Chapter Text
The last thing Viktor heard from Jayce was a laugh. An incredulous laugh as they landed, improbably safe, somewhere far away. It burst out of him like cannonfire, had him hiding his face in his hands and his chest heaving. And once it fizzled out of him, just like they did at the end of the world, so did all the fight.
I thought we were dead, Viktor muses to himself. It would’ve been infinitely easier.
He feels something cold against his back, and it’s not the metal of his brace or the blood internally dripping down his broken spine; it’s melting snow.
And, fuck, he’s cold. For the first time in a while.
His staff is next to him. His cloak is still wrapped around him. Damp, but not unusable. His body is still there, surprisingly. Arms and legs and a head. His hands pat at his face, just to confirm it’s in one piece. Then he splays his hand out to his side, reaching for someone else. After finding nothing but grainy, slick snow, he sits up straight and turns, despite his back screaming at him. After so long without a body, he’s forgotten his own limits.
“Jayce?” Viktor whispers, and his breath comes out in a warm puff. He turns to his other side and he’s there, thank god, staring at the gray sky.
“Jayce,” he huffs, placing his hand carefully on Jayce’s shoulder. He flinches away like Viktor burned him, sitting up like he’s ready to run. Viktor pulls back, and Jayce just watches him. Scared. Then more sad than scared, like all the adrenaline went flooding out of him when he saw Viktor recoil. Jayce has always been mercurial like that.
Jayce closes the distance between them swiftly. Holds Viktor’s face in his hands like water. Traces a line down the center of Viktor’s face with the pads of his thumbs.
Viktor looks up at him. God, he’s different. God, he’s tired. “Are you hurt?”
Jayce says nothing. Just rests his hands at the nape of Viktor’s neck.
“Are you cold?”
Jayce breathes. He’s not here, Viktor infers quickly. He’s floaty, his head turning but his eyes never glancing at anything other than space. Boring a hole into the universe, he is. Again. Good thing that, for once in Viktor’s life, he is extremely present, with ice on his back and a fever-hot Jayce Talis at his front. He holds Jayce’s coat closed with his hands.
“We’ll walk some, alright?”
Biting his lip, Jayce turns away. Viktor leans back, not wanting to intrude. Still keeping the coat tight around Jayce’s shoulders, of course. He likes to be useful.
“I’m sorry,” he huffs, watery. “I’m so sorry, Jayce. I’ll fix it. I’ll fix it, I promise.”
The town they stumble across (quite literally) is more like a village.
“Hello?” Viktor hisses cautiously. He used to do this when he was a kid, sneak into houses and stay until he found a better one. Or, until he got the tiniest inkling in his gut that the enforcers were onto him. Irrational, sure, but he never actually got caught, unlike someone he eloped with. And now, there’s no enforcers. Hopefully. Just the meek villagers and Jayce and the soundless winter outside. Everything is bright, reflecting off of the snow like a solar panel. Jayce shies away.
There’s linens in the closets. Shirts in the drawers. Plates in the cabinets. All with a generous coating of dust, just like the blanketing snow outside. Viktor idly traces a star onto the dining room table, just like how he used to on his desk, when he was jittery and waiting for results. Jayce moves like the undead, dragging his feet and hanging his head. The second he finds the bed, he loses focus on anything else, implicitly trusting Viktor to make sure all is settled. Or maybe implicitly surrendering, saying, ‘Yeah, I don't really care if we get caught.’
Understandable. At least Viktor thinks so. He thought they had a very noble ending.
His mouth is dry, he notices, as he tries to croak out, “I can sleep on the…”
Jayce grabs Viktor by his cloak and pulls him to the bed. He momentarily removes his death grip to undo his brace, slip off his boots and peel off his coat. His hands graze the buttons of his shirt, but he leaves them be. He slides himself on top of the white sheets, turning his back to Viktor. He reaches back to grab blindly at his cloak, though, tugging gently until Viktor inches closer. When Viktor’s knobby knees hit the mattress, he pulls the sheets back. Sliding in carefully, he guides his legs underneath the thin fabric.
He stares at the ceiling at first. Counts the boards. He gets to forty before he turns his attention back to Jayce. Sweet Jayce, shivering on top of the sheets, curled up like a cat and breathing shallowly. He hooks his fingers into Jayce’s back belt loop. Viktor can practically hear the gears in his head turning. He pulls him close, enveloping him as best he can from behind, his chest to Jayce’s back, his arms looped around his middle. Jayce heaves a sighing breath, like a wildcat shuddering, and he relaxes. Viktor doesn’t need words for that.
The next day, he slams his staff against the floorboards until it splinters in half. Then he breaks one of the halves in half, using his cloak as rope to improvise the shittiest crutch ever to be improvised. It’ll work until the snow thaws. Whenever that will be.
Jayce gets up and limps to the doorway to see what was beating on their temporary shelter, but he quietly returns to bed. He doesn’t get up for the rest of the day. When Viktor slides into bed behind him, wrapping his arms around his middle and pressing his cheek against the nape of his neck, he doesn’t say anything at all. Just sighs.
Viktor dreams that night, for the first time in what feels like a lifetime. He dreams of a concrete wall with him and Jayce on opposite sides. He dreams of the hands of fate, all violet and giant and refulgent, holding him like water. Then, the hands are holding Jayce. And then, the hands cradle an orb of light, blinding and burning and beautiful. Then, Viktor’s alone again.
Ah, he thinks. There it is.
He claws at the inky walls of the pit he’s in, kicking and pounding against the blackness, but the walls soften in response, simply adapting to his protesting. He tries to speak, but the walls become so porous that no soundwaves can be reflected back into noise. He drives his fingernails into the flesh of his palm, but his nails melt from underneath his skin, leaking into the darkness. And just when he’s accepted his condemnation, his perdition, that’s when he hears Jayce. Jayce screams, the first noise Viktor has heard from Jayce since they ended up who-knows-where, and Viktor sinks his hands into his own rib cage. His slender fingers dissolve into his chest, and he feels nothing again, and then he jerks awake.
“Ominous,” Viktor huffs under his breath, easily dismissing the whole thing. Him and Jayce are in a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere in freezing winter, with a mere two legs that are kind of okay between them and even less food, if Viktor still needs it, fuck, he needs to figure that out, too. Basically, his weird hyperbolic collage of unconscious dread can fucking wait.
There’s a knock on the front door later that morning, and Viktor just about dies.
“Hello?” The voice in front of the door is chirping, high-pitched and musical and, to Viktor’s misfortune, very disarming. “Is anyone there?”
With Jayce, to put it kindly, which Viktor always will, out of service until further notice, he thinks of ways he could prevent enforcers from taking entry by himself. He’s not entirely opposed to shanking them; he’s a pacifist, no doubt about it, but if he were to ever shank anyone, it would be an enforcer. Double-suicide isn’t completely out of the picture, either. They kind of did it once already.
His relief is infinite when he cracks open the front door and sees a curly-haired woman, short and stout, bundled up in furs and leathers and the biggest boots he’s ever seen.
“Hello,” he squeaks, suddenly realizing he hasn’t had a real conversation in weeks. Months, more like. Even longer, if he’s not counting his whole… project.
The woman squeaks even squeakier, which helps Viktor a bit. “Are you alright?”
Viktor laughs, but it really ends up as a pitiful sigh with some weak intention behind it. “What a question, miss.”
The woman grimaces sympathetically. “I just wanted to say that we are always here if you or your friend need anything.”
“You saw us?”
“We see everything,” she whistles, pointing vaguely down the road, presumably towards their neighbors. “Not much happens here, honestly. You’ll understand, eventually, if you stick around. Which I assume you will. Not to assume. But it’s a few months before spring. But you and your friend were in the snow in the first place, so maybe you’ll decide to take the trek somewhere else. I don't know. Y’know, the people who owned this house packed up and left in the dead of the night. My sister thinks they were laundering money, and she’s always been right about those kinds of things. Probably ‘cause she dabbles in it herself. I probably shouldn’t tell you that. There’s no enforcers around these parts, though. There’s not much of anything, really. Oh, me rambling again. I just wanted to say hello, and I wanted to let you know that if you need anything, well, I can’t guarantee we’ll have it but we can definitely try and get it.”
Viktor finds it a strange twist of fate that they’re not the only criminals to find refuge in this house. Whatever rules the universe is sick and twisted, he decides pointedly, like he wasn’t already intimately familiar with the slender, zemblanitous hands of fate.
“I do have some requests,” he whispers as kindly as possible. “If they aren’t too much trouble. If it’s too much you can slam the door in my face, I swear. I’ll understand, really.”
And that’s how Viktor ends up with a bag of honeyfruit, salted beef, and more loaves of sourdough bread than he’s ever seen in his life. Some firewood too, which has Viktor placing his palms on the shut door and thanking a god he never once believed in.
He leaves a plate on the nightstand by Jayce’s side of the bed. There’s a bite taken out of a slice of bread by the time Viktor wakes up. An accomplishment; probably the first they’ve had since they stumbled here. He mutters to himself about it in the kitchen while he watches the snow fall. And fall. And fall.
“Isn’t it great?” He says under his breath to an imaginary audience. Maybe to Sky, wherever she is now. “Well, I’m not sure if it’s great. We’re getting somewhere. Progress. Eh, maybe not that word. Improvements.”
Later that night, Viktor awakes to an empty bed.
“Jayce?” He breathes, really not loud enough to summon anyone.
A noise. Keening, like a wounded bird. Viktor sits up, grabbing his crutch from where he leaned it against his bedside table earlier.
“Jayce?” Viktor tries again, a little louder. He also tries to calm the fuck down; there’s only so many rooms Jayce can end up in. Bedroom is out, so that leaves the bathroom, kitchen, living room. Maybe the linen closets, Viktor wouldn’t rule it out. Jayce feels anxious in open space, sometimes. He thinks something is coming, Viktor can tell just by watching his eyes flit across the room. Maybe Jayce is scared of him, wildly preparing for Viktor’s next attack. Viktor won’t rule that out either.
Peering through their bedroom doorway, he finds candlelight trembling into the hallway from the gap between the bathroom door and the floorboards. “Jayce.”
He jostles the brass doorknob. Nothing.
He knocks, bless him. Nothing.
“Jayce?” He calls, louder than he’s ever been with Jayce, he thinks. Nothing.
He recalls a trick he learned from some of the older kids back home, a trick to undo the safety mechanism in older door knobs. Simple, quick, effective, definitely used previously for nefarious purposes. He returns to their bedroom, retrieving the pin cushion from one of the dresser drawers. Sticking the longest pin into the center hole of the knob, he pushes forward with all of his weight. The knob finally turns, and the door gives underneath Viktor, and he flies right into the bathroom cabinets, falling hard onto his knees. He curses instinctively, immediately wrapping his hands around the bend of his leg.
“Fucking god,” he hisses.
It’s eerily silent in there. Especially compared to the soundscape a few minutes ago, filled with weepy breaths and muffled cries. He turns his eyes away from the ground and towards the bathtub, and there he finds Jayce, sitting right across from him. He’s leaning against the wall of the tub, hands and leg guarding himself. Eyes wide with fear, like prey. His leg, his festering leg, is the only limb not curled inwards protectively, which is because of Jayce’s inability to move it without screeching, Viktor presumes. He’s surrounded by glass vials and serums and potions, all in an attempt to treat the endless, self cannibalizing wound.
Viktor laughs, relieved, but it comes out as more of a creaking sob, not unlike the whistling of the door hinges when Viktor forced them open. “I thought you were…”
Viktor doesn’t finish. They both know. Instead, he offers.
“Can I help?”
Jayce presses himself against the wall of the bathtub, wincing as the sensitive scar tissue on his back is forced flush against the cold porcelain.
“Please?” Viktor asks, which has Jayce flickering back to himself, relaxing for a split second. “Whatever you’d like,” he adds, hoping to make the deal more appealing, though negotiation was never Viktor’s job.
Jayce tilts his head, carefully exposing the tender skin on the underside of his chin. Viktor takes the invitation. Cautiously, of course, he moves slowly and intentionally towards the leg until Jayce gently jabs him with the heel of his foot. Ever impatient, even now. Viktor smiles at the spark, however fleeting it may be.
Lifting the trembling leg into his lap, his hands hover over the infection. He looks at Jayce for a little guidance, but Jayce now has his face hidden in his hands, his neck tipping over the lip of the tub wall.
He starts with alcohol. There’s a few rags in the little wicker basket, and Viktor takes one and douses it, before gently draping it over the wound. Jayce flinches. Viktor knows this isn’t the most painless way to clean, but, God, does it work. And Jayce appreciates his pragmatism. At least, he did.
Carefully, Viktor presses down on the layers and layers of necrotic skin, flaking and rotting and eating at everything around it. The skin that’s left is so thin that Viktor is sure he could see the muscles moving underneath it like a shadow box.
He needs a surgeon, Viktor decides. A real, qualified, medical professional. Not someone who’s been in and out of hospitals. Someone brave enough to carve out the putrid flesh like the innards of a gourd. Hell, someone brave enough to take everything below the knee.
Viktor takes the glass bottle with a white cream in it, labelled ‘numbing’ in scratchy writing. Jayce has attempted to apply some himself, it seems, but couldn’t finish. He pins Jayce’s leg to his lap, which has him whining and shivering. The most he’s spoken in days. The fastest he’s moved in weeks. Viktor’s theory is promptly confirmed; the muscles are visible as shadowy blocks through the paper thin dermis and fascia weakly shielding them.
“I know,” Viktor huffs, throat burning. “I know, Jayce, I’m sorry.”
He places the cream gently on the healthiest skin closest to the infection site, not wanting to put it on the actual open wound, and Jayce’s muscles seize up like a vice. The base of his skull knocks against the lip of the tub, his other leg kicks out and twitches, and he lets out the loudest noise he’s made since arriving here; a low, wispy, watery growl, hissing sharply through his gritted teeth.
Viktor works as fast as possible, tears silently spilling over his lashes as Jayce spasms underneath him. Eventually, Jayce exhausts himself, the only resistance left being his involuntary twitching and the sounds of him sniffling. Once Viktor wraps the leg, he winds up cradling Jayce’s head. Hugging his head against his chest, shielding him from the world with his curtain of dark hair.
“I’m sorry,” Viktor whispers into the waves at the crest of Jayce’s head. He runs his fingers through the thick locks, doing his best to keep any tears from falling onto him.
He’s been through enough, Viktor reminds himself. I won’t help by crying salt into his eyes. Plus, it’s been a long time since Jayce let Viktor hold him, and he’s not going to ruin it; he’s already ruined everything else. He pushes his hair back and kisses the top of Jayce’s forehead, right where his hairline starts. Then three more kisses, one for each of his scars shaped like Viktor’s fingerprints.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he thinks he means it more than anything he’s ever said, even though he’s said it so much by now it must mean nothing at all to Jayce. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”