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Jayce rested his head back against Viktor’s chest, exhaling softly.
Viktor pressed his cheek to the top of his partner’s head, his thighs pillowing Jayce’s body close to his, in their astral peace, as their hands intertwined, and stared beyond the horizon of wonder.
Content to gaze at the infinite expanse of the stars. Each glimmer of light, a universe.
They sat together, enjoying the quietude of oblivion, after eons of making love, where astral bodies clashed and collided, died and were reborn, in the endless sublime of creation.
After a restful eternity, Jayce murmured.
“You feel it too.”
He raised his right palm, and Viktor mirrored the motion, where the same symbol had ingrained upon his own astral hand.
The Acceleration rune. That which teleported bodies and souls alike, through time and space.
Viktor took Jayce’s hand closer, and placed a soothing kiss upon the ethereal skin where the rune had been etched.
“I do.”
The moment had come, to leave their rest, and return to all of existence.
To be reborn again and again, live different lives, across different lifetimes.
“Will we remember…all of this?”
Jayce cuddled Viktor from behind, his back pressed against their cushiony sofa.
He smiled at the feel of his partner’s lips on his palm, and chased after Viktor’s touch, cupping his cheek. Viktor laid his own hand upon his, keeping him there.
“Hm…”
The warmth of their fireplace in their small yet cozy home, as their wedding rings gleamed gold from the crackle of the flames.
It was a cold midnight outside. The rest of Piltover and Zaun did not disrupt their quiet together, so they didn’t either.
“Here and then.”
Drowning in an oversized yet fluffy V neck cream sweater over a deep red and long-sleeved turtleneck, Viktor burrowed into Jayce’s warmth, sighing, contemplating the impossible, infinite places where they were together.
“Though I imagine we will only remember everything before here, and not all our lifetimes.”
Jayce never got over being thrilled that Viktor had finally embraced his touches, and reciprocated them back.
That he had finally realized he was worthy of the love Jayce always had for him.
You make me feel loved, that I can love purely, despite everything I’ve done.
“We will not always remember…and we will be bound to repeat the same mistakes.”
“JAYCE!”
Viktor sobbed, cradling his partner’s cold body, crimson staining his hands, and nothing he could do —
Nothing mattered in the chaos of the explosion that destroyed the council room. Nothing.
His partner, the man he loved so much that it overwhelmed him, stared beyond in a lightless gaze.
He didn’t care how much immeasurable pain he was in. He didn’t care that Mel fell to her knees next to them, nor the agonized shouts of Salo in the distance.
Any hope of healing Jayce, no matter the cost, even through the Hexcore if he had to —
Viktor felt his mind shattering, embracing the pull of insanity, as nothing kept him anchored anymore against the world’s ruthless nature —
Death. Imagine a world that no longer need fear it —
My Jayce died, and there was nothing I could do to save him.
“NO! VIKTOR! NOO!!”
Jayce struggled against the hands that held him back, desperation coursing through his body as he tried to break free and run —
His partner in the distance of the bridge, smiled sadly at him, as hundreds of Piltovans and Zaunites rushed at him, a conduit to lash out their grief, their anger, their ignorance —
“VIKTOR!!!”
He despised the sudden tears that clouded his vision, of his last sight of his partner, his screams of anguish as the people they once sought to help reached Viktor —
Viktor, who took the sole blame for the Hexgates, that in an unforeseen consequence of abusing the Arcane, had released a corrupted plague, leading to countless victims of illness and death, so many children gone —
Viktor, whose mangled body was raised up in mock worship, and when Jayce thought they were done, that they exacted their blood price —
The most gruesome sound, of flesh being torn, sawed apart, the sound that would never leave Jayce for as long as he lived —
I thought I wanted us to give magic to the world, but now, all I want…
They held up Viktor’s head in front of his face, raw blood dripping a pool below him, and —
Why does anyone commit acts others deem unspeakable?
“We might face each other again, as enemies.”
Jayce sighed, then fondly kissed the top of Viktor’s head.
“You’re irredeemable, Viktor.”
Giopara’s Mercury Hammer trembled from standing his ground against the sheer force of the Machine Herald’s Hexclaw, their battle at a deadlock. Jayce grit his teeth, blood dripping from his forehead.
“You will never change.”
What he’d seen Viktor do to all those people in his lab —
“An error in your logic, Jayce.”
All the people who were dying from the chemical disaster in the Sump, if Jayce had not destroyed the warehouse, taking the lives he meant to save —
His once colleague’s expression remained devoid of emotions, even under his cracked steel mask.
“All will soon change.”
A recursive, destructive, emotional impulse. Nothing more.
“We would be strangers to each other.”
In this possibility, Viktor chose not to give Jayce a rune.
He gazed upon the unconscious forms of the young child and his mother, the warmer air settling in remnants of snow and light.
He knew this would be his undoing.
Yet the older mage stooped down, and caressed Jayce’s forehead gently, taking out his memory of the past moment with the softest whisper.
The sacrifice of his existence, of his future relationship with his once partner, was all worth it…so Jayce may live, without the painful burden of the Arcane’s future for him.
Jayce will live, and that was all that mattered.
As Viktor felt himself falling apart, fading away in glimmers of light, he gave the young boy asleep in the field of flowers one last hidden smile, and walked away.
“Goodbye, old friend.”
“Would you love me, even then?”
An echo of an old fear. A field of yellow tulips, symbolizing unrequited love. That he loved him, and asserted that Jayce didn’t return his feelings, and never would.
Jayce held Viktor tighter in their embrace.
That was Jayce’s greatest failure to his partner. That he ever let Viktor believe he didn’t love him completely.
“Even when I won’t remember… I always love you.”
Jayce had felt hollow for as long as he could remember.
He hid it behind flamboyance and arrogance, but nothing ever filled the void in his chest…like he was missing something that had been taken from him.
Maybe it started when his father died, leaving him and his mom alone. Maybe it was when they took that trip to the mountains, and they almost died themselves.
Maybe he would feel like this all his life.
It felt like he was just going through life on auto-pilot. Following the Talis family business, getting top grades in the Academy. Having rich snooty friends who encouraged his worst traits, all for future connections.
And yet, as he walked with them to the next class through the Academy’s gardens, Jayce could only tune out their annoying voices, gaze unfocused, just taking one step in front of the other.
There should have been someone there next to his side, not these idiots. But there was no one.
Like there was someone who was meant to be by his side, and they were gone.
“Hey, watch it!”
A collision, an surprised yelp, and the flutter of paper everywhere —
Shoved to the ground, a student with short chestnut hair glared at them all, his cane clattered noisily against him.
Jayce felt his breath stop for a second.
Vaguely, he could read what the other boy’s strewn papers planned. Blueprints and equations, a schematic of an automaton. The title of one blueprint. Blitzcrank Mark I.
His friends bullied the young man with their harassing laughter and crude remarks, taunting him, saying whatever trencher shit he was making wouldn’t win this year’s Distinguished Innovator’s Competition.
The school bell tower rang, and one of his friends swore, as they all rushed ahead, not wanting to be late for Professor Stanwick’s lecture.
Jayce stayed, staring at the brunette who shook his head, picking up his papers and cane irritably. Then, he finally noticed he was there, and —
Piercing golden eyes, an annoyed scowl…and the cutest moles that he wanted to reach out, touch…
“Why are you still here?”
Jayce felt the hollow in his chest twinge, and livened by curious wonder, gave a small smirk back.
“And what if only one of us remembers?”
In this world where magic did not exist, Jayce waltzed with Viktor, smiling as his best friend laughed at their shared joke, hiding his face upon his chest to reign in his mirth.
Sweeping violin melodies floated in the air. A slow wedding dance. Viktor insisted, saying one waltz wouldn’t kill his leg.
He didn’t know why he never realized Viktor had been there this whole time.
He didn’t know why he didn’t realize he was bisexual sooner, and that his mother loved him no matter what. He didn’t know why he was so attached to his best friend and fellow scientist, always taking him for granted, and how many times he left Viktor alone.
Jayce didn’t know why the memories of their past life, of their love, came to him when it was too late…
As he watched Viktor exchange wedding vows with another.
The warmth of Viktor’s hand in his as they danced, his other on the small of the newly wedded man’s back…
Jayce had worn a red tie to the wedding, while Viktor wore white, matching with his now husband.
His husband, a veteran named James.
James looked near exactly like him, except with silvery grey eyes. His mother joked they were long lost twins, but he never found it funny, even before he remembered.
You would find me in someone else, when I’m right here. I’m here, Viktor.
Viktor grinned at him, and those golden eyes shined beautifully under the warm lights of the wedding reception, as everything and everyone else around them blurred, and all Jayce could focus on was the man within his hold.
He didn’t even notice James having stopped talking to one of the guests, concernedly walking up to them…
As they spun in slow circles, and Viktor’s grin faded, hypnotized by his gaze…
And for a few seconds, Jayce saw his Viktor. His Viktor, in his matching red tie, and his lovely face that hadn’t been changed by the Glorious Evolution. The same one he fell in love with, all those innumerable years ago, when they invented Hextech, as a small soft smile graced his lips.
Time slowed as Jayce felt his heart rend in pure adoration and pain, wanting this moment to last forever, as he smiled tenderly back.
The world kept spinning, as Jayce’s hand had gradually moved up to caress the back of his best friend’s head, and so did Viktor’s up to his neck —
“Viktor — ”
He would show his Viktor just how much he loved him, and that no one else mattered.
“I imagine we will find a way.”
In this world where Hextech was never invented, Viktor adjusted his round golden glasses, and walked the steps leading to one of Stillwater’s holding cells, the pattern of his crutch clinking against hard stone interrupted by his stray cough.
The last thing the warden huffed after unlocking the prison cell ahead of him, then walking back to the elevators, after releasing the prisoner under Councilor Heimerdinger’s order, signed in his name by his former assistant…
“All yours.”
Very few held love for the man kept in the stone box deep in the prison. Seven years, yet the people of the united cities of Piltover and Zaun never forgot.
The Zaunite girl’s death sparked a revolution, a change for the better for the two cities as a whole.
Undivided in voice, they held Jayce Talis accountable for his unsanctioned research into magic, for violating the Ethos, and for the accidental murder of a young undercity teenage girl named Vi, who had tried to rob his apartment with her siblings.
The now dean of the Academy remembered him back then, when he was still just an assistant to Heimerdinger. He never forgot the look of horror on the young student’s face as the enforcers took him away, before he could even have a chance to talk to him.
He didn’t know him then, or how much he would mean to him.
Before he could reach the open cell, Viktor staggered slightly, grasping onto the wall as another painful cough wrecked through his lungs.
Even now that his memories of their first life together returned, some things never changed.
His disease was getting worse. What did he have to lose anymore?
In this life, Viktor’s only wish now, was to spend the rest of his finite days with the man he loved, in however many ways.
Even if Jayce didn’t remember him.
Wiping the blood from his lips with his handkerchief, Viktor readjusted his gold glasses once more, and finally reached the prison cell.
The sharp inhale he took would be mistaken by others for fear or caution.
Yet Viktor knew the truth.
Jayce Talis, disgraced inventor and prisoner of seven long years, had his back to him as he scratched equations onto the stone walls, showcasing even in the dim light the expanse of his skin tattooed in dark ink. Among them, his house symbol, never forgotten.
When those beautiful hazel eyes turned to meet his, gaze hardened by animosity and fierce sweat…
“Who the fuck are you?”
Viktor exhaled, and crossed the line.
It hurt Jayce to think about, even now. Yet pain was inevitable, and part of what made loving someone worth every agony.
They waited long enough, and Jayce couldn’t hold them off anymore.
The exchange of prisoners between Piltover and Zaun could no longer be stopped, and the crimson line upon the bridge mocked him as he walked over it, leaving the uppercity for good.
The Zaunite sighed. This was for the best.
I don’t want him to see me like this…because it will only make it more difficult for him to leave.
That was what Viktor’s mother told him while his Piltovan partner remained asleep after his surgery. Sepsis, from taking a gunshot meant for him.
Bringing Viktor, son of one of the great Piltover houses, into their conflict between the two cities. Jayce’s very presence topside a crime for sneaking into the border, all to protect the other man who crashed into his life. And he failed.
He tried his best to push Viktor away, to treat him like he used him. To treat him like the fancy, snooty richly dressed Piltie he was, to blame him for all the hardships Jayce went through living on the streets in Zaun.
But the man he fell in love with was the smartest person he ever knew, and saw through his ways to protect him.
That no longer mattered.
As long as his partner was safe, healing well in that fancy hospital, he would live with that knowledge comforting him in the times he knew would come, of missing Viktor so much his chest would ache.
Then, as one of Zaun’s agents began to cuff his hand along with the others, he heard it.
The screech of one of those new steampunk cars just now making its way to the undercity. Coming to an abrupt halt, not even waiting to turn off the engine, as a figure emerged, harried —
Viktor stared back at him, golden eyes locking onto his, and the agent taking him away —
“No…what are they doing?” his beloved whispered in horror, “Why — ” realizing —
“Jayce!”
Everything slowed down, as Viktor ran to him from across the bridge, uncaring of the strain on his metal prosthetic leg, nor on his still healing wound, he’d only just woken up from the brink of death —
“Don’t run…” Jayce murmured —
“Jayce!” And his heart fucking broke as even from the other side he heard Viktor’s sob of desperation —
“You can’t just leave like that! I can’t let them take you like that!”
Closer, closer, the line from which there was no going back and his shout driven by fear as the agents held him back —
“Stop running!”
“What do I do if you just leave me like that?” Viktor cried, uncaring of the enforcers who reached out to stop him, a few of them drawing their rifles —
Viktor had to live, he had to, he can’t —
“How would I live after you leave like that?!”
The catalyst of love, as Jayce violently pushed away the agents holding him back, and he ran towards him —
Crossing the line once more, shouts from both sides, weapons drawn —
Returning to embrace Viktor, who wrapped his arms around his neck, unwilling to let go, as Jayce held him back tightly, uncaring of the chaos of the world around them.
The end was approaching, the stars told them so.
Yet he had one last question to ask, before they were reborn.
“What would you wish for, Jayce? For our next life.”
“…and since we have lived in happy companionship all our lives, we pray that death may carry us off together at the same instant, so that I may never see my wife’s funeral, and she may never have to bury me.”
Jayce quietly finished, reading aloud his paperback copy of a collection of Ovid’s tales from Greek mythology. He closed it gently, as Viktor unconsciously sought his warmth in their bed, lulled into blessed sleep by his partner’s soothing voice.
“What would you ask for?” His partner murmured back.
Viktor hummed, thinking.
Jayce’s eyes sparkled in wonder as his childhood best friend shyly showed how his toy boat worked.
“You made this…” The other boy looked away, unused to such undivided attention. “Amazing!”
Viktor gulped, pulling the release, and set the boat down upon the water. They watched as it chuffed along the river, before Jayce took his hand that wasn’t holding his walking stick, and the other’s excitement latched on to him as well, as they hastened to reach the toy boat before it fell over the water’s edge.
“I think…”
Viktor squeezed his hand in Jayce’s, heart warming at the thought.
“For our love, and legacy, to always be intertwined, even long after we are gone.”
“Papa!”
Naph ran towards Jayce, laughing as he was followed close behind by Amaranthine chasing him, a bundle of hand picked flowers bunched in her hand. Their shoes were slightly muddy from the morning rain that had disappeared, leaving behind dewy sunlight upon their garden in the spring.
His eldest son at seven clung to his pant leg, hiding from his younger sister, who pouted, making grabby hands for her adopted father to pick her up. Jayce chuckled, used to their antics, and hitched her up in one arm, resting his weight on his knee.
“What did Naph do this time, Ama?”
Naph went to protest, but the younger girl spoke up first. “He tried to throw away the flowers I picked for Mama.”
“One of them had a giant caterpillar, Ama! What if it gets on Vel or Thal?”
“It would not!”
“Alright you two, that’s enough.”
Jayce put a hand on his son’s shoulder, who adopted his partner’s indignant scowl all too well. “I know you were looking out for your new baby siblings, Naph.” He bent down on his knee, Ama hiding her face in the crook of his neck as he looked his eldest in the eye. “But being mean to your sister isn’t looking out for them. She’s your sibling too.”
He could see the pinpricks of tears threatening to form, but he waited.
“M’sorry, Ama.” Naph mumbled, picking at the hem of his shirt. Like he wanted to reach out, but didn’t know how.
Amaranthine rested her cheek on her father’s shoulder, looking back at her brother, before sticking her tongue out. Naph scrunched his nose.
Settled with their small fight, Jayce smiled, and standing up, took Naph’s hand with his free one, then led them back inside the house, up to his bedroom with his husband.
“Jayce?”
From their shared bed, his husband sleepily called for him, and he came, kissing Viktor’s forehead lovingly.
“Morning, V.”
“Mama!”
Amaranthine and Naph ran off to find a good enough vase for Ama’s flowers, but not before kissing their parent’s cheek, promising to come back.
Viktor slightly groaned, a touch groggy still, and Jayce chuckled.
“I made you sweetmilk and pancakes. Cut some fruit on the side too.” Jayce secretly found how Viktor with his ruffled wavy bed head hair looked like a sleepy kitten that didn’t know what year it was, but didn’t voice it aloud when his husband murmured lowly.
“Vel…Thal…”
The first things on Viktor’s mind when they woke up were his babies, and it melted his already adoring heart for his husband.
Making his way to the side of the room, where their seven month old twins, Velkan and Thalessa, slept soundly in their shared cot he made especially for them. The soft twinkle of the baby mobile above, of butterflies and little forest creatures, spun lazily in orbit.
He picked Thal up first, his daughter, who had inherited Viktor’s hair and his eyes. She squirmed before settling down again as he laid in his partner’s arms.
Viktor caressed her little face, smiling sweetly over his daughter’s sleeping form in her light purple onesie. Jayce sidled next to them, Vel in his arms, who had woken up and nearly cried, but he’d anticipated it, and rocked his baby son in the same method that would get him back to sleep. Rubbing soothing circles on his son’s back clothed in his soft grey onesie, Jayce felt Vel’s wispy darker brown hair tickle his nose a touch.
He remembered the day they were born. Naph and Ama put on their best clothes, excited to meet their new baby siblings, and Viktor went insane during childbirth, almost breaking his hand as he screamed.
Viktor would later say he didn’t remember a single moment of it, tired with his main memories being holding his babies for the first time, and Jayce crying in happiness to the side, kissing his temple while he held one of them, thanking Viktor for their existence.
“Do you want to go outside today?”
“Mmmh…”
Viktor closed his eyes, as they both heard Naph and Amaranthine back in the garden, laughing about something they were playing at. Today was a rest day meant for all of them, and to sleep in was a blessing always. Jayce smiled, knowing they’d reheat the pancakes for lunch, that would go surprisingly well with the pasta he would cook later.
“No…No, I don’t think so.”
Then, snuggling with Thal, who yawned cutely next to him, Jayce joined his husband in bed, their twins resting in between them, as Viktor pulled his red blue blanket over them all.
Jayce felt his breath taken away, as possible as one could within the astral realm between all existence, at the sheer immense yearning and love he had for Viktor in every lifetime.
“I…I would like that.”
For his soulmate, up to the very end.
Their decayed skeletons, nature growing around them. Resting close together, in a loving embrace even in death, found underneath the field overlooking the mountains.
Viktor laid down next to him, in the same embrace, as they stared at each other, one last time, before they left the peace of the stars.
“As long as we’re together.”
How excited he felt, to live in all these universes, and to find each other in every life. How grateful he was, to be part of the journey, with the only one he ever truly loved.
Their astral forms began to float, as they held each other close, and the stars gleamed in blissful oblivion.
As they closed their eyes, and dreamed of their love in every universe.
Two pale butterflies with buttery yellow dots on their wings, rested on the same wildflower, before flying away, together.