Chapter Text
Does it matter if the ouroboros knows it devours itself? The meat between its teeth is still its own, regardless of acknowledgement, and its jaws will still hunger despite any understanding it may gain toward its demise. There is only one way in which this ends, and it’s with familiar flesh caught between the tandem hinges of a skull.
But go on, you can pretend. There's nothing stopping you. When it folds into an oblivion so small it spits itself back new, the next tail it bites may not be so known.
Only one way to find out:
Act 1: The Search For...
It was all spinning light, the gentle phantom touch of an astral hand, the burning, burning, burning between two others. It was everything, every single thing that could ever happen, happening. Like uncontrollable screaming, like bleeding out, like being born, a million equally overwhelming sensations at once, bright and hot and dark and freezing. Nothing mattered, and yet everything did—that's what they were doing this for, after all, for the sake of everything else in the world, because what could matter more than the persistence of all that there is?
(Except... No, actually—what could matter more than two inextricably bound souls collapsing like stars into each other? What greater fusion could they have achieved, what brighter light could have ever crested the horizon? There was no pain more beautiful than the melting, the implosion of one spirit into another, like it was always meant to be. From the beginning, they think. From the very beginning, it was always meant to end like this. Two becoming one. Ultimate repentance.)
It stretched on and on, except it didn't. It was eons and then a single moment, a blip in the infinite expanse of space and time, so small no rational decimal could capture the seconds, so long there was no number big enough to quantify their drawn-out death. They could have lived in the moment evermore, at the pinnacle of total annihilation and complete oneness. Expanding out infinitely, imploding in forever. Both at once. It was almost stillness.
Then: nothing. The sudden stopping of an unstoppable force. Like a great hand blocking out the sun, a total eclipse that cast the world in pitch darkness. But to say that there was darkness would be to imply that there was something, and there wasn't. There was no scientist and pseudo-god clinging to each other like they'd forgotten how to do all else. They were nowhere, nothing, an incomprehensible passing into nonexistence, so not-something that it cannot be named.
And then it could be named, everything around him. Glass, stone, paper, wood. Wind, dirt, debris, dark. Feet on the edge of a drop-off, blunt nails digging crescents into calloused palms. The disorientation of feeling after nothingness, the sudden jolt of awareness, the memory of a life lived played backwards.
Step, tap, step, tap.
"Am I interrupting..."
Viktor's voice, trailing off behind Jayce in the emptiness. No, not emptiness—it was his old apartment. His old, destroyed apartment. The moon beamed into the absence of a wall and Jayce stood in the beacon like a statue, suddenly aware that he’d been two seconds from stepping off the edge of the sixth story. He turned around, eyes landing on the figure behind him.
Viktor. Young, human, achingly beautiful. He looked confused, eyebrows drawn together like he had forgotten his line in the middle of a play. Body rigid and tense, his mind was clearly working over the same three realizations Jayce was having:
1) They were alive.
2) They were alive together, somehow both transported back in time (or maybe simultaneously inserted into the same alternate timeline, but Jayce wasn’t about to question it too hard).
3) There was no real Hextech yet. The few unripe fruits of Jayce’s labor had been confiscated to Heimerdinger's lab, set to be destroyed the following day.
"Jayce?" Viktor breathed, and it was like Jayce's body had been activated by that lovely, wonderful sound, limbs clumsily moving of their own accord across the room until his arms found their home around Viktor's shoulders, squeezing firm like he'd disappear without the pressure.
"Viktor," Jayce whispered. He let out a noise not unlike a laugh, the purest relief bubbling out of him in small waves. There may have been tears at his eyes, may have been a tremble to his hands where they grasped at rigid shoulders.
"How are we—how am I— " Viktor tried, unable to settle on a question to voice as the cogs in his brain turned and turned.
"I don't know." Jayce smiled, small and unnoticed in Viktor's shoulder. "I don't know, but we're alive, Viktor. We're alive before Hextech. Gods, we get a second chance."
Viktor was so still beneath him that Jayce hadn't truly noticed until he started to shake. It began in his hands, a tremble that moved up his entire body, and then suddenly he was ducking out of Jayce's embrace, knees nearly buckling as he backed away. Cold wind blew between them from the hole in the wall. Jayce suddenly ached for how whole he had felt in that dreamy expanse, when he and Viktor had blurred into one for that brief moment in time.
"I can't... I shouldn't be—" Viktor palmed at his face, hand settling to cover his mouth. Eyes glazed, he stared past Jayce to the missing wall, to the starry sky beyond it, so similar to that infinite ether they had tandemly dissolved in. Jayce didn't know what Viktor was seeing, but he didn't think it was good. Instinctively, he took a step towards him, but Viktor just stepped back even farther, internally crumpling in on himself.
"No, no, no," Viktor mumbled over and over, the word tumbling out of his mouth like he couldn’t stop saying it, a cut tongue bleeding. Jayce didn't know what to do to keep him from falling apart.
"Vik," he tried, voice soft. No recognition.
"Viktor, hey." He chanced another step forward, and Viktor didn't move, didn't even register the action.
"Hey, it's okay, it's gonna be alright."
Jayce placed a tentative hand on Viktor's arm and he flinched, full-bodied as if he had been shocked, like he was suddenly remembering that he had a physical form. He shook his head, a little feverish, his wild, golden eyes finally meeting Jayce's own.
"No, I..." He swallowed, tried again. "I shouldn't be here," Viktor whispered, as if it was some dark secret. "Not after—"
His breath hitched, like he couldn’t say it, mouth closing around the unfinished sentence. But it didn’t take much for Jayce to know what he meant. Not after what I did to all those people. Not after all the innocent lives I took.
Jayce drew in a breath. "I shouldn't be here either, then." There was no real fight to it.
Another shake of Viktor's head. "You didn't... You aren't responsible for what happened, Jayce. You tried to stop it. You are the one who deserves a second chance."
"But I am responsible. I'm the one that didn't destroy the Hexcore. I kept you alive because I... I was selfish."
"But you couldn't have known how things would turn out. Your intentions were good."
"So were yours." The hand on Viktor's arm squeezed, nearly imperceptibly. “You just wanted to help people.”
A scoff. "In no world should that be called helping. I hurt people, Jayce."
"So did I."
"That hardly counts, you don't have nearly as much blood on your hands. I should not be alive."
"I know."
There was a bone-deep sorrow in his voice, seeping through the cracks of him. Jayce naturally hated the thought of Viktor's death, and the ache of it had never lessened over the years he’d had to contemplate it. If anything, it had only grown. But seeing Viktor here—younger, healthier, not bogged down by the weight of illness—gave Jayce hope. The thought of a do-over dangling in front of his face. The thought that they could be together again, could both make everything right, hand in hand. Partners.
"But you are. You're here now, and I won't stop you if you want to end it, not this time. I've forced you to live enough." Jayce moved his hand to cup Viktor's shoulder. "But think about it before you throw this chance away. We can still help people, Viktor. Without Hextech."
A beat. "And how do you suppose we do that?"
"I don't know. But we can figure it out together."
Viktor shifted a little. Unsurety, tentative listening.
"Please," Jayce breathed. "Just try. We don't have to attempt greatness this time, just good. Even if it's just for a few people. Even if it's just for the two of us."
"I don't deserve good."
Viktor had said it so softly, it nearly went unheard in the quiet apartment. But they were so close—when had they gotten so close?—that Jayce could practically hear Viktor's heartbeat, feel Viktor's breath on his skin, ghosting over his lips.
"You do," Jayce whispered. And, if he had thought a little less, been a little weaker or maybe a little braver, anything other than the man that he was, he would have leaned just that much closer, would have brushed his mouth against the soft line of Viktor's...
But, before he knew it, it was happening, and he wasn't sure which of them had closed the gap, but it didn't matter because Viktor was kissing him, slow and sweet and delicate. He pulled back so slightly, just for an unsure moment, before Jayce rushed forward. Heavier, deeper, years of longing and repressed emotion finally breaking the dam, he tried to put everything he wanted to say into it, tried to imprint the weight of it all onto Viktor’s lips:
You deserve good, you deserve every good thing that could ever come your way. Let me give it to you, let me help it reach you. I'd do anything. Gods, I'd do anything.
One hand cupped Viktor's neck, the other the side of his face. A cane clattered to the ground, Viktor's hands found Jayce's waist, then his arms, then the back of his head, clawing at him like the animal intent to carve out a home. Two bodies pushing into each other, trying to breach skin and meld into one, breathing and pulsing and panting in rhythm until all too suddenly Viktor was taking a step back, pushing away at Jayce's chest as cold air rushed to fill the too-large space between them once more.
"I can't—" Viktor panted, mouth working, trying to form the rest of a sentence. "I can't," he repeated, all he seemed to be able to say. Then, "We can't. I can't—to you."
Jayce blinked at him, just as breathless. He didn't know what to do with his hands, hovering shakily by his sides. "Was that not... Did you—"
"Sorry," Viktor breathed. He pushed the back of his hand to his mouth, like he was going to be sick. "I shouldn't have."
"No no, I—I liked it," Jayce tried to tell him, but Viktor's eyes were darting around the room now, like he had just been caught in some horrible act and was trying to find the nearest exit. He bent down to pick up his cane, nearly dropped it on his way back to standing, and turned towards the door.
"Where are you going?" Jayce's eyes widened, whole body filled with a buzzing. He wasn’t scared to admit he feared for what Viktor might do if he left Jayce's sight. The thoughts of what might happen to him—what might happen to him by his own hand—crashed like a tidal wave so suddenly onto Jayce he was shocked when his knees didn't meet floor.
Maybe he had lied before. Maybe he couldn't let Viktor die after all.
So, when Viktor went to take a step, Jayce gave into the impulse and grabbed his wrist so hard he nearly fell backwards. Viktor strained not to look at him as he straightened.
"Please," Jayce pleaded.
A quiet moment, a few seconds that seemed to stretch on like minutes, like hours.
"You don't want this, Jayce."
Viktor didn't try to break Jayce's grip, so he took that as an invitation to step forward, just a little closer, planet drawn to a star. Viktor clenched his cane so hard his pale knuckles somehow grew paler.
"Don't tell me what I want." It wasn’t harsh. It was desperate, earnest.
"Well, I am."
Viktor finally turned to face him, the set of his brows too firm, the look in his eyes too close to anger. It made Jayce's lungs hurt.
"What do you think we'll do, hm? Try once more with Hextech and watch it all go to shit like last time?"
"No, I—"
"Or will we finally give up on that dream, try at domesticity while I sit and waste away again? Be two restless scientists trying to play house?"
"I don't care what we do, Viktor. All I want is you."
Viktor's face softened the smallest amount, unnoticeable to anyone who hadn't spent years staring at it, longing for it, memorizing every line and curve and how they changed and what they meant. But then it was gone, replaced by something else, too fleeting to place. Fear, maybe. Something uncharacteristic. Jayce was suddenly, momentarily afraid he would never fully memorize his features, never have them so known they were imprinted on the backs of his eyelids.
"And when we can't find a cure?" Viktor mumbled, all the bite in his voice nearly gone. To my illness went unsaid, but Jayce knew what he was talking about. He always knew, with this.
"We will."
"How are you so sure?” It wasn’t as much of a question as it was disbelief—disbelief that Jayce could still hold out so much hope after witnessing all that had happened, after all the years upon years of tireless work that had produced fruit more rotten than either could have ever foreseen growing.
"We know what didn't work last time. We can focus on a new approach."
"And when that doesn't work?"
Jayce didn't think it was possible for Viktor's voice to get any quieter, and yet it had. Like all the anger had simmered out, left only with the cold grief of having to watch yourself wither away again after already having experienced it—knowing what's coming, knowing all the ceaseless effort you had put in to stir the stars and change your fate, and knowing that it had only worked because you had destroyed yourself along the way. Knowing you can't ever again achieve that beautiful end to your suffering without simultaneously ending the world.
"If," Jayce corrected. "If it doesn't work... then at least we tried." But that was not an if that Jayce could fathom. It had to work. There was no possibility in which it didn’t, no future where Viktor didn't overcome this. He was so sure of it, as sure as he was that the sky was blue and the ocean deep. He wished he could give just an ounce of that surety to Viktor now, wished with the heart of a child who hadn’t yet experienced the weight of disappointment, with the mind of a deluded scientist crazy enough to think it could come true anyway. After everything he’d been through... Hell, maybe it could. No real loss in hoping.
A small moment passed. Blinking in the near silence, a deep breath. A voice barely above a broken whisper as Viktor said, "I don't think I can go through it again, Jayce."
A cracking in his chest, pressure to a bruise. "I'll be with you every step of the way, if you'll let me. I'll do everything I can, this time, anything you need. Please, just try.”
Jayce hadn’t meant for it to sound so desperate, but he was a desperate man, all at once realizing, overwhelmingly, that he needed Viktor like he needed air in his lungs and blood in his veins. He didn’t know how he’d been so blind before, so wrapped up in Council politics he couldn’t acknowledge it. Too entangled in what everyone else wanted him to be to forgo the only opinion that mattered—the other half of his soul, the man who’d made magic, who’d given Jayce the entire world. He’d lower to his knees, cling white-knuckled to the hem of Viktor’s shirt, and beg until his voice gave out if it meant he would stay. Anything.
“I don’t need you to take care of me.” Bitterness, just barely seeping in.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
“Then what do you mean?” There was a hardness to Viktor’s eyes, jaw set in some display of defiance. Like he wanted to keep fighting, like it was easier to keep his teeth bared.
Jayce did know that Viktor knew what he meant. Maybe he just needed Jayce to say it, to get some kind of confirmation after everything. Maybe he just wanted to see if he could make Jayce spit it out, test the limits to which he could push him. He couldn’t begrudge Viktor for it. He couldn’t begrudge Viktor for anything.
“I love you, Viktor," Jayce said. "I’ve always loved you.”
The words hung dense in the air between them for what felt like eons. Jayce remembered every time he’d almost said it aloud, flashes of another life—late nights in the lab where they had both been too sleep deprived to think straight, when they’d gone out drinking together and Jayce had downed one too many of some sweet drink he couldn't even remember the name of, the time Viktor had brought him soup when he’d been too sick and delirious to even think about whatever equations were scrawled on their blackboards. The all-consuming ache of those words on his tongue, how he’d never thought he’d be able to lift the weight of them because he had been so sure Viktor just wasn’t interested.
“You don’t have to say it back, you don’t have to return the feeling. I know we kissed and everything, but—”
Viktor sighed before he cupped Jayce’s face, turning so that their bodies were almost flush once more. He kissed him again, short and sweet, before he took a deep breath, let it out slowly.
“Fine,” he said.
“Fine?”
“I guess you’ve convinced me. For now.”
Jayce couldn’t hide the relieved smile that spread across his face. And, if he leaned in to kiss Viktor again, nobody saw except the two of them.
─────────
It wasn’t that simple, of course. Viktor couldn’t very well forget what he’d done just like that, hear a love confession spilling from the lips of a man he’d been silently, painfully pining after for years and years and suddenly forget the guilt of his crimes. Here, in the moonlit dimness of his bedroom, with Jayce’s arm sleep-heavy over his waist, was somehow the remorse’s favorite place to find him.
How could he be enjoying this, after everything? Strip hundreds of people of their humanity, rewrite every living atom of their bodies into thrumming metal jealousy, nearly destroy the world in pursuit of elusive perfection, and this is his justice? A quiet romance, a simple second chance? It wasn’t right. The fact—and it was a fact, nothing more, nothing less—that he didn’t deserve this was always drumming in his ears, a mantra repeated with every agonizing beat of his heart.
Perhaps dying would have been the mercy, Jayce had said on a night so quiet Viktor had wanted to rip the brain from his own skull. Maybe this was his atonement for everything, having to live with the guilt. But he was sure Jayce would rationalize the fact of their living in a million different ways if it kept Viktor breathing, kept him standing at Jayce’s side.
Viktor couldn’t fault him for it. He probably would have done the same for Jayce, even if he wouldn’t admit it. They were two celestial bodies drawn to the other’s dip in the space-time fabric of gravity, black holes that could do nothing but pull and pull and pull at the other. They kept each other living by being their own demises: too insane to keep themselves alive, too selfish to let the other die. It was a horrible dance, one that wouldn’t end, even if it should have years ago. They’d be spinning long after the music stopped, orbiting each other in love-driven defiance far past the heat death of the universe.
Viktor sighed.
It had been a week since their first night back in their bodies. Jayce had been crashing at Viktor’s, his life’s work had been destroyed, and they were figuring out what to do with themselves. They could run away to a different city, sail to another continent and leave their dream of Piltover behind for good. Except that Viktor didn’t like that idea. I can’t abandon the people of the undercity, he had said. I just wanted to put the idea out there, Jayce had replied.
They hadn’t considered trying again with Hextech. Well, they had, but not for more than a few seconds; better to squander the idea before they got wrapped up in fantasies of doing it better this time, of futilely trying to sidestep all the mistakes they had made the first go around. They both knew well enough the chances of everything ending the same were far too high for the risk. A dream lost, burnt to a crisp by the fires of fate. It was for the best, they repeated again and again until they believed it. Viktor was sure he did. He wasn’t as sure about Jayce, though he knew Jayce wouldn’t try again if Viktor told him not to, and Viktor had. Like a dog in blind obedience... Viktor hadn't decided if it was endearing or concerning, yet. Probably both.
The two weren’t sure just how they would scratch the never-ending itch to help people, still. Jayce wasn’t on the council yet in this timeline, and they both highly doubted he’d be able to get a position without Hextech—not that either of them really wanted him as a cog in that dreaded machine again, anyway. He wasn’t even allowed on Academy grounds. And, since he no longer had the Kiramanns’ financial backing, he was likely going to have to work at his family’s forge for a living. Viktor still had his grueling job as Heimerdinger’s assistant. Not that he didn’t like Heimerdinger—it just wasn’t his life’s ambition, as he had said what felt like a lifetime ago. He doubted he’d be able to rise through the ranks anytime soon, if at all. He also doubted he’d feel well enough to work for a while (or ever again). He’d give Heimerdinger a notice.
All that to say, they were floundering a little. At least we have each other, Jayce kept saying. At least we have the chance to make things right. We’ll figure something out.
But Jayce’s banalities could only do so much to soothe Viktor, and with too much time on his hands he couldn’t stop the incessant drone of his mind from filling the quiet. All this inaction was making him antsy, was making both of them antsy, although Jayce was trying his best to hide it (and failing, mind you).
Viktor’s eyes combed through the dark bedroom, gaze eventually landing on the window. He could see the freckling of stars past the roofs across the street, and his mind was drawn back to the ether of the arcane, as it so often was. He wondered where Sky was now, if she had joined them in this timeline or her soul had been set free. Free to where, though, he didn’t know. He wasn't even sure if that had really been her in the arcane. He hoped it hadn't been, at the very least. She shouldn't have had to witness all the horrors her death had helped further.
He sighed again, wiggled out from under Jayce’s arm, covered him back up with the blanket, swung his legs off the edge of the bed so he was sitting. Jayce made a small noise, but one glance back at the man told Viktor he was still adrift in an ocean of sleep.
He didn’t know where he was going when he stood and grabbed his cane; he just knew he wanted to be somewhere else. A small voice in the back of his skull told him that that somewhere else was oblivion, the peaceful nothingness of nonexistence. He ignored it.
He took a step, no braces to support him, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. The ache of an absence in his chest so deep it was like a presence, a string tied tight around his lungs slack and somehow also pulling him in a million different directions... He felt stuck, like he was trudging through miles of thick mud hoping he was going in the right direction. Except that he didn’t know what the right direction would even lead to. Peace, maybe. For other people—not for him. Never for him. Not after everything he'd done.
Gods, he just felt so empty. This will pass, Jayce kept saying. You won’t feel like this forever. He knew that, he really did. But, sometimes, Viktor wondered if he even wanted it to pass. He couldn’t just move on from everything he had done. He hadn’t earned the right.
And when will you? When will you be satisfied with what you’ve done here?
...
How many people must you help? How many must you save to make it all right?
...
Silence. Even his internal dialogue didn’t know. Perhaps it never would. That was the thing with progress, with science: it doesn’t stop, and it never will, a forever forward-moving machine trying to reach an end goal that doesn’t exist. He’d said it before—his contributions would be figments, short-lived mist dissipating just as quickly as it had apparated. It’d never be enough for him, no matter what he did. Insatiable hunger, a yearning for impossibly infinite time from a body allotted less than most—maybe 40 years, if he was truly lucky. All scientists had to make peace with it at some point. Frustratingly, Viktor had never really been able to.
He got halfway across the apartment before Jayce awoke to drag him back to bed, a hand gently guiding him back to shore (a ball on the end of his chain). He didn’t fight it, spent the rest of the night staring sleeplessly out the window until the sun broke the surface of the horizon.
He wondered what it would feel like to drown.