Archive of Our Own ^beta

I would recognize you in total darkness, were you mute and I deaf. I would recognize you in another lifetime entirely, in different bodies, different times. And I would love you in all of this, until the very last star in the sky burnt out into oblivion. 

Madeline Miller 

Viktor can’t bring himself to leave. 

He thought he was past the sort of sentimentality capable of driving him to such weakness. He’d transcended, hadn’t he? He had rebuilt himself without all of the broken pieces of his former life, painstakingly purged himself of worldly attachment, and yet—

He can’t find the will to walk away. Not when Jayce is still here, suspended on the precipice between life and death. Forever frozen. Always within the reach of Viktor’s fingertips, but no longer capable of responding to his touch. Viktor had stolen that ability—that simple act of autonomy—from him just as he’d stolen it from everyone else. And now Jayce was here, never to wake again. 

Never to lay a grounding hand upon Viktor’s shoulder, his thumb pressing soothing circles into his back. Never to speak, to offer words of encouragement or protest in that smooth, rumbling voice of his. Never to lay those amber eyes upon him and see him as no other had. Viktor would have taken arguments and battles to this unnatural stillness a thousand times over. Jayce had always been a man of motion, a blur of energy and light that spilled over everything he touched. He was not meant to be still and supplicant as he was now. 

“Why didn’t you fight?” Viktor asks in the early days of his solitude, frustrated and accusatory. He’s standing in front of Jayce, watching his prone form as though the man might suddenly look up, his familiar eyes bright, his skin shining, restored to personhood in the blink of an eye. 

But there are no anomalies in the world that Viktor has created, no miracles. Viktor had made certain of that. He had washed the world in pale, unforgiving light and only realized in the aftermath that he had extinguished the flame upon which he relied on for warmth. In the pursuit of perfection, he had erased the man whom he had once believed was the closest he’d ever get to encountering it. 

Jayce is still and silent; he is not there, not in any meaningful way. Viktor discovers early on that wisps of a person might remain in their body, the puppetlike creatures that had once been his friends, his colleagues, his fellow humans sometimes stirring when he walks past them. Their faceless heads turn towards him, their cold fingers grasp at the air as he presses through throngs of their suspended figures. Their minds are gone, lost to the star-speckled eternity Viktor has drawn them into, but it seems as though the rote instinct to move, to seek warmth, cannot ever be entirely erased. 

Viktor is not afraid. It brings him a strange sense of comfort, at first, to see the puppets move; a small spark of hope. Perhaps, he thinks, he could return these people to their bodies and free them. He would only need to untangle the shifting web of an individual’s consciousness from another’s, isolate it and guide it back to its proper home. It is not an easy task. It is no task at all, he learns quickly. 

They’ve melted too far into one another. These people, whomever they once were, no longer exist as individuals. Finding any one of them, extricating the impossibly tangled threads of one person’s selfhood from all others, is beyond even the scope of Viktor’s power. He tries anyway. If he could only find Jayce, if he could just pluck him out of the endless night and draw him back into his body, perhaps they could fix this. Viktor does not question whether or not Jayce would help him. Jayce always had. He always would. 

But Jayce is gone. His body—if it can even be called that, when hardly any visual trace of him still remains—does not even respond to Viktor’s presence as the others do. He remains just as he had been in the moments before Viktor had severed him from himself: knelt forever at the feet of his own destruction. Weapon down, the bulk of his hammer pressed into the ground rather than raised to strike. Jayce had known even before Viktor had that there was no escaping what was to come.

“Is this my punishment?” Viktor asks when Jayce’s kneeling form offers no response. He resists the urge to lash out, to wrench Jayce’s hammer from the grip of his frozen, warped hands just to see if it might finally draw something out of him—but of course it won’t. Jayce is gone. Viktor has erased him. 

Viktor collapses to his knees, crawls forward. He wants to shake Jayce back to life. He wants to cup his cheeks and feel the warmth of Jayce’s skin against his palms, wants to watch his lips part, wants to hear him speak, but the blankness of his face holds Viktor back. Jayce’s face is smooth and empty, immutable. A porcelain shell identical to all others. There is nothing left, and that is perhaps the worst punishment of all: Viktor will not even get to look upon Jayce’s face and remember him as he’d been. 

It’s foolish to hope—to want—but he does it anyway. The urge to touch is too great to bear. Viktor threads his hands through the cage of Jayce’s arms, reaches up, and takes the broken face of his partner into his hands. 

The biting cold is the first thing he notices. Jayce had always run hot, perhaps excessively so; Viktor remembers the way it had sometimes seemed to burn when Jayce laid a hand over his shoulder or clapped him gently on the back, heat searing him straight down to the bone. Heat like that should have hurt him, but Viktor had always found solace in its scorch.

Now there is no warmth or comfort in the shared point of contact. It feels like a lifetime ago that Viktor had wondered what it might be like to do this very thing, to grasp Jayce in his hands. In his most indulgent version of events, Jayce’s brown skin would flush with warmth beneath his touch, red rising to the apples of his cheeks. Viktor would graze his thumb over the corner of Jayce’s lips, exploratory, and Jayce’s mouth would fall open in astonishment, stuttered questions pouring from his lips. Viktor had never let himself imagine what might have happened if he’d had the will to push further—he’d been too afraid to hope, even in a fantasy, that Jayce would reciprocate.

“Jayce,” Viktor rasps, and he sounds unbearably pathetic and pleading to his own ears.

If Jayce was still here, there was no doubt in Viktor’s mind that this simple plea is all it would have taken to capture his full attention. He’d have dropped everything without a second thought, closed in the distance until he was at Viktor’s side. Arms open, palms outstretched, concern etched into every line of his face. Ready to reach out the moment Viktor requested it. Always so open with his emotions, so eager to display his affection. As though he were proud of it. Proud of Viktor. But Viktor had never let himself believe it. What could a man like Jayce have found in Viktor that was worth such unadulterated pride?

“Please. Jayce.” Viktor tries again and feels immediately, unbearably selfish for resorting to this, begging the man he’d destroyed to rescue him from his mistakes. “If this is a punishment, shout at me. Hit me. Just don’t—” Viktor cuts himself off, choking on a sob. Just don’t be gone, he wants to say, don’t leave me here all alone. 

Jayce had chased him to the end of everything. Viktor will never forget watching him slump to his knees in this very spot and surrender to his own erasure at the hands of his closest friend. What right did Viktor have to ask this of him now? What right did he have to desire Jayce’s company after erasing him entirely? 

But Jayce has always been more than he deserves, so he answers Viktor’s pleas anyway. 

Not with words—not even with movement. Just a faint flutter, a stirring of something that Viktor knows immediately. Just Jayce’s fingers resting on the broken strings of his heart, pulling one back and plucking it ever-so-gently. It’s so soft it's hardly there at all, a phantom pang that should be completely indistinguishable from any of the thousands of souls colliding and melding within the ocean of space Viktor inhabits. But it is Jayce. Viktor knows it immediately, feels it down to the core of him. Whatever had reached out had the markings of Jayce’s intrinsic, all-encompassing light, and now that Viktor had felt it he clung to it desperately. 

His fingers tighten around Jayce’s stony face, watching for any sign of life. It does not come. Just another faint pang, a sudden spike of energy amongst the infinitesimal realm of Viktor’s consciousness—and then warmth. The sort of warmth only Jayce had ever given to him, a heat that cuts straight through the bone-deep exhaustion of Viktor’s frame and breathes new life straight into the heart of him. 

Viktor had forgotten what it was like to be warm. He collapses, hands slipping from Jayce’s empty face, and bows head to the ground, weeping into the decaying ruin of their shared dream underfoot.

In the time that follows—an expanse that Viktor does not bother to measure or account for, but that he knows must stretch out behind him far beyond what any creature should be capable of experiencing—he finds himself here over and over again. He visits Jayce compulsively, pressing into him whenever he feels weary or frightened or hopeless. Jayce never speaks, never moves the way the others do, but Viktor feels him constantly. 

He attunes himself to Jayce’s presence, familiarizes himself with every minute change in the expression of Jayce’s energy. They cannot converse, exactly; whatever is left of Jayce is inexorably removed from any traditional concept of humanity, but he is always there. He is a constant presence, a warmth that never falters. Even after the end of everything, he comes to Viktor’s rescue time and time again, a singular point of energy in a world entirely devoid of it. 

“I went to see you again,” Viktor says one day, draped over Jayce’s hunched back, face pressed against his shoulder. He’s long-past the point of caring for his own pride; it’s not as though there is anyone left to mock him for his weakness anymore, after all. Nothing to stop him from indulging in the warmth of Jayce’s figure, the flutter of his energy nestled deep within. 

Viktor has mastered the art of turning the others out, of honing in on Jayce’s soft light alone, and he smiles when Jayce’s energy flutters in the barest acknowledgment of his words. He’ll never know if Jayce is responding to what he’s saying—if there is any true understanding left—or if he is simply responding to Viktor’s voice, but he suspects it is the latter. The fluctuations in Jayce’s energy are random, sporadic; they do not seem to change depending on what Viktor says to him, how he acts. He ebbs and flows without discipline, but he never fades away entirely. 

The knowledge of this aches. Viktor despises himself for what he’s deprived the world of, for what he’s deprived himself of. One of the most brilliant, unparalleled minds the world would ever encounter, and Viktor had snuffed it out in pursuit of his own ambition. He’d stolen Jayce’s light, and now all he could do was try hopelessly, over and over, to stop himself from doing it again in some other timeline. 

At least he wasn’t doing it alone. 

“I tried another rune.” Viktor continues. “We will see what you make of it.” 

His lips quirk up into a smile at the thought. Visiting Jayce as a child burns every time, but it is also one of the very few indulgences Viktor allows himself. To see Jayce bright and awestruck, with so much life still left to spill out in front of him, fills Viktor with a rare sense of hope that, inexplicably, does not diminish no matter how many times he repeats the process. He does sometimes lose himself when he realizes another timeline has failed, but when he goes back again, when he drops the rune into Jayce’s gloved hands and sees the pure, unadulterated wonder on his face, Viktor’s hope blossoms bright within him once more. 

“You are brilliant. You have always been so brilliant. It is a wonder something as bright as you was ever allowed to exist at all.” Viktor murmurs against the shell of Jayce’s ear. Then, just as he lets his eyes slide shut: “I am sorry to have failed you so many times, Jayce.” 

The warmth burns brighter. Viktor leans into it and closes his eyes. 

And then, without any warning, Jayce is there. 

Not his Jayce. Viktor’s Jayce is as stock-still as ever, parts of him weathered away by time and covered in plant growth, utterly unmoved by the sudden presence of an outsider for the first time in, in—in an eternity, Viktor thinks, and has to hold himself from back from rushing to Jayce’s side immediately. This Jayce does not have the knowledge he needs yet, has not yet seen the desolation that Hextech will cause if left unimpeded. Viktor has told himself time and time again that if another Jayce ever does manage to make it here, he will not interfere before it is time. But he cannot stop himself from watching. 

This Jayce is just like Viktor’s own: the same age his had been when it had all ended, if not very close to it. Same dark hair, same bright eyes, the same rugged determination that forces him to keep going well past the point at which many others would have stopped. Viktor had nearly intervened when he’d hurt his leg—he would never forgive himself if he let another version of Jayce die at his hands—but he needed Jayce to see the truth of this world, the cruelty of it. Nobody to help. Nobody to offer comfort. Nothing but empty faces and the hollow wind for company. 

Jayce survives, just as Viktor had known he would. He climbs his way to the top of their ruined world step by painstaking step, and Viktor watches, his desperation growing with every slow advancement. He needs this Jayce to make it. Needs to see his face in the clear light, to hear his voice doing something other than crying out in pain. Needs, selfishly, to feel the heat of his skin beneath his palm. He needs Jayce’s warmth, his solidity, the weight of his presence taking up space. A man in motion. 

And then Jayce is there, kneeling before his own ruined figure, crumpled by the weight of what he has seen. Viktor stands behind his Jayce, keeping himself at a distance from the outsider fear of losing himself entirely. He cannot bear to look, to see the raw tangibility of the man knelt before him. He cannot let himself have this, not even for a moment, not when his Jayce will forever be deprived.

“Why did you ever give me this?” Jayce asks, raw desperation in his voice. He’s clutching at the bracelet wrapped around his wrist, glancing down at it and then up to Viktor with pained, pleading eyes. “Why?” 

Viktor finally brings himself to look. He sees the shock on Jayce’s face, the emotions flashing, and wants to cry. Wants to abandon all pretense and throw himself forward, fling himself into the arms that he knows are strong and warm and real. He wants Jayce’s weight bearing down against his own, the heat of his skin, the roughness of his hands. He wants to feel the rumble of Jayce’s voice when he speaks, wants to bend his head and listen to his heartbeat for as long as he is allowed to. Jayce. He wants Jayce, real and alive beneath his fingertips. 

He doesn’t know how he manages it, but Viktor explains. He tells Jayce what he’s done, what’s to come. He lays the truth of his folly down at Jayce’s feet, and when he’s finished Jayce is watching him with wide, despairing eyes—but there’s no anger in his gaze, no fear or disappointment.

“Oh, Viktor,” he gasps, and Viktor nearly sobs. He relishes the sound of it, the honeyed way that his name falls from Jayce’s lips even after everything he’s done. He thinks Jayce will shout at him, rail against him for being so selfish, so self-serving and stupid—a weak, self-pitying part of Viktor hopes for it, even. He wants Jayce to shout at him if only to hear him speak more, if only to give Viktor the opportunity to apologize for it all. 

But all Jayce asks is, “How long have you been here? How long have you been alone?”

Jayce is concerned. Concerned for the monster that brought about the end of countless worlds, for the object of his own destruction. He’s so kind. He’s always been so achingly, desperately kind. It burns, to hear him speak with such tenderness. To address Viktor with so much undeserved care, to be worried for him of all people.

“I am not alone,” Viktor murmurs, his gaze flickering to his Jayce, the statue knelt as a guard between them. He watches the other Jayce do the same, watches as realization begins to dawn on him. 

“You don’t have to stay here,” Jayce says, panting, wetness rimming the whites of his eyes. “I wouldn’t—he wouldn’t want you to stay here with him. You could go anywhere.”

Viktor smiles, very nearly laughs with the absurdity of it all. Here Jayce is, confronted by the stone-faced evidence of his demise at Viktor’s hands, and still he is looking after Viktor. Still he tries to protect him, to offer comfort. Still he is kind. 

“Not without you,” Viktor says, laying a hand gently upon Jayce’s shoulder—his Jayce—and finds that he is not surprised when Jayce moves. Of course this would be the thing that draws him back, if only for an instant: the opportunity to save Viktor. 

Jayce moves at an unhurried pace, aeons of inactivity slowing him, and pushes the hammer forward. His fingers peel away, relinquishing his hold on it. The other Jayce watches, chest heaving, before he slowly wraps a hand around the handle, clutching it tight. When he looks up at Viktor, there is that same burning determination in his eyes that Viktor has loved for so long—and that same sense of wonder, too. 

It is agony not to reach for him. Viktor finds that he can hardly manage it, has to keep his eyes downcast and his body turned half-away just to keep himself from swaying into him. He does not deserve it, he reminds himself. He will not take from another Jayce what he will never be able to give to his own. 

After Viktor sends him back, he rounds on Jayce, whose figure is as silent and still as ever. So many questions flit through his mind as he stares at the man’s curved spine, the weary hunch of his shoulders: Have you heard me all this time? Should I have tried harder to bring you back? Have I failed you all this time, over and over again, by being unable to disentangle you from everyone else? They are senseless, pointless questions. It does no good to dwell on what could have been, so Viktor does not waste time voicing them.

Instead he walks around to face Jayce, sinks heavily to his knees. He is unmoving once more. His arms are still hovering, ever-suspended, now curled around nothing. He looks different without his staff: less defeated, perhaps. Now he just looks tired, wanting. As though he’s reaching out for something rather than clutching at a final lifeline. 

Viktor might be projecting. 

The empty space is too inviting to ignore, so Viktor kneels down before Jayce, takes a breath, and ducks his head beneath the bracket of Jayce’s arms. He moves slowly, gently; there is no reason to hurry now. It will all be over soon, one way or another. Viktor eases himself back, sighs in relief when his back presses against Jayce’s stiff chest and that all-encompassing warmth floods his system. He sinks lower, his head resting on one of Jayce’s arms, his feet curled up by his knees. Lets his shoulders slump, his eyes flutter closed. The constant noise of the world quiets. 

“It won’t be long now,” Viktor tells Jayce, and lets himself rest.