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Nothing moved… Nothing breathed… Nothing was alive…
There was no talking, no laughter, no crying, no nothing.
There was only silence. Pure, uninterrupted silence. Stillness, cold and distant. There was only chaos, anomaly, and dysfunction.
A sound was heard only when he walked. It was the soft but also heavy sounds of his footsteps along broken streets, or well, what used to resemble a street once. Sometimes it was his cane, supporting his weight against the weight of his guilt and sorrow on his shoulders. But never once was it the voice he hoped to hear.
“You are late…”
He had said in a hushed tone, his back pressed against the hunched figure of the petrified corpse looking downwards, clenching a hammer.
“Usually you are here earlier than this… I wonder, did you grow lazy in that timeline?”
He let out a chuckle, waiting for a moment in case someone responded to his lame joke. Truth was that he was never good when it came to humor, and truth was that he knew there would be no reply to his question. Not this, not any.
“You never found my jokes funny did you now? Hah, you only laughed because you were too kind to let me think I wasn’t funny… But I knew better than to trust your sense of humor Jayce.”
Closing his eyes didn’t help the silence, it only became more deafening. It made him want to talk more and more, even if it became a monologue, even if a monologue is all it would ever be in this timeline, he couldn’t bear how much the noise of nothingness scratched against his ears.
“Say something… Please… Curse me, hate me, anything… Just let me hear you Jayce, just this once… I know I am pleading, hopelessly so, but if there is a chance…”
His closed eyes slowly fluttered open, taking in the destroyed landscape that was once Piltover and Zaun. White splattered amongst dulled colors, ashes, and rumble… What was once regarded by him as perfection, was now laying in front of him, under his feet, splayed before his eyes; and it was nothing but ruin.
“Once… Once this could become something great… If only I listened to you…”
The hooded man’s cane dug its end against one of the cracked tiles, as he slowly lifted his body up, circling with fleeting footsteps the hunched statue-like corpse.
“It would have been nice, you know… To keep working together, to keep being partners… Maybe in the timeline when I listen to you, to the professor, to the people… Maybe in that timeline I will also be able to listen to not only my brain, but also my heart…”
Now in front of the corpse, its face only obstructed by the hammer it was still holding in one piece, the Mage pressed his forehead against its shattered one. That caused the eye of the petrified man to shift a bit, trying to look at him, yearning to give him a response. But as it did, Viktor understood its pain, its suffering, and its sorrow. He slowly lifted his head, stopping the immediate connection with the ‘perfected’ dead body of his friend.
“No, not yet… I shall not disturb you just yet… Only when you come through and pass your trials and tribulations will I stir you up from your slumber my friend. Forgive me, for I cannot give you the rest and peace you deserve in this timeline just yet…”
Viktor’s fingertips touched Jayce’s petrified cheek, running down gently to his chin, as if he was porcelain and he’d break at any moment, with even the slightest gust of wind.
“Soon you will find rest, I promise you… But not yet, for we must be the guides yet again, to hopefully fix my mistakes sooner than last time… Hopefully, this time we succeed… Hopefully this time… This time we…”
His voice betrayed him as it broke, and cracked, unable to fully form a sentence in the end.
“We don’t… We both know we don’t…”
A broken chuckle made it through his cracked lips, and then a breathless exhale, making a mixture of dark brunette and white bangs flutter against his cheeks. He very well knew that this reality was one that they weren’t together, it was obvious by their state in this forsaken world inside the Hexcore.
A world that never failed to remind him that he was at fault. He; the ‘Herald’, the ‘Savior’... He who had so many regrets, so many voices calling out his mistakes… Voices that even now, even as he was enveloped in all this unbearable silent void, didn’t make enough noise for him to feel alive.
“Jayce…”
Viktor whispered his partner’s name fondly, a smile tugging at his lips as the corpse in front of him reacted just a little bit with a twinkle of life in its eye.
“I promise that in the timeline we manage to live happily, achieve our dreams without harm, and truly make Piltover and Zaun prosper… I promise that in that timeline, I will tell you everything I know, everything I feel… And I promise that when the time comes, and when the time is right, we will be together, Jayce.”
Leaning down just a bit, Viktor’s lips found their way right beneath Jayce’s twinkling eye, which slowly dimmed and faded away, becoming nothing once more.
“But now… You are finally here… Aren’t you…?”
That question was not to be answered right away, but a scream from the horizon behind him gave him eventually the answer.
“Jayce… I am sorry to have subjected you yet again to such an ugly truth…”
He apologized to no one that was there, except the statuesque corpse behind him, but it was an apology he wanted out of his chest nevertheless. After his restlessness about Jayce’s arrival finally calmed down, the Mage rested next to his friend’s corpse, waiting, and hoping… Hoping that this time it would be different; for it would have been what Jayce would have wanted, for him to keep on hoping for the best… Ah, he was always the optimist… How Viktor missed his optimism… How Viktor wished Jayce was right…