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In this timeline—the first timeline—is the start of many things. In this timeline, there is no runestone.
Instead, it is the first Machine Herald and the first Defender of Tomorrow, the first battle against Noxus and the first Glorious Evolution. It is, as well, the first time the world ends.
And, so importantly, it is the first time the Machine Herald stands atop the destroyed Hexgate and realises the error in his ways. This happens years and years and years after the end of the world, so many years that it almost doesn’t matter. The Machine Herald—Viktor—is alone and has been alone for a very long time. It only bothers him now.
Kneeling where he left him so long ago, is the dead and ruined figure of Jayce Talis. It is not a name the Machine Herald ever dared to think of, but the Machine Herald never dared to return to the top of the Hexgate. Not until now, when that feeling in the back of his mind called him there.
That feeling he now knows to call longing.
He kneels before Jayce, stares at the gaps in him and the moss and plants that have grown in the hollow where his heart once was. His hammer sits in his grasp, ultimately useless in the end. How Viktor wishes now that it could have worked. What would the world have been, if Jayce had not failed?
Viktor remembers, a sharp and sudden thing, when Jayce came to him in the commune. When Jayce joined him there and stayed with him for many long weeks. Until Viktor’s abilities gave out. Until Ambessa Medarda attacked. Until Jayce ran to save Caitlyn and Singed returned in his place.
And Viktor, as desperate to keep living as he always was, agreed to his offer.
Jayce had never stood a chance.
The Arcane calls to him, as it always did. And in this form, no longer the metal bulk of the Herald, he can feel how it is meant to be. Not this warped and rotten thing that surrounds him, but something that could be beautiful. Something that encases this universe and every other.
He sees it, kneeled before the love of his life, and understands the truth of what he is meant to be. A mage, always. A scientist, always. He can still be both, and he can apologise to the Arcane for the many mistakes he has made. He can apologise to Jayce too.
The knowledge burns. The knowledge is agony. He could have been so many things, could have had so much more than he did. And instead, he destroyed it all in a warped idea of perfection and safety. Because that was what he had always wanted, health and safety and warmth. He’d wanted to live.
And now he will, but at what cost? Jayce is dead, and has been dead for longer than he ever lived.
Viktor pulls on the Arcane, asks it a question and hopes it will answer. He weaves runes in his mind, casts them in the air in a way that is new and instinctual—like he has been doing it his entire life. It is easy, in the end, to make a runestone. It sits his palm, an innocent thing, but he knows it will change so much.
With this, it will not take them so long to figure out Hextech. With this, they may meet even earlier. With this, Viktor may learn his mistakes before he ever dares to make them.
The runestone is easy, but understanding the way the Arcane weaves between universes takes longer. He does not know how long he sits across from Jayce, lost in the Arcane, desperate to understand it.
But he does, eventually.
He sees the connections between worlds, sees how the Arcane shifts from one to another. And what is he now, if not a part of the Arcane? He eyes the runestone in his hand, and he knows what he must do.
“I’m sorry,” he says to the hollow form of Jayce. These are his first words in years and years and years, and he does not find that they ache as much as he expected. “I will make this right, I promise.”
And then, staff in hand, he is gone.
Too soon to see the way the yellow eyes of what was once Jayce shift to the space he had been standing.
~*~
In this timeline, Ximena Talis succumbs to the blizzard.
Viktor makes it too late to save her, lost and confused amidst the storm. But he does find Jayce, sobbing and screaming in the snow, and transports them both somewhere nicer.
This is the first difference from his timeline. It is the most important.
Viktor drops a runestone into Jayce’s tiny hand. He stares for a long time at the boy that will so soon become the man he loves. The boy who will, hopefully, save him from himself.
Viktor helps him bury his mother, and then he shows him the way to Piltover, so scared that letting him wander on his own will be the death of him.
In this timeline, Hextech happens earlier. In this timeline, so does Viktor’s disease. It takes him before he can ever make the Hexcore. Jayce mourns and Hextech lies stagnant for years.
It does not feel like a victory.
~*~
When Viktor blinks back to himself, he is still standing before the figure that was once Jayce. It aches more the second time, somehow, seeing him sitting there—the epitome of everything Viktor ever did wrong.
In that universe, they loved each other, and neither one ever spoke of it. This Jayce had, in the commune, and they’d had a few weeks together before it all came crumbling down. Viktor thinks back on those weeks, those nights spent in the cradle of Jayce’s arms. And it burns.
Oh, the life they could have had.
Viktor kneels again, runs his fingers down what remains of the hammer. They weren’t just his mistakes, were they? Both of them were trying to survive in a world so determined to work against them. There was nothing else they could have done to stop it. Now, though, Viktor has a solution.
He stares at the storm that has settled around the Hexgate, protecting Jayce from the evolved figures of his once followers who now aimlessly swarm the land. He does not remember creating the storm, but he must have. Some forgotten part of himself still attached to Jayce even after the end.
That was the reason Jayce never evolved—this he knows with a painful certainty.
He could not ever bare it, having Jayce one with him. This way, even dead, Jayce is still his own person.
Viktor does not say anything this time. He simply pulls upon the Arcane and leaves.
~*~
In this timeline, Viktor saves Jayce and Ximena. He hands Jayce the runestone and leaves.
It is easier the second time.
In this timeline, Jayce’s early studies are more powerful. The explosion in his room kills a child, and he is put to death. This timeline’s Viktor watches the trial with a painful ambivalence. He will never know what could have been.
Jayce dies, and Viktor follows with nothing to his name except the title of ‘assistant’, forgotten in a matter of years.
Viktor does not linger long than that, even as Zaun flourishes in their wake. It is too painful to think about.
~*~
“How strange,” Viktor says, hours after he returns. “That the world would be better with us both dead.”
Jayce does not respond, of course, but that does not stop Viktor from talking to him.
“I’d like to think that there is a world out there where we create Hextech and make everything better. They cannot be separate things, not in every universe.” He sighs and wipes away the tears that threaten to fall. “That cannot be the truth of it all.”
Bugs still live in this world that Viktor has created, though they are nothing like the ones that came before the end. They flit across the warped metal below him, and when they dare to touch Jayce he flicks them away.
“I will tell you when I find one. I hope it will be soon.”
~*~
In this timeline, they fail.
In this timeline, Jayce is angry.
In this timeline, Viktor leads the commune without him, dies the same way and is restored by Singed once again.
They march upon the city and Jayce is there, but there is nothing he can do.
The Machine Herald takes all. The Glorious Evolution comes again.
And this time, Viktor does not let the Machine Herald linger in the world it has created. He meets it in the astral plane of the Arcane. It stares at him, but before it can understand the depth of its sins—before it can be Viktor again—he takes that soul and merges it with his own.
There will only be one of him jumping from timeline to timeline, an amalgamation of every mistake he has ever made.
~*~
He has memories now that are not his, memories that are repetitions of his own. They are surprisingly easy to segment away. He stills feels them, though, the heartbreak at Jayce’s anger, the longing for his return, the hope that they could still be something. And then the perfect nothingness after the end.
It would have taken that Viktor years of ruling upon fields of nothing to realise that something was missing. To realise that perfection does not and cannot exist, not without sacrificing everything. They were lonely years, in hindsight. Painful years. He’d searched for something that did not exist and when he realised the quiet, he could not ignore it again.
Viktor touches his face, grateful for the feeling of skin on skin. How easy it had been, in the end, to shed the metal visage. He is left with a body of void and starlight, a body of the Arcane, but it feels more like him than anything else before did.
And there is still Jayce. Viktor loves the permanence of him. Loves him. Still, after all this time. He always will, until age eventually takes him. And how strange a thought that is, that age will be the thing that takes him in the end. But until then, Viktor will jump from timeline to timeline and when he comes home, he will tend to Jayce.
Moss crawls up his arms now, marring that perfect white. He is the epitome of everything the Machine Herald wanted gone from the world, broken and covered in plant matter. In the quiet around them, he is beautiful.
“We lost in this one,” he says to him, and this time his voice is choked. “I’m sorry.”
He does not wait for a response he knows will not come.
~*~
In this timeline, Viktor tries harder. He presses the stone against Jayce’s palm, makes him promise to be careful with it. Not a lot changes.
Hextech is made the same. An explosion, a trial, an ‘am I interrupting’.
After that, it is very, very different.
In this timeline, Viktor does not spill his blood in the Hexcore. In this timeline, Jayce never becomes Councillor. They cure him with the Arcane. For a while, they are happy. They love each other.
And then there is war between Zaun and Piltover, and then Hextech is made into weapons. And then Jayce and Viktor fight for Zaun.
And then they die, in battle, together.
It is the happiest timeline Viktor has seen.
~*~
This time, when he returns, there is a soft feeling against his wrist. It takes him a moment to realise what it is. His hand rests against the handle of the hammer, like he can’t quite stop himself from touching it.
And there, against the soft skin where his pulse lies, are fingers. Viktor blinks, stares at the whiteness of them, the impossibility of them, and follows the line of them up a hand, an arm, a shoulder. To a face that stares back at him around the long handle of the hammer.
“Jayce?” Viktor whispers. It’s so quiet. He doesn’t dare say it any louder. In case he’s wrong, in case this a figment of the multiple imaginations currently inside him.
And then the hollow form of Jayce moves. His fingers curl around Viktor’s wrist, holds him so gently like he’s afraid he’ll hurt him. Jayce never could, not even if he wanted to. He pulls Viktor’s arm closer, closer, until it rests on what remains of his shoulder. There is little similarity between the body he has now and the one Viktor knew so intimately, but he draws his fingers alone where the collarbone would be all the same.
“Are you really in there?” Viktor asks, hating the hope that burrows into his chest.
Jayce nods, a slow and agonising movement. It breaks Viktor’s heart.
“All this time?”
Another nod. Jayce does not have a mouth, he cannot speak. He does, however, have eyes, and they track every movement Viktor makes. They are a beautiful yellow, almost the same shade as Viktor’s own. His hand trails up, cups his cheek, feels the cool metal of his form against his skin.
“I don’t—” Viktor says, but he does not know what he was trying to say. “Jayce, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t—I didn’t—”
There are tears in his eyes. They spill down his cheeks and stain the white robes he now wears. Jayce stares at him, and there’s so little emotion in his face. He could be angry, could be furious. Viktor would not even blame him. Look at what he has done.
But Jayce’s fingers trail up his arm, brush softly over his skin and his bandages, move as gently at his always did. And Viktor sobs. He sobs and sobs and sobs, head bent and chest heaving, but his hand never strays from Jayce’s face.
~*~
In this timeline, the runestone does not change a thing.
Viktor dies in the attack on the Council chambers. Jayce brings him back. Viktor leaves. Jayce follows.
They love each other. It is not enough to stop the Glorious Evolution.
The first Viktor takes this soul too, though its memories are so eerily similar that he must stand in what remains of this world for a very long time. Jayce is somewhere there, both dead and not, aware but unmoving.
He is glad that the Arcane understands enough to let this world fade into nothingness when Viktor leaves. He could not imagine letting Jayce sit there alone, for eternity.
~*~
“I don’t know how to change you back,” Viktor says. “Not in this universe. Not in any of the others. I let the Arcane take you. It is better than letting you sit for eternity, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
It takes a while, long enough to Viktor begins to doubt himself, but Jayce does nod. One hand always stays on the hammer, despite the storm protecting him and the lack of threat Viktor poses, but the other wanders.
This time, Viktor sits gently on the body of the hammer and smiles as Jayce’s hands travels the space where his skin turns to the Arcane. His robes lie forgotten on the ground and for a moment he can pretend that all of this is as it should be. He can believe that the fingers running against him aren’t cool metal. He can believe that what lies below his robes is still flesh and bone.
Jayce moves his hands like he still believes Viktor’s beautiful, lingering on his arms and the nebulous space where his breasts had once been. It is a touch that would have once led to something more, but the mere idea of it makes bile rise in his throat.
He thinks the same would go for Jayce.
Jayce, whose hand shifts up to cup Viktor’s cheek and the beard that has started to grow there. In a couple of universes, it is Jayce who has the beard, and Viktor is almost disappointed that he never got to experience that for himself.
There are tears on Viktor’s cheeks. He learns this only when Jayce’s thumbs brush them away. He moves so slowly now, in this new form, like everything takes so much effort to do. His joints don’t make noise, deathly silent in every movement. It is only his eyes that tell Viktor’s he’s still alive.
Jayce is only thing with eyes left in the world, the only thing that can stare and see and understand. All the others were merely extensions of Viktor that he’d rather not use anymore. They move on their own, hunting for the unevolved, none of which have existed since Viktor destroyed the world. Aimless, like he was for so long.
“Thank you, my love,” Viktor whispers, nuzzling into the hand against his face. “I will try to find a way to help you, I swear.”
~*~
In this timeline, it is not Jayce and Viktor who change. The world is merely different.
They are more technologically ahead than the original timeline, something must have changed long before either of them were born. Their medicine is much more advanced.
Advanced enough to save Viktor from the disease in his lungs only a few weeks after he meets Jayce. It is Jayce who brings him home afterwards, Jayce looks after him.
And without the disease slowly killing him, there is no need for the Hexcore. It never gets created, never gets needed.
It takes years and years, but they bring Hextech to the world. They bring it to the people of the Undercity like Viktor always wanted. Jayce becomes Councillor and advocates for Zaun independence. It passes with little debate.
Jayce and Viktor grow old together as the Men of Progress, they have a legacy together.
~*~
“I found the best one,” Viktor says. He sits behind Jayce, pulling bugs from the moss and flowers in the cavern of his skull. It does not hurt him, Viktor’s asked, and the least he can do is tend to what remains.
There is less there than there was last time Viktor was here. He pulls a shard of that pure white metal off a cushion of moss and knows it is from one of the prongs that now makes up the top of Jayce’s head. Time still runs in this universe, and it will one day take everything. Including him. Including Jayce.
“We were happy. I was healthy. There was no Hexcore, no war,” he says, wistful. “It wasn’t perfect, but it never could be. I wish you had been able to see it, Jayce.”
Jayce leans back into him over the course of long seconds, tilting his head against Viktor’s shoulder. They’d done this a thousand times, when Viktor would come up behind him in the commune. So long ago now, but the movements are never forgotten. He winds his arms around Jayce’s waist, presses his lips to the cool metal of his shoulder. Eyes closed, but it’s impossible to pretend this time that it’s anything other than what it is.
The end of the world at his hands.
It only makes sense that it would hit him now, the agonising regret and the sinking feeling at knowing that there is nothing that can be done for his universe. Nothing the can be done for Jayce.
A runestone forms in his palm out of instinct, pressed against Jayce’s torso. “There are many more to see,” he says. “I will not be gone long. I never am, am I?”
But he is still gone for an unknowable length of time, and Jayce’s figure deteriorates further and further every time Viktor returns. He ages in the only way he can now. It is agony to watch.
The way Jayce’s fingers brush against his feels like a smile.
~*~
In this timeline, the runestone changes almost everything.
Hextech isn’t anything like what it has been in the other timelines. Neither is the Hexcore.
Neither are Viktor and Jayce.
They still love each other. Viktor still augments his body, cybernetically instead of magically. And he is exiled for it, by Jayce.
They fight each other for ever and ever, neither of them willing to land the killing blow. Neither of them willing to reconcile their differences.
They stay like that for the rest of their lives, but the world is still free of the Machine Herald.
~*~
Viktor sometimes reads Jayce’s thoughts. It is an instinctual part of his magic that he cannot help. At any touch, he can see it all. But he tries not to linger long in Jayce’s. He didn’t when he was the Machine Herald either, too scared deep down that he would see something that would make him throw it all away.
Even at the end, he hadn’t let himself see it. Maybe if he had, everything would have been different.
Now, when he greets Jayce, he feels his longing and his happiness and his love. He sees hours upon hours of listening to the storm and kneeling in place, watching the bugs crawl along the metal. He feels the wistfulness and the intrigue, the curiosity that has fuelled Jayce his entire life.
It is always beautiful to see, even if Viktor does not see them for long. It is enough to know that Jayce is happy to see him.
“Hello, my love,” Viktor says every time he returns, grazing his fingers along some part of Jayce. If he’s lucky, he will hear words. If he’s lucky, he will hear I have missed you. But this is something he knows even without hearing it.
There is a weariness in his bones now. It is so completely different to the pain that had been his constant company for such a large part of his life. Not the majority, not anymore, but the most pivotal parts. The weariness comes from age—it is a feeling he never expected to experience.
In the polished metal of the Hexgate, he can see his reflection. The facial hair that now covers his cheeks and chin is streaked with grey. The sight steals his breath from him.
“I am growing old, Jayce,” he says, and he finds that he cannot look at his partner. “I am going grey.”
He is the amalgamation of so many versions of himself now, so many Machine Heralds screaming and crying over their mistakes. Others he has seen have grown old, and Jayce has grown old with them, but he did not ever think he would be one of them.
And yet, he is.
When he finally looks at Jayce, he finds those yellow eyes already staring back at him. It is an easy thing to drop to his knees in front of him, to hold the hands that still, after all this time, clutch his hammer. It is easy, too, to rest his head against the handle, just above where their hands rest.
He sees Jayce’s sadness, his relief, his longing, and he echoes it back into the Arcane.
~*~
In this timeline, it is almost exactly the same.
Hextech, Hexcore, Councillor Jayce Talis and the Council chamber explosion.
Viktor sees himself die. Viktor sees himself comes back to life at the hands of Jayce. Viktor sees him leave.
And then, a difference. Heimerdinger returns with a boy named Ekko mere minutes before Jayce would have left to find him. The anomaly Viktor created with the Hexcore has spread through to Zaun.
And then, for the first time, Jayce goes down to the Hexgate before Viktor becomes the Machine Herald. The anomaly picks him up, picks them all up, and throws them across the Arcane.
Viktor can feel Jayce in it, spinning lost and confused, and makes a decision. He brings him to his universe, lets him see what has become of it. Lets him see what happens if things go the way they are about to. Viktor will not let the same thing happen, not when he has been given this chance.
But then Jayce falls and falls and falls. Viktor helps him while he sleeps, brings him food to eat, watches him carve the plans for a leg brace. It is awful to watch, but a part of him knows that this Jayce needs to learn these truths. The Arcane does not need another Machine Herald. Viktor cannot take on more memories.
Months pass with two Jayces in his universe and Viktor waits and waits with his own.
Finally, the other Jayce reaches the Hexgate. There’s a brace around his leg, of similar style to the one Viktor wore so long ago. He looks how he does in some universes, hair and beard long, but he has seen much in the months he spent trapped.
For a moment, Viktor regrets leaving him there, but he knows this Jayce needed to learn.
And so Viktor tells him everything, shows him the truth of what has happened here and what he has done in so many universes. He shows Jayce that they are and always will be connected, that it starts and ends with them—that Viktor made sure it did.
He has not told his own Jayce much of this, only that he saves him in every universe, only that he cannot ever leave him to die, only that he gives him a runestone. His Jayce never knew that it was looking upon him that changed it all.
“I will not fail,” says the other Jayce, and though it isn’t the first time Viktor has heard him speak, he finds that he has missed hearing his voice. His Jayce is as silent as ever.
Viktor puts a hand on his shoulder, sees the awe and the resilience and the longing for only a brief moment. Sees the love, still buried in there.
For the first time, Jayce lets go of the hammer. Two of his fingers snap, lodged in the handle he has held for so long, but he does not seem to mind. Like everything, it is slow, but Viktor can feel the trust his Jayce is putting into this. He knows, like Viktor, that this Jayce will fix it all.
Viktor embeds the runestone into this Jayce’s wrist, smiles at it, knows it will save them. This is what he made them for, after all.
~*~
Viktor falls to his knees atop the Hexgate when he feels the other Jayce and Viktor be destroyed in the Arcane. Torn to nothing. Obliterated by the very runestone Viktor had created for them. This isn’t the ending he had wanted for them.
But at least, say Jayce’s thoughts, They died together.
This is how Viktor knows that a part of Jayce is touching him. The sharing of memory and knowledge and thought, but this is the clearest it has ever been. That is Jayce’s voice, Jayce’s inflection, Jayce’s soft sadness at the truth of it all.
Their hands are clasped together over the space the hammer once lay. Viktor can feel the jagged edges of his fingers and the softness he still holds him with. “Yes,” Viktor says, but the word is so choked it is barely audible. “At least they were together, my love.”
He is so tired, now. He can feel the years upon him, feel the exhaustion of isolation and desperation. But Jayce is holding him with two hands for the first time, free of the weight of the hammer. He is still on his knees, still rooted where Viktor had ended it all, but he pulls Viktor’s hands towards him, yellow eyes locked on his face.
The back of Viktor’s hand brushes against where Jayce’s lips would have once been. A facsimile of a kiss.
He longs to rest. He finds himself growing weary now. So many universes and he can only do so much. If he could, he’d wrestle them all into something nicer, but it would only lead to the same mistakes. Fields of dreamless solitude. And Jayce, in the middle of it.
No, he will give each universe he can a runestone, and they will make their own choices.
“I must keep going, Jayce,” he says. When he stands, Jayce does not let go, fingers tightening in a way that would have once been painful but now only keeps him in place. “I will not be long, I promise.”
He sounds so tired, even in his own ears. How much longer must he do this? How many versions of himself can he see before it becomes too much? All the heartbreak, all the happiness, all the regret that wells up within him at every single one.
Stay with me, says Jayce.
And do what? Viktor does not ask this. There is so little left except them and the bugs and the moss that grows within Jayce. He does not deserve to stay, not yet, not when he has not figured out how to turn Jayce back. So many years trapped in place in a body that is no longer his own, unable to speak. All because of Viktor.
“I will come back,” Viktor says. And then he is gone.
~*~
In this universe, Viktor goes through the motions. Save Jayce and his mother, hand over the runestone, and watch.
The apartment explodes and this time there is nothing to stop him from being exiled. Viktor is not there. There is nothing to stop Jayce from jumping from the ruins of his home either, except an obviously Undercity-make scrap of cloth trapped under a piece of wall.
It sends him to the Undercity. It sends him to Viktor.
Hextech is never made. Prosthetics and filtration systems and basic medical care are made in its stead, with Jayce and Viktor at the forefront.
In the war between Zaun and Piltover, they make weapons, but Viktor never becomes the Herald.
They love each other. This is constant. This is an immutable part of every universe.
Including Viktor’s own.
~*~
Jayce’s hands rest on his cheeks, rubbing at the beard with something akin to wonder. It is not often in the many universes that Viktor has one. Not often that he survives long enough to grow it. Sometimes he does. Those are the kinder universes, the ones he almost wishes he could stay in.
“I don’t know how,” Viktor says. “I don’t think I can.”
If he could, he’d change them all back. But the Evolution is permanent by design.
Jayce’s body is crumbling further with every second that passes. He still has years before he is nothing but rubble atop the Hexgate—the same number of years as Viktor, if they’re lucky—but the sight of it makes Viktor rage.
It’s alright, says Jayce. You’re here, now. Stay. You’ve done enough, Viktor. You can rest now.
“But—”
I forgive you.
The sound that spills from Viktor is a shaking ragged sigh. Of relief and despair and so many things he cannot possibly name. How long has he waited to hear those words? How long has he stopped himself from hearing them?
He is tired, exhausted. He is old. Surely, he can rest now, having saved as many universes as he could. Surely, he can let the other souls he took into himself rest too. They’ve been doing this for so long now.
But universes are infinite, and they will all lead to the Herald if he is not there to change it.
“I will stay,” Viktor says, and he feels Jayce slump against him. “But first I need to do one more thing.”
This time, when Jayce lets him go, there is no guilt between them.
~*~
In this timeline, Viktor does not give Jayce the runestone.
He lets it all play out the same, lets them meet and create Hextech. Lets them love each other. Lets himself die in the Council chamber and be revived by the Hexcore.
He lets the Machine Herald be born again, lets it destroy the world in an instant.
In this timeline, Viktor comes to the Machine Herald and guides it back to the Jayce it left on the Hexgate. He is the Arcane. He shows his other grieving and raging self the ways of magic, shows him how to understand the universe and the way they all tie together.
He shows him how to repent.
In this timeline, Viktor hands himself a runestone and a responsibility, and leaves the rest of the timelines up to him, for him to do it all over again.
~*~
Flowers bloom bright in the cavern of Jayce’s head. Pretty things. Viktor caresses them for many long minutes, the air around them silent except the ever-present storm.
Somewhere, in a thousand other universes, the other version of himself drops runestones into Jayce’s hand and begs for forgiveness.
“What do you wish to do, my love?” Viktor asks. It is good to rest, to sit and not have to think about moving again. To be with Jayce, in whatever capacity that can be now.
There is a smile in Jayce’s thoughts, something bright and wordless.
As Viktor sits before him, fingers trailing over the nature growing in and around him, Jayce leans back. Every movement is still slow, like it takes so much thought and energy to do. His hands drop to his knees and slowly, so slowly, he pushes himself up.
Parts of him are left on the Hexgate, glued to the metal, but not so many that Viktor makes him stop. For the first time in years and years and years, Viktor looks up at Jayce. He is beautiful, standing tall, looking so much like himself and yet entirely different.
He holds out a hand and Viktor can’t do anything except take it in his. He feels the pride, the relief, the love. He feels the excitement and the hope and the bone-deep exhaustion. And then, he hears it.
Come with me.
“Where?” Viktor asks, now standing face to face with the man he has loved across universes. He presses a kiss to where he once pressed his fingers on Jayce’s forehead.
Everywhere, says Jayce, cool hands coming to rest on Viktor’s waist like he can’t stop himself from grabbing. Let’s see the world you made.
Viktor does not tell him that it was kill him eventually, that he will be ground down into the nothing. Jayce knows, he can feel it. And when Jayce goes, so will he, but they have so much time before that. Time Viktor never expected to have.
Viktor smiles, and it does not feel foreign on his face. “Alright, my love,” he replies, and it is as simple as that.
He gathers the Arcane around them the same way he did in every single blizzard. Jayce stares up at it and Viktor feels that nostalgia, that childlike awe, wash over them both. When they disappear from the Hexgate together, they are wrapped in each other’s arms, ready to see what the rest of their quiet years have in store them.
In their wake is only silence.
~*~
In this timeline, the first timeline, is the start of many things. And the end of them. And the repentance and forgiveness and the beginning of a cycle the Arcane will continue for eternity.
In this timeline, they succeeded and they failed. They lost and they mourned. They loved and they died and they gained it all back again.
In this timeline, finally, they are happy.