Chapter Text
PART ONE SUMMARY
Part one was a modern AU with Viktor as a deep sea scientist, Singed as his father, and Sky as his only friend. Viktor is trans and has the deadname “Orianna”. Viktor’s mother passed at the time of his birth and Singed died a year prior to the beginning of the fic.
The story begins with Viktor traveling down into the Mariana Trench in a vessel named the Orianna. He has dedicated his entire life to supporting his father’s dream of uncovering the secrets held within the trench, specifically by studying the organisms that live down there and applying the knowledge of how they survive in such a hostile environment to humans as a potential cure for disease/key to immortality.
Singed didn’t want Viktor to travel down there since it’s a one-way trip and will isolate him from every other human on the planet but after his father’s death, Viktor completes the vessel and does it anyway.
When Viktor gets to the bottom, he tries to make himself at home despite the immediate unease he feels due to the large windows and lack of visibility around him. He sees a small pink fish in the kelp field next to the vessel, who he names “Fish Rio” after his childhood cat. He talks to Sky using the radio but doesn’t have any other methods of communication beyond that. In the beginning, they talk every day but over time that dwindles and Viktor’s loneliness grows. He occasionally leaves the vessel in order to collect samples but otherwise spends all his time inside.
After six months, Viktor gets an accidental radio call from Jayce Talis, who is a famous astronaut in this AU and is orbiting Earth for 2 months before his solo Mars mission. Viktor calls him Talis at his request and they begin to talk everyday. Viktor becomes so infatuated with Talis that he masturbates to the thought of him often. It is on one of these occasions that we are introduced to a monster watching an unaware Viktor from outside the vessel.
An ill-fated romance blooms between Viktor and Talis and after they confess their feelings for each other, they have radio sex. The monster watches with clenched fists. On their last day together, Viktor and Talis both cry and express that they wish things were different. Then they say their goodbyes. Following Talis’s departure, Viktor falls into a deep depression and stops getting out of bed.
The monster sighs as it watches Viktor lie motionless. Viktor is spurned out of bed by the crackling of the radio, thinking it might be Talis for a moment but it isn’t. Still—now that Viktor is out of bed, he decides to clean himself up and get back to his routine.
Despite his efforts to get better, Viktor’s mind continues to deteriorate and he experiences depersonalization, derealization, and thoughts of self harm. The monster watches from a distance but otherwise doesn’t interact with Viktor.
Following the unexpected gruesome death of Fish Rio, Viktor crashes out and hallucinates that his dead father is talking to him, which prompts him to smash the box holding Singed’s ashes and beg his father not to leave him. The monster approaches the glass while Viktor is in the shower and looks upon the mess.
Viktor sees a mysterious figure and thinks it is a figment of his imagination. His mental health is bad but slightly improved after his crash out, which he does not remember for some reason. He taunts the figure and teases it through the window, undoing his shirt as he asks it to come closer. Receiving no response, Viktor gives up and goes into the bathroom. When he leaves, it is revealed that the monster is fighting the urge to chase after him.
On Viktor’s first trip out of the vessel since seeing the figure, he is initially worried but calms when he doesn’t spy anything amiss in the surrounding area. However his fear grows after sensing something is watching him and he ends up becoming so scared that he retreats and swims quickly back to the Orianna. He feels like something is chasing him but he doesn’t look back at it and at the last minute, he feels a tug on his wetsuit.
During a call with Sky, Viktor tries to tell her about the figure but she convinces him that he’s being irrational and it’s probably nothing. Shortly after that, Viktor has a wet dream and starts to masturbate after waking up. He startles after being surprised by the sudden appearance of the figure right outside his window, closer than it’s ever been before. The figure is a merman with a strong jawline, shining eyes, a broad muscled chest, a short beard, pale cyan skin, long hair, white scarring on its arms, and glowing palms. Since the figure somewhat resembles Talis, Viktor believes he is imagining it and starts to interact with the monster through the window, showing it his body.
The monster speaks into his mind, demanding to be let in and then it breaks into Viktor’s ship. It holds him down and tries to fuck him, which makes Viktror horrified and aroused. But upon breaking Viktor’s hymen, the monster apologizes and disappears.
Viktor longs for the monster to return, spending his days looking out the window and his nights falling into dreamless sleeps. Sometimes he thinks he can smell the ocean on his sheets in the morning but he dismisses this as wishful thinking.
When the monster finally returns, Viktor seduces it—despite it shapeshifting its appearance to become more monstrous—and they fuck nasty while the monster communicates exclusively by speaking into Viktor’s mind. The next morning, they discuss their relationship and agree to become partners. After this, Viktor seems to forget all about Talis.
Months pass and while they have a great relationship—full of sexual exploration, gifts from the monster, and collaboration on Viktor’s work—Viktor feels frustrated over the fact that the monster doesn’t talk about its past, take Viktor to visit its home, or let Viktor top. The monster leaves sometimes to “tend to its home” and Viktor feels very unstable during these times. Leading up to the end of the story, the monster is away more and more often.
One day—when the monster isn’t there—while looking through his old journals for inspiration for his work on his father’s dream, Viktor finds a sketch he’d drawn of Talis’s face. This triggers a psychological break as Viktor remembers Talis and his previous crashout. He then develops a delusion that he is Fish Rio and when the monster returns, it finds him slamming himself into the windows of the ship, trying to escape his “tank”. Viktor falls unconscious as the monster transports him to its cave.
When Viktor wakes up, he’s lying in the cave and hears metal clanking in the distance. He sees a portal on the wall and piled bodies in the corner. He is then lifted up by tentacles and brought closer to the monster. The monster then speaks to him aloud for the first time, saying “I love you too… I’m sorry” in a voice that sounds exactly like Talis’s. Viktor asks if Talis was real and the monster doesn’t reply.
Then the monster inserts two tentacles into him and tries to distract Viktor by showing him its memories of their relationship, which include memories that Viktor doesn’t remember—like a hot air balloon ride, a date in a field of flowers, and a swim under a waterfall. Viktor becomes frustrated and resists the monster’s hold on his mind. Once he regains his vision, he sees that the tentacles have been depositing glowing, blue orbs into his abdomen. He looks up and locks eyes with the monster before being plunged into darkness.
Back at the empty vessel, the radio crackles and Talis says, “Viktor! Are you there?!... It’s me, Commander Talis.”
PRESENT DAY
Jayce waded into the shallow pool, cradling Viktor’s limp body in his arms.
The pool wasn’t full of water, but rather a thick, syrupy fluid that would protect Viktor during his transformation.
At least… that’s the hope.
Jayce tried to focus on the planes of Viktor’s placid face, tried to map them for the days ahead when he wouldn’t be able to see him, rather than entertaining the many possibilities of what all could go wrong, the probability that he wouldn’t make it.
Viktor had to make it. There was no other alternative.
I promised him I would protect him.
When the thick fluid reached his hips, he lowered Viktor down and let his body be swallowed up into the protective cocoon that would serve as an incubator for the next… however long it took.
Jayce stepped back and watched as the glow from Viktor’s body gradually grew dimmer as it sank down to the bottom of the pool.
All he could do now was wait.
AN INDETERMINABLE AMOUNT OF TIME BEFORE
Jayce dragged the mercury hammer out of the dome with a screech , his mind spinning as he felt adrenaline coursing through his veins like battery acid, corrosive and painful as it forced him to move forward, compelling him towards the next action, the next fight, the next piece of the mission. He was a man of action, a soldier, an actor playing his part. He couldn’t think about what that part had been, only what he needed to do next.
I gotta get out- out of here- get out- now-
Jayce nearly fell over when the screams started, the discordant melody of agony abrupt and unexpected. He gripped the side of the entrance to the dome and leaned over, emptying his stomach onto the ground outside. He didn’t just feel the shrieking in his ears, but in his whole body- every cry a stab into the man who killed them all, piercing into his flesh as if they were exacting their revenge on him for killing their herald.
Keep moving- get out- move- move- move-
Jayce fled the scene, the agonizing screams of the commune members echoing in his ears long after he’d made it back out of Zaun and into Piltover.
“You did WHAT?”
“I destroyed Hextech.”
Mel narrowed her eyes, looking more shaken than Jayce had ever seen her. She clenched her jaw and let out a long breath, centering herself before she responded. Even changed, her dark skin decorated in golden accents that she had yet to explain, she was still the same Mel as ever, sensible and unflappable during times of crisis.
“Why- why would you do that?”
“Heimerdinger was right about Hextech. It would have ended the world, Mel. I saw it. You have to believe me,” Jayce said, resting his hand on Mel’s forearm as his eyes implored hers.
Mel brought her hand on top of his before letting out a sigh, “Jayce, we need Hextech if we are going to win this war.”
“We don’t need Hextech to defeat Zaun. We-”
“No, not against Zaun... Against Noxus,” Mel sighed again, looking away from him and turning her attention out the window towards the busy streets of Piltover outside, full of foot traffic as workers ventured out for their lunch hours.
“Noxus?! But they are our allies- they came here to help us,” Jayce replied.
“Not anymore. I tried to talk my mother out of it, but I’m afraid her ambition is greater than my influence… it’s a decision she likely made months ago, judging by growing host of Noxian warships just outside the harbor,” she said, lifting her gaze away from the populace of Piltover and up to the portion of the sea they could see from here, the usual cerulean of its watery depths displaced and diluted by the grey and red masses of their foreign invaders.
“Order! Order! We are gathered today to discuss crimes against Piltover perpetrated by Jayce Talis.”
A spotlight flicked on with a thunk , illuminating him as he stood in the middle of the darkened council chamber, his feet planted in the same spot he had stood in seven years ago.
The whole charade was a bit melodramatic considering that the only people in the chamber were Mel, Shoola, and the recently-sworn-in and hastily-assembled new members of the council, who were really just a ragtag bunch of Piltovian elites, chosen for their familial connection to the deceased councilors—no matter how distant a relation apparently, judging by the fact that Jayce could scarcely recognize a few of them. The chamber hadn’t even been fully restored from the bombing—crumbling cracks in the walls, larger pieces of rubble haphazardly stacked in the corner, and the illuminated air around him revealing swirls of dust from the uncleared debris.
But hey- they fixed the fucking spotlight, Jayce thought, trying not to roll his eyes at the farce of a trial they were making him go through.
“You stand accused of treason, espionage, and alignment with an enemy state. What do you have to say for yourself?” Shoola said, her tone haughty while she addressed Jayce, as if he were just another criminal and not someone who had sat beside her in this very chamber.
Jayce could feel the critical assessment of the new council members from where they were cloaked in shadow, their beady eyes sizing up his posture for weakness, likely taking stock of his falling social standing, scrutinizing his appearance—which was slightly less disheveled after a long shower, a beard trim, and an outfit change into his mourning set of clothes, black with understated red and golden accents. No doubt, each and every one of the social climbers around him were probing Jayce for faults that they could later exploit and he wasn’t sure what they were finding.
And he wasn’t sure how any of them would vote. Mel had a lot of sway with the old council, but things were different now and besides, she was still angry with him and they hadn’t spoken since she’d stormed out of their last conversation once Jayce had reiterated that he would never recreate Hextech—no matter how great a threat Noxus posed.
“I would never do anything to bring harm to Piltover. My actions were to protect Piltover. I am not sorry for what I did and I would do it again to save our city,” Jayce intoned his previously prepared rebuttal, his confidence growing as his sight adjusted to the dim light of the chamber, allowing him to look each of the new councilors in the eye.
“While I do not agree with Jayce’s actions, he has been a great contributor to our society for many years and we will need his genius if we are to win this war against Noxus,” Mel said evenly.
“How can we trust your assessment, councilwoman- when your own mother is the one leading the charge against Piltover?” the cyborg who had taken over Bolbok’s seat interjected.
“I too will vouch for Jayce’s character. He must have had a good reason to do what he did,” Caitlyn said, her lilted accent sounding slightly strained as she shifted impatiently in her seat. Jayce wondered how much persuading Mel had to do to convince her to take over her mother’s position. Caitlyn had always been better suited for jobs that put her in the heart of the action and the slow dredge of bureaucracy was the antithesis of that. It was hard to reconcile the mental image Jayce had of Caitlyn, one of a tenacious little sister, with the polished woman seated in front of him now. He never would have imagined that the mischievous little girl he knew in his youth—the one who would coax him into hiding beneath tablecloths at her parent’s events so the two of them could poke at people’s ankles as they walked by—would grow up to become not only a councilor, but the acting sheriff of the enforcers.
“Have our standards of conduct really fallen so far that we have become like undercity children begging for scraps- willing to accept anything to fill the empty seats of this chamber?” a grey haired man with a geometric, metal collar argued.
Mel cocked her head, a telltale sign of her growing frustration, “Our standards of conduct? You have sat on this council for mere days.”
An older woman dressed in opulent plum and black chimed in, “The length of our tenure in our current positions should not matter. I’ve been head of my house longer than you’ve been alive, girl- and I’ll have you know-”
Jayce’s head started to pound as the room devolved into petty fighting, the councilors’ voices growing louder and louder as they spoke over each other and verbally sparred for dominance.
“Listen! I was wrong to try to create magic! We should have listened to Heimerdinger- we were never meant to try to harness the arcane – it was foolish and egotistical to believe otherwise. Now- it’s too late for me to undo all of the damage I’ve done, but I promise that going forward I will assist in the efforts to defeat Noxus in any way I can- without the use of Hextech.”
He directed his impromptu speech at each of the councilors, tipping his head at them in turn as a gesture of respect. These were people he could have charmed with confidence months ago, people whose names he should have remembered- names he would have recalled with ease before he tumbled down into that chasm, before he lost his mind spending months shivering and alone, his broken body sustained by a diet of raw lizards and water that burned as he choked it down his throat after slurping it out of a dirty puddle.
Jayce was so far removed from the smooth-talking politician he had become before everything had gone sideways. How stupid it all was now, how futile all of those years of effort had been, his insatiable need to crawl his way upwards in the eyes of society, to gain back the prestige his house had once had back when his father was still alive.
Just to end up right back underneath the harsh glow of this spotlight.
But he would be lying if he said that he wouldn’t do it all over again… because it hadn’t really all been for nothing, had it?
Not at all—I never would have met Viktor if it weren’t for Hextech.
Though maybe that would have been better…
Without me, Viktor would still be alive.
In the end, Jayce received a slap on the wrist- a simple travel ban to keep him from crossing the bridge into Zaun, getting on any departing boats at the port, or joining the teeming mass of civilians fleeing on the airboats.
He should have been relieved that Mel was able to save him.
But instead, he felt almost… angry that she had spared him from a harsher sentence.
Maybe Jayce deserved to be thrown into Stillwater or even worse, executed for his crimes in the city square—his name stricken from historical texts, his life reduced to rumors and gossip, his mother forced to flee the city and live with distant relatives to escape the stain he left on the Talis name.
During his darkest moments, Jayce imagined the scene of his own execution—making the choice between a firing squad or hanging, the disquiet of a jeering crowd suddenly holding its breath, a diligent bureaucrat noting down his final words, and after—the way his blood would creep as it filled the cracks in the cobblestone.
But he was spared of that fate… for now.
Jayce also imagined the battlefield, a place he wasn’t stationed near but could still hear in the distance, the sounds of gunfire and mortar shells audible at every hour. He thought often about the very real deaths caused by every weapon he designed for the ongoing war against Noxus, how Rictus and thousands of nameless Noxians had fallen to the ground indirectly by his hand, sacrificing their lives in the name of neverending conquest.
Jayce rarely thought about the Piltovian and Zaunite lives his defense systems saved. It was easier to see himself in the graves than it was in the smiles of the innocent.
The innocent—he didn’t like to see them, didn’t like to see their smiles as he walked down the halls of the bunkers or their waves—small hands peeking out of windows—spied during his rare trips down the silent streets. It was as if Jayce couldn’t appreciate peace anymore. He struggled to find comfort in the rare moments of quiet, the occasional minutes of silence from the frontlines, war was the only language that made sense to him these days.
After all that had happened, violence had become more appealing to him, justified even. Peace only made him tired, though that was supposedly the end result of war. When Jayce was a younger, more idealist version of himself, he didn’t understand why societies built upon bloodshed and formed by forceful subjugation were surprised when they couldn’t sustain lasting peace but now… he didn’t care enough to propose alternate solutions, feeling so far removed from his previous pacifism that it felt like a quality that belonged to someone else.
Jayce didn’t like to dwell upon his past self but he did wonder when it became impossible for him to return to it. There must have been a moment—perhaps a day down in that chasm—where his psyche severed into two halves, the Jayce who created and the Jayce who murdered.
And there must have been another moment where the Jayce who murdered turned back to destroy the Jayce who created, to leave him bloody and bleeding—stomped into a pulp in the back of their shared consciousness.
And then—a final moment where he forgot what it was like to be the Jayce who created entirely, where he forgot what it was like to be any other version of himself than the warmongering Jayce he was now, the man who wielded his anger like a hammer to destroy the rest of his emotions.
Violence is the problem and violence is the solution.
Jayce spent nearly all of his time working in a makeshift lab set up in one of the secret Academy basements. He had an assigned room in the bunkers that he shared with his mother, but he barely spent any time there, his bunk growing dusty with disuse. He preferred to sleep in the lab, to steal snatches of rest sitting up against a wall clutching a weapon like he had down in the chasm and as a result, Jayce hadn’t seen his mother much in the past few weeks- or months, maybe?
Time in the basement felt fluid, uncertain. If it weren’t for other people, he might wonder if it was passing at all, his existence in this secret space deep under the earth so far removed from reality. In the absence of windows, he often didn’t know the hour. And in the absence of a regular sleep schedule, he rarely knew what day it was. And in the absence of holidays, it was hard to be certain of the month.
Jayce’s work was his life—in some ways it always had been—but it was even more so now. He still saw Mel during her visits to communicate with him on behalf of the council but they rarely spoke of more than business. And Caitlyn… she was busy—busy leading the enforcers, busy being a councilwoman, and busy with her on-again, off-again personal vendetta against Jinx and her corresponding off-again, on-again relationship with Vi. Jayce couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her, but he didn’t blame her. He understood. They had both been through so much, how could anyone ask any more of them than what they were already doing?
But people did ask more of him.
All the time.
“Jayce, are you sure we can’t use Hextech to help us win the war?”
“Jayce, what are your opinions on this potential peace deal with the Noxians? Smells fishy, doesn’t it?”
“Jayce, if we’re going to work with the Zaunites, I need your help. It seems you’re the only one who can reason with those people.”
A carousel of constant demands. He let himself ride the wave of them, let them carry him into the future, he didn’t have it in him to be anything more than a passive participant in his own life.
All action, all the time. It was just what he needed.
The times in-between demands were dangerous.
Any moments he had to himself where he wasn’t too bone-tired to think were dangerous.
Thoughts of Viktor were dangerous.
Move- move- move-
“He was a good man, Jayce. No matter what happened. He was your friend and he knew that you cared for him.”
Ximena didn’t know that Jayce had been the one to kill Viktor. She thought he died in a random act of violence down in Zaun. That’s what everyone thought. The only one who knew most of the truth was Mel.
No one else knew what Viktor had become, what he had done, what he would have done. No one connected the mysterious Herald figure back to Viktor after the tragedy at the commune.
So his funeral should have been packed, even with all of the other funerals happening that day as the people of Piltover and Zaun finally had the time to properly mourn their dead, to put to rest their fallen after three long years of war.
But besides Jayce, it was only Ximena, Heimerdinger, and the priest.
It was a short affair. Viktor would have liked that. He never enjoyed being the center of attention.
Still, Jayce had picked out the finest casket, tombstone, and bouquet of tulips he could find. Viktor would have made fun of him for it. “What do I need those for? I’m dead.”
Once he was alone—everyone else peeling off one at a time after the brief service, his mother squeezing him into a tight hug before she departed—Jayce laid the tulips down on the freshly turned dirt.
The tulips looked brighter against the dark soil—almost upsettingly so—as if the flowers were too alive to exist in this place of mourning, as if their cheerful hue were mocking the dead.
Jayce didn’t know what Viktor's favorite color was, all those years together and he’d never thought to ask, but he hoped yellow was okay.
He asked now, softly, letting the wind carry away the words he should have spoken long ago, “Viktor, what’s your favorite color?”
The grave remained silent, the only noise around the gentle rustling of the wind in the trees and the faint sounds of the city in the distance.
Jayce felt silly talking to a grave, but at this point, it was one of the few things he had left of his partner. A grave, the small amount of their research that hadn’t been destroyed, and an apartment full of belongings that Jayce hadn’t been able to bring himself to visit since Viktor’s passing.
He kept talking, telling the grave all that had happened since that day at the commune.
“I wish you could have seen it, Viktor. Zaun and Piltover uniting. It was what you always wanted. It wasn’t a perfect union- of course- but they really came together to defeat Noxus.”
Jayce knelt on the ground—cold damp seeping into the thin skin of his knees through his suit pants—and rested his hand on the top of the grave, the sharp edge of the hard stone reminding him of what Viktor’s shoulder blade had felt like underneath his palm.
“I’m just sorry- that it took so long and that I had to wait to- to lay you to rest… I’m sorry for a lot of things.”
As the hours passed, Jayce continued to catch Viktor up on everything that had happened over the last few years of war and the last few weeks of tentative peace, slowly transitioning from kneeling to sitting to leaning against the grave and finally to laying on the ground, uncaring as he ruined his finest suit.
“They added seats to the council to represent Zaun. Three seats! I almost wish I was still a councilor just so I could sit in on their meetings. You know that Sevika must be giving them hell.”
At dusk, a groundskeeper came by to tell him the cemetery would be closing soon. If the man thought it was weird that Jayce was laying on the ground next to a grave, he kept that opinion to himself. Jayce used the small amount of sway he had left using what was left of his reputation to convince the man to let him stay.
He just couldn’t stomach leaving Viktor again, especially as the night fell and it got colder, a temperature that would have had his partner wearing a button-down, a sweater, and a coat and Viktor still would have been complaining about the cold.
Jayce laid down on the grave, spreading one of his arms across on top of the tulips as he rested his cheek against the cold dirt.
Viktor needs my warmth.