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Viktor caressed the leaves of his orchid, magic flowing from his fingertips and into the plant. He never used to have so much greenery around. Before, when he was sick and in pain, it was difficult to be consistent in caring for anything, even a houseplant in his windowsill. Now, he loved this place more than anywhere else. The only thing he’d created he could take pride in at all.
He wielded the arcane still, bringing life to these plants. Growing food at such a pace no one in Zaun needed to starve. Though the plants in the greenhouse were not for consumption, and Viktor had grown them to study them.
The orchid was a fascinating feat of evolution. Flowers grown in unusual shapes, designed to best attract pollinating insects to trap them within. The plant didn’t harm the insects, though, it was no predator. Instead, it set the insect free with its pollen attached to the body, so it could fertilize the next flower it encountered. Each species of plant had its own unique mechanism, and yet Viktor had found with human intervention, they crossbred quite easily.
“I thought I might find you here.”
Viktor stiffened as Jayce entered the greenhouse. It wasn’t that Viktor didn’t want Jayce around, but he hadn’t sought Jayce out as often. It was difficult—too difficult, perhaps, and Viktor preferred to avoid that which caused his emotions to resurface. He’d never carved out his feelings as he thought, and now that he recognized their return, he didn’t know how to let them run their course anymore.
It had been so easy with Jayce, once. A quiet coexistence, always being on the same page. The same dream, the same goals, a shared brilliance that had allowed them to succeed at something that should have been impossible.
Fate had brought Jayce back to him after their paths had first diverged, and Viktor should be grateful. Yet neither of them were the same, and being around Jayce made that only the more painful. He didn’t know how to be what Jayce wanted anymore. He didn’t know how to be anything resembling human. He didn’t know if he wanted to be.
“Jayce,” Viktor began, voice softening, but he did not know how to continue.
Despite everything, he still wanted Jayce close to him. He always did, no matter how much he tried to hide it. No matter how much it hurt.
“What are you working on?"
That, at least, he could answer. Jayce would understand his interest in the plants. Different from mechanical engineering, perhaps, but it was a discipline of science still, and Viktor had always liked to broaden his expertise.
“I’m studying the evolution of these plants.”
Jayce raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were done with the glorious evolution.”
Viktor bit his lip, he wasn’t explaining this properly. Jayce didn’t understand him without effort the way he used to—Viktor had grown too strange for that.
“This is the evolution of life, a slow process that allows species to adapt to their environment over the course of generations. Nature’s greatest force, some would say. The glorious evolution was instead a consequence of the arcane, seeking to supersede nature and change life to a perfect, final state. In retrospect, evolution may have been a confusing term for the change the arcane could bring. But as you’ve shown me the damage arcane evolution will do, I suppose it matters little. It is no longer a theory I’m studying.”
Viktor had barely recovered from the shock, of learning where the arcane led if he kept following, if he kept pursuing the cure to his own weaknesses. He found no comfort in accepting things as they were, but he didn’t know what else he could do. He couldn’t risk that horrible world Jayce had found himself trapped in.
Hence the plant research. Perhaps one of these days, it would turn to something that could really help Zaun. A discovery like Sky’s flowers that filtered the air.
At least in his greenhouse he couldn’t hurt anyone.
“I missed you,” Jayce said then. “I miss doing research with you.”
Viktor didn’t respond, not immediately. Jayce struggled with distance. Loneliness, abandonment, nightmares of that pit. And after all the ways Viktor had hurt Jayce, it had to be better to keep a safe distance. Even when he’d become a healer, he’d been nothing but poison to those he cared for. Jayce couldn’t be his next victim.
His resolve faltered though, as Viktor had known from the start it would. He didn’t want to stay away from Jayce. He wanted to do research together once more. But even without pursuing the glorious evolution, Viktor remained a mage, connected to a place where Jayce couldn’t follow him.
He didn’t know how to explain to Jayce how he found himself caught between two worlds. Part of him wanted to stay. Plant his feet in the soil, put down roots, and build a home for himself here in a world where he no longer belonged.
Part of him wanted to leave. Disappear into the vast expanse of the arcane, and explore the endless possibilities that world held. Perhaps find one in which he wasn’t a monster, where he could offer more than destruction. He’d worked so many years to reach a point where magic could aid people, and it couldn’t have been for nothing.
“I can’t,” Viktor whispered, and he watched as Jayce’s face fell, pain written across his widened eyes.
He struggled finding the right words. He’d never had to explain himself to Jayce before. Or perhaps he’d never chosen to, and he’d left Jayce stumbling in the dark, never fully grasping what Viktor needed from him. Now, Jayce wasn’t satisfied with that anymore, and Viktor had no idea how to talk to him.
“I can’t be who I was.”
Jayce sat down beside him, posture relaxing, if only a little. Jayce always kept some tension locked in his body—an unhelpful response to the terrors his mind conjured. Viktor wasn’t quite sure how he remained strong enough not to touch Jayce as he had done for so many others, and take away his pain. He understood now it was wrong, yet Viktor still couldn’t accept there was nothing to be done for Jayce. He'd come back haunted for that broken world, but Jayce had always been anxious, always tense. Viktor had offered comfort where he could, but both of them had preferred to pretend Jayce was fine. That Jayce didn’t need help.
But Jayce did, and Viktor had no idea how to give him what he deserved.
“I know you’ve changed,” Jayce said after a silence. “I never minded that. No matter what form you take, you’ll always be my partner. The only thing I can’t stand is this distance. Almost like you’re afraid.”
Viktor swallowed. A human reflex his body no longer needed, as he lacked any digestive system, but at least such reactions kept him somewhat grounded in this world.
“I’m not afraid, Jayce.”
“Then why? Are you still angry with me?”
Viktor didn’t know. If Jayce hadn’t done what he did, he would be dead, and perhaps the world would be better for it. Viktor’s healing hadn’t been healing at all, and he had given everything to undo the damage he’d already done—to set the people of the commune free and allow them to choose their own fates.
Now, he was left here with his plants, where he couldn’t hurt anyone. Alone. Perhaps Jayce should have left him dead.
Yet he found he didn’t want that. He’d never wanted to die, he just couldn’t bear to live at the cost of others. He’d never wanted anyone to suffer as he did.
He’d carved out an isolated existence for himself here in his greenhouse, but he didn’t know how to live in a world or body that no longer felt like his.
“I understand why you did it now.”
He’d thought of himself as Rio, at first. An experiment better left dead, yet kept alive against its will for the sake of science. Learning of the doctor’s daughter had changed everything. He was the same to Jayce, someone he couldn’t bear to lose.
He still had no idea what that meant.
Jayce’s eyes didn’t leave him for a moment. “That doesn’t answer the question.”
No, Viktor supposed not. But he didn’t know how to put any of this into words. He’d tried to express his feelings that moment when he first woke up. A charge, a recursive impulse. Unpleasant. But none of that made sense to Jayce. It didn’t make sense to Viktor either.
Viktor stared at his hand, the purple metal with its golden highlights. Something so alien, so unlike who he’d once been. As long as he could be Zaun’s saviors, their healer, then he could exist inside such a foreign body. Nothing but a vessel to bring magic to those who needed it.
But Zaun needed no savior. And if he was no good for healing, then what was he for? Why was he still alive?
“I’m not upset with you anymore. I know I should have told you more, if I wanted you to let me die.”
Viktor also knew it wouldn’t have made a difference. Single-minded like the doctor, Jayce would have used the hexcore even if he’d known about Sky. But he supposed he should be happy, that someone wanted him around enough to go to such lengths. Even if Jayce’s obsessive need scared him sometimes.
“How does it feel?” Jayce asked then. “Your body. You told me you don’t feel cold, or warm.”
The lack of cold didn’t bother him so much as the lack of heat did. He missed the warmth of Jayce’s touch, the way his body felt like a furnace. Now, he felt nothing but the magic coursing through the metal that was supposed to be his body.
“Not every sensory experience is different, or influenced by the arcane. I can see and hear and smell as a human, though I suppose none of these require parts of my body that have been altered. While I can taste, I cannot eat, so I suppose there’s little use for it. But I don’t feel pain, or heat, or cold. Touch is strange, muted. I feel enough of my body to coordinate movement though. And I feel the arcane within me, like a current.”
The arcane wanted nothing more to be used, and Viktor struggled to resist its call. And through him, it had a far closer connection to the world than with other mages. That made him different, and so much more dangerous.
All mages carried a sliver of the arcane within their souls, but they remained rooted in this world, the magic forever something other. They could wield its power, but a wall stood between them and the arcane. Those who reached too far could weaken that wall, and risk being consumed like the mages of the ancient rune wars.
But Viktor had landed on the wrong side of this wall since the moment he’d become a mage.
“Everything is muted, except the arcane. Like I’m not supposed to exist here anymore. It’s easier, to enter the arcane fully.”
Viktor longed to disappear there now, but Jayce couldn’t follow him. He hadn’t seen Sky since the moment Jayce returned, and he’d learnt since then she’d been nothing but an imitation. A poor attempt to distract him from his loneliness, and attempt to fill the hole Jayce had left. He didn’t know if he missed her, if he could miss someone who had never been real, but he missed being able to share the arcane with someone. Existing in a place that made sense without seeing only his own soul reflected back at him.
Jayce placed a hand on his shoulder, the way he’d done so many times before. Across the fabric of his blanket, but firm, putting pressure against his body.
“How does this feel?”
Jayce had never asked him how it felt. They hadn’t been like that. Jayce had simply touched him in ways no other person ever had, and that had been their normal. More than likely, Jayce didn’t think about these things. But he had changed too, and not all of it was bad.
“Not unpleasant,” Viktor allowed. “Muted. I feel pressure more than soft brushing.”
“Does it help you feel more like you’re here? With me?”
Viktor didn’t know how to answer. That wall between him and the world muted touch, but it had existed long before Viktor had become something so wholly inhuman. He’d never known what it was like to live connected to those around him. He’d grown up isolated here in the undercity, left behind by peers who dared each other to jump buildings. And he’d never found his footing in Piltover either.
He’d thought he could force the connection he sought with tendrils of gold, but in his attempt to allow people to understand each other better, he’d only turned them into muted copies of himself.
But how could he accept he’d never feel grounded or connected? He’d never feel like there was space for him, no matter how much he’d tried to carve something out. He wanted to disappear into the arcane forever, but Jayce needed him here.
Viktor sighed. Another circulation of air that served a purpose no longer, but he did it anyway. To trick himself, perhaps, into believing he was still human.
“I don’t know, Jayce. Nothing about me feels right. Not this body, not the magic. It’s like a whisper beneath my skin, it needs to be used. It’s not satisfied with the plants.”
He caressed his fingers across the leaves once more, tried to distinguish the difficult sensations the best he could. He had a body still, and he existed. Jayce didn’t think him a monster for what he’d become, and Viktor had never sought anyone else’s approval.
Jayce placed a hand on his shoulder as he’d done so many times before. “I cannot bring myself to regret saving you. But I’m sorry it has to feel like this. If there was anything I could do to make it better…”
Viktor shook his head. “I cannot become more human than I am now. My body won’t let me. And I cannot go anywhere but here. Zaun cares less for these differences, but Piltover will despise me.”
Nor did he care to seek a haven elsewhere. He supposed he had grown roots in this soil, barren and toxic as it was. He was no longer Herald to a commune. While some had chosen to stay in their houses and tend to the farmlands, Viktor lived past them. He hadn’t spoken to anyone but Jayce in weeks. Not so different from before, he supposed.
Viktor’s eyes widened as Jayce pulled him onto his lap, arms wound tight around his body. Not warm like it was supposed to be, but the pressure quieted some of the voices inside his head. As long as he had Jayce, part of him still existed.
“How does this feel?” Jayce asked.
“Better,” Viktor forced out.
His body required no air for its maintenance, but he still used it to speak. If he was human, Jayce would crush his frail body. As it stood, this didn’t quite satisfy.
“Can you hold me tighter?” Viktor asked.
Pressure resembled normal sensation still, and perhaps Jayce was strong enough to crush him back into this world.<
“I’m not that strong,” Jayce said. He let go, and Viktor gasped, desperate to feel Jayce against him. With his body as it was, it could never be enough. “Unless… I have an idea. Lie down on your back?”
Viktor raised an eyebrow, but did as Jayce asked, lying down between his flowers, eyes aimed at the multicolored glass of the ceiling. Then Jayce lowered himself, lying down top of his body, his larger form covering every inch of him, head nuzzled into Viktor’s neck.
And oh, the pressure, this was what he needed. Nailed between the earth and the plants below him and the man he loved. He’d never come this close to existing here, grounded in this world.
“Better?” Jayce asked.
Viktor couldn’t quite manage to speak. He nodded, and hoped Jayce picked up on that. Then he closed his eyes, his focus only on the weight. Jayce had lost some muscle during his time away, but they were working on that. Viktor could provide food, at least.
He could stay like this forever, or at least long enough to tether himself to the soil below. He’d never be fully human again, and perhaps he never had been. But when all else failed, Jayce could still crush him back into existence.
“I can’t claim to fully understand what your body is like now. And I understand it feels alien to you, and I was selfish for forcing it on you. But I need you to stay, okay? I need you with me.”
Viktor wrapped his arms around Jayce, fingers running across the muscles of Jayce’s back until they relaxed beneath his touch. He didn’t want to go, and he didn’t want to leave Jayce. He’d find his equilibrium somehow, between Jayce’s embraces and his plants and the research he could do here still. Neither of them was the same, but he found so much beauty within this new version of Jayce. Even if he couldn’t take all his pain.
They were both alive against all odds. Perhaps for the moment, that would have to be enough.