i read the signs

by vavavavoom

Summary:

“Haven’t you learned, Defender?” He grabs Jayce’s jaw with cold metal fingers, “There’s no honor in war. Only death.”

Jayce takes in one gasping breath, gathers it, then spits into the Machine Herald’s face.

How’s that for honorable, he adds silently.
—

Viktor and Jayce are deadly agents on opposite sides of the war. Amidst their attempts to stay alive and bring victory to their homelands they encounter each other instead.

Notes:

The only part of this that is canon is that Zaun and Piltover go to war. Aside from that, the events of Arcane didn't happen and the characters haven't met.

The plot and characterizations are heavily based on the book This Is How You Lose the Time War.
Title is from Manchester by Kishi Bashi.

Hope you like your romances bloody. Onwards!

EDIT: this work has been translated into Russian by the lovely Loga! available here.

Chapter 1

“I heard he’s not even human anymore–” the other soldiers whisper in the hushed corners of the mess hall,

“ –that he’s more metal and wire than skin and bone.”

“I heard that his heart’s a ticking time bomb, and that when it hits zero this whole planet’s gonna blow.”

“I don’t care if his dick is a machine gun, he’s still just a rusted hunk of metal.”

The soldiers burst into snickering laughter, but soon grim silence takes its place. Probably because that “rusted hunk of metal” is the single reason their ranks have been thinning for months and months on end.

It’s the haunted last laugh before the hush of death. The desperate attempt at humor by a man about to be sent to the gallows. Except the gallows would be a blessing compared to being killed by his metallic hand.

The Machine Herald.

Jayce has read his case file so many times he has it memorized. Although perhaps that’s moreso a testament to how little they know about the deadly Zaunite agent as opposed to Jayce’s memorization capabilities.

They say all you get is a glimpse of metal –a flash of sun on a reflective surface– before you’re dead. Blown to smithereens, or torn between the teeth of whatever weaponized gadgetry he’s built.

For months, the war between Zaun and Piltover has been equally balanced, going point for point on raids, battles, and coups. But somehow, one single person seems to be tipping the scale for Zaun and it makes the atmosphere in the compound resemble a cemetery. Haunted and forlorn.

At the outset of this war, hopes were high. After all, how could a rag-tag nation of criminals and addicts best the City of Progress? But the war drags on, and the heads of the Piltover forces– once held high in pride– now droop lower and lower as they suffer blows they didn’t expect to receive.

Jayce casts a gaze at his fellow soldiers sitting around him and only sees bleak looks of resignation staring back at him. It makes the food in his mouth turn to ash, and he stands from the table leaving the rest of his plate untouched.

When he returns to his bunk, a cramped quarter he shares with six other soldiers, he takes the Machine Herald’s casefile out again. His eyes fall on the words he knows as intimately as if written by his own hand and he falls asleep reading about his comrades being murdered.

–

The dark words printed on paper do not prepare him for meeting the Machine Herald in person.

They’re standing on opposite sides of the territory border –just a mere few yards of distance– although it might as well be an endless chasm stretching between them.

Jayce is painted red in blood; most of it belonging to the Sheriff, who’s slung over his shoulder and bleeding onto the ground in wide reflective pools.

The Machine Herald approaches.

Despite the thickness of his metal suit, his footsteps barely make a sound. Jayce sees his reflection staring back at him in the shiny breastplate, wearing an expression of a man meeting his death.

It’s not rusty at all, he thinks somewhat deliriously. The man’s armor gleams like freshly polished chrome and Jayce wonders if he cleans it off after every battle, meticulously wiping away the bloodstains until it sparkles.

“This is the part where you run away.” says the Machine Herald.

Up close, Jayce can see the yellow glow of his eyes, reduced to two narrow slits by his mask. When his voice comes through the mouthpiece, it’s like the hiss of air escaping a punctured lung.

“It’s only the girl they want.”

Jayce’s eyes widen in shock before flickering to the bloody woman in his arms. In the metallic reflection, Jayce sees his own mouth open in disbelief as his mind turns over the puzzling words.

Run away?

Is this a strange type of mercy? Or perhaps a game. A predator toying with his catch before devouring it whole.

“I’ll give you till the count of ten, Defender,” he says and Jayce's eyes widen in surprise again, this time at the use of his covert callsign.

The Machine Herald starts counting, and Jayce sees the future play out in front of his eyes like a vision. He sees himself returning to base– empty-handed and missing a commander– but alive. And for what gain? To be cast out as a deserter. Or even worse, to be thrown back into this senseless battle that he lost the point of ages ago.

“Ten..” says the Machine Herald, looking down at Jayce with an unreadable masked gaze.

Jayce holds his ground, stares back up at his killer, defiant but also resigned. He doesn’t want to live a life of a traitor but more than that he refuses to let the Sheriff– to let Caitlin– die alone. After all, she was his friend before she was his commander and Jayce wants to die while that still means something to him.

He cradles his friend in his hands and waits for the swing of a blade to end it all.

“You’re an honorable one aren’t you?” says the Machine Herald instead of making the killing blow, “How naive.”

He steps forward– crossing the border as if it’s nothing more than a crack in the pavement– leaning down so that he’s eye-slit to eye with Jayce.

“Haven’t you learned, Defender?” He grabs Jayce’s jaw with cold metal fingers, “There’s no honor in war. Only death.”

Jayce takes in one gasping breath, gathers it, then spits into the Machine Herald’s face.

It paints the mask in an insulting spray, dripping down in an almost obscene splatter.

How’s that for honorable, he adds silently, terribly pleased with his act of rebellion. The last one he’ll ever make.

The Machine Herald doesn’t make a noise, doesn’t react. Just wipes the spittle from his face, gathering it in his palms and looking down in what could be fascination or perhaps just contemplation over how he’d like to murder the Piltovan soldier.

He raises one hand and the fingertips light up in a deadly glimmer, glowing with some hacked-up Zaunite technology that will vaporize Jayce on the spot.

Jayce thinks about closing his eyes but decides to look into the Machine Herald’s masked face instead. He wants to die looking into the eyes of his killer, letting the flames of his hate keep him warm till the very end.

He waits for death to come.

A second ticks by… Then another.

And it makes Jayce wonder if the Machine Herald has frozen from a glitch in his programming.

Then comes the thunderous sound of an explosion. The blast of artillery bullets being ripped from their shells.

Further away from behind the Machine Herald, Jayce sees plumes of smoke and fire coming from the Zaunite side of the border.

The sound of screams fill the air and in the distance, ragged voices are calling,

“Viktor! Viktor! Someone get Viktor goddamnit–”

The Machine Herald’s raised palm twitches once… twice… before he lowers it.

In an instant he’s gone, disappearing into the smoke and fire like a shadow at daybreak.

–

The encounter instantly rockets Jayce to fame when he returns to base.

After rushing Caitlin to medical, he’s brought through a winding maze of corridors and swiped into high clearance rooms that he’s never had permission to enter before.

Still dripping in blood, the councilors and other bigheads question him mercilessly. He is the only one who has encountered the Machine Herald so closely and lived to tell the tale and they wring every detail from him like water from a rag.

They make him draw diagrams of the man’s armor, describe it in meticulous detail again and again for the military scientists to pour over and digest. He describes the heaviness of the other man’s presence, the glow of his technology, the slits of his eyes. Even the rumbling deepness of his voice, carrying just the hint of some foreign accent.

Jayce's voice becomes raw from recounting every second from twenty different angles. He doesn’t hold back and tells them everything he knows.

Or rather… almost everything.

Viktor,

is what they called him.

It’s a shockingly human name. A fact that makes it sharp and bloodletting in Jayce’s hands. For some reason he keeps that detail to himself; a souvenir that he uses to feed his hatred, keeping it burning and bright.

A shallow part of him wonders if he’s been shown mercy by the cruel killer, but a wiser part of him knows it’s not true. The truth is that the Zaunite agent is simply so unthreatened by Jayce that he does not even think twice to let him live.

He hasn't been let go, he’s been ignored. Negligible, like a bug that narrowly avoids being crushed underfoot.

A hot streak of anger flickers through him, and his muscles simmer with the boiling heat of his hatred.

I’ll show you, thinks Jayce brimming with poisonous venom, just you wait.

“So?” asks the councilors after they have exhausted all their questions. In their eyes, something is forming. Hope, the first sign of it in weeks.

“Do you think he can be beaten?” they ask with hushed voices.

Inside, the gears of Jayce's mind are turning, turning, turning. His wounds have not even stopped bleeding and yet he feels as if he could run the entire length of the world three times.

How ironic that it took an encounter with death to make him feel so alive.

“Perhaps,” He says as his face splits into a wide grin. He returns to his room and starts to come up with a trap.

–

The Machine Herald slips into the guarded storage room with the subtlety of poison sliding down the throat.

He sticks to the shadows, moving invisibly behind the rows of soldiers that Jayce has positioned outside as if he’s nothing more than a specter. As flashy as he can be, he also knows how to be subtle. The soldiers barely blink when he slips through their ranks–so silent is his presence– but also because Jayce has commanded them to look the other way.

Once the Zaunite enters the room he approaches his prize at the center.

An iron safe bearing such complicated machinery, it looks like it time-traveled here from the future. The Herald could easily wrench the door off its hinges with his augmented arms or blast a hole through the center, but sometimes to remain unseen is the object of the game.

He types in a long password into the keypad. The very same one that Jayce has let his soldiers and agents leak to the other side.

The Machine Herald’s shoulders raise in surprise when he sees what’s inside. Not the weapon of mass destruction that he was expecting– fueled by rumors leaked from Jayce's own planted lies– but an empty box. Or rather… empty except for a note.

The words on it are borderline unreadable, hastily scrawled by Jayce’s hand, and slipped inside before the sergeants and soldiers could notice.

The Machine Herald holds it in his hands, brings it closer to make out the cramped words.

This is the part where you run away.

He barks out a surprised laugh and the harsh noise slices through the silent air before the blaring sound of sirens drowns everything out.

Outside, rows of armed barricades are forming. Hordes of soldiers surround the vicinity and big machines with even bigger cannons aim their scope at the boarded-off room waiting for a signal.

Jayce steps out from the shadows, just as The Machine Herald turns to regard him with an amused tone in his voice.

“So you lived,” he says, having the gall to not even sound a little bit afraid, “I had quite hoped that the blood loss would do its job.”

Jayce feels his fingers twitch in response, aching to wrap around the other agent’s neck and squeeze.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he says instead, “Guess you’ll have to try harder next time.”

He adds as if it’s an afterthought, “If there is a next time, that is.”

“You are more naive than I thought if you think this is enough to do me in Defender.” says the Machine Herald, “This is quite a cute trap you’ve laid. But you should know–,”

A blinding bolt of light zaps the air, followed by the smell of burning.

In the wall behind Jayce– just millimeters to the left of his head– a deep chunk has been torn out of the wall, vaporized by the Machine Herald’s lasers.

“ –That it is you, who is trapped in here with me.”

Jayce feels his lips curl into a smile even as he flexes his hand on his weapon and swings. The other agent deflects the blow with his armored forearm, filling the air with the sound of clanging metal. Too fast to even see, he sweeps his legs under Jayce’s feet causing him to topple to the ground.

“Goodbye Defender,” says the other man, bringing his metal glove within an inch of Jayce's nose.

Jayce stares up at the armored man, taking in the contoured lines of silver panels, the yellow glow of his eyes. “Goodbye, Viktor,” He replies, as his face breaks into an expression of pure glee.

Because this too is a trap.

He digs his hand into his pocket, grasps the remote hidden deep inside, and presses a single button.

There’s a millisecond of lag where fuses ignite and time seems to slow. It gives Jayce just enough time to savor the surprised double-take the Machine Herald makes before sparks catch and burn.

“You–” Viktor hisses. But he doesn’t get to finish before the bombs detonate and the world goes white.

—

The world burns around Jayce as he coughs up blood and spit.

There’s a solid presence above him where he’s laid in a ragged heap on the flame-warmed ground. He knows this because when he presses upwards there’s a rigid sensation of metal blocking his way.

Viktor is braced above him, staring down at him and shaking with some uncontrollable emotion. It feels like laying down naked on a race track; as if at any moment Jayce might be run over by something fast and powerful.

“You are insane,” Viktor spits at him, a look of fury swimming in his eyes.

His eyes.

Jayce takes a painful breath of shock at seeing –not a mask staring down at him– but a face, one of flesh and blood.

In the explosion, half of the Machine Herald’s mask has split and cracked off, revealing an expanse of pale skin and dark eyes beneath.

Jayce wasn’t even sure if there was a person down there. And if there was, he expected it to be the face of an ugly beast, the savage facade of a mindless killer. Yet nothing could prepare him for the sight of the real Machine Herald– of Viktor.

Brown hair and dark eyes placed in a quiet unassuming face. The type of face that Jayce’s eyes would pass over unconsciously if it was located in a crowd of people. And yet this is the man who has been winning a war all on his own. And Jayce’s heartbeat triples in speed while taking in the stark nakedness of his features, the severe slant of his brow, and the curling sneer of his mouth.

“Is this how you intended to take me down,” hisses the other agent while blood drips from his temple onto Jayce's skin, “By blowing yourself up?!”

He fists his hand in Jayce’s ruined uniform, bringing their faces closer so he can attack him with his words, “The Piltover forces really are desperate, aren’t they? Bringing in a deranged lunatic like you to lead them.”

Jayce looks up at the man’s face, sees the seething hatred there, and feels so happy he could cry. It gives him the energy to rear upwards and flip them over in a rugged tumble so that it’s him braced on his hands and knees above the other man instead.

“Take a good look, Viktor” he hisses, relishing the way the other man’s eyes widen imperceptibly when he calls him by his real name, “Because this deranged lunatic is going to be the one who finally kills you. I swear it, even if it's the last thing I do.”

He brings his face close, feeling like he wants to spit in the man’s face again or maybe into his mouth to make him choke on it.

“No one else,” he emphasizes again, pressing his fingers into the man's neck, “Only me.”

Viktor’s mouth falls open in shock and –without his metal armor– Jayce feels the roaring thud of the man’s heartbeat under his fingers, thrumming and jack-rabbit fast.

From far away comes the sound of Piltover forces, surrounding the premise and growing closer to the wreckage.

Viktor’s eyes flicker to the voices then back to Jayce. In his naked eyes, the shock is fading and something else is taking its place. Something dangerous and filled with heat.

Jayce can’t help the aching thrill that races through him when the other man’s face splits into a beaming smile. Viktor grins up at Jayce with blood dripping from his gums and says,

“Do your worst, Defender.”

Suddenly there’s a knife in Viktor’s hand — a sharp blade produced from a camouflaged pocket in his armor, completely hidden from Jayce’s line of sight.

He feels something akin to admiration when Viktor doesn’t even hesitate before plunging the dagger deep into Jayce’s chest.

—

The doctor takes diligent lengths to explain to Jayce just how close he came to dying.

“Just a millimeter to the right and it would have torn into a major artery” he explains wearily like a parent telling off a child, “You would have choked to death on your own blood.”

Jayce nods, pretending to be chastised. But in secret, he presses his fingers to the ruined skin above his heart. His pulse flutters at the aching pain that emanates from the scar, lingering and pervasive like the touch of a lover.

—

A month later Jayce is leading a raid into a Shimmer manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Zaun. They burst into the factory, armed to the teeth, only to find an empty warehouse; all of the shimmer supply already moved somewhere else that will take –yet again– months to locate and track down.

Amongst the abandoned debris, Jayce finds a single note pressed between discarded sheets of paper and receipts. A fluttering scrap, barely noticeable if you weren’t searching for it. But Jayce is always searching for something.

Or more specifically, someone.

He grabs the note and slips it into his pocket; only reads it when he’s back in his bed– held up to the moonlight– while his bunkmates lie deep in sleep.

Defender, it reads.

That was quite the lovely note you left for me last time and I thought it would only be fair if I returned the favor.

Are you surprised? Shocked that things have not gone according to carefully laid plans?

Oh, I wish I could see it. I bet it is beautiful. Your expression of betrayed surprise.

I suppose I'll have to wait until you are bleeding out under my foot to experience it for myself. That too should be very beautiful, or at least so I imagine.

Viktor

P.S.

It seems quite unfair that you should know my real name and yet I haven’t a clue what yours is. I thought you wanted to be the one to kill me. Do you not wish for your name to be the last thing that I curse with my final hate-filled breath?

How disappointing.

—

The following week Jayce leads an attack on a Zaunite soldier training camp.

Most of them are young teenagers, some just barely on the cusp of leaving childhood. He feels a twinge of sorrow seeing the young faces squatting in their hovel-like barracks, which only intensifies as the Piltover soldiers march them to the firing squad.

Don’t think, he reminds himself, stop thinking.

He’s a seasoned soldier at this point and knows that thinking too hard about things only leads to ruin. That, or insanity.

As Jayce surveys the wreckage of the battlefield, he keeps count. He counts the collateral, the number of bodies strewn on the ground, the number of throats he’s slit.

Jayce is always counting because war is just a numbers game where the totals are always ticking upwards. But this time as he counts, the other half of his brain is searching. Searching for a place to leave his precious cargo.

He deposits the note in the open mouth of a dead Zaunite soldier before closing the corpse’s lips around it like the folds of an envelope. He tried to write more legibly this time, but could not stop the shaking of his hand as it scrawled the words hastily onto paper before battle.

Viktor, it begins.

You told me months ago that Piltover must be desperate to bring a deranged lunatic like me to their forces, but I think it is Zaun who is desperate to be recruiting soldiers into this laughable excuse of a war who are practically children.

In a way, you remind me of a child. Petulant, when you do not get your way. Destructive in your temper tantrums. Tell me how many lives have fallen to pieces in your hands like a toy you’ve lost interest in?

It is clear from the way you wreck and kill that you have never learned discipline.

You need a stern hand to show you your place. Did I mention I have two? None of which are fake.

P.S

My name is Jayce.

—

Jayce quickly moves up the ranks.

No longer does he eat in the mess hall with other soldiers or sleep in a bunk room with six other roommates. Now meals are brought to his door. The door to his room where he’s given the luxury of a large bed with its own bathroom.

It’s not like Jayce cares about the creature comforts. But he luxuriates in the new gift of privacy he’s received. Sprawls onto the bed to read and reread the note in his hand without having to hide in the shadow of night.

Jayce, the latest one reads. A folded up slip, delivered in the pocket of infiltrating spies that Piltover sent over the border months ago, now returned to them in coffins.

Of course, you would have a name like that. Sunny and warm like a puppy dog. Yet why does the little pup speak jaded words he knows nothing about?

If this war is laughable, then perhaps it is because things like disease, poverty, and hunger have never been more than the punchline of a joke to you (one that probably starts with a Zaunite walking into a bar).

I will tell you this. No one on this side is laughing. They are too busy sharpening their blades.

You will lose and I will kill you. I’ll rip your heart from your chest and hold it in my hand until it stops beating. Our victory is assured and your death will make it all the sweeter.

Viktor,

P.S

Thank you for the considerate gift of these infiltrators. I enjoyed torturing the secrets from their lips and watching them wriggle like a gutted fish on a cutting board. But I’m afraid the fun’s run out and now I'm returning them to you, wrapped up in a box and a bow.

Enjoy.

–

Jayce gets his chance to reply after destroying a weapons facility that supplies several Zaunite guerilla factions.

Viktor, it reads

I won’t enter a pissing contest with you over who has had a harder life. The reasons numbering:

1. It would be childish.

2. I would probably lose.

I’ll admit I had a comfortable life before I became a soldier. Most of us in Piltover do. But these things you speak of, hunger, disease, poverty are gifts that have been spread by the very war you speak so highly of.

If encouraging what you sought to end was your goal, I applaud you. The mind-twisting circles people spin to justify their crimes will never cease to amaze me.

And speaking of hunger, I know it well.

I have never hungered for something as I hunger for your blood pooling in my hands and dripping down my arms.

Jayce

P.S

Tell me how much of you is metal underneath? I’m wondering if I could fetch a pretty penny pawning your scraps at the junkyard. Or perhaps I’d keep them as a trophy of sorts.

I wonder, would they still twitch and whirr after they’ve been severed from their owner?

P.S.S

Even the most harmless of little pups have fangs.

 

They trade a note for every blow they deal on the enemy force, with each one growing deadlier and more fatal than the last.

The council –never one to leave a useful tool underutilized– sends Jayce on more dangerous missions with less and less backup, siccing him on the enemy like a dog off the leash.

The latest is a recon mission which he returns from bearing a briefcase full of blue crystals for some use that the council does not deign to tell him.

Like a good soldier, he does not ask.

Earlier on, he had the energy to justify, reason, and debate. But now he just goes through the motions, completing his tasks and doing his part like a clockwork gear.

There’s no rebellion left in him… except maybe one.

He returns with a note in his hand. One he ripped out from an empty chamber in a barrel gun. The same one that was used to shoot holes into his entire squad before Jayce cracked the gunner’s neck with his bare hands.

Little pup, it reads.

I have killed countless Piltovan soldiers, but I’ll allow you this: I will never enjoy a death as much as I will yours.

I look forward to it in every waking moment and even when I sleep. I dream about your throat closing beneath my fingers.

P.S

Even my parts that are flesh and blood are ten times stronger than any steel they produce in Piltover.

Although the idea is not a bad one. To keep a souvenir of your sweet demise.

Your eyes come to mind. I remember that they were quite lovely, hazel and tinted with bloodlust. I would keep them on my bedside like a prized possession.

Jayce returns to his room still covered in blood. He sheds his clothes, reads the note again, and feels as if he’s being burned alive.

He grabs himself in hand and is already so hard that it aches.

It’s the adrenaline, he tells himself as he runs his finger through the slick that’s gathered at the tip to lubricate his hand and form a tight fist around himself.

He conjures the man from memory. The severe slant of his nose. The arching curve of his brow. Those dark eyes, burning with a fire that could raze the world to ashes.

Jayce remembers how pale his skin was– like cream, or white silk– and wonders how it would look painted red with blood. He groans as he thrusts forward, driven mad by the dizzying violence of his desires. Completely wrecked, he squeezes his fist tighter and roars his orgasm.

Jayce doesn’t even wait for his post-climax shivers to subside. Still trembling and panting into the sheets, he takes a pen and paper and begins to write.

Dear Viktor, it starts.

I suppose this can only end one of two ways. With your death or mine.

Is it strange that I look forward to it regardless of which way the coin lands? I imagine the tip of your blade entering my heart and it feels like waiting for a kiss. Isn’t it interesting how easily one can confuse hate with love?

Jayce

—

Jayce is sent on mission after mission, but there are no notes to be found, no glints of sunlight on metal. The letters stop like a well that’s run dry.

He rips his fist right through a Zaunite soldier and when he pulls out the entrails he hopes –almost delusionally– to see a note buried within. But aside from blood and gristle, his hands are empty. He tosses the body to the side and howls his seething anger at being abandoned so mercilessly.

Jayce stands on the desiccated battlefield– bodies strewn as far as the eye can see –and feels like a lone piece on a chessboard, a queen lacking a king to checkmate. He stalks the battlefields like a demon and feels burning with a hunger to cut his knuckles on metal edges.

Back at base, the other soldiers murmur that the Great Defender has finally gone off the deep end; that the trauma of war has unspooled his mind like thread.

The councilors don’t attempt to relieve him, rather they capitalize on his unhinged ferocity, sending him on dangerous missions balanced on barely-thought-through whims. All while behind closed doors, they build a deadly weapon. One that Jayce knows will win them the war, but only at the cost of leaving the world in ruins.

Don't think, he reminds himself again. But try as he might, the battle takes its toll.

Exhausted and overworked, even Jayce the Great Defender starts to make mistakes.

It’s only after he’s battled his way to the center of the Zaunite military headquarters that he realizes how deeply in over his head he is. He’s blazed a trail of blood and bodies to get here but now he’s surrounded on all sides by Zaunite soldiers. Any backup he’s had is long dead. He’s alone and on the brink of death and the only Zaunite he wants to kill him has been missing for months.

Defeat is a bitter pill to swallow, thinks Jayce as the enemy descends on him like vultures on a corpse.

—

They try to torture secrets from him but the attempt is laughable at best.

They threaten to shove spikes under his fingernails, to hold his head underwater, and cut his limbs from his body like a turkey being carved for dinner.

Jayce just laughs in their faces.

After all, what are a few mere discomforts compared to Hell; the place where he is surely spending the rest of eternity? He’s a man at the end of his rope and–ironically enough– it doesn’t leave the interrogators enough slack to hang him with.

Eventually, they give up, handing him a phone with the councilors on the other line. If the dog will not save itself, they decide, then ask the owners to.

“Do not worry,” say the councilors, “we are negotiating a deal.”

The interrogations stop and instead he’s left to languish in a cell.

Jayce almost prefers the torture.

Left alone to rot, the tangled sprawl of his thoughts threatens to overwhelm him. He pushes himself against the bars of the cell, asking anyone who passes, “Where’s Viktor? The Machine Herald. Bring him to me.”

But none answer.

He does not even have his notes for comfort. He wastes away on bare ground and dreams about metal slicing into skin.

—

When Jayce wakes he’s bound to a chair in the middle of a sparse room.

The walls are completely blank and devoid of any personal keepsakes, except for various weapons and guns hanging from hooks. He’s seen these types of rooms before in a million variations. The room of a soldier.

The prickle of danger that races along his skin feels like receiving a caress from a lover.

“Viktor,” he nearly sighs the word, just as the other agent steps out of the shadows into the pool of light streaming in from the window.

The sun bounces off his metal armor, casting a kaleidoscope of refracted light onto the walls. His face is fully masked and unreadable and it makes something inside Jayce crack open at the seams. His fingers twitch to rip the mask off and see the expression inside.

“Where are you taking me?” he asks, only now becoming aware of the slight movement of the walls, the telltale sway of being on an airship in motion.

“Back home little puppy,” says Viktor, “your owners are calling for you.”

Ah, thinks Jayce bitterly, so the negotiations have finally been settled.

The councilors have undoubtedly traded something devastating for his return and of course who would be trusted to hand him back and make sure no funny business happens other than the Machine Herald himself.

“Where were you?” he asks, trying to keep the betrayal from his voice.

“Away,” says Viktor simply, “foreign engagements.”

Jayce lets the implications of his words spread across the network of his mind. The implication that other nations are being pulled into this war in a blatant act of treacherous collusion. But just the thought of battle tactics makes his mind withdraw like an animal, beaten into submission. He shoves the thoughts from his head, moving instead to other questions that burn more brightly. One, in particular, comes surging to mind.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Do not proposition me so sweetly, pup.” Viktor grabs Jayce’s face, tilting it upwards in examination, “It puts all sorts of ideas in one’s head.”

“So you’re just letting me go?” He can’t help the bitter tone that rises in the words, can’t push away the feeling that he’s being abandoned once again with his tail between his legs.

“Your owners will be quite upset if I return their dog to them, dead. Perhaps next time.”

That’s when Jayce finally rips free of the bonds.

A product of brute strength and ingenuity. But mostly a hidden knife sewn into the seam of his pants (he’s learned from the best after all).

He springs from the chair and is on Viktor in an instant.

He wrangles the man into a chokehold, hissing as metal fingers grab against his forearms leaving dark bruises behind. In the ensuing struggle, Viktor wrestles the knife free from his grip and it falls onto the ground with a dull clatter.

But Jayce doesn’t let go. He’ll never let go. They’ll have to pry the Machine Herald from his cold dead fingers.

“Remove the suit,” he hisses.

“And why should I?” replies Viktor before slamming into the wall, pushing all the air out of Jayce's body.

Pain blooms in a thousand cutting flowers, but Jayce doesn’t loosen his grip. With a strangled roar, he reverses their position so that he has Viktor pressed against the wall instead.

“You’re a coward,” he hisses, “Always hiding behind a metal shield, while the rest of us fight with only our naked skin for protection. You are too scared to face me as a man on equal ground and it’s pathetic,” he rages all while thinking: I’ll have you bared or not at all.

“You want to fight me as equals?” hisses Viktor, before the click of metal clasps opening fills the air. Steel panels crack at the seams to reveal pale skin underneath before hitting the ground with a metallic clunk.

“Can you handle it though, Defender?” asks Viktor, approaching Jayce, all naked skin and vengeance, “The thought that even without the suit you’ll never reach me?”

Jayce roars and goes for Viktor’s neck, now exposed and vulnerable. He has him in the barest of chokeholds before Viktor delivers a gut-wrenching kick to his middle, sending him sprawling backward onto the floor. He retaliates with a sweep of his legs under the other man’s feet and knocks him off balance, sending Viktor to the floor as well.

Then it becomes a grapple. The tangled knot of two snakes trying to squeeze the life out of each other.

Jayce fights with everything he has; he rails against the other man thinking, let me in goddamnit, just let me in.

But his movements become sluggish when Viktor gets his hands around Jayce’s throat. He squeezes his grip, fingers contracting like claws, and slowly begins crushing Jayce’s windpipe. Jayce’s lungs sputter and contract and soon he sees black spots dancing at the edges of his vision.

He’s just about to pass out when he finally grabs onto the knife on the floor– the same one that he used to cut through the ropes– and has the tip poised at the center of Viktor’s adam’s apple.

The moment becomes quiet and liquid. Two opponents on the brink of checkmating each other. And they regard each other with the type of respect that can only exist between mortal enemies.

“I’ll tell you this,” says Viktor, still squeezing Jayce's neck mercilessly, “you have become much stronger since we last fought.”

Jayce’s heart flutters at the words. It’s the first sentence that has ever been spoken between them that is not a barely concealed death threat or a tease. Like a carnivore that’s tasted blood, he hungers for more.

“Tell me something else—” his words drip with desperation “ –something true.”

He wants Viktor's soul whole and bared, with not even the barrier of ink on paper to muddle the meaning.

“The truth-” says Viktor, neck quivering against Jayce's blade, “ –is more dangerous than this entire war.”

Jayce presses the knife deeper and it cuts a shallow line of red across Viktor's throat, adorning his neck with a bloody necklace.

“Defender,” sighs the other man, shivering with pain or perhaps something else, “remember the last time we held each other in this embrace? The way my blade entered your rib cage so sweetly?”

“Except you made a mistake-” whispers Jayce, feeling the scar above his heart twitch in response “you missed by a millimeter.”

Viktor watches him with the quiet regard of a predator coming across something else deadly in the clearing. The wavering moment of hesitation before fight-or-flight.

“Ah, but here is a truth for you, Jayce–” he says, eyes bleeding open in the dim light.

“I don’t do anything by mistake.”

—

When they kiss, it’s the sparking collision of two razor-sharp blades meeting mid-swing.

There is no softness. No give.

This too is a battle, with each side fighting mercilessly to gain control.

The taste of Viktor’s blood mingles with Jayce’s saliva and the sharp tang of it makes something flare-up, white-hot within him.

Jayce’s knife lays discarded on the ground, abandoned in favor of trailing his hands down the other man’s body as if he could peel him open.

Viktor is surprisingly slender. A slim waif of a man under his bulky suit. It fills Jayce’s head with dizzying visions of throwing the man over his shoulder; of lifting him off the ground by the hips and having him against the wall. He groans his desire while digging his fingers into Viktor’s side, admiring the way they leave crescent-shaped impressions in the skin.

His skin is pale as the assassin’s moon, the watchful companion of killers that strike at night. All except his left hand and leg which are constructed of some dark metallic alloy. Making him deadly both in disposition and by creation.

“Is this a new method of trying to kill me?” asks Viktor, breathless as Jayce bites into the juncture of his jaw.

“Because I think it’s your most successful attempt yet.”

“You never shut up do you,” whispers Jayce with equal parts hate and desire.

So many words have been passed between them. Mostly on blood-drenched notes strewn across the battlefield of their encounters.

Enough words, thinks Jayce, kissing his lips down the other man’s blood-crusted neck. There will be time for postscripts, love letters, and explanations yet. But now is the time for action.

—

Jayce’s fingers fit into Viktor with the snug rightness of holding a gun. He spits on them to aid their entrance and tilts upwards trying to find the trigger.

Viktor jolts upwards as if being electrocuted.

“Shit!” he bites out, before yanking Jayce’s head up with a painful tug on his hair.

“Careful, you brute,” he hisses, “It is not a piece of machinery to blindly press the buttons of.”

Jayce adds another finger in retaliation and curves it upwards to press into that merciless spot again.

“Agh!”

Viktor’s hand falls away along with his words and he arches back onto the floor, thighs, and hips quivering. It’s disorienting to see the deadly Machine Herald reduced to such a trembling wreck and the sight fills Jayce with prideful glee. The thrilling adrenaline at having bested a strong opponent.

Although if he’s being honest with himself, it's a temporary victory at best. Already, he feels his cock weeping against his stomach, pulled out with the other man’s clever hands in the devolving madness to feel skin against skin.

As if reading his thoughts, Viktor closes his hand on his member and gives one vengefully tight tug. The painful friction causes Jayce to call out –an embarrassingly needy sound– and sink his teeth into the meat of Viktor's shoulder.

“The teeth on you-” the other man hisses, even as he lets out a choked-off whimper of arousal, “don’t you know what happens to dogs who bite the hand that feeds them?”

“They acquire a taste for blood, I imagine,” says Jayce, before removing his fingers and pressing his tip to the tight unyielding entrance.

Viktor isn’t even close to being prepared enough. His entrance is still tight as a vice, like the grip of hands on the throat. But Jayce has completely run out of patience.

“This is going to hurt,” he says.

“Yes,” replies Viktor, “I knew that from the moment I laid eyes on you.”

A silent question hangs in the air; one that’s as old as time. The question of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

Jayce slides into Viktor all the way to the punishing hilt thinking, finally, I’ve got you now.

—

The painful squeeze of Viktor feels like it’s breaking every bone in his body. It’s a breathtaking pressure that threatens to flatten Jayce into something paper thin and he trembles with how much he feels.

Beneath him, Viktor is vibrating like a jet engine taking flight. Every beautiful muscle clenched tight and quivering as if suffocating the feeling being contained within.

Jayce feels himself shaking apart at the sensation, unable to move or say a word.

Eventually, Viktor breaks the silence.

“If you ever decide to fuck me like you mean it,” he says with a creaking voice, “feel free to let me know.”

Jayce wants to laugh but it comes out as more of a sob.

“Shut up,” he says with an emotion that feels a lot like love.

He slaps his palm over Viktor's mouth, cutting off any chance of reply, and then shoves forward.

Viktor makes loud senseless noises against Jayce’s cupped hand, uninhibited and reckless. The wet cries from his mouth condensate against Jayce's open palm as he shoves himself deeper and deeper.

Beneath him, Viktor’s pale body is arching like a bow, notched to attack. The simmering heat of him combined with the numbing tightness of the other man threatens to completely push Jayce over the edge but he takes a deep breath –steadies himself– and thrusts again, groaning in pleasure even as he’s being destroyed.

Against his open palm, Viktor’s mouth goes slack. The wet openness makes Jayce tremble with a need to enter and he shoves his fingers between the other man’s teeth and tongue. Tears are forming in Viktor's eyes, a mixture of pain and pleasure driving the droplets from his eyes like blood from a cut. Jayce leans down and licks the tears from his face, eating up the pained and pleasured noise like it’s the last dinner before being sent to hang.

As he reaches the crest of his climax he leans down, whispers into Viktor's ear with a growling voice.

“Tell me something true-” he says again, needing to hear the words written inside Viktor's heart and perhaps some confirmation that he himself is somewhere mixed inside, scrawled within the margins.

Jayce removes the hand from Viktor’s mouth, unleashing a loud wail that echoes through the room.

“Jayce, I– I, Jayce, Jayce-”

It’s meaningless drivel. Not much more than the senseless chant of his name. But perhaps that was the answer he was looking for because Jayce topples over the edge of his orgasm, burying it deep like a knife inside of the other man.

—

When Jayce wakes with a start on the flimsy cot, it takes a second to remember where he is. He gazes around the empty room, dazed and mindless, before memories invade his stunned oblivion. Memories of pale arms–one flesh and the other metal– wrapped around his neck. The sensation of a wet mouth, panting against his open hand.

Oh.

He holds his head in his hands, dizzy with the implication of what just occurred. That’s when he notices that the room isn’t swaying anymore. The ground feels solid beneath him, meaning that the ship has finally landed.

He gets dressed, pulling on the ruined rags of his clothing before going to the window and pulling the curtain aside. What he sees makes his heart still and drop into his stomach like a heavy stone.

He’s not at the Piltover base.

He’s pretty sure he’s not even in Piltover anymore.

There are no towering buildings in sight, no airship ports, and no markets. Instead, there are sprawling rows of evergreen forests covered in a white blanket of snow. Ice-covered mountains loom ominously in the distance. Towering snowy peaks that shouldn’t be visible from Piltover or Zaun or for miles in either direction at that.

His eyes take in the foreign surroundings with growing dread before flickering across the room, scanning the obvious clues to Viktor’s departure. The panels of his metal suit are gone, along with the weapons from the wall and the rucksack that hung on the hook of the door.

Like an assassin at dawn, Viktor has vanished without a trace. It’s as if he was never here in the first place. All except a note left amongst the clutter on the bedside table.

Jayce picks it up with a trembling hand feeling a sense of wrongness settle over him like chains.

Dear Jayce, it reads

Before I told you a truth, I told you a lie.

The councilors did not negotiate for your return. I guess you were more useful dead than alive in the end. Such is the fate of mercenaries like us.

But even in such a miserable business, there were good times, weren't there, little pup?

Before I met you I felt myself grow hazy with boredom like a sword that grows dull from making the same cuts day after day. But the hardness of your hatred and wit made me sharp again. The game was fun, and I’ll admit that some days it was the only thing I looked forward to.

But here's what killers like us know better than most: All things –even the good ones– must come to an end.

Take this ship and run far away, but avoid Noxia and Freljord as they are secret conspirators in the war effort. Go somewhere distant and peaceful. And when you get there do not look back.

I would ask that you think of me and our bloody bouts fondly (I know I will), but perhaps it is kinder to ask you to forget.

Viktor

P.S

You asked me to tell you something true so here it is for your collection. Consider it a gift; the last one I’ll leave you with.

I did not always want to be a soldier.

In fact –once upon a time, in a long-forgotten past– I wanted to be a scientist.

Perhaps in another life, I managed to make something of myself and contributed to the world with my brilliant mind and inventions instead of bloodshed and death.

And since we are suspending reality, perhaps you too are there in this other life. And instead of being enemies on warring factions, we are partners working towards the same goal. How interesting and funny that would be.

Don’t you agree, little pup?

Jayce tears out of the airship, stumbling into the snowy clearing under the wide yawning sky.

The note crumples to ruins in his shaking fist as he raises his head to the sky and howls.

He wants to kill something, or cry, or dig a hole in the ground and sleep forever. He wants so much that his heart threatens to explode with it, unable to contain everything in such a small overworked organ.

But before he can fall to his knees, he sees something in the clearing. Barely perceptible and neatly covered up, but undeniably there.

A sign.

Jayce shoves the note in his pocket– doesn’t even look back– and begins to run.

His feet leave jagged holes in the snow and as he picks up speed he sees more of them. The peculiar mark in a snowdrift, too happenstance to be organic. The scattering of dead leaves amidst the snow, almost perfect in their careless pattern.

It’s not obvious.

In fact, it’s the opposite. The subtle marks of a master in stealth covering their tracks.

Jayce’s pulse hammers in his throat, and his blood stirs like a hunting dog catching the scent of his prize. Viktor’s no easy prey to catch, slippery like a fish in water, and furtive as a ghost when he wants to be.

But at this point, Jayce is an expert in looking for remnants the other man has left behind, whether it be a note on the battlefield or a hidden knife in the shadows.

I see it, Jayce thinks with ferocious clarity, I see it all.

His nose is twitching like a shark scenting blood. Perhaps Jayce is a mad dog, nothing more than a ragged stray brought into the fighting ring to satisfy the greed of his owners. But a dog always finds its way back to the hand that feeds it. And once Jayce sinks his teeth into something he doesn’t let go.

He crashes into an empty clearing and sees Viktor at the other end of the pass. Instead of wearing his metal armor, he’s clothed in a hooded cloak designed for travelers seeking to avoid wandering eyes. He hoists a bag full of supplies for the long journey ahead and freezes mid-step when he sees Jayce approaching.

“Going somewhere?” Asks Jayce as he blazes a trail through the snow to the other man.

“Jayce.” He replies, his voice laden with something complicated and heavy.

His eyes grow steely, a knife pulled from its sheath.

“Leave,” he says, “I am done with you.”

“Well, I am not done with you.”

“Are you daft? I said I’m done,” Viktor’s voice is coated in venom, “Once you called me a child who tires of his toys. Well, consider me bored.”

“That’s a lie,” says Jayce, “isn’t it, Viktor?”

Part of him thrills in the way the other man flinches at the use of his real name– an obvious weakness of his– while the other part is busy reading the signs.

There are physical signs of Viktor’s escape: the bare traces of his covered-up footprints, the ghost of his breath in the cold air. But also there are signs in the past. Ones that only exist in memory.

Jayce remembers waking up in the aftermath of an explosion to a metal body braced above his like a shield, the painful slice of a knife missing his heart by a millimeter; he remembers the first words the other man ever spoke to him on the bloody ground of the battlefield.

Now is the part where you run away.

It’s like reading a case file. Everything organized and obvious to see.

The obvious fact that perhaps Viktor had never wanted to kill Jayce.

That perhaps he had simply wanted him.

Viktor regards Jayce with a tremoring look. The look of a predator meeting his match and perhaps reaching the conclusion that he’s entered a fight he cannot win.

“I'm leaving,” he says, a dark look closing over his features as he turns to flee.

“Fine,” says Jayce before the other man can pass over the ridge. The word echoes through the frozen valley and the pine trees shiver under the snow.

Viktor freezes midstep. Even from behind, Jayce can see the other man's thoughts spinning in circles.

He turns back to regard Jayce one last time.

“Goodbye, Jayce,” he says, with a soft look flickering over his eyes, as brief and fleeting as sunlight on a cloudy day.

“Oh, this isn’t goodbye Viktor.”

Jayce takes a step forward, feeling something powerful thrumming within him.

“You can leave,” he says, clenching his fist around the invisible feeling, “You can run to Zaun. To Piltover, Noxia, Frejlord, or even the fiery pits of hell. I don’t care. Wherever you go, I’ll be there, following you like a shadow.”

Viktor lets out a strangled noise, stopping in his tracks before he’s suddenly in front of Jayce again, fisting his hands into his shirt with a vicious expression on his face.

“You fool,” he hisses, “You think you can tail me? you won’t be able to. You don’t have the means.”

“Try me,” replies Jayce, not missing a beat, “I’ll meet you behind enemy lines. Even if you run in front of the firing squad, I’ll already be there. Catching bullets in my chest.”

Viktor’s hand loosens on his shirt. He stumbles back as terrible understanding takes place in his eyes alongside bone-chilling weariness.

“Why,” whispers the other man, the desperation of a dead man seeping into the words, “Why must you endlessly throw yourself on the sword when I’m giving you a way to walk away from this.”

“Don’t you see Viktor? You’ll never shake me, for the rest of your life or until I’m dead. It was always going to be that way.”

The anger drains from Viktor’s features. What settles in its place is exhaustion, followed by fear, then defeat.

Victory is in Jayce’s grasp, and he digs his claws into it, steps forward, and says,

“Unless–”

“Unless?”

Jayce raises a hand to the other man and Viktor looks at it wearily, the eyes of an abused animal used to being hit. But Jayce moves slowly, allowing the other man to accept the gentle caress to the cheek. The softest touch that has ever passed between them.

“Unless you come with me.”

“Come with–?”

“You're a traitor now Viktor. Do you think Zaun will overlook this? They won’t. Not even for you.”

Viktor looks at him with a cutting gaze even as he leans slightly into Jayce’s hand.

“You want me to run away with you?” He asks, incredulous, “Like a schoolboy who’s been scolded by his parents?”

“I think between us, we have a few more tricks up our sleeves than schoolboys.”

Jayce sees a million pathways lighting up in the other man’s mind, playing out possibilities, analyzing variables, and calculating risks.

He would have made a good scientist, thinks Jayce, helpless with emotion.

“It would not work,” says Viktor after several beats of silence, “Perhaps alone you can make it out. They might look the other way. But two of the most high-ranking agents from Zaun and Piltover together? There’s no way they would not come after us.”

Jayce feels the truth of the words settle in his bones. The two deadliest weapons of Zaun and Piltover, together with no one to answer to. It is too dangerous of a pair to be left alone, too much of a liability to leave alive.

He thinks about the power and resources of two nations combined, tearing the world apart to find them.

And realistically what chance would they have? What's the power of two nations compared to that of two runaways? A rusted hunk of metal and a dog with teeth too sharp for its own good.

Jayce feels his mouth stretch into a smile.

“So let them.”

“What?”

“Let them come after us.”

Viktor looks at him with a gaping mouth. Silent and dumbstruck.

“What? You do not think we can take them?”

“We would be fugitives, Jayce. Enemy number one. They would not stop until we are dead.”

“Let them try,” says Jayce, “I do not know of anything more deadly than us.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. We would be alone. No one would help us or grant us asylum. We would be on the run forever”

“Yes,” replies Jayce, “They will come after us more fiercely than they have ever gone after each other. Nowhere will be safe. The only refuge will be the shelter we create between us.”

He savors the way that word tastes in his mouth.

Us.

“The odds are not in our favor.” says Viktor, “There’s just the barest percent of a percent that this doesn’t end with our bodies hanging. We’d be fighting tooth and bloody nail just to survive another day.”

“Yes,” repeats Jayce, while thinking that it’s always been like that anyway.

A dangerous look is beginning to form in Viktor's eyes. Deadly like the hand on the knife at the bedside or poison slipped into a drink. It lights every nerve ending in Jayce’s body on fire and makes him feel alive in a way that he hasn’t felt in months, maybe in his entire life.

The silence in the clearing grows heavy as if reality itself is bending under the weight of the moment. Jayce regards the other man, hopelessly conflicted at how one person can stir him into such a frenzy yet also bring him such a sense of calm. When Viktor’s voice comes out it’s barely a whisper.

“Do you think we can win?”

In the depths of his voice there is something new. Something true.

Jayce considers the question. Realizes that for so long he’s never cared who actually wins this war. From the moment they met, there was no desire to bring victory to his side, just the desire to survive.

But now a different sort of prize comes into view. Not for Piltover. Not for Zaun.

This is a new victory altogether. One that belongs to them and them alone. The hidden third opponent in a game meant for two.

His gaze meets Viktor’s and the animal instinct inside struggles to determine friend from foe, enemy from ally.

Jayce makes a decision and steps forward, thinking about how love and hate are on different sides of the same coin. The singular currency that draws them together.

“Well,” says Jayce, as a smile begins to form over sharp teeth, “There’s only one way to find out.”

 

 

Notes:

thank you so much if you've read to this point :D as usual comments appreciated (mother, i crave validation).

Chapter 2: Epilogue

The sound of silverware hitting metal trays is the only noise that echoes through the quiet cafeteria. The soldiers dig wordlessly into their mystery meat, heads hanging like corpses.

There’s no talking, no chatter, not even the hint of a whisper. The only communication that passes between the Piltovan soldiers is the occasional arched brow. The narrow shift of eyes that flicker to the armed attendants standing nearby and then to each other, raised as if to say: can you believe this shit?

It’s only during stolen cigarette breaks in the dead of night– window popped open with one arm hanging out into the cold night air– that the soldiers whisper their complaints.

“This is ridiculous,” they mutter.

“Can’t even use the damn toilet without monitors.”

“They treat us like dogs. Just training. Eat. Training. Lights out.”

“It’s because of him–” One man says, exhaling a plume of smoke between his fingers. He’s an older soldier, a weary face amongst fresh recruits.
“–They don’t want another one of us going rogue.”

The word passes through his lips like a curse. The fresh recruits look at each other with raised eyebrows. They weren’t here when it happened, but the story gets passed behind closed doors, the whispered dark of night, the rushed moment between showering and getting dressed.

Like a legend or a folktale, it gathers power with each retelling.

But before any of them can ask the man more, the lights around the compound flash on in a blinding blaze.

Half-finished cigarettes fall to the ground and the window slams shut while up above, the sound of an alarm is blaring.

CODE RED, CODE RED, it screeches, THIS IS NOT A DRILL, THIS IS A CODE RED.

Boots find their way onto feet and guns into hands.

It takes longer for the councilors to get out of bed, unaccustomed as they are to being woken in the middle of the night so urgently. They rub their bleary eyes and shove their arms into velvet robes as they follow the commanders deep into the subterranean weapons vault.

They descend so deeply underground that the sounds of sirens and shouting fall away like dead birds.

It’s eerily quiet.

By contrast, the sound of the councilor’s footsteps becomes thunderous as they approach the safe at the center of the room, a hulking giant of bulletproof metal and complicated locks.

The councilors type in the passcode. An action they've done nearly every day in preparation for the final battle in a compulsory cycle of experiment, tweak, test.

But this time there is no ease in the motion. Their hands are shaking.

The safe door hisses open like a dragon, exhaling. As the door yawns open, the councilors step back as if expecting a demon to step out from its depths.

But there is no movement from inside.
There is nothing.

Nothing, where there should be a briefcase full of hex-crystals, pulsing blue and vivid.
Nothing, where there should be a weapon; a deadly miracle of plexiglass and hex-power wearing the form of a gun.

A bone-chilling emptiness stares back at the wide-eyed councilors.

Empty except for a letter. A folded-up piece of parchment that looks like it’s been there since the beginning of time.

Dear councilors, it reads

It seems congratulations are in order, for this is quite the pretty gun you’ve developed. Although I suppose you can’t take all the credit for yourselves. A saying comes to mind: one about standing on the shoulders of giants.

But we digress…

It’s a good weapon, a marvelous one even. Hopefully, you don't mind if we take it out for a spin. After all, sharing is caring.

Rest assured, we are not imminently running to Zaun to hand over our prize. On the contrary, we’ll keep it tucked cozily into our pockets like one keeps a treasured letter.

We hope it’s not too much of an inconvenience. But surely you have the resources to develop another.

Consider it a retirement gift of sorts. A going-away present for years of excellent service.
If not that; then an insurance policy.

Should you try to come after us, you might find yourself on the wrong side of your own weapon.

This is not a threat. (It’s a promise.)

But let’s keep this on a lighter note, shall we?

Let’s agree to follow the Good Neighbor rule (although rest assured, we are far, far away by now). Do not bother us and we will not bother you. That’s to say, you are welcome to keep your war as long as you keep your distance.

What do you say, neighbor? Shall we shake on it? (Metaphorically, of course.)

Please note that we are generous people. That’s to say, any transgression on this agreement will be paid back ten-fold with change to spare. You should know better than most not to treat this like a bluff. This weapon is quite impressive, but it is only the second most deadly thing you’ve created.

Another digression…
We’ll end on this point.

Sometimes, an object can be two things at once: a harmless pup or a mad dog, a kiss or a wound, relentless hate or undying love.

This letter as well, has two meanings.
An ultimatum or a goodbye.

The outcome depends on what you do next.
Choose wisely.

Sincerely,
The Machine Herald & Defender of Tomorrow
Viktor & Jayce

 

 

 

Notes:

Is it completely, despicably, batsh!t bonkers to be in love with a fictional rendition of fictional characters?! These boys have me in such a chokehold I literally can’t breathe.

Sorry we did not actually get a glimpse of the chaotic duo (as you can imagine it’s exceptionally hard to track them down). I imagine they’re somewhere far away, doing what they love most, ie: trading sly remarks, wreaking havoc on the world government, and sneaking looks of admiration at one another (while stabbing someone, probably).

Like I said, batsh!t bonkers.

Also i made a twitter (literally fresh off the press), I might rant about fic writing, post fanart or do absolutely nothing on it, feel free to say hi.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of war-verse