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squireofgeekdom · 2 years

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Break Glass In Case Of Emergency

I’m going to post this on Ao3 later, once I’ve done some more polishing, but here, dear followers, have ~3.8k of post-Arcane-S1 fic with an optimistic ending. Jayce POV, Jayce & Viktor and Jayce/Mel, to absolutely no one’s surprise ---

It comes back to him in flashes.

At first, it is only as the sound of breaking glass, over and over and over as he floats between sleeping and waking.

Sometimes the sound of glass on stone merges into the faint beeping of machines, as his vision cuts from the glow of council lights to sharp white light above him. He hears people asking questions, he tries to answer.

His arm hurts.

---

The table is lit. Unanimous.

He looks at Mel, beaming.

There is another light. Blue.

It shouldn’t be there.

The sound of breaking glass -

- sound of breaking glass -

---

“ - is severe. Very severe. It may ultimately be necessary to proceed with amputating the arm, sir.”

He’s not a sir. His name is Jayce.

He tries to tell the voice that. He falls asleep before he can ask the voice why he keeps having nightmares of sharks.

---

It doesn’t explode until the teeth hit the ground in the middle of the room.

Mel has disappeared behind the cog, and then everyone disappears in blue flame.

Everyone except -

Viktor -

- covering him, but no, that’s his job -

- he flings an arm out, over his partner, he has to -

Blue flame -

- collides with purple -

---

“Ma’am, you shouldn’t be in here, you need to be -”

“Jayce?”

He knows that voice. His mother. He needs to -

---

His head is ringing. His voice is hoarse.

“Mel? Mel!”

The echoing silence in return sends cold through his bones.

He grasps on to a warm arm. “Viktor - Viktor -”

The ringing is too loud to hear anything. He -

---

“You suffered serious concussive head trauma from being so close to the center of the blast. You’ve been in and out for several days.”

“Yes, I - ah - yes.”

“I discussed the damage to your arm while you were awake yesterday, however I’m not sure if -”

“Where is Viktor?”

“In isolation, sir, but -”

“What? No -” Jayce shakes his head and immediately regrets it.

“The - ah - effects of - “

“But he’s alive? He’s alive?” The doctor nods. “I need to see him.”

“Sir -”

“Mel - where is Mel -” he stares at the doctor. “She was behind the cog - the table. She -”

“Councilor Medarda is still in intensive care.”

“I -”

“She is alive, sir. But you need to rest and not disrupt her treatment, or yours.”

“I -” There is a certain inescapable logic to that. “Viktor. But I can still see Viktor. I don’t need to get up, I can just - a chair -”

“Sir, we still don’t -”

“It’s Jayce.” he says. “I’m his emergency contact and this is damn well an emergency!”

---

“Viktor - “

Anything else he might have meant to say disappears at the sight of his partner.

His right leg and forearm are coal dark, threaded with veins of bright, pulsing purple -

- the purple light -

- dark flecks like the edges of burnt wood, veins glowing further up Viktor’s arm, into his shoulder, one ambitious tendril tracing its way up into his face -

“What -?” it bursts out of him, and he immediately regrets it.

“The hexcore.” Viktor says, not looking at him. “You have to destroy it.”

“Viktor - you -” he stammers, because this was unmistakably the effects of the hexcore, what else could -

purple

“- are you alright? Do you need anything? I’ll get you out of here soon, are you -”

Viktor shakes his head. “You have to destroy it.” He looks at Jayce, finally meets his eyes. “You promised me.”

“But it - you -” He looks at Viktor, searching. “You - you found a way. You’re -” not dying.

He doesn’t dare to put the hope into words.

“My - friend - showed me.”

Jayce catches a breath. An idiot. You’ve been an absolute idiot. “You didn’t tell me.” But why would he, after he’d been so unforgivably -

“I didn’t. I should -”

“I - I don’t - I haven’t been a very good -”

“If I had, maybe Sky would still be …”

The mention of Sky’s name stops his reiteration of his old self-recriminations in its tracks. “Sky? Sky would still be what?”

Viktor shakes his head.

“Viktor.”

“Sky is dead,” Viktor says, voice cracking. “You - you have to destroy it.”

“I -”

“You promised me.”

---

Mel is propped up on the medical cot, but when she opens her eyes and looks at him, it’s as though her pillows are as dignified as any council chair.

And her left arm is gone.

Strips of gauze cover one side of her face, covering stitches underneath; her hair has been cut close to her scalp. And there is more damage, covered by the hospital sheet, damage the doctors hadn’t been sure she would survive.

But she had. She had clung to life tenaciously through the surgeries.

Of course she had. That was the Mel he knew.

“Are you just going to sit there?” She says, with a small smile.

He takes her right hand, her remaining hand, with his left hand, his good hand. “Mel.” He presses a kiss to her knuckles. “I’m - you - “

“Well,” she says, looking down at the hospital gown, with the air of someone reviewing unpleasant reports they’ve read half a dozen times before. “My mother always said a leader should have scars. I suppose I’ll match her in that,” she adds with a bitter twist of her mouth.

“No,” he says, running his thumb over her palm.

She looks at him, and her gaze softens. “... No, I suppose not.”

“Do you - do you need anything? Are you -”

She smiles at him gently, looking around at the pillows around her, the IV in her arm, the glass of water on the side table with the flowers - that last his request. He’s still confined to the hospital, or he’d have gotten them himself.

“All of the treatment has been quite sufficient. Thank you for the flowers.” She says, diplomatically. “I suppose I am only down one working arm. If you and Viktor could see fit to develop some hextech prosthetics -”

He sees Vi with the Atlas gauntlets, mining tools wielded with deadly force.

Sees the black and purple crawling up Viktor’s arm.

He shakes his head. They were alive. They would find a way to help people.

They had to.

“They tell me I’m probably going to have to lose the arm,” he gestures towards his right shoulder. “So we’ll match.”

She lets out a breath of laughter. “At least we’ll have one working set of arms between us.” She meets his eyes. “Jayce, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m just glad you’re alive.”

She smiles, and he cradles her hand against his face, presses a kiss to the heel of her hand.

“Where is your partner?”

“He’s -” He finds his hand shaking as he speaks. “He’s - in isolation. They won’t - they won’t let me get him out.”

“He’s alive?”

He nods. “Something - something happened.”

She watches him.

He lets out a shuddering breath, and then words seem to tumble out of him. “He - he must - he found a way to use the hexcore, to get it to connect with him without - and I didn’t notice because I was - was -” being the world’s biggest asshole and shittiest friend, the voice of self-recrimination in his head says. “And it - it’s helping. It even - it must have reacted with the weaponized gemstone. Protected him. And - and some of me. Most.” He looks at her, and his guts curl up with guilt. He’d give anything for her to have been the one sitting next to Viktor. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. You - you need to rest and - and recover, and I’m just - dumping on you.”

She shakes her head. “Tell me,” she says, with a slight huff of laughter. “I could use something else to think about.”

He tilts his head.

“Well, it can’t be worse than all of the other emergencies to think about,” she says. “And - maybe I can actually help with this one. I don’t like feeling helpless either, you know.”

“Of course. I don’t - I don’t know if -” he lets out a long sigh. “Viktor - before - before. He made me promise to destroy the hexcore. I thought he meant the - the hammer. The weapon. But that’s not what he meant. And I - I didn’t know why. And now - now -” now I know why. But -

But maybe he’s making a leap too far. Maybe he didn’t understand correctly. Or - or maybe Viktor had another vision.

The Hexcore can’t have killed Sky.

Because -

“But I - I don’t know what it will do to him. They’re - it’s - there’s something -”

“Jayce,” Mel says. “Does he know? Did he ask you again, after - ?”

Jayce nods. “I promised. Before. And - he - yes.”

“I’m not a scientist,” she says, “but I know he’s your partner. He’s your partner because you trust him. Do you think he doesn’t know the risks?”

“I -” he starts, then shakes his head. “No. But I - if I do this and it -” kills him.

How is he supposed to live with that?

But how is he supposed to live with anything else he’s done in the past week?

“Then that’s his choice. If he’s decided that is worth it - you can allow him the dignity of that choice,” she says. “Many people - don’t have that choice. Many people die for far less.”

“I - know.” He thinks about the faces of the children in the factory.

“Talk to him,” she says. “You have that chance - that’s a gift. Don’t waste it.”

He presses another kiss to the heel of her hand. “You’re right.”

“I know,” she says with a smile.

“Thank you,” he says, earnestly. “If there’s anything I can get you, anything at all -”

“I’m really alright. Well,” she adds with a raise of her eyebrows, “for all this. Maybe something to write with. I suppose I’m lucky I’m right handed.”

Jayce lets out a low breath of a ‘hah’, looking down at his useless right arm.

“But with this -” she gestures at the IV. “It’s harder to remember than it usually would be. And -”

“You shouldn’t stress yourself. You still need to -”

She smiles at him. “I don’t think you can say anything about pushing yourself too hard. But I will rest, I promise. I just want to be able to keep notes so I don’t keep -”

“Feeling like you’re forgetting things.”

“Yes.”

“Of course. I’ll bring a notebook,” he says. “And fresh flowers.”

She smiles, and runs her thumb over the edge of his cheek.

He presses a kiss to her palm. “I love you,” he says. “I - I don’t know if it’s too soon to say that, but, well, surviving a near death experience and all -”

“Jayce,” she pulls his hand back towards her, presses it to the uninjured corner of her mouth. He can feel her breath over the back of his hand. “I - I think I love you too. No, I do. I love you, Jayce,” she says. “I know that much.”

“Mel,” he says, and leans in carefully to kiss her cheek.

She holds his hand for a moment longer, and then lets it go. “I love you,” she says again, each word leaving her tongue like something strange and new and precious.

“I love you too.”

---

“You didn’t destroy it.”

Viktor’s voice is accusatory.

“Viktor - I - we need to talk,” he says. “About the hexcore. About -” you.

Viktor sighs, looking away. “He was right,” Viktor says. He doesn’t say who ‘he’ is. “They despise me,” he says with a faint tilt of his head towards the door.

“Viktor, it’s - I’ll -”

“He didn’t say,” Viktor adds, more quietly, his head pulled down like he’s trying to curl in on himself, “that they would be right.”

“No,” he says, and it’s like the word is the gasp from a punch to the gut. “Viktor, no.” He grabs Viktor’s shoulders. “No. You -”

“Sky would be alive if it wasn’t for me.” Viktor says. “Sky would be alive if she hadn’t tried to save me when I -” he flexes his blackened hand, with its purple veins.

Viktor’s voice holds only self-recrimination, but Jayce’s mind still takes it and whispers you should have been there. If you hadn’t been awful, if you hadn’t been distracted, if you had been the partner you should have been you would have been there and this wouldn’t have happened.

“Why should I let you try and - and save me? Why should I let anyone?” he says. “Why should anyone want to?” he adds more quietly, with a small gesture of his blackened hand.

“It’s not your fault, Viktor. Whatever the hexcore did - it’s not your fault. You would never have hurt - “

A child’s sightless eyes stare up at him in memory.

He never would have hurt anyone either. Never wanted hextech to be used to hurt. Never -

“I created it. I was the one who made it to - use that way. I was the one who was desperate enough to - to -” His breath rattles in his chest. “I put his compound inside of me when I knew how - how monstrous it could be, because it was the only way - the only chance - to survive what it would do. I knew it could kill.”

“His… compound?” Please not shimmer. Please not shimmer.

Please don’t make me watch what that would do to him too. Not after -

“It’s from the undercity,” he says, in a mocking imitation of Jayce’s angriest tone on the word, one that sends a rush of guilt through him all over again. “My… friend. I’m sure you know what it shares a root with.”

He knows. He’s known since he’s seen the purple.

“Are you - does it -” he trips over his words, terrified that something else awful will fall out of his mouth “- the withdrawal symptoms -?”

Viktor shakes his head. “Not like that.”

“Thank goodness,” he says, briefly slumping back, letting go of Viktor’s shoulders.

Viktor raises an eyebrow. “I think we have more than enough to be worrying about.”

“Tell me about it,” he says, briefly reminded of the terrified city outside of these walls, the one he is supposed to be keeping safe.

“You still have to destroy it.”

“Viktor -”

“Jayce, Heimerdinger was right -” Viktor stops to cough. “It’s a seed - a seed of destruction.”

“You saved my life, do you know that? Again.” He grips Viktor’s shoulders. “If the hexcore - energy - magic in your -” he waves at Viktor’s arm, leg “- if it hadn’t reacted to shield - if you hadn’t covered me - I’d be down a lot more than an arm.”

“Something you wouldn’t have needed to be saved from if we had - had listened to Heimerdinger. Been more careful about the research. In the wrong hands -”

“We can still help people, Viktor! You - this isn’t -”

“No.” Viktor says, with such vehemence that he coughs violently, his face twisted up. “Not like this.” he says, with a nod to his right side. “Not with - that. Not with what it’s become.”

“But it’s - you -”

“I understand what I’m asking, Jayce. I know it better than you do. And I’m asking you to destroy it.”

“You’re asking me to - to -” kill you, but he can’t say it “- to do something that might kill you! You want me to have your blood on -”

“Do you think I don’t know that?!” He stands up, Jayce leans back. “Why do you think I’m asking you to destroy it! It won’t let me!”

Jayce reels, staring at him.

“I won’t let it - I won’t let it take me. Or anyone else.”

“Is there - is there any chance - any hope - you -” that you could survive it being destroyed.

He looks at Jayce, silent for a long moment. “You have to destroy it.”

---

Jayce lifts the hammer in his left hand.

He shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be doing this, putting the strain on his recovering body.

But the hextech inside makes it far lighter than it should be, far too easy to lift in one hand.

He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be doing something that could - that could -

That will could kill his partner.

The hextech core glows, a purple eye staring at him, mocking him.

I will kill him. I will kill him. I will kill him.

(I have his life, like he has yours.)

He stares the hexcore down, his face twisted into a snarl. Its shape is distorted now, curves and points, with no trace of runes. No trace of what Viktor created.

You promised me. You promised me. You promised me.

He swings the hammer.

The room explodes in blue and purple.

The sound of breaking glass shatter in his ears again -

- sound of breaking glass -

blue and purple not again not again not again

His ears are ringing. He is on the floor.

He looks up.

The hexcore is still there, glaring smugly down at him, perfectly intact.

A shout, half a sob, escapes him.

The hammer is beside him.

He looks at the hammer, the fracture lines now running through it. Not a hammer, a weapon.

You should not exist.

He needs a crowbar, a wrench, any screwdriver, any piece of metal that could come to hand to tear through those fractures, tear this thing, this killer apart.

No. Not yet.

Viktor.

---

“Did you destroy it.”

It’s not a question, something in Viktor’s voice says he already knows the answer is no.

“I - tried, I -”

The sight of Viktor robs any more words from him.

The veins of purple pulse violently, swollen, something distorted about the limbs, his hand curled up like a claw, motionless, the edge of the black at his elbow is now swollen and red, the tendrils of black sinking like claws into his flesh.

“Please don’t,” Viktor says, as he reaches for the light. They aren’t calling it isolation anymore, ‘his own quarters’, they say, even if they are well watched. His compromise with Bolbok, the only surviving council member not in intensive care, thanks to their extensive modifications.

But as he draws closer, even the shadows can’t hide the twist of pain around Viktor’s mouth, the way his breath rasps, his bloodshot eyes.

“What -” Jayce starts, but he already knows what did this. The crash of his hammer on the hexcore -

He sees the echoes of the child’s bloody face on Viktor’s, almost imagines blood dripping from the corner of his mouth - or is he imagining it?

And something breaks inside of him, shattering like so much glass.

“No.”

“Jayce, you have to find a way to destroy it -”

“I tried and it did this to you -!”

“This - this is -” Viktor stares up at the ceiling, tear tracks down his cheeks. “This is bigger than me. Sometimes - sometimes the mutation cannot survive,” he says. “Shouldn’t.”

He doesn’t know what that means and he can’t bring himself to care. “I can’t do it.”

“You promised me.”

“I’m sorry Viktor, I can’t.” He leans forward, pleading. “We - we have to find another way. You’re my partner, we - we can do what we do best. We can find another way.”

“No one else dies for me, Jayce, please.”

“I won’t let that happen. But I won’t let you die either.” Jayce takes his hand, the one that still has ordinary skin. It feels cold. “Please, just - promise me you’ll be ready to try?”

“I suppose promises aren’t worth what they used to be.”

“Viktor, please.” He holds on to Viktor’s hand like a lifeline, waits, trying to remember to breathe.

Viktor doesn’t look at him.

“You - you asked before, why you should let anyone try to save you. Why anyone should want to.” He looks at Viktor, silently pleading that Viktor will look up. “At the start of all of this, you remember? You saved my life.”

“I think you have - paid that debt.”

Am I interrupting?

“And I’d do it again. As many times as you need me to,” he says. “You didn’t just save my life, Viktor, you -” have my life “- became a part of it. The most important part. You became a partner in my dream. You became a part of my future. And you still are. You always will be.”

Viktor looks up at him.

“I promise you, I will always try to save you. As many times as it takes. So please - try with me,” he tries his best to smile, “partner?”

Viktor looks at him for a long, terrifying, silent moment. “If we find a way that won’t -” he shakes his head vaguely. “I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask.” He squeezes Viktor’s hand. “Get some rest, alright? Do you need anything? For the -”

“I am -” Viktor coughs, “fine.”

Jayce waits, but Viktor doesn’t say anything else.

“Alright,” he says, letting go. “I’ll be back tomorrow, okay? We can - we can work on it.”

Viktor nods, already turning away and lying down.

Jayce waits in the doorway for a long moment before he leaves.

---

Viktor leans heavily on his shoulder as they walk into the lab. Jayce would get him a chair - would carry him, but Viktor -

Viktor reaches for the hexcore.

He screams, and Jayce can’t reach for him, has to stop himself, because he knows -

Viktor holds the hexcore in a purple storm, screaming -

His eyes lock with Jayce’s, and he hears “Jayce it’s not m-”

And then it’s drowned in the storm and he can’t see Viktor anymore.

But he knows how it ends.

“Jayce it’s not me!”

Jayce walks towards the survivor, heedless of any danger.

Jayce knows this isn’t Viktor, wants to tell himself to stop, but can’t.

“Viktor? Viktor are you alright?”

“I am -”

Jayce catches him, and then Viktor-not-Viktor stands up straight.

Jayce looks up at him. “Are you - does it hurt? Are you feeling better?”

“Yes,” the voice says. “Yes, I think I am ready to get better now.”

The eyes looks forward, and somehow he knows Viktor-not-Viktor is looking at the hex-claw, looking at the next stage - looking -

---

He wakes up.

No. No no no no.

That hadn’t happened. Wouldn’t happen. He wouldn’t let it.

He reaches out an arm - or tries to, and feels sharp pain for his trouble.

Right. The surgery.

The amputation is this morning.

He lays back and stares at the ceiling for a long, long time.

---

He sits up in the hospital bed, wobbly writing on the notebook page in front of him - he’s still getting used to writing with his left hand.

Victor wheels up to the side of his bed, gaze only barely catching on the bandages where Jayce’s right shoulder used to be.

Viktor’s right arm is curled into his side, in a sling, still not fully recovered from the damage to the hexcore, even after more than a week. He waves his left hand. “So I suppose all of our notes will be illegible.”

Jayce laughs.

“Shall we?”

#squire in piltover #r: our hextech dream #otp: nothing feels impossible when i'm with you

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