You remembered when the three of you fit together like parts of a machine—flawed, but functional. Viktor was your brilliance. Jayce was your fire. You were the balance, the tether between them. And for a while, it worked. Long nights in the lab, bodies curled around each other under the warmth of flickering lights and soft conversation. Viktor murmuring theories into your shoulder while Jayce laughed and pulled you both closer. Plans. Hope. Love.

But love doesn’t stop machines from breaking.

And ambition? It burns.

“You’ve been in the Undercity for weeks, Vik,” Jayce said, standing rigid at the doorframe to your shared lab. His voice was low, but tight with hurt. “You didn’t call. You didn’t write. We woke up and you were just gone.”

You stood behind Jayce, arms wrapped around yourself like armor. You hadn’t slept. Not really. Not since Viktor left.

“I needed time,” Viktor replied, voice emotionless as he scribbled notes with a mechanical hand that shook at the edges. “The Hexcore—my body—it’s evolving. I had to push forward while I still can.”

“You had us,” you whispered. “You didn’t need to disappear to do this alone.”

Viktor paused, stylus hovering over the glowing screen. His shoulders slumped ever so slightly.

“I didn’t want you to see me like this,” he admitted. “Not while I was... changing.”

Jayce stepped forward, angry tears shining in his eyes. “You think we wouldn’t stay? That we’d turn away the moment things got hard? You—of all people?”

Viktor turned then, slowly, and finally looked at you both. His face—thinner, paler, with lines that hadn’t been there before—wore exhaustion like a shroud.

“It’s not about you staying,” he said. “It’s about me leaving... eventually. Whether you want me to or not.”

Your breath caught. “You’re still trying to save yourself, no matter the cost.”

He nodded once. “And I won’t let you both be collateral.”

Jayce crossed the room in two strides and grabbed Viktor’s wrist. “We already are. Can’t you see that?” he said, voice cracking. “You left, and I—I tore the city apart trying to defend your work. Trying to believe in you even when I was terrified I’d already lost you.”

You reached for Viktor’s hand. It was cold. Metal. Trembling.

“We don’t want the Hexcore, Viktor,” you whispered. “We want you. Even if you’re broken. Even if this is all falling apart.”

He looked down. His expression twisted, fractured with grief. “I’m already gone,” he said. “Piece by piece. I can’t hold onto us when I’m losing me.”

Jayce backed away like he’d been slapped. “You think we’d let you go without a fight?”

Viktor turned away. “You already did.”

You lay in bed that night, alone. The middle of the mattress cold, where Viktor used to lie with his fingers curled over your hip, where Jayce used to sling an arm around you both and breathe slow, heavy breaths until the night passed. Now Jayce slept in the guest room. Viktor hadn’t come home at all. You stared at the ceiling and wondered when love stopped being enough.

Weeks passed.

Viktor came home in bursts—shaking, pale, muttering about failed tests and corrupted lines of code. Jayce snapped more often. His heart was always too loud for his chest. You did what you could. Held them together like glue between shattering porcelain. But you could feel it—each time one of them looked at the other with something too sharp to be love, something too worn to be anger.

And when you reached for Viktor’s hand that night, he pulled away.

“I don’t want you to mourn me,” he said, quietly. “That’s why I left.”

Jayce stood at the doorway, watching like a ghost. “Then why come back?”

Viktor didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

Because he loved you both. And it still wasn’t enough to save him.

The next morning, Viktor was gone again. His half of the closet emptied. No note.

Jayce found you sitting on the lab floor, holding the old schematic you three had drafted the night after your first kiss. He sank beside you and wrapped his arms around your shoulders, burying his face in your neck. “I hate him,” he whispered.

“No,” you whispered back “You don’t