Chapter Text
The days leading to their last push toward the Hex tower are― or has it been weeks? Hours? It can’t be weeks can it? How long has it been since his return? How long has it been since he watched the light fade from Viktor’s eyes and his last breath whisper through his lips?
Viktor smiled when he saw Jayce in his abode. A soft tilt of his lips, a tinge of hope warming up the unnatural color of his eyes. Would it persist if Jayce does nothing? Would it warm up his eyes back to their original gold the longer Jayce stays there?
…I won’t fail!...
Jayce’s thoughts slip through his mind like sand through fingers. It is a constant colossal effort to collect them, one grain at a time, to stay present, grounded. If he was less tired, if he was more lucid, the memory of that moment when he raised his hammer against his best friend would likely be occupying his whole mind. As it is, he is morbidly grateful for his scattering thoughts.
Or perhaps something in him tries to preserve the remains of his sanity, keeping him from fully acknowledging what he has done, what he has lost.
Never before having trouble spreading himself between several tasks, right now it takes Jayce everything in him to focus on just one ― he needs to finish what he promised. He will dwell on his own pain later, if he survives. Will take his time to grieve and fill this emptiness he already feels in him with tears and regrets and the unsaid words. And if he is lucky, he will perish alongside Viktor. Will turn into a blissful nothing, sparing himself from carrying the weight of both of their unfulfilled dreams and all the time they could’ve had together.
The Viktor he sees at the bottom of the Tower is a new form from the one that step out of that impossible cocoon the arcane made out of the lab table. There is nothing of the man Jayce knows in the frame of the Herald, barely anything in the almost fully mechanical voice. And yet he still asks if some part of Viktor still remains there.
He doesn’t know what answer he wants to hear. It would be easier if Viktor was truly gone, completely consumed by this form. But a part of Jayce that weeps quietly somewhere deep inside his mind desperately searches for anything that is Viktor.
Viktor flies up the Tower and Jayce rushes after him. It is a race and it only breaks in pace for a moment, when in horror Jayce realizes where exactly he is kneeling, his hands around the handle of the borrowed hammer. This pause is enough for Viktor to reach out, and Jayce feels the touch of cool fingers against his forehead, the fingertips burning into his skin, marking him as Herald’s flock.
Jayce blinks, and then he is floating.
“This is what you see?”
His mind is his own again for the first time in so long he has almost forgotten what it’s like. Viktor’s form is colossal in front of him, dwarfing him. Jayce doesn’t know if it’s supposed to be oppressive, if he is supposed to feel scared or insignificant, or hopeless. But under all the shine of the embroidery of stars, gold and arcane, and a cold impassive mask, there is his best friend, his former partner. Jayce cares not for what form he takes. It is his mind that he loves. His wit and his hopes, his fears and dreams and even insecurities.
And even here now looking at this almost god-like being towering over him, Jayce takes stock of the golden lines along his right leg and around his torso, and he wonders if Viktor himself realizes that even in his perfect form he created the visages of the braces that held his body together. He might hate them but they are a part of him.
Framing his majestic glowing form are two long ends of whatever remains of the blue and red blanket Jayce threw over Viktor’s shoulder in the lab.
Jayce doesn’t want to inspect this. Something in him knows that it would simply hurt too much.
In the end he is only able to reach his partner with his words when something from the outside world interferes. He doesn’t know what transpired, but a piece of Viktor’s mask is blown away from his face, and his golden eye, wide and scared, looks at Jayce with such level of vulnerability that it doesn’t belong to the being that has nearly reached godhood.
Viktor shrinks and hides, and Jayce’s heart breaks, again, the wounds that has not even started properly healing yet, once again re-opened.
“...You were never broken, Viktor. There is beauty in imperfection. They made you who you are, an inseparable piece of everything I admired about you!”
They finish this just like they started it ― together.
Jayce doesn’t have a body in this place, but he still feels a cold grip on his heart when his hold around Viktor’s hand fails for the first time and he is pulled away from him.
When Jayce can get close again he wraps his hand around the back of Viktor’s neck, bringing their foreheads together. Viktor's free hand is on Jayce’s forearm and his eyes are closed. And Jayce can’t stop looking at him. He feels terrified, of what is happening between their enclosed hands, of what it would do to the world, of losing Viktor again. It is pointless, he knows. He was ready to die, he is, and he is absurdly sickeningly happy to go into nothing alongside his partner, but these last few seconds he is also filled with regret that he will never see Viktor again. And so he watches. Watches the content on Viktor’s face settling there now that the rune is secure between their hands, and the Jayce’s hold on the back of his neck is firm against any pull that can separate them again.
The last thing Jayce feels is his mind intertwining with Viktor’s as they are forcefully sucked into nothing.
~
He opens his eyes to fire. He is fully painfully physical wherever he is, and he takes in panicked breaths as he looks around frantically. The sounds reach him as he takes in the burning building behind him, bright in the darkness of the night. There is screaming, it comes from all sides at once. Someone is barking orders, someone is screaming in pain. There are sounds of a battle and occasional explosives. A bright white beam cuts through the darkness ahead, and the familiar figure floats above ground toward him.
“Out of the way.” The voice is similar to what Jayce heard just minutes ago, but it sounds angrier and more hollow at the same time.
“Viktor… Wh―”
“Neither friendship nor love will stop what is necessary, Jayce.” The claw attached to Viktor’s back turns its eye on Jayce. It lights up, and Jayce’s world turns to nothing.
Again.
~
Jayce’s vision clears, and everything is bright. Pink, golden and blue hues on the blinding white, and amongst it all a figure kneeling down before him. Jayce blinks and his eyes focus on the familiar face that holds an unfamiliar expression. Viktor looks… for the lack of another word, divine. Not the godlike visage Jayce saw before, but something that is at the same time more human and as far from a human as it can be.
Viktor’s hair is white like in that place, but longer. Small pieces of light pink cloth cover the shoulders of the otherwise bare torso. The legs are metal, but unlike what Jayce has seen on him before. He is glowing.
Viktor tilts his head looking at Jayce inquisitively, and his amber eyes are bereft of any emotion.
His voice is cold when he says,
“I foresaw your failure, Jayce. But I had hope nonetheless.”
A hand with long elegant fingers reaches out to him. Cold fingertips graze along the side of Jayce’s jaw.
He blinks, and he is gone again.
~
He is almost ready the third time, almost not surprised.
He steps over the ruined edge of his old lab and plummets down toward the ground when the realization forms in his mind.
There is no one there this time to call him off the edge.
This death is less merciful than the one from Viktor’s laser. Jayce breaks his spine, hits his head, likely shatters a few organs. But it takes time to fade away. There is no one around at night to see him, and so he lies there, almost delirious with pain and fading consciousness, and thinks that it must be other timelines he is thrown into, and not just a product of his damaged mind. He’s had hallucinations before. They never hurt just as much.
The pull of nothing is already familiar. He thinks it takes him before his body dies in that world.
~
At some point Jayce loses count. Of the other lives and of the time that has passed. He doesn’t die in all of them. Viktor tries to kill him in only a handful. Sometimes Jayce is alone. Sometimes Viktor is there. A lot of these worlds, these timelines seem almost the same to each other at the first glance, with only miniscule differences. Some are so drastically different they barely feel real.
Jayce feels his sanity slipping with every new life he is forced to visit and live through, albeit briefly. He doesn’t know why this is happening and if there is any purpose to it. Is there something he is supposed to learn through this experience? Or is it a punishment of some sort?
Or perhaps there is no ill will behind it, and it just happens on its own, because they probably dislodged something important in the fabric of time with that rune. Perhaps he is meant to wander these worlds forever now. Perhaps his Viktor is doing the same, and they just never are in one place at the same time.
When Jayce loses count and track of time, he resigns. Mindlessly he goes through these glimpses of how it could’ve been if , and stops trying to figure out what if has transpired in each of these lives.
It is easier this way, he finds. Not to question, not to wonder. He can stay detached like that.
It doesn’t always work.
The room is dim, the only source of light is a lamp on a nightstand.
Jayce is the only one left by the side of the bed, the others left some time ago ― having said their goodbyes they preferred to leave the two alone for Viktor’s last moments.
Before he left, Heimerdinger looked up at Jayce with sorrow in his eyes, and said,
“I’m sorry, my boy. But as much as this hurts, you made the right choice ― the Hexcore had to be destroyed.”
Jayce didn’t want to hear that. Doesn’t want to hate the Jayce from this world that even considered such a choice when his partner was dying from an illness that was eating him inside out.
Jayce doesn’t know why Viktor didn’t die in the Council chamber explosion. Perhaps there is no Jinx in this world. Perhaps Viktor simply wasn’t there. Whatever the reason, he got to live until the day when his illness finally overtook his body.
Viktor’s hand is weak in Jayce’s grip. His breaths are coming slow and shallow with that horrible unnatural sound, like every gulp of air shreds him from inside, and it probably does. Slowly, Viktor turns his head to look at Jayce. His eyes are barely focused and Jayce can tell he is having trouble keeping them open. Viktor’s lip twitches, he starts to say something, fails, sucks in a wheezing breath that makes him wince in pain. Jayce leans closer, tightening his grip on Viktor’s hand if only to keep his fingers from shaking.
“It’s alright, V, don’t speak, it’s alright, I’m here.” He doesn’t know who he is reassuring, Viktor or himself. He is only half aware of the dampness rolling down his cheeks. He feels numb and cold, like he is not really there, and he knows he won’t be soon, and this other Jayce, the one whose body he is occupying, will have to face not only the pain of losing his best friend, but missing the last moments of his life too. Perhaps that Jayce deserved it, for not doing everything in his power and beyond to save Viktor’s life.
Perhaps Jayce himself deserves this too. To watch life slowly fade away from the person he cherishes the most in this world and any other. For letting him walk away. For walking away on his lifeless body after dealing the killing blow.
Viktor’s lips move again and this time he manages to speak. It is only a whisper, weak and pained, but Jayce is close enough to hear it.
“Thank you… Jayce…”
Jayce’s breath dies in his chest, just as Viktor’s last one whispers through his lips. His eyelids dip, and his hand grows lifeless and heavy in Jayce’s.
For several moments Jayce watches Viktor’s face, waits to hear the next breath but it doesn’t come.
Feeling numb, he slowly straightens up in his chair and lays Viktor’s hand carefully on his chest. He reaches out to gently push Viktor’s eyelids closed, and then folds his own hands in his lap.
He closes his eyes and waits. There is something new inside of him that feels like void. He watches as it begins to suck in the parts of himself that he thinks he is never going to get back.
This time Arcane is not in the hurry to pull him out into another timeline. This time it waits until there is nothing left.