Chapter Text
That man, the one whose eyes shone like sunlight on water,
Those glorious eyes.
The warmth that radiated from them almost tangible,
his voice warmer,
They reminded him of a love letter, those eyes, yellowed and old,
His lungs working at the bellows to provide a voice of similar essence,
Similar soliloquies falling from his lips as that wrinkled paper,
He had imagined it once, what Jayce might write in that letter.
He looked at him.
The man he loved.
Soft amber eyes looking back at him.
He couldn’t do this to him.
Not Jayce.
He had been willing to sacrifice everyone he knew but he couldn’t do this to Jayce,
Not now.
Not after what he had done.
The monster he had become.
But it would’ve been glorious.
Wouldn’t it?
To merge into the astral plane with his partner
The one he wished he could’ve called His lover
in the name of piltover, of zaun,
Of The arcane.
To spare all those he could have sacrificed.
It would have been beautiful.
But that thing.
That thing he was.
That inhuman monstrosity.
It haunted his mind.
If he spared anyone,
Had to sacrifice the rest,
If he had to choose?
It had to be Jayce.
So he pushed him away,
The fear in Jayce’s eyes was something he would never forget.
It would haunt his mind for the rest of his life.
He was thrown from the astral plane in time to see the body of what had been Viktor collapse.
To see himself collapse.
He was thrown from place to place, it was almost soothing if it hadn’t been terrifying.
To watch worlds collapse around him.
Where he had woken up, praised and insane,
Where viktor had died in that first explosion
So many places, so many timelines-
It was blurring together
It was too much too fast,
The spiraling was horrible
Making the blood pound in his ears to some merciless beat
He closed his eyes and felt his cheek cold against the ground.
The familiar feeling of earth beneath him a solitary comfort.
He opened his eyes to the tap of heels.
He felt out of place,
Like he wasn’t supposed to have survived-
He glanced over
And him-
He was not supposed to be alive.
He thought,
as he looked at that man, as he had seen him years ago.
“Viktor-“
He was unconscious- what was this-
What was happening here.
They were not supposed to be here- not in this timeline-.
He could feel it in his bones.
A thumping of funeral drums that would never come to pass.
“Jayce!?”
Shit.
He sat up-
His head throbbed.
His vision blurred.
“Mel- I-“
She caught him as he fell again.
The irony was palpable, she had held him like this before, under much different circumstances.
She was saying something to him, but his hearing was buffering in and out.
When He woke up again he was somewhere he hadn’t been in a long time.
Mel was leaning over him with a cloth.
She took a flying step backwards as soon as he opened his eyes, as if she had been caught in something ungodly and secretive.
Some unforgivable act, being caught in her mercy.
“I would’ve gotten healers but-“
She glanced over her shoulder to where he could assume viktor lay.
His life partner.
“Jayce you would be put to death.”
He felt unreal,
Like a figment of someones imagination-
A whispered melody
A wisp of smoke-
He was alive!
Viktor was alive!
By gods he felt like rejoicing!
But Mel was speaking to him as if he was already dead.
He could hear those drumbeats now.
Coming ever closer
He looked at his partner one last time.
“We have to get you out of here”
That was the last thing before he was out again.
Like a flickering, fading, little light.
He was back in that place.
The astral plane, as viktor had called it.
But it was wrong.
It was all wrong.
He looked at his hands,
And oh how he regretted that glance
They looked like some cursed thing.
Warped and twisted by the arcane like nothing he had ever seen
He let out a startled cry into the still night air, and watched dust land softly on his skin like snow.
He was alive.
He was okay.
And he wasn’t there.
What he could say for viktor however.
He had no clue.
He hadn’t woken up in three days.
He could hear the melancholic sound of the funeral drums.
Maybe they weren’t for him,
Maybe they were for his partner
Thump
Thump.
Thumping away.
Like a rhythmic tapping of fingers never ceasing
Waiting
Drumming away on a table till they bore holes through the wood and blistered the skin,
He read the note again.
The one Mel had left him when she abandoned them to this place.
They were in a small town, just outside of Noxus.
She had left them three months wages and this old place,
This horrible creaking crying place.
The wall paper peeled at every corner as if the very walls were wallowing in their despair.
Even the plumbing wailed.
It seemed to seep into their lives the longer they spent here.
Maybe it was the house.
Or maybe it was the ever thumping drums marching towards his partner-
But he loathed this place with every fiber of his being.
He almost wished they had dissolved into the astral plane,
anything would be better from this
This hiding from a city that so cruelly sang his praises.
It was torment,
to have consciousness enough left to witness how he was so lovingly hated by everyone he used to know,
to be dragged through the mud and then forced to rebuild.
But he had no other choice.
So here he was,
Nose to the grindstone,
If he had to rebuild
He.
was.
Going to.
Make.
It.
Beautiful.