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On his knees was where he was meant to be. He knew it now, and he thought that perhaps if he’d known it before, everything could have been prevented.
On his knees, defeated. On his knees, in supplication. On his knees, for pleasure.
It mattered not which kind, only that now - as the creature he and Viktor created - he was as he should be.
The Hex infection grew out of his broken and shattered body. The colorful beauty of it made his bone white husk lively again.
He had no heart anymore, but he had pieces of his soul left, no matter how faded they were now. They pulsed warm at the fleeting thought of Viktor. It drew His eye; His ever watchful eye.
Knelt in defeat was the last iteration of his genuflection. Knees fused to the ground and fingers wound tight around the Mercury Hammer. His eyes were fixed upon the shame they forced upon this world, just past the Hexgate and down to the apocalypse they wrought.
Past the clouds into the damnation they handed out to the people of the land, all while Viktor built them this small, peaceful place at the top of the Hexgate.
He could sense Him lurking in the shadows behind him, his lonely god. His mournful and regretful god. Viktor’s presence was a balm to him, and when He cupped His hands around the reminders of his soul, he shuddered in his cage.
“Jayce…” Viktor murmured, both out loud and in the place where He pulled all the souls of the living into; in the Arcane. “You called for me. Though, perhaps I only imagined it… wished it.”
It was a lonely existence for them. Viktor, because He was the last truly living being in Runeterra; Jayce, because he was barely holding onto the last threads of his soul to remain with Him.
Jayce could do nothing but remember.
A Zaunite accepted into the Academy. It was unheard of; it was all anyone was talking about for months – even the whole school year. A Zaunite in their midst.
They bumped into each other, the Zaunite cursing and Jayce apologizing frantically. The man’s things went everywhere, his papers and binders. Little blue gems went rolling along the ground. Jayce was immediately on his knees, messily tiding things up.
The man knelt down much slower, relying heavily on his cane to help him down.
“Ah—you must be more careful,” the man muttered, accent thick, and Jayce couldn’t tell if he was talking to him or himself.
“I turned the corner too fast, that’s on me,” Jayce said. The man looked startled, abruptly looking up at him like he’d forgotten Jayce was there already. Jayce glanced down though, leaning forward to grab ahold of one of the blue gems. He held it up, blinking owlishly at it, examining it in the sunlight that streamed through a nearby window.
It was circular, cracked all over, but something was running just beneath the surface. Jayce lifted his other hand and lightly flicked the gem, blue sparking out from it at the impact.
“Careful!” the man scolded, once more, this time definitely at Jayce. He cursed in a language Jayce didn’t understand. Jayce shifted his eyes from the gem to finally look at the man. He felt the earth drop out from under him when their eyes met. The air was stolen from his lungs.
Gold eyes, brows furrowed in annoyance, hair artfully tousled across his forehand. Jayce felt like he’d been struck by lightning. Perhaps it was the strange blue gem he was holding instead.
“What is it?” Jayce asked. “Some sort of energy?”
The man tilted his head at that, silently considering what to do with Jayce. He seemed interested by Jayce’s question. It had been a test without either of them realizing, until Jayce passed.
“My lab is nearby… if you want to see a demonstration,” the man offered. Jayce had never agreed faster to go to follow a stranger to an even stranger place.
They’d done it all together after that, him and Viktor. They were inseparable, a decade together, then longer after that. Hexgates were made, their weapons made, Viktor’s illness cured. The council wasn’t bombed, the Noxian army never came.
It was the cure that doomed them; it was what drove the two of them in this timeline. Magic – the Arcane – did not give freely. It demanded something in return for Viktor, who should have succumbed to his illness.
Viktor freely stepped into the Hexcore as it fused with his body, and he freely stepped out, a changed man. Their commune they built together, while Jayce only became more and more enamored. His hammer was not meant to be against Viktor, but rather in defense of Viktor.
Viktor’s hair was longer now, streaks of blonde-white through it as the Arcane took a piece of him, even as it made him nearly immortal. He sat in the greenhouse in this memory Jayce had conjured up, on the edge of a murmuring fountain.
Peace was all they wanted for a time.
It was where Jayce found Viktor, dipping his metallic fingers into the water. Viktor looked up, and to Jayce. His beauty was almost painful to look at, but the purple and gold metal crept up his neck and around his cheeks, jolt his cheekbones. The mole at the corner of his mouth begged for Jayce to kiss it.
“Viktor,” Jayce sighed, a smile on his face. He dropped the hammer near the entrance of the greenhouse, next to where Viktor’s cane already sat. The corners of Viktor’s mouth curved up in response to Jayce’s smile. His ever-changing eyes melted to a warm pink as he watched Jayce make his way over.
Jayce never told him about it, but his eyes never did that when he looked at anyone else.
“Have I told you how much I like your beard?” Viktor asked, fingers still skimming the surface of the water.
“Not today,” Jayce chuckled, kneeling before Viktor when he was close enough. He leaned forward to place a kiss to one of Viktor’s bare knees. The blue blanket-turned-robe was hiked high up his thighs.
“Good thing we do not have a barber here,” Viktor mused. Going into the Hexcore of his own free will had left bits of humanity in him, but they were all for Jayce. Jayce’s big hands wrapped around each of Viktor’s delicate ankles, then dragged slowly up his calves.
A shudder went through Viktor, followed by a soft, pleasant noise. The plant behind him seemed to bloom more with his joy.
“You are insatiable,” but a smile was heard in Viktor’s voice.
Jayce, on his knees for pleasure, spread Viktor’s legs apart. He pressed kiss after kiss along an inner thigh.
“Wait”— Viktor reached down to grab his chin and pull his face upward. Jayce’s neck angled upward harshly, but he didn’t mind, for he saw Viktor leaning down, eyes closing, lips moving closer. Jayce continued to move his hands up his thighs, but he met Viktor halfway, their kiss soft, gentle, and it embedded itself onto his soul.
A gasp from Viktor behind him. They were connected in the Arcane, so what Jayce felt, Viktor did too. What Viktor felt, Jayce could feel tenfold in his sensory deprivation.
Viktor’s grief enveloped him; a grieving for who they could never be again: two scientists, two inventors that thrived off the other’s intelligence and quick wit. A thump sounded behind him, and he so desperately wished he could feel the way Viktor leaned against his rotted through back.
Once, when this had begun and he was less of a husk, Viktor would seat Himself behind him to lean against him fully. He’d see the ends of Viktor’s long hair in his peripheral vision when He leaned His head back against Jayce’s shoulder. The infection hadn’t eaten away at his exposed back yet.
Jayce could feel the ghost of a smile when he thought of their first moments together like this. The physical touches were frequent from Viktor back then, before He realized Jayce couldn’t feel. Viktor spent the first night, fitting Himself between Jayce’s hammer and his chest, between his outstretched arms, trying to curl close to him with tears in His eyes.
The price for Viktor had included Jayce. Both were so wrapped up in their movement that they hadn’t realized until it was too late. Jayce always felt as though he’d been an outlier; not part of the equation.
Viktor sensed his longing and wrapped Himself around Jayce’s soul. Jayce missed the physical touches, but this was better.
“The price of my cure could never be worth it. The world for one single man?”
Not just a man, though, not to Jayce. A god. His everything in this world.
Maybe the other Jayce’s had fallen for their Viktors too, but his love was one that had him folding the minute Viktor’s lips quirked upwards while he stood in his commune. The blue gifted blanket wrapped around his body while his metal, machine parts made him ethereal.
To his knees, Jayce fell then, as well. In supplication to the man who would become his god; to his lover who made himself divine.
Love - love. The feeling crashed through him, ripping his already shredded soul even more. It consumed him: a crooked smile aimed at him, a rare laugh from a man who was too focused in his work to find humor in the world, the trust of his partner at the Distinguished Innovators Competition, the night they shared wrapped in each other in celebration. All the nights after, spent together.
Sunlight caressing pale skin, dark bags under his eyes, his soft, bronze hair.
Gold eyes, opening, seeking him out first. Warmth of a first love.
“Jayce,” Viktor’s voice cut through him. The sound of shuffling and then Viktor was in front of him. He could only see His hands and the white robe, but Jayce yearned for them all the same. He wanted to touch, to be touched. He wanted the warmth of Viktor’s affection on him again.
“You use up what’s left of yourself in thinking these things. You must stop,” Viktor lifted a hand, hesitant, but then He touched Jayce’s wrist. Arcane power fused with him, brief and only for a second, but long enough for him to lift his dead, empty eyes.
He could see Viktor’s face now.
How could he stop yearning for the deity that was before him?
Something akin to pain lanced through him; a rending of his soul. The specter of a bare faced Viktor with gold eyes and a snarky quirk of the lips, replaced by a somber god. Bearded and weathered, this Viktor was as beautiful as He’d always been, only different now.
Sad eyes, the multicolor of the Arcane, watched him. Oh, to touch Viktor’s cheek once more, to feel the soft skin there; to feel the beard He’d never had before. It was unfair that Viktor had pieces of him that Jayce had never touched before.
It was unfair that Viktor grew old alone, while Jayce merely fell to pieces as time passed.
Viktor’s brows pulled together, and He lifted both hands to frame his white, metal face. His thumb brushed against the red and green infection that ate away at him.
“Jayce,” Viktor’s voice now overlapped a memory of Viktor, with his short Academy hair, nervous for a first kiss, saying his name. He leaned forward, His eyes closing slowly. He was used to the hammer’s long handle being in the way, and He expertly avoided it.
Stars sparkled around His face, in the shadows of the blanket Jayce had once given Him; the blanket that had since been bleached by the sun above them. Stars dusted His cheeks, in His beard. They loved Him as much as Jayce did.
Tightened pressed around him; the pressure of his yearning closed in on him. Viktor, Viktor, Viktor.
Jayce longed to close his eyes, purse his lips. He longed to kiss Viktor back as - what he presumed - soft lips brushed against his ivory metal lips.
Their love doomed the world, but even as the Hex infection ate away at his metallic parts, they were still together. Just a little.
I love you.
Viktor pulled away, but He rested His cheek against what was left of Jayce’s.
“He’s here, the other you, with the acceleration rune. He’s different from the others, I think. I don’t think this one has realized his love yet - I think that will work in our favor. He’ll be the one to end it all,” Viktor promised, voice low. But all Jayce wanted was Viktor. The world was already doomed, what did other timelines matter?
It was this timeline that destined all the other Jayce’s and Viktor’s to meet. This timeline decided the fate of every other one. This Viktor loved Jayce so much that He traveled to the other timelines to force the pair together in the endless pursuit to give them all fleeting moments of adoration and the love of soulmates that were never supposed to meet.
In the pursuit to watch as their love tore apart the world.
It was only now, after so long, that Viktor was trying to end the loop. Jayce could not simply die in the snowstorm with his mother; Viktor could never allow it. They had to meet, but one version of them had to end it all, for it would not be this Viktor and it would not be this Jayce, with his knees fused to the ground.