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After the trial, the world Jayce around had phased into a blur. His guilty conviction had damned him to Stillwater: a place of smugglers, traffickers, and murderers, though he supposed he’s that last one now… The days that had followed the trial were more or less the surrendering of anything else in his dorm and study, followed by the sickening commute to prison. He wasn’t sure about much; disoriented and withdrawn, he simply followed when led and sat when told- like a dog on its way to the shelter’s ‘back room.’
He doesn’t have the comfort of a hug or hand to hold, or even a blanket to clutch, for he heard the guards whisper of the risk he posed to himself. They were right: the thought of ending it all rolled around his head aggressively. Jayce felt more naked than a newborn baby, more sick than a plagued man, and more tired than an overworked farm ox.
His mind felt like festering pus swishing around in his skull, so he did the only thing that felt right: he rocked. He rocked himself back and forth until the bones in his seat ached, and then he rocked left to right until his hips cramped at the motion, only to rock back and forth again. His face felt hot from crying, but his skin was prickly and cold from the concrete floor stealing his body heat. He rocked and swayed until his back hurt, only to curl in and allow himself to cry once more. The only notion he had of time was the faraway drawl of shouting and fighting in the common area, somewhere he wasn’t permitted until a “risk assessment.”
Sometimes he’d quietly argue with himself about what went wrong that day. These self disputes would grow louder and louder until a guard would come by yelling, ‘Hey! Hey! Knock it off. Damnit!’ And ever the people-pleaser, Jayce would fall quiet and resume his self-soothing rocking…
Nights, days, hours, minutes, it all meant nothing anymore to his once razor-sharp intellect. Food trays came and went, scornful eyes of passing guards looking down at him as he rocked and cried day after day. On the rare occasion, a physician of sorts would stand from afar with his clipboard and glasses on the end of his nose. He would just shake his head, write and walk on. These encounters were the only thing Jayce took note of, he tallied in the grime each time. Eight…eight times he’s failed reassessment and failed to be allowed back with people- even if they were terrible criminals.
His mama always called him a loverboy. Once a boy who would accidentally over-water plants, a boy who loved to sit with the old ladies who fed birds in the park, a boy who would try to help waitresses pick up dirty dishes at restaurants… a boy who dreamed of helping the world. And look where it got him, in his own personal hell— alone.
Despite his incapacity to track time served, his sentence marched on and on. Eight tallies turned into twenty-three, grief to frustration, meekness to callousness. His hair grew into a thick shag that curtained his eyes when he curled in on himself. At some point in the colder months, he was granted a sheet to go along with his meager cot. He would wrap it as tightly as he could around his shoulders, trying to remember what the last hug from his mama felt like and then… he’d rock again. One day, when the telltale sign of meals being served off in the distance, his ‘doctor’ came by as usual, he wrote briefly on his clipboard and pushed his glasses up. Then, as if the very atoms in his body were talking to him, Jayce felt called to slowly stand up and shed his protective blanket, feeling akin to a deer in headlights.
“Do you feel ready to join the rest?” He had short gray hair and a lisp. Jayce softly looked him over, assuring himself he was indeed the one being addressed.
“Y...Yes...” came hoarsely from his unused voice. The man wrote again briefly before fishing a ring of keys out of his pocket.
“Come along,” the gray haired man said as the door clicked open and a guard who was out of sight stepped in with cuffs.
Jayce readily offered his wrists, but the guard walked around and pulled his hands behind him instead. Jayce looked back at the wretched space. All that showed he existed in here were twenty-three tallies scratched into the corner’s dirt. His heart started to pound loudly in his ears as he was led down the dingy hallway. A tear welled up in his eye. He begged it not to fall. It rolled down his cheek nevertheless. They walked and walked until the sounds of shouting and tray clattering burst through the doors opened for him. He felt the guard unshackling his wrists: “You report to the door on the far wall after breakfast. You’ll get your new cell then.”
Jayce absentmindedly went to rub his bracer that had long been absent, the handcuff reminding him of the sensation. The new noises were akin to a high school cafeteria, along with the mannerisms. Cliques and bullies, gossip and rumors, sneers and laughs. He glossed over the room, taking it in. He had sat in silence for so long, he’d forgotten the feeling of being amongst the buzz. With a deep sigh, he staggered over to the serving line, a ghost of an appetite actually being present. He gingerly decorated his tray with several mushes and scanned the bustling room for an inconspicuous space to sit. He settled at the corner of a table that had several women with many intimidating body modifications. They snickered and eyed him like delectable, fresh meat; Jayce decidedly faced the wall and forced some bland bites of food down.
A buzzer rang shortly thereafter, and he quietly dismissed himself to his intended door. Sure enough, he was given a new jumpsuit, linen, and a cell number that was now nestled in a row with others. He sat eyes closed, silently on an equally lumpy cot and basked in the noise, the noise of arguments, pleas, and racketing, the noise of actual people. When the doors were all shut and locked, Jayce finally had the courage to open his eyes. The noises continued, and the risk of this, everything, being a dream was nonexistent now. The stench of unwashed bodies fogged any thoughts of his. However, like an emaciated dog devouring rotten meat, the grace of being near others was unfathomable.
His new cell was just as empty and dingy as the one in isolation except for the art deco metal bars now in front of him… and how on one of them there was a bent corner. He crawled forward and prodded the metal before keenly working at snapping the piece off. Jayce wasn’t sure what prompted the thought, but he needed this inconspicuous piece of metal. The possibility of scribbling and formulating grabbed his mind with zeal. Eventually, with a *ping*, a roughly 2-inch brass triangle sat in his palm. Jayce stared at it before weighing where to begin. He could start on the slightly obstructed left wall, but what if they do cell checks? No, no, he can’t risk that… so his skin, he supposed, it is.
This research was his life's work, his reason for living; he couldn’t conceive who or what he was if it was all just forgotten. With a steadying breath, he took the brass to his calves and worked up to his quads; the painful bite of metal cutting his tawny skin was disturbingly comforting. It gave him some sort of sick sense of justice in harming himself. His reckless studies got a child from the Undercity killed; he needed to hurt as atonement.
The threading of pink underflesh was stark against his olive skin where he cut. The blood would bead, and he’d wipe it away, letting it dry tacky and brown. He scrawled voraciously everything from his studies he could remember over the course of several days, his only clock being meal times. Careful to pause and hide his dealings when guards passed his cell. He left his arms untouched, fearing repercussions, but when his fervor eventually got ahead of himself, he dug the brass point into his forearm.
* * *
Without a day wasted, he was back in isolation and his triangle confiscated. He had hardly made it a week. The scabs littering his body are fresh and stinging beneath his uniform. The only grace given to him was a shower and a full head and face buzz, though it was more likely intended for a thorough lookover.
He was returned to an isolation cell, but this time the hunger to recount, write, and reflect still burned in his being. He set to picking at concrete for hours until he got a tiny chunk in his hand and immediately started scratching on the walls and floor, both things he had and had not carved into his own flesh. He would write so fast that his knuckles would knick and drag and start to bleed along the walls with the chalk-like script. The mania of seeing math and rune combinations in front of him felt like an incredible drug high.
Come morning, they bounced him to a new cell so he would not be able to fester amongst the contraband scribbles. Then the gears started to turn, a game, a game he could all too easily play along with.
He modeled the best he could for the next two inspections, and once again, he was back among the general prisoners. Upon this arrival, he examined those adorned with tattoos and networked his way to the designated prison artist. The boy, once so sweet his mama would accuse him of giving her cavities, turned his charm into favor and leads. Now this time when Jayce was returned to isolation, a sixth of his body was tatted atop of his raised scars.
He learned to play the game: to carve his research into his skin, face isolation, behave and return to have it tattooed over. By the fifth or so go-around, Jayce looked like a scrapbook of his long-gone journals. The ink raced along his limbs to his second knuckles, they cut off at his ankles and tapered up his neck. The only ink on his face— the rune symbol that was on his bracer— was now eternalized on his left cheekbone. Time marched on and his tattoos healed, gruffness now rooted in his temperament where self-loathing and fear once sat.
‘How dare they? Bastards! They don’t even know!’ would bubble in his mind when he thought too much about his trial. Hands that once signed every page of his notes made fists and swung when cornered. They clawed in fights and pulled on hair, and on occasion, a finger would break and heal slightly lopsided. He slowly grew in the social ranks, a brawler and charmer in his own right. He earned a spot towards the front of the meal line, clean sheets always got delivered to him during shortages and respect followed him wherever he walked. With his new sense of self, he kept his dramatic short shag and allowed his scruff to become a solid beard. Crows' feet and dark eye bags were now a permanent fixture on his once picturesque face.
Jayce does not know the month or day, but on an unassuming morning, a guard approached and opened his cell. “Hands” is all that was commanded.
A furrow crossed Jayce’s brow as he turned around and complied. He hadn’t been taken to isolation or escorted in a long, long time… why is he being cuffed and walked out now? He walked in silence, thinking of the possibilities. When it came to their usual left turn to the isolation cells, they turned right down a long corridor. Eventually, they paused, and the guard unlocked a door for him. It was a relatively skinny room with ugly yellow lighting, a wooden chair to the left, and a chair bolted to the ground on the right.
“Sit,” was ordered, and so he sat with his arms uncomfortably pinned between himself and the back of the chair. “Forward,” barked the guard, and so forward Jayce leaned. He felt his right hand freed, and his left hand now shackled to the armrest. Jayce stared at the cuffs and then the wooden chair, the empty room, and eventually the door when it swung open.
In walked a gaunt man with feathered chestnut hair. Under his right arm was an awkwardly shaped crutch; he had two moles adorning his angular face, and— this is the man who led the confiscation of his lab! Who ridiculed his journals! As the man limped towards the adjacent chair, Jayce looked away with a sneer. Not even a lion comes back to batter around its corpses. What could this bastard possibly want?
“You are Jayce Talis, no?” he asked slowly with that rich accent that felt like mockery. Jayce’s eyes flicked up and down from the corner coldly. “Hm,” the thin man hummed to acknowledge the silence. He lowered himself gingerly onto the wooden chair. “Seven years in here does not seem to have fared you well,” he tried humor while producing a book from a shoulder bag. He put it in his lap, just within Jayce’s peripheral vision. The yellow light glinted off a ‘T’ inlaid in leather. The prisoner finally dignified a glance and there it was… his journal.
“Is that mine?” he whispered.
“Why, yes actually. This,” he pulls the journal back a little, “is why I called upon you.” He did a single pat to the cover. Jayce was told adamantly everything would burn, his eyes darted back and forth, mind racing so hard it made his hearing pound.“...where I need the author's help.” Jayce tuned in all of a sudden unaware his ears were ringing instead of listening.
“That’s mine! I was told it burned!” Jayce shouted, and he went to stand, the tight shackle swayed him to sit back down. The mole-dotted man leaned back ever so slightly and blinked, relatively unfazed by the outburst.
“Yes, and technically yes,” he said monotone, “as I was saying earlier, I’ve been reviewing your research in confidence since your arrest. As far as the council is aware, your research was burned. I was only able to pilfer this journal, a couple of folders, and a leather cuff with an engraved gem— much like the one on your cheek there. But now I am at an impasse and need your assistance.”
Jayce gripped his forehead with his free hand. “How’d you even get clearance? I’m not supposed to talk about my research or magic.” That last half was whispered.
“Eeh, being assistant to the dean of the academy for a decade, you learn a yordle’s signature. And as a bright man once said, it is an ‘independent study.’”
Jayce’s face twitched at the reference. Not much made his skin as hot as talking about that fateful day. “And why would I help the bastard that aided in my arrest?” he hissed. His scowl turned to his journal. There was a rainbow of bookmarks, ribbons, and sticky notes sticking out of the pages.
The thin man’s lithe fingers open to a bookmarked page with fuchsia ribbon and offered it to Jayce, he froze. His gaze narrows at the man’s amber eyes before hesitatingly taking the book in hand. The chestnut haired man waited until Jayce looked down to read before quoting from memory, “The Arcane could bring the future to Piltover. It could unite the cities… help the common people.” That last part was softer. Jayce’s eyes shot up, and he stared for a moment before looking back down and running his tattooed fingers over his old writings cautiously, as if they might combust. He was startled back to reality when the adjacent man started hacking an awful, croupy cough. He watched as he fumbled for a handkerchief and held it tightly to his face as he hacked for another minute or so.
“Lung blight?” Jayce asked in a quiet tone.
“Pardon?” the man said, he was attempting to fold and hide the concerning amount of blood on the square.
“Lung blight,” Jayce reiterated a little louder and nodded towards the soiled cloth. The amber eyes flicked down, and he quickly stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket. He blinked a couple of times and wiped his hand absentmindedly on his leg.
“Most likely, yes. That is also the ruse I am here under. Disease research amongst the prisoners.”
“There’s plenty of ‘em,” Jayce slouched back, book still in hand but eyes trained on the man across from him.
“I do not doubt that, but I am here for you,” He nodded to Jayce for emphasis. “Unfortunately, I fear this disease of mine will take me before I can do any real good in this world. So I’ve negotiated with the warden to meet with you twice weekly for 30 minutes.”
“Why would they allow that? I only know as much as the sick bastards in here,” Jayce sneered.
“Yes, but the warden specifically does not know that.” A corner of his thin pink lips actually quirked up at that. Jayce looked back down at his journal. He carefully flipped through pages, looking at the other man’s addendums and bookmarks. Jayce slowly closed the book and looked up.
“I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Viktor.” A slender hand came up, not to ask for the book back, but to shake. There was a moment's hesitation before Jayce reached out. When their palms connected, it felt like something greater than them took a sigh of relief, the air almost thrumming with how correct this felt... A fated meeting of cogs to awaken a great machine.
