dead to the power of two | OPEN

[runeing]

Who: celen's boys (aka charles and viktor), you?
Where: viktor's lab, lupin, the farm
What: viktor finally loses the battle against his illness and comes back. meanwhile, charles is learning magic (badly).
Warnings: death and dying, mentions of child abuse



PROMPTS IN COMMENTS.

▷ charles.
▷ viktor.

Comments

[runeing]

[ viktor wakes.

viktor wakes, and doesn't know — anything, really. not the time of day, the date, or where he has been. there is a blanket over him, but that could simply be... a coincidence? has his body really been here the whole time, or has he disappeared, only to reappear here once the simulation finished rebooting his body?

as he rises, there are signs in the lab that jayce has been there — he is as certain it is jayce and no one else as he is of the heart beating in his chest. but jayce is also, notably, no longer there; which is a good thing, he thinks, because it means he's... doing alright? enough to be elsewhere?

yes, that's good. and so he leaves; because, indeed, there is someone who he knows is worried sick about him, who he promised to go to the moment he'd wake. the only person he knows with certainty had known of his death; after all, if his body simply disappeared... then everyone else might simply think he'd gone back home, like vi and caitlyn had.

he almost hopes that's what's happened.

still; it is the next morning that he returns, the door clicking shut softly behind him, and as quiet as he is, the sound of his crutch against the floor is impossible to mask. but there's a light on, and so he calls out, hesitantly, ]

Jayce...?

[scientits]

[ they've - well, he's - been here once before. an empty lab haunted by the ghosts of what could have been, frenzied scribblings on a chalkboard, the silence suddenly broken by the single utterance of his name. the uncertain lilt in viktor's voice as he calls out is so startlingly familiar that in the heartbeat before jayce turns around, he nearly expects to see metal, magic, his madness manifested--

it's not, of course. flesh and blood and mundanity - or as mundane as viktor could ever be to his eyes, which is to say not at all - and the relief that floods his system literally staggers him as he steps forward. it's almost, almost, enough to drown out the sharp bite of anger that accompanies it, that this whole ordeal must be necessary at all, that a force so powerful as to reset the biological clock post-mortem somehow still isn't enough to prevent it from happening to begin with.

no. deep breaths. this place, strange and unnatural though it may be, has at the very least given them the gift of time - a resource they had so precious little of back home. time to learn, to experiment, to chart the steady course of progress and stop this from ever happening again.

( he has never wanted to learn grief, nor the acceptance of the inevitable. what is the point of genius, of magic, if not to devise a solution to the greatest problem of them all? what is there to accept when instead he could fix? ) ]

Viktor! You're back!

[ variables change. people, less so. for all the differences between now and then, jayce's reaction remains exactly the same - he stumbles forward and reaches out, drawing viktor in for a tight hug. ]

[runeing]

[ variables change. and in this situation, many are changed from those moments viktor has yet to experience — he isn't changed in irrevocable ways, isn't an amalgamation of metal and magic and flesh made into something other... there are no hextech weapon blueprints on the table, there is nothing except jayce, whose frantic notes viktor had witnessed earlier when waking.

and so, his own reaction is certainly different from what jayce will remember; there is the moment of hesitation, yes, but none of that cold detachment to be found in the way viktor lifts his hand and clutches jayce back, tips his head forward to rest against his shoulder. ]

I'm sorry, [ he says, when he finds his voice again from the overwhelming relief that jayce is here, that, based on his notes he'd seen, he doesn't have to fight this battle against what this place can do alone. ]

I never wanted... to cause you pain. Or worry. And I fear I've done both.

[ because if it had been jayce who had found him, as he suspects it to be... yes, he's certainly done both. ]