Chapter Text
Dying is nothing like Jayce had imagined.
He’s come close a few times now, he thinks, but those had been different. Those had been painful, terrifying—his mind frantic, his body eating away at itself, fear rampant, ravenous, poised to consume him whole. Those times, he’d wanted to fight tooth and nail to keep his heart pumping blood through his veins, to persevere until his last breath and spit in Death’s face when his lungs never stopped working. Those times, he couldn’t form a single coherent thought, couldn’t focus on a single emotion, couldn’t bring himself to accept his fate.
But as he and Viktor explode and implode all at once, blinking out of existence like dying stars as they destroy the very detrimental thing they’d both taken part in creating, Jayce feels oddly… calm. Serene, even. He’s filled with a sense of inexplicable peace as he and Viktor hold each other in this strange astral plane.
Then everything goes white, then everything goes black.
Then Jayce wakes up in a field.
Undoubtedly a man of science to his core, Jayce had never really believed in an afterlife. All he believed was that a conscience would gradually fade into nothing, and a person would simply cease to be as they were mourned, then interred. So he sits here now, conflicted.
Because he can feel the soil beneath him, and a gentle breeze skating over his skin. He can feel fresh, clean air being dragged into his lungs, a pulse thumping within his chest, his own solid corporeality occupying space. But there’s also a strange haze blanketing the field that seems to stretch infinitely into the horizon, the cloudless sky is continuously cycling through colours, and Jayce doesn’t think anything quite feels real enough for him to believe he hadn’t actually died.
The tall grass shifts softly somewhere behind him. Jayce thinks nothing of it at first, attributing it to the light wind, but then it stops abruptly, and he has to resist the urge to turn around.
He doesn’t feel scared, no—just desperately curious.
“Jayce?”
His voice is barely above a whisper, but Jayce would recognize it even if he’d gone deaf.
“Viktor?”
Jayce slowly stands up, turning to face his partner—even in death, it would seem, if this really is death after all.
Viktor looks a few years younger, the lines of his face less pronounced, the bags under his eyes less weighted. His gaze is sharp as ever, and though he still leans most of his weight on his left leg, he’s steady, and most importantly—he’s no longer part machine. This is the Viktor from when they’d first met in Jayce’s wrecked apartment, there to chide him on Heimerdinger’s behalf before the handcuffs were secured around Jayce’s wrists. This is the Viktor who had saved Jayce from death, who had helped him clear his name and make a greater one in its place, who had become his lab partner, his best friend, one of the people Jayce trusts the most in the world.
This is the Viktor that Jayce fell in love with, but had been too much of a fool to admit to it far sooner.
Jayce throws himself at Viktor, wrapping his arms tightly around narrow shoulders dressed again in that oh-so familiar Academy uniform. Viktor melts into him, sagging into his embrace. Jayce is more than happy to hold him, to carry his weight, his burden.
“I’m sorry,” Jayce murmurs, almost pleading, “I’m so sorry, Viktor.”
“I forgive you,” says Viktor, and it’s like a wave of comfort washing over Jayce. “If you can… forgive me, as well.”
“Of course.” Jayce hugs Viktor closer. “Always.”
Jayce thinks he could revel in this for eternity, and maybe he can now—only, after a few moments, he realizes that Viktor is grimacing into his shoulder, and that pain, at least, still exists in this strange place.
He carefully guides them both to the ground, an arm still slung over Viktor’s shoulders even as Jayce sits by his side. Jayce feels as if breaking that contact would somehow cause Viktor to disappear, and that’s a thought he isn’t quite yet prepared to face.
They sit in silence for several long minutes. Jayce’s breath hitches when Viktor rests his head against him, his heart rate spiking and a warmth buzzing on his face.
“What is this place?” Viktor eventually wonders aloud, maybe to himself, to Jayce, to this new bubble of universe of theirs.
Jayce isn’t sure how to answer, so he merely shrugs. They’ve both become physically younger again, somehow, but their memories of years beyond have remained intact. They appeared together, wherever they are, for no discernible reason, when Jayce thinks that they very well should be dead. That they should be nothing. Because he’s begun to get the sneaking suspicion that they are still living, only in some alternate reality.
It’s at least far more pleasant than the other one the Arcane had decided to send him to.
“This is all my fault,” mumbles Viktor, his eyes glazed over, vacant as he stares out into the eternal distance. He looks suddenly older. Weary.
Jayce shakes his head. He won’t lie to Viktor, won’t call him blameless— but he hadn’t started this. He had only been the beginning of the end.
“It’s my fault that I couldn’t live without you.”
Viktor turns his gaze to Jayce, his irises so terribly, terribly golden. Jayce hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed seeing that shade of yellow.
“I wasn’t thinking,” Jayce admits, somewhat sheepishly. While there isn’t much still left unsaid between them, he knows now just how precious, fleeting, fragile time is, and he refuses to waste any more. “About what was for the best. About what you would’ve wanted. The only thing running through my head was, ‘I have to save Viktor.’”
Viktor cracks the faintest smile. “I should have died, yes.” Jayce must be hallucinating, thinking Viktor’s eyes flicker briefly to his lips. “But I shouldn’t have left.”
“That wasn’t all you.”
“Mm.” Viktor shrugs a shoulder, his smile growing into something proper, if only a little melancholic. “We are both flawed.”
Jayce huffs out a laugh, self-ironic and mildly bitter. “Deeply.”
They slip into another lull, one that could have lasted minutes just as well as hours or days, the tranquility a stark contrast to the unending chaos their lives had become in these past few years.
Jayce thinks he could get used to this. He hopes, more than anything, that Viktor feels similarly.
It’s just hard to tell, when Viktor’s face is pinched in thought the way it is.
“Do you think it would have been best had we never met, Jayce?”
Jayce can’t help his immediate frown. “Why do you—“
“All possibilities, right?” Viktor draws his good leg close, his shoulders curling inward. “If our paths never crossed in the first place…”
“It’s too late for that now, isn’t it? There isn’t a point in theorizing anymore, V.” Jayce heaves a sigh. He drags a hand over his face, the one not currently occupied with keeping Viktor within reach. “You wanna know what I think?”
Viktor shrugs. “By all means.”
“I don’t think there is a possibility where we don’t meet.” Jayce furrows his brow, thinking, squinting up at the ever-changing sky. “I don’t think there is a possibility where you don’t save me. Where I don’t save you.” He shakes his head. “I don’t think there can be, Viktor.”
After a long moment, Viktor hums approvingly. “I like that theory.” His hand finds Jayce’s draped over his shoulder, entangling their fingers. “I’m glad it is you, Jayce.”
“I—“ Jayce's heart beats in his throat, forceful, erratic. He swallows his nerves and takes a slow, deep breath. “Can I ask you something?”
“You never needed my permission before.”
That word, before, holds a lot more weight than it used to.
“I know, but… just this once.”
Viktor fixes Jayce with an odd look, but he doesn’t object. “What is it?”
Jayce’s lips quirk, and though his exhale is shaky and his palms are clammy, his pulse is suddenly calm, steady. Like he’d been preparing his whole life to ask this one single question.
“Can I kiss you?”
A few seconds pass, then a few seconds more, and Viktor just stares at Jayce. But just as Jayce’s mind begins reeling, just as a pit in his stomach begins to form, thinking, dreading he’d made a mistake—Viktor’s mouth curves upward, amused.
“Almost eight years,” Viktor remarks, and while most would mistake his tone for condescending, Jayce knows he’s only teasing. “I have waited almost eight years for you to ask me that.”
Jayce splutters, struggling to find the words to respond. His face grows instantly warm. “Well, you could have said something s—“
Their lips don’t quite crash together, but it isn’t a tender thing, either. Viktor guides Jayce through his short-lived panic, slender fingers caressing Jayce’s cheek—and oh, how Jayce much prefers Viktor’s touch this way, so gentle, so human.
Maybe not in another timeline, but perhaps in another reality entirely, they could have reached this conclusion much sooner, and without all the bloodshed.
For both their sakes, Jayce really does hope that there’s a version of them that never had to suffer.
Jayce sighs into the kiss, into everything he’d imagined and more. It tastes like coffee and late nights in the lab, red wine if the problem they were stuck on was particularly perplexing; it tastes like flesh and metal and blood all fused into one, underlined by something oddly saccharine, elusive, electric. It’s invigorating, intoxicating, and Jayce can’t help but chase the dregs of it when Viktor pulls away for air.
But then Jayce is faltering, head clouding with guilt, shame, regret. Viktor watches him, his expression, his own face twitching with the threat of a frown.
He tries to mask his hurt with humour and a light tone, but they’ve always known each other too well, haven’t they?
“What? Was it not good?”
Jayce shakes his head. “No, no it’s—it’s not that, it—” He presses his knuckles to his lips to stop himself from rambling, forcing himself to breathe. “It’s just that… I wasted so much time on the council, and wanting to advance Hextech, and so many other things— while you were right there. From the start, you were right. There. All I ever needed.” Jayce’s shoulders slump as he goes quiet, his voice soft, broken. “But in the end, I only got you killed.”
There’s a brief, somber lull, then Viktor flicks Jayce’s forehead.
“Well, don’t waste any more time,” Viktor scolds. “We do not have to talk about it all at once.”
“But—“
Viktor narrows his eyes at Jayce. Jayce’s mouth snaps shut.
“We can start from scratch,” Viktor continues. “Figure out where we are, if there is anyone else. Then we can talk.”
Jayce huffs, rubbing at his forehead. “Have this all planned out, do you?”
Viktor hums. “And you don’t? For shame, Jayce.”
Jayce rolls his eyes, then climbs to his feet before Viktor can retaliate. Viktor stretches out a hand and Jayce grasps it, helping Viktor up. He snakes an arm around Viktor’s waist once he’s standing, partly indulgent, partly for support.
“This better not be all field,” grumbles Viktor.
“I doubt it,” Jayce says, though he still doesn’t think he could guess with any certainty whether that’s true. “But there’s only one way we’ll know for sure.”
So, slowly but surely, they set off to explore oblivion.
Together, like it was always intended to be.