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Ekko, there’s something I need to confess.
Ekko brought a hand to his mouth, stunned. He staggered until he hit the wall of the cramped, messy room, dark eyes fixed on the tear-stained letter Ezreal had left on the table before disappearing completely for months — far too long for two who lived traveling between timelines.
He couldn’t believe what he was reading. To him, Ezreal had been a complete idiot from the moment he got close to someone from another timeline that he didn’t belong to. Since then, their lives had only become more complicated. Ezreal would disappear for hours, come back with his gauntlet short-circuited, then vanish again.
He liked to say he was living, but he wasn’t. That was obvious.
Ezreal was slowly dying from a love that didn’t seem to be mutual. In fact, it was clear it wasn’t. The one who wasn’t fully human would never know what it meant to love the way Ezreal did.
“You idiot…” Ekko whispered painfully, running a hand over his face as his body slid down the wall to the floor, eyes never leaving the letter.
Kayn was secretly rehearsing his death every night.
And I knew, but pretended not to.
Maybe… I just wasn’t as desperate for him.
Over that last sentence, the cardstock was stained with tears and ink that had run in the process of trying to wipe away his shame.
Ezreal loved. That was evident. Ezreal was desperate, otherwise he wouldn’t have written something to Ekko, especially knowing that Ekko didn’t agree with that senseless love. Because that wasn’t love. No, sir. That was a sickness. A sickness acquired in the process of time travel.
Ezreal held the gauntlet close to his chest, walking through the empty corridors of the Fractal Court. The emergency lights were on, flashing red every two seconds, tightening the grip around Ezreal’s heart.
That ship was never this empty. Soldiers were always walking through the corridors, either in training or “on field.” It was also rare for it to be stopped on any planet other than the one where the Demacian Empire’s ship stayed. Something was happening. Something was missing in that timeline.
I know my love for him was different from yours,
Ezreal walked slowly. His feet dragged, the iron boots made a terribly loud sound, his breathing wavered between anxious and exhausted. Each step echoed louder than the last, and the feeling that this wasn’t the right timeline grew like an invisible pressure on his shoulders.
He stopped in front of an upward-sliding door left slightly open, which he quickly recognized as Kayn’s office. The light inside flickered, spilling red reflections across the metallic, white and blue floor. The place, once always immaculate and organized, now looked like a battlefield.
The control panel on the left side, which Kayn used to monitor the ship’s internal systems, was shattered — as if something had gone through it in anger or haste, stabbing from one end of the panel to the other.
Torn maps. Glass on the floor. A broken gin bottle in the corner.
And, amid the chaos, the polaroid of the two of them still stuck to the wall by the entrance, but with Kayn’s face scratched out in something red.
Ezreal averted his gaze, feeling a sharp pain pierce his shattered heart. He left and continued toward the hangar still within Kayn’s office. The only place where Kayn ever seemed to breathe — if that being even knew what breathing truly meant.
When he stepped out of the ship, the air was heavy. It really was a planet with no name, no color. Gray, dead, and really hot.
Ezreal stopped, leaning against the dark iron railing, looking around as if he could recognize where he was — and in what year — just from the stars aligned in specific positions. He couldn’t anyway.
His heart stopped along with time when his eyes fell to the ground, far from the ship, finding a long trail of blood that eventually mixed with golden blood.
There, just a few meters ahead, in front of a huge gray stone, was Kayn.
Kneeling, his blue hair stuck to his face with sweat and golden blood. His only functional eye wide open, almost surprised, as if he himself hadn’t expected what had happened to him.
And in his chest, the dangerous scythe Ezreal had always avoided, driven deep as if guided by its own will. One hand gripped the upper part of the blade; the other rested on the ground.
But it was love, too!
— KAYN!
Who could really blame me?!
If you’d seen the despair in his Ora eye too you wouldn’t be able to judge me either!
His voice broke on words that didn’t even leave his throat before Ezreal used the gauntlet to teleport right in front of Kayn, releasing a sort of bluish dust into the air.
He moved closer, kneeling quickly before him. He didn’t know if the heat he felt came from the planet or from the tears that burst forth — too hot, too raw — sliding down his red cheeks and falling onto the hot ground.
Kayn was still alive. Barely. His eye met Ezreal’s, and for the first time, there was no arrogance in it. Only fear. And… a hint of relief?
“I… didn’t think you’d come… Idiot…” Kayn whispered shakily, clearly in pain, yet still with that stupid little smile that always stirred something in the blonde’s heart, almost never showing all the teeth.
Ezreal held his face, the gauntlet device glowing faintly as if wanting to activate, to take them to a better timeline, without death, without pain. He tried to do something, anything. But time no longer responded to him.
Not even time wanted to save Kayn.
“Why…?” Ezreal’s voice came out choked, trembling, desperate, holding Kayn’s face with both hands to keep him awake, focused on something. “Why alone? Why didn’t you let me fix what bothered you? Why didn’t you give me time?”
Kayn smiled. A sad smile, almost human. Almost relieved.
“Because I knew that if you were here… you’d try to love me again.”
And then, his eye closed. Without a curse, without an epic ending. Just the silence of someone who had lived too long on the edge of every reality Ezreal had imposed upon him — and at last chose what the blonde never wanted.
Ezreal pressed his forehead against his, feeling the weight of what he had lost. And of what he had never truly had.
“…Pearl,” He called weakly to the suit’s AI, still close to Kayn, not releasing his face or wiping the tears that blurred his vision of his lover. “…Take me twenty minutes back, in this same timeline.”
Pearl answered with a short crackle through the internal speakers, something Kayn would probably have heard if he were alive.
“Warning: Unstable parameters. The requested point is too dangerous for the suit. Risk level five, high. Safety protocols advise against this type of travel.”
Ezreal remained still, his face pressed to Kayn’s, as the response echoed. Time no longer obeyed. Not for the two of them. After everything Ezreal had gone through, after everything he’d done to protect Kayn from himself.
A heavy silence filled that painful scene. The planet’s dry wind scraped against them and made the hole the scythe had left in Kayn’s chest vibrate, emitting a hollow sound, almost a lament. It was as if Kayn himself was saying something.
Ezreal closed his eyes, the gauntlet burning in his palm. For the first time, it wasn’t a weapon or an escape. It was only a weight he had to carry. Something that would help him in no way.
“Then give me just… One second.” He murmured, more to himself than to Pearl, more to Kayn than to the universe.
And in that one second, Ezreal realized that even after traveling through a thousand realities, there wasn’t a single one where Kayn didn’t choose to lose himself.
There was no timeline to save someone who didn’t want to be saved.
Kayn’s body was cold now. The planet felt hotter, suffocating, the stars in the sky blurred by tears. Ezreal took a deep breath, trying to swallow the pain tearing him apart from the inside, slowly laying Kayn on his side so that the scythe would remain there — untouched by future or past — but wouldn’t hurt him any more than it already had.
“I’ll come back,” He promised to a corpse that could no longer hear him. “Even if it’s just to see you before this.”
He stood up and closed his eyes. The gauntlet pulsed blue. Not to save Kayn, not to save himself, but to try, one last time, to find a point where he could understand.
Where he could say goodbye.
Or where he could hold Kayn and tell him that he loved him so much he would save him in different realities, different scenarios, different versions of them.
The air distorted around him. Time groaned like an old door closing. And Ezreal disappeared.