#vigilwips

aaaaaand an alt text version cause bsky’s alt text wordcount limit is virgil-phobic lol:

“Do the gods light this fire in our hearts,

or does each man's mad desire become his god?”

― Virgil, The Aeneid

There is an odd, unfamiliar emotion in the incandescent eyes that turn to meet Jayce's words. A look of something he nearly recognizes behind the otherwise collected and calculatedly still expression that Jayce has come to recognize as The Herald's mask. The new name which the people of the commune have adorned Viktor with is fitting in a way Jayce finds himself despising, the taste of it acidic and heady in his mouth.

He hates that he finds himself thinking of Viktor as that, too—as not Viktor, not his partner, but The Herald. Some otherworldly bringer of death who's meant to be his mission, his mark, despite the fact that he that still adorns the spitting-mirrored mask of his beloved ex-partner. So what if Jayce knew that Viktor's heart had stopped beating on that table before he threw the Hexcore into his chest? So what if Viktor had been revived by something beyond their understanding, if his limbs had stretched like branches and his flesh was more akin to the smooth, weaving bark of a tree then that of a man? The Herald still also looked like Viktor.

Still sounds like him. Still smelled like him. Still felt like him; a presence that hung thick in the air like the way the presence of a rainstorm forming on the horizon feels—a latent heat from rising warm air that destabilizes the very molecules of oxygen both inside and outside of one's lungs.

He still acts and argues just like my stubborn asshole of a partner, too…

For as well as Jayce felt he still knew Viktor, the expression he wears now is something unknown. Or, at the very least, it is unfamiliar to witness on Viktor's face. There is the flicker of a different kind of pain than that which Jayce is accustomed to see painted on him: a response to something based less in the physical, something far more emotional than he's used to seeing on his estranged partner. It teeters on outright vulnerable, if only for a fraction of a second. Something halfway between annoyance and apologetic; a bit lost, even—like he can't place whether he wants to confess to something or charge Jayce with another crime. Jayce couldn't really blame him if he did choose to throw out accusations. There are countless offenses he has committed and yet to be acquitted with, even aside from the one he made the moment he stepped into the commune. The expression plastered on Viktor's face is a fractured sort of frustration, rather than the focused sort that Jayce had come to associate with him. It leaves Jayce feeling unnerved, antsy and restlessly unprepared for whatever is meant to come from this conversation.

Viktor picks the prior choice of confessing; perhaps as an olive branch.

"I do regret… how I left," Viktor treads carefully with a soft sigh. The hand he examines slowly closes into a fist before curling open again, fingers stretching in a repetitive, fluid motion, over and over until he continues with the condemnation that Jayce's subconscious predicted.

"But—I do not regret leaving. I needed space, from all of it. From our collective and individual follies, our failures. And yes, admittedly: from you. Us. It just was not as inherently personal of a decision as it may have seemed in the moment. By the time I sent someone to find you to speak, well… I was told that you had left?"

Jayce feels the olive branch snap then; though, he knows it's not really Viktor's fault that the words fall on tender wounds. His eyes are pleading as they gauge Jayce, words teetering between cold and compassionate before clearly waiting for a response—an explanation for where he had been before the commune. It only makes Jayce feel all the more pathetic for how any words he could find to describe his however-long-it-was absence end up getting choked on the bile-flavored spit that pools in his pursed mouth.

The taste reminds him of the sickness that had settled into his marrow and sinew over the course of time he spent in the fissure. The too-fresh fractures in his leg pound out in pain, the numbness he used to shield himself chipping away in light of the reminder. The mere thought of attempting such a feat as explaining what happened, where he was, what he saw, makes his head pang and throb as it had during the fever. His tongue becomes heavy, slicked with a pool of too much saliva that feels like it's swimming with scales. Viktor either senses or sees the apprehension and chooses to relent, looking away with a small, singular nod of nondiscriminatory defeat. It is a somewhat sad motion of understanding , one that fails to conceal his displeasure over the blatant-and-barely suppressed desire to press Jayce on the matter. His words continue to sting as he fills the silence for Jayce, moving the conversation along in spite of Jayce's reluctance to participate.

"The initial drive to be so far away stemmed not from despising you, Jayce: but rather from the startling and suffocating reality of all the ways we had failed each other as well as ourselves. Though, your choices across various contexts—but especially regarding Hextech, the Hexcore, me—"

Viktor inhales deeply as though to center himself—the exhale that follows causes an unnatural clicking and buzzing noise, something not-quite but almost like a whirring. It vaguely reminds Jayce of the same kind of crackle that had formed over the years of Viktor's natural life, when illness had sunk in underneath his ribs right underneath Jayce's nose, eating away at the man he'd so admired, loved, and worshiped. The rough and harsh sound of pained inhales and exhales that made Jayce want to rip into the mans' chest with his bare hands and resolve the issue himself, if only he knew how to even begin placing what the issue was. Not even the best doctor's in Piltover had an answer for what exact factor in the complex equation of Viktor's health was causing his decline. They had only known enough to confirm the worst: that with all the parts added together, his case was undeniably terminal.

⟢

It had always seemed something selfish and shameful to Jayce—how he'd loved Viktor so much that he was a blind fool to it even happening. How he couldn't recognize the true density of the emotions that had been right in front of him for so long until he was left alone at the bottom of a decaying world with nothing to do but face it. How he'd never let himself fully acknowledge what Viktor's presence in his life really meant until it began to dissolve away, day by day. Jayce hadn't had given himself the spare time to piece together exactly how much he loved Viktor, how much Viktor had become the core of his world—at least, not right up until the center of his very world crumbled in on itself. The grief that rippled through Jayce when he found Viktor in the lab, passed out and bloody-nosed, only to be given the news he was dying was unlike anything he'd ever known. He'd encountered death before: his father, among others. Yet grieving wasn't something he felt himself particularly accustomed with in a traditional sense.

Even as a child, Jayce had found it easier to work his way through the pain by simply focusing on things that the living still needed done. Though he had only been 12 when his father passed, there was much to do in the aftermath and far too little time to process. He'd found himself easily falling into the role of holding everyone else together post mortem: making arrangements, running errands, tying up legal affairs even when they went well beyond his expertise, making sure that Ximena did not wither away from starvation. Not to mention supplying a steady space for all the other's emotional processing while wading off the sharks that swam to the bloodied waters in hopes of devouring what remained of the Talis' Hammer Industry. In these ways, Jayce found that grief more often than not made the world spin by faster. Time didn't slow down how others had described it would with his sadness, it sped up in cruel spite of it.

To Jayce, healing was synonymous with running, racing to keep up with that ticking clock that counted down to his own time for demise.

It was different with Viktor. Perhaps it was because there was warning, a looming sense of anticipation, whereas every other loss he'd endured seemed to sneak up from behind Jayce or be caused by his own sinning hands. While the news of his partner's diagnosis did still motivate Jayce to work harder, to press on full-steam ahead—this time, it felt as though his world had stopped. Time became slow and sluggish, almost frozen. Life was lived in limbo. Jayce's days wasted away to the incessant hum of Hextech and Coucil work; any free time was spent researching medical documents in desperate search for answers until he collapsed. He had remained stuck in that terrible moment at the lab, at the hospital, where his great fear was confirmed: he was losing Viktor, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. The unhelpfully true phrase 'He's dying' played on loop within his mind through every passing millisecond. It hit him with ten times the weight in the small moments of normalcy, when they were lost in work and it was almost easy to forget what was happening until a coughing fit or almost-fainting spell or the general sickly pallor of his partner brought him back down to reality. Then, shame would fill his veins.

How could you forget that you're losing him? You're watching him fade away in front of you but you keep going on like it's normal. You won't even do him the justice of acknowledging it's inevitability. Are you that ungrateful? That selfish? Does all this time mean so little to you that you fail to cherish how precious the time you have left is?

His mind replayed the scenes that led to the discovery like a coil of film unspooling: finding Viktor bloodied and collapsed on the cold tile of the lab, the doctor's pitiful face and detached tone when relaying the news that he had not years but months—if he's lucky, they'd said. The hours he spent waiting by his bedside before Viktor woke up when he was certain it was already too late, that he was watching him pass away right in that very moment. How he knew immediately, in that moment, that he would never and could never love someone else like this again. That he could never admit to Viktor now what he felt. How cruel it was to even think that, let alone say it to his partner, when he'd waited until it was too late to do a goddamn thing about it.

How could he ever confess to all of that—to the fact that while Viktor literally bled out on the floor from the effort of carrying the brunt of their work, he had been wrapped in someone else's naked embrace, obsessing on Viktor and their work in the back of his mind the whole time? How the only reason he found Viktor on the floor like that at all was because he'd rushed back after having some grand Hexcore related "break-through" that occurred post-coital—combined with an incessant need to see him, even though he had the most beautiful and brilliant woman in Piltover wrapping him around her silken sheets and shins that night?

Jayce ended up not even remembering what the break-through was that had led him to the lab in the first place, the thought ejected the moment he saw the crime scene before him. In hindsight, it hadn't mattered anyways; it was only ever an excuse to return to the lab and see Viktor. Any excitement Jayce had over either notion immediately dissolved in the dread of finding Viktor unconscious in a pool of his own blood, crumpled on the lab floor like a discarded paper doll.

It was a heavy guilt and a gripping vice of hurt blooming from vines of remorse and regret that grew tendrils through his veins, clinging against his bones with the sharpness of rose thorns. All of it based from a selfish desire, formed from only realizing how badly he wanted something when it was already slipping through his fingers like sand.

⟢

And Jayce still can't do it now, either—confess to the weight of all his sins: his lust, his confusion, his greed. His throat closes the same way it had when he saw that sight of Viktor in the lab, in the hospital bed, each time he so much as forms the thought. He can't bring himself to admit to all the ways he'd wanted Viktor after failing him so deeply, nor all the reasons he been willing to kill him just two weeks ago despite that. He couldn't begin to unravel the complex web of thoughts or feelings he had now held about Viktor. Or the Herald. Or what—whoever—the person before him is. He can barely even handle the relentless racing of his own thoughts about everything that he's done and encountered himself; all the death he's seen or caused , all the ways it's changed him.

So instead, he just swallows it all, listening on and feeling something far less than half-there as Viktor continues filling the space his own words cannot.

"I could not understand it, Jayce. Truthfully, I am still not sure if I do. What you chose to do… it has changed everything, for both of us. I felt myself filled with an unfounded form of rage the day I awakened that left me detached. Different, even beyond how I had already been altered physically. And ever since then, I have continued to feel distanced in a way that I never considered myself particularly acquainted with before… My body and mind were not just reborn but remade, entirely new; there is only a resonant charge of what or who I was before. I can remember who I was before, but I do not recognize it as myself. I don't expect you to understand that—and I understand now that you had your own reasons, for your choices. Your own context and story. You have every right to that, but so do I. Perhaps what pulled us apart was beyond our control; or maybe I shut you out too quickly in my initial reaction—but I need you to understand. It wasn't out of hatred. It was simply too much upon both my revival and immediate review. In my defense, Jayce—you do not always wait to see all the sides of a situation; and at the time you were too determined to fix something I already knew was irreparable. I felt that, eh… well, one cannot continue to live where they have already died, I suppose?"

Viktor laughs with a tone that is not quite derisive, but still humorless. The feigned attempt at any lightheartedness and the symbolism in his sermon does nothing to salve the way his words burn through Jayce like molten lava. He feels his face begin to heat with a boiling anger at the way Viktor's words leave him once more feeling utterly outcast and discarded. He feels foolish for being here; embarrassed for assuming Viktor still cared just because he was tolerating Jayce haunting his community. It stings and scorches through him in a way that he tells himself has absolutely nothing to do with the other forms of tension in him regarding Viktor.

"So what are you saying—we're just doomed, then?" Jayce retorts, his voice bitter before falling to a choked sort of betrayed and broken. "If you believe that, then why let me stay at all? If-if we can't fix this—whatever this is, that broke us—why let me stay? Why not tell me to leave? You should want me to leave. And if you do believe that we can fix it, then—" his voice cracks in a way that makes him wince, but he forces the words out bitterly despite it. "Why didn't you find me, Viktor?"

"No—" Vitkors eyes close as he shakes his head firmly, calm and resolved. "I'm not saying we're doomed, Jayce. But we had reached a point of discord at the time that required our paths to divulge—did we not? Something irreplaceable in us both, and thus between us, had fractured. Neither of us were equipped to repair it. There were too many external variables. I have had much time to think and change, now. It looks as though you have as well. I could not see it this way then, but I understand now that being unable to go back does not mean we cannot move forward… Still, that does not mean I understand exactly how to move forward with you, any better than you do with I." Viktor replies softly. His sad and vulnerable eyes shift through colors, cast in a film of somber sympathy as they turn to search for something in the scarred face before him.

Jayce can't help but wonder if he looks as unfamiliar to Viktor as Viktor does now to him. He hadn't really taken any time to look in his reflection, though he caught glimpses of it throughout the last two weeks. Enough to know he looked nothing like the last time Viktor had seen him. Was it even time that changed them? Or something beyond that, more powerful and infallible? Whatever it was—Jayce despises it still. He fails to relate to Viktor's acceptance of the circumstances. If anything, it only reminds him of the Mage's cold warning just before he opened the anomaly:

"Remember, Jayce. Whatever happens, whatever he says, whatever he looks like—whatever feeling you are consumed by or what you see when you face him: it is not your Viktor. Not anymore. He isn't the person you love. He isn't a person at all. It's only the Hexcore using him to survive. You have to destroy it."

His expression sours suddenly; a sarcastic scoff leaving his split lips, frame hardening, hazel eyes filling with fire. Even though he no longer believed the Mage, the fear that his belief is once more founded in something faulty is enough for him to reject The Herald's sentimentality. It's clear from the twitch of response in The Herald's brow that he does not find what he's looking for from that response, nor the verbal one that follows.

"I've seen the end of what your current projection forward looks like," Jayce spits, more venom behind the words than he intended inherently towards the being they fall on. The Herald flinches as though burned by the sparks of Jayce's spite, visibly biting his own mouth: but he remains quiet otherwise. Jayce's voice drops an octave when he forces it through the feeling of glass in his throat, cracking with the failed effort of holding back his bitterness. "It isn't any prettier than our past. Just—just emptier. Barren. Decayed."

The Herald says nothing at that for a moment again, but his face contorts with pain in a way that stops Jayce from continuing further, despite the fact that he has countless other things to say on the matter. He continues to stare at Jayce with a concerned, contorted sort of curiosity—and Jayce again refrains from meeting his eyes. The Herald waits, and waits, and waits… the mosaic windows that had become the irises of his companion's eyes drilling into Jayce for so long that he feels his skin begin to bead with an anticipatory sweat. He shifts uncomfortably—even clears his throat at one point—but says nothing more, refusing to elaborate until finally, the other relents. Viktor inhales sharply, posing his question much in the same way that Jayce has heard him offer countless other questions of philosophy or theory:

"Is that what I am to you, Jayce? What this place is?" He counters with a firm defiance, motioning around them as though it proves his point. The inner corners of his eyebrows angle up sharply, flittering colors of otherworldly irises moving rapidly as they question the lush plant life that surrounds them. "Of all things, of all the possibilities… what you come up with to describe all of the things before you is dead?"

Jayce doesn't know how to reply. His brain scrambles and races, mouth parting but not even bothering to stammer while thoughts begin supplying too many answers rather than a lack any to the question. There are simply too many things he wants to say coming to mind much faster than his mouth could ever hope to form them, even if his heart was willing to share. All his efforts are focused on forcing his lower jaw back into place and physically biting back the words on the inside of his lip. It requires enough force that he can feel the imprint it'll leave later forming, the slightest taste of iron and blood spreading across taste-buds as only his mind screams:

Oh, come on. What do you expect me to say to that, Viktor? Yes, no—I don't know! Do you even know if you're alive? Are you even you anymore?! You asked me to destroy the very thing you became. So what are you—who are you, now? Viktor, or "The Herald", or the Hexcore itself, or—or someone, something else entirely? You never let me figure out. You never really let me see who you were, let alone what you became! You barely let me see you at all! You just left the second you were back—and then I died. Inside and outside, I was nothing anymore. Not alive, just empty, dead. Everyone was dead to me. Everything. For months—or was it years? I don't still don't even know that! Fuck! I-I don't know how much time I spent there, what or where there even was—how long we've been apart or-or if what I experienced as months actually was months at all?! If it wasn't for this fucking rock embedded in my wrist and everything else that proves it was real, I'd write the whole thing off as a psychotic break. I don't know what happened to me, or to you, or why it fucking happened! All I know is that I died. I was dead. I died with you, Viktor, don't you fucking get it? I died when I saw you in the rubble of the council room, and I died again when your heart stop beating on our lab table; I died when I betrayed you, and then I died every day you were lost to me, and died all over again of joy when you came back, and then died in tenfold new way when you left. I hated you for leaving me! I hated myself for failing to love you enough to keep you from leaving at all! And-and then—fuck! I don't even know, Viktor! I don't know what happened. I don't know where I was. It was horrible. I can feel it calling me back, luring me to die again. Was any of it even real? I don't know. I just—I lost you and then I lost everything. I lost my fucking mind, and lost the person I loved, and this whole world and-and myself. So of course you're dead. Because you're here, and I'm here, and I'm dead too. I don't what I am either. I don't know what that or any of this means for any of us, either, and God Viktor sometimes it feels like I'm still there—still choking on the gaseous stench of death and sting of starvation—so take your pick. Yes. No. I don't fucking know! Of course you're dead! I'm dead, you're dead, we're all fucking dead and it's all because of me—

The toll of attempting to choke back this selfish, sour stream of consciousness comes at the cost of his voice. Instead of finding it or attempting to form words, Jayce turns to focus on glowering at some indeterminable point of space. He knows he looks like he's pouting, but he's really just processing. Attempting to, at least: all the while, his mind supplies vivid, rapid reminders of that future he was sent here to prevent. Rot. Corruption. Decay. Crumbling masses of mankind and matter; a stench like acid and the great heat-death of all DNA, all naturalistic life. A thick, humid blanket of smog that suffocates even the strongest, healthiest of lungs: let alone those like the ones Viktor was born with. Time bends around him, and he's lost to the present. Jayce can't prevent the tremble that takes over his body as memory pulls him back; he tries to suppress it but fails, all the more frustrated that he still can't seem to get a goddamn wrap around the reality in front of him. His own expression falters into an accompanying anguish to his companion, and he feels himself fall into a form of living rigor morris.

Despite his best effort to hide it, the length of time it takes for Viktor's patience to bridge into offense is not long enough for Jayce to collect himself. Viktor notices the distress—but Jayce isn't paying enough attention to spot what, exactly, it is that he recognizes. Maybe it's the shudder in his hands, the subtle tremble of his shoulders, or the bouncing of his good leg that Jayce doesn't even notice until he freezes a moment later. If anyone had learned to intuitively recognize pain, it would be Viktor. Jayce never stood a chance at hiding any of it from him. He knew that. He doesn't know why he bothered to. Not to mention the fact that Jayce had noticed even from afar that The Herald's natural understanding and his innate capability to sense even the most silent suffering in those around him had only become preternaturally heightened since his transformation.

Viktor closes the gap between them when he recognizes it, coming into Jayce's bubble with the calm certainty of someone doing nothing abnormal or wrong. He reaches one tenderly reverent hand forward, outstretched it in an effort to place it over Jayce's arm—a misplaced attempt at offering comfort Jayce knows he doesn't deserve, doesn't want. Not from anyone: and above all not now, not here, and not from Viktor. Jayce recoils with a hushed snarl, eyes shuddering with the strain of a visceral wish to retreat that causes the other to violently retract. Jayce's body prickled at the proximity of his ex-partners hand, skin lit with the sensation of a million needles as he's still lost in recollection of his painful travels through the anomaly and back—the similar, sharp feeling being seen only further cemented the reminder of unwanted eyes lurking in shadows into his flesh. Jayce finds himself consumed again amidst the famished, frozen, and fathomless ache of a form of suffering that had no end, no purpose—only could end in death or a resilient survival of the circumstances that bred it.

"Don't," he snaps, shuddering harder as he fails to choke back a sob. He shrinks away pathetically from Viktor's overwhelming presence, the waves of unfettered feeling hitting him from every conceivable angle, every single one all-consuming and never ending. He wants to throw up. He feels his breathing turn to harsh bursts of barely-held back hyperventilation, a small noise of desperate frustration accompanying one particularly shaky exhale.

alt text for chapter 2:

When Jayce's flesh wakes on its second day of new life, he finds that he is alone.

This doesn't warrant cause to startle. Something deeply rooted in his subconscious anticipated the solitude even in spite of the fact that there was little explanation for it. Honestly, it was more shocking when he had awoken the other day—still, but alive in Viktor's thin and familiar arms—than it was to wake like this, alone. He rises on his second day of new life uneventfully. A deep breath is inhaled to bring in the scent of dried flowers, accompanied right after by the slight remnants of something not-quite but close-enough to petrichor, like wet clay and rain on steel; there is a thick humidity left in the air from the emotionally-formed-embryonic fluid that helped eject him back into existence. The sun has just barely began to crest beyond the horizon, yet already billows of steam can be seen getting reabsorbed by the heat and light of daybreak that begins to ward off the deep indigo of night. Jayce turns his head languidly to watch it from the open face of the shelter floor he rests on, but his body remains otherwise unmoving as it bids farewell to the waning moon, welcoming the soft colors of dawns embrace.

It still feels odd, this natural and instinctual yet novel sensation: to sleep, to wake. To be. In the deadlock between life and death Jayce considered home for the last millennia, there was no bridge between conscious and unconscious. It was all combined, coagulated and intertwined in such a way that intangible, intellectual thought became the only thing left to define him. Nowhere left to run when the container of his body dissolved, removing him from the confines of mass and matter and stretching him across the intricately woven fabric of space time. There had been no way to escape the mind or thoughts; leaving no feelings, no dreams, no reprieve. Not in the way a vessel like flesh felt them, at the very least. There was no need for these things, no body or form to host such mortal needs.

What could sleep offer the dead? The dead dream only of life: of breathing, of experiencing the miraculous existence that is living at all once more. In fact, if what Jayce had known truly was death, then dying itself could be compared to a dream. A sleepless, eternal dream in the form of a wish to return to life. Jayce's own soul was no exception to this, though it appeared now that he may have merely been suspended in some kind of limbo rather than truly dead.

That, or he'd died and been revived over so many times, in so many ways, across so much of time and space, that he could no longer decipher the difference.

Jayce's thumb seeks out the weaved tall-grass braided into a ring on his finger, savoring the roughness of it as he rolls it across the digit. At least that much was still real: this body, the brand of braided devotion, the renewed mass of a mind in his skull that feels so heavy, so burdensome. It felt leaden, this… waking. Like being pulled from water right when you succumbed to the fate of drowning; the burning pain of liquid forcefully expelled from lungs that had already given up on breathing. Revival wasn't a pretty, painless experience. It wasn't some beautiful miracle. It was brutal and primal, less akin to being reborn and more like being resown from undoing, being un-reaped. An un-reading; the reforming of oneself that unraveled all things—scar tissue and old wounds undone and reopened, bleeding back out and healing in rapid rate under new flesh. Jayce wasn't sure what he was now—or who he was meant to be in the first place. Every nerve, every cell, every atom feels foreign and unfamiliar. His own skin feels borrowed, misplaced and out of sync with anything around it.

He imagines this must be akin to how Viktor felt when he'd first been revived by the Hexcore. No wonder he hated Jayce for it before. Jayce can feel some part of himself hating this, too. Why couldn't either of them be more prone to letting things go? For millennia he'd clung to whatever shreds of consciousness he could find of himself. For timeless, countless days Viktor clung to this timeline, to the possibility that Jayce may find his way back. In truth, Jayce hadn't really intended to come back. Not at this point, at least. It had seemed a moot point. Viktor had found a new purpose, and Jayce was too numb from the effects of eternal damnation to care one way or another about finding himself again. He'd resigned to the fate of being an onlooker. It's not like watching Viktor was such a bad view, and he figured eventually whatever he was in that state would fade into some sort of nothingness. It already did, occasionally. Yet somehow Jayce always found himself back here, watching, waiting.

alt text for chapter 3:

Viktor jolts awake, blinded and sweat-drenched under the blazing summer sun, hands grasping for the presence that should rightfully be before him. Instead, his palm falls on the cold, hard, and lifeless surface of Jayce's statuette.

He recoils with a gasp, scrambling across the dusty floor and away from the brutal reminder that he is not where he should be, vision still blurred in the brightness and lips cracking from dehydration. His tongue darts to wet them and is met with the taste of iron. The air is devoid of any remnants of life; the aroma of sulfur and stagnancy is all that remains. An utterly unfamiliar sense of disorientation and confusion washes over him, followed by a tidal wave of grief and rage when recollection fully settles into his bones. It evokes a dry sob that shifts to harsh coughing. His chest returns to the old, painful sensation that had been lost on him, burning and stinging as his mind races to remind him what has occurred, how he slipped back through time. All at once, he feels the same small, sick, and subjugated man he had been in his youth. His lungs struggle to do their job. Eventually he forgets to attempt to calm himself all together, lost in the narrow pathways of his mind attempting to explain the inexplicable.

In the shadow of his addled sleep, he wonders if perhaps the entire occurrence had been a dream all along. It hadn't made any sense for two versions of him to exist in one universe without time and space bending in on itself in the first place. Had Jayce truly ever been revived at all? Or had Viktor simply been here like this the whole time, freshly-rewoven into flesh instead of machine, curled among the corpse of his partner, his subconscious supplying hallucinations of the harrowing desire for an apology and reconciliation that he could never fulfill? Had other seasons ever come at all? Would he ever see night paint the sky again? The mere idea of it all feels so far away, inconceivable and impalpable, as though it happened only in theory and thought. He feels outside of it all; outside of himself. He cannot place how long he's been here; whatever amount of time may or may have not lapsed is not accompanied by the movement of the sun scorching the little remaining proof of life from its fixed point at high-noon. Viktor's body is rigid, equally frozen as the heavens and hell he finds himself in as it runs through the various hypothesis explaining what occurred. The most likely still settles on it never having occurred at all.

His thumb is the first thing that manages to brave movement again. It seeks for his ring finger unconsciously, and finds a greeting of braided tall-grass. The tension is in his body is erased, but in its place grief and sorrow settles.

No. It was real. I cannot waste this time on useless thoughts; I must find my way back.

Viktor's mind betrays him, supplying continued thoughts of panic despite how firmly and restlessly he lifts his body. Was it always this heavy? Had he always felt gravity so much? His heartbeat drums loudly as he rushes towards the familiarity of his shelter past the curved ledge of Jayce's memorial. Some part of him feels a need to look backwards, to prove that the monument is there at all: but the sight of it is too much, sour-flavored saliva pooling at his tongue as nausea overtakes him. He tries his best to shove it aside—there are bigger concerns to worry about. The trivial concerns pop up anyways.

Had Jayce felt this helpless when he'd found Viktor collapsed in the lab? Was he this desperate when he merged Viktor's body with the Hexcore? Jayce is going to wake up alone. Will he think Viktor abandoned him on purpose?

Will he think that I left him alone again?

He wants to gag. He wants to scream, to break things, to break down in tears: but worst case scenario and he has to relive everything all over again, then he will have to save every drop of emotion for the spell. His head is tossed back, eyes blinking rapidly when they threaten to pour over despite his effort to push it aside. Instead, he digs his dirty, uneven nails into the soft flesh of his palm, and continues to stomp his way forward towards the shelter, clinging to the hope that what resides inside will give him some sense of when he is. The books or journals, or the flowers pressed between the pages will offer some placement. Alternatively, the lack of them at all will confirm his new fear: that he's found himself at the beginning.

ramblings/AN's:

the parallels in the openings of these chapters was initially unplanned actually! lol i realized after writing the first two paragraphs of ch3, that both chapters started with both jayce and viktor waking up, and their initial sensations. i loved that it formed a parallel here: jayce's calmness vs viktor's anxiety, the differences in their enviorments, the switch from magevik being in control to jayce being the collected one who knows what's going on (somewhat. sort of.)

these chapters are turning out to be really fun, but they've also been a challenge to get through. in order to figure my way back to a happy ending, the plot has gotten even more complex and convoluted. i love that, but it's been a lot of planning and not as much actual writing as i'd have liked. also been pouring most of my effort into wrapping up ch2 of fate forged from failure instead, cause it's right at the cusp of being done; whereas premise of promise not only is harder to get through because it makes me emotional and touches on so much grief and in general has less ready. i hope to at least get ch 2-4 for this one posted by the end of this year; alongside a ch or 2 of fate forged in failure & one chapter for both wanting, wrapped in red & AMSATASM. i feel like i'm juggling a lot of works, but overall it's been helpful to be able to shift gears and jump between things when i lose steam on one work.

AMSTASM Snippets:

Jayce's eyes appear more green than usual, an illusion caused by the contrast of the redness surrounding them, wet and glossy and a good bit surprised. Pink floods up his neck when he pulls back, brushing over his cheeks and ears as he drops his hands from Viktor's arms as though they've burnt him. He tries not to read into the way Jayce avoids any eye contact, irises flicking back and forth from different features of Viktor's face to any other area except his eyes.

"Oh—hey, uh—sorry, Viktor. You okay?" He stammers out. His voice is scratchy, a bit of redness on his nose… Viktor knows what this is. He's seen it a few times before.

"You've been crying," he states flatly.

"What? No—" Jayce's voice is squeaky. He's lying—he has easy tells. Viktor sussed them out within the first week of knowing him. "No, I-I was just—"

"I was commenting, not asking."

"It's—It's nothing. I'm fine, Vik, I swear. Just over-tired, and I guess I over exerted myself when we—" Jayce pauses to uncomfortably shift his weight on his other foot, picking at his own nails between them. "During our test," he corrects.

Viktor blinks at him defiantly in response, still unsatisfied. He stays still and silent other shifting his weight a bit, one arm crossing over his torso to rest on his other elbow, staring at Jayce impatiently until he finally caves and continues.

"Really, I am," Jayce says adamantly, puffing up his chest a bit even though his shoulders sag with a little tell of defeat. "I just—I don't know, this happens sometimes? Okay. Actually, a lot of the time. Usually it's, uh, during…? But I also usually don't—well, I… yeah. I don't bottom," Jayce says awkwardly. "Or I haven't before, until tonight. So. Just feeling a lot of… new things?" He sighs, visibly distraught. "I don't know."

Awareness slides a sharp knife between Viktor's ribs.

"Did I hurt you?" He asks. His voice comes out more strained than he means it to, gravity suddenly heavier, making it harder to deny the feeling of the ground rushing up to meet him. "Or did I make you uncomfortable?"

"No!" Jayce affirms quickly, earnest eyes meeting Viktor's. "Not at all. It's not that. I just feel…" A broken, half-hearted laugh escapes his lips as Jayce scratches the back of his neck and stares back down at his feet. "I-I don't really know what I feel, honestly? It isn't bad. Just overwhelming, I guess."

Viktor lets that confession steep into the silence. He doesn't know what to say, because he doesn't exactly know how to feel about any of it, either. Nor does he quite yet believe that he hasn't done something horribly wrong, and damaged them beyond repair. Unlike Jayce, Viktor is not brave enough to admit to the complexities of his own thoughts.

He does know he needs to piss, and he feels about five seconds away from combusting, so... he coughs after a significant pause, nodding at the door behind Jayce.

"Okay. Well, I don't wish to avoid this conversation or seem indifferent, but first can I, eh…"

"Oh!" Jayce exclaims, poofing into action and scrambling out of the way as though he just realized where he was. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. I'm sorry if I worried you or something. It's really not a big deal. We don't have to talk about it, Viktor—"

"No, I want to—" Viktor says as he slides past the door as quickly as he can and peeks over his shoulder, meeting Jayce's anxious and somewhat sad gaze with a rather desperate one of his own. "Unless… you do not?"

"It's not like that, I just…" Jayce hesitates, meeting his eyes again sheepishly. "I don't want to put you to feel obligated to or anything."

"It's no problem," Viktor shrugs, instead of saying that he'd rather bath in a fresh batch of acid than not know exactly what about their exchange is eating at his partner so terribly. "Just, give me a moment. Wait for me in the break room?"

"Okay," Jayce stammers. "Yeah, of course. Sure. You got it, partner."

The door slots into place with a click of the lock behind him before he can see much more of Jayce's slightly shell-shocked expression. Viktor fumbles against the faucet to let the water pour out of it, splashing the cold liquid onto his face a few times for good measure. He genuinely did need to pee when he came this way. Pretty fucking bad, actually; but, what he needs more than that is a moment of fucking relief so that he can think clearly. He can't talk to Jayce with his own dick throbbing the way it was. He needs to breathe at an even pace, to not fixate on the way hearing the word partner just now struck a strange chord in his chest, despite it being no different from the thousand of other times Jayce had called him by that same exact name, in that same exact tone.

He needs to not be thinking of kissing him, licking against his teeth, tasting every inch of his mouth; even though that was his own explicitly set boundary, put in place for good reason. He needs to not be second-guessing it, for the sole purpose of satisfying a crude curiosity.

Jayce's distraught disposition did nothing to temper his feelings. If anything, twisted man he was, somehow it worsened his own condition. Viktor isn't really sure that Jayce is far enough away or that the faucet is loud enough, or the walls and door thick enough, for him to get away with this act of shame. But he has to do it now. He has to because Jayce is, undoubtedly, going to spill his guts about how much he regretted all of what they did and how awkward he feels because of it, and corner Viktor into a conversation about agreeing to never do something like this again. He was probably working himself up now to give a speech on proper work-partnership boundaries and some other slew of things Viktor has no interest in hearing, because his mind has narrowed down to one sordid, simple image:

Jayce's teary eyes, all gorgeous woodsy-green emphasized by the redness around them, looking up at him from below as Viktor face-fucks him silent and stupid. The sound of him gasping into his ear, his hands grasping at his hair, the wet heat of their bodies melting together.

Viktor is disgusted with himself for it; yet he's swallowed whole by the intensity of the vision all the same. It doesn't help he has such freshly acquired, first-hand experience to base the sensations off of. He sighs with shaky frustration as he yanks down his pants and comes to half-stand above the toilet, bad knee propped on it's closed lid. His hands find their way between his legs before he can come to his full senses enough to feel any shame in what he's seeking. Viktor spreads himself with a soft groan, watching as his swollen dick twitches back at him from beneath the thick bush of hair, greedy and needy. He runs one finger slowly over the swell of it, biting the back of his hand to stifle his need to moan louder.

The logical part of him that knows he can't get caught doing this is overridden by the impulsive animal in him that wants Jayce to hear him. He falls deeper into the fantasy, imagining Jayce doing so, imagining him crouching to the floor beneath him to slide his mouth over Viktor's cock. How beautiful he'd look sucking him off, those same tear-lined eyes taking Viktor as he face-fucks him. Amber eyes squeeze shut as he works himself off with quick, rough movements, cock pinched between thumb and index finger.

Thankfully, it doesn't take long. An all time low: thirty seconds, if he's being generous.

[part 2; the start of the scene a bit after the above section]:

"Do you regret it?" Viktor hesitantly asks.

"No. If anything, the opposite. I'm… glad to know what I do now," he says bashfully.

"Discover something new, did you?" Viktor teases lightheartedly, earning him a scoff and a glare.

"More like proved a long-standing theory. Don't tease me. I'm still sensitive, Viktor, I'll cry."

It's his turn to scoff, rolling his eyes at his partner's usual over-dramatics. At least it meant he was feeling more like himself again, Viktor supposes.

"Your ego seems perfectly intact from where I sit. You'll live."

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Regret it? Do you wish we didn't… do that?"

"…No," Viktor says cautiously, softly, after several passing moments of only being able to hear his own elevated breathing. "I don't—I… have not enjoyed sex very much, statistically speaking. This, though? It was, eh… a rare exception. I enjoyed myself. Though, I am sorry if I wasn't up to your standa—"

"You were perfect, Viktor," Jayce interrupts. "Please, don't doubt that for a second."

He can feel Jayce's eyes drilling holes into him, but Viktor can't bring himself to look. The unyielding certainty of the statement makes his spine feel like liquid fire, his teeth grinding against all the counter-arguments he can supply to that remark. I am many thing, he thinks, and perfect is not synonymous with a single one of them. Viktor shifts uncomfortably, suddenly feeling small and hot like an ant under a magnifying glass. He doesn't know what to say, his brow furrowing a bit in frustration from being taken off guard so easily. This, much like the rest of the night, was not exactly going to plan.

"If you say so," is all he can manage to reply.

"I'm glad."

"Hm?"

"I'm glad that it was good for you, too," Jayce whispers, then, softer still: "That I could good for you."

Fate Forged in Failure snippet:

Two languid weeks filled with lamenting will pass before Jayce and Viktor so much as lay eyes on each other again.

The evening of their second separation, Jayce falls asleep in the same spot he's left in. He wakes at some point, limp and lifeless, curled up in a ball like some sad lost creature on the cold stone floor. It takes longer than he'd like to admit to even realize where he is. To piece together that he's at the commune, and not at the bottom of a ravine. The emptiness in his stomach, heart, and soul feel the same. The bitter taste in his mouth is the same. The buzzing in his hands and pain in his leg, all the same. So, it takes him some convincing as he scans the room quietly to gather his senses. Eventually he manages to convince himself the humidity is from the presence of plants, plants not a decaying atmosphere and dank water.

That fight was real. No nightmare or hallucination—as if I'd be so lucky.

Jayce lays there uselessly, mind spinning with survival plans that no longer served any purpose for some significant portion of time. Or maybe it's seconds? It feels like years, stuck there. Frozen. Still. When the most recent horrors of reality replay in his mind—the disdain in Viktor's voice, the pain in his eyes, the anger buzzing like a stripped wire between them both—he's finally able to swallow the reason behind the sadness that sinks into his marrow.

The thick sense of humidity in the room is replaced by an equally torturous humility in wake of all that was said, and all that left unsaid between them. The things he wishes he could change or take back now settle like stones in his throat; that which he would say differently to ease the tension, that which he could have said to make it worse. Between these thoughts and the dark, harsh coldness that's taken root under his skin in spite of the warm air, it felt any different from the ravine—even if it was quite literally some folds of time, space, and reality away.

It's the combined pangs of hunger and plip-plop-pattering of raindrops against the glass ceiling that eventually rustle him out of the fog of dissociation. It shouldn't help; the rain had been his worst nightmare in the ravine, and he thought he'd be terrified of it forever. Here, it tethers him somehow. He scans the glass ceiling to find that it extremely late at night. More accurately, very early in the morning.

Ironically, he realizes that what he just awoke from was the first peaceful, quiet night of sleep he'd been given since long before the Council room exploded.

He ached to return to the quiet reprieve of dreamlessness, but a bone-deep restlessness kept him from it.

Jayce only realizes there's a blanket wrapped around him when he shifts. It slides smoothly off his body as he rises—and he thumbs the material to find it is the same one he'd placed over Viktor all that time ago, when he first emerged from the Hexcore. At least, it looks like the same one. The dual-sided blue and red fabric was a common, cheap design that Jayce picked up from a general store in Piltover one day. It was more likely one of several copies that was lying around, sourced from various commune members, than it was the exact one from their lab. If it smelled faintly of sterility and steel, mixed a lingering scent of honeyed wildflowers—so similar to the faint perfume of Viktor's new personhood—then, that was just as likely a coincidence.

Placed a foot away from his face, Jayce finds a serving tray with bread, juice, and soup that had long-since gone lukewarm. His body is sore, heart thick with sorrow; yet he hardly registers feeling anything at all when he reaches forward to scarf down the offerings.

It doesn't taste like anything, even though it smelled fragrant enough to make his stomach growl. Herbs and seeds were pressed thoughtfully into the grains of bread, broth rich in fat and oil. A skilled culinary hand crafted this meal, yet he couldn't truly appreciate it. The flavor reaches his tongue, but not his mind or heart. It serves the sole purpose of filling his stomach, without any real feeling of nourishment. His stomach turns and rejects the food before he even gets halfway through, which only furthers his discomfort. The truth of Viktor's words haunt him all over again as he stares at the broth in his spoon.

"You barely sleep. You refuse to eat, surviving off nothing more than scraps. You barely speak to anyone. You cannot call this living. You're withering away in front of me—I can see you rotting, both physically and psychologically, but you deny anything I can offer you to help!"

He discards the leftovers with a dejected sigh, guiltily leaving it to rot.

Afterwards, he only has enough strength to join that decay. Jayce crawls back into the closest garden bed, trying to chase sleep while sprawled under a strange plant with large leaves. He stares listlessly at the swaying fronds for some time. It reminds him of their old test subject plants. It was nearly identical to the ones that had withered away in their lab back when they were testing their theories that the Hexcore could possibly heal Viktor. The color was all wrong, but otherwise it was the same—the shape, the veins, the way it seemed to undulate knowingly at him.

With their test sample, a simple seed bloomed instantaneously. They celebrated loudly at the miracle of it, marveling at the magical growth. It was the briefest sensation of breakthrough; one that all but disintegrated before them when a death rattle suddenly being expelled from the plant, its colored leaves and branches sapped to gray. It wheezed sickeningly as it withered, almost a mimic of the same way he had heard Viktor struggle for breath on days where his symptoms flared the worst. Jayce hadn't even realized plants could make noise until that point. It remained in their lab, wilting, lifeless: and their excited embrace quickly following suit.

Not long after, so did their partnership.

The damn thing was a poor omen. He shouldn't have been so foolish to be optimistic about it. They had desired to unlock a way to sustain life—but what had been offered was instead the ever present, lingering promise of death, quickened by their own hubris.

What an apt metaphor for how our partnership turned out, he thinks sourly. The thought leaves him overcome with an urge to reach into his own stomach and pull all the food right back out of his stomach, just to balance out the mental impact of the memory with a physical one. For some reason his lizard brain screams that's the only way to resolve this horrible, suffocating feeling. If it weren't for the guilt he feels over wasting more resources, especially so deep in Zaun where things all too often ran scarce, he would have.

Instead, Jayce smacks the plant away from him angrily, hearing a few thick, woody stalks crack with the offense. The plant shakes back at him then limps sadly, as if scolding him for the assault. he trudges angrily to a different area, settling into a bed of velvety moss by the aqueduct that runs throughout the greenhouse. He tosses and turns aimlessly, trying and failing to stop himself from replaying every part of their argument. Jayce picks it apart from every angle, weighing each other's transgressions and missteps against each other in order to solve who's at a greater fault.

Every way he ran the equations, it came to the same conclusion:

They were each equally at fault for all of it.

There was no way to divy up the blame that didn't leave them both stained with guilt. Not that it made him feel better—if anything he was worse for ware, weary and head spinning from the circles his own mind spun him in about how they got here; why this was happening; what could or could not be done; how to make sense or amends or an attack. What exactly he wanted, though, was still unclear; or rather, it was disregarded as a factor all together, an irrelevant numeric to the complex, confounded equation he was attempting to solve. At the very least, he'd come up with some solid counter arguments to Viktor's points by replaying it on loop. Even if they were belated, and potential to being cast aside for the chance at letting bygones be bygones and trying to forge a new way forward.

He still isn't sure he wants to live, or that he and Viktor have any real right to. He's here though. Here and too tired to do anything about not wanting to be here, so he may as well go down swinging.

Pain revisits him as he fight against a sour sense of accountability about his own part in their conflict. He replays Viktor's parts over and over too, as though digging in a gunshot wound for the bullet. A tightness in his chest strings soft, silent tears from his eyes as he laments.

Should he keep Viktor at an arm's length, or plunge him into the depths of this despair just so he didn't feel so fucking alone anymore? Neither felt healthy, or right, or godforbid safe. He knew he couldn't escape this. It was pointless for him to care about comfort at this point, considering how his livelihood could be defined by a lack of safety and a childish spite towards structure. Nothing felt certain or clear anymore; and that, he had always prided himself on. His vision; his ability to see long-term, big picture, to break things down and build them up better. That was what had always kept him grounded, despite his head objectively being in the clouds in every other nameable way.

Now, all he can see is the broken shards of his stupid, reckless mistakes. It makes him panic, mind supplying that it's all simply just too much—the stress of it all is sure to pop his heart at this rate.

The looming memory of death in any form helps nothing with the dread that swallows him whole, body and soul. Tension spreads violently, and soon he was shaking like the last leaf in a Winter wind, even though the greenhouse air was warm, thick and heavy with humidity Even wrapped as tightly as he can manage to bundle in the blanket, a coldness bites at his bones. Sweat beads across his skin—he tries to force the thoughts away, to shove the feelings away, to slip back into the reprieve of sweet, dreamless slumber. Such luxuries apparently met their expiration date, it seems.