Archive of Our Own

In one moment, the world was cold. Quiet. Stagnant. Open. Lonely and waiting and wanting.

In the next, it wasn’t quiet anymore. There was life there, human, besides Viktor’s own.

Viktor turned. His gaze flickered over the sky, fingers sliding over the smooth expanse of Jayce’s curled back to ground himself as he reached out in his mind towards that life. The presence was so far off, down in the depths of the hell born under Viktor’s own hands, the swirling winds trying to obfuscate it.

There were always flukes, as was nature, and Viktor wondered, briefly, if this was one of them. The presence was unfamiliar. It had an energy to it that almost made Viktor want to pull back from it. 

Yet it was familiar, all the same. Even through the howling winds and sand, the warmth could not be mistaken; the light within it still shined brightly, like a lighthouse in the dark of night. As much as Viktor wanted to pull back, he wanted to lean in, too, and bury himself in that warmth so that the waiting and wanting and loneliness could finally be closed off.

For once, Viktor didn’t know. So much time spent working through every timeline, every possibility, clawing through them with the desperation of an animal, scared and cornered, fighting for its life — but, what, had he missed something?

Even with all his power and all the time in the world, Viktor was still only human. Maybe he did miss something. An offshoot, lonely in its own right, quiet and open and waiting and wanting—

“Jayce?” Viktor whispered into the air.

And, in Viktor’s mind, he heard a reply, instantaneous and desperate: Viktor.

The air seized in Viktor’s lungs. He brought both hands to his staff, clutching it just as desperately as the voice that’d rung out in his mind, to keep himself steady. The warmth roiled through him, and, no, it wasn’t just warm, it was hot. It was burning.

Viktor, the voice called again. Viktor, where— Wait for me, just— I’ll find you—

Viktor’s legs shook, suddenly too weak to hold himself up any longer. The heat was too much. The voice, the energy, all of it, too much, and Viktor sank to the ground, rasping out without thought, “Up, Jayce. Come.”

Up? But, I can’t see— Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Okay. Okay, I’ll try. No, I’m coming . I promise, I’m coming, I’ll find you—

For once, Viktor had no doubts about that. Where many Jayces had failed, this one, Viktor knew with a sudden certainty, would not.

So, if only to keep his wits about himself, Viktor closed himself off from that burning-hot-warmth. There was a desperate attempt from this Jayce to stop him, a cry in his mind of, Viktor, wait, don’t shut me out, but he had to. He had to. Something about this Jayce was going to burn him alive, and then where would they be?

As soon as the connection between them broke, and the world was cold and quiet and stagnant and open and lonely and waiting and wanting again, it was as if that Jayce didn’t even exist. As if Viktor was truly alone again, with only his memories to haunt him and timelines for him to haunt in turn. 

He stopped shaking. In just a few minutes, his muscles felt stronger. He set his staff down by his feet, and placed both hands on Jayce’s back, smooth and curved and stalwart, and he breathed.

Maybe it was better this way. 

- - -

Ten days passed before Viktor felt a stirring in his mind again. Foreign, warm, desperate. Jayce.

Again, Viktor pulled back. He barred the doors, and no matter how hard Jayce tried to get him to open them, Viktor resisted.

It’d been too much. Was too much.

All this time alone, his only moments of contact with other lives were fleeting and quite literally life or death, whether it was to save a Jayce that had a chance or to return a Jayce who’d failed to the barren, just-as-lifeless earth of this timeline. Jayce haunted him with the voracity of an ever-looming monster, but at least it was quiet. At least it was fleeting. At least Viktor had no hope.

He did not like the stirrings of hope he felt with this Jayce. He did not like it at all.

It was better this way. Viktor kept him out.

- - -

Another ten days passed, and that turned into twenty, thirty, forty, fifty—

By the hundredth day, that hope Viktor had buried six feet deep was now sat upon by dread. A hundred and eleven days total, Jayce had been there. And for a hundred days, he’d been silent, and Viktor had not reached out.

Perhaps he’d doomed this Jayce, in his desperation to hide away from the light and warmth. Perhaps, if he finally reached out, all he would find were the last embers of a campfire, about to be swallowed up by the howling winds of the earth below.

Viktor did not want to reach out and find out.

But he did anyway.

As soon as he opened the doors in his mind, light shined through. Warmth followed, like the sun. Somewhere down there in the harrowing wastes, Jayce still lived on.

If Viktor spoke and drew Jayce’s attention, he knew that the warmth would likely burn away at him again. Carefully, Viktor brought himself down to the ground, leaning aside to rest his body against Jayce’s smooth one.

Then, quietly, he spoke his name: “Jayce.”

He was right. All at once, the warmth grew hotter. Viktor? And hotter still. Viktor, I— I’m sorry. I thought you wanted me to leave you alone. And, I got distracted—

Viktor breathed through the burning. It felt like it was out of Jayce’s control, whatever it was. “Distracted by — what?” he managed to ask.

Everything.

The burning started to cool. Viktor could breathe a bit easier, and he could feel sadness radiating through their connection in turn. Jayce’s emotions were controlling the heat, not Jayce himself. Almost as if—

This is… I think this is what my world would have been like. If he— if he didn’t—

Silence followed for a few beats, and the connection wavered during it. But Viktor did not speak, did not dare interrupt Jayce.

…I’m sorry. I just think I ended up here for a reason. The people, their bodies, they’re so cold? I’ve been trying to warm them up. And it’s so dark, I— I don’t know what happened here. What happened here?

“What do you intend to do here?” Viktor asked instead of answering. Trepidation laid heavy in his voice; he had no energy to hide it, not when communicating like this, so intrinsically linked. Jayce would know whether his voice echoed the feeling deep in his core or not. “Do you intend to fix what cannot be fixed, Jayce Talis?”

I— I, um.

Viktor sighed heavily through his nose, the air shaking with his shoulders. “This world cannot be fixed. Cannot. You will waste your breath, your energy, your life. It is broken, Jayce. But you are not yet broken.”

Jayce grew even cooler. He felt like tepid coffee left forgotten on a workbench, intended to be a caring gift but not enough. Frustration, Viktor thought, should’ve been hotter than that.

You aren’t either, Viktor.

But, instead, frustration was cold. And with those words, the connection closed not of Viktor’s doing, but Jayce’s.

It was indeed better this way, even if Viktor had to draw his cloak tightly around his shoulders and curl into himself to shutter himself from the cold that lingered long after Jayce closed himself off.

- - -

Twenty-three days later, Viktor was woken from his dreamless slumber to a stirring.

It was not Jayce, down in the wastes. It was something — someone — new, and it scratched an itch in him that had gone so long without ever being disturbed. 

Every life on this earth that had been claimed by the calamity, frozen in time forevermore, was linked to Viktor in a way he’d refused to ever extrapolate. They simply lingered in the background, cold, thrumming yet quiet, stagnant and open and lonely and waiting and wanting.

But this was more than that. This was warmer, louder, stirring, comforted and together and no longer waiting, no longer wanting. Fulfilled, instead. Wrong.

Wrong.

Viktor hauled himself up with the help of his staff, adrenaline rushing through his stiff muscles. He focused in on the stirring of something he dared not consider what as he drew runes in the air, and those runes brought him to that stirring.

Anger burned in him, hotter than Jayce’s own warmth, and the words came tumbling out of his mouth immediately: “What are you—” And just as fast, the words died out on his tongue. Doing, he was about to demand, but ‘what are you’ was actually the better question.

Because the Jayce Viktor was glaring at was different.  

His eyes were dark brown and wide in shock; as close as they were now, the connection between them was like a mirror, bouncing thoughts and feelings and emotions between the two of them, so Viktor knew he was shocked at his sudden appearance. Those two things were not unusual. It was the ring of golden light around his pupils that was unusual.

Even in the dark carapace of this former building, where the frozen bodies of a family hiding from the incoming calamity were all curled together, Jayce was bright. His hands seemed to match the ring around his pupils; they were golden, bright, warm.

Where Viktor had taken to the comfort of the universe, dark and ever-expansive and life-stealing, this Jayce had taken to the sun, hot and bright and life-giving.

He knew, and yet Viktor asked again, voice falling softer: “What are you?”

Jayce stared back at him, golden eyes flickering over Viktor’s face. He was searching for something. “You— you already know,” he said, even softer than Viktor.

All timelines. All possibilities. Yet Viktor had missed this one. 

“Leave them be,” he snapped, rather than focus on the answer staring him right in the face. “They have been through enough. And, you— you must leave—”

“And go where? Leave how? Viktor, I didn’t choose to come here. My world was— was dying, it was my fault, I couldn’t handle this, all this magic, but my- my Viktor, he— he went into the core, and I don’t know what happened, all I know is it got so bright and hot and I felt like I was dying, but then I—” He clapped his palms together; they flashed brighter from the impact, and he sent one hand sliding forward. That was him, hurtling through the arcane with no control, terrified of burning out. “—and I ended up here. And as soon as I got here, I felt you. I felt everything in this place, and it’s all so cold, and dark, so why else would I be here if it wasn’t to help? I can’t fix my world, it’s gone, I know it is, but, maybe, maybe I’m here for a reason, and maybe my Viktor’s sacrifice won’t be in vain. You just— you have to let me try. ”

“No!” Viktor shouted, slamming the butt of his staff against the ground.

Jayce flinched back, bumping into the frozen figures behind him. His hand came out to steady himself against the tallest one, a mother who’d tried so hard to curl over her children in time, as if that’d save them from the incoming calamity, but it’d caught her mid-motion, and she remained there hovering over her children, back arched and head ducked down, her lips parted in silent, neverending reassurance.

The moment Jayce’s hand touched her back, Viktor felt it again. A stirring. Desperation reaching out for comfort and warmth and light when everything was quiet and cold and dark.

“Take your hand off of her,” Viktor demanded. “What would you do, bring her into this broken world where she would live amongst rubble and dust and ghosts? What life would that be? You would damn her just to sate your own ego? Take your hand off of her, Jayce Talis—” Viktor stormed forward, looming over Jayce. “—and come with me.”

Immediately, Jayce’s hand raised off of the mother. Viktor grabbed it roughly, squeezing it tight so Jayce couldn’t think about darting away, even if it burned against Viktor’s own palm. He drew runes in the air with his staff, and just like that, having been swallowed by the arcane like a black hole, they’d returned to Viktor’s perch over the earth he’d destroyed.

“This…is what you meant by up,” Jayce whispered.

Viktor let go of his hand. There was too much awe radiating off of Jayce for there to be any reason to suspect he may jump right off and plummet to the wastes below. As better as that would have been, Viktor clearly would not be so lucky.

- - -

Seven days later, Viktor was nowhere closer to finding whatever strange offshoot of a timeline this Jayce had come from.

The thread, he knew, was finding one where Viktor had never intervened and Jayce had still been drawn to the arcane despite this, but that was like finding a needle in a very, very large haystack.

Jayce was no help with this. Each time Viktor would gesture up to a scene floating above them and ask if it was familiar, Jayce would stare for a few moments, then shrug his shoulders and reply through their connection, not even verbally: I don’t know.

What was worse was that, through their connection, Viktor also knew that Jayce was lying. He knew, but refused to say anything. It was a stubbornness Viktor knew all too well, albeit not in such a long time.

But for how much Viktor could feel of Jayce through their connection, he hadn’t stopped to consider that Jayce felt the same. Not until, as the sun dipped below the horizon, bathing the world in reds and pinks that signaled storms down in the wastes, and frustration had made its place heavy and undeniable in Viktor’s gut, Jayce said quietly: “I already told you. You can’t find it because it’s gone.”

The timeline he’d been combing through, one where a Jayce had never been helped by Viktor but still managed to make it to Piltover by the graces of a timely merchant finding him, where his father still invented the collapsible pocket wrench, where his father still died but Jayce was instead left an orphan in a home far too big for him alone — it disappeared, pulled away from Viktor like an ocean wave pulling back from the shore.

“The world was dying, because of me,” Jayce continued. With each word, his voice got quieter, quieter. “When me and my mamá were lost in the snow, on our way to Piltover, I kept her warm. She gave me her gloves, her hands were exposed, but she never got frostbite. She said it was a miracle. I never realized it was me, that I was the miracle. The runes, the arcane, Hextech, all of it, I wanted it because it felt like it was calling to me. We worked together, me and my Viktor, and we made amazing things, but then he— he was dying. And there was this voice in the back of my head, this feeling in my gut, and it told me to go into the core.”

Viktor’s eyes widened as he looked aside at Jayce. That had been the key? All timelines, all possibilities, and even so far removed from the main branches, Jayce Talis loved him so much he wanted to defy death for him.

There was a tugging in his chest, an ache in his heart, and he wasn’t sure if it was from himself or from Jayce. Maybe they even both felt it, and they were simply compounding on each other. (This was not his Jayce. He was not his Viktor. And yet—)

“So, I went in. And when I came out…it was all just so much. So much. I don’t even remember most of it. All I remember is how badly I wanted to save him, so I did, but also how that was — perverted. I started to think, if I could save Viktor, why did I have to stop there? He was okay, but I could keep going. And I tried to, but the more I did, the further I reached, it just— it all got so loud, and hot, and— and, I don’t…” Jayce trailed off, a shuddering sort of breath falling from his lips. He curled forward, not unlike Viktor’s Jayce, kneeling there with his empty hands outstretched. “Someone wanted to — use me. I think they were? It felt so wrong. I wanted to help, but they wanted me to burn. But then I remember, I woke up in the room with the core, or, um, became aware, at least, and Viktor was there with me. Everything had been so loud, but in there, with him, it was finally quiet. He told me everything was going to be okay. That I’d given him enough, and now he had to give back to me before it was too late. And, now— now I’m here, and ... ”

“And you cannot go back,” Viktor finished for him.

“Yeah,” said Jayce. He swallowed thickly, and then he sniffled. Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes and spilled over. “I can’t. And you can’t find that world, that timeline, because it’s gone. I know it is. I felt it— I felt h-him— ”

This was not his Jayce. And Viktor was not his Viktor. 

Yet Viktor still braced a hand down against the ground, and brought the other up to Jayce’s jaw. He coaxed Jayce to look at him. 

Jayce’s skin was warm, warmer than the entire doomed earth they both resided on — both resided on, because Viktor could not send Jayce back to his timeline, could not send him to another, could not doom him after such a sacrifice had been another Viktor’s desperate attempt to help him live — and wet from his tears, and his lips were chapped from the stale air, and his eyes were so bright, this close, that Viktor couldn’t quite look at them.

So his gaze fell to Jayce’s lips again, and they lingered there, beat after beat of his heart, and when he felt heat flare through their connection, open and waiting and wanting, he closed the distance still left between them and kissed Jayce.

It was not better this way. But after so much time alone, Viktor did not have it in him to care, at least for one night.

- - -

“You are too grand in your ideas,” Viktor muttered the next morning. “If the world cannot carry the weight of life—”

“But it can? It does,” Jayce interrupted. “The…salamanders. The rain. There’s other things, too, like, uh, bugs, I’ve seen plenty of those, and — I mean, I remember, I used to joke with my Viktor that cockroaches would outlive us all, but it seems like here they really did? That’s still life, though. And if there are bugs, then there’s salamanders, then there’s us. It’s not — perfect, but… But it’s not nothing. We can work with it. Maybe—”

Maybe? Jayce cut himself off, falling quiet. He squinted down at the dark clouds separating them, so high up, from the hell of the wastes below.

It was familiar. Uncannily so. Jayce was thinking, and it didn’t take their mysterious connection for Viktor to know that, because he had so many physical tells that not even becoming a mage and a living weapon of some sort, apparently, could beat that curiosity and eagerness out of him.

And, like so many years ago with his own Jayce, Viktor deigned to let him think in silence. He watched him, leaning on his staff, the wind rustling at Jayce’s growing hair and Viktor’s cloak.

He didn’t know how long they were quiet, how long they stood like that. But, eventually, as lightning began to light up the clouds below, Jayce declared: “Maybe I can bring life back to the earth, too. Before I help the people. Maybe…”

Jayce blinked, looking aside at Viktor.

“Maybe…we both can,” he finished.

Viktor’s lips twisted up in a grimace. “Both of us? Jayce Talis, this world is broken because of me. I cannot heal it.”

“It’s not broken,” Jayce implored. “What did I just list off? All the ways life is continuing on, even despite what happened here, right? And, I— I know, when I get worked up, my magic…also gets worked up. What if it does for you, too? What if you thinking this world is broken, that you doomed it, what if that makes it like this? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, maybe. And I was so focused on the people , feeling them, that, maybe I missed the ground. The air. The — everything else. Maybe we should go down there—”

“We should not—”

“Viktor.” The light in Jayce’s eyes flared brighter. The determination in Jayce flared brighter, hotter. “Please.”

There was no ‘maybe’ to that plea, so Viktor took him back down into the wastes. 

Storms down there, Viktor knew, were often brutal. A number of timelines had ended during storms like these, Jayces caught without shelter and claimed by the winds, the lightning, the rain. Viktor’s guiding hand had had to be light; he had already seen what too much help would do, early in his attempts to prevent the hell he’d wrought in as many timelines as he could, and that meant there was little he could do other than watch and wait. 

Here, though, with this Jayce, Viktor brought them to a shelter still standing. Not many survived the calamity, but this one, deep within a part of Zaun once intended as a haven for all the wrong reasons, now stood as one for all the right reasons. It was solid, windows unbroken and covered in layers upon layers of dust, dirt, and technicolor film, all stringy and thick, like viscera. 

“This is…Zaun, isn’t it?” Jayce asked. He’d craned his head up to look through the cracks above them. 

While no light could penetrate the clouds covering the wastes, and the cracks were too thin, too low, to even catch glimpses of the lightning above them, the world was quiet enough that the sounds of the storm still traveled. The wind rattled and whistled; the thunder boomed. It always reminded Viktor of ghosts.

But rather than linger on that, he pushed it all away and focused on Jayce’s hands, as they glowed bright through the oppressive darkness. “How did you know?” Viktor asked and answered both.

He could follow Jayce’s gaze as he looked around, so long as he followed the light.

“It’s familiar. I think, when I started to lose myself, I’d gone down into Zaun? There were so many people there I wanted to help…” By then, Jayce had turned in a full circle, and was now facing Viktor again. His gaze, though, was looking past him, towards the entrance to the former enclave. “There’s something out there. Not a person. Not an animal, or a bug. It’s… I don’t know what.” Then, Jayce’s eyes did look at Viktor. “Can you feel it, too?”

Light against the dark. For so long, the dark comforted Viktor. In it, he’d found endlessness. Loneliness. Quiet. Open, waiting, wanting.

He did not have to confront the things that haunted him, so long as he took comfort in them.

But these things did not bring Jayce comfort. When unease roiled through Viktor, stirring up a part of him he’d long left buried, Jayce’s eyes squinted against the dark, golden light pinning tighter on Viktor.

Jayce’s voice rang out in his mind, not a question, but a declaration: You feel it.

Viktor swallowed, fingers tightening around his staff. I do, he replied, as much as he didn’t want to. It is why I brought you down here.

For better or worse.

- - -

While the storm raged on overhead, Viktor and Jayce spent the next two weeks picking their way through Zaun, stone by stone. Whatever it was that they felt, Jayce’s sense of it was far stronger than Viktor’s was. That didn’t surprise Viktor, but Jayce theorized early into those two weeks that “maybe if you didn’t close yourself off to it, Viktor, you could feel it better, too—”

But Viktor did not feel like he had the right to, whatever it was, yet Jayce insisted that he did . One round had been enough; Jayce didn’t argue about it after Viktor had roughly closed their connection for an hour, and thus nearly gotten himself lost because Jayce hadn’t realized he’d wandered off without him. After that, they did not argue, and they did not close their connection off from each other. 

That, that connection, Viktor had theorized days later, was simply because they were two mages that were opposite sides of the same coin. Both of them alone, their worlds destroyed, filled with the desire to fix, powerful in different ways but meeting together in the middle.

Because of that connection, Viktor had felt a warmth thrumming in Jayce at the end of his rambling theorizing, even while they were both ankle-deep in rubble and mud, digging for another metaphorical glimpse of whatever was calling to them. Them meeting in the middle, coming together, was something Jayce liked.

They hadn’t spoken of the kisses they’d shared, nor the body heat they continued to share each night since, but that, Viktor knew, was for the better. This was not his Jayce, and he was not his Viktor. Anything between them was a yearning only for the partner they’d lost — and they had to focus on finding whatever was calling to them, instead. 

By now, they’d combed through most of Zaun, or at least whatever was still accessible. While Viktor could have used his magic to pull away the worst of the rubble, Jayce swore ten times over that ‘it’ wasn’t going to be hidden away like that. 

How he knew, he couldn’t say, but by this point, all they were operating on were feelings, ideas, guesses, so Viktor couldn’t argue against it.

Little runes floated above Viktor’s head, blue light cascading down onto the rubble he was pulling away that had clogged one of the many pipes that once carried Piltover’s runoff down to Zaun. Jayce had gone further ahead, scouring through the mud and muck since it was easier for him to see with his golden hands, when—

“Viktor!” Jayce exclaimed suddenly, his voice echoing around them. “Viktor, look— look! Do you see it? Come here!”

Burning-hot excitement started to course through Viktor’s veins, enough that he stumbled against it, reaching out for his staff to steady himself. Over that excitement, Viktor felt something — natural.

That was the only way to describe it, based on what he felt. While so much of Viktor’s magic felt mechanical, like technology, even down to the runes he’d draw in the air or create simply by thought, this thing, whatever it was, felt natural. It felt bright and airy, the same way Jayce himself had shone throughout the darkness of Zaun’s rotting remains.

Viktor stumbled as he trudged through the mud, having to lift his legs extra high just to get his feet out. “Jayce Talis, you are blocking the view—” he’d started to complain, but Jayce was already moving aside before he could finish it, because he felt the annoyance before he heard the complaint, and—

And Viktor could see, by the golden grace of Jayce’s hands and eyes, and Viktor’s own rune halo, that there was a flower poking above the mud, its yellow petals stark against the muck surrounding it.

“There— there is grass under the mud, too,” Jayce whispered. And, silently, through their connection, he added: This is it. It has to be. Viktor, I— We— We can make this better.

- - -

They’d returned to Viktor’s perch to rest mildly more comfortably that night, but the next day, when the sun had barely even risen, Jayce was shaking Viktor awake like an excited child on their birthday.

“Viktor. Viktor. Viktor, I know you can hear me, don’t make me talk inside your head— ”

Viktor groaned, batting away Jayce’s hands while his eyes remained tightly-shut. “I am an old man, Jayce Talis. Let me sleep.”

“What? How old are you? I’m thirty-two. You look like you’re forty -two. Fifty-two? That’s nothing. You’re not old. My dad died when he was forty. That wasn’t old, was it? See, now I’m guilt-tripping you, Viktor. You can sleep after we’ve fixed this world and you have a bed and I have a bed and there’s four walls around both of our beds. Wake up.”

Viktor’s eyes snapped open, only to see Jayce’s brown-and-golden-ringed eyes staring right back at him. His lips parted in a wide smile, showing off the gap in his front teeth that used to tickle some horribly-pining part of Viktor’s brain.

“Hi,” Jayce said. “Good morning.”

“I would not call it a good morning,” Viktor mumbled, hand coming up to push on Jayce’s cheek, turning his beaming face away. As he slowly sat up, he added, “But, yes, morning.”

Jayce looked back at him immediately, lips no longer parted because they were pressed together in a frown. His nose, however, was scrunched up in a way that also used to tickle some horribly-pining part of Viktor’s brain. 

“How is this not a good morning? We found life yesterday! A flower, and grass, completely untouched by the— the, um. The—”

Calamity, Viktor supplied silently.

“—calamity, yes, that, thank you! Or maybe it was touched by it, but that little area has finally started to come back to life? I don’t know. But I do know, I know, I can use that to make things better all over. We just kinda need to, you know…get back down there. And I can’t do that on my own.”

“You could jump,” Viktor supplied out loud this time.

As Jayce stammered in indignation, Viktor reached for his staff and used it to help himself up. Jayce stood up too, and his eyes, for once, looked surprisingly — puppy-like. This time, Viktor could not deny that the itch it scratched in his brain was far more present.

“You really could just jump,” he said again, as he drew runes into the sky, and before long at all, they’d teleported down to the rune he’d left over the rubble down in Zaun that’d managed to stay out of the muddy water.

Through the dark, Jayce’s eyes seemed to twinkle, just a little. “I think I prefer this, actually? But, thanks for the suggestion.” 

He reached down, his warm hand finding and taking hold of Viktor’s wrist. His bare hands couldn’t quite handle the heat, but the buffer of the cloak and the bandages around his wrists made it bearable. 

In a way, the heat was as grounding as the light. Being back down in Zaun, in the waters he once played around as a child, innocent and full of hope, it felt like the darkness wanted to swallow him whole, so he needed that sense of grounding.

All too soon, though, after they’d made their way back to the flower and the grass — as they’d cleared the mud away to free it all — Jayce had let go of Viktor’s wrist. He squatted down in the barren dirt beside the patch of grass, golden palms settling over the grass.

Perhaps Viktor understood, then, the feeling of that stirring. The way the mother had reached out for the light and the warmth, been comforted by it in a way Viktor nor the calamity had ever provided her.

And perhaps he also understood just how powerful Jayce Talis, this Jayce Talis, really was. Because Jayce’s voice rang out clear in Viktor’s mind — if I lose control, I’m sorry, please do what you have to do — and the time between that and Jayce taking a deep breath was less than a second, so quick it felt as instantaneous as the first time Viktor heard his voice calling his name.

Then, Jayce’s palms began to glow brighter, and the golden light filled his eyes completely.

Suddenly, it was hot. Viktor stumbled back from Jayce’s body, feeling the frayed edges of his cloak soak in the water and cling to his ankles. The bottom of his staff stood unsteadily in the mud. 

Jayce had only just started, but Viktor felt only the desire to pull him out of whatever this was, whatever he was doing. If he lost control? Do what you have to do? After all this time alone, the thought of doing what he had to do against an out-of-control Jayce Talis felt horrible. How could this man give him hope, all burning-hot-warm and bright, and risk it all for some far-fetched idea?

This wouldn’t work. 

All timelines, all possibilities, and not once had Viktor ever seen his own timeline healing. It was done for.  

He was here to prevent other timelines from suffering this same fate, and to sit with the ever-crushing guilt of the hell he’d brought upon the entire earth, guarding the bodies of those who’d lost their lives in the calamity that followed. That was it. Fate had brought him to this point in this place for a reason.

This wouldn’t work. This wouldn’t work, this wouldn’t work, this wouldn’t work—

But just as Viktor began to reach for Jayce’s collar, hoping to yank him back and shock him out of it, he realized the ground was beginning to glow. He realized the grass was beginning to spread. It looked new, like the hairs on a baby’s head, only just sprouting, but the life was indeed spreading under Jayce’s palms.

Viktor stepped back even further. His breath had seized in his chest once again, coming out tight and wheezing, and he clutched his staff as he leaned against it, letting it bear his weight.

The light kept spreading. Viktor couldn’t see it through the muddy water, but he felt the heat of it, felt barren and unnatural land give way to life. Eventually, it started to spread down the path that led back to the broken streets of the city itself, but— Oh.  

Oh, no.

Viktor felt stirring, and in turn, he heard Jayce gasp. The light seemed to flicker, and Jayce suddenly lurched forward, lips parting with a wordless cry.

I’m coming, I’m sorry, I feel you, I’ll help you, I’m coming—

Viktor and Jayce’s voices melded together in Viktor’s mind; Jayce was crying out to the stirrings of life, and Viktor was calling towards Jayce. 

Viktor lunged forward, digging his staff deep into the mud, and grabbed hold of Jayce’s collar. His fingers brushed against the skin of his neck, and it burned, but some part of Viktor’s brain told him to touch it, grab it, hold it, and Viktor shifted his hand to the back of Jayce’s neck, palm against his skin entirely and fingers curling into his hair.

As soon as his grip settled, something within them collided, and Viktor’s head spun with the force of it. He squeezed his eyes shut against the dizziness, groaning quietly himself, and when he opened them, he was no longer in Zaun.

Jayce’s perception of the Arcane was far brighter and warmer than Viktor’s ever was. While Viktor saw an endless cosmic galaxy, saw the expanse of the universe spread out before him, heard nothing but his own voice echoed back to himself, felt nothing but the physical sense of stillness and quiet, Jayce’s was the opposite. Jayce’s was a reflection of the earth they both stood upon, barren earth giving way to newly-sprouted grass, but the water Viktor stood in ran clearer than it ever had, even when the world still had life in it. The sun was beating down on them, brighter than Viktor had ever seen it in Zaun.

Oh, Janna, Viktor understood. He never wanted to leave this place. A small, selfish part of him wanted to step into the warmth and let it fill him completely, but the much more logical part of his brain remembered he wanted to stop Jayce. This was too much, too soon.

Gently, Viktor’s hand slid around to Jayce’s chest. His fingers slipped below his shirt, splaying over the golden light that was his body’s astral form, right over the beating of his heart. 

“Jayce,” Viktor said softly, as he leaned down to speak into his ear. “Jayce Talis. You are letting your ego get ahead of yourself.”

Jayce gasped again. This time, Viktor felt his heart skip a beat; felt the heat of his skin flicker like a candle; felt something give, like a tree falling in a forest.

“Viktor. ” 

Not a question. Jayce heard him, felt him, leaned back into him. Tilted his head up and back, staring at Viktor with wide, light-filled eyes. There were no puppy-dog pupils there, but Viktor felt the energy all the same. 

Here, like this, it wasn’t just their voices that had melded together. They had melded together, so entirely, so intrinsically, as if they were the laces of a corset or the interlocking bones of a spine. It was — strange, and yet comforting all the same.

“You feel so warm,” Jayce whispered. “Finally.” 

Viktor couldn’t help the grin that curled his lips upwards. “Finally? Jayce Talis, did you frighten me on purpose?”

“I frightened you?” Jayce blinked. A gentle sort of prying motion settled over Viktor’s mind, fingers undoing the laces of the corset, hands tightening the screws in the spine, and Viktor let it happen. A beat later, Jayce said, “I did. I — I’m sorry. It wasn’t on purpose. This was…the same issue I had in my timeline. When I use my magic, when I reach out, I feel and hear so much. I never figured out how to ground it. And, so, I focused on the bank of the  water, but then I kept going, and then the path led to the city, and there’s people— I felt them. It’s not just the ground; it’s them, too. They’re like — shells. It’s like they’re being protected? Like they were…”

“...waiting for you,” Viktor finished for him. He felt it; he knew. “All timelines, all possibilities, and yet I had resigned myself to this. To suffering. I thought my fate was to suffer so that others might not. Yet, if I had just looked a little farther, waited a little longer…” He huffed out a laugh, and it was warm against the side of Jayce’s head. “I think, Jayce Talis, that perhaps you are one in a million.”

This was not his Jayce. 

Viktor’s Jayce kneeled unmoving in the perch above the wastes, having been the catalyst and the sacrifice. There was no thrumming to him, like all the others, no matter how much Viktor wished love could bring him back. He would forever be a stalwart guardian, a reminder of what unchecked desire could bring. In a way, with his guard never-ending, he had defied death.

And Viktor was not this Jayce’s Viktor. 

Jayce’s Viktor had been snuffed out, blinked into nonexistence along with the rest of his timeline. He had been the catalyst and the sacrifice, his death defied only physically for so long. No matter how much Jayce wished it, love wasn’t enough to keep them together. But his memory lived on, would forever serve as a reminder of what unchecked desire could bring, and in that, he too had defied death.

The two of them, this Viktor and this Jayce, were instead each other. Two sides of the same coin. Light and dark. Life and death. The sun and the stars. Without one, there couldn’t be the other. All timelines, all possibilities. 

Jayce started to turn. Viktor let him, and in a moment, Jayce was facing him, pulling at him, sinking into the grass and letting Viktor hover over top of him. His fingers threaded through Viktor’s hair, pushing it back and pulling Viktor even further down. 

Jayce’s lips were warm, and his hands were even warmer. His entire body was, Viktor quickly found out, because the clothes covering Jayce’s astral form fell away, an illusion of protection he no longer needed. 

He was open, waiting, wanting, but it wasn’t born out of pain or despair, wasn’t an echo of the cold, stagnant world left in the calamity’s wake; it was desire. Warm and yearning, safe, loving.

When Jayce spread his legs further, Viktor was already moving to fill that space. One of his hands settled in the grass beside Jayce’s head, and the other reached down, taking hold of himself and slowly easing into Jayce. He felt Jayce gasp against his lips, felt Jayce’s fingers curl against his scalp, felt Jayce’s warmth flare hotter, hotter, hotter—

“Vuh— Vi— Ah. Shit.” A tiny thread of confusion, almost, weaved into that warmth, and as Viktor drew his hips back, still slow, wanting to coax more gasps out of Jayce, he pulled on that thread, too. And, that time, Jayce didn’t speak verbally. You’re — not V. You’re you. You— I don’t know what to—

What to call me? Viktor asked, pressing back into Jayce at the same time. Jayce moaned low in his throat, and Viktor smiled. You can find it, Jayce.

Like this? Like— Not while you’re— You just like the way it feels, when I look— 

He’d let Jayce ruminate on that. Viktor was guilty as charged; the nonverbal laughter, a thrum of amusement in their connection, was enough for Jayce to complain — you do, of course you do, of course I knew — but still delve into Viktor’s mind again, anyway. 

Viktor’s hips began a languid rhythm at first, rolling into Jayce without a care, without worry about time, because, there in the Arcane, they had all the time in the world. But the further Jayce delved into his mind, the further they became intertwined, and the warmer Viktor felt, and the more the desire and yearning they both felt mirrored back onto each other, growing and growing and growing. 

At some point, Viktor had drawn Jayce’s legs further back, pressed his knees to his chest. He’d been able to lean down, in, ever closer, press their foreheads together and let their breaths intertwine as much as the rest of them. The warmth had turned to heat, but it wasn’t burning or overwhelming; it was simply part of this, of them, tempered by Viktor’s cold.

At another point, when Viktor realized time had blurred too much for him to have any sense of it, and realized he didn’t care , not when he had Jayce under him like this, so intertwined, Jayce suddenly gasped, and in their connection, he gasped again: Vitya?

Viktor felt his heart seize in his chest as much as his breath. The next press-in of his hips was deeper, grinding. A moan fell from his lips, and Jayce kissed him through the next one, and the next, again and again. 

Vitya. Vitya. My Vitya—

Whether this was better or worse, Viktor could not tell, but once more, after so much time spent lonely, waiting, wanting — he did not have it in himself to care.

- - -

When they came to in the physical world again, mere seconds later, as opposed to however long they had spent in the Arcane, they were in the same positions they’d started in.

Jayce was kneeling on the ground, palms settled over no-longer-barren ground, and Viktor’s hand was pressed to the back of his neck, fingertips threaded into his hair.

The ground was no longer glowing, and the air around them was no longer burning hot. Despite that, the sproutings of grass remained, valiant in the face of all the stalled-out life around them.

Viktor and Jayce both came to the realization at nigh the same time, because whoever realized it first, the other did in near-instantaneous turn: healing this world was up to the both of them. Jayce’s powers would burn too hot and too far without Viktor there to temper him, to pull him back from the brink. And it was as much about coaxing life into the world as it was about coaxing a lack of it out.  

The world, the people frozen in time on it, even Viktor himself — they’d all been waiting for this Jayce’s arrival to finish the puzzle. They had to do this together.

How do you feel? Viktor asked, his fingers running through Jayce’s hair.

He couldn’t see Jayce’s smile, but he could feel it.

Like we have a lot of work to do, Jayce replied.

Maybe that was for the better.

- - -

Time passed. Viktor wasn’t sure when he lost count of how long it’d been since Jayce arrived in this timeline, but he did, and it didn’t concern him much. 

It took practice for them to figure out how best to reign in Jayce’s reach. Eventually, they’d settled on Viktor joining him in the Arcane, using his own magic to blanket the world around them both. Jayce’s powers respected that barrier of the cosmic galaxy. It kept him from burning out. 

So hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month, they worked. That small patch of grass, that one single flower, had brought life back to all of Zaun. Blades of grass poked through the stone streets, flowers bloomed, ivy crawled up walls where technicolor film once clung, and, eventually, they moved on to Piltover, then the land around both city-states. 

Eventually, they knew it wasn’t just the land they needed to bring life back to. So much of the world was still broken, stagnant and cold and quiet and open and waiting and wanting, but they’re created a pocket of life amongst all of that, breathing and warm and still quiet, still open and waiting and wanting. It needed more. It wasn’t complete, not yet.

“I think,” Jayce said, as they walked through the forest that had grown under their own hands, “we could build a house somewhere out here.”

“A house? Here?” Viktor’s brows furrowed. “We are the only two people alive on this earth, Jayce. We could make a home anywhere.”

“For now, we are. Eventually, hopefully, we won’t be. And not even thinking about, um, people going back to their own homes, rebuilding, taking up their space again — do you really want to live in a city like Piltover again?”

Flashes of images and sensory memories passed through Viktor’s mind: the crowd of people in Piltover’s markets, the even bigger crowds of people in Zaun’s markets, Progress Day celebrations, so much noise and heat and stifled air and emotion and peoplepeoplepeople, everything, everywhere, all at once—

Viktor interrupted the flow with a gentle, I think I understand now, cielo.

Sorry, Jayce said quickly, and, again, “Sorry—” which was followed by, “You do, though? You do. I think— I think, out here, it’d be nicer. Quieter. We’d be…more grounded? Literally. Hah. Because, you know, it’s just forest out here. Dirt and grass and rivers.”

They were coming up on the curl of a river, in that very moment. The water ran clear for the first time in years, grass growing along the banks of it. Wildflowers bloomed, weeds too, and they grew up towards the sun shining through the leaves of the trees, reaching out for warmth after so long without it.

And there, at the bank of the river, was a mother deer and her fawn. They were frozen in time just like the people of this world, legs carrying them forward in an aborted run, a desperate attempt to escape the incoming calamity. They were scared, cornered, fighting for their life the same way Viktor spent so long existing like, and just like Viktor, they couldn’t outrun it.

But they don’t have to run anymore, Vitya, Jayce reminded him, his voice ringing out as gentle as the touch of his hands were upon the deer and fawn’s backs. Neither do we.

No, they didn’t.

As Jayce’s eyes began to glow, as he fell into the Arcane, Viktor slipped in behind him, his hands settling atop Jayce’s own. One moment he was in the forest, and the next, he was in the Arcane with Jayce.

The way they worked was practiced and familiar, by this point. 

Jayce breathed slowly, lungs filling with warmth and life and exhaling it out. 

Viktor coaxed those protective shells away from the deer and fawn, letting the light and warmth fill them.

They stirred in response, minds starting to wake up and muscles starting to relax. They didn’t reach the same way people did, like whenever Jayce accidentally went too far in the beginning of their work, but they stirred all the same, harder and harder, until, eventually—

“Oh,” Jayce gasped, and they were suddenly hurtled out of the Arcane with the force of the deer and fawn taking off into the forest, leaving Jayce and Viktor behind.

Jayce’s eyes continued to glow for a few moments after, and Viktor felt him reaching out, following the feeling of them as they ran deeper into the trees. But as the glow died down, and the heat did, too, he simply said, “There’s — so much more for us to do.”

Viktor hummed, pressing a kiss to Jayce’s head. “And yet we have so much time. Perhaps the cottage can be our side-project.”

“The cot—” Something burned between them, and it took a beat for Viktor to parse it as embarrassment. “I didn’t say cottage. Why did you say cottage?” Jayce demanded, turning in Viktor’s arms to glare up at him.

“Why did you picture a cottage?” Viktor asked and answered both. He was teasing Jayce; he would not deny that. “A big one, at that. More than one bed, more than one bedroom. A fireplace. A garden. Poultry. It all flashed as one big, cottage-y picture, cielo! You cannot get upset with me for your thoughts—”

“Stooop it, stop it, stop, I’m never thinking again,” Jayce bemoaned. With quite a lot of effort, he shoved himself away from Viktor’s teasing words and grin. “We have — fish to revive! And more deer. And foxes, and bears, and wolves, and— and, so much. The cottage— No, the home, not the cottage, not the cottage— That is a side-project, nothing else, we’re not worrying about it—”

As Jayce scrambled over to the river, dropping into it without a second thought, because the water was clean and clear and safe, and because the water was cold enough that it shocked any further images of cottages and life and warmth and family away from his mind, Viktor watched. Eventually, he followed.

He sat on the bank of the river, cloak drawn up into his lap so it didn’t get wet. His feet, however, did dip into the water. And his hand, without any fear, reached out for the back of Jayce’s neck, fingertips splaying out over his still-warm skin.

Fish. They were bringing back fish.  

And, finally, Viktor was certain that it was absolutely better this way.