, one of his inventions that actually does its job.
“They need to be refitted,” he suddenly is reminded of that to-do list. “I have a few more modification for the joints and the power.”
She does a mock salute. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll swing by the forge later. I think Cait’s gun needs to be looked at too, right?”
“I can work on them at the same time.”
“Okay,” she says, “Okay.”
Her eyes trail down to their feet, can’t help the flicking over to his brace. Again, she doesn’t say anything about it. She turns, throwing the plates away and heads for the table where the tea kettles are, pour one herself even when her face pinches at the taste. Reminds him of how Ekko had looked after he took the offered drink while Heimerdinger brightened up at that.
When she hands the cup back to him, the press in his hand is weighted with meaning. Perhaps this camaraderie is slowly turning into comradery. They are about to march into battle as allies, anyway. He thinks it is a given by now. Vi leaves afterwards, surely heading to wherever Caitlyn is. Jayce stands too and returns to work.
---
His head starts to have a steady thudding. The veins pulsing harder and louder. He massages his temple, leaning against the table and the wood is starting to blur. Mel places a hand on him, eyes concerned. She always can see through him. Especially when he’s caught so off-guard, he can’t even lie lest he stumbles over his own words.
“You should go see the doctor,” she says quietly the moment they are alone, attention flicking to his leg, and at least, she doesn’t know where the true problem is.
Jayce indulges her, follows her through the hall and into the medical bay, then sitting down as an aide does a check up on him. They reexamine his leg, assumes it’s acting up again (aggravated, they tell him, by what happened in the council room) and gives him some painkillers, advises to take it easy for the night (they all know time isn’t a luxury anymore), before sending him on his way, an express reminder to not take the painkillers on an empty stomach.
Some sandwiches are handed to him for a late dinner. Warm and so filled that he holds them carefully. He takes them to his room, closes the door, locks it, and just… stands there, back against the wood. His stomach is empty, groaning with only the constant tea instead of something filling, fibrous, rich. Jayce picks the sandwiches apart, taking the cut ham, still fragrant and as he holds his breath, he bites it.
His teeth break the meat apart, grinding it into paste, something soft enough to push down. But the longer he chews, the more the taste lingers. Same with the lettuce, the tomatoes, the eggs. He coughs, frowning and covering his own mouth with a hand.
Don’t focus on the food. Take it and ignores everything except swallow when his throat doesn’t constrict. Find the break in the reflex, then repeat the same thing. Just ignore the texture, ignore the taste. The body needs energy, like feeding wood into the forge, keeping the fires stoked. He can do it. This is such a small thing. There are more important things. Just chew, swallow, repeat. Again, then again. Repeat. Ignore what the food consists of. It’s alright, it’s not cold nor slimy. It’s…
Jayce grabs the bin and spits out the sandwich. He retches, acid building behind his throat but there is nothing much coming out, only broken bits of bread that got lodged and saliva. The painkillers stay undisturbed by the table, waiting for him to continue and do it all again. He pushes them to the corner, a tablet or two falling down to the floor.
This isn’t going well. He needs to eat, he has to. His body is begging for it, showing signs of it throughout the last few days, and retaliate in aches when he does not pay them mind. Not understanding that he keeps feeling crawling things in his hands, crunchy shell or runny flesh in his mouth. How similar everything is sometimes despite the stark differences on his plate. Jayce holds the rim of the bin, glares at a corner through sweaty bangs. Wills himself to swallow at least three mouthfuls before he washes it all down with water.
It has to be enough, he thinks, dragging himself to the couch. Brace clinking against the wood. Has to be, at least his stomach isn’t fully empty anymore. He smothers the cough that threatens to spill and forces himself to sleep. Half of the bitten sandwiches lying pathetically beside the painkillers.
---
There is progress, he supposes. When he shoots up and sees the sky is dark now as he winces at the pain shooting up his knee. A couple of hours without interruption, without images and flashes trapped behind eyelids or the whirring from his own mind betraying him from a little nap. Carefully, he adjusts himself, leaning against the couch more, takes a breath because that is all he can do while straightening his leg. He still isn’t used to this. That reflex of a healthy limb still haunting him. (He had always known, of course, the one risk of being born into a family focusing around smithing, around intensive labour, but then, he had been able to not do that his whole life, saved himself from the fate of working oneself to the point of destroying their physical body… and look where he is now.)
He's dizzy.
And if Cait, Mel or Vi sees him now, they probably can clock where his problem lies. Especially Vi. He’s not eating. That is that. Can’t keep anything much down before he has to stop. A reason why he avoids the mess hall, why he just stands back while everybody takes a break. They notice, but responsibilities weigh on him and the way he moves are enough to stop them from asking. Jayce isn’t sure how long that can last.
The forge is usually his place of refuge, but the heat and the hammer in hand are making him weaker. Of course, they are. He doesn’t have enough energy to keep going like this. So, he’s here. Stays on the couch with the brace halfway to being unclasped since it starts to chafe and the pressure is getting on his nerves. No matter how lightweight and well-engineered, it is still a brace. It cages him sometimes when his thoughts get awry.
The sandwich is there, staying vigil on the table. It is soggy now, cold and limp and Jayce doesn’t touch it, doesn’t smell it. But the scent wafts still, it’s rotten, damp, and he’s…
A knock. He snaps to it. A knock again. He clears his throat, bundles the sandwich into the trash, and answers it.
“Sorry to wake you.”
It’s Caitlyn.
“It’s alright, sprout,” Jayce replies and it relaxes his shoulders when he knows it is her. Seeing her again had been a relief, even when it was in the middle of chaos. Had grounded him enough to bring them all back to Piltover. “What’s going on? Anything I can do?”
By now, he notices the wrapped-up boxes in her hands. It takes him a while to realize they look the same from his mother’s cupboard.
“Some officers handed me this, said it was from Ximena,” she adjusts her hold. “They said it was something she made and insisted for them to bring back afterwards. Took them quiet a while to find you, so I just took it off their hands.” She puts them in his arms and immediately, he can feel the warmth, the familiar weight of the inside.
“She didn’t have to…” He murmurs, half smiling as he opens up the cloth wrapping.
But she did because she is his mother. And habits die hard even when war is looming. He remembers taking back a lot of containers that he had to share most of them with people at the lab whenever he returned from her house, a mother’s worry and insistence of taking care of him and the people connected with him by default. Sky was always delighted at what he brought, even Heimerdinger wasn’t immune to not just take a peek. (And Viktor was all too happy to not need to prepare his own food for the busy week he set himself up for, especially after he and Ximena shared the camaraderie to order Jayce around because he never refused them.)
“I think the officers who delivered also said she had kept them hostage until they swore to bring them safely here,” she tries to chuckle. Caitlyn stands there, hands hanging off her sides. She looks tired, they both are. His little sister isn’t so little any longer, is she? Jayce smiles, this time fully. Tender.
“Here,” he takes a box and Caitlyn blinks. “Take some, mom doesn’t do anything in halves. She wants you to have some too.”
“I don’t think I can finish this alone,” she hesitates.
“Isn’t Vi with you?” He raises a brow with a smirk. Caitlyn flushes slightly, shouldering him softly. “Ow, ow, okay fine, I’ll stop. But seriously, just take it, you know how mom is.”
Caitlyn shrugs, but nods too. “I know,” she says and they go quiet. Neither of them knows when they can see Ximena again. The one thing they both can do is to be comforted that she is safe. It can be hard, it is hard, but what else is there to do about it?
“Well, then,” Caitlyn looks to the side, “Guess I better go now. You should sleep, you know.”
“How long until dawn?”
She does a mental calculation. “In five hours.”
Five hours. He hopes he can go back to sleep again during that time. Gets his focus back, refresh his mind. Caitlyn leaves after surveying him from top to bottom, isn’t quite satisfied with the way he begins to slouch and favours his other leg more, but she doesn’t push and instead takes his mother’s food back to her own place.
Jayce closes the door, the audible click almost deafening in the hallway.
---
He puts the box on a stool, opened now with the cloth folded neatly underneath. It’s filled with wraps, something simple and easy, but it is his mother’s cooking and they are always wonderful in his eyes. She makes them when the weeks get busy, when Jayce was so knee deep into his study during his Academy days that he forgot lunch and dinner, or when he was too lazy to make something while he stayed in the forge that she flicked him on the arm after she got down there.
To Jayce, it smells like home. His stomach growls. Maybe he wakes up too often because it stays empty for far too long lately. Jayce carefully picks up one and unlike before, he doesn’t disassemble the wrap like the poor sandwich. He just takes out a small bite, almost kittenish, cups the thing in his hand.
It’s… good. No, more than good, it’s perfect. He does another bite, larger this time, and finds himself growing hungrier, so he takes more. The spiced meat and the vegetables sit well for him, so he keeps eating, finishes one and gets another. His mother always liked it when he asked for seconds and scraped his plate clean, always smiled and pat his head when he was scarfing down food like someone was putting him on a timer.
His cheeks feel wet, his eyes even more so. Jayce doesn’t muffle himself and doesn’t reach for the bin. He slows down, slides to the floor, knees tucked to his chin. Hugs them close as he chews. In the silence of his room, Jayce finally is able to eat and keep it in. Even when the food is so much better shared and his mother around encouraging his partner to fill up his plates more. Viktor liked Ximena, that much Jayce could tell, appreciated her to the point he contended with him as her family.
He will never step foot in her house again, never sit with her to share some tea, never talk about Jayce behind his back and gets Ximena laughing. They can’t go back. Those days are over and it is just another thing that Jayce mourns. On top of the loss and everything.
But he wipes his face eventually. Because he isn’t allowed to just wallow in things of his own making. Not when there is a world out there that needs to be defended. And someone that he wants to reach out. To save. Even if that sounds too selfish perhaps.
Jayce saves the leftovers in the box, places it carefully wrapped once more. And with a full belly, he closes his eyes to face tomorrow. He’s better now. Marginally, but that is so much more than before. He doesn’t stop half curling in on himself as he sleeps on the couch.
---
An enforcer hands her a letter as she nurses a cup of tea. The wind is colder in higher elevation and closer to the north, and her fingers sometimes ache at the metal joints. The others who share the safehouse stokes the hearth, warming their hands over the fire. Ximena takes the letter, offers a pot of the tea but the enforcer declines with a bashful bow, excusing herself that she is needed elsewhere. She seems like a good young lady, Ximena thinks, looking down to the envelope.
It’s from Jayce. She opens it, cup forgotten. Then, she smiles and sighs. Nothing much is written there, Jayce isn’t always good at writing letters, after all. Often easier to just speak with how fast the gears in his head turn. But she folds this one letter back carefully and places it amongst her precious luggage. She doesn’t know when she can see her boy again and Jayce does not promise anything when he doesn’t know when the fighting is over, so she holds onto whatever it is that has her son’s existence and keeps the letter safe.