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── .𐀔. ── .𐀔. ──
It is akin to an inner instinct of a new parent, one Viktor’s mother used to tell him about.
“There were nights, I would wake up right before you would start crying. As if I knew you would need me.”
Viktor opens his eyes to the darkness of the night, and barely a few seconds later, he hears sniffles from the other room, followed by cries. Snoring by his side, Jayce does not even flinch, curled up as he is around a pillow. Some nights, he wakes up just as abruptly, alerted by his daughter’s distress, and some nights he remains in the realm of dreams after an exhausting day.
That night is the latter option.
It is a familiar affair, and Viktor never minds. He sighs fondly, kisses his partner's forehead, who grumbles something in a foreign tongue, then sits up. He contemplates grabbing his crutch before settling for his wheelchair instead. As he approaches his daughter's room, the latter's cries quieten at the gentle sound of his wheels making their way to her.
“There you go, Nadya. Nadya Nadya Nadya,” he chants her name like a prayer as he carefully takes her in his arms, then comfortably leans on the back of his chair.
She squeals, her tiny fingers immediately reaching for a strand of his hair. He tilts his head to help her achieve her goal.
His daughter. What an incongruous thought, still.
He has a daughter. He is alive and he has a daughter.
Nadya giggles, letting go of his hair in favour of wrapping her little arms around his chest—or at least trying to. Viktor holds her closer, making sure she sits comfortably on his arm while his free hand gently caresses her back. She babbles nonsense onto his chest.
“You sweet, brave thing. Do not worry, Papa is here.”
She squeals her delight as he peppers her chubby cheeks with kisses.
Looking at her, he could easily forget he even contributed. She has his eyes—he thinks, his ears, and a few moles in the same places as him. The rest is all Jayce, from her nose, hair, brown skin and stubby limbs.
You would think Jayce was the one who did all the work for nine months. Viktor scoffs at the thought.
Well. It is not so bad. A mini-Jayce. He lifts Nadya in his arms, smiling as she laughs and wiggles around, mimicking a bird in flight, it seems.
“My štěstí,” Viktor whispers, bringing her back closer to his chest. “Let’s sleep now, shall we?”
Nadya babbles, eyes wide open, challenging him in her own way.
“No?” She smiles, shaking her head against him, and starts to fuss. “It was not a suggestion, my darling.”
Viktor sighs, leaning back as he starts humming a long-lost lullaby from his childhood. Slowly, but surely, Nadya calms down, emitting little sounds, as if trying to sing with him. But even those quieten down and soon, she is sleeping, cheeks squished against his shoulder and a little hand still grabbing at his shirt.
Viktor can't help it. He kisses her head again, and again.
His daughter, his light, his love. Oh, what words he never thought he could put together and make a reality.
Fuck, he's crying. Hastily, he wipes the tears away before they can fall on his poor, unsuspecting baby.
It was such a certainty, at some point, that he would never get to see a day past thirty-three. With an eroding body and nobody to call his own, the idea of growing a family felt so foreign. Even as a son of Zaun, where orphaned children create their own families with other unfortunate souls they could gather in their way, Viktor could never find such solace after he ran away from Dr Reveck, and his parents dying not long after.
Even later, as he built a life in Piltover and found someone he could picture a future with, he knew it needed to remain just that—a fantasy. His time was limited, and Jayce was uninterested. They had another dream to achieve. It was not like he was aspiring for a family of his own anyway.
Then… Then, he saw Vander’s memories. In those few weeks before everything went wrong, he can now selfishly admit that he may have spent more time than needed bathing in the warmth of the man’s memories, feeling the love and longing that painted the memories, seeing the man’s kids play, bicker, fight, and yet love with so much passion. It made him ache—that he never got to experience such warmth, and that he could never live it because even that metallic body was rusting the more power he used to strengthen Vander’s memories and bring him back to himself.
(The ache in his chest then became real when Jayce—)
Viktor takes a deep breath. He can see Nadya’s crib, Jayce’s paintings on the wall, and the half-built bed for when their daughter will eventually grow out of her crib. He can feel his daughter’s peaceful breathing against him and the firmness of the carpet on his bare feet. He can hear the faint sound of the wind blowing outside, rustling the foliage of the trees, and the progressively steadier beat of his heart.
He is alive. Reminding himself of such remains a battle.
“I died thrice after all, my brain still thinks this is some afterlife,” he had teased Jayce once, only to get the saddest eyes and pout directed at him, and he never joked about his deaths again.
(Jayce still blames himself for all of them. Viktor still doesn’t know how to make it stop.)
As the rune took them, then spit them out, and they found a village where to settle, Viktor was the first to bring up the idea of a family. It was amusing, in retrospect. At that point, he and Jayce were… something more than friends, connected forever by the touch of the arcane, but something less than lovers.
Or he assumed so.
Viktor is not a man of action when it comes to his feelings. His affection for Jayce was nothing new, an inane part of him that he had learned to be content with. Much like the thought of family, the thought of a relationship, of romance, was only a fleeting one. With the limited time he thought he had, he could not see the point of feeling so much, of sharing it with someone, only to bring suffering upon his inevitable early passing. And Jayce never displayed any indication that such affection could be returned anyhow.
(He was wrong about that, of course, but it is not his fault that Jayce is ironically just as bad as him about expressing his feelings with words. And then he mistook every affectionate touch as friendship because he had never had a friend before. What a pathetic thought, isn’t it?)
Then another chance descended upon him. Suddenly, so many possibilities were lying in front of him, everything he had denied himself before, resulting in his lonesome, was suddenly within reach. And for some reason, he asked for a child before thinking of confessing.
“You did not need to. I didn’t think we needed to,” Jayce would later admit. “Kinda thought it was a given? It’s you and me, like it’s always been. That’s the simplest feeling in the world.”
He had sealed that statement with their first kiss, which Viktor can still feel upon his lips some days.
Viktor sighs happily, briefly standing up to put his daughter back into her bed, only for her to panic, eyes opening wide as she clings to him and starts to sniffle.
“No, no, štěstí, apologies, my sweet. I’m here, you’re safe,” he whispers as he rocks her back to sleep.
Right. This happened before as well, but he cannot just sit in his wheelchair and spend the night there. So, he makes his way back to his and Jayce’s bedroom.
Carefully, he climbs back up into the bed where his rightful place is still carved out onto the blanket. Jayce has turned, a small frown on his face, with his arms splayed on the empty space beside him. Viktor hums, looking between his sleeping husband and daughter. Smiling to himself, he pulls the blanket away with one arm, carving a place for Nadya between him and Jayce… only for his daughter to start fussing as soon as he tries to pull her away from him.
Never mind, then.
With Nadya still carefully cradled in his arms, he lies down. Jayce must sense his return in his sleep, for a small smile tugs at his lips, head tilting downward toward their daughter. Viktor finds himself sniffling, holding back tears at the sight before him.
Then, he closes his eyes, letting his family’s peaceful breathing lull him back to sleep.
── .𐀔. ── .𐀔. ──
“Dada,” a tiny voice wakes Jayce from his slumber, before he feels a chubby little hand lightly slap his face. “Dada.”
“Nadya,” he mumbles, blindly reaching for her hand before his eyes fly open. “Wait, why are you—”
He cuts himself off upon meeting his daughter’s wide, honey-coloured eyes, offering him a toothy grin. “Good morning, mija,” he whispers, kissing her forehead and earning the sweetest of giggles. “How did you crawl up in here, huh?”
“Papa,” she says, and only then does Jayce realise she is holding a strand of a still-sleeping Viktor’s hair in her other hand.
“Oh, oh darling, do not tug,” he hurriedly says, carefully distangling her hand. In his action, he scoops her into his arms, causing her to cheer with glee, as he scoots closer to Viktor, tucking the hair back behind his ear.
Jayce lets his touch linger, tracing the fading scar in the middle of his beloved's forehead and pressing a gentle kiss on it, then on his moles— below his right eye, above his right eyebrow, they both only discovered recently, the one just above his lips. That is when Viktor twitches into consciousness.
“You stink,” Viktor complains, pursing his lips.
Jayce laughs and gives him the silently requested kiss.
Nadya whines between them, pulling away from Jayce’s chest with small, ineffective punches before he hands her over to Viktor, who gladly welcomes her into his arms.
“And suddenly, I stop existing,” Jayce laments.
Viktor grins wickedly and then indeed pretends like he does not exist, his whole focus on the bundle of joy in his arms. Nadya is back to tangling her uncoordinated hands in Viktor’s hair. Jayce scoffs quietly, amused.
“I’ll go make breakfast.”
Viktor hums in response. Jayce gets out of bed, forgoing his brace for now—he’s honestly too lazy to put it on right now— and grabs a cane instead as he makes his way to the door. But then, as he reaches it, he turns around and leans against it to look at his family again.
Viktor has rolled over, holding Nadya in the air, pretending to drop her periodically, making their daughter laugh louder and louder every time. It is a familiar sight now, seeing Viktor playing with Nadya, yet something about the way the gentle morning light spills over them makes the moment feel otherworldly, like a scene Jayce might have only dreamed.
Truth be told, Jayce had been terrified when Viktor shared his desire to have a kid. He… he’s never been good with kids, whether when he was a kid himself or when he grew up. He had Cait, but she barely counted—she was not a typical kid, and there were times she acted like the responsible one.
His luck with children did not… improve afterwards. There are times, he needs to give Nadya to Viktor, afraid he might hurt her with his too-rough hands or drop her. It became easier, eventually, especially when Viktor, one day, refused to take her away from him. Nadya had been fussing, clinging to Jayce’s shirt and screaming even as the latter tried to make her look at Viktor. Upon noticing this, Viktor wrapped his thin arms around the both of them, guiding his hands around their daughter, keeping her safe and close. Nadya immediately calmed down, cheeks squished against Jayce’s shoulder.
Viktor then kissed his nape and whispered, “Look at her, peaceful and safe. She loves you.”
Out of the two of them, Viktor was the one who could never let go of their daughter in those first few months, always cradling Nadya close and looking at her as if she were magic herself.
And she is, in a way. Their little miracle.
(Without the arcane, they may have never been even able to meet her.)
Unshed tears constantly shone in those darling golden eyes, disbelieving but filled with so much unfiltered joy. Jayce could never get enough of the sight.
He misses it. It’s silly, really. The sight is right in front of him, but there was something indescribably uplifting about Viktor holding a newborn, their newborn, marvelling at the tiny proof of their love combined.
And Nadya looks so much like him… maybe he wants a mini-Viktor too. Maybe they should keep trying until they get one.
“... I want another,” he finds himself saying before he realises.
Viktor pauses his movements—falters, really, so he is quick to lower Nadya down on his chest so he doesn’t drop her— to look at him with a bemused smile. “Jayce.”
“Three others, even. Or until I get a mini-Viktor to spoil too.”
“Jayce!” Viktor laughs, trying to stifle it. “At least wait until this one can properly talk.”
“Yes or no? Baby, please.”
Nadya makes a sound, clearly confused. Viktor pouts, brushing his nose against hers. “Mm, what do you say, Nadya? A little sibling for you.”
Of course, she doesn’t reply and just giggles, loving having her papa so close and uncaring about anything else. Jayce’s heart grows fonder.
Then, Nadya throws her arms in the air and turns to look at Jayce. “Dada!” she calls, making grabby hands at him. Jayce is helpless but to rush back to her side, though he does wince a little at his hastiness without the brace on his leg to ease the pressure. He can feel Viktor’s disapproving and worried look without even glancing his way.
“Don’t,” he says as he takes Nadya from his husband’s arms, “I’m fine. I’ll put the brace on later.”
Viktor grunts, displeased, but stops himself from saying anything, knowing that, were the roles reversed, and they have been several times, they would have the same endless argument.
The familiarity of it all is a comfort that Jayce never thought he could achieve. And as he looks at his daughter, his soul fills with so much hope and happiness. She will hold the future in her hands, their legacy. He is alive. He lives.
And his story is not over yet.
“So,” he says, once Viktor has secured his own brace around his leg and is now standing with the help of his crutch. “Yes or no?”
“Jayce.”
Jayce fights a triumphant smile. He knows that tone.
“You know the answer,” Viktor settles for saying as he kisses his shoulder, then their daughter’s cheek. “I’ll make breakfast then, since you quickly forgot about it.”
“I didn’t—”
Nadya’s laughter rhythms their morning as they slip into their routine, their new life away from past grievances. A haven of peace and the small discoveries of family life.