Work Text:
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it starts the same.
Two stars, orbiting. Light caught in endless chase, spiraling with a purpose neither remembers. It is not love—love requires choice. It is not hate—hate requires something to lose. It is something beyond, something innate, something stitched into the fabric of everything that ever was or ever could be.
Jayce burns like fury. His surface is molten iron and his heart churns with energy so fierce it threatens to tear him apart. He is the kind of star that makes gods weep. His light doesn’t just illuminate; it sears. If you gaze too long, you’ll carry the ghost of him in your vision forever. Jayce is the beginning of all things, the kind of star that births worlds in his wake, each planet a pale echo of the fire in his core.
Viktor is something different. His shine is steady, muted—a light that doesn’t blind but lingers, persistent, touching the dark places Jayce cannot. He is a collapsing thing, giving more than he should to the void, a mass so dense that it bends the space around it. A faint red haze surrounds him, bleeding into infinity. If Jayce is a maker, then Viktor is entropy, and what he consumes, he keeps. Where they orbit, gravity warps and time stretches thin, but they never meet. Not yet.
It’s when they pass closest to one another, their gravities tangling, that it almost feels like magic.
They tear trails of stardust from each other’s edges, brilliant flashes of light bleeding away, and for one infinitesimal second, the universe feels like it might hold its breath. These encounters are rare and brief—cosmic seconds in the scope of eons—but they leave scars, invisible to all but them.
And then, they drift apart again, leaving only the memory of heat behind.
Jayce and Viktor, both trapped in a cycle as old as the stars themselves. Their paths are immutable, carved into the fabric of existence long before either of them began to burn. They are different stars, shining just the same. Neither remembers the first time they crossed each other’s orbit, but they both know how it will end: a collision so violent it will rip the universe open.
But for now, they spin.
Viktor watches Jayce’s light flare again, brighter than before. The radiance consumes, threatens to obliterate the small planets that trail in his wake. Viktor’s own gravity shudders at the weight of it, drawn helplessly closer. He wonders—not for the first time—how many millennia he has spent falling toward Jayce, pulled by a force older and stronger than either of them.
He lets himself imagine what it might feel like to collide, to become part of something greater than himself.
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it ends the same.
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it starts the same. And sometimes, it starts here.
In the undercity, where the air tastes of rust and the light comes in sickly green shafts through the cracks in the pipes. Where the streets are slick with oil and refuse, and nothing is ever quite clean, quite safe. Where children are born already hungry, already fighting, already forgetting what it means to hope. Where Jayce and Viktor both came into the world, and it changes everything—and nothing.
Jayce is a fighter from the moment he can stand. The kind of child who snarls back at the world when it snarls at him. He grows fast and broad, and every day his fists bruise just as easily as his pride. There’s a fire in him that the undercity cannot quench, no matter how many blows it lands, no matter how hard it presses him down. He wants to climb. To break through the ceiling of the world and see the sun for himself, even if it blinds him.
Viktor is different. Smaller, quieter, but no less relentless. He doesn’t fight the world; he studies it, pulling apart its ugly, rotting pieces with deft, grease-stained fingers. He understands that the undercity doesn’t kill you quickly—it erodes you, taking you apart bit by bit until nothing remains but scraps and ash. He wants to build something that lasts. Something that defies the decay.
They meet when they’re still boys, both scavenging the same wreck of a workshop. Jayce’s hands are already curled into fists, ready to swing, when Viktor steps back, a strange kind of calculation in his pale, sharp eyes. He doesn’t flinch, and it throws Jayce off, like a punch that never lands.
“Take it,” Viktor says, his voice thin and rasping. “It’s junk anyway.”
It isn’t junk, not really—Viktor wouldn’t be here if it was—but something in Jayce softens at the offer, at the sharp, tired twist of Viktor’s mouth. He lowers his fists, and something shifts between them, something that will only grow heavier with time.
Years pass, and the undercity grinds on. Jayce fights, always fights—sometimes in the alleys, sometimes in the makeshift rings where people bet more than they can afford to lose. Viktor watches, distant and curious, and when Jayce’s knuckles split and bleed, Viktor is there to stitch them up. Neither of them says what they both know: the world down here doesn’t forgive people like them. Not for their hunger. Not for their dreams.
They grow into their own shapes, jagged and unyielding. Jayce’s fire burns brighter, hotter, until it singes anyone who comes too close. Viktor is colder, sharper, a blade honed to precision. Together, they are a force that the undercity cannot ignore—Jayce, with his reckless, boundless energy; Viktor, with his cold, calculating brilliance.
And yet, the undercity holds them fast, as if its rot runs too deep in their veins for them to ever escape it. They try, in different ways: Jayce with his fists and fury, Viktor with his quiet, relentless tinkering. But the ceiling above them is made of iron, and even their combined strength can’t break it.
It’s only when they stand side by side, watching the toxic green haze of the factories churn into the endless dark above, that they feel the weight of it. The inevitability.
“We’ll get out,” Jayce says, his voice hard with conviction. He turns to Viktor, his eyes blazing with that same unyielding fire. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”
Viktor doesn’t answer, not right away. His gaze lingers on the faint light above, dim and unreachable. His mind is already running ahead, calculating, considering. He knows the truth Jayce can’t admit yet: escape isn’t always possible. Not for people like them.
And yet, something in Viktor’s chest shifts, bends, just a little.
“Together,” he says, his voice low, and for the first time, it almost sounds like hope.
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it ends the same. And sometimes, it ends here.
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it starts the same. And it never really starts here.
In the topside, where the streets gleam under polished cobblestones, and the sky is open and clean. Where glass windows shimmer in the light of a sun that never seems to set too early, and the air hums with innovation and ambition. Where children grow up surrounded by opportunity, cradled by the careful architecture of a world designed to make them thrive. Where Jayce and Viktor both came into the world, and it changes everything—and nothing.
Jayce Talis is born to the kind of family that others envy. His parents are innovators, brilliant minds who turn ideas into realities that reshape society. He grows up in the soft glow of a workshop that always smells of metal shavings and ozone, a world where every tool has its place and every problem has a solution. From the beginning, Jayce is loud and bright, a wildfire in motion. He wants more—more knowledge, more space, more everything. He’s the boy who scales the tops of buildings just to see what lies beyond the horizon, the one who burns his fingers on his father’s tools because he’s too impatient to wait for instruction.
Viktor is born in the same city but in the shadow of different walls. His family is quiet, reserved—a thin thread of tradition running through their lives. They are craftsmen, not inventors, working with their hands instead of their minds, and Viktor learns early to respect the precision of labor. He grows up on the edge of the bright academic district, watching the scholars pass by with their flowing robes and air of purpose. He doesn’t envy them, not exactly. But there’s something in him that sharpens whenever he sees their faces, something that aches for a world larger than the one he’s been given.
They meet in the hallways of Piltover’s Academy, young and untested. Jayce is already on his way to becoming a star, his charisma as sharp as his mind. He shines in every room he enters, too loud, too fast, too eager, but always magnetic. Viktor is quieter, his brilliance more focused, more patient. He doesn’t need to demand attention—it comes to him naturally, drawn by the precision of his ideas and the way his mind carves through problems like a scalpel.
Their partnership begins out of necessity. A shared project, assigned by a professor who probably doesn’t even remember their names. Jayce thinks Viktor is strange, too formal, too cold. Viktor thinks Jayce is reckless, too brash, too much. But when they work together, something clicks. Jayce’s raw energy, his wild, boundless ideas, find balance in Viktor’s careful calculations, his methodical mind. They argue—constantly—but it’s never unproductive. Each disagreement sharpens their work, pushes them further.
Their project is a success, of course. The kind of success that earns applause from professors and murmurs of admiration from their peers. But it’s more than that. It’s the moment they realize they could be something greater together than they ever could be alone.
From then on, they are inseparable. Jayce pulls Viktor into his world of reckless ambition, of ideas too big to fit into the confines of their workshops. Viktor grounds Jayce, tempers his wildness with the weight of reality. They build things that no one else dares to imagine, pushing the boundaries of what Piltover’s science can achieve.
But for all the light and privilege of the topside, there are shadows even here. The academy is full of politics, of hierarchies that don’t bend easily. Jayce’s family name opens doors, but it also casts long expectations. Viktor’s quieter brilliance is often overlooked, dismissed by those who see only his modest background and strange, foreign mannerisms. They feel it, both of them, the weight of a system that promises opportunity but delivers it unevenly.
One night, after a long day in the workshop, they sit on the edge of Piltover’s highest tower, watching the city lights glitter below.
“You ever wonder,” Jayce asks, his voice soft, “if it’s enough? All of this. Everything we’re building.”
Viktor doesn’t answer right away. His eyes are on the horizon, where the lights of the undercity flicker faintly, like a distant constellation. He knows what Jayce is really asking. Knows that for all his friend’s brilliance, for all his fire, Jayce carries an unease he can never quite name.
“No,” Viktor says finally. His voice is quiet, steady. “But that’s why we keep building.”
Jayce turns to look at him, and for a moment, there’s something unspoken between them. Something that neither of them can name yet but that feels as inevitable as the rising sun.
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it ends the same. And sometimes, its best that it ends here.
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it begins almost the same. And in this one, it begins with a crown.
The kingdom of Caelum is young, its borders still raw from conquest and diplomacy, and the weight of its future rests heavily on the shoulders of its boy-king. Jayce is crowned too soon, his father lost to a skirmish along the far edges of the territory, his mother to illness years before. The crown sits awkwardly on his head, too large, too heavy, as if it knows he hasn’t grown into it yet.
Viktor kneels before him on the day of the coronation, his sword laid flat across his palms, his head bowed low. He is not a nobleman; his family was barely anything at all, a long line of tradesmen scraping by on the outskirts of the capital. But his mind and his skill with a blade had elevated him beyond his station, and by the time Jayce took the throne, Viktor had already proven himself as both a soldier and a tactician.
“You kneel too often,” Jayce had said to him once, before the crown, when they were just two boys sneaking through the castle gardens. “We’re supposed to be equals.”
Viktor had smiled at that, a small, sardonic thing that didn’t reach his eyes. “A king and a knight are never equals.”
But now Jayce is king, and Viktor kneels like he’s meant to. It changes everything—and nothing.
The court is a suffocating place, full of whispers and wolves in silk, each council member hungry for more than their share of power. Jayce is too young for this world, too restless. His dreams are not of taxes and trade agreements but of battles fought and won, of banners flying against a sky too bright to hold shadows. He wants to fix everything all at once, to charge into every problem headfirst, as if the world can be solved with brute strength and determination alone.
Viktor is the one who tempers him. The one who stands at his side during council meetings, his sharp gaze cutting through the room with more precision than his sword ever could. He doesn’t speak unless he must, and when he does, his words land like stones in still water, rippling outward, impossible to ignore.
“You can’t fight your way through this,” Viktor tells Jayce late one night, after the council has adjourned and the two of them are alone in the war room. Maps and letters are scattered across the table, and the flickering candlelight casts strange shadows across Viktor’s gaunt features. “Not every enemy carries a blade.”
Jayce sighs, running a hand through his hair. He’s still wearing the crown, though he hates the weight of it. “I know,” he says, but there’s frustration in his voice, a restless energy that Viktor knows too well. “I just—this isn’t what I wanted. I’m not my father.”
“No,” Viktor says simply, his gaze steady. “You’re not. And perhaps that is a good thing.”
Jayce looks up at him, startled, but Viktor doesn’t flinch under the weight of his gaze. They’ve had this conversation before, in different forms, and it always ends the same: with Jayce looking like he wants to argue and Viktor standing like a stone wall in his path.
“You’ll be a great king,” Viktor adds after a moment, his voice quieter now, almost soft. “Not because of what they expect of you, but because of who you are.”
Jayce doesn’t answer, but the tension in his shoulders eases slightly. He reaches for the crown, pulling it from his head and setting it down on the table between them. For a moment, it feels like the air in the room shifts, like the weight of the crown has lessened just a little.
They are still young, both of them, too young for the roles they’ve been given. But they carry them anyway—Jayce with his fire, Viktor with his quiet resolve. The kingdom doesn’t see it yet, but they are not just a king and his knight. They are something greater, something inevitable.
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it ends almost the same. And in this one, it ends with a crown.
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it ends the same. But sometimes, it ends too soon.
The disease takes Viktor in the dead of winter, when the air in Piltover’s bright streets is sharp and brittle. Jayce sits by the bedside for hours, watching his friend’s chest rise and fall, each breath shallow, labored, as if the simple act of drawing air has become a monumental effort.
The hexgates remain unfinished. The prototype is locked away in the lab, its gleaming curves gathering dust, the equations scattered across pages that only Viktor truly understood. Jayce knows the numbers by heart—he’s read them a hundred times—but without Viktor’s mind, they’re nothing but symbols on a page.
Jayce refuses to leave, even when the nurses tell him it’s pointless. “Go home,” they say softly, pity thick in their voices. “He wouldn’t want you to watch this.”
But Jayce stays. He can’t leave. Not when Viktor is slipping away, piece by piece, like the gears in a machine coming undone.
“It’s not supposed to end like this,” Jayce says, his voice hoarse. He’s clutching Viktor’s hand, careful not to disturb the thin tubes running into his veins. “We were supposed to finish it together. The gates. Everything.”
Viktor’s lips twitch, the ghost of a smile. His eyes, sunken and dull, flicker with something faint and fleeting—recognition, maybe, or just memory.
“You’ll finish them,” Viktor rasps, his voice barely more than a breath. “You always... finish.”
Jayce shakes his head violently, his grip tightening on Viktor’s hand. “Not without you. We built this together, Viktor. I can’t—I don’t even know where to start.”
For a moment, there’s only the sound of the machines, the faint hiss of air, the steady beeping of the monitors. And then Viktor’s voice cuts through, so quiet Jayce has to lean closer to hear it.
“You’ll figure it out,” he says, his words slow and deliberate, each one costing him more than Jayce wants to imagine. “You always do.”
Jayce swallows hard, his throat tight. He wants to argue, to tell Viktor that he’s wrong, that nothing about this will ever be right again. But he doesn’t. Because even now, Viktor is looking at him with that same quiet certainty, the same unshakable belief he’s always had.
The machines keep beeping. The air stays cold. And Viktor closes his eyes for the last time just as the first flakes of snow begin to fall outside the window.
Jayce doesn’t cry. Not then. Not until the funeral, when he’s standing in the shadow of the academy, watching as Viktor’s name is etched into stone. Even then, the tears come slowly, one by one, like they’re afraid to be seen.
The hexgates remain unfinished for months. Jayce locks the lab door and refuses to step inside, refusing to even look at the prototype. He buries himself in other work, in anything that doesn’t remind him of what he’s lost.
But grief has a way of creeping in, of filling the spaces you thought you’d left untouched. And one night, long after the city has gone to sleep, Jayce finds himself standing in the lab, the key in his hand.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there, staring at the door. Long enough that his fingers grow numb from the cold, long enough that he can almost hear Viktor’s voice in his head, calm and patient, guiding him forward.
When he finally opens the door, the air inside is stale, untouched. The prototype gleams faintly in the dim light, and Jayce steps closer, his heart heavy, his hands trembling.
“You said I’d figure it out,” he mutters, his voice thick with emotion. “You better be right, Viktor.”
The hexgates are finished six months later. They are beautiful and terrible, a triumph of science and engineering. But when Jayce watches them light up for the first time, he doesn’t feel triumph. He feels only the absence of the one person who should have been there to see it.
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it ends the same. But sometimes, it ends too soon.
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it begins the same. And sometimes, it just… works.
Jayce and Viktor stand side by side in the heart of the workshop, the air electric with anticipation. The hexgates hum softly, a deep and steady resonance that thrums in their bones, as if the universe itself is holding its breath. Everything has been checked, triple-checked, calibrated down to the smallest fraction.
“It’s ready,” Viktor says, his voice calm but edged with something Jayce hasn’t heard before. Excitement. Hope.
Jayce looks at him, and for a moment, he doesn’t see the meticulous inventor, the sharp and steady mind that never falters. He sees his friend. The one who stayed up with him through endless nights of failure. The one who believed in this project when Jayce’s own faith wavered. The one who never stopped.
“You sure?” Jayce asks, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, his hand poised over the activation panel.
Viktor raises a brow, a faint smirk curving his lips. “If it fails, it will not be for lack of certainty.”
Jayce barks a laugh, loud and unrestrained, and then he presses the button.
The hexgates flare to life, and the room is bathed in brilliant, cascading light. Arcs of energy ripple across the gate’s surface, bending space into a shimmering, kaleidoscopic void. For a second, Jayce thinks he hears something—a faint, harmonic hum, like a note held just on the edge of hearing.
It works.
Jayce’s breath catches, his grin splitting into something wide and wild as he turns to Viktor. “It works!” he shouts, his voice breaking with exhilaration. “Viktor, it works!”
Viktor doesn’t answer immediately. He’s staring at the gate, his expression unreadable, his eyes reflecting the shifting lights. And then, slowly, he nods, his lips quirking into a small, tired smile.
“Yes,” he says softly. “It does.”
For a long moment, neither of them speaks. They just stand there, side by side, watching the impossible unfold before their eyes.
The months that follow are a whirlwind. The hexgates transform Piltover, their technology revolutionizing trade, transportation, and science itself. Jayce becomes a star overnight, the prodigy who brought Piltover into a new age. Viktor, ever the pragmatist, avoids the spotlight, content to let Jayce take the brunt of the attention while he refines their work in the shadows.
And yet, they are always a pair. Where Jayce goes, Viktor is not far behind, his cane tapping softly against the marble floors of the council halls, his sharp voice cutting through debates with the precision of a blade.
There are setbacks, of course. There always are. Prototypes fail, investors grow impatient, the council’s politics threaten to grind their progress to a halt. But every time they stumble, they find a way forward, together.
One night, months after the gates first came to life, they sit on the balcony of the lab, a bottle of cheap wine between them. The city sprawls below, its lights stretching out to the horizon, glowing brighter than ever before.
“Do you think it’ll last?” Jayce asks, his voice quiet.
Viktor tilts his head, considering. “What? The gates? Or us?”
Jayce laughs, but there’s something softer in it, something vulnerable. “Both, I guess.”
Viktor takes a long sip of wine, his gaze fixed on the horizon. “The gates are a foundation. Strong, but they require maintenance. Attention. So long as we do not grow complacent, they will endure.”
“And us?” Jayce asks, leaning back against the railing, his eyes on Viktor.
Viktor doesn’t answer right away. He sets the bottle down, his thin fingers curling around it, and when he looks at Jayce, there’s something unguarded in his expression.
“We endure,” Viktor says simply. “Through trial. Through triumph. Through everything. We endure.”
Jayce smiles, the tension in his shoulders easing as he lifts the bottle in a mock toast. “To enduring.”
Viktor raises a brow, but he clinks his glass against Jayce’s all the same.
In every timeline, in every universe, with every possibility, it ends the same. But sometimes, it ends like this.