Archive of Our Own

you’re quite certain you died. this’s the third time you’ve said that to yourself, which makes you suspect that you’re quite bad at this whole death thing after all. the council attack blew you apart, but a stronger hand than yours forced upon you a new heart. the heart you were given was shot out by the same force that first hammered it inside. he has now returned to you the first one you ever had, straining to pump with leaking valves, but now full and whole. it remembers the first time your eyes met, then the first time you ever saw each other, and every time your paths intersected before and after then.

there are many patterns in the world. you saw them in the configurations of the hextech, what permutations of the runes bent the world and when, and in the rhythm of the core, the rhythms which exploded into the full splendor of arcanum. you walked through them like the forests you never got to see in your life, not as a child in the undercity nor as a respected piltovan academy man. you grit your teeth and pulled yourself up when your leg gave and when the gray choked your soul out, you wove your fingers through the weft of magic and man, and as you felt you had to prove to the world that poor and crippled you could be like them, you saw the aberrations in others and felt you could correct them. you were always good at that, the contraction to your partner’s great ideas, the refiner, decanter, and checker of math. in a perfectly ordered world, all problems were solvable and you were reason’s calm and steady hand.

perhaps that’s what did you in. you could never refrain from extending possibility to its logical end. they will say he was the idealist, but you were more feverish in life even than him. they spat on you, ridiculed you, made you hide away what you were to the point you hid away from yourself. the path to your survival was at first idyllic, then the world beat down on you and it was spiteful. in the last moments before your first death, it was desperate. you could laugh at it now; at times, he was more distraught at the thought of your end than you were. you asked him once with the cannula in your nose if he was thinking of his mother when he looked down at your hospital bed. that was cruel, you knew. how fervently you both did not want to be separated made you quite unfair to each other in the face of death. and yes, it was you both. you wanted back that charming you from your youth, the one that could make him stutter on the backfoot. you wanted to be equal again.

you failed to realize you were. you failed with the commune. you failed with your vision, suckling up to warmongers who would crush the young nibling you were back then, extracted by the noxian and the chemist as the council did before them. you failed to see your ignorance, as you had always warned yourself against.

but he did not fail you. with that, you see how the patterns in the anomaly and the hextech were the same in the end. they were all the intersections of your paths, woven by where, in a sea of realities, you fell apart and came together again. that was your magic.

it all feels silly now. you have no throat with which to laugh. this is an infinitesimal final moment of your consciousness, and somehow, he has crammed himself into it yet again.

may his persistence build your shelter against the end.

you’re quite certain you died. you looked into the plastered eyes of the you that did and nearly resigned yourself to that fate in the same fashion. you thought it was only right. how many times had you tried to force the choice you thought was best, and how many times did it return to slap you across the face after that? you fell for every kind hand that led you no matter how many times it strung you along, whether it was there to tighten your leash or hold the side of your head, because you swore, this time, this time, you would be good enough to make it different. you were not mel’s hero, nor caitlyn’s, nor zaun’s, nor piltover’s. it was not you who saved your mother or the name talis. at the top of the world, you convinced yourself that you were not enough to save him, and if that was true, death could have you. there was no point in a life where you could not return back to him what he placed in your hand.

and it wasn’t you who made it possible. it was the undercity kid. he said it, but you thought it in the same breath: there was no way that could happen. you had barely survived crawling out of that ravine, and by the end of it, you were a ragged end-scrap of a man. the chaos was unbearable, the fraying of the patterns inconceivable, each thought of it tearing apart what you had left in your head. how did, whatever he saw in another world, how did he overcome it?

only now do you understand that the kid had the strength to do what you both couldn’t. he understood his limitations. he reached out. he asked. even as a single agent, he wasn’t alone, and that gave him what he needed to do the impossible. in your younger years, you were much like that.

and you could be that again. the kid did his part, and it was your time to insist you could save him again. he showed you what the world looked like through his eyes, shining stars in a vast expanse. so you lent your eyes to him. anyone else’s would’ve seen the purple wire frame of metalloid muscle and pulled skin, or a key, a door, a wall. you saw his face, not fresh when you were younger, but right there, right before the mistake that catalyzed all of this, and aged, how old he should’ve got to settle in. you hoped he would understand.

and he did. as poorly as you expressed it, nobody ever knew you better than him. not even yourself.

maybe that’s why he sent you. he knew you would be one to remember what the two of you were, beginning to end. you would dream, half-thought out and expansive, and he would dream sober, confident. you puffed out your chest, but with how many rocks you were dashed against in the process, you were nervous, but not cautious. you wanted so much for so many, you knew, you knew, it didn’t have to be like this! before anyone else believed in you, it was him. it cleaved you in two how many times you took that belief and killed him in the name of it. maybe this time, when he kills you too, you’ll be even again.

you were never good at the finer words. you had speechwriters that many years in. let them be clumsy: may wherever you two go, his hope will remind you of yourself, again and again.

(this is it. the exegesis of being.

being unable to know

whether the present moment is catabolism or anabolism

because the two feel the exact same.

you will not survive this.

one of you is hot with the light of progress.

one of you is cold with the tides of conclusion.

dissolving and breaking apart at the edges.

start to finish.

you hold onto him, forehead to forehead.

you hold onto him, forehead to forehead.

this is what it means to dream.)

you love him more than anything, and he now knows.

well, that’s all the time you had.

well, that’s all you had to say.

it’s the end. the rune is meant to accelerate. you are taken to somewhere you’ve never been across the stars and arcanum you thought you were yours and you were bound up in. the hand in yours melts into your own, palm and palm and palm again. chest, and forehead, knees, legs, lips, you are as hot as the sun streaming down from a crack of cavern in the undercity’s depths. you are burning, searing, but if it’s painful, it’s only for a second. the line is blurring, and you are content. he is crammed into you, and what is you, ends.

it’s the end. the rune is meant to accelerate. you aren’t half-hearted about any of it, you gave him what was needed and you’ll give him all you still have. you aren’t sure whose fingers are whose, but you’re sure both hands are yours, the lightness in your stomach, the memory of the first time you two floated like this from his eyes and yours at once, the full painting of the picture. not two backs, but one back on both sides. it feels like you have a wingspan. you are flying off somewhere in a thousand splinters. you save him, the same as saving yourself, and what is you, ends.

ends.

ends.

ends—

means and endings

                                means to endings

                                                                 what it means and ending

                                                                                                              what means an ending

                                                                                                                                                       mends and gleamings

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  what—

what are you?                                                                                                                                                                                   ?uoy era tahw

you are:                                                                                                                                                                                                  :erew uoy                                                                                                                                                

a million different yous hold seminar in your head.

you fail, you win, you never meet you, you never live.

(blitzing, buzzing, tearing apart.)

you die in the gray and iron and glass.

you die in the snow still holding onto your mother.

you throw yourself off a ledge. you throw yourself off a different ledge.

you really think you have to stop that, but oops, here’s a few more realities of ledges.

(bloodied noses, warm embraces, funerals.)

it’s getting embarrassing, okay, you get it, you will not try to kill yourself again.

 you’re shot by an enforcer and shot by a chempunk and shot by you and shot by you and shot.

you blow up in the council attack.

you died and you didn’t and you died and you didn’t and it’s worse.

you never exist, and you realize how much of the world you touched.

(how much?)

you have the graver injuries. you get the core. you get metal. tomorrow and herald swap.

you are rival students. you are both assholes. sweet milk. a construct.

a lab, a gem, the smog, the arm.

crank it.

too many constructs. you lead them, you oppose them. you don’t know who wins in resistance.

you’re at the academy, luminary club president, and he’s in the library, robotics.

the lockers, a dragged hand, follow me.

the lockers—

holy shit, really, in the lockers?

you’re the one who drags you into the lockers. you don’t apologize.

(heartbreakers and heartthrobs.)

cowboys, full machines, death.

wait, you wanna go back to that whole cowboys thing.

no, no, you’re moving on, hush.

(how was heimerdinger such an ass in that one?)

(eh, it’s not real anymore.)

(what’s that supposed to mean?)

(how am i supposed to know?)

it’s overwhelming-everything.

it’s frightening-beautiful.

it’s all that could ever be and all that ever was.

now you understand. it’s not that you found you, nor that you chose you.

(though you always would.)

it’s that there never was a you without you.

cut from the same conceptual cloth to be parallels from the beginning.

mirrors in some worlds, shadows in others.

haunting still yourself, even in absence.

you are not two halves of one thought.

you are the same thought, synonymous with one another.

you were never alone. just waiting to find yourself.

you’re you again, and you don’t know who you are, and you don’t know why you still are.

you still have some purpose.

you have no hand to hold anymore. all hands are your hands.

you are among stars. you wonder if you can see runeterra from here.

(does that scare you?)

(somewhat. grand designs always seemed like something to create, not be a part of.)

(you know well that choice is often taken and seldom given.)

(do you have to patronize yourself?)

(not your intention.)

(sorry.)

(sorry as well.)

(you’re still taking it in, is all. the entirety of creation is a lot to digest.)

(you’ve gotten a good deal of experience in wide consciousness.)

(is that so? did it feel like this when you first woke up?)

(no. it was colder. like a rock swept up in a river.)

(you’re sorry.)

(you were furious, but you had no room for fury. it was all distant.)

(you’re sorry.)

(and then, energy. no longer resignation. you could help again.)

(you’re sorry.)

(that is all you ever wanted.)

(that’s all you ever wanted.)

(the weapons?)

(fury and sunken cost. you loathed it, but what else were you good for?)

(so much. so much. that is why you believed in you.)

(yet you’ve never learned better in a thousand lives.)

(and you were blinded in all of them, only ever with half the picture.)

(by love and by principle.)

(by fear and loathing.)

(you were wrong about feelings. like many things, you wanted a simpler answer.)

(but you remembered.)

(and you learned.)

(and perhaps this time, unlike all the others, you’ve got it right.)

(you have saved what matters the most.)

(there is no longer a pattern. all the weavings and intersections remain left behind.)

(consolidation. a single path forward, woven in starlight.)

(nothing calls you forth this time, no desperation, no spotlight.)

(it is your own choice to move forward.)

(are you ready?)

(have been.)

(you will never tire of yourself.)

you journey onward.

ah.

your leg. you still have a weak one. bent inwards.

hah. yes, of course. sure, why not.

even like this, you are terribly sentimental.

it is your proof and reminder that you were once a person.

it gets harder and harder to distinguish. was it from birth or from injury?

both and neither. you are a struggling convention for consensus.

you see in two directions at once. sometimes parallel, sometimes at an angle.

sometimes as the limits of the same line.

you are not afraid of this. you look at what you think is a leg fondly.

the bounds of your form are still litigating themselves.

you are seasoned with a cane and clumsy with getting used to change.

you don’t entirely understand what’s going on.

and yet, for once in your life, you don’t feel as though you need to.

it’s like a dance. you sway this way, and then, you counterbalance.

you are always there to catch yourself.

there is no need for the answer at the end of this walk.

only the soft and airy curiosity that first spurred you towards creating.

you skip and jump when you can and stop to admire the infinite when it strikes you to do so.

you can no longer see the lines of people.

you suppose you never did in any of your positions as leader.

not for lack of trying, but in the narrowness of your focus.

you were terrible with your focus. if neglecting the important was a competition,

you would have every color of accolade for it.

the guilt is left behind at the start of the trek.

you grow ever further from it.

one by one, stars appear above you and below you.

they guide the shape of your path.

someone still forgives you, and you thank them.

how long does the journey take?

after a while, you posit: as long as you feel like it should.

you are not tired of it yet.

at some point, the straight path winds into the peak of a mountain.

the chills of the immigration passes and the cooling ducts of the underbelly come to mind.

you climb. when you were a child,

there was a storybook of a defecting soldier captain your mother bought

who climbed the peak of a mountain for salvation and found it.

you figure it must still be in your childhood room.

yes, your childhood room,

which was nothing more than a cot, a desk, and the space of a closet.

all other rooms always felt like decadence. you liked to lean your hammer on them.

as if to say, yes, i own this, thank you, you do not.

in your desk was the story of a child,

who leapt off the side of a cliff in pursuit of a toy,

and instead found herself rising.

your father liked to read that one to you.

you wish you could have had your father see you.

your mother, your father, they’re gone.

only your mother is left.

sometimes, it feels like you have neither, like you were just ejected from being.

who is burning your name into that paper?

who remembers that you are now gone?

did life start at the academy, or did you exist only when you met each other?

it’s harder and harder to remember anything before the enforcer’s investigation.

you are rising. you are climbing.

when you reach the top,

you are satisfied, and jump.

yes, this feels like the appropriate end to where you were going.

time to see where those who atone end up.

you come into awareness that you were not seeking a place, but a person.

or, you’re not quite sure if who receives you can be described only as a person.

you slink back at the overwhelming authority before you, as gentle as it is.

you are very aware of the limits of kindness.

you raise your head and bow at the overwhelming authority before you that strikes awe.

you are used to pleasing patrons with particular interests.

but there is no disparity in your stations, you quickly realize. you exude something yourself.

her eyes—

(you are immediately sure that her is correct, despite never meeting her before)

—you cannot see them with the flourish obscuring her face, but they are fond.

how long has she been waiting?

on instinct, you check your lapel for any grease or burns.

you do not have any lapels. that is somehow more embarrassing.

she heeds you at a humble stop to rest with nothing more than a pot and a campfire.

translucent visions of pilgrimages past flicker by around you.

wordlessly, you join her opposite the pot.

her hair streams into the lines of comets. gems sleepily float by her shoulders.

hardly any distinction is made between where her body ends and her robes begin.

you wonder what she sees when she looks at you. you hesitate to ask her.

could be both or neither. you don’t know what you prefer.

her staff taps the side of the pot. an offer.

“please. i insist. it’s a rare treat to share the view of the mountaintop with someone.”

you go to lift the lid, and you think the hand on your back is the one that reaches over.

puffs of steam brush up against your face(s). the liquid is marigold-colored

and a few round dumplings bob up and down the surface.

it smells of warm spices like the sort mel one tapped a crate full of,

the first import from ionia through the hexgates, she said,

and the sweet tubers of your father’s humble scrap soup,

the one that made the food last longer between visits to the doctor.

no bowls or plates that you can see. just the ladle.

years of inferring etiquette standards at banquets makes you hesitate,

and then you go for it, because none of it really mattered.

you’re not quite sure if what’s in your mouth is a flavor you’ve ever crossed before.

it’s a full body experience. cashmere blankets and the scent of smoke

a warm hand over your shoulders, a moment shared in private.

everything prized and precious rushes forth,

and also,

carrots?

distinctly, carrots. in fact, it’s the only thing you can distinguish.

huh. life’s still got surprises.

“it’s good,” you say, honest, unsure how much deference is appropriate to calibrate for her.

“is it? i’m glad. a friend taught me the recipe. i wasn’t sure how well i remembered the steps.”

you were never bad at small talk, mind you. you’re just not sure if the cosmos are a good place for it. there are infinite questions you feel you should ask, beyond the basic orienting ones, and they all jam in the gears of your head until you agree, and the most pressing one ekes out:

“what’s happening right now?”

your voice is not yours, but it’s absolutely your own. the tone and timbre vibrate in a way that brings to mind two tuning forks. there is a charge to it. a potential. she smiles.

“you’re finding what you seek. and it’s my responsibility to ensure that those on their journeys have a light guiding them towards what they need. since yours has taken quite the different path than most,” she trails. she looks out towards the infinite. “i thought it would be nice to greet you, as another did for me.”

“are you a god?” on instinct. then, with consideration: “are we going to the same place you went to?”

the woman’s laugh is slow and smooth, a hand cupping water from a fountain.

“some would consider me such. personally, i still feel like a pilgrim even now. your path is adjacent to what mine was, but it remains discrete. your destination will only be yours. though i would like this to not be the last time we speak.”

you tried to be a god when you were a man. you were made into a god when you were a man. the prospect of taking the mantle up once again immensely tires you. you had just gotten it right, chosen what was most important to you, and it was your hope in that choice to rescind from all stories forever. you had gotten so close to making that godly change, but your own hurt and spite blurred your vision. all you wanted to do is help. you fear what that level of power will make you do again. you were happy to rescind and be chosen.

“we can’t do this. we’re sorry, but we can’t.”

“it is in your full capacity to turn back. i understand doubting the path you lay out.”

images of two faces falling down the mountainside flash by. she could not save them, but they are with her.

“to that i ask only this: why did you set out in the first place?”

did you save yourself? did you fall down? are you alone? together? who is with you now? in all possible realities, you do not know, but you do not let go. the boundary of falling and rising ceases to exist as long as you are together. you do not want to lose yourself again. only you can serve as your anchor. the better is still possible.

even now, it is still possible.

“we dreamed that things could be better. together.”

“and could that dream still be realized?”

yes, but not by you. it was you who aimed to bring magic to the people and brought nothing but noxus to their shores. you who took up arms in a conflict far larger than you ever should’ve pretended to know, you who forsook the citizens of the undercity as not your own, and you whose love blinded, at every opportunity, the right choice. all you have done in the last of your life is correct the mistakes you permitted under your watch. you have seen the world turn to ruin or hubris again and again, chaos, built by your hammer. you owe you a happiness, not your guilt. it’s time to be selfish. leave the better tomorrow to someone fresher. you have already had your turn at tomorrow, and now, all you want is now.

completely and fully, you understand your errors, the incomplete movements of your lone perspectives, actors in the same play pretending that your story had diverged. across the walls of your head your failures echo, but they dampen, your own hand steadying the others when they tremble. down in your core a reconciliation occurs. forgiveness and guilt and redemption and deserving ceases to mean anything because there is no longer room in you to damn what you are. you feel the mechanisms within you disagree, return different number solutions to the problem, but they whirr and work and resolve. you check a thousand outcomes against yourself. out bloom the happy memories, regardless of how they turned out, with you and you and the center and you and you at peace with it all. how your lives have played out time and time again forms the rhythm that you move to. what would you do now, embraced once again in all this understanding, if you walked away from what it tells you?

yes, but not alone. you had every tool available to you, every fundamental connection that could be made in the web of the arcane, and you misused them. you took up a duty you did not even realize was assigned to you and pretended to know the nature of the soul, you who forsook what it meant to be a person in pursuit of perfection, and you who, afraid of asking for more from him in a body falling apart, pretended to not see love in yourself and the place of your birth, birthed a movement that exceeded you. you built an order and that order broke the world and had to be undone. you owe you a happiness, not your regret. it’s time to set things right, and now is the time to do it. you will yield that tomorrow you know you deserve.

yes, it is too late for you as you were. but you may try again. as you were a child once, spinning screws without drilling holes, you have now grown. you will guide you. this you know.

“yes,” you say. “it could.”

“then you need not fear the climb, inventor. spoil yourselves with what you find, then enrich the world.”

she knows you in the plural. a gulp of the meal in her ladle.

“how can you tell?”

she lowers the spoon.

“i see what truly is. i know what trials all face. i know the challenge of following a road few will truly comprehend. in a very un-godly way, dare say, i empathize with the bends of your path. all i can do is light the stars along your way, but this is my advice! hold tight to your coupling. treasure it. now you know what value your affection has.”

you can’t help but puff a scoff, even if involuntary: “if only you told us this before we erred.”

“forces of the world are notoriously dispassionate. we obsess only over our divisions among ourselves. i hope that, in the many ways you already have, you prove yourself different.”

“we will,” you say. “we’ll try,” you say.

“then go forth, my friends. change the world yet again. your heart will lead you the rest of the way.”

with a wave of her staff, the summit splits into view and shines with the light of your summed cosmos. their radiance spills into your eyes in every color. you laugh. you shiver. you cry.

you rise.

“thank you, traveller,” as you collect yourself. “if only we were better guests. we would have normally brought flowers. or pastries. once we brought flowers to a party where the host had. big allergies. it was embarrassing. it was hilarious.”

“think nothing of it. though, preferably, pastries the next time we meet. the mountain gives one an appetite for sweets.”

she stays at her campfire as you go along your way.

the summit is conceptual, you find. it does not take long at all for you to reach it, but you know despite that that the journey was hard, as if the years worth of fatigue accrued in your life settles into your form at once. the world sits below you as witness to what will happen. it will remember, even if no one else does.

you stand there as one. you stand holding your own hand for comfort. you stand side by side, and you can distinguish yourself by which fingers are thick and which are slender. none of this feels contradictory. to the end you are partners, rested in a line, and to the end you are together, so there is little need to understand yourself as so separate. you look you in the eyes and recognize which are yours. an array of colors sits within your irises, but the shape remains distinct. you see them in all their incarnations, youthful, and harrowed, and changed. they are all yours, and the worlds they saw, all yours. it feels like it would take too long to grieve each and every one of them.

this world is waiting for you to become a part of it again.

you hold on and you abstract yourself once more. it’s an easier way of understanding yourself if you can simplify your existence into a conversation between two parties, antipodes, nodes and antinodes. you are still getting used to approaching this framework of being.

“i feel like i should apologize.”

“we have already forgiven each other. why?”

“it all feels so small now, but. i’m picking up every small thing in our lives and going, why that, why that? you were sick, but why didn’t i pull you up on the stage with me? why didn’t i spend more time with you? help you with your leg? it all seems so obvious. like i could’ve made it work.”

“you were not the only party in these situations. i refuse you to be the sole arbitrator of your bad decisions. it was my weakness as well: i should have known you would not be ashamed of me were we both behind the podium desk. your regret is my regret, your ignorance, mine as well. if you feel guilt for being the face of hextech, then do not be greedy and assume the blame for all our faults as well.”

“are you mad?”

“you already know the answer to that. should i be mad is another question, and one i would ask you as well. but how many times have we died now? and where has that anger taken us?”

“i didn’t want to do it, you know.”

“a snap decision had to be made. i wished you had talked first, yes. some of it all may have been avoided. but do not worry. i will generously hold it over you for half of our eternity. it only hurt somewhat horribly bad.”

“and in the council room? with mel?”

“bit of vengeance. pinch of jealousy. what can i say? i could move more freely than i ever previously had. i wanted to let all i had kept in out.” you pause. “for the record, i never resented lady medarda. at least, not in the sense of your relations. other things, other words for them. there was a game at hand, and she was playing very well. you have a tendency towards the immediate. i did as well, for other reasons. we have in common the sharp blaming of ourselves.”

“you wanted to live. you’ll never convince me there was anything evil about that.”

“there wasn’t. just that i pursued it poorly. secretly, like a forbidden desire. an approach which led to error. everything always takes ten more years than we have.”

“were you cold when you woke up?”

you laugh, a short huff you can’t hold back. “cold stopped meaning very much at that point. temperature altogether was a suggestion, not a sensation. but, looking back. i must have been. when it mattered most, you did always know when i needed help.”

“and you me.”

“in hindsight, all things become obvious.”

you’re out of pertinent words to trade. this conversation and all its parts, you were already aware of. it felt nice for a moment to have it as yourselves.

“what do you think happens now?” you start.

“i don’t know,” you say, and your eyes trail down to the world. “we come back.”

you take a long, long while to let that sink in. you are afraid to look too closely at the mess you’ve left in your wake. but you are ready to take the next step forward. another you will have found what to do about your mistakes. this, as it always has been, is about getting to a better tomorrow.

you announce to only yourself: “i’m ready.”

and the star chooses you.

there is a girl in piltover with a song to sing and nowhere to let it loose. her parents are tinkerers: she is naturally drawn to you. she walks by the riverside that falls into the undercity over the bank and wonders if that means that in zaun there’s always rain. all the conversations, all the quiet hopes and bitten back curses, she hears them and they overwhelm her. what is her way forward? what can she do?

a butterfly passes just in front of her nose and she fails to stifle an achoo! the butterfly rests on a curl of her hair, its wings iridescent, and she cannot help but be entranced by the way it shines in the noonlight, as though its scales as see-through. off the butterfly goes, and her eyes follow it to a nearby window. she sees a bright pink box-dye.

the girl cranks the wrench to finish her guitar. she will learn how to better do her roots.

there is a girl in zaun with two pigtails and a live wire in her heart. she loves her city and knows what it has done. she fights for it regardless. all her energy is boundless, but she has nowhere to channel it into. the echoes of the chembarons and their gang wars still shake the fissures. the firelights work hard, but her corner needs a protector. this is a place where the young grow older than they should and quickly. she is poor in wealth but not in spirit. who will protect her?

in the corners of her hideout, she finds a small hammer with bronze and leather in the hilt by a pile of scrap she’s collected to recycle. a pack of bandages sits under her bed, well-used. as she will many times in the future, an idea like lightning strikes her. the scraps bend under the might of her hammer.

that girl has a gun and something to prove. let her make a world where that no longer has to be true.

on the shores of ionia, in the heart of noxus. in the sands of shurima, on the slopes of targon. if you need vision, pray to the herald who opens your mind to the possible. If you need means, pray to the defender who gives you the strength to pursue it.

you wondered early on what the fate of hextech would be in a hundred, thousand years odd. would they credit one of you as its inventor and leave the other to collect dust? would they remember the both of you and theorize about what your partnership was? would you both be forgotten, hextech as legend and no mention of your loss? would they confound you, mix you, create a man who was both of you and never was? you were never sure what would be the best outcome.

even this may not be the ideal, but you’ve had your turn creating. the inventors of the future are out there. they do not need the sisters of justice, nor the scorned lovers of the moon and the sun. they seek aid from the partners in every sense of the word, in love and soul and more, to set their progress off.

you are the aspect of ingenuity, separate and as one. you will not fail them. your touch is gentle and your hammer strong.