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The light is fading on the horizon, but he remains in place. He is not yet a wave, only a particle, trapped on the stone bench beside the tree with yellow flowers.
The sunset is not beautiful, but it is enough.
He hasn't understood beauty for a long time. He is becoming forgetful. But there are too many reasons for him to stay there. Beside the plant, he stops hearing the voices.
His son has already appeared twice. Tall, with dark, wavy hair, the spitting image of his father. Of the other father, because of the four creations, the only one who received his pale-skinned face and scattered constellations was her, the girl so fragile that she had already become an adult,
like the other three, men six feet three despite their purple faces at birth,
from the blood given upon their arrival on Earth. They continued to exist.
Uniform matter. Combined DNA. Half of one, half of the other.
"Come on, Dad," the second oldest said, already gripping the walker with an impatient grip. He had taken after the other in personality, too. Or perhaps he himself. Always anxious. Always wanting to do more than he could,
like, for example, getting his father away from there so soon.
No, Viktor would stay to observe the stars with his husband.
It was the first thing they saw together. In Piltover and in the post-Arcane world. In their second chance at life, naked, in the cold and in doubt, they slept embraced, pointing to the sky, smiling
at the luck of having the privilege of living. Guilt, pain, forgetfulness would come, but in those first moments, they were together,
and what a privilege! What a privilege. Souls that they thought would be extinguished after the end still belonged to a body, still lived in a world,
and despite everything, even with the difficulties, arguments, with the doubt of materiality, they made the most of it, in the best way there is to live:
creating memories.
But he is losing his.
"Do you remember the time Amaranthine insisted on memorizing every constellation she could? And you had to repeat everything she pointed out several times every day?"
In the silence, he laughs to himself. He needs to recount it so he doesn't forget. Jayce had been annoyed on the very first day, but there was no escape: His daughter was seven years old and dreamed of visiting the stars, little knowing that her parents had done the same.
Viktor asked another question about memory. And another. And another,
about his pregnancies, about the roof of the house that collapsed after Rio's birth, about the old man in the village who accepted Viktor as an apprentice, about the names and properties of the crystals and the days and hours and
every detail, every pain, every love they shared
(many, too many to count, a cliche perhaps, but like the galaxies in the sky, like the grains of sand, like the drops in the sea, like time itself),
even without any answer.
He shifts. His leg hurts,
and not only it, all his joints do,
it's cold so it hurts more
(funny, it didn't hurt that first night under the stars),
but he shows nothing but a twitch of his nose, a slight sigh.
Jayce would ask, "where is it?" and kiss the patch of skin covering his organs;
when Viktor got pregnant, all three times
(the third was adopted)
Jayce made a point of kissing him every day,
even when Viktor angrily pushed him away, accusing him of causing his nausea, pain, and crazy cravings;
He had memorized all his birthmarks, even the newest ones, the result of age:
face, arms, torso, legs, back, fingers, thighs, knees, navel, collarbone, nape of the neck, under hair and hair…
His husband made a point of kissing them all the time. "Those are your stars, are you sure you didn't steal some souls from that place and leave them here?" he would sometimes joke, after Viktor accepted living with the guilt of having taken one or two. He joked, but he prayed. He joked, but insisted he was joking. And then he joked in another way,
"Those are the deaths you had in past lives,"
near his chest,
"Those are the places I kissed in past lives,"
in the center of his heart.
"Did we kiss in past lives?" he wanted confirmation,
and they both knew it wasn't true, that in some timelines,
some universes,
there was a Mage and a warrior and devastation, only;
"but in all of them I saw you. I must have touched you there," between his legs, lips so close to his, and then he not only kissed the moles,
but devoured them, as if he wanted to tear them off with his teeth.
Sometimes, they spilled each other's blood,
Viktor's fingernails, Jayce's back,
the violence of sex, a pain that Viktor craved; Jayce accepted,
Viktor's arms tied, Jayce's command without limits, the obedience in Viktor's eyes,
and in Viktor's body, and in his spread legs,
salty kisses, a heavy heart, and a hug was enough,
just the two of them under the covers, pointing to the bedroom ceiling, praying the children wouldn't hear,
for the cycle of pain and pleasure to be completed,
"There's Orion," Jayce joked,
there’s Centaur,
Sirius
he pointed to his cheek. To his mouth. To the center of his chest.
A death in his past life,
a kiss in another.
It's already night. He sees Orion, or an imitation of it.
"Do you, where you are, believe in afterlife?"
They didn't talk much about it, about the end of everything,
they thought they already had more time, so they didn't question,
neither life, nor children being born, the womb sheltering,
the forehead glowing, the voices,
Viktor was frightened but there was nothing to be done;
"At least this seems to protect you,"
he, always so fragile, thought he would give in first,
but three births and four lives made him seem only to rejuvenate,
while Jayce lost his leg. His movements. His time. His colors.
It seemed unfair, but he was still warm
a few months ago.
"At least you remember," Viktor says to no one,
"or you don't even need to remember."
Later, they questioned,
Jayce asked Viktor, who had already died,
what the end was like,
but, as a wave-particle, only the effect remained—I don't know, I don't know, really, I don't remember, I wanted to, but—
"it's all right."
Viktor asked the Arcane
only once. One single thing. The main thing:
will we meet again, he and I?
We have to, don't we? After everything.
Jayce lamented for his father as a child. He thought the sudden death was unfair. He wanted to believe in heaven. An afterlife, reincarnation, that one day
all that pain would be freed so he could grasp the reunion.
His mother had a life with him. His children had their teachings. He wanted at least to say goodbye to his father. It didn't seem fair, so young.
But years passed, and Jayce was the father of the moment, and if there was a chance, he wanted to save it for Viktor.
It seemed unfair not to be one thing with his partner.
Viktor also asked and wondered.
The voice is like anything that exists. The Arcane is now part of his world,
and when the wind answers, it's not a certainty. It could just be him, it could just be his desire,
he's losing his memories and his sanity, after all, since his husband's relapse. It could be
anything.
There is no justice,
therefore, there is no injustice. There is nothing certain, and there is nothing uncertain.
But there is also not nothingness. There is no way there could be.
During those months, Viktor thought of going on his own,
to discover if there is a hell, if there is another, if there is an afterlife,
but his son is ahead of him, warning that it is time to go,
and he promised Jayce, and Jayce promised him.
If there is something,
if there is nothing,
at least there was. And there is hope. He doesn't know what lies beyond time, and time governs him. Time and the promise:
"I cannot forget," Viktor murmurs, very softly, towards the colorful petals, as if Jayce could hear him from beneath the earth. And he must hear. He nourishes its roots, after all.
Nothing is created. Nothing is extinguished. Everything comes from something. In nature, everything transforms.
Wave-particle. Particle-wave. I am here and you are not. But you exist within me, and I died with you.
He is old. He can barely stand on his own. At night, he cries from confusion, from longing, from loneliness, because he has no warm body beside him, after all those years. It seems wrong, unfair, unreal, that he exists without Jayce nearby. That man made him walk again, filled him from the inside out, created marks and stretch marks and laughter on his flesh that even time hadn't marked so deeply. Their minds were one, their intellects worked simultaneously. How could he not have his other half? It was never like this, he remembers, never…
But the Arcane — the world — helps him to stand, hands him the walker, touches his hunched back. "What do you think about some empanadas today?"
"Sure. I want the dulce de leche ones. The dulce de leche ones were your father's choice every time," he replies.
Perhaps they are pure energy. All those souls—maybe they wouldn't amount to anything, maybe they were one. And wouldn't that, too, be a privilege? To find each other, in the end. To become light with your soulmate. To be the other.
Everything hurts, and he laments the journey they will have to make home. He wants to give up now and just rest, but he lives, because there is still life, because he has to remember.
But he doesn't stop being selfish. To nothingness, he desires what shouldn't exist.
Viktor hopes they will at least reach the same waves.
"Yours too, Dad."
Actually, no. He preferred the chocolate ones.
But those were Jayce's favorites. And Viktor can choose for him, for now.