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piscesnebula2024-12-29 08:41 am
wildrune) wrote in piscesnebula2024-12-29 08:41 amEntry tags:
wildrune) wrote in piscesnebula2024-12-29 08:41 am
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The strange, destroyed world he had seen in brief flashes in their very first contact is now fully realized around them. It is recognizably the undercity and Piltover, the destroyed hexgate standing in the very distance, but very little remains. Husks of buildings crumpled into themselves, or elongated bizarrely, stretched out into the organic swirls of metal he is now so very familiar with. And there, everywhere, haunting every corner, those shells of people with five glowing fingerprints on what remains of their faces.
Jayce takes him through his memories, and even as blunted as Viktor's emotions are, he finds it difficult to watch. At first, Jayce is confused and terrified, and that quickly turns to agony -- the crack of his leg bones and the thud of his body hitting the ravine floor has Viktor reaching out like he could do something, like he could change the past. But all he can do is watch as Jayce does anything and everything he can to survive, scratching desperate equations into a rock face, tearing his hammer apart to build a brace for himself. As they watch, Viktor takes Jayce's hand in that cosmic arcane space, squeezing tight.
Finally, the Jayce of memories manages to climb out of that hole, step by painful step clawing himself to Piltover and the ruined hexgate. Every step of the way, he's dogged by those husks--
Until there is sunlight and greenery, and a frozen figure that can only be Jayce clutching onto a mutated hammer, and-- ]
I did this.
[ The assumption comes in a hollow tone; the horror Viktor can no longer feel is nonetheless reflected keenly on his astral self. Something shudders deep inside, a quiet fracturing of something foundational. ]
That is what you are trying to tell me; that this is the end stage of my plans, and this is what I turn people into.
[ Still, there is disbelief in his voice, a plea: deny it, tell me otherwise, tell me I'm not responsible for this. ]
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Jayce holds onto his hand in the cosmic space as he witnesses what happened and it isn't easier now that he's past it. This is his humanity dying, but not all the way. Otherwise he wouldn't be here with Viktor, in love enough to give in. He knows that once Viktor understands, it will hurt him, but it has to happen. He turns to look at him, his eyes sympathetic but also sharp.)
Yes. It was you.
( Another version of himself would have tried to soften it or deny it to protect Viktor, but he is not that anymore. They both have to live with the harsh realities of what their creation led to. Viktor did it but Jayce is the one who came up with Hextech, he is the one who could not let Viktor die. This is as much his fault.)
I swore I would stop it. But ... I swore to you, Viktor.
( The face of the cloaked man is shown. The context of this being the mage that gave Jayce the rune in the first place is shared. It was always Viktor from the start, a version of him pulling at the strings to get the right version of Jayce who had a chance at stopping it. In all timelines, in all possibilities, only you can show me this.. The end of pursuit. Endless solitude. That is where this path goes to, if Viktor continues to follow it. Jayce suffered as he did to learn this lesson.
Of course Jayce could only promise to kill Viktor to Viktor himself. It's always about him, one version of the other. He turns Viktor toward him, cupping his face, his eyes softening. He stays close to him, forehead against forehead. If they were in the real world they would be sharing breath, they're that close. )
I thought I had to kill you to save everyone, but ... maybe this is the only way. Maybe he meant that I was the key because I love you and I will always choose you.
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And all Viktor can feel is horror.
It should be fascinating. But he's being looked in the eye by another version of himself and told that the only place his path leads is utter ruination. That other self-- it's obvious that he destroyed this world, that he transmuted Jayce and potentially millions of other souls into featureless empty shells. And now all he can do is pass this message on. To try to stop his other selves in other timelines from doing the exact same thing.
All Viktor had ever wanted was to help. And his destiny is this.
He breaks away from Jayce with what feels like a scream building in his chest, unable to bear looking at him. The memory shatters around them, leaving them in a dark expanse, and then Viktor yanks from them even that-- abruptly, they are back in the bathtub, and his expression is contorted with more emotion than he's ever worn in this body, the cracks in his body glowing bright with agitated magic. There is a lessening, somewhere, the hexcore's claws being worked out of his mind one by one, emotion returning in great, overwhelming waves. All it took was a shattering of his determination, one chink in the armor.
Viktor claws his way out of the tub, and staggers to the doorway of the dwelling. The commune outside is howling, his internal torment infecting the shared consciousness. ]
How can you say that-- [ He grits out, forcing it through his teeth. ] --after what you just saw? That world, those people-- I did that, and you can still love me?
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He didn't want to hurt him which is why he avoided this conversation, but now that he can see it land, he believes it was the only choice he could have made. It hurts to see Viktor hurt, to know he broke something in him with the truth, but at the same time, he thinks he was right. This is how to stop it. Viktor's horrified knowledge will lead him to rethink.
They're back in the tub and Jayce looks startled, snapping out of it, and he stands, watching Viktor panic. His head jerks toward the howling on the outside and he scowls. See, it was already headed to that future. These people were not themselves, they were controlled by Viktor. His partner couldn't see that but now he had to. They were the mechanical monsters he saw them as. He follows Viktor cautiously, letting him feel what he needs to.
The question is a surprise because it never occurred to Jayce that there was any other option than loving Viktor. It's as much a part of him as any core aspect of his personality. He steps closer to him, reaching out to lay a gentle hand on his shoulder.)
I did this to you. I put the hexcore in you, and it's blinded you to what you've been doing.
( Jayce knew instantly when he saw Salo that things had already gotten worse. At the time he couldn't be certain if it was too far gone or not. It was on the cusp, and Viktor's inability to see why what he did was wrong told him that. But he can come back from it. The hexcore had to have affected him. Viktor asked Jayce to destroy the hexcore. He didn't. Here is where it leads.)
You let me make love to you. You forgave me for my mistakes. How could I not do the same for you?
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Now that emotion is returning, he realizes just how much had been taken away. Now that his humanity is returning, he realizes how far it had been dragged out of his reach. The return of both is agonizing, like the slow leeching of a painful poison where the cure hurts worse than the injury. He'd barely noticed when both emotion and humanity had been lost. Now, he cannot think of anything else.
Jayce's hand folds over his shoulder, a point of warmth among turmoil, and Viktor struggles to not take comfort from it. He shouldn't be allowed to take comfort from it. In trying to heal people he has brainwashed an entire community, taken their independence from them and removed all emotion from them. It had made so much sense at the time -- emotion as a weakness, as a hindrance to greatness -- and now all he wants to do is claw the magic from his own body like its removal might be some kind of penance. ]
I do not know how to make it right.
[ The admission is pained, hollow. ]
Now that I am aware of the hexcore's effects, I can feel its corruption, but I do not know how to withdraw it from the others.
[ And that's not even touching the greater question: if all it took to sever him from the corruption was seeing Jayce's memories and his love, then surely Viktor could have broken himself free at any point, if he so chose. If he had just been strong enough. The revelation that he may be a very weak person is... uncomfortable. ]
If the hexcore is destroyed-- perhaps that will free these people.
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No, that's not an option. I already took that off the table. For all you know it'll kill them too.
( By refusing to shoot him when he thought he should have, so Jayce has already decided that is not an acceptable choice. He isn't going to change his mind on that now. And it is true that he has bonded this group of humans together like a hive, they probably would not survive the loss of their center. There has to be another way.)
You don't know yet how to withdraw it, but you can learn. The hexcore may be a part of you but it's not all of you.
( Jayce cups Viktor's face in his large palms.)
You have the strongest mind I know. It misled you, but now that you can see it, you can change it. We're not strangers to doing what seems impossible.
( Jayce doesn't have the answer either as to what Viktor should do here though. He's not in his body, in his mind. He just took them to some kind of astral plane where he can see everything all at once, that's far beyond what Jayce can fathom let alone control. So in this case he has no real power outside of trying to convince Viktor that he's capable of handling this.
His lover has always been so certain of himself and independent so this may be new and uncomfortable to him, but he can push past it. Jayce is proof that doubting oneself doesn't have to break a person unless they choose to let it. He's full of doubt, or at least he was, until right now. Now he's confident. This was the right path. Viktor will stop it from happening and he fulfilled his role that mage-Viktor told him.)
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What did he do with it? Is their emotion still within their minds, just suppressed? Or did he rip it out entirely? Will returning it be a simple matter of unblocking, or will he have to rebuild them? Is he even capable of that?
(For the briefest of moments, Viktor viciously misses the simplicity of being he had had just moments before. Now that he's able to snip away the strands of the hexcore tangled up in his mind, everything is so much more... difficult.)
He has no lungs anymore with which to take a deep breath to steady himself, so Viktor does the next best thing, closing his eyes for a moment. There, he can see all the souls he's linked to, bright golden lights stretching out into the distance. It's not a reassuring sight, but at least he knows they're there. Within reach. Forcibly shoving down some of that emotion, he can hear the lessening of the cries of the commune, devotees getting up from where they'd fallen in the dirt or on the floor of their dwellings, slowly recovering. And when Viktor opens his eyes again-- ]
I am... so sorry that you had to go through all of that. Just to point me in the right direction.
[ Viktor's hand comes up to wrap around Jayce's wrist, dark metal curling over olive skin. ]
Your leg. [ He falters. ] I could heal it, but... it would remove your mind. Your emotions, and passion. I do not think I am capable of healing without doing that, not while the hexcore still works within me.
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( It is, too. Jayce led a privileged life compared to Viktor or anyone else from the Undercity. He did suffer and go through his own struggles, but he learned from first-hand experience how difficult it was to rise from the bottom to the top, sometimes crawling on his hands and knees to do so. Jayce has been humbled, he's left behind his arrogance and self-pity and come out the other end stronger for it. Less sane, more damaged, a little broken, but stronger and focused.
Viktor was always the one who managed to steady him. Jayce with his intense emotions and being, usually the one with all the nerves, who needed a person to tell him to punch it instead of doubt himself on their original great invention. Now he can be that person, sturdy and true, for him.)
No. Leave it.
( It'll heal someday or it never will; probably the latter. He could never reset it the way he needed to. He'll live with a limp for life if he has to. Viktor did. He tilts Viktor's head up toward him and leans in to kiss him very gently. It's insane how many times he wanted to do that over the years, thinking about it when he looked at Viktor. How easy it would have been to lean over when they were working and act on his feelings, and how afraid he was to do it. Now he kisses him to reassure him, one of his hands remaining on his cheek and the other to his hip, solid as he holds him there.)
I love you. We'll figure this out. We have to do some tests, right? Like we would with anything else.
( They never did any tests with human subjects, is the thing, but they will be very careful in what they do next. Jayce feels a moment of guilt over killing Salo before he had any chance to maybe undo what happened to him, but at the time, he thought he was going to kill Viktor so why not anyone who got in his way? He has regrets but they're not going to help them.)
You bring in one and we test out if there is a way to detach from them. You might need to go into that ... astral projection thing you just did? Maybe you'll be able to see more clearly.
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The thought that Jayce had to suffer that much just to be able to bring him these memories to shake him loose from the hexcore-- it is intolerable. If he in every world needs a Jayce to show him the way, is that just his destiny? To make every Jayce suffer, just so every Viktor doesn't destroy their world?
How can Jayce still look at him? Still kiss him with such tenderness? Viktor's half-tempted to throw some kind of fit and kick Jayce out, just in the hope that he'll make his way back to a cushy Piltover life where he might suffer the least. The urge to push him away is, for a moment, all consuming. Viktor puts a hand to Jayce's chest, metal fingertips curling over bare skin, and thinks about it -- thinks about exactly what poison he can spill in Jayce's ear to make him leave and never look back.
But in the end, he is too selfish to go through with it.
He... thinks he needs Jayce's help to set things right. And he cannot bear the thought of making Jayce leave, not when they've finally acknowledged things between them. A stronger man would cut Jayce loose, perhaps. In this moment, Viktor is not feeling particularly strong. ]
Will you help me?
[ He sounds hollow. Lost. Jayce may not have an innate understanding of that arcane space like he does, but he will still be invaluable. ]
I always did do my best work with your help.
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If every version of Viktor needs him, he'll be there. Anything can happen to him in the meantime. His devotion is unquestionable. Despite the fact he nearly killed him, that was because another Viktor talked to him. It's still all about him. Jayce let his priorities shift once before and look how that turned out.)
I am never leaving you again, Viktor. This is where I want to be.
( It feels so clear to him now that he has shaken off enough of his trauma to see better. He was sick before and some of him remains that way, but it took feeling like a human again for him to settle. Rebalance. Apparently sex with the love of his life can be very healing, but the food and the bath did almost as much for bringing him back to his humanity.
He is sorry that Viktor sounds hollow, that he's had to suffer emotionally for the truth. It might be necessary, for both of them, but it still feels bad to him. He pulls Viktor to him and into a warm embrace, his large body wrapped around him. His cheek rests on top of Viktor's hair and he is home. They never got to embrace like this before, not fully, not until that day in the lab.)
We'll do this together. Your followers will make it out of this. We've done the impossible before.
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Tentatively, Viktor's arms creep around Jayce's waist. There is so much bare skin on offer, warm against the metal of this form.
With his cheek pressed against Jayce's collarbone, he theorizes: ]
I am unsure if I suppressed their emotions and personalities, or if I did away with them entirely. I suspect the former to be true, as I can see their souls in the astral space I showed you, so my theory is that I removed the bulk of their souls and shifted them to reside in the arcane rather than the physical. If that assumption is true, returning them to themselves should be a relatively simple process.
[ He sighs, the metallic resonance to it heavy. ]
If, however, I obliterated their emotional self, then I would have to construct it again from memory and whatever echoes reside in their mental space. That process would be lengthy, and highly prone to error.
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Viktor lets him too. He's folded into Jayce's embrace and rested his cheek against him, and Jayce lifts a hand to run soothingly through his hair. The sex they had was intense and necessary to get them here, but he finds this intimacy just as satisfying. It's not a question for him how he could still love Viktor after everything he saw and now knows. He just does. It's simple in the end. This is the man he's loved for years, who has been everything to his heart. His partner and best friend and the love of his life. How to stay angry at him was the hardest part.)
Let's run with the theory that it was just suppression first. I don't think these were their final forms, they didn't look like people at all when I saw them, so there was a step in between now and then.
( Jayce doesn't know what that was, since all he saw was the aftermath. The robotic beings that chased him didn't look like people at all, unlike the corpses that were made of trees. So whatever wiped everyone else out, they didn't really seem human anymore. It would make sense that there was a secondary change to get them to that form. Who knows, maybe his actions would have caused it, if he chose a different way. They'll never know now. Viktor's seen for himself what Jayce envisions so he knows his creatures were different.
He pulls back but still keeps Viktor in his arms, leaning down to press their foreheads together, staying close within his embrace. Viktor needs him, he needs to lean on him and know that he can come back from this. Viktor's done this for him too, that's what partners do.)
I should have told you all of this before we had sex. It wasn't right of me to prioritize my desire over the truth.
( And yet, he can't find it in him to regret it. He should have told him but at the same time, Jayce needed it to remember being human. Their time together brought him back to his body and to his heart, made him more than the feverish survivor he became. He can know intellectually that he was doing the wrong thing while emotionally being thankful for it.)
But if we figure all this out, if we fix it ... maybe we can try again?
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[ Because Viktor has always been a man with a one-track mind, no matter what he turned that mind to. Work, usually. His commune, now. Last night, it had been getting his hands on Jayce as quickly as possible. He finds himself drawn back into those sweet memories, a tempting distraction from everything else that has unfolded before him. Viktor sweeps his hands down Jayce's sides, settling on his hips, one thumb idly stroking the crest of bone. ]
You will, unfortunately, have to get dressed before we begin fixing this. You are a terrible distraction, on display like this.
[ His returning emotions feel so horribly unstable, flipping wildly between guilt and want and horror and desire. He wants to march outside and shove everybody's souls back in their bodies. He wants to push Jayce back onto the bed and ride him until he can't think anymore. He wants to exile himself to some far off land where he can never hurt anybody ever again.
Viktor bites back a sigh, and separates himself from Jayce, stooping to pick up his robe.
He has to fix these people first. To do anything else would be unconscionable. ]
If these are not their final forms, then let us hope I can fix what I did. What will become of this place after that, I do not know. I can hardly imagine they will want to stay.
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It's true, neither of us was in the mood for talking.
( They crashed together with a fervid energy that came from equal amounts of pain and love. He only wishes that they could still be in bed together, enjoying the aftermath of finally getting something they both deeply wanted, but he had to ruin it this morning with his paranoia. But then it brought them here, which is where they have to be. They have to stop what could happen. It is more important than their personal wants.
He's still surprised when Viktor points out he's a distraction and he glances down, having forgotten entirely that he's naked. The touches of Viktor's hands on him should have reminded him, but it's been an overwhelming few minutes.)
Oh ... right. We'll ... circle back to that.
( The nudity. And distractions. Maybe. If they're lucky. Jayce goes over to where Viktor brought him clothes earlier and starts tugging them on. They fit, of course, Viktor knows his size, although he's thinned out from lack of food and he's less bulk than pure muscle at this point. He feels more like a person when he does that though, so he thinks it was probably for the best. It's amazing what food, a bath, and some clothes can do for a person who was lacking in all of them only a day before.)
It's not, they were completely inorganic when I saw them. There was nothing human left of them. The way the other you talked, at some point he thought he was ridding people of imperfections by changing them.
( And that doesn't seem to be the case here. Currently Viktor has changed and healed people, yes, but he isn't trying to dominate them entirely. Or pinpointed the human things within them that have to go. They're not that far gone. That's the important part, and what he'll keep reminding them both.
Now fully dressed, he returns to Viktor and reaches out to snag his hand, threading their fingers together. )
I told him I had to find a way to stop it. We're going to do that, the two of us.