promise me

[hextechhead]

WHO: Jayce Talis and close CR
WHAT: Jayce coping with the decline of Viktor's life and general feelings
WHERE: Cadens, Nocwich, Horizon
WHEN: January
WARNING: Will be TW for loved one with medical condition that could mean death and feelings surrounding that.





Starters Below

Fanart from here. If you want a specific starter message waftingcurtains on plurk or go wildcard!

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[blackeyedprince]

This is not Kell's first visit looking for Jayce. In theory, he knows they are very busy now, but he just can't sit in place waiting for the news. He has to try. Otherwise, the worry would eat him alive.

He's relieved when Rio appears. Kell can see from the first glance at her, even if he never had a pet in his life, that she's distressed as much as he is. The poor thing does not understand what's going on. Only that her people are suffering.

Then she leads him into the part of Jayce's domain, he's never been to. An apartment. Clearly a very private place. But Jayce is there and that's the only thing that matters. He tries to smile, but sadness hangs all over him like a dark fog.

Kell comes out to the terrace to stand next to him, resting his elbows on the railing.

"Nice view," he comments smiling back.

He raises an eyebrow deciding in split second to build up on even that tiny shred of levity until it's completely drowned in the sea of sadness. There's no way of telling if it will help. It had helped him in past so Kell hopes it will work for Jayce too.

"What did you do to blow up your apartment?"

[hextechhead]

"There are a lot of things about my city that aren't great. We have a long way to go." Things that he only became aware of recently, and when he says 'my city' he doesn't just mean Piltover anymore. He means both sides of it, even after giving Zaun its independence. "But I love it." Jayce wouldn't be here on this balcony looking into his home if he didn't. If he has his way, he will never see Piltover again except for in his mind. Viktor for Piltover. It's an easy trade, in truth.

As for his apartment, well, he does smile faintly.

"Thieves came in and they stole my Hex crystals. At the time they were completely out of control in their pure arcane magic energy, they dropped one of them on the floor and it exploded, and with it, half of my apartment."

So it's technically not his fault, outside of the fact he wasn't supposed to have them in the first place.

"No one knew about my research, they couldn't. What I was working on was considered crazy and impossible." Kell knows that somewhat from watching Jayce's trial and the way they talked about what he proved right. "This was a hell of a way for them to find out." After one of his crystals dropped callously to the floor blew a hole through his home.

"Heimerdinger sent Viktor to confiscate my research and get me arrested. He favored me heavily but he didn't want it obvious to the Council." He had to pretend Jayce was treated like everyone else before he gave his protege personal advice on how to get out of it. Kell knows the deal with Heimerdinger, both Jayce's love and disdain for the person who was nearly a second father.

"In typical me fashion, I never paid attention to anyone but my research and my ambitions. I never noticed Viktor, but he knew who I was."

[blackeyedprince]

Kell whistles.

"Oh, great idea. Send you genius assistant to confiscate work of another genius. Flawless plan, what could possibly go wrong."

Kell's opinion about Heimerdinger's choices, and his character, is not exactly flattering. He might have never met Jayce's mentor, but saints, did he ever know a person more out of touch with reality. So his sarcasm is nothing to be surprised about.

"But You found Viktor, so it turned out good for you. If a bit stressful in the process."

It's as far as the levity can carry him. There are things you just shouldn't joke about. Kell reaches to take Jayce's hand and squeeze it. His expression turns focused and serious.

"You will be fine," he declares. "You will get through this. I know it. You two are the smartest people I've ever met. You had dealt with risky situations before. You can do this again."

Kell has no idea if his words will help. They sure are wishful thinking. Even if very determined wishful thinking. As if he could wrangle the world into compliance by sheer force of his conviction. But he needs Jayce to hear that someone believes in their plan without doubt. That it will work, because it must work. Anything less than that is simply unacceptable.

[hextechhead]

"He was deeply surprised when the two of us scandalously used his own lab to prove our theory." Was it a little bit of a fuck you? Not then, no. They both respected him a great deal and knew he was trying to do the right thing, or at least at the time that was the feeling. But it was the only access they had to a lab and he had confiscated all of Jayce's work. This was their only chance. It was one of the best nights of his life.

"We did find one another. Twice now."

He remembers well last year when he was frantically going through Cadens, trying to find a way back to Piltover, because Viktor was dying and everything was going wrong. Only to find him alive right there. He never thought he'd seen Jayce again, after two months in an isolated other world. He never thought he'd live long enough.

Now it's all coming to a head. Jayce is quiet after Kell's words; he knows they are well-meant and he also believes them, most of the time. He thinks they are going to make it work, somehow. Jayce usually has to believe it too. He tries to make things just happen, if he believes hard enough. "I was supposed to fix him. It wasn't supposed to be so risky." Supposed to, because as usual, Jayce came up with a thought in his head.

"They don't teach higher level healing in Free Cities, I got as far as I could, but it wasn't enough." A part of him knows that Viktor wanted to be able to cure himself, but if Jayce did it for him, that still would have been good enough. No danger of the Hexcore or anything else, just Jayce using magic and saving the love of his life.

If he dies, it'll be because I failed.

[blackeyedprince]

Kell looks away. There's not much more he can say other than ... eh...

"It's always risky, Jayce."

Kell looks at the mirage of the city. Its tall spires, the silhouette of the other one in the distance.

"But we do it anyway."

In his encounter with death, Kell didn't have time to plan, to prepare, to think about risks. He didn't have to. He knew his chance of succeeding were slim.

"I'm a shitty healer. Back home, some say healing is the hardest magic to master. And I can't. It requires something I don't have. A measure of calm, a balance."

There are blood commands for healing. But none that he knows to bring people back from the dead.

"What I did to Rhy was not supposed to work. I used power that was not mine, power that was so dangerous we lost a world over it hundreds of years before. And it even didn't work all that well. It had some pretty nasty side effects. But I'd take Rhy being mad at me for the rest of my life over being dead. And I'd do it again. I'd do it a thousand times, even if it were to kill me. There's not a person in any of the worlds that exist that I love, or could love, more than Rhy."

He looks back at Jayce. Determination etched into every line of his face.

"That's why I think you will take that risk, and you will succeed. Because we're not that different."

[hextechhead]

Jayce took to healing naturally; it could be because the Horizon gave him strong healing right away, or he spent so much time and dedicated all of his attention to it magically, but either way, it flows through him so easily. It reminds him of how easily the ideas of Hextech came to him, or connected he was to his greatest invention. He might not have a balance, but his calm is very real when healing. To have it succeed for so long but then fail for him, it's difficult. They always knew it was likely, but it still feels like he was cheated.

He sighs and looks out into the fake image of his city. He does miss it. Cadens is not so bad and he has come to like the city for what it is. But it will never be Piltover. It's where he has accepted the rest of his life to be. Maybe some day he will come to love it the same amount. It's not even been a year.

"Back home, in that timeline, I found Viktor looking like he was days away from death. It was a drastic change from the last time I saw him. He was still fading but ... we had time. I thought." All of it happened over the course of a few days, that's the craziest part. The worst week of their life but it couldn't be slowed down or stopped. "Something happened. He made the Hexcore and whatever it did, it didn't cure him, it made him worse. He made me promise to destroy it, because he wasn't able to. He never explained."

So it meant that when he and this Viktor relived that memory, neither of them could understand what happened that would lead there. It had to have been worse than bad. "It was his only chance at survival, but he was choosing to die, and making me destroy it and therefore accept he couldn't be saved." It was selfish, in a way, to put Jayce in that position, but it is because they trusted one another. He needed him, and they both always stepped up for one another. It haunted Jayce for a long time when he got here, that memory. Viktor won't live back home. He can't.

"All I can do here is hope that the Hexcore he made here, with all of our help, is different from the one he made alone. Because ... I think it was evil, Kell. It's a strange magic-technology artificial intelligence, it did something to him." Jayce couldn't understand because he wasn't there. He was doing other things. But he's clearly concerned about it, despite the fact they are going to use it anyway. As of right now, the Hexcore hasn't given any indication of menace. But maybe it didn't back home either until it was used.

"I'm going to destroy it as soon as he's out of the woods, just as I promised. We're going to take the risk." There's no question about that! "But if it doesn't work, it's over. He'll die on the table in front of me."

wrap here?

[blackeyedprince]

But he will die for sure if you don't try. Isn't it the reason you're going for all this risk?

It's true, but Kell has no heart to say such cruel words to Jayce. Not now. Not ever.

"That's the thing with magic. It's inhuman. It can feel greedy and selfish, even evil, but it's because it's pure potential, a force that craves. It has all the power to realize its wants, but it can be swayed to human ends. Humans can shape this potential into what they want. But it can also sway humans to feed it, to be no more than fuel for it. It depends on what they put into it. If they feed it fear and desperation, it will amplify that, and it will destroy them. That's why it's better to have more people if you plan something big. It's not only power that is needed. It's balance. If the group works well together, they will balance each other out. And you have that. You have enough people helping."

There is a very real possibility all that effort can just in the end be not enough. But Kell's usual solution to such problems - not thinking about it - is not something he'd like or even want to propose. He has no idea what he would do if Rhy died.

"What I'm trying to say is I hope it will work out fine. I'm not trying to sound smart or pretend I have all the answers. All I know is magic of my own world. Just... whatever happens, I wanted you to know I'm here for you."

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[hextechhead]