Chapter Text
Jayce felt disgustingly empty. After the light blasted from the rune as their bodies were absorbed into the small stone, he felt like his mind was harshly ripped from his body, the small connection Viktor kept in his internal dimension snapping as their beings became one, their bodies ceasing to exist in the progress. He would find it sickening romantic if they weren’t dying. The two souls, once inseparable, who lost each other because of their ambitions, are now reunited again in death. He was surrounded by a sea of darkness, endless nothing, like a night sky with no stars to show him the way, the cold all around him made him feel like he was slowly freezing.
Viktor held him, hand on his arm slowly stroking, trying to soot him and make death less painful. The man everyone pictured as an egotistical scientist, was lulling him to his death. This feeling wasn’t foreign to him, the first time breaking his spine and skull in the congress room after Jinx’s attack. He’ll never forgive himself for how selfishly he acted that day, fusing the Hexcore without thinking twice about his partner's body, transforming him into a corrupted version of himself. He did it out of love, he wasn’t ready to let him go, the infection caused by the grey already rotting his lungs made him feel like he had to find a way to keep him alive, by his side, where he belonged. The second time was when Jayce blasted him. He killed him in his sanctuary, while he looked so ethereal, meditating in his new form. He understood later that Viktor trusted him so much he let him in the small community with his hammer, the same weapon that caused his death. If Jaycee could still feel any sort of bodily sensation, his stomach would twist in that familiar sense of shame and sorrow.
“Not even death can silence your thoughts, Jayce?”
A familiar voice from nowhere seemed to silence his monologue.
“Viktor?!?” He spoke? He didn’t know if whatever mind connection they were doing counted as talking. “Where are we? What is happening?” Frantically, he tried to squint his eyes to make out the silhouette of his partner in the deep darkness.
“I really don’t know, I think our consciousnesses are slowly dying, but somehow we are still granted the company of each other” The voice sounded tired, a hint of sadness shining through a calm demeanor towards the end of the sentence “I’m sorry that you have to spend your last minutes with the cause of your death, but it’s seems like the arcane has other plans for the two of us. Do as you please in these last minutes.”
Jayce felt the hurt emanating from his voice, he wanted to hug him, hold him in a comforting embrace, and tell him that even after everything that had happened, he still cherished him, loved him, but all he could muster up at the moment was
“Do you mind if I ask you something, Viktor?” He took the silence following his question as a yes “What brought you to do such things? You saw the outcome of the glorious evolution in my mind, do you think you would have gone that far to perfect everyone even in this universe?”
“I…” Victor seemed for a moment to be lost in thoughts, pondering the possibilities of the consequences of his actions “I don’t know, I was blinded by the arcane’s insatiable need of resources to extend itself and my need for perfection that I can’t completely deny the possibility of that outcome… though I want you to know, Jayce, that I, right now, am happy you stopped me, saving the world as a result. What I got to see from your mind, all the hurt my distorted vision of a better world caused is revolting. All those poor souls I trapped and left to suffer in foreign mechanical bodies, they were crying, I heard their sorrow and hurt from the vision.”
Jayce couldn’t say he was surprised. He believed Viktor when he said that he was relieved he stopped him, he remembered vividly the face of the alternate universe Viktor, eaten by aging and guilt, sitting by his statue, the only one still intact for the most part, clean and away from the storm cast on the others. He was surprised to know that his partner could hear all the transformed people’s feelings.
“Do you despise me for what I’ve done, for what I’ve put you through?”
The question was so unexpected it destabilized Jayce for a moment.
All he could feel for his former partner was love, affection, the same feeling that held them together before the attack and made them reunite in the end.
“I think we both know the answer to that, Viktor. I left behind everyone, Mel, Caitlyn, Vi, and my mother, so I could hold you for one last time. From the moment you gave me that rune as a child, we were linked together, you saved me from a painful death, I saved you from an eternity of guilt and self-hatred. In the end, we always had each other’s back.”
Jayce could have sworn he felt a hand brushing the void where once his hand would have been, the feeling so light and gentle it killed him even more knowing he couldn’t reach out for more.
“Why do you think so highly of me?”
“After years in the lab working together and knowing you fully, it’s impossible not to love you. I’ve found you endearing since the beginning. The way your accent would get more marked during sleepless nights at work, your endless knowledge that seemed to deepen every day, your cockiness when somebody tried to underestimate you just from your origins. Everything about you is extraordinary, and I feel lucky to have met you, in all timelines and possibilities.”
The same touch now was where his chest would have been.
“Now you’re spoiling me with all this flattery, even after all these years you haven’t lost your charm. But please be honest with me, scream, shout, insult me I can’t die knowing you haven’t been honest with me now.” Viktor sounded so frantic it made Jayce try to reach in front of him, where the touch on his chest was coming from.
He couldn’t describe what he felt when he touched his partner’s face, it was like cupping something almost non-existent, it scared him how unreal the face of his love felt. He missed his partner’s touch, the high fives, the hugs, he had to get used to this mockery of his face.
“I love you” was all he said instead “It feels like I’m holding your soul, it’s strange but romantic at the same time.” He traced the features on that face he knew so well, the moles under his eyes, over his lips, every little detail of that masterpiece of a man engraved in his memory so clearly. The hand on his chest traveled up, feeling his soul with such gentleness like it was grazing one of the most precious pieces of art in the history of time.
“Tell me you’re really here and not a product of my dying consciousness, I need to know you’re real, that Viktor is holding my soul as we get absorbed in the arcane.”
He felt something brush against his lips. It felt strange, like their soul mixed for mere fractions of seconds.
“I wish I could see your face one more time, but fate has been already kind enough to let me have you here right now. I am real, I love you, Jayce Talis; I loved you since we started working together when you rushed to me when I was sick, when you sacrificed your life to leave this world with me. Let’s hope that whatever is beyond this realm will pity the two of us, and let us rest together..”