Archive of Our Own

Dark wings, fluttering across his vision.

Drifting like motes of charcoal, burning in a dead wind. The faintest caress of air as they flit by, shade on shadow, void on vacuum.

Jayce follows them, running swiftly. He has no choice: somewhere behind him, a totality looms, too terrifying to look at. If he does so, he will be lost, compelled to surrender to the hymn of peace it croons to him, promising a sweet salvation.

He will not go. Not without Viktor.

Their end is with each other. He knows it with every fibre of his being, a fragile spark of life that diminishes with every passing second.

Time is running out. He feels it in his bones.

So he dashes after the specks of soot, leaping across the desolation of the Herald’s cosmos, empty now of starlight, of soul, of glory. Jayce’s spirit is ephemeral, a gossamer grace, so diaphanous as to be nearly transparent, the shards of his sundered psyche clinging together from the purity of his love.

Only you, he hears, an echo that follows him, a fate that has haunted him since childhood.

Only you.

“Viktor!” he calls, with every scrap of meagre strength he can muster.

Dark wings answer, fracturing reality.

***

Light and sound. A violent tempest of it, shocking after his apotheosis.

It takes a minute for the chaos to coalesce into something his failing senses can translate.

When it does, he immediately knows where he is.

The Distinguished Innovator’s Competition.

Specifically, the aftermath, the pulsing party, beating before him with merriment and melody. He stands on the outskirts of a dance floor, glitz and glitter awhirl in the smeared scene, hazy with memory. Shadowy shapes swirl by, chatter tumbling from them like notes of music, indistinct, indecipherable.

Above them, a storm rages, lightning cracking through the billowing cloud, towering structures that flash ominously with fey-green, ochre, and sickly maroon.

He ignores the sight and pushes through the crowd, seeking, searching.

At the centre of it all, he sees himself.

Jayce as he was, many years ago, black shirt loosened, white blazer flaring as he spins to the music, cut in crystal clarity against the smoky background. His face is lit as if touched by a rising sun, beautiful in a way he cannot understand, for surely he has never looked so golden or warm, nor have his eyes been so filled with such tender passion?

I remember you.

Viktor, all around him, in him, through him. Encompassing.

“Viktor!” he shouts again, but his voice is tiny, inconsequential against the noise, barely discernible even to his own ears. Thunder rumbles overhead. He whips around, frantic, desperate to find his partner, and sees only black butterflies funnelling into a tornado out of the turmoil above.

Your laugh, my Jayce. Your joy. Intoxicating.

We were drunk: that was my mistake. It melted my defences. I had no shield against the arrow of your beauty, no armour to turn the blade of your smile.

His younger self pauses, looking through a natural parting of the crowd. Jayce follows his gaze.

There: Viktor as he was, many years ago, rough brown coat and red tie, oaken hair tousled by insobriety. He is looking at Jayce’s younger self with a lost expression, lurking at the edge of festivity, the eternal outsider. Jayce remembers. He saw him, saw his longing. He wanted to fix it, to share in the felicity of the evening.

You saw me. You knew what I wanted. You came for me.

His mind wavers and merges with his past self. Now it is he who steps through the crowd, two becoming one, filled with urgency, all else forgotten except the need to touch his partner.

Jayce goes to him, flashes a disarming grin, and offers a hand.

“Jayce,” Viktor says, exasperated. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It’ll be fine,” Jayce tells him. “I’ll hold you.”

“You’re drunk. You can barely hold yourself up.”

“Factually incorrect,” Jayce says cheerfully, slurring only slightly. “C’mon, Viktor. Live a little.”

Viktor glares at him for his choice of words, but Jayce does not relent.

“Don’t you trust me?” he purrs.

Ridiculous question, really.

Viktor sighs.

“I am going to regret this,” he mutters. Nevertheless, he leans the cane against a stool, and hesitantly takes Jayce’s hand.

His fingers are cool, his skin soft. Jayce beams and pulls him close, wrapping one strong arm around his braced back.

What a fool I was. If I ever had hope of resisting you, I gave it up this night.

They walk, Jayce leading, Viktor leaning, into the crowd.

Amidst the mayhem, Jayce holds his partner carefully, keeping him safe; he takes it slow, easing him into the rhythm. He always delights in lavishing attention on Viktor, intuiting his needs and answering them, reading his pain and then doing his utmost to relieve it.

To finally have him in his arms, with trust given and joyously received, makes him giddy with happiness.

Who in this world would deny you, Jayce Talis? Did you even know how ruinous you could be? How the gravity of your magnetism compelled everyone around you?

Slowly, patiently, he coaxes Viktor into a dance, guiding him with his body, holding him as steady as he can. And slowly, almost reluctantly, those amber eyes shift from apprehension to sparkling amusement, and Jayce smiles all the brighter; he cannot help teasing him, touching him, provoking him into breathless laughter, completely heedless of anything other than the growing light in Viktor’s lovely face.

Did you mean to wield it so cruelly against me?

Jayce remembers. He yearns. He aches. He tries to talk to Viktor, to confess his love; his mouth cannot form the words, trapped by the script of their memory.

Here it comes. The fall.

Jayce is full of playful intent. He gently spins Viktor out from him, then reels him back in, tugging him close against his chest; Viktor’s head falls back against his shoulder, and he gazes up at Jayce with that peculiar fondness so unique to him, marked by the crinkling around his eyes, the mischievous curve to his lips.

Look at you. God, just look at you.

Jayce blinks, looking outside himself: he sees the high flush on his cheeks, the shine in his hazel eyes, the blinding smile on his face. The way he looks at Viktor as if there is no one else and never will be anyone else.

My heart was racing like a lovelorn teenager. I thought, I want to kiss him. Oh, I wanted it, Jayce. As much as I have ever wanted anything.

Viktor stiffens in his arms, drops his gaze. He steps away.

“Is everything alright?” Jayce asks, immediately concerned, worried he pushed him too far.

“I’ve had enough, that’s all,” Viktor murmurs. “Will you take me back?”

“Of course, V.”

I panicked, naturally. I felt the doom of it even then, and so I ran. I was not for the likes of you.

I was already dying, and you had barely begun to live.

No, Jayce tries to plead. How would I live without you?

But the dance is fragmenting into shards of darkness; forks of lightning strike down, splintering it apart, and the cloven pieces melt like candlewax. Reality pools into formless murk around him, a mire of recollection, and Jayce cannot determine which way to go.

Death serenades him. He covers his ears and screams to blot out her song.

Butterflies respond to his distress. Obsidian wings dart down a collapsing path. He hears the distant sound of shattering glass.

Jayce runs after them, hoping, praying, flinching as puddles of molten memory try to slide up his legs and prevent his flight.

He jumps over them instead, like a child in the rain. They flash underneath him, some unfamiliar, many he recognises; how much of his life is entwined with Viktor’s?

He watches as azure magic ricochets through a city. In another, two men swimming through the air. Hours-days-months-years debating in the lab, feverish from research, obsessing over results. Cogs and laughter in every tangled weave.

His hand on Viktor’s narrowing shoulder. The wonder of their science, capturing magic with mundane mechanisms. Looking at Viktor when he could not see. Viktor looking at him when he could not see.

Orbiting. Endlessly. A galactic waltz. A moon falling, an earth avoiding. Ever present in the other’s sky. Unable to fly apart, fundamentally bound as one, yet unable to collide together, fearful of a conjoining cataclysm that would ruin all they cherished.

“No more,” Jayce grits, sprinting, straining, as the void gurgles behind him. “He’s mine. You can’t have him.”

Dark wings take hold of him. They ripple and unfurl to a Piltovan sunset, casting the world aflame.

***

Viktor shuffles down a street. His cane is loud upon the cobblestone, ringing like a death knell with each sharp strike. His breathing is hitched, tiny gasps of exertion. His spine slumps like a wilted rose.

He is clearly exhausted, his body quaking with the effort of keeping himself upright. Shadows shiver past him on occasion, sometimes through him, yet none pause to check on him.

Jayce trails behind, fighting to keep up. A desert wind is blowing, causing hot stinging sand to lash at his spirit, tearing through him with wisping streams of light. The sensation is not unlike being stabbed with a heated dagger, the wound cutting and cauterising in the same instant.

When he opens his mouth to call to his partner, it clogs with sand, bitter like salt. His mouth is so dry he cannot spit it out.

Around them loom the gleaming towers of Piltover, chrome and brass, fading in and out of view as the roiling sandstorm surges and subsides. Overhead, the sunset blazes in a midday sky, rendering the world in aureate colour, interrupted only by the dull brown of Viktor’s trousers.

They trudge along, for an age, to Viktor’s apartment, the only building that appears real in the mirage of wasteland around them.

Viktor drops his keys three times trying to get through the front door. Each time, he sighs, and painstakingly lowers himself to pick them up again. When he tries to straighten, Jayce can see the muscles in Viktor’s back contorting and hears the sharp hiss through his teeth as he slumps against the wall to recover.

Jayce has rarely seen him in so much pain. He aches to comfort him.

Finally, they get inside the dim apartment. Dusty beams of dying light stream through the glazed windows. The tumult of wind outside drops to near silence; Jayce tries to speak, but only sand sprays from his mouth. Still no voice.

Viktor drops his keys on the coffee table and his body onto the couch. His cane falls limply on the rug beneath with a muffled thud. He leverages his legs onto the couch one by one, then reclines onto it, pressing into his eyes with his palms.

When he lowers them, Jayce realises to his rending dismay, that Viktor is crying. Not weeping, nor sobbing; his breathing is wet but steady. Just great swollen tears, slipping endlessly down his face as he stares blankly at the ceiling.

Jayce’s heart breaks. He tries to go to him and finds he cannot. His feet are stuck on the frayed welcome mat inside the door, rooted as if in quicksand; he is forced to watch helplessly as his partner breaks apart in front of him, a private bubble of past suffering that Jayce should not be intruding upon.

It seems an hour passes in this way. The shadows in the room lengthen. Still, neither of them moves.

Then comes a knock on the door.

Viktor looks towards it with the same amount of despair and irritation that Jayce feels. Viktor just got somewhat comfortable; who would be calling on him this late in the evening?

Another knock.

“Coming,” groans Viktor, coughing roughly after the word. He wipes the tears from his face with a sleeve. Then the exhaustion and pain in his expression smooths and vanishes as he leverages himself creakily back off the couch, reaching for his cane with another heavy sigh.

I was so tired and sore that night. The last thing I wanted was company.

Viktor walks over to open the door through Jayce, a ghostly, insubstantial touch.

You, however, were the exception.

“Jayce,” says Viktor, startled.

Jayce steps through the doorway and into himself. Now, he remembers where they are.

“Viktor,” he greets warmly. “Sorry for intruding. Is it okay if I come in?”

“Of course.”

He steps past Viktor and heads to his kitchen, dropping the large paper bag he carries on the countertop. Then he shrugs off his coat and lays it on a stool tucked underneath.

“God, it’s cold in here,” he mutters. “Mind if I light a fire?”

Viktor nods in agreement, though he looks confused.

“I thought you were wanted at the opera tonight.”

“I am.” Jayce checks the fireplace and sees the same careful arrangement of wood from when he last visited. It seems Viktor has not lit a fire since then; the knowledge makes him frown.

“Are you not using the fireplace?” he asks, shoving in more kindling underneath the stack of logs.

Too much effort to start and maintain. I never said so, but the heating wasn’t plumbed to my bedroom. I never had the energy to fix it.

“My blankets suffice, most nights,” Viktor answers dismissively. “Jayce.”

“Hm?”

“Why are you here? Surely the Council will be displeased by your absence.”

“Oh, I’m sure they will,” Jayce says carelessly, as the crushed papers and twigs begin to flame. He brushes his hands free of ash and stands up, turning to his partner, who meets his eyes. An ember is flickering inside his honey gaze, reflecting the swiftly catching fire. It contrasts with the dark circles underneath his long lashes.

Jayce goes to him, touches his arm.

“I know you had a hard day,” he says quietly. “You mask well, but I know better. You don’t need to hide it from me.”

Viktor clenches his jaw, tensing under Jayce’s hand.

“I don’t want pity from anyone,” he bites out. “Least of all you, Jayce. You should just go where you are wanted, instead of bothering me.”

That wounds, more deeply than he cares to admit. Jayce has never pitied him. Rather, he admires him; Viktor’s strength in the face of adversity beyond anything he has ever experienced. Jayce is not sure that he would have a fraction of his fortitude in the same position.

Stupid. So fucking stupid. I never deserved you.

He struggles to conceal his hurt. All he wants is to be a place of support for him, and to be so soundly rejected makes him feel worthless. He takes his hand away.

“I thought I might cook you dinner,” he says stiffly, looking down, feeling about two feet tall. “So you could rest a bit. I’m sorry, Viktor. It was presumptuous of me. I should have asked first.”

He walks to the kitchen to pick up his coat, cheeks reddening with shame.

“Wait,” calls Viktor.

He stills, clutching onto the back of the stool.

“That was very unkind of me,” Viktor sighs. “I must apologise. I should not take my frustrations out on you.”

“It’s alright.”

“It’s not,” says Viktor quietly, coming up to touch his arm in turn. “I didn’t mean it. You’re being sweet, and I really would prefer it if you stayed. Genuinely.”

Coward.

Jayce pivots to regard him. Viktor meets his gaze warily; his brows are pinched, his cheeks sallow with exhaustion, but his eyes are soft and pleading. Jayce swallows down his pain.

“If you’re sure,” he says warily. “It’s just steak and salad, nothing fancy. I didn’t want to make you wait for anything more involved.”

Was I always so blind to your attentiveness? You loved me; maybe not as I wanted, but you loved me.

Viktor nods, appearing relieved. “I am quite hungry,” he confesses.

Jayce offers him a small smile at that. “Then I’ll get started,” he murmurs. “Just take a seat, okay?”

I condemned ignorance in others while it existed within my own heart. I saw you every day and yet did not see you as you are.

I wish I could tell you everything I should have, all these years ago.

Too late now. Too fucking late.

The tension between them eases as Jayce starts cooking. Viktor props himself up on another stool, a cushion tucked in for his back, and soon enough their natural conversation takes over, dispelling the awkwardness.

It is a simple meal: beef eye fillet lightly seasoned with Zaunite spices, paired with a fresh salad of lettuce, cherry tomato, avocado, and feta, all doused in a Piltovan lemon-lime dressing. They do not bother setting the table to eat; instead, they settle down onto the couches, plates balanced on bent knees, inhaling the food while they chatter.

By the time they have finished, they have lapsed into recollection, swapping tales of their mishaps in the lab, both snorting with laughter. The empty plates lay forgotten by the sink as the evening wears on, heedless of the hour, absorbed as they are in each other’s company.

Only when the clock strikes midnight do they realise how late it has become. Both startle at the sound, and Jayce laughs.

“We haven’t stayed up like this since before the Gates were built,” he says wonderingly, and then his voice turns wistful. “It was a simpler time, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” replies Viktor, low. “It was.”

Jayce looks at him. Viktor’s expression is relaxed, his mouth curved with wry, fond amusement. Yet something shimmers behind his lovely eyes, something Jayce does not recognise; for an acutely uncertain moment, it feels as if his partner is a complete stranger to him.

“You know you’re my best friend, right?” he blurts, inexplicably anxious.

“Yes, Jayce. Of course I know that.” Viktor says it teasingly, quirking an eyebrow at him.

“I mean it. No matter what happens, or where life takes us, V. I’m always here for you.” He takes a deep breath. “You’re the most important person in my life.”

Viktor looks away. One hand grips onto the cushion on his lap, knuckles white from the effort.

“And so you are, to me,” he says softly, after a pause.

Jayce gazes at him, but Viktor will not meet his eyes again, and a blossoming hope withers slowly within him, a fragile spring bud succumbing to the last winter frost. All the merriment of the evening turns sour, sticking like ash in his throat.

He cannot help feeling like he has said something terribly wrong, and flounders for a way to fix it, tongue-tied by his nervousness.

“We should sleep,” says Viktor suddenly, interrupting Jayce’s reverie. He grabs his cane and rises shakily to his feet. “It’s too late to walk back, I think. You can take the spare room, if you want?”

“Oh,” says Jayce awkwardly, standing in turn. “Yes, that- that would be good. Thank you.”

Viktor is at the stairs already. He is slipping away from him faster than grains of sand falling within an hourglass; Jayce’s heart pounds with distress. A portent of doom is lowering onto him, a crushing weight upon his shoulders. He needs Viktor to understand what he is really trying to say.

“Viktor,” he tries, desperate, “I wanted to tell you-”

God, what were you trying to tell me?

“-Not now, Jayce,” sighs Viktor. His profile is half shadowed by the dim stairwell as he glances to the side, his eyes downcast. “I’m tired. I’m sure you understand.”

Was this it? Where our paths really began to diverge?

The dismissal steals his breath and words from him. Jayce stands helplessly, wringing his hands, wrought by his longing and anguish.

…Was it because of me?

“Tonight was very nice,” Viktor adds, so quiet he is nearly whispering. “Thank you for being so thoughtful.”

“Of course,” Jayce manages to choke out, ever polite, too stupid to say what he should. “Anytime.”

No. Please, no.

Then Viktor is gone, the tapping of his cane disappearing up the stairs as he walks away from Jayce, leaving him bewildered and heartsore in the lounge with only the dwindling fire for company.

He does not suffer for long. It is not his memory, after all.

His younger self begins to smear like watercolour, and Jayce steps from him, frantically gathering his wits to bound after Viktor as the scene drips like paint on a canvas. He makes it up in time to see his partner hobbling into the bedroom, and sprints forward, darting through the doorway before they are sealed apart forever.

Inside the room, Viktor is trembling.

He’s right there! For the love of Janna, go to him! Walk outside, tell him, hold him, kiss him; ask him to your bed! Can’t you see that you’re nearly out of time?

As if Viktor heard his future self, he twitches and reaches for the door handle. For an agonising second, it seems he will open it; then he sighs, frustrated and forlorn, and thunks his forehead against the wood.

You craven weakling.

Viktor’s voice resonates with acidic disgust around him. A wind wails in response, and the walls begin to crumble, ground into dust as the sandstorm outside reignites with increased fury.

“You’re not!” shouts Jayce, amidst the furore. “I could have come to you! I wanted you with me too!”

But Viktor, wherever he is, cannot hear. His bedroom cracks open like dried earth, causing gaping fissures to fracture through the carpet, so Jayce whirls about in search of his guide; there, in the mirror by the bed, a blotch of ink flares across the polished glass, bleeding outwards just like-

He dives for it, smashing through the monochrome surface into blinding light and stinging sand. Immediately, a thousand butterflies swarm to his feet, their sable wings beating furiously to lift him up and carry him forth from the earthen maelstrom.

“Why?” he gasps to them. “Why are you helping me?”

No answer, or at least, not in words. Only a pressing sense of urgency, a metallic taste of regret.

“Who are you?”

A ripple of song without sound, something he knows, something he can shape, almost touch, though never hold.

“What-”

But the butterflies beat a gale onto him, delivering him to the desert once more, and the rush of air orders: run!

So Jayce runs. The sky breaks open, and sapphire torrents of water pour down from an unseen heaven onto the wasteland; in the deluge he sees fragments of things he never knew, glittering inside the foaming waterfalls.

He sees blood on a hexagram, magical connections firing and misfiring infinitely, a thin blemished face offering a vial of poison, an echo that whispers: Jayce will understand, a bridge of concealment, a sky on fire, or is it Sky on fire?

Yes: a cyclone of violet flame, atomising her even as she screams into nothingness, making Jayce wretch with horror as he runs; then he watches Viktor drag himself over the floor to a cerulean notebook, begging, pleading, alone, forsaken.

How much did Viktor keep from me? How did I miss so much?

All this loneliness, all this sorrow, all this anguish, and where was Jayce?

Where was I?

Failing him, after promising to be there, promising to destroy the Hexcore, promising to kill him: promises upon vows upon oaths, all broken in the pursuit of his own overwhelming selfishness!

Jayce stumbles, falls to his knees, paralysed by his torment. The butterflies try valiantly to raise him up, but despair claws into him, dragging him into the sucking quicksand with ichorous tentacles that writhe across his flickering grace greedily.

Behind him, death stalks forward, immune to his struggle, and he has no strength left by which to escape its sonorous embrace.

He is failing Viktor again. His faltering spirit wavers, a breath away from disintegrating.

Then Sky is there, with celestial curls and brown eyes that spark in anger.

“Get up,” she snarls at him, and yanks him to his feet as if he weighed nothing; he is too shocked to resist when she shoves him forward.

“Don’t you dare give up on him now, Jayce Talis!” she snaps. “Move it!”

She turns and raises a hand; a luminescent shield of light beams from her palm, halting the void’s encroachment on him.

“I’m sorry,” Jayce cries to her, hesitating, unsure if she is real, or another vision. “Sky, I wish…”

He trails off. What can he say that would make any of this right?

She looks back at him, and her eyes soften.

“Sometimes, progress demands sacrifice,” she tells him. “This is mine. Don’t waste it, Jayce. Save him. Now go!”

He takes one last look at her, capturing her in his mind forever, then obeys and races off, bursting with gratitude that overflows from his body like rainbow silk; he darts between the behemoth waves of water until one crashes onto him and he tumbles, drenched, through a wild rainstorm, a grey sleet of remembrance.

***

A sickness of the soul is the only way he can describe this terror.

He clutches at his head, foot tapping incessantly on the ground. His hand is shaking. He cannot seem to get it to stop. The room’s walls are veiled by a frigid, torrential rain, thundering against the metal floor, the smell of rotten petrichor and ancient rust clogging his nose.

Ah. Well, this is poetic, I suppose.

“Jayce,” rasps a weak, strained voice.

“Viktor,” he breathes, glancing up. Viktor looks as if he has aged a decade in the past day; fatigue permeates every pore of his face, rendering his siren eyes in sharp contrast, the amber of them fever-bright from illness. “The doctors, um. They said…”

The words are impossible. He does not want to accept them. Does not want Viktor to accept them, even as his partner sighs with resignation.

“How much time do I have?”

Not enough.

His silence says it, even if his throat is too choked to speak.

They say nothing further to each other for some time.

“How did they find me?” Viktor asks, sounding exhausted.

“One of the night guards checked on the lab,” Jayce replies tiredly. “They sent a messenger for me. It was around midnight, I think. It’s nearly midday now.”

Viktor ruminates on that for a minute.

“I…apologise for disrupting your sleep,” he says. Idly, like it is an afterthought. As if this whole situation is a minor inconvenience to him.

Jayce stares.

“Don’t- don’t ever apologise for that,” he exclaims, horrified. “I’d always want to know, whatever the hour. And I wanted to be here, Viktor. Truly.”

I should have told you how much it meant that you were. I nearly did.

Jayce reaches up to rub his neck, relieving the aching muscle. Viktor’s eyes catch on the movement; an unreadable expression flickers across his face. Shock, maybe, or perhaps a great pain, as if something had just wounded him mortally.

That damn mark. Someone had kissed you. Claimed you.

“What is it?” Jayce asks, alarmed, half getting to his feet to call for a nurse. “Do you need help?”

“No, no,” gasps Viktor, closing his eyes. “Just a twinge, that’s all.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, Jayce. I’m fine.”

Jayce settles back down on the chair, his heart racing with anxiety. “Can I get you anything?”

Viktor shakes his head. Then, with his eyes still closed, he asks carefully:

“Have you told Mel?”

“Not yet. I didn’t want to wake her.” Jayce answers him absently, realising he did not even think to leave her a message; he will have to go to her soon and explain. This is not how he would have liked to spend their first morning together.

Some of his fright bleeds away as he thinks of her. The scent of jasmine on her skin, her melodic laugh against his ear, the vibrancy of her fierce wit. To have his desire matched in kind is a heady delight; not until she kissed him, did he understand how deeply he craved such a connection.

I knew then. The look in your eyes, at the mention of her name. I’d lost you.

Fuck, it hurt so much. I thought I wanted this, but oh, Jayce, the pain…like nothing else I had ever felt. A decade of regret, slamming into me at once.

I wish I could say not telling you was my greatest mistake. Perhaps, in a way, it was. Yet only a week after this I killed Sky with my own hubris, and months later, how many innocent souls were vanquished due to my corruption?

How can I rate their lives against my own folly?

And still, at the end, I erred again. God, I shouldn’t have- why did I let you finish this with me? Fuck, fuck- it’s too late, it’ll forever be too late; all I’ve done with my life is fail you! Can’t I do anything right?

The thundering rain freezes mid-fall at Viktor’s words, hardening into suspended chips of ice. Then the metal floor shudders and groans deeply, warning of change. The air itself begins to distort, folding in on itself impossibly.

Too soon! thinks Jayce madly, even as his mouth continues talking, repeating the words of a script that has no meaning anymore. He fights furiously to take control of his aspect, to let Viktor know he is here, right here, before him; for a split second, the rumbling intonation of his younger self wavers, and Viktor’s eyes widen for a fraction of a heartbeat.

Then a forest erupts from beneath them.

Thorny, barbed trees, tall as redwoods, shearing through the metal as if it were paper, sprouting with impossible speed towards a non-existent roof. Jayce is hurled to one side, Viktor to another, as the creaking wood chokes and crushes all the space between them; Jayce dives from branch to root to avoid being entrapped in the maelstrom of bark.

In less than a minute, he finds himself standing alone in a dark, cloying forest, so overgrown that only the faintest light permeates the oppressive gloom.

“Viktor!” he yells.

No answer: the sound of his cry is muffled by the dense wood around him. The boughs above shake cruelly, a whispering laugh, as if mocking his attempt.

Something soft brushes against his cheek and he flinches. It happens again, followed by a sensation of calm; velvet wings are touching him, their delicate black bodies too difficult to discern in the shadows.

“I can’t see,” he says. “Can you show me where Viktor went?”

A zephyr flows against his skin as the unseen shapes flit away, and Jayce calls out after them, worried they have abandoned him. But then a lurid green light pierces the forest murk, emanating from the tangled gnarl beneath him, and in the gaps between roots, he sees Zaun laid out in all its chemical glory, as if he stood on a fissure edge above the dizzying depths.

There, soaring through the canyons, is the Machine Herald, scarlet cape streaming behind his eldritch body. Jayce leaps after him, jumping from root to root, a glowing sprite in the darkness, butterflies following in his wake.

The chasms warp into different scenes as he chases Viktor. First the Herald flies through his ivory commune, hunted by a slavering beast of blood; then his godly form races upon the bank of a dirty stream, chasing after a child’s toy boat; next he stalks through an apocalyptic nightmare of the other world, fey-yellow beams of light scouring the crumbling towers for any semblance of life yet requiring evolution.

“Viktor!” Jayce shouts again.

The Herald’s head turns slowly. A pitiless mask meets his gaze.

In a flash of déjà vu, they are back in the Council room, and Jayce is in the Herald’s unyielding grip being strangled with casual disregard. Steely fingers dig into his burning throat, unaffected by his flailing, and his suffocating brain wonders dazedly how Viktor, so good and kind and gentle, could be hurting him like this-

Jayce, my Jayce, I nearly…

Oh god, this is hell, I can’t…

Then they are plummeting down the Hexgate tower as roaring lasers of Arcane energy fire around them, a heat so intense it sizzles the air itself; Jayce swings his hammer forward, trying to pry the Herald’s grip off him and call Viktor’s name, but they are falling too fast, and the gemstone chamber is rushing up to meet them.

Before they crash into it, an anomaly explodes, a bloom of mandala that entraps them like a web, coating their bodies with sticky miasma. The Herald’s mask cracks open, revealing Viktor’s terrified, confused face; as one, he and Jayce strain to pierce the veil, desperate to drag themselves free of its corrupting clasp.

They break through and collapse to the floor, strands of magic pouring off them both. Jayce looks up, panting, and knows immediately where they are.

This is the day Viktor left him.

Behind them, the Hexcore’s viral mesh looms in its frame, the vibrancy of it decayed and rotten now they have torn it apart.

No. I’m not reliving this. I refuse.

Across the lab, Jayce’s younger self is sleeping, hunched over the workbench. But Viktor does not stumble over to him; instead, he paces, almost manically, pulling at his lank hair.

“Why? Why did I leave you?” he gasps into the silence.

I was angry. He broke a promise I never asked him to keep.

“I didn’t want him to love me!”

Do such things matter, in affairs of the heart?

“No. No, it was because of everything he did! The weapons, and the Hexcore; look what he made me into!”

LOOK WHAT I MADE HIM INTO! His whole life was manipulated by my tainted touch! He was doomed from childhood, because of me! Because without him, I kill the fucking world!

Viktor groans, a sound of pure anguish.

“Everything I judged in him was in myself all along,” he whispers brokenly.

Then he looks over at Jayce, continuing to sleep uneasily on the bench, back twitching from the pain of his injury.

“I didn’t even ask what happened. I just left. Abandoned you as I always had been, my whole life, until you. Jayce, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

It’s okay, Jayce tries to say. I made mistakes too. We didn’t mean to hurt each other.

His voice is still not his own. A creeping horror is crawling down his spine. He senses the end is near.

He must find a way to speak to Viktor.

Jayce dashes to his hunched form and slips inside, fighting against a yawning wave of exhaustion that threatens to drag him into unconsciousness; he is losing the battle when cool fingers are laid gently on his shoulder, and suddenly, the grasp on his mind vanishes.

His younger self stands like an automaton and pivots to face Viktor, who is looking at him deeply with those strange, prismatic eyes.

“Would that I had done this instead,” Viktor murmurs, and leans up to kiss him.

It is not a good kiss. Jayce does not move, too stunned to react; his lips part slightly, but otherwise he does not even breathe. There is no memory to direct his movement, he realises. Viktor is imagining this, shaping this recollection to his whim.

However, does that mean...?

Viktor pulls away. His expression is bitter, wry.

“I don’t know what I-”

Jayce kisses him.

Surges forward and kisses him. Cups his lovely face in his hands and consumes him. Strokes his thumbs across sharp cheekbones, tastes the plushness of his sensuous lips; his heart thunders when Viktor gasps into his mouth and moans, wanton, as if all his desires are being sated by this single, devouring embrace.

Oh god. Oh, god-

Jayce cannot speak, but he pours all his feelings into the kiss, letting one hand settle against the golden flare of Viktor’s hip to draw them flush together. He licks into Viktor’s mouth, overwhelmed with need, and drags his other hand through lank, tousled hair; Viktor sinks into him, his lithe form trembling, and tentative purple fingers curve around Jayce’s bicep, caressing, clinging.

I love you, Jayce says, with his lips, his tongue, his breath, his touch. I love you. I love you. I am yours. Please, Viktor. Know me. Feel me.

It is magic. All thoughts fly from him. He can think only of Viktor’s soft skin, his cool metal, his tantalising sounds, this euphoric agony of connection. It is heaven; it is paradise, or it would be, if only Viktor would see.

Then powerful arms are shoving him away, so forcefully that Jayce is slammed back against the workbench, grunting from the impact.

Viktor stares back at him with horrified eyes. One hand lifts to touch the moisture on his lips, moisture that Jayce put there.

“Can I not even honour your memory?” he chokes out wretchedly. “As if you would ever kiss me like that.”

Jayce shakes his head, an emphatic denial, and reaches for him again.

Enough of this torment. There’s nothing to be gained. Let it end.

No! Jayce cries: he is so close-

Too late.

Everything shatters. The forest. The lab. The sky. The floor.

Jayce and Viktor.

Nothingness swallows them.

***

He floats in a hollow abyss. There is no storm, no desert, no rain, no forest. Only a void surrounds him, reverberating in warning.

Nothing.

“Whoever you are,” he begs, “Please. Please. I need you.”

Butterflies answer his call in a symphony of song.

They gather to him in a vast whirlwind, and this time they are not black but a scintillating rainbow. Colour bursts around him like the onset of a stormfront, a vertiginous display of every conceivable hue; as he turns about, amazed, he realises that each butterfly holds within its wings a fragment of memory.

All of Viktor’s life, swirling about Jayce’s ethereal spirit, causing his hair to blow in a spectral breeze. It is a kaleidoscope of him, a million fractal shards that blur before Jayce’s vision, spiralling up and up until he is utterly lost in their reflection.

A million places for Viktor to hide. Jayce does not know where he has gone, and between the cascading wings, he sees a deeper darkness closing in, inexorable and implacable. There is nowhere left to run.

He cries out, with his heart, his soul, for aid. The Arcane is not enough. He has only one chance to find Viktor, and if he gets it wrong, they are both doomed.

They need a miracle.

And then one arrives.

She dives down the vortex in a blaze of radiance, landing before him in a tempest of power. Magic pours from her like a fountain of infinite possibility. Her beautiful face raises and looks at him, and her incandescent eyes shimmer from gold to forest-green, wide with shock.

“Jayce!” she exclaims, hands flying to her mouth.

He is overcome with joy and relief. They run to each other and hold on tightly.

“Mel,” he gasps. “How are you here?”

“The Arcane summoned me,” she breathes, looking around. “And then I felt your call. There’s some type of anomaly atop the Hexgates as we speak. Is that your doing?”

“Ekko, Viktor, and I killed the Herald,” he tells her. She is so warm in his arms. “And now I’m trying to find Viktor, and I can’t, Mel, I can’t- there’s so many memories-”

She puts a finger on his lips, silencing him. Her head tilts as if listening to some far-off sound.

“He’s here,” she says. “His distress is immense. A mortal despair.”

“Yes,” says Jayce numbly. “He thinks I’m dead, and I can’t find a way to reach him.”

Story of our lives. Was there ever any way forward for us?

Hope dwindles, and his soul’s grace dims.

“Jayce Talis,” Mel says sternly, drawing his gaze to hers with an elegant hand. “You know Viktor better than anyone. Use that brain of yours and think. Where would he go, if he was in that much pain?”

He anchors himself in her eyes, racing through the options, and then he knows. Mel sees it in his expression.

“Go to him,” she orders, ever the Councillor. “I’ll buy you what time I can.”

But Jayce does not move, not yet. Sorrow, regret, gratitude, love; they all flow through him at once.

“I’m sorry, Mel,” he says softly. “I wish this had ended differently for you and I.”

She smiles at him, though her eyes shine with pooling tears.

“The stars never aligned for us,” she says. “We didn't get a chance to grow. And now, I can feel what you are to each other, Jayce, in here. How could we compare?”

“What we had was-”

“A spark of something real, I know. I’m glad we shared it, even for just a moment.” She kisses his cheek. “Go, Jayce, with my blessing. Be happy.”

He presses his lips to her hair, breathes in the scent of Jasmine and sunlit magic.

“Your heart is gentle, Mel Medarda,” he murmurs. “Never forget it.”

Her eyes well with tears. “I’ll tell your mother what happened here,” she whispers, and he nods, too overcome to speak further.

He squeezes her one last time, full of love, then steps to the kaleidoscope of butterflies. In his mind's eye he pictures the memory he needs, raising up a hand, and from within the riot of colour one tiny spark comes down to alight on his palm.

Memory blooms.

The last thing he sees is Mel going luminous with golden energy, bright as a solar flare, her tear-streaked face hardening to grim fierceness as she turns to wage war with death itself.

***

He has dreamed of this place countless times. Often it haunted the smoke-stains of his pungent fire, down in the ruined fissures of Zaun.

The butterfly, his Arcane guide, flies to his shoulder, devoid of colour once more. This memory is lit in a deep violet, the last clinging shade of the evaporating rainbow.

His hammer is a familiar, sinful weight in his hands as he makes his way through the machinery. His Councillor garb is starch-stiff, itching at his soul.

Jayce cares not, for there, sitting on the sewer edge, as he once did many months ago, is Viktor. Hunched over, cane at his side, staring out over the drainage falls.

Waiting to die. Black butterflies flock to him.

Jayce looks at him and loves him. It permeates every part of his being. He lets it soar up through his heart, through his throat, unlocking the words that have been buried inside him for so many years.

“Viktor,” he calls out, clear as a bell. “I love you.”

Viktor hears him. Jayce sees him flinch; he drops his head in his hands.

“No,” his partner moans. “No more. No more.”

Even now he cannot believe that Jayce has come for him. Jayce steps forward to touch him, to make him understand.

Time explodes. Reality fractures again.

He sees the Herald before him, turning to fix that penetrating, emotionless gaze upon him. But Jayce is not afraid of it anymore; he looks through the mask, through memory, and there: underneath the visage is Viktor as he was, amber eyes full of hope and laughter, smiling at Jayce from in front of the blackboard in their lab.

“I’ve loved you since I’ve known you,” Jayce tells him, steady and sure, letting the memory of youth fall away from him, from them, leaving both as they were in the Arcane realm, clad in starlight with moonglow hair.

Reality swirls into a tiny pocket of cosmos, surrounded by an encroaching void. Viktor curls up on himself in the centre; dark wings sprout from his back as he covers his ears, too afraid to listen.

Jayce floats to him, lays a hand on his shoulder. At his touch, Viktor’s wings ripple with iridescence, and he freezes, before taking a shaky breath.

“Jayce?” he asks tentatively. He still does not look.

Jayce smiles, moves to kneel before him. Reaches up to gently clasp those beloved wrists and guide Viktor’s hands away from his eyes.

“I’m here, Viktor,” he says warmly. “I’m here.”

“Oh, Jayce,” his partner chokes out, disbelief and relief shuddering through his expression. “How? I- thought you were…”

“Shh,” Jayce soothes. He cannot seem to stop smiling. “I can explain later. We have to leave here. You can feel it, can’t you?”

Viktor blinks away tears. He looks shell-shocked. “Yes. I was waiting for it to claim me.”

“I know. Will you come with me, instead?”

“To where?”

Jayce laughs. “I have no damn idea. Wherever the Arcane wants us to go.”

Viktor’s eyes roam his face nervously, though his body brightens with desperate hope. “What if something dreadful happens again? Can we trust it?”

Jayce glances towards the butterflies gathering around them once more.

“I trust it,” he says firmly. “Because it has always led me to you.”

Viktor stares at him in amazement.

“How can you forgive so easily?”

He is not talking about the Arcane.

Jayce pulls him close, rests their brows together.

“You know why, Viktor,” he murmurs.

Viktor reaches up to cradle his face. Joy blossoms over his spirit in prismatic colour.

“You love me,” he whispers in wonderment.

“Yes. Always. Forever.”

Viktor sighs deeply, releasing a lifetime of regret in that one breath, and they close their eyes in unison, trusting to fate and each other. The Arcane exults at their acceptance; it lifts them up and away from the collapsing cosmos, sending them soaring like meteors across the starry sky to a new horizon.

***

They land, naked as babes, in a meadow of wildflowers.

Warmth caresses Jayce’s skin, an intoxicating sensation after the shifting vapours of Viktor’s memories. He is distantly aware that a summer sun is high overhead, basking their nude bodies in its midday heat; from somewhere behind him, he hears the melodic burbling of a creek. A floral scent permeates the air, fresh and pure.

Vaguely, he realises that his own injuries are healed. The scarring on his leg is gone, replaced with a glowing pattern of runic magic on his shin and knee.

He pays little attention to any of it, however, because Viktor is in his arms, lying on top of him. His hair is shoulder length and silver tipped, his skin pale and shimmery, and against his chest, Jayce can feel his heart beating, slow and steady and strong.

“Hey,” he murmurs, running a hand through his hair, bursting with happiness. “You okay?”

Viktor lifts his head and meets his gaze. His irises are like honey, limpid and tender. He says nothing for a long moment; Jayce can practically see that quicksilver mind flickering through all that occurred, connecting the pieces together.

He lets it happen in silence. Only touches his hair, his cheek, his neck, compelled to reassure himself this is not a dream.

“You were there,” Viktor says eventually, in that lilting accent. “In my memories with me?”

“Yeah.”

“You heard what I was thinking?”

“I did.”

Viktor bites his lip. “I see.”

Jayce says nothing, just waits. He has time for patience, now.

Viktor studies him.

“The last one, in the lab,” he says, low. “That was you?”

Desire shoots through Jayce like a wildfire.

“Mhm,” he rumbles, sliding one hand down Viktor’s bare body to his hip, curling his fingers around it tightly. “It was. And, to be clear…I would kiss you, just like that, my Viktor. Whenever you want. You need only ask.”

Viktor exhales sharply. His pupils darken, though he does not move; he is gazing at Jayce’s mouth as if spellbound. Jayce cannot resist him any longer. He rolls them both, so that Viktor is pressed into the soft grass beneath them, his hair fanned out like a halo around his head.

“Are you going to ask?” Jayce purrs, sliding against him sinfully, breathing the words against his lips, aflame with want.

In answer, Viktor kisses him, one slender leg wrapping around his waist to pull him down.

Need consumes them instantly, a blazing conflagration that neither are prepared for. All their world narrows to each other, this eternal ache to touch, to know, to give. It maddens and satiates them in equal measure, a passionate fervour of requited love, kindled by a decade of mutual longing.

Sweat slicks their bodies as they rock together, gasping into each other’s mouths with wild abandon; magic sparks around them when Viktor moans suddenly, throwing his head back from the strength of his cry.

“Inside me,” he pants, arching deliciously against Jayce, causing him to bite down on Viktor’s shoulder to muffle his answering groan. “I must feel you, Jayce”

One pale hand reaches out to grasp a bunch of primroses; Viktor tears them free, crushing them in his hand in a flare of magical energy, leaving a smear of shining oil that he applies to Jayce and himself in agonising, teasing strokes.

“Enough,” Jayce gasps eventually, pressing their brows together, shaking with need. “Viktor-”

“Yes,” begs Viktor. “Yes, please, yes- oh god-”

Jayce means to take it slow, to worship him, but the first push obliterates all coherent thought, for their joining is a pleasure beyond any he has ever known; Viktor moans like a desperate creature, raking his nails down Jayce’s back as if he cannot get enough, and it is more than Jayce can bear.

He gives it to him hard, gives him everything he has, panting against the soft skin of Viktor’s neck. He pounds them viciously to a blissful peak, and at the climax they cry each other’s names, rendered senseless from the sheer ecstasy and dazing relief of finally being found.

***

They find the gurgling creek afterwards, nestled in the lee of two rolling hills, leaping merrily over smooth river stones. They wash themselves and then tumble into a patch of daisies beside the water, overtaken by a soul-deep exhaustion, and fall asleep curled together in the hill's shade.

Jayce’s dreams are dark and formless, causing him to spasm on the grass irregularly, faint flashes of horror and trepidation shivering through him. It is a foreboding sense of loneliness that wakes him sometime in the evening; he comes to with a startled gasp, his eyes unseeing, filled with terror that Viktor has left him in the meadow alone, and what will he do if Viktor has gone?

Jayce cannot lose him, not again-

A warm hand catches his own, and soft lips caress his knuckles.

“It’s alright, Jayce,” Viktor murmurs. “I’m here. I’m not leaving you again. Not unless you wish it.”

“I don’t,” gasps Jayce, reaching for him blindly, heaving for air. “Please don’t.”

Viktor holds him steady until his heart rate mellows, whispering soothing words into his ear while grounding him with touch. When his panic has receded, Jayce inhales the scent of primrose on his skin and sighs.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I expect this will happen again.”

“Do not be sorry, darling. I’ve no doubt you’ll be doing the same for me in due course.”

Jayce leans back to gaze into his eyes. Warmth and love greet him, but underneath, shadows yet lurk. The scars on their souls are not so easily healed, not even by magic.

“We’re kinda fucked up, aren’t we?” he murmurs.

Viktor- laughs. Jayce stares at him, amazed.

“I think that might be an understatement, my Jayce,” he says, smiling. “But at least we can be fucked up together, no?”

Jayce smiles back at him, and the tension in his body loosens. “Yeah.”

Viktor tilts his head suddenly, his eyes flickering with a strange cast.

“I have marked you,” he says. He gestures towards Jayce’s brow.

Jayce lifts a hand and passes a hand over his forehead. Four jewel shaped marks tingle as he touches them, the skin there unusually sensitive, a lingering magic still humming beneath the surface.

“Huh,” he says. “Must be from when you claimed my mind?”

When he looks up again, Viktor is staring at him hungrily.

“May I?” he asks in a dark, possessive tone. Jayce swallows and nods.

The moment Viktor’s fingers touch him there, Jayce moans, sinking supine onto the daisy bed; it feels as if Viktor is stroking a hand through his soul, causing him to tremble helplessly beneath him.

The sensation feels amazing.

“Good?” asks Viktor slyly, sounding imminently satisfied.

“So, so good,” gasps Jayce, fighting to hold still, so he does not arch like a cat into the caress.

“Mm. There’s a patch of primroses to your left, you know.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.”

“Good to know. I’ve always appreciated botany as a science. Any other floral facts you’d like to share with me? What’s growing to my right, maybe?”

Viktor purses his mouth. Jayce slides him a saucy wink, then breaks into a moan as Viktor leans down to apply his lips directly onto Jayce’s brow.

“Oh,” Jayce pants, dizzy with want. “Do that again.”

“I will, if you roll to your left. Don’t make me drag you over, Jayce.” Viktor pauses, then adds in a hot breath against his ear: “Unless you want me to, of course?”

Jayce is undone; he can do nothing except obey and roll over to his front in the primroses. They quickly lose themselves in each other again, teasing with lips and tongue, stoking the flame between them once more.

When he is ready, Viktor takes him, savouring him slowly until Jayce is begging sweetly beneath him, yearning for release at his partner’s hands. Only then does Viktor’s restraint shatter, wholly unable to deny him; he gives Jayce exactly what he needs, deep and swift, and in short order they are both groaning as their orgasms wash over them like the tide.

They lay together in the afterglow for a while, sticky and sated, absorbed in the other’s eyes, kissing languidly as the sky shifts from blue to gold.

Eventually they stir and return to the creek to bathe, wading out to the centre, since it only flows up to their shins at the deepest point. They kneel there and take turns pouring cool water over each other’s bodies with cupped hands until they are cleansed.

The evening air is still warm when they emerge, though with night fast approaching, that may not stay true once the sun has disappeared.

“We need clothes,” mutters Jayce, somewhat irked at himself for neglecting this concern all afternoon in favour of…other pursuits. “And food. And shelter.”

Viktor does not reply. When Jayce looks over at him, his partner is sitting in the grass again, one hand extended, palm down, to lay upon the earth.

“Viktor?”

“Quiet, please. I’m listening.”

Jayce pads over and sits quietly next to him, observing. Viktor is frowning in concentration, his brow furrowed; his hand twitches intermittently, as if reacting to some unseen force. There is a taste of ozone in the air.

Jayce waits, fiddling with a blade of grass.

“It’s a nexus of Arcane power,” says Viktor eventually, opening his eyes.

“This place?”

“Yes. Magic flows through this realm with hardly any separation from intent and desire.”

Jayce eyes him. “So you still have the Hexcore’s magic within you?”

Viktor looks at him then with a wry smile. “No, I don’t think so. This is different. I have no more magic than anyone else in this meadow would, just a little more experience, maybe. Here, feel for yourself.”

He takes Jayce’s hand and presses it to the ground.

“Do you remember the night we first cracked Hextech?”

Jayce raises a pointed eyebrow, and Viktor sighs.

“Eh, stupid question. What I mean to ask is, can you recall that sensation of lightness in your body? As if gravity had reversed its polarity?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Good. Close your eyes and reach for that sensation within the earth below you. Try and…pull it up, though your fingertips, until you can feel it in your chest.”

Jayce closes his eyes and obeys, concentrating intently.

For several long minutes he tries to search for that sensation. When nothing happens, he feels rather foolish, as if he were a child playing magician in his parent’s garden again, waving sticks with an azure crystal attached securely to his wrist.

The thought distracts him for a moment, lost in a memory of innocence, and then-

A protective warmth reaches out to him, like a mother’s lullaby, glimmering up his arm and into his heart. A dormant knowledge, something he always knew, yet could never hold onto, unlocks within him.

“Oh,” he breathes, realising. Unbidden, his eyes fly open.

Prismatic light is floating around his arm in erratic loops, somewhat akin to an electrical current that flicks against the hairs of his arm.

“It’s like Hextech,” he says, stunned. “Except, without the…”

“…Without the technological interference,” finishes Viktor, smiling at him. “Go on. Cast it.”

“Cast it? For what? And- how?”

“Manifest what you want by picturing it. As you said: clothes, some food, a cottage, a dragon; weren’t you always telling me how much you wanted a pet salamander?”

“Not helping. Do you really want to start this life by summoning a fire breathing dragon into an open plain of flowers?”

“Hardly the worst thing we’ve done,” says Viktor calmly, and the dark humour catches Jayce so off guard that he is startled into a laugh.

“Clothes to start,” he decides emphatically, once he has recovered, and envisions what he needs in his mind’s eye. Fey butterflies shimmer into existence as the magic pours off his arm into a glowing orb that hovers before him; after a moment, the coalescing power dissipates, and two piles of clothing land on his lap.

“Holy shit,” he breathes. “I just magicked us some fucking underwear.”

“Truly, your greatest accomplishment to date,” Viktor drawls, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Oh, shut up.”

They continue to bicker while they dress. The clothes themselves are a blend of Zaunite and Piltovan commoner garb, complete with shirts, pants, vests, leather boots, and hooded cloaks: scarlet for Jayce, indigo for Viktor.

When they stand again, Jayce runs his eyes over Viktor, admiring the slender muscle of his long legs, the enticing curl of silver resting against his cheek. Affection rushes through him; he goes over to gather him into his arms and squeezes him tightly.

“Too much, Jayce,” gasps Viktor, trying and failing to shove him away.

“Too bad,” says Jayce cheerfully, unrelenting. “Better get used to it.”

Viktor makes a noise of complaint, though he melts when Jayce lays a kiss upon his neck, and slips his arms around Jayce’s waist with a sigh.

“What is it?” Jayce asks him, catching the pensive look in his eyes.

Viktor opens his mouth, then closes it again, troubled.

“You can tell me,” encourages Jayce, cupping a hand against his face. “Anything at all, sweetheart.”

“I…” starts Viktor, stilted. “I just. I am not sure I deserve this happiness, Jayce. Not after everything I’ve done.”

He tucks his face against Jayce’s neck after he finishes speaking. Jayce holds him close and stares up at the purpling sky.

“I have no answers to that,” he says slowly. “Though I do believe what happened is not solely your fault, nor mine, Viktor. Too many others were involved for that to be true. I learned that while running through your memories.”

“What do you mean?” Viktor mumbles the question, still hiding his face against him.

“Ambessa, the Council, Silco, Singed…all played their part in the Herald’s ascension. Think about it: the variables are countless. The Black Rose supposedly wanted to stop Ambessa in order to prevent an apocalypse, yet in doing so they drove her straight to you. Or what if Jinx hadn't blown up the Council Chambers that night? Would that have changed the outcome? How can we ever analyse it fairly?”

He leans back slightly and tilts Viktor’s chin up to catch his gaze.

“Nevertheless, fate, or the Arcane, saw fit to give us a second chance. We have a long road to walk, I know. But we’ll be walking it together. That’s enough to keep me moving.”

Viktor looks back at him with those gorgeous honey eyes, shifting with myriad emotions.

“Where will we go, though?” he asks quietly.

“Well, to start…” Jayce makes a show of considering, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “I was thinking about climbing up there to watch the sunset.”

“Jayce.” Viktor huffs at him, though a sweet smile is spreading across his face once more.

Jayce flashes him a grin and offers an arm. “C’mon, Viktor. Live a little, or at least, give me this before we opt to flagellate ourselves for all eternity.”

“…You’re incorrigible.”

“You love it.”

“I do,” murmurs Viktor, taking his arm. “I do love you.”

They walk up the nearby hill, leaning on each other, and at the crest, they settle amongst the primroses, daisies, and tulips. The vista is expansive, undulating fields of emerald grasses and lush wildflowers that eventually give way to vast mountains, whose peaks are gilded by the sinking sunset. The clouds above are a riot of colour: lily lavender, peony pink, apricot amber.

It is so beautiful it brings tears to Jayce’s eyes. He glances at Viktor, and sees he is similarly affected, so he reaches down to pluck a daisy and then tucks it delicately behind Viktor’s ear, amongst his oaken tresses.

To his surprise, Viktor does not tease him for the gesture. He only looks at him tenderly, eyes full of love, and shuffles closer to lean his head on Jayce’s shoulder. Delight sparkles through him at the motion, and Jayce gently pulls him in, resting against him in turn.

Together they sit, until the gloaming has cooled the world to mystical shadow, and the frogs begin to croak peacefully in the creek behind them as effervescent butterflies flit like stardust across the meadows of their new home.