In grief, time feels both impossibly slow, and unfairly fast.
Viktor couldn't say what compels him to make the trek to Jayce's old workshop, other than the fact that it's been a year since he died and Viktor cannot bear the thought of sitting idle on this particular day. The workshop has long since been repaired after the explosion caused by the break-in, but it has sat unused since then, dusty, windows shuttered, only narrow strips of sunlight tearing inward. Jayce had only moved some of his work and designs to their bigger lab in the Academy, and the rest had remained here.
It is largely a collection of failed contraptions and unworkable theories scribbled on notepaper and blackboards, but they are nonetheless remnants of the man he loved, and thus, Viktor treats them as if they're fragile treasures, so careful he barely disturbs the dust in the room.
It has been a year. A year since Jayce and a woman from the undercity decided to strike back against Silco and attack one of the chem factories. Viktor had never known. He thinks-- maybe Jayce never told him because he knew Viktor would disapprove, or maybe Jayce never got the opportunity, too caught up in a heady plan. It had taken days to find out the truth. Days of knowing Jayce was missing, but not knowing what had happened. Days before someone had carted his body back up to Piltover for identification. But Viktor has never been able to hold a grudge against Jayce for that secret, because he had been keeping his own, too -- the night Jayce had gone missing, Viktor had been about to use the hexcore to attempt to transmute his leg, fueled by a strain of shimmer. He'd been seconds away from doing it, runes carved, shimmer ready to inject, when his eyes had flicked to the clock and realized Jayce should have been back by then. After that, an experimental drug developed by one of the very few Piltover doctors to care about undercity illnesses has helped prolong the life of his lungs, at least a little.
But here he is. A year after his soulmate died, and he's still alive despite all projections. The world feels so very grey, and yet he continues.
Slumped at a dusty desk with his crutch hooked into the corner of his elbow, Viktor looks through an old journal just to see Jayce's handwriting again, fingertips gently tracing the swirling notation of gears and sockets. He has so much work to do, but today he has to take for himself, alone in a room full of memories.
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Viktor couldn't say what compels him to make the trek to Jayce's old workshop, other than the fact that it's been a year since he died and Viktor cannot bear the thought of sitting idle on this particular day. The workshop has long since been repaired after the explosion caused by the break-in, but it has sat unused since then, dusty, windows shuttered, only narrow strips of sunlight tearing inward. Jayce had only moved some of his work and designs to their bigger lab in the Academy, and the rest had remained here.
It is largely a collection of failed contraptions and unworkable theories scribbled on notepaper and blackboards, but they are nonetheless remnants of the man he loved, and thus, Viktor treats them as if they're fragile treasures, so careful he barely disturbs the dust in the room.
It has been a year. A year since Jayce and a woman from the undercity decided to strike back against Silco and attack one of the chem factories. Viktor had never known. He thinks-- maybe Jayce never told him because he knew Viktor would disapprove, or maybe Jayce never got the opportunity, too caught up in a heady plan. It had taken days to find out the truth. Days of knowing Jayce was missing, but not knowing what had happened. Days before someone had carted his body back up to Piltover for identification. But Viktor has never been able to hold a grudge against Jayce for that secret, because he had been keeping his own, too -- the night Jayce had gone missing, Viktor had been about to use the hexcore to attempt to transmute his leg, fueled by a strain of shimmer. He'd been seconds away from doing it, runes carved, shimmer ready to inject, when his eyes had flicked to the clock and realized Jayce should have been back by then. After that, an experimental drug developed by one of the very few Piltover doctors to care about undercity illnesses has helped prolong the life of his lungs, at least a little.
But here he is. A year after his soulmate died, and he's still alive despite all projections. The world feels so very grey, and yet he continues.
Slumped at a dusty desk with his crutch hooked into the corner of his elbow, Viktor looks through an old journal just to see Jayce's handwriting again, fingertips gently tracing the swirling notation of gears and sockets. He has so much work to do, but today he has to take for himself, alone in a room full of memories.