Archive of Our Own

Viktor wakes in a room he has not seen in more than a decade, and stares at the ceiling in stunned silence.

For a moment, he believes that everything was nothing more than a dream, a fancy of an exhausted mind. But he can remember it all so clearly, and he knows that belief is nothing more than wishful thinking. Everything he did is real, and he cannot ever change that. Which means, awfully, terribly, that he should no longer be here.

Viktor should be dead—was ready to be dead—and now he is not.

Now, he is somewhere both unfamiliar and not. He’s lying down in a bed, pillows soft and plush under his head, and early morning sunlight streams in through the nearby window. Scattered around him are trinkets and blueprints, notebooks stacked on the bedside table.

He knows this place. He has not been here since before he met Jayce.

Jayce.

Viktor launches himself upright, and the sharp burn of familiar pain sends him right back down against the pillows. He clutches at his leg, at the awful ache in his bones. In the commune, in the body the Hexcore had given him, he’d grown so used to moving without pain. His leg was never straight, never perfect, but pain was a non-existent thing when he was the Herald. No cold, no pain, only potential.

He grits his teeth, breathes through the pain. A familiar routine, but one he hasn’t had to do for a long time. Thumbs in the bend under his knee, massage the muscle and the join there, apologise to his body for moving so quickly.

The pain is not quite as bad as it was before he became the Herald, before the Hexcore and the Glorious Evolution and everything that came with it—before dying so many times. And his breaths come so easily. They spill from him like they’re desperate for freedom, flowing like water from his mouth and nose.

This is what makes him stop, makes him freeze in the warm confines of his bed and really look around him. His cane rests against the bedside table and the uniform folded on the soft armchair is the one he wore as Heimerdinger’s assistant. The cogs and gears and pieces of scrap on the workbench are severely lacking in the magic that had so taken over his life.

Viktor knows, without standing from the bed and looking at the mirror on the other side of the room, that he has been sent backwards in time. This room, this body, these blueprints and plans are all from before he ever met Jayce Talis.

It makes sense, two acceleration runes cancelling each other out, reverting back and back and back.

Slowly, so slowly, Viktor pulls himself from the bed and grabs for his cane, fingers wrapping around the handle so easily. He has not used this in years, but it feels natural, it feels right, more than the crutch and the back brace ever did. He has neither of those things now, and he feels nothing but relief at the mere idea.

He stands before the full-length mirror in nothing but his underwear. His body has a healthy flush to it and his hair is short once more. There are no scars, no runes carved into his skin, no marks from the brace around his leg that he does not yet have. Just his cane and his sore leg and his youthful face.

He’s back before it all started, and he cannot for the life of him understand why.

It was supposed to be finished. He and Jayce had finished it, destroyed the Herald and themselves in the embrace of the Arcane. His older self—alternate self, regretful self—had given them the runestone for that very reason. They were both supposed to be dead. He had chosen it, when he could have so easily thrown Jayce aside and brought about the end of everything. He had chosen to die with Jayce.

He had chosen to die loving and being loved in return, finally, after so many years.

And now… And now he is here, back at the start. A cruel joke of the Arcane.

His next breaths are shaky and his hand trembles around the handle of his cane. It is all he can do to get himself onto the edge of the bed before the panic overwhelms him.

He had killed so many people, destroyed so many lives for an impossible ideal. Manipulated by his own mind and the Hexcore and the doctor and Jayce, who had killed him to stop the very thing he eventually became. He’d raged at first, distraught and heartbroken, but now he understands. He would have done it too, if he’d seen what the other Viktor had shown him, he would have thrown himself from the top of the Hexgates.

What is he supposed to do now? Do it all over again? Destroy Hextech before it even starts? He does not understand why the Arcane dropped him back here, why he couldn’t just die and be done with it, why he has to live again with everything he’s done.

His head drops into his hands, chest heaving. He’s hyperventilating. He sees this like he’s watching his body as an outside observer, distant and distinctly uncurious. It is impossible to slow his breaths, impossible to know when and why and how.

All he wants is Jayce.

He needs to find Jayce, needs to know that he’s not the only one who’s been sent back.

If Jayce is there, he’s probably panicking just as much as Viktor is. Jayce, who had gone through so much just to get back to Viktor, just to stop him, just to save him, just to tell him that he loved him in the only way he could.

Is it enough, knowing that? An impossible question to answer.

But the thought of Jayce settles his breathing just enough for him to stand again. He changes slowly into clothes he has not worn in many, many years. The pain in his leg is stark, agonising, though he knows it is the best it will ever be. Months and months of painlessness has him struggling, but he will grow used to it with time.

He has years again, now.

Viktor spends a long time standing at the front door of his apartment, willing his hand to reach forward and grab the doorknob. He knows what will be beyond it, but it is a Piltover has almost entirely forgotten. Hexgateless.

Jayce never did see this apartment; he’d left it not long after they met. Jayce has no idea where to find him. But Viktor knows where to find Jayce. He will never forget the first day they met. He is the one who has to make the effort to reunite them.

Even though, somewhere not quite as deep within him as he would like, he believes he is not worthy of even seeing Jayce now. Except, he knows Jayce, and he knows he will stop at nothing until he finds Viktor.

He wrenches the door open. Beyond is only drab hallway and the elevator that breaks in the weeks following his and Jayce’s first meeting. He remembers this, remembers the frustration and the pain of taking three flights of stairs twice a day, but it is a distant thing, brought on only by the sight of it.

Every step feels like it takes so much effort that he almost wonders if this will be worth it. He is no longer used to this; he feels unwelcome in a body he knows was once he. After the Hexcore, he’d been so angry at Jayce for the way his body changed, but he’d grown used to it in time. He’d grown to like it, to feel comfortable within it and enjoy the power it brought him.

He clenches his jaw through the pain, adjusts his grip on his cane, and strides from the foyer of his apartment building. The daylight is blinding, and he blinks rapidly to avoid the vertigo. He fails and has to lean against the side of the building for seconds he cannot count.

Piltover bustles around him, all bright grins and privileged joy. It is not like the Undercity, tired and dying; not like the commune, peaceful and quiet; and not like the Piltover he left, invaded and scared. He misses the commune, misses what he made and the people he helped—hates himself for what he did to it.

No one really looks at him as he walks slowly down roads he only vaguely remembers. He took this path to the Academy for years, but it was only half of one after he met Jayce that he moved somewhere that was more accommodating for him. He has not walked down these roads for a very long time.

Jayce lives somewhere between the Academy and the Kiramman Estate. It’s a long walk made longer by his unfamiliarity with his own body. Viktor cannot help but stare at each person and building he passes, wondering which of them he took with him into the Evolution and which buildings crumbled under the weight of the Noxian invasion.

There is no Hexgate on the horizon. It’s like missing a step on a staircase. A blank spot where something should be.

Viktor should have died up there. He fully expected to.

The Arcane is still not something he fully understands, despite everything. It would have taken him years and years of isolation and regret to learn it all. He does not have that time, not like his older counterpart, and so the Arcane remains an enigma he hopes to never understand.

It has given him a second chance, given them both a second chance, and he will not throw that away despite the longing in him to. If the Arcane is giving him the opportunity to fix his numerous mistakes, then he will apologise for the rest of his life. That is what it is asking of him, it seems.

Unsurprisingly, Jayce’s apartment is in a much nicer part of Piltover than Viktors, though all of Piltover is much nicer than anywhere in the Undercity (except the commune, says a part of his mind he is so desperate to ignore).

Viktor’s heart pounds. He moves as fast as he is able towards the entrance, mouth dry and lips silently forming Jayce’s name. His cane clacks loudly against both the pavement and the tiled floor within, and he wonders for a moment if Jayce can hear him coming. He almost expects, as he climbs to the third floor, that Jayce will be opening the door to run for him, that smile on his face and the bright look in his eyes—the same one he’d had the entire time they were in the astral plane together.

If there is one thing Viktor knows with absolute certainty, it is that Jayce does not hate him, no matter what.

But the hall is silent, eerily so, and the sound of his cane tapping against the floor is too loud in his ears. He stops in front of Jayce’s door and wonders what it looks like when it’s not debris and rubble. Like the lab, most likely.

He knocks and it’s weird, waiting for the man he loves to open the door. The man who saved him from what would have been a very lonely life. It feels almost trivial, reuniting like this, but he can’t help the little thrill of excitement welling in his gut.

Is he allowed to feel like this, after everything he’s done? Is that what the Arcane wants from him?

Seconds pass, each one slower than the last. Hesitantly, Viktor knocks again but hears nothing on the other side. Jayce’s apartment is empty; he is not home. This, if Viktor is being honest, feels even more trivial. Jayce simply isn’t home right now.

A burst of laughter spills from Viktor’s lips. It is not a happy sound, merely noise for the sake of noise, and it echoes down the hallway like a ghost. Jayce’s absence makes sense, between one second and the next. He would not have stayed when he woke. He would have gone looking for Viktor, just like how Viktor came looking for him.

And the only place Jayce would know to look for him would be the Academy. Another laugh, a frustrated thing that borders on a groan, and Viktor pulls himself away from Jayce’s door. He could so easily wait here for Jayce to return, but he does not know when that will be, and there’s a frantic energy in him to keep moving. He can’t stop, not until he finds Jayce.

The apartment is locked, thankfully, and despite his curiosity to see what lies on the other side of the door, he walks away. The Academy awaits.

It is not until he steps within the grounds of the place he spent so many years studying in secret that he remembers that he has a job here. The sun is high in the sky already, and Heimerdinger must be waiting for him somewhere, but Viktor can’t find it within himself to care. He does not even know what day it is, could not for the life of him figure out what tasks the Dean of the Academy would have him do. He is far more than the young man who had been his assistant.

All he knows is that somewhere, Jayce is looking for him.

And then what? They will talk, surely, about everything that has happened. Viktor did not get a proper chance to apologise to him, to truly say the words. Being with him, letting the runestone take them, that felt as close to an apology as he could get at the time. But there needs to be a real one, now that they’re alive.

He needs Jayce to know that he regrets everything—everything except dying with him.

Hextech… Part of him still wants to make it. They know their mistakes now, know what will come from their meddling with the Arcane and the body. The Hexgates worked. The Gemstones worked. It was him and the Hexcore that changed everything.

But hadn’t Jayce said that all he wanted was Viktor now? Not the magic or Hextech or the dream he’d had his entire life. Just Viktor, just his partner.

So, what then? A magicless, scienceless life? What would they be without the very thing that brought them together in the first place? There is a wild feeling in Viktor’s chest, not a nice one. They could figure it out, surely, but he can’t imagine it.

His leg aches more and more with every step, and he wonders how he used to do this every day. He will grow used to it again, though it would be better if he didn’t have to, would it not? Despite everything, he still does not have the answers to these questions.

Viktor earns a few more stares in the Academy courtyard than he did on the streets of Piltover. People know him here as Heimerdinger’s assistant, and he has to stop where he stands to take in the simplicity of it. As founder of Hextech, he was resolutely ignored in favour of Jayce. As the Herald, he was worshipped. As the bringer of Glorious Evolution, he was… he was the enemy.

Perhaps a little bit of academic fear is welcome in comparison to that.

There is a bench against one of the many Academy buildings, one that faces the bustling courtyard. Despite his longing to get to Jayce, his leg is aching, and the pain will only grow worse if he does not rest. It is a surprisingly easy thing to do, sitting and leaning back, straightening his leg onto the cracked pavement. He’s in a dark enough part of the courtyard that people give him a wide berth, rushing to and from classes with little care for those around them.

He massages the muscle of his thigh and calf with precise movements, digging his thumbs in where he hurts the most. The brief break gives him time to glance across every face that passes, searching the crowd for the one he longs for the most.

It takes a long time for his leg to settle, and Viktor spends every second itching to get moving again. One of the buildings nearby houses their old lab—or will house, possibly house, sometime in the future if he and Jayce decide to try again. It is strange to think in both past and present, to believe that he has travelled through time.

His counterpart had managed it by choice after so many years of harnessing the Arcane. This time, the magic of the universe didn’t give him any other option.

The crowd thins out between one second and the next, letting sunlight stream unhindered onto the pavement. Viktor is still blissfully in the shade, thumbs in the sinew around his knee as he glances from one building to the next.

And there, hurrying from the door of what Viktor distantly remembers to be the physics building, is Jayce.

He’s so young, a naïve brightness to his face, the optimism of someone who has not seen the suffering the world so often offers. Viktor always thought he remembered it accurately, the way Jayce had looked in their early days, but time clouds all memories. Jayce is somehow more beautiful. But he always has been, even when he’d come to the commune, especially when they were in the astral plane together. Viktor had never seen anyone so lovely.

There is still that awful pain in his leg, but he stands anyway. Jayce is striding across the courtyard like he’s determined, looking for something, looking for Viktor.

“Jayce,” Viktor says, but his voice is little more than a croak. Has he spoken at all since he woke, since he became the Herald? Again, louder. “Jayce.”

Jayce moves ever closer, eyes locked on… on… on something that isn’t Viktor. He doesn’t even see Viktor, doesn’t hear him, not even as Viktor moves closer and closer towards him. Cane clacks against pavement, so terribly loud. They draw closer, closer, closer, and Viktor reaches out for him.

And Jayce walks past, not even sparing a glance in his direction.

Viktor falters, struggling for a moment on a crack in the pavement, and watches Jayce leave the courtyard with an aching chest. It is agony, more than his leg, and he knows that he will not be able to catch up with him.

He knows, as well, that his Jayce has not travelled back in time with him.

Viktor is alone.

Suddenly, this no longer feels like a gift or second chance. It feels so much like a punishment.

It is a lucky thing that he does not stumble and fall, relying heavily on his cane to keep upright. Jayce is not here, not his Jayce, and the one that is has not yet met him. His Jayce could be anywhere, in any time. He could even be dead, torn apart by the Arcane like Viktor was supposed to be.

The thought burns. He cannot shake it. The idea that the Arcane has kept him alive for this feels like torture, a knife in his ribs, the illness that very nearly killed him ravaging his body all over again.

His breathing falters like his body, but he cannot move. He does not know what he is supposed to do. Chase after Jayce? Go back to his apartment and tell him… tell him what? That his Hextech dreams ends in such a monumental failure with or without Viktor? Jayce would not ever believe him.

And yet, he takes a shaking step forward to do it anyway. Because the least he can do is stop Hextech from ever happening the way it happened for him.

“Ah, my dear boy, there you are!”

Despite the months without him, Viktor would recognise Professor Heimerdinger’s voice anywhere. He walks over with his hands clasped behind his back, a bright look in his eyes. So different from the last time Viktor saw him, when he had been so right about the Hexcore. But Viktor had been dying, and he never would have heeded the Professor’s warnings.

“Professor,” Viktor says. He does not know what else to say right now. The last person he wants to speak to is Heimerdinger, but he does not know if he truly has the energy for a Jayce who doesn’t know everything that they are to each other. Not yet.

“Is something the matter, Viktor?” Heimerdinger asks. “You haven’t been this late in a very long time.”

Right, his job. Assistant to the Dean, to a man who saw him as nothing but a blip in his long life. Those who burn the brightest… How Viktor despises him now, even knowing that he was right about the Hexcore. Or… no, he still wasn’t. It was Viktor’s own choices that had warped the Hexcore into what it became—what he became. It could have so easily been something good if Viktor’s hadn’t been dying.

Would he have even made it if he hadn’t been dying?

“Apologies, sir,” he bites out. “I had my own errands to attend to this morning.”

Professor Heimerdinger frowns at him. It is not so early in their work together, he doesn’t think, but he always had high standards to look up to. How many assistants had he gone through before Viktor? Will there be any after?

Viktor does not remember seeing Heimerdinger at the end of it all, not in any of the thousands of memories he’d collected. It was like he had completely disappeared from Piltover and Zaun.

“No matter,” says Heimerdinger with a wave of his hand. The students still walking through the courtyard give them a wide berth, shooting wary glances their way. “This morning’s class wasn’t too chaotic without you. This afternoon’s, however… well, let’s just say I’m glad you’ve shown up now, Viktor.”

“Class?” Viktor says. In all the time Viktor worked under Heimerdinger, the man had always been too busy to teach even a single class, let alone multiple. “What class?”

“The… introduction to astronomical physics,” Heimerdinger says, each word slow like Viktor is but a child. “My boy, are you sure you’re feeling alright?”

Viktor flounders for a long moment, mind reeling with far too much information. If there is one thing he never learned how to do in all the years that passed since meeting Jayce, it was lie. “Just… uh… got my days confused, Professor, that’s all,” he says.

Judging from the crook of Heimerdinger’s brow, he does not believe him, but he also does not argue. “Come along, then,” he says instead, only a little bit long-suffering. “We’ve got a lot of work to do beforehand.”

Heimerdinger leads him out of the courtyard, his small legs moving at the perfect pace for Viktor’s still aching leg. They head in the same direction and Jayce, and Viktor almost expects him to be waiting, to have at some point realised and remembered and become the Jayce he so wanted him to be. But there was no one there, just him and Heimerdinger.

Now, Viktor knows he is an intelligent, knows he is able to make connections not many other people can. Jayce had always commended him for it, told him that Hextech would barely be able to progress if not for him. But the connections his mind is currently making terrify him. There is only one answer to why this Jayce does not know him, why Heimerdinger is teaching classes Viktor knows he never did, why he is even here in the first place.

He was a fool to even consider travelling backwards in time.

Just like Jayce, before the Herald and the Evolution, Viktor has been transported to an alternate reality.

~*~

It takes days and days for Viktor to learn the differences between this reality and his old one, even longer to come to terms with the fact that the Arcane has moved him here. It could have so easily killed him; it was well within its rights to do so. And yet, he is here.

Here, being at Heimerdinger’s side, falling into a long-forgotten routine. Here, being an alternate Piltover so very similar to his own. Here, being the Bridge of Progress in the dead of night.

The last time he had been here, he’d been detained by enforcers regulating a blockade ordered by Jayce. He hadn’t dared step foot on it when he’d gone down to Zaun after he’d awoken from the Hexcore’s chrysalis. Too many memories, and he had been made of little more than metal and fear and grief.

The bridge is empty. No people, no enforcers, no blockade. Only the memory of a rebellion he had still been a teenager for, a rebellion he’d lost a parent in. A rebellion that caused his mother to send him up to the Academy. He lost her not long after, and then Heimerdinger had found him.

Viktor stands in the middle of it, on the line where the bridge separates, on the invisible border between Zaun and Piltover. He stares at the skyline of the Zaun, but cannot make himself take another step, not yet.

He has much to apologise for, down here. In all the days since he awoke, he has not had the courage to go down and see if anything is different. He has not, either, sought out Jayce again. Viktor know already that his Jayce is not here. He is alone in this universe, but it is for a reason.

If the Arcane is attempting to punish him, then he will still try to apologise. He only needs the courage to do so.

He grips his cane tighter, feels sweat on his palm and cringes. This young, he is strong enough to defend himself with the cane against a single attacker, but robbery is so often a group effort in the Undercity. If he is unlucky, he will not ever make it down to where he so desperately needs to go.

One step. It is shaky, hesitant.

Another step. His cane clicks loudly against the ground, echoing in the silent night.

Another. The Undercity draws closer. His birthplace, his deathplace. His owes so much to it.

Another and another and another. Viktor crosses to the other side of the bridge and does not turn towards the blinding bright lights of Piltover behind him. The Undercity beckons, and he will not let it wait.

There is a voice within him, urging him on. This time, it is not the Hexcore and the anomaly he created with it. This time, it is instinct.

Dressed in Undercity garbs, rags wrapped around the handle of his cane to hide the Piltovan make of it, Viktor walks slowly down familiar streets until he reaches one of many elevators. Just like last time, suffering people and litter line the streets, and Viktor aches. Last time, he had been able to help them, albeit at the urgings of the Hexcore. This time, he does not know what he can do for them.

He keeps moving. He ignores them, and they ignore him. To them, he is nothing but another person suffering and struggling at the hands of Piltover.

The elevator is a creaking thing. He imagines Jayce taking it, knows that he had come down to the Undercity a few times in his early days, and is surprised that there had never been a story about Jayce being robbed. Except, of course, for the robbery that is still to come.

It is something Viktor could so easily stop, now that he knows about it. Vander is still alive, the Last Drop still stands, and Viktor knows it is Vi and Powder who will eventually steal from Jayce and cause the explosion that will bring them together—is supposed to bring them together. It very well might not, if it ever happens in the first place.

There is a little under a year before they meet, more than enough time for Viktor to figure out if it ever needs to happen in the first place.

But his instinct does not tell him to go to the Last Drop. It is not a place for him, and there is little Vander can do for him. There is so much Viktor can do for Vander, but how much can he tell him before Vander assumes him to be a spy of some sort? Not much, from what he understands of Vander’s memories.

No, avoid it all for now, and follow where his gut so badly wants him to go.

The streets are lively, the alleyways quiet. Viktor knows which ones are safer. Head down, move through the crowd, keep his cane close so that it doesn’t knock into anyone. The pain is not quite so bad as it was the day he woke, his mind settling into his body.

The Undercity is much the same as it was in his own universe. He cannot find any stark differences, but those in Piltover were small and subtle, just enough for him to know that things are different. A different shop where his favourite sweetmilk place once was, the enforcer uniform a slightly different shade of blue.

If he wanted to know the differences in Zaun, he’d have to spend more time down here. He would have to remember what his own Undercity had been like, but it was such a long time ago, and it changed so much after Vander died.

Viktor follows a familiar path. He took it only once, but he remembers it all the same. Like last time, it is dreary and dark, but there are less people around. This particular part of Zaun is empty, dangerous, and lonely. Shimmer does not yet exist, if it’s been made at all, and there are no lingering shimmer addicts to follow him.

He wonders, painfully, if Rio is still alive in this universe.

When he turns the same corner the Hexcore guided him down so many months ago, he freezes. There, upon the hill, are the curved beams he made his home out of, obstructed by the wobbling tower and the tiny home below it. Viktor stares up, up, up and sucks in a deep breath.

Two days ago, he stood at the top of one of the Academy’s taller buildings, terrifyingly alone, and considered ending it all. He did not move towards the edge, simply watched the little Piltovan ants move about their day and thought about it. How easy it would be to forget the crippling loneliness and the knowledge that this Jayce is not his own.

It was the thought of Jayce that made him pause. Without Viktor, there would be no one to interrupt him when he too finds himself on the edge of a building. There would be no Hextech either, but Viktor, even now, has not figured out if recreating Hextech would be a good or bad thing.

But it was not the thought of Jayce that made him step off the roof entirely. It was the thought of himself, of the body he had taken over when he was shoved into this universe by the Arcane. Because there had to be one, some other alternate him, working as Heimerdinger’s assistant in a desperate attempt to make himself known.

First, Viktor had taken over this version’s entire life, and next he was planning on stealing it from him entirely? How utterly unfair.

Viktor knew the only way to leave this stolen body was to recreate the anomaly and somehow get lucky enough to be transported back to his own universe. He did not have the control over it that his older counterpart did, and he did not want to. Without that control, it would be impossible.

And so, in this universe he would stay. In this universe, he would make up for his past transgressions and the unwilling hijacking of his own body.

Viktor looks away from the top of the hill and steps confidently towards the place he called home for so many months. There is nothing there, no light, no homes, no fields of crops and flowers. There is only the dark, the same dark that pervades so many of his childhood memories.

He steps into it, welcomes it for the first time in his life. Something in him told him to come here, something deep in his gut. He is letting himself live for whatever this is, that instinctual need to be where he had saved and ruined so many lives. Hundreds of people, dead, possibly from the moment he touched them. He does not fully know.

No one should have had the ability to puppet and control bodies the way he had, influence them like he did. He thinks of Councillor Salo as he walks about the blackened and rocky ground. So desperate to walk again, he’d come down to the Undercity for the first time in his life, sneering all the while. Viktor had healed him, and Salo had not sneered again. Was it even Salo that had remained, afterwards?

So many questions Viktor can never dream of answering. He has only his own mind to accompany him now. Jayce is gone, and Heimerdinger is not someone he would ever trust with the knowledge of the Hexcore again. Privileged little thing; he has never understood what it is to suffer. He has never known death.

Viktor walks and walks and walks until his legs grow tired and he stands once more before the broken arms of the metal beams. He cannot take another step forward. This time, there is no Hexcore, no Arcane beckoning him, no desperate people trying to rob him. There is only the darkness and the empty fields around him.

With his powers, he had made a home for so many. He had helped them make buildings, helped them be safe, but he had also helped them breathe. The flowers, tall and pretty, were more than just decoration. They’d filtered the very air around them, removed the lingering toxicity even Councillor Kiramman’s ventilation systems had failed to take care of.

There, that gut feeling. Viktor smiles for the first time since he arrived in this universe. He knows what he needs to do.

He will make Zaun breathable. This will be his penance, his apology to the world and the Arcane and the very universe itself. This will be his memorial to Jayce, helping the people they’d never been able to.

And he knows that Jayce would be proud of him for this. It is the only thing that stops him from collapsing in the dirt in the middle of what was once his commune.

~*~

The flowers are sparse throughout the Undercity, and Viktor is gentle with every cutting he takes. A snip of rusted pruners, the cutting placed in a dirty glass filled with clean water from Piltover—a strange juxtaposition—and left to grow roots in the shelter that once belonged to Violet and Powder. He sees their names written over and over again in one of the beams, and he grazes his fingers along them in apology.

It is not a stable place to live, but the plants do not mind, and he is not yet ready to live permanently in Zaun again. It is not his right, not yet.

And so, he returns to the quiet of his apartment in Piltover, to the schematics he had once been do devoted to, and piles them up in a corner of his desk to be abandoned again. Like last time, there are more important things to worry about.

He works with Heimerdinger still. If he is not ready to live in Zaun, he is not ready to entirely abandon his life in Piltover yet. Should the Arcane decide one day that he has spent enough time here, he would like his counterpart to return to a life that he has not ruined.

There is a voice in the back of his mind, a feeling deep in his gut, that there is no returning to his world. Viktor has not let himself comes to terms with that yet. It is a difficult thing to think, harder still to understand. He does not deserve to return there.

He teaches alongside Professor Heimerdinger, and a part of him loves it. There’s so much ambition in the students’ eyes, a wonder that he knows he and Jayce saw in so many of the assistants Heimerdinger sent their way. There’s more of it now, but Viktor is not the founder of Hextech here. He is but an Undercity cripple, an intelligent one, even in the eyes of Heimerdinger, and the students do not respect him as they should.

When they complain to the Professor of their terrible grades, they only have themselves to blame. Even Heimerdinger tells them this.

But when he is not teaching or grading or signing hundreds of pages of bureaucratic paperwork, he is down in the Undercity, tending to his plants. They grow slowly, over the course of weeks, and the first few cuttings die within days. They wilt in the night, disgusted with the air or the water or something entirely other that Viktor does not yet understand.

He was a physicist and an engineer, first and foremost. His only understanding of biology came from the Hexcore’s brief interactions with plants. Not enough understanding to base any hypothesis on. Not enough understanding to reasonably go to shimmer, but he had been dying, and Jayce was disappearing from him, and nothing was making sense anymore. Desperation was a terrible thing.

He deserved the blame, but he also deserved some level of understanding. Fusing with the Hexcore had never been his choice, but he’d come to terms with it. He had understood, in all the months Jayce was gone, that he would have done the exact same thing if it had been the other way around.

Once, in another life, in another universe, he had. In numerous universes. In all of them.

Sometimes, he sees Jayce. Once, on his way to a class he helps Heimerdinger with. Another time when he was at the Academy’s library, checking out books on plants and growth and cellular biology. All to find out how a plant undergoes photosynthesis in a place like Zaun.

Jayce had been there, sitting at one of the many desks and reading through a splayed open book. At the time, Viktor did not get a good look at the cover, but he knew it had to be something on the Arcane. What else would it have been? It was Jayce.

They did not make eye contact. For that, Viktor was grateful. How could he have ever explained that whenever he saw Jayce, he remembered every moment they had together? He remembered coming together right at the very end, Jayce showing him the truth of their whole lives. He remembered holding him and being held, dying so very in love.

He is still so in love. It is the only reason he does not speak with this Jayce. It does not feel fair to the one he should have died with to pursue another, one so unaware of everything.

So, every time he sees Jayce, he watches from a distance, and remembers. All he can do is keep the memory of him alive.

It is not until he is back in his little makeshift greenhouse, surrounded by cuttings that both grow and wilt, that he realises he is grieving. A strange thing, grief. So quiet, so painful, so all encompassing. Viktor goes through the motions of his day, but every second of every minute there is the Jayce he left, the world he left, and all the thousands of mistakes he made.

He misses Jayce, more than anything.

The realisation has him sobbing, and he hides himself away from the plant cuttings, terrified of what getting one of his tears on them might do. The Hexcore is not in him anymore, but he is still not the soul that belongs to this body. Viktor is a corrupted thing, a mockery of magic, a false mage.

He throws the cuttings that die into the barren fields around him, hoping that some force of nature will take them and make them grow in a way he cannot. They never do, not in all the weeks that pass, and he crushes them underfoot as he walks to the home Violet and Powder have not used in years.

There are no whispers of shimmer. Or, if there are, he is too focused on his own projects to hear them. No one bothers him down in this empty part of the Undercity, and despite his near daily trips down, he is not accosted once. Maybe the city recognises him as part of it, or something entirely other, or, worse still, nothing to worry about at all. Insignificant, despite what he is trying to do to help them.

“Please,” he says to the books he has borrowed on garden tending, eyeing the cuttings in their dirty glasses. It has been almost two months since he arrived in this universe, and he is so very tired. “Please just grow.”

There is a reason no one has ever tried this, and it is because the plants grow so rarely, take in such a small amount of the toxicity. But Viktor knows, he knows, that if he can get enough of them to grow, he can save so many people from the fate that will surely still take him.

He ignores the thoughts of death and reads paragraph upon paragraph about tending to soil.

Once the cuttings grow, he will need pots and trays for them, soil and a healthy source of water. Viktor grunts in frustration and drops his head into his hands. He should have sorted out a proper system for the water first, should have drawn up more schematics and plans instead of jumping straight into things.

He wasn’t Jayce. He thought through everything he did meticulously. Experiments were structured things, and he did not even have a proper hypothesis to test. He had only observations from an entirely different universe, plants grown with the aid of magic he knew he still had and would not dare tap into.

Once a mage, always a mage. But mages had a choice, and Viktor would always choose not to tap into the magic he had been given, lest he repeat the reason he was sent here.

The acidity level of the soils outside needs to be tested, as does the chemical makeup. He does not have the equipment for it here, but the Academy does. And if there is one truly good reason to keep his job as Heimerdinger’s assistant, it is the constant and unquestioned access to every space and resource the Academy has to offer.

Viktor heads back up to Piltover as the sun rises with vials of soil in hand, sleeps hours upon hours in an apartment he treats like a hotel, and heads to the Academy’s chemistry labs when the sun is high in the sky. The information he gleans from the stressed and tired student tells him little. He does not understand enough about the make up of his flowers to know if the number of nitrates in the soil is a good or bad thing.

He writes the information down anyway and promises the student extra marks on their next assignment. He does not even know if teaches them.

In the library is Jayce, hurrying out with a stack of books. He glances briefly at Viktor, mutters an apology, and keeps going like he hasn’t seen anyone of import. Jayce hadn’t known who he was last time either, so absorbed in his studies. He holds no academic fear of Viktor. It would be a relief in any other situation.

As he walks between the shelves, searching for books of water filtration systems, he imagines what it would have been like if he and Jayce met before the explosion in his apartment. Viktor knows he would have been immediately intrigued by his research, but would they have grown as close as they did?

He wants to think they love each other in all the universes they meet. He cannot imagine hating him—he hadn’t even when he was the Herald.

Would Viktor have left Heimerdinger as readily as he did in his universe? Would they have become partners without the intensity of sneaking around the Academy? Viktor likes to believe they would, likes to believe that magic would have always intrigued him without the trial and everything that came with it.

He is still intrigued now. He thinks he always will be.

The books tell him more than any other about water filtration and managing crops. It is almost an information overload, but he is nothing if not competent, and once he knows as much as he can about the flowers, he knows he will be able to create some kind of rudimentary farming system.

It will not be enough, but it will be a start. This is what matters most, that there is a start.

On the days he does not work for Heimerdinger, he spends hours upon hours holed up in the home Violet and Powder once had, drawing schematics and checking on his cuttings. Some of them have finally grown roots, and they will need to be transported into the soil sooner rather than later.

They are pretty things, spindly and long, with leaves that are small but threaten to fan out as they grow bigger. Viktor remembers the fields of them and in the darkness that pervades the space, imagines it all over again. Zaun deserves this, after everything the city has been through. It deserves someone to care about it again.

As the cuttings grow, Viktor makes his way to a store he had stopped visiting long before he went to the Academy. Benzo’s is more cluttered than he remembers, and he has trouble fitting between the tightly packed shelves. There are trinkets everywhere, little pieces of old technology Viktor would have once loved to find a use for, but he has a goal in mind now and he will not let anything distract him.

A little boy with a shock of white hair sits on the counter and watches as Viktor peruses the store. Viktor does not remember seeing this boy’s memories, but there’s a flash of recognition in him—a flash of the anomaly and a contraption that should never have existed. The boy who threw a second anomaly at him, the boy who stopped time just long enough for Jayce to get through to him.

He's so small.

His name is Ekko. Viktor knows this from memories of people from the commune, people who had once been members of the Firelights, the gang that had been blamed for stealing the Gemstone. A gang that does not yet exist and very well might not. If he’s lucky, if Viktor ever makes a decision on what to do about Vander and Silco and Jayce and everything else he knows cannot happen but might have to.

Ekko watches him stride towards the counter, legs kicking at the air and his head tilted with a curiosity only children have—one he has not yet learned to hide. He is an intelligent boy, one with so much potential. There were only a few people who could have ever recreated Hextech or the anomaly. How strange to be faced with one so young.

“Hello,” Viktor says. Speaking is strange when he is in the Undercity, there isn’t much use for it. “Is Benzo in?”

“Out the back,” says the boy, a brightness in his eyes. This is a child who has yet to see the horrors of the world. “I can help you!”

“Perhaps you can,” Viktor replies. He can’t help but smile in response. The children in the commune had been sweet but quiet. As had Isha. She’d sat with him many a time when he’d worked on Vander. He knows, somewhere in the maelstrom of Jayce’s attempt on his life, that she had died along with him. “I am searching for a book on Zaunite flora, or anything botanical, if you have it.”

Ekko frowns at him and it’s obvious he was expecting something easier, something already on the shelves. Or perhaps he is still just curious. There wouldn’t be many people who want to know the kinds of plants they grow in a place where plants don’t often survive.

“I’ll check the back!” Ekko says with a not insignificant amount of cheer. He disappears and a door slams somewhere else in the shop, leaving Viktor to stand there in silence.

If he had stayed in the Undercity, maybe he would have ended up in a place like this. Or maybe he would have ended up with the doctor. Maybe he would have been with the other Shimmer addicts, desperate to feel anything that wasn’t the pain in his leg or the ache in his lungs. But a shop like Benzo’s is the nicest option, something small and quaint and wonderful. As wonderful as things can be, when placed so far below Piltover.

The door opens again sometime later, only a matter of minutes, and a man Viktor knows to be Benzo strides out. There are two books in his hands and a curious look in his eyes. His head is tilted like Ekko’s—or Ekko’s like his.

The books Benzo drops on the counter are thin and covered in dust. “These are all we’ve got. Can’t say I’ve had many people ask about this sort of thing around here,” he says. The curiosity makes way for suspicion, not anything angry or violent or terrible. Concerned, perhaps.

A History of Zaunite Botany, says the title of the first book. Not quite what he’s after, but it might have some useful tidbits. He cannot see the title of the second book, the letters on the spine worn with age, but it will still be the best he can get.

“A personal project of mine,” Viktor replies, wiping away some of the dust from the botany book. “How much for them?”

Benzo tells him a miniscule amount of money, but Viktor knows he will not be able to get away with paying more for them. They sit awkwardly under his arm, but the store is not all that far from his makeshift greenhouse. It is a walk he can manage.

As he leaves, he catches Ekko’s eyes again, the top of his head barely visible over the counter. Viktor smiles at him, but doesn’t see any kind of response, just that curiosity. A feeling that will take him over one day, if he is lucky. Viktor could see him at the Academy, granted entry under the Undercity scholarship made after Viktor’s time. The one that had been given to Sky years after she should have been accepted.

Sky, who would still be alive here, somewhere in the Undercity. He will not go to her, cannot face her and what he did to her. The Sky that was with him in the astral plane was not really her, just a manifestation of the Hexcore and his guilt. She does not need him, and he does not deserve her.

He doesn’t deserve many things.

Viktor takes his books back the barren fields and tries not to think about Ekko or Sky or Jayce. He fails, but he cannot say he didn’t try.

The second book is an encyclopaedia of all flora and fauna that existed in the area prior to the founding of Piltover and Zaun. Under the dim light of a lamp he took from his apartment, Viktor reads the old pages and makes note upon note on the flowers slowly growing in their glasses nearby.

The flowers are particular. This, he already knew. They require a low level of sunlight, but a lot of water, and if the soil conditions aren’t perfect, they will wilt and die in a matter of hours. The book does not tell him much about the kind of soil it needs, as the author was unsure, but there are hypotheses and suggestions he can test.

Except… there is very little chance he can change the soil conditions of this whole area, once he figures out the right conditions in the first place. He’d need to segment the soil out into different plots, which would take the kind of manual labour his body could not ever handle. He still needs to figure out the water filtration, and he is getting somewhere with his schematics, but it is the grander scale of it that stops him.

And then there is the fact that it was the Arcane that allowed him to grow them in his universe in the first place. Magic had changed the soil. Magic had given the commune the ability to build a water filtration system. Magic had aided the light and the air and everything that was needed for growth. It was not possible without it, not on a large scale.

There is but one option left to him, once he has built a small-scale prototype and found the right kind of soil for all the little cuttings growing roots in their jars, one single place he can go and get everything he needs.

Viktor needs to find Jayce.

~*~

Standing in the hall outside Jayce’s apartment for the second time, Viktor ignores the anxiety welling in his gut. It has been almost three months since he woke in a body that belongs to another version of him, a body he can’t ever give back, and this will be the first time he will have a conversation with this Jayce.

He is home this time; Viktor can hear him on the other side of the door, tinkering away and muttering to himself, so muffled that not a word can be heard. A smile hesitantly makes its way to Viktor’s face—Jayce worked the same way in his universe, narrating everything he did like it would solve all his problems.

Viktor’s hand hovers in front of the door, fist clenched to knock. He doesn’t know if he can do this, if he can get through the conversation that is about to follow, but there are no other options available to him anymore.

He knocks before he can think it through too much, and the sound echoes down the hall. The noise from the other side of the door ceases and for a moment Viktor wishes that Jayce had decided to go out again. Seconds pass, slow and steady, and then the doorknob rattles.

Jayce stands before him, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He is so young. Viktor misses the beard, even though he didn’t see much of it, misses the beauty of him in the astral plane. This Jayce has a soot stain on his cheek, and Viktor’s hand itches to wipe it off.

“Uh, hello,” Jayce says. “Can I help you?”

Viktor wonders what he sees. A man in Academy uniform, cane in hand, completely unknown to him. Is he curious? Is he frustrated? Does he think that Viktor is attractive? Viktor throws that last thought away before it can properly form.

“Hello, my name is Viktor. I am the assistant to the Dean of the Academy,” he says, and the words shake only minutely. Enough for Jayce to notice, if he were a different Jayce.

This Jayce frowns with his whole face, crinkled eyes, furrowed brow, lips turned down into something that could so easily be described as a pout. “Professor’s Heimerdinger’s assistant?” he asks, glancing briefly over his shoulder. “What can I do for you?”

Viktor has practiced his story many times in the days since he decided he needed Jayce’s help, but the lie still sits wrong on his tongue. “The Dean has sent me to check on all the Academy’s independent studies personally. He thinks it will provide a better insight into your progress than the admittedly sparse reports you have been providing.”

This last part is not a lie. He did check over Jayce’s progress reports before coming here, and they were vague little things, nothing more than saying his work was on track to be completed by the deadline he’d set himself. They made little to no mention of what his study entailed, aside from the creation of ‘Hextech related materials’. They’d made Viktor laugh and wonder how no one had thought to question it.

But then again, Jayce is from a much lower House. As long as he was progressing, of course Heimerdinger or any of the study supervisors wouldn’t care too much.

Jayce stutters for a moment, and all Viktor can do is raise an expectant eyebrow at him. “Well, I mean, everything’s going fine. You’ve seen that in my reports,” he says, and Viktor knows that Jayce never expected anyone to actually see what he was doing until he was ready. Some part of him has always known that this breaks the ethos. “Surely that’s all you need?”

“No,” says Viktor and waves his cane towards the lab he can barely see behind Jayce’s broad figure. His heart is pounding; he cannot control it. Lying has never come easily to him. “Professor Heimerdinger has requested that I inspect laboratories and workshops, hear firsthand what people are researching. This includes you, Jayce Talis. May I come in?”

He knows Jayce is going to say no, stutter out some excuse that won’t hold up under any kind of scrutiny. His hands are clasped together in front of him, fingers rubbing at the band around his wrist. Viktor sees it for only a moment, but the runestone is entirely different from his own. It is not the acceleration rune that had damned them and saved them. If he had not already confirmed that this was an alternate universe, the runestone would have done it for him.

In all timelines, in all possibilities. Of course, his older counterpart had already been here. Did he know that this Viktor would ever show up here? Possibly not. He was a grieving man, a regretful man, but he was not all knowing.

There are more important things to worry about than who his counterpart became. Jayce is still fidgeting, thinking through his inevitable excuse. He opens his mouth to do so, but Viktor stops him with a hand in the air.

“This… Hextech of yours, I am quite curious about how you expect it to work,” he says. These are the same thoughts he had near on a decade ago and a year from now. He remembers them so clearly. “Creating mining systems like you’re describing would require an immense amount of power Piltover simply isn’t equiped to handle right now. So, how are you planning to solve that? I would like to see.”

There, the light in Jayce’s eyes. He could not ever resist explaining magic to whichever unsuspecting person dared to ask. The few times Viktor went to a gala or party, he would laugh when someone asked them about Hextech and Jayce’s subsequently rambled an explanation.

He still stutters, unsure. Viktor can’t blame him; he has very little choice in the matter. Then, a sigh. “You probably won’t believe any of it,” he says and moves aside to give Viktor enough room to enter. “But you’re welcome to come in. I just… How much of this information will go back to Heimerdinger?”

Viktor smirks and shakes his head. “Do you have something inside that the Professor would not approve of?” he asks. He moves into Jayce’s apartment before the other man can answer. He knows the answer already, after all.

The laboratory is both exactly what he expected and nothing at all. There are books scattered everywhere; Jayce’s terrible organisational system is startlingly apparent here. Schematics and contraptions litter the desk. Some, Viktor recognises as the beginnings of things they used in their lab. Others are entirely new to him, and it is impossible to tell if they are unique to this universe.

Splayed open on the desk is a notebook Viktor recognises despite the passing of time. These are the notes Viktor handed to him on the ledge of this destroyed room, the very thing that kickstarted the best years of his life—and the worst.

He moves to it before he can stop himself. “Wait, uh, can I explain first?” Jayce asks. He strides forward, but not before Viktor can pick up the notebook. There’s a tense silence as Viktor pores over the pages. He knows already what is written here, but there’s a nostalgia in seeing it all over again like it’s brand new.

“Magic?” he says after a few long moments. He looks up at Jayce, hovering next to him, and spies the wince on his face. “I’m sure you’re well aware that this would violate the ethos should anyone else find out.”

It’s reminiscent of their old banter, but this is not his older partner. This is a different Jayce entirely, one that does not know him. It is entirely unfair, to both of them. Viktor must put a stop to it entirely. He loves this man, but this man does not love him, and the version of him that did is gone.

Viktor will not project that relationship onto this Jayce. That would be even more unfair.

“You wouldn’t,” Jayce says, haunted.

Again, Viktor shakes his head. “No, I wouldn’t,” he says and flips another page in the notebook. “Tell me about this. I have never seen anything like it.”

And Jayce does. There’s so much passion to him, to every word that spills from his mouth. All he has ever wanted was to help people, put magic in their hands and watch them flourish. This is what he tells Viktor, and Viktor has never heard it from his mouth before, not directed at him personally. It is a wonderful thing to hear.

The passion, the dedication, the sheer naivety that ended up being the death of them both. He does miss those early days.

“I haven’t been able to get the crystals to stabilise yet,” Jayce finishes, a not unfamiliar sentence. “I’ve been trying to lower the frequency, but nothing’s worked so far. Once I figure it out, then I can present Hextech to Professor Heimerdinger and the rest of the Council. They can’t deny it if they can see it.”

They very well could. Very nearly did, if not for Mel Medarda.

Viktor hums and reads over more of the pages. He already knows the solution, of course he does, but he needs to keep up with little façade, just for a while longer. Jayce watches him the whole time, antsy, waiting for something Viktor isn’t sure he can give. He does not know what he wants.

“That’s not quite right,” he eventually says, looking up from Jayce’s notes on the crystal resonance and frequency.

“What? About the Council?” Jayce replies, brows furrowed once again.

“No,” Viktor says with a huff. “About the frequency for your crystals. May I?”

He gestures to the blackboard on the wall. The same blackboard, this time covered in diagrams and papers. There was nothing on it last time, all of it stored in Heimerdinger’s lab, and Viktor almost feels bad at the idea of wiping it all away. But once again, what Viktor has to show him will change everything about his research and his life.

Hesitantly, Jayce allows him to scrub the blackboard clean. He does not watch. Instead, he disappears into another room and comes back out after Viktor has already started writing up his calculations, a familiar crystal in hand. Viktor smiles at it and knows he is not as awestruck as he should be. He can only feel fondness and regret and that lingering grief in the face of it.

This is all for the flowers and the Undercity, all to make it a better place. He can manage facing this other Jayce for as long as that may take.

When he is done, remembering not to get too ahead of himself, he steps away from the blackboard and gives Jayce a chance to read. There is the awe, on Jayce instead of himself, and he turns towards Viktor with an expression he does not ever remembering seeing on him.

“How did you…” he asks, but he does not finish.

“Your crystals will only stabilise at a high frequency,” he says, determined to ignore the way Jayce is staring at him. How alone has he been in his research? “You have to—”

“Crank it,” Jayce says, and Viktor is thrown back ten years in time.

It aches, so much more than he expects it to. Memories flash by, years of working in the lab, years of loving Jayce from afar. And then, of course, the end of it all, the certainty he had that he was about to die finally knowing that he was loved in return. It has been months now, but he still thinks the Arcane cruel for this.

It would have been easier to die with Jayce—his Jayce.

“Yes,” he says, soft and hesitant. He can’t help it; the words spill from him. “You have to… crank it.”

From there, it is simple. This is months and months before Jayce is robbed, so all of his equipment is readily available. There’s no rush, no sneaking, no silly little lie that haunts him for years in the face of Mel Medarda. Just them, in Jayce’s lab. And if Viktor adjusts a handful of little things to make sure that they don’t destroy all the windows in the room, it’s not like Jayce will ever know.

When Jayce is about to drop the crystal into his machine, he stops and frowns at Viktor. “Why are you even helping me?” he asks.

Ah, the conversation they’d had on the ledge. Of course, it would happen here instead. In Jayce’s eyes, Viktor has merely looked at his work and corrected him, nothing more. How could Viktor have forgotten?

“I have… a project of my own,” he says. No mention of the Undercity cripple, because that almost doesn’t matter here. It’s not Piltover he’s trying to impress. His legacy will be one of helping people, just like he always wanted, without the need be seen by those who have always looked down on him. “There are flowers in the Undercity that can convert and filter fissure gas, but they are extremely difficult to grow. I would like to make fields of them, but the soil is not fit and water filtration is… difficult, to say the least. Your Hextech looks like the solution to my problems, if you’re willing to dedicate some time towards me—my work.”

Silence. This is the moment. Jayce will either say yes or no.

“You’re just wanting this for your own benefit?” he asks.

Not the expected answer. It makes Viktor smile. “What else would my reasonings be? Once, it would have been to have my name on something wonderful and massive. Because that is what this is, Jayce. This is magic, it is wonderful,” he replies, and he finds that it is still the truth despite everything. “And, you say you want to help people. There are thousands of people in the Undercity who cannot breathe. I was one of them. I will not let them suffer any longer.

“I have been struggling to even get the flowers to grow for months. And seeing this… I can only hope that it could be used for something as kind as my flowers.”

“Viktor…”

The way Jayce says his name makes him swallow, makes him ache. “I am happy for you to come down to the Undercity with me and see my research, if you like.” He smirks and meets Jayce’s eye. He cannot help the banter. “If you think you’re doing well at hiding your research from the Academy, Heimerdinger does not know about mine at all.”

A bark of laughter, petering off into a sigh. Jayce runs a hand down his face and stares out the window in front of them. In the distance is the Undercity, and Viktor wonders if this Jayce has ever been down there before.

“Alright,” he says. “If this works, I’ll come down and see your research. How does that sound?” There’s a smile on his face, something sweet, something that Viktor can’t often deny.

“It sounds like you don’t believe in my calculations,” Viktor says before he can stop himself. The last thing he needs is to grow close to this Jayce as well, to fall in love with this Jayce like he so easily could. He wants to, deep down, if only to feel the warm of his hand against his skin again, but it feels so wrong.

A professional relationship, that will be all.

Jayce huffs a laugh. “Guess we’ll see,” he says, and he drops the crystal onto the mechanism.

As they float in the tight expanse of Jayce’s apartment, Viktor can’t help but laugh again. There’s a joyousness to the way they bounce around the room, knowing that no one will interrupt them this time, that they will be here for more than an hour. It feels, again, like something wonderful and new.

This is the Arcane, flowing through the room, through him. It could have so easily rejected him, but it hasn’t, even though it must know what he had done to it. But he floats and he laughs, and he grabs the gear that drifts through the crystal, holds it tight against his palm. It feels like forgiveness.

~*~

When Jayce comes down to Zaun with him, he brings the crystals and his notes with him. Viktor gives him a coat to hide just how Piltie he is, but it probably won’t be enough. They meet outside the Academy not a day after Viktor helped with his Hextech, an hour after Viktor has finished his duties with a still oblivious Heimerdinger.

How strange it is to be working on Hextech with no one knowing, still a secret to everyone except himself and Jayce.

“Are you sure we’ll be safe?” Jayce asks, eyes the case in his hands. A little too obvious for Viktor’s liking, increasing the chance that they’ll be confronted to a degree Viktor is not particularly comfortable with.

“No,” he says, and tugs on the hood of the coat. “Keep your head down, keep the case hidden, and follow exactly where I go.”

He hates how much he has to treat his home like somewhere so deadly, but it is not a safe place. He wants it to be, more than anything. The flowers will help. If they can breath without concern, if they can drink water without fear of disease, things will get better.

Viktor remembers the Council chambers in the moments before he died the first time. They had voted in favour of an independent Zaun, and the city didn’t even have the infrastructure to support it then. If he can make sure that they can survive on their own, that they can be healthy on their own despite everything Piltover has done to them, then maybe independence will be easier in this universe.

“If you’re sure,” Jayce says, eyeing the city warily.

“Trust me.”

It is a difficult thing to ask of him when they didn’t have the trial and the ledge and the adrenaline of the enforcers at the door. This time, they are nothing more than two scientists with a shared hope—not quite a shared dream yet.

Should it be a shared dream? Should he let that happen again? Viktor’s mind is a tangle of confusion. The only thing he knows for certain is that Hextech is the only way the flowers will grow and do what they need to do. It is the only reason he has letting it happen. Part of him wishes that Jayce didn’t have to be involved, if only so that the temptation would not be there.

It might have been easier to simply sneak into his apartment and take what he needed. He eyed the case in Jayce’s hands. No, he never would have been able to carry it all out. And Jayce is the only person who has ever been able to find the mistakes in his work.

“Follow,” Viktor says again, and they head towards the elevator. When he glances over his shoulder, Jayce is looking at the streets and the people in them like he has never seen them before, never understood such suffering.

And Viktor knows he has, in a way, thinks of the snowstorm and the mage that saved him. The Viktor that saved him. But that is a different kind of suffering to those of the Undercity. This is the suffering of people who have been cast aside for no reason other than where they came from. These are people with the potential for happy lives, ignored out of misplaced prejudice.

The elevator rattles as they go down and the air whooshes out of Jayce’s chest. “I’ve never…” he says, and Viktor knows how the sentence finishes without him having to speak.

“Welcome to the Undercity,” he said, and there’s only a small amount of pride in his voice. Mostly, it is resignation.

“It’s…” says Jayce as the elevator doors open, revealing the neon lights and the darkness. “There’s so much.”

Viktor hums. He has no idea what Jayce could possibly mean, but he is not exactly wrong. There is a lot to the Undercity, thousands upon thousands of people, more than most Piltovans expect. And there is joy here, in the lights and the laughter and the camaraderie. But it all only exists to cope with the way that none of them can eat or breathe safely.

No one bothers them, still. They shoot looks Viktor’s way and when their gazes dart to the hulking form of Jayce beside him, they dart away like they were never thinking of hurting him in the first place. Jayce isn’t that big, not yet, but the coat and the hood and the massive case makes him look all the more threatening.

He almost looks like he fits in.

The streets grow quieter, emptier, dirtier. The sounds of Jayce’s breaths are loud in his ears; they sound something like panic. There is little Viktor can do to comfort him except show him the flowers. He wonders for a moment, knowing that Jayce had come down here once in his universe, if he’d had the same reaction then.

And then he thinks of the blockade and ‘they’re dangerous’ and knows that this is an entirely different Jayce. This is a Jayce that might not ever become Councillor, who might not succumb to the call of power over not one city, but two.

Viktor hates it, the anger that sits deep within him at the memory. It was not what they were ever supposed to become. It changed them both for the worse.

His fields are empty. A little bit of sunlight streams in, tinted a sickly yellow-green by the smog in the air. He and Jayce stand at the entrance for a few slow seconds. “Is it dangerous to breathe here?” Jayce asks.

Viktor looks at him, at the concern in his eyes. “Only marginally,” he says. “Perhaps only a little bit more than anywhere else in the Undercity.”

It does nothing to alleviate the fear on Jayce’s face, but it also doesn’t send him running for the hills. In fact, it’s Jayce who takes the first step towards the wobbling and towering makeshift greenhouse. Viktor follows, ignoring the flutter in his chest and the memories swirling in his mind.

There are rows of trays of soil resting on a table now, some of the cuttings desperately trying to settle roots within. The soil in each is a variety of mixtures between some he bought from a gardening store in Piltover and some from the fields around them. An experiment that will take days or weeks to learn the outcome of—the perfect mixture of nutrients for the flowers.

Viktor moves from the only surface empty of trays and cuttings, a rickety desk where he’s been keeping his books. Behind him, Jayce looks around, dropping the case gently at his feet.

“Do you live here?” he asks. And to his testament, he does try to keep the judgement and concern from his voice.

“No,” Viktor replies. “I have an apartment in Piltover. Perhaps I will move back here, but not while it is like this, and not… here.”

And not at the top of the hill either. Some nice little house off to the side would be nice, where he can keep an eye on his flowers and not have to worry about the memories that haunt him between to two curved beams.

He flips the book on Zaunite flora and fauna open to a bookmarked page. It is the only one he needs. With a wave of his hand, he guides Jayce over and watches as he scans the faded words on the pages. In the top corner is a drawing coloured in pale yellow. It does not capture the beauty and wonder of the flowers, but Viktor doesn’t think any drawing ever could.

“The Arcane has the power to boost and augment many things,” Viktor explains. Jayce may one day ask how he knows this, but it is easy to talk of story books and fables—his Jayce had kept so many in their lab. “This could include the soil, with fragments of your crystals, perhaps. Or water filtration. I have schematics here.”

Viktor hands them to him. His cuttings wave in the thing breeze. If they grow, they will not bloom for months and months. All that time will be spent keeping them alive. If the crystals do work, he still wants to know how best they grow so that they can move beyond the confines of his lonely fields.

An Undercity filled with bright yellow flowers, what a wonderful sight.

“Viktor, this is…” Jayce whispers, running his fingers over the blueprints Viktor had been struggling so much with. “This could change lives! This is what Hextech is meant to be. I didn’t think…”

“Didn’t think what?” he asks. Despite himself, he longs to know everything Jayce thinks.

“I mean, I didn’t think I’d end up collaborating with anyone on this. I didn’t think anyone would understand just how much could be done with this. I hadn’t even considered plants and soil,” Jayce finishes, smiling sheepishly at Viktor. “But… I want to see what we can do with this. What do you say?”

Jayce holds out a hand for him to shake. It isn’t a hand on his shoulder. It isn’t ‘our Hextech dream’. It isn’t partners. But it is as close as they will get here, as close as Viktor will allow them to get. He takes his hand and shakes, two short pumps. A promise in the silence between them.

“Shall we get to work then?” Viktor asks, nodding towards the case on the floor. “There is much we can test here.”

Jayce laughs. Viktor so easily forgets how young they are both meant to be here. He feels old, feels like he has lived decades. He has lived so many lives, experienced so much, it feels impossible to return to that youthful hope he’d had last time. There is only the hope and the sadness and the mourning, the grief and the apology in every fibre of his being.

They will wait until the cuttings either die or grow in their trays to test out the crystal fragments. Jayce tells him it will be difficult to gain any without letting them become unstable and explode, but there is so much room in the fields, and no one in the Undercity will grow concerned at the sound of an explosion.

For the meantime, they focus their efforts on the water filtration system and Viktor’s hastily built scale model. They rebuild it, make it bigger, and test it out on the water source down past the hill. Jayce walks over the top of it, between the curved beams, and Viktor can’t help but remember the home he’d built for himself there. The home he’d brought his Jayce to, wanting to share all of his achievements with him.

The home in which Jayce had killed him.

And no matter what, despite everything that has happened in his universe and this one, he has not ever regretted what the commune was supposed to be. He doesn’t regret wanting Jayce to see it. Had he not been transported to the other universe himself, had he not seen how things would go and set it in motion himself, perhaps they could have been happy there together. They could have been peaceful, could have loved each other, could have celebrated everything Hextech had become.

Because he had helped so many people there, even if he’s sure he maybe have also killed them the second he touched them. Killed them or stripped them of who they once were. And is that not the same thing? But still, it had been something good, if only for a short time.

Jayce walks through the centre of the beams, and Viktor strays around them like stepping anywhere near them will kill him again.

The water filtration system is flimsy, at first. Jayce does not understand just how toxic and awful the water can be, even with the filtration systems that already exist within most buildings. It takes refining, it takes test after test after test. It takes weeks of Viktor leading Jayce through the Undercity as many days as they can spare.

The cuttings grow and die, and Viktor learns what they need in their soil to thrive. In two of the trays, the plants grow thicker stems and the first new leaves begin to sprout. Viktor’s heart pounds at the sight. His plan is working. They only need to augment the soil, get it as close to perfect as they can get.

This is trickier. Viktor understands the Arcane far more than Jayce ever will; he can see how it flows through and around the crystal Jayce brings him. He knows innately how to get the crystals to do what he wants them to do, feels the call of the magic in his fingertips. He cannot tell Jayce this, cannot reveal to him that he is a mage—the mage. It is not what he wants. Which means that he cannot explain to Jayce how to get the crystals to work. He can only suggest, only provide explanations that sound like desperate hypotheses and then act surprised when they work.

But it does work, and the joy on Jayce’s face every time they make a discovery is palpable. Viktor cannot help but share it, and he knows that Jayce will be the end of him once again. It is inevitable.

~*~

“You have been distant lately, Viktor,” Heimerdinger says from across the desk, hands clasped together on the polished wood. “Is something the matter?”

“Not particularly, sir,” Viktor replies. His fingers itch against the arms of his chair, his cane hooked by his wrist. “I don’t think I understand why this meeting has been called. Have I done something wrong?”

He knows that he hasn’t. He has been fulfilling all of his tasks optimally. Marking grades, aiding in classes, following up on whatever paperwork and tasks Heimerdinger needs him to do. Never working on studies or experiments, of course. That was not in the purview of the Dean of the Academy, not anymore. A true waste of Viktor’s talents at this age, but he had taken anything he was given in his universe, desperate to be seen and known. He’d been so convinced that being Heimerdinger’s assistant would get him seen, but it had only hidden him.

Heimerdinger takes a breath and glances out the window to the left of Viktor, one that oversees a majority of Piltover—but not Zaun, never Zaun. “No, my boy, you’ve been doing everything as well as you normally do,” he says, and Viktor bristles at the moniker. “But you seem… distracted, like something is taking up more of your attention. You’ve been quite unfocused in class lately. I’ve grown concerned.”

Suddenly, Viktor doesn’t care. It’s a sharp feeling, a mix of relief and anger. If he ever leaves this body, this universe, he could be dooming this Viktor entirely, but he will not ever remake the anomaly. And so, he will not ever leave. This is his home now, and he will not repeat the mistakes of the past. Like making Heimerdinger think he can ignore the Undercity any longer.

Three hundred years, and he has not once done anything to help. It infuriates him.

“I have been home a lot more lately, sir,” he explains, head tilted to the side like he would when he was the Herald. The mannerisms are his now; they will not leave. “I have been… gardening. There is a flower down there that converts fissure gas into breathable air. I have been growing them.”

He chooses his words carefully. No Arcane, no Hextech, no Jayce Talis. No experiment either. Treat it like a hobby, something he does with his free time, and Heimerdinger won’t dare find reason to investigate further. For now, Viktor is an Academy employee, and he must follow the same rules as everyone else. An unsanctioned independent study is cause for expulsion, and he still needs access to equipment and resources, at least for the time being.

“Oh!” Heimerdinger cries, like he expected more, like he expected something devastating from the Undercity cripple. Those that shine the brightest often burn fastest. He cannot ever unhear it, the cruelty of it, the disregarding of everything Viktor had done for him. “Is that all? Well, it does seem like it is taking up quite a bit of your time—”

“If I am completing all my tasks at your standards, I do not see a problem.”

Heimerdinger sighs and meets his raised brow with an expectant look, one Viktor finds only patronising now. “There are expectations for attending and working at the Academy, Viktor, you know this. More expectations when working as my assistant. Things are growing busier now, and I can’t have my assistant distracted with matters of the Undercity.”

“The Undercity is my home.”

“You might as well be Piltovan at this point, my boy. Put your focus here, where you can do more,” Heimerdinger says, and he must think that the expression on his face is sympathetic. It is anything but. “Anything you work on down there will be fruitless.”

Viktor bristles. “And why is that?” He can’t hold back the derision in his voice.  

“It won’t last, my boy,” Heimerdinger replies, hands twitching towards him. If Viktor was closer, he might have tried to pat him on the hand. “Anything down there… well, Councillor Kiramman is specifically building her ventilation systems so they’re difficult for people of the Undercity to access. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“Ah, well, how do I put this? Everything we’ve tried down there fails. It’s almost pointless, lad. They don’t want help.”

Viktor lurches from the chair. “And what exactly have you tried, sir?” he asks, a sneer curling at his lips. Heimerdinger stares up at him, shock in his wide eyes. “Have you asked them what they wanted, or have you simply done what you think they need? Three hundred years and you’ve let them suffer like this without care.”

“Viktor! You are crossing a line!”

“No, Professor Heimerdinger, I am merely speaking the truth,” Viktor says. He grabs for his cane, but his anger makes him feel like he no longer needs it. “You have done little to help my people, and the moment I tell you I am attempting it, you try to stop me. You are the head of the Council for the City of Progress, and yet you pretend like Zaun isn’t left lying in the dirt.”

Heimerdinger bristles in his seat, but it’s like Viktor’s words trap him where he sits. “Zaun?” he spits.

And Viktor realises his mistake immediately. Any mention of Zaun disappeared after the rebellion and the massacre on the bridge. He was a fool to mention it, letting anger win over his thoughts. “The Undercity,” he says instead. “Is that all you took from what I said, sir?”

“I think,” says Heimerdinger, and he takes a breath to steel himself. “I think perhaps you need a break from your responsibilities, Viktor. You’re clearly stressed. A break would do you well to understand the lines that cannot be crossed here.”

“I understand that perfectly well,” he hisses. This is years of anger, decades of it, and the understanding that after all this time, Heimerdinger has been a willing cog in the machine. And once, so was he. Never again. He is going to fix it, help the Undercity, make it better.

“You’re dismissed, Viktor,” Heimerdinger says, but Viktor is heading for the door before he can finish speaking, slamming it closed behind him.

In the silence of the hall, Viktor feels the anger spill from him like his throat has been cut. How pointless, to rage at the head of the Council. Nothing has changed for years and years, so why would the words of a scientific assistant make any difference? He is a fool, but there is still a thrill within him at the way he had spoken to Heimerdinger. Years he has held onto those words and those beliefs, even when Jayce had become a Councillor.

A break. How meaningless. Does Professor Heimerdinger truly believe that he would come back after an outburst like that? He has been given the freedom of the Academy without the responsibilities that came with working under Heimerdinger.

Just like Hextech all over again.

Perhaps Heimerdinger will come down and demand his research, his flowers. Or perhaps, he will be given the freedom to work. It’s not as if Heimerdinger suspects he’s doing anything except gardening, after all.

Viktor sucks a deep breath in through his nose and straightens his back, fingers tight on the handle of his cane. There is still so much work to be done, and he has so much time to do it now. No matter what, this will be worth it, even if he feels for the Viktor’s whose life he’s derailed.

~*~

Weeks and weeks later, he takes Jayce to Benzo’s shop for supplies. The water filtration system is working, finally, but they are having difficulty with transport. Every day, Viktor wishes he’d thought things through more before he started this, but sometimes he thinks that if he did, he never would have started.

Jayce, of course, is like a child in Benzo’s store, picking things up that they do not need and turning them around in his hands. There is something sweet about it, but Viktor makes himself look away.

Little Ekko sits on the counter again, watching Jayce with narrowed eyes. “Why are you friends with a Piltie?” he asks.

“Ekko…” Benzo says from behind him, just on the cusp of reprimanding.

“He’s been helping me with some research,” Viktor explains. He likes Ekko, likes the potential the boy has. He is still but a child now, but as he grows older, Viktor longs to see what he can do.

This is the first thought he has about the future that has nothing to do with the growth of his flowers. It is an almost normal thought, but it gives him pause. Everything he has done has been about growing his flowers, making the air breathable better than Councillor Kiramman ever could. Never about living, never about surviving beyond that. Redemption, and nothing more.

But Ekko makes him think.

“The stuff about the plants?” Ekko asks, and he frowns a little when Viktor nods, lost in thought.

“You’ve quite a collection here!” Jayce calls from somewhere among the shelves.

Viktor sighs, fighting the little twitch of his lips that threatens to become a smile. “Grab what you need and let’s go. I think we’ve wasted enough time, don’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jayce says, but he comes to the counter anyway, arms laden with so many things. Viktor is almost entirely sure that they don’t need half of it, but he knows Jayce is still working on his own project whenever he is not in the Undercity.

There is less cohesion this time, less attachment on Jayce’s part. They are simply two people working together to help people. Viktor helps Jayce with his calculations. Jayce helps Viktor with engineering and building. It is mutual, but it is not the partnership they once had. It is better this way, but something inside him still aches—still mourns. There is a hole in him, and he does not know how to fill it.

When they leave, Ekko is still watching them, and Viktors knows that in a few years’ time the boy will come to him in curiosity, determined to work on something to help Zaun. And Viktor finds that he is almost excited for it. He knows he will let him, no matter what.

How strange it is to look forward to things. He almost doesn’t know what to do with it, except to keep going, to wait those years out.

“I never realised anything like that was here,” Jayce says, a youthful excitement in his voice.

“You’d never been to the Undercity before we met,” Viktor points out. Not unkindly, but he does try to hide his amusement at Jayce’s sheer excitement.

He’s only realised over the weeks they’ve worked together than they’d changed so much after they started Hextech. There’s so much joy to Jayce in these early days, and he can assume there was a joy to him too. Somewhere he remembers it, the determination and the thrill he’d had about sneaking into Heimerdinger’s lab, calling Jayce egotistical, jumping in headfirst when he wasn’t even sure it would work.

He hasn’t changed much in that last regard, it seems. Or, perhaps, he has regressed, surrounded again by the freedom of youth. But he knows he is still more mature than the Jayce he is working with, he knows he has seen more than this one ever will. He has seen so much of what life can offer, and so had his Jayce by the time it was all over. Viktor is tired and pessimistic and knowledgeable about the way Piltover cares about Zaun. Jayce was too, once. He wishes he was more prepared for a Jayce that does not understand.

Jayce laughs, pulling him from his thoughts. “You’re right,” he says, then frowns wistfully at the streets around them like they’re something beautiful. “Maybe I should come down here more often.”

“You’d be robbed blind in a matter of moments,” Viktor replies, ignoring the fact that his Jayce did make it down to the Undercity in the days before they first met—ignoring again that it did end up in him being robbed.

“Probably,” Jayce says, and there’s something in his eyes that makes Viktor feel only the tiniest bit guilty, just enough to take a different route back to their tiny lab.

Two extra turns and they’re cutting through the courtyard that might in the future house a statue of Vander. There is only a fountain there now, spilling water in sad rivulets. It needs fixing. He could fix it, now that he has the time without Heimerdinger’s classes and responsibilities. It wouldn’t take much work to get it running properly again, even if the water wouldn’t be the cleanest.

And there, nearby, is the Last Drop. He never went in there when he last lived in Zaun; he hadn’t seen the point. Alcohol was nothing something he ever found a need for. It meant, of course, that he never met Vander. Not until he came to the commune, and Viktor failed in saving him. All those memories of the bar and his family and the people he lost, Viktor can still see them all.

Jayce steps away from almost as soon as they walk into the courtyard, heading for the fountain. Viktor keeps an eye on him, but cannot move himself from where he stands in the middle of the courtyard, cane lodged between two uneven bricks.

Because outside the Last Drop is a figure Viktor knows to be Silco.

He doesn’t look at all like any of Vander’s memories. Not the youthfulness, not the anger and confusion and grief, not the hurt or the revenge. This is a man who looks, for lack of a better word, shy. He hovers outside the front door, hands at his side, like he’s waiting for something—his courage to build, perhaps.

This is not a man who is creating shimmer. This is not a man determined to rule the Undercity for the sake of an independent Zaun. This is not a man controlled solely by rage and regret.

Viktor has wondered for weeks what the differences in the Undercity were between his universe and this one. He never would have expected something so massive, something that would shift the state of the world entirely.

As Viktor watches, the door of the bar opens, and Vander steps out. He should look away, should give them space, but he wants to catalogue this like he’s catalogued every other difference, even if this is bigger than all the others. Such a monumental difference to his own world, he is in awe of it.

He cannot hear what they say to each other, but both of them look a little bit nervous. It is not the first time they’ve spoken like this; there’s a familiarity in Vander’s hopeful smile, but it feels like a first that Silco is here. There is a forgiveness in the way they stand close to each other, in the way Silco reaches out and aborts the movement over the course of a few slow seconds.

Viktor should look away, should focus on Jayce putting down their crate of supplies and investigating the fountain like he’s found a new personal project, but all he can do is what two people change the course of the world in a matter of seconds. It doesn’t last much longer. Vander pats Silco on his shoulder, his hand lingering the way Jayce’s sometimes would when he touched Viktor, and a sharp bark of laughter echoes through the air.

Then they disappear into the bar, Vander’s hand on Silco’s back, and Viktor knows that whatever happens beyond that door will change everything. No shimmer, no chem barons, no Progress Day attack and battle on the bridge. Something else entirely, something better or worse. Viktor will have to keep an eye on it.

But something in the pit of his stomach tells him that it will be good.

He stands there for a few minutes longer, even though the door is closed and neither one of them come back out, even though Jayce could somehow manage to get himself into some kind of trouble if Viktor has his back turned for too long. But there’s so much relief in him, so much hope, that this would mean wonderful things for Zaun. Independence, if they’re lucky, without as much death and bloodshed.

There always will be some, in a rebellion, but he does not want a repeat of the battle on the bridge.

“How difficult do you think this will be to fix?” Jayce calls from the fountain.

Viktor swallows, his throat dry, and finally makes him turn towards Jayce. “Not very,” he says. “The difficulty will come from accessing the pipes, which is probably the issue. We do not have the supplies or the time for that right now.”

“We’ll add it to the list then,” Jayce replies, like it really is as simple as that. And maybe it is.

As he guides Jayce back to the empty field and Vi and Powder’s old home, he wishes he had decided to bring his Jayce down to the Undercity when they’d both still been alive. If this one could find so much wonder and joy in it, what would his have seen when they were so much closer there? What could they have changed, if they hadn’t kept themselves trapped in Piltover?

Regret is a terrible thing, but he keeps him aware of himself, keeps him from making the same mistakes over and over again. And he regrets so many things.

Regret is the thing that keeps him in the house while Jayce goes out into the fields with the crystals and his new materials. The cuttings are growing fast, and they will need to be planted properly soon, which means that Viktor’s thoughts are punctuated by the sound of explosions and electricity.

He longs for a moment to return to the water treatment facility he spent most of his free moments in, thinking and thinking and thinking. The last time he was there, before all of this, he had very nearly thrown himself from the ledge. Sky had been dead. Jayce pulled him away, a mirror of their first meeting.

The Distinguished Innovators competition. Jayce’s smiling face as he sabotaged the carriage over. Viktor, trying and failing not to throw up, thinking he was the most beautiful person he had ever seen. That is something he will never get back.

He still does not understand why he has been brought here, of all places. If the Arcane was furious with him, as it should be, would it not have sent him to a universe where he could not do a thing except watch it all come tumbling down? Instead, it has punished him and gifted him. He has a chance to right his wrongs, but his Jayce is long since dead. There will be no shimmer, and he is scared of what the consequences will be.

So many good things, and so many terrible ones. He must keep living, with a Jayce that is not his and will never understand the things he has been through. He must watch the world flourish not because of things he has done. That is a punishment, but the hope it brings him is very much a gift.

The Arcane is a strange and wonderous thing, and he will never fully understand it. For that, he is grateful.

Outside, the Crystals explode and blue lightning arcs across the fields. Jayce stands atop the hill, framed by metal and the pulsing light of unstable Hextech. He is beautiful, that tiny and unfocused figure. For a moment, Viktor can pretend that this Jayce is his own, can pretend that when he comes back inside, Viktor can draw him in, press a kiss to his temple, and tell him that he has loved him for years.

The impossibility makes his heart ache.

~*~

The Crystals work, of course, though Viktor pretends to be shocked. He does not pretend to be overjoyed by it, smiling down at his field of growing flowers with far more fondness than he expects. Jayce is there to help him plant the Crystal shards and the flower cuttings, and he is there where Viktor notices the first new leaves. But he isn’t in the days that follow, focused on his own work in Piltover.

Viktor has not been back to his apartment for more than half an hour in days and days. Now that he is officially on his forced sabbatical from the Academy, as Heimerdinger’s letter so neatly put it, he has more time and freedom to move around. After all, the only person who would need to find him is Jayce, and he knows exactly where he is.

The plants are beautiful, even though they are far from bloomed. They are a vibrant green against the pale and grey daylight that streams into the field, almost blinding in a space that is nothing but greys and browns and sickness. He stares it for what might be hours, as if trying to see if they will grow tall and bloom in front of him. He cannot make himself look away from them, even if they are only a single line in a vast field.

The breath he sucks in is choked for many reasons, not the least of which the tears that prick at his eyes.

It is slow work after that. He grows more cuttings from flowers harvested around the Undercity, watches the Last Drop when he passes it for any more signs of Silco or Vander or Vander’s many children. He knows Vi and Powder are alive; he’s heard Ekko talk about them the few times he returns to Benzo’s store, but he has yet to see them. He does not see Silco again, but there is something lighter in the air that he does not know how to name.

Jayce returns at least once a week, sometimes more. He brings Crystals, destroys them on the far side of the field and hands the pieces to Viktor. In return, Viktor helps him with his calculations and his schematics, watching as Hextech forms almost without him, something both the same and different to what they had once created.

He does not tell him that the Council will surely reject any attempts at building Hextech properly. It was their illegal movements that intrigued Councillor Medarda after all, and Jayce is not so intriguing to her when he is not openly defying the Council.

Though, he could be wrong. Viktor does not know which he would prefer. He should have figured this out by now, but Hextech and the Arcane are enigmas to him, a mixture of wonderful things and the end of the world.

Surely, there is a nuance to it—a balance. It will take him the rest of this life to find.

This life, he knows, will be a short thing. His disease is inevitable. He knows the signs now, a mixture of experience and retrospection, and he can feel the beginnings of it in his chest. A shortness of breath, brief pain and a tightness in his chest, nothing that couldn’t be excused by his already existing pains, but he knows. And he knows too that it will exacerbate the pain in his leg. It, predominantly, is the reason he ever needed a back brace so young.

The extra supports will always be necessary, but without the disease, he may last until his midlife before the back brace and the crutch become necessary. That is what the Undercity doctors told him when he was younger, what the dismissive Piltovan doctors corroborated when he started at the Academy. They had been wrong, of course, and none of them ever thought to consider why.

They had cared little for him, a random man from the Undercity acting like he deserved everything Piltovans received. They saw his cane and his leg and his lack of name, and they wrote him off entirely. They’d doomed him in his universe, over and over again.

His disease need never have killed him.

If this body were his, he might simply let the disease take him. There is still a decade before the worst of it hits, more than enough time to do what needs to be done here. But the body is not his. He has taken it unwillingly, and he may not be able to ever give it back, so the least he can do is treat it with the respect it deserves. The least he can do is treat his disease before it can ever grow to be a debilitating and deadly thing.

The signs of it will be there. This, he knows. He only needs to convince a Piltovan doctor of the same.

The solution, in the end, is surprisingly simple. Jayce meets him outside the Academy and follows him down to the Undercity and their project as he does every few days. It is on that long walk down that Viktor brings up with quandary.

His hand shakes around the handle of his cane every time he takes a step. Like his body—the body—knows that he is talking about it. The leg cannot ever be fixed, but after everything he has done, everything that has happened, he does not ever want to fix it. The leg is him, has always been him, and it is something that makes him worthy and admirable.

He is doing nothing more than repeating words spoken to him a very long time ago now, but it might just make him believe it. Jayce is gone, but Viktor can keep his words.

“I have a favour to ask of you,” Viktor says when they’re halfway across the bridge. The sun is setting around them, purple and orange light cast over the water. It is pretty, but Viktor does not look at it for more than a few seconds.

“Anything,” says Jayce, like it’s so simple, like they’re close enough for this. He’s so clearly ignoring the distance between them. Their relationship is friendship built of mutual interest, not the connection of adrenaline. “You’ve helped me out so much with Hextech, I want to return the favour any way I can.”

“Some would argue that you already have,” Viktor replies. The flowers would not exist without Jayce. “But… I wanted to ask… It’s only that I am quite unwell, as you may guess. Not only my leg, but there is an illness in my lungs as well. No doctor will run a scan on me. I have been told that it is nothing to worry about.”

Jayce stares at him, and they slow to a stop in front of the now familiar elevator. “But… you know your own body,” he says.

“Yes, but I am from the Undercity, and the doctors in Piltover care very little for someone who cannot afford treatment. And, well, being assistant to the Dean does not pay as much as one would expect.”

The elevator rattles when it stops, the doors opening in jerky movements. Jayce steps in and holds the door open, chuckling at the way it always prematurely attempts to close. It is as cramped a fit as ever, and Viktor’s leg aches from the walk. He leans heavily against the wall, ignore the way the metal cries and Jayce looks worriedly at him. He shrugs. The elevator has not failed yet.

“How can I help you then?” Jayce eventually asks. “With the doctor, I mean? I don’t mind paying for your treatment, if that’s what you need? The Kiramman’s give me more than I actually need for my research. To be honest, I don’t think they know how much someone actually needs to get by day to day.”

That doesn’t surprise Viktor one bit, but the idea of taking Jayce’s money makes him stomach curdle. Yes, Jayce is from Piltover. Yes, Jayce had much more privilege than Viktor ever did. But he still struggled to make a name for himself, still struggled to be known for more than just a collapsable pocket wrench. Even so, that name is still attached to a House, and it is the name he needs.

“No, no, nothing like that,” Viktor says. The Undercity spreads out below them, as dark and vibrant as ever. “Names go over better in Piltover. Names are… a show of status. Names of a House, even more so. A doctor would not want to disappoint someone with the privilege of a name.”

“So, you want me to…”

“Come to my appointment with me, if I’m not imposing,” Viktor tells him. The elevator shudders to a stop and the doors creak open. “I would need you to vouch for me as a member of your house. And, if you could, demand the tests I need and—” Viktor chuckles at the mere thought of what he is about to ask. “And I need you to threaten various complaints and maladies and the like when the doctor inevitably declines.”

Viktor does remember how his Jayce very nearly declined sneaking into Heimerdinger’s office the first night they met, convinced he would somehow get into more trouble. Without any real threat to his wellbeing or safety, the look in Jayce’s eye is mischievous. He is a young man dedicated to his work without much time for acting like his age. Viktor has offered him the barest hint of it and knows that he will so readily take it.

“I don’t know if I’m that good of an actor,” he says, but it is not a no. It is, actually, very close to a yes.

Viktor knows that Jayce isn’t much of an actor at all. He is, by all accounts, terrible at it. But he’s passionate and driven and will stop at nothing if he thinks something is amiss. What Viktor is counting on is the anger that Jayce will feel in the face of what Viktor so regularly deals with. It will be enough.

It feels only a little bit terrible to use him like this, but they are, in a way that is so very different to what Viktor is used to, friends. It counts for something, despite it all.

This is as close as they will ever get. He will, one day, have to watch this Jayce fall in love with someone else and live a life all his own. And he will, one day, come to accept that. The same way he has accepted that he cannot love this Jayce the way he loved his own, even if they are so very similar. They are not quite the same, haven’t experienced anywhere near enough to be the same. And Viktor will not ever let them be the same.

“That’s fine,” he says with a wave of his hand. “I’m sure you’ll be alright. Will you help me?”

“Yeah, Vik,” Jayce says. It is not a nickname his Jayce ever gave him. He does not know how he feels about it. “Of course. When is your appointment?”

It ends up being two weeks away. Jayce skips a class to attend with him, waving away any and all of Viktor’s protests. It feels like too much, but also so very like Jayce. And he so desperately needs someone there to help him speak for himself, even if he hates that he must do it like this.

He knows his body more than any doctor ever could, and that was the truth in his universe too. If only they had listened to him, instead of berating him when it ended up being too late, as if he had not tried.

The doctor he sees brushes him aside within minutes, telling him that it is simply the turning weather and that he must have the beginnings of a cold. He does not listen when Viktor tells him he has felt like this for years and rejects him when he asks for a scan to be done on his lungs. Instead, he asks after his leg and his brace, and he belittles him with every word that spills from his lips.

“The scans are very expensive,” the doctor says, looking down at his papers like Viktor isn’t even worth making eye contact with. “I’m sure the treatments for your leg are more important.”

Beside him, Jayce bristles, his hands clenched into fists on his lap. This was the reason he never let his Jayce see this, but in hindsight, that had been a mistake. Hindsight is a terrible and wonderful thing. He despises it.

“Viktor is a member of House Talis,” he growls, and it is only Viktor’s hand shooting out to halt him that stops him from standing and towering over the doctor. “I want the fact that you are rejecting the tests he is asking for written down and sent to me for record keeping.”

The doctor stammers, just like Viktor expected. “W-Well, I don’t think it needs to come to that,” he says, turning in his seat towards Jayce and finally catching on the Talis sigil on his coat. “It will simply be a waste of your money, Mister Talis. It is nothing more than a cold.”

“The money is not a problem,” Jayce says. “Run the test like we’ve asked. If we’re wrong, then we’ll know for sure, won’t we?”

He sounds like a Councillor for a moment, a hint of that political man. That man who, in godsdamned hindsight, was so woefully unprepared for being a Councillor. And Viktor had been so angry at him for it, for the fact that at a single hint of power, Jayce had forgotten everything they had fought for. He was so very tired of hindsight, but it was the only thing keeping him going.

Viktor smirks, watching the doctor shuffle awkwardly in his chair, surrounded by the sterile white walls and the single window of his office. Without a word, he fills out the form for a scan and holds it out to Jayce.

“It’s not for me,” Jayce says, derisive and judgemental. Viktor has to try very hard not to laugh in the doctor’s face when he’s handed the form. It’s strange to be a bit smug over the fact that he knows what the results will be, high and mighty over being correct that he is still dying.

It’s the principle of the thing, after all. The doctor is wrong, and Viktor knows it, and he needs this useless Piltovan man to feel even a little guilt. He takes the form, folds it in his hands, and leaves the room without saying another word. Jayce follows him, footsteps hurried against the tile.

“Was that okay?” he asks, his arm brushing against Viktor’s. “I hope I didn’t overstep.”

“You were perfect,” Viktor says before he can think clearly, running the high of spite and adrenaline. He waves the folded form in Jayce’s direction. “I got exactly what I needed.”

But Jayce only frowns, and it is an expression Viktor cannot read. If he is reading too much into Viktor’s words, he can only hope that he will be gracious in the face of rejection. “Are you… Are you going to be alright?” he asks instead, and Viktor blinks from the shock of it.

He expects too much, even now. How many dreams had he had over the years of Jayce coming to him in the lab and confessing long hidden feelings? They bleed over in this universe, even when he wishes they wouldn’t.

“We’ll see,” he says, though there is a part of him that wishes he could tell him everything. It wouldn’t be fair for Jayce to know, though, not when there’s a chance that Hextech won’t go the same way. Only one of them needs to be so paranoid. Jayce can be free to do as he wishes. “But, I am hoping that we’ve caught this early, and that treatment won’t be so difficult.”

It would be heartbreaking to learn that his sickness is incurable even this early, that the fissure gas has warped his lungs permanently, that he is doomed to feel his body crumble and erode all over again. While it is mostly for the sake of the body he is in, there is a little selfishness involved. He does not want to feel that agony again, scared that his desperation to live will send him on a uncontrollable path all over again.

He cannot trust that he won’t make the same mistakes when faced with yet another death. Three times, he has died. He does not want to do it again for a very long time.

“Do you need me to come with you for the scan?” Jayce asks. It would be easy to say yes, to let him stay this time and see everything that his body is.

“No,” he says instead. “I think that is something I need to do on my own.”

And Jayce understands, of course he does.

It takes another few weeks for the scan to be done and the results to come in, and Viktor spends each day down in the Undercity, returning to Piltover only to sleep and eat. His apartment has collected dust over the weeks, entirely unlived in. He wonders what the point of it is now, if he is spending so much of life in Zaun, if he is no longer Heimerdinger’s assistant.

There was a life here, one dedicated to getting out of the Undercity and making a name for himself, a legacy, one that will allow him to help the place he had come from. It is a life that has not been his in a very long time.

Still, he longs for a legacy and a name and a way to help the Undercity. He has a decade of knowledge on how to do that now. This old life, naïve and so brutally fought for, can be forgotten once again.

His scans come back positive for the disease he knows he has, a cloud in his lungs—a treatable cloud. Viktor revels in the guilt and the apology in the doctor’s eyes when he’s given the prognosis, and he knows that he will live a long life.

~*~

The first flowers bloom the day Viktor starts his treatment. They are tiny things, the petals small and reaching for the sky. They still have a long way to grow, but Viktor has so much time now, if the pills he’s been given do as they are supposed to. Easily treatable, the doctor had told him.

Easily treatable when picked up so early. He had been good to listen to his body, the doctor had said without a speck of irony or self-awareness. Viktor knew himself, knew what each ache and pain meant, knew when he was going to have a bad day and when his body would let him walk to and from each city without too much difficulty. And when it wouldn’t.

The walk will grow more and more difficult as the years pass. Viktor knows this as he sits in his makeshift lab. He will, one day, need to move permanently into the Undercity. Not the field, not again, but somewhere close to the entrance. Perhaps even the place Ambessa of Noxus had set up her camp. There is something about it that amuses him, something like retribution or reclamation. The thought sticks in his mind for hours.

He runs a gentle finger over the yellow petals. These innocent things can change so much. Already, even though they are so small, they are working hard to convert the toxic gasses in their air around them into something cleaner, brighter, something like the commune.

Jayce, planting more Hex Crystal shards deep in the dirt nearby, smiles at him in a way that is so achingly similar to Viktor’s own Jayce. “I didn’t expect them to be so pretty,” he says and then tilts his head curiously. “Or so small.”

“They are still growing,” Viktor replies, pushing himself to his feet with a wince. “They still have a long way to go.”

The medication he is on makes him drowsy, but that does not stop him from doing the work that needs to be done. It will only be until he has gotten used to them. He follows behind Jayce, planting cuttings over the buried Crystal shards. These too will grow and bloom and become something wonderful. He smiles sleepily at them and knows that he will soon need to rest.

There is nothing to rest on in the little house except Vi and Powder’s small and uncomfortable bed. It is not suited for the needs of his body. Nothing is, except the furniture he had saved for so carefully in his apartment in Piltover. It would be difficult to move it down here, and he does not yet have a place to put it all, but he can’t stop himself from thinking about living back in Zaun.

The only downside to it would be how difficult it would be for Jayce to come down to help him. Though, with every trip, Jayce grows more and more understanding of how to navigate the streets and people of the Undercity. He understands more about what life is like down there, more than he ever did in Viktor’s universe. Still, he focuses his attention on what he wanted Hextech to be when he was this young. It hadn’t been the Hexgates or the Gemstones—those had come from conversations with the Council and with Viktor—but Viktor cannot remember what his original plans had once been.

They weren’t the flowers either, but Jayce was nothing if not amenable to the ideas of others.

“Hey, Vik?” Jayce says, an unknown number of minutes later, much further down the field than Viktor expects. “This is huge, you know? All of your books said these were almost impossible to grow down here, and well, look at them!”

Viktor smiles, he can’t help it. “They wouldn’t be if not for your Hextech,” he says.

For a moment, he expects to hear ‘our Hextech’, expects this Jayce to be as attached to him as the other one was despite the distance Viktor has so carefully put between them. But instead, Jayce straightens and stares across the expanse of the fields.

“A team effort then,” he says, so quietly that Viktor strains to hear him across the distance between them. “This calls for celebration, doesn’t it?”

Viktor should have expected it. This is still Jayce, after all, and every minor breakthrough meant a chance for them to celebrate. Dinner or drinks or a night at one of their apartments, nights that felt like dating and domesticity. Viktor had loved them, even though they’d hurt when he was alone again. He finds he has missed them without even realising they were gone.

“What do you have in mind?” he asks before he can stop himself. It isn’t a good idea, he knows this, but he is a fool in love and always will be.

It does not matter if this Jayce is not his own, he is still Jayce and Viktor will love him in any body. But he will love him from afar, like he always has.

“Why not that bar we saw a few weeks ago?” Jayce suggests. “I’ve been wanting to try out some of the food down here for a while.”

“It might not suit your palate,” Viktor says. So many of his words are out of his control, like he’s falling into habits that no longer exist. His body and his mind do not agree, for the first time in a very long time. He could spend hours thinking of ways to maintain the distance he so badly needs, and ruin it all in a matter of seconds.

Jayce shrugs, oblivious to the war within Viktor’s mind. “Only one way to find out,” he says.

And that’s how Viktor finds himself at a table in the dark bar, nursing a drink between his hands. The Last Drop is both exactly what he expected and nothing like it. It’s rowdy and loud and far too dark for his liking, but there’s an unspoken agreement in the air, like a truce. This is a peaceful place.

At the bar itself is Vander, talking with various patrons. Viktor tries to find Silco in the crowded din but it’s too dark to see much aside from vague silhouettes, many of which could be him. But there’s an ease to Vander’s shoulders, one that did not exist in any of the memories Viktor saw.

“Huh,” Jayce says, across from him, dressed in Undercity colours and somehow still looking out of his depth. “Bars in Piltover are nothing like this.”

Bars in Piltover felt clean and sterile, and the men there had too much ego and too many freedoms. The Last Drop felt safe, as long as you weren’t stupid. “Bars in Piltover are boring,” he says instead of any of his thoughts.

Jayce laughs, a pretty sound. “That’s for sure.”

Conversation does not come so easily to them, not when Viktor is so aware of what he can and cannot say. Jayce asks him questions about his life in the Undercity and how he came to be at the academy, and the memories Viktor sifts through are a decade older than they should be. Some of them might not even be true for this universe, but he has no way of knowing.

His parents are still dead, this much is obvious, and they must have still bought him that uniform to help him sneak into the Academy, but anything else was up in the air. He cannot even say with any certainty if he ever met the doctor and Rio here. There is only his life, his other universe, and Viktor must be careful not to mention things that happened with his Jayce.

Memories are a fluid thing; they grow foggy with time.

A fight breaks out a little over an hour after they arrive, and Viktor watches with distant curiosity as Vander makes his way over. The man does little more than stand, and whatever words he says are so quiet that they don’t make their way to where Viktor and Jayce sit on the other side of the room. They are not the only ones watching. It is as if the entire bar can’t help but watch Vander, enraptured and in awe of him.

The fight dies down only a few moments later. As Vander walks back to the bar, Viktor turns to find Jayce staring at the room around them. “He’s the boss around here, then?” he asks, voice low like he’s scared someone will hear just how little he knows.

Viktor hums. He remembers, sharp and sudden, the memories of the Zaun he had wanted to create—the Zaun he’d failed in creating. “And then some,” he says. “Most of the Undercity respects Vander. He has the city’s best intentions in mind.”

And yet, an agreement with the enforcers. A secret one, because he knows those around him would call him a class traitor. He protects the city for Piltover’s best interests. Viktor keeps this to himself. He wants to think that Silco’s involvement will change things.  

“Didn’t think to ask him for help with your little project?” Jayce asks. He’s so genuine in every question.

“Not yet,” Viktor answers, taking a sip of his drink. It burns on the way down and he winces; it’s not what he would normally drink. “It was you I needed, in the end.”

It’s dark, dark enough for Viktor to pretend he does not see the flush on Jayce’s cheeks at his words. It sets his teeth on edge, his own sheer failure at keeping his distance. But he’d failed in that the second he’d asked Jayce to help him get his treatments. That had brought them closer, if only because Jayce now knew so much about him, but Viktor hadn’t had any other option.

And still, he does not leave the bar. Half because he gets a good look at the Undercity and Vander, and half because the conversation that eventually flows between him and Jayce again is nice. It’s different, talking with someone about something that isn’t his work. Months he has spent on this. Months he has spent thinking about nothing but this.

Time passes easily. No other altercations break out in the bar, and the laughter and rabble does eventually grow on Viktor. It is still not somewhere he would spend a lot of his time, but it is nice enough for a night or two every so often. Especially if he does end up speaking with Vander, should his flowers work the way he so badly wants them to.

Jayce buys him another drink and smiles at him from across the table. A sweet thing, pretty, the gap in his teeth proudly on display. It is almost too much for him to handle.

“I think… I think it may be time to retire,” Viktor says, downing the last of his drink. “Piltover is still a long walk away, after all.”

Jayce nods, wide-eyed like he’d forgotten about the passage of time. “Let me walk you home,” he says. It is not a question. Viktor smiles anyway, as if Jayce is not the one in more danger in the Undercity.

And still, he lets him pay for the drinks and make himself obviously Piltovan to Vander when he compliments the bar, but no one else around them seems to mind too much. The streets are a different thing entirely, but even they are quieter—though not by much; the Undercity is always a bustling thing.

Jayce still talks as they make their way back to the elevator and over the Bridge of Progress once again, entirely unaware of how much Viktor is sick of Piltover. There is a smug quietness to the city that Viktor hates all of a sudden, a pretentiousness in the air, like it is better than a night life and the joy of company. Like it is better than a lot of things in the Undercity.

He was aware of all these things in his own universe. Holding the memories of hundreds has changed so much. He feels a fool, ignorant, but that comes with knowledge. He’d said something like that to the doctor once, hadn’t he? So long ago now.

They’re near his dusty and cold apartment before he realises, carrying the conversation in monosyllables. From the content, if tipsy, look on Jayce’s face, he does not seem to mind Viktor’s sudden antisocial behaviour.

“Thanks for coming out with me,” Jayce says. He’s still smiling. Viktor’s pretty sure he’s been smiling since they left the bar. “I had a good time.”

Viktor’s had conversations like this before. Few and far between. Some of them had ended in another warm body in his bed. Others in sleeping peacefully by himself. This will be the latter. It has to be.

“So did I,” he says anyway, because he will not lie.

He is not given time to finish what he wants to say. Jayce’s hand is so suddenly on his wrist, thumb rubbing the cool skin of the back of his hand. Viktor looks up at him, sees days and nights of this face, and Jayce is leaning in before he can do anything. Slowly, so slowly, as if giving Viktor enough time to move away.

And move away he does. Viktor takes a step back and pulls his wrist from Jayce’s grip. There’s a beat of silence, long and painful, and Jayce stares at him with dawning embarrassment. It is not an expression Viktor likes to see on him.

“Oh, shit, Viktor, I’m sorry,” Jayce says, stumbling back. He runs a hand down his face, does not meet Viktor’s gaze. “I guess I was reading into things wrong. I didn’t mean—I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable.”

“Jayce…”

“I should go, sorry,” Jayce says, like he doesn’t even hear Viktor anymore. “I’ll, uh, I’ll see you later, alright?”

Viktor hisses in a breath. “Jayce, wait.”

But Jayce doesn’t. He’s gone a second later, disappearing around the corner and into the dark streets of Piltover beyond. Viktor is left alone, hand clenched tight around the handle of his cane. He heaves a sigh, guilt washing over him, weighing him down.

It should not have gone that way. Viktor should not have let it get that far, should have found some other way to get the tests he needed instead of letting Jayce think that there was something between them. And there was, Viktor couldn’t help it. Of course, there was, but it would not be anything more than what they already had.

By the time Viktor makes it back up to his apartment, there are tears in his eyes. He wants his Jayce, needs his Jayce and the understanding they had between them in the end, needs someone who knows all of his mistakes and forgives him for them anyway. But his Jayce is gone, dead for Viktor’s mistakes, torn apart by the Arcane in a desperate final attempt to save Viktor from everything he had become.

He collapses on his bed, feels the cold blankets around him. Months he has spent here now. Months with and without Jayce, months knowing that his own actions are the reason he has lost the person he loves most in every universe. Every timeline.

Tears stream down his cheeks and his chest heaves. It’s a terrible thing, to love someone and not be able to have them, to have the universe dangle what he wants in front of his face. Tempting and terrible, and so utterly unattainable. He will not do it, will not move on from his Jayce. It would not be fair to any of them.

He buries his face in his hands, feels warms tears against his skin. For the first time in all the months he has been here, Viktor cries—mourns—for everything he has lost.

~*~

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing out of Viktor’s mouth the next time he sees Jayce, only a few days later. “About the other night, I mean.”

They’re sitting on the edge of the field. Or, more accurately, Jayce is standing among the flowers, and Viktor is sitting on a bench they’d installed a few weeks ago so that he can rest when his leg flares up without having to make the trip all the way back to the house. It was Jayce’s idea. It was considerate and sweet. Viktor tries not to have any shame when he sits on it now.

Jayce glances at him before turning back to the flowers. He’s taken over Viktor’s job for the next little while, checking to make the plants are growing healthily and that there aren’t any pests. He should have been checking on the water filtration system, but it can wait while Viktor rests.

“You don’t need to apologise for that,” Jayce says, as polite and understanding as ever. “I was the one who misread. That’s not your fault.”

Viktor sighs, stares down at the ground. This is a conversation he has prepared for, but it does not mean he wants to have it. “You didn’t misread,” he says.

Jayce shoots up, gaze locked on him, and Viktor hates the hope that he sees there. It’s not fair on either of them.

“What?” Jayce says, frowning. “I don’t understand.”

“You didn’t misread,” Viktor says again. He steels himself, bunches his hands into fists at his sides, and ignores the twinge in his leg. “You are beautiful, Jayce Talis, but I… can’t.”

“You can’t?” says Jayce. There’s so much hurt in his face and his voice, but it does not stop him from making his way over to the bench. It is a rickety thing, made from whatever wood and metal scraps they could find, but it is comfortable enough. “Can I ask why?”

Viktor huffs a chuckle despite himself, but the sound is a sad thing, something to make noise for fear of silence. “You can,” he says, and Jayce sits down next to him, far enough away to be painful. “I… I had a partner, once. Not very long before we met. He’s the love of my life.”

“Oh, shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

“He died,” Viktor says. At any other time, Jayce thinking he was the other man to himself might be funny, but it is a distant thought in comparison to the words he must spill. “He died barely a few weeks before we met, Jayce. And I… I thought we would die together. It seemed like we would. And yet, here I am.

“All of this, the flowers, they’re for him. I wanted to be better than I was. I wanted to learn from my mistakes. I wanted to prove that some of the things I was doing were right, even I went about them the wrong way. I wanted… I wanted to see in myself what he saw in me.”

“Vik…”

“And you… you’re very kind, Jayce. This would not exist if not for you. But I cannot bring someone into my life like that, not now. Not for a very long time, I think. If at all.” Each word is harder than the last, but he has said so many of them now. Only a few more left. “I am sorry. As I said, you did not misread, but I can’t. I will simply… be in love with a dead man for the rest of my life. I’m content with that.”

For a while, there is only silence. Jayce sits next to him, hands clasped together in his lap and his head bowed. He’s running through a hundred different things to say, Viktor knows. He’s seen that look on his face a thousand times.

“I’m sorry,” Jayce eventually says. It’s so quiet that Viktor almost misses it. Then, the clearing of a throat, and Jayce is turning towards him. “I understand. Of course, I understand. I’m sorry that happened to you. I… I lost my father when I was young, and it… it never really goes away.”

“No,” says Viktor. “It doesn’t.”

Jayce winces and Viktor can hear the bitten back curse. “Sorry, that wasn’t what I meant. Only that… I get it. Grief is—” But Jayce doesn’t finish that sentence. Instead, he sighs and leans back against the bench, glancing at Viktor out of the corner of his eye. “If you need someone to talk to about it, I’m here.”

Viktor smiles; he can’t help himself. “Thank you, Jayce,” he replies. Their eyes meet from across the bench. “I trust this won’t impact our friendship or our work together?”

“Of course, it won’t,” Jayce tells him, almost frantic. “Never!”

It is almost strange, now, to consider himself a friend of this Jayce. But as the flowers wave in the stiff breeze of the Undercity, he cannot think of another word for them. Still, there is that part of him that wishes that this Jayce was his own, that they could have been given a chance to live here and change the world for the better, together.

He will always do what he can without him.

Another sigh escapes him, and he pushes himself to his feet. There is work to be done, as there always is. The idea of it feels easier now—the idea of working alongside this Jayce for the foreseeable future.

“Come,” he says, smiling down at this Jayce. “I am not so sore now. The water filtration system needs maintenance.”

~*~

Time passes. The flowers grow and grow and grow. They come up to Viktor’s chest at their tallest, bending and bowing towards the light that shines through the field. Lines and lines of them have grown, until they cover half the field and touch the metal arch atop the hill. When Viktor breathes, it is so clean and so easy, almost like breathing in Piltover.

The treatment Jayce helped him get works. He spends a day, months and months after his discussion with Jayce, raging at the fact that it had been so easy to treat, that if the doctors had listened to him years ago, he’d need never have relied on the Hexcore to save his life—need never have become the Herald at all.

But the treatment works and Viktor breathes easily no matter where he goes, and the only thing he has to worry about is the gradually declining state of his bones and muscles. But without his disease, he will have at least a decade before the back brace makes its return. More than enough time for him to do everything that needs to be done.

Before he knows it, the day he met Jayce in his universe comes and goes. This universe’s Jayce is with him, looking over plans and schematics for the flowers’ expansion and a handful of equations for Jayce’s personal research. It is a calm day, an easy one, but Viktor is so aware of what Jayce might be returning to that evening.

But when he walks Jayce back to the bridge as the sun sets, he sees Vi and Powder for the first time. They stand outside the Last Drop with two other boys Viktor knows to be Mylo and Claggor. They are talking to Vander—to Silco—and nothing seems any different. Jayce is not a random rich Piltovan here, but someone who has made his presence known. And, like Viktor, has made his presence useful.

The little family is wonderfully alive and happy, and Viktor sits with the relief that he does not have to worry about shimmer and the chem barons and the impending war between Zaun and Piltover. He can focus on the flowers and independence and all the many ideas he has now.

It is a good day, but as they cross over the Bridge of Progress and Viktor makes his way back to his sad and dusty apartment, he can’t help but stare up at the academy building and the empty space near it where the Hexgate should be. Despite everything, a part of him still feels like they should be up there, sneaking into Heimerdinger’s lab and desperately trying to stabilise a crystal before the enforcers broke in.

The cane in his hand broke that day. It sits whole and perfect in his grip.

He forgets sometimes that he does have Hextech, but not in the same way. He has it in a safer way, one buried underground and safe from his direct influence. It is the way he wanted so long ago, a way that helps so many people. It is not, of course, the way this Jayce imagines Hextech, but Viktor is sure that it will be the only way he ever gets it.

Piltover doesn’t need the Hexgates. He and Jayce don’t need the Gemstones or the Gauntlets or the Hexclaw. This is what Hextech always should have been. Helping people for the sake of helping them, in ways that actually matter.

But there is almost ten years of work and love that he has lost, and he will always long for it.

His apartment is cold when he returns. Winter will set in soon and his knee will ache more, but the thick blankets he has stored in the closet will keep him warm. In the doorway is a letter from the Academy, slipped under his door while he was gone. Heimerdinger asking the status of his break, most likely, or telling him that he’s no longer welcome to return.

If that is the case, he will need to move down to the Undercity again sooner than expected. Rent in Piltover is a difficult thing on the best of days, impossible without steady employment.

But what does he need this space for anymore, now? What does he need Piltover for? Any resources that he needs for the flowers, Jayce can get for him. Viktor has no use for the Academy or the Council or this sad and cold little apartment. The furniture can be moved with Jayce’s help.

He throws the letter on his desk and coughs through the film of dust that it kicks up. He stands in front of the mirror, looks at the long lines of his body and the youth that’s still in his face. There, in his eyes, age and exhaustion. They make him look older than he is—or perhaps the age this soul truly is. His hair has grown out, touching his shoulders like it had at the commune. The blonde that streaks through it is natural, not a by-product of the Hexcore.

He's pretty like this, he thinks. He looks soft. At the commune, he hadn’t gotten a proper look at himself outside of what his body had become, and he hadn’t particularly cared. But here, like this, young and as healthy as he can be, he’s pretty. He likes his hair and the way it frames his face. He hasn’t liked anything about his body in a long time.

For a moment, he wonders if his Jayce had liked how Viktor had looked in the commune, if he’d thought he was pretty. But there hadn’t been that much time, had there? Only mere seconds between Jayce walking in and Viktor trying to greet him, and then the terrible, excruciating pain of dying.

How agonising that had been. He’d only wanted Jayce to see what he had created, but there he’d been, pointing his warped hammer at him. And Viktor had not understood for so long, why it had happened like that.

Then, memories. Then, understanding. Then, the knowledge of everything Jayce had seen in the time they’d been apart. And Viktor would have done the same thing, if it were him. It had been terrible. It had been heartbreaking, but Viktor understood in the end.

If only he’d been given a chance to tell Jayce that.

He sleeps, and he dreams of Jayce and what could have been, and when he wakes up the next day, he keeps going.

In the field, alone, he scouts out a good place to build a home. It does not need to be large: a bedroom, a kitchen and a space for him to work. It only needs to be more stable and secure than Vi and Powder’s old home, threatening to collapse under the weight of the ramparts above it.

He was right, months ago, when he said that it would be spiteful and promising to build in the place Ambessa Medarda built her camp. When he stands in the place that it was, he sees white-clad bodies and hears the roar of a Vander that will never exist. It is the perfect place, a way to stand up to a woman whose memories he never saw and who will never know he existed here.

It will take time and resources and money he does not yet have. And so, even though he never wanted to live in the rickety little home, he will have to for a while. At least until he gains the support of the people of the Undercity. Trade works best down here, and his flowers cover half the field.

Jayce is gone today, working on his own projects in Piltover, but it gives Viktor the chance to draw up schematics for the next part of his plan. Chambers to hold the flowers, ones that can hang in the homes and streets of the Undercity. A tiny shard of a crystal in each to keep them healthy and alive, should the owner forget to water and tend to it, and the air quality across Zaun will improve.

Then, and only then, can he truly live in the Undercity once more.

The schematics come easily to him, neat lines and soft colours. No other scientist would colour their diagrams the way Viktor does, but they help him visualise what he needs to do easier. There’s something soft about the yellow he uses for the flower, far softer than their true colour, hazy from the memories of another time.

It doesn’t take much time to learn that he might not need Jayce for this just yet. He has the ability to make the chambers himself, even if he is not quite as confident in forging as Jayce is, and there’s a collection of unused Crystal shards sitting in a locked container on the workbench nearby.

There is, deep down, the concern that someone would find the Crystal shard buried amid the soil and use it for… well, something. But Hextech does not yet exist in this universe. The most anyone would do with it would be sell it to someone like Benzo, where it would sit on a shelf to collect dust until Viktor or Jayce inevitably found it again.

More likely, they would simply take Viktor at his word and leave the chamber be, let the flower do its work.

The main thing he needs now are more cuttings. And he has so many flowers to harvest them from and so many empty trays and jars littering the space. The little home he has accidentally made for himself is entirely set up for what he wants to do. That fact makes him smile. He can get to work right away, once he does one single thing.

He grabs a piece of parchment from the pile Jayce had brought down weeks ago, and writes up his formal resignation from the Academy.

~*~

It takes time for the first cuttings to grow, weeks and weeks, time enough to perfect his schematics and talk through them with Jayce. Time enough to build a prototype chamber and find all the holes in his designs. Not enough space for soil and the Crystal shard and the roots to happily spread. Not enough holes in the top for the air to come through, rendering the whole thing almost pointless.

Jayce helps him, in the end. He takes Viktor to his family forge, somewhere Viktor had not seen often in his own universe. Like the water treatment facility, the forge was Jayce’s place to relax and work through his thoughts. It might not quite be that here, not yet, and so Viktor sits near the stairs and watches Jayce hammer and bend the metal into shape.

They still feel too close, sometimes, and there’s a longing in Jayce’s eyes that Viktor hates. But it’s easier with the understanding between them, even if Jayce sometimes asks questions about his other self that Viktor cannot ever answer. It hurts too much.

They are friends, if only because there is no other word to describe them. That is all they will ever be. With the chambers built and the last stages of Viktor’s plan in the works, there will be less reason for them to be around each other. Especially considering Viktor’s goals to move back to the Undercity (and potentially help them with their independence).

Relief and regret are at war within him at the thought, but he knows which one will win.

Distance will be good for them, for him. Jayce does not yet know it, but he will understand, especially when he becomes so busy with his Hextech. Plans for what will eventually be the Atlas Gauntlets sit on a nearby workbench. Not the Hexclaw—it was Viktor who had come up with that. This is what Hextech was always going to be if Jayce had his way, helping people in the mines work safer and faster.

Viktor does not want to tell him that it benefits Piltover anyway, considering the mined materials didn’t stay in the Undercity. He thinks he is helping. And he is, in a way. The people of the Undercity should be able to work faster and safer. But the people of the Undercity should not have to work in the mines at all.

Still, Jayce is beaming at him from across the forge, hair stuck to his forehead and sweat running down his arms. He wears only a singlet, which has to be against some kind of safety regulations, and all Viktor can think of it is the longing to have seen this in his own universe.

He mourns a thing he never really had. Jayce may have loved him, and he very much loved Jayce, but neither of them knew until the end.

His lips burn with a kiss he never got to experience, his forehead itching with the phantom feeling of Jayce’s against his—a Zaunite show of affection, something Viktor had never expected from him.

He mourns love, and he mourns the relationship that could have been.

It is a difficult thing to push the thoughts aside, but he has work to do, and this Jayce is waiting for him. The chamber is perfect, just what he needs it to be. There’s a slot for the shard and plenty of space for the soil, glass and metal shooting up the side to curve into sleek holes for the air to spill out of.  

“Perfect,” Viktor mutters. And it is. It can rest on any surface, hang from any hook. The real problem will be mass producing them to suit the needs of the Undercity, but that is a problem he will solve later. “It’s perfect, Jayce. Thank you.”

Jayce is still smiling at him, sweat on his face and a light in his eyes. “Needed an excuse to use the forge again,” he says. “It’s been a while, if I’m being honest.” He laughs, and Viktor can’t help but laugh with him. “So, who’s this one going to, then?”

The answer is easy, but it takes him a few days to prepare both himself and the chamber.

The bloomed cutting sits neatly in the chamber when Viktor sits outside Benzo’s store, entirely alone. The few people who pass him give him a strange look—give his flower a strange look—but none of them bother him. He is allowed to stand outside the shop and gather his words, a familiar anxiousness inside of him, like the times he and Jayce would present their findings and research to the Council.

This is so entirely different and all the more welcoming.

Viktor takes a deep breath and steps inside, the chamber and its flower cradled carefully in his hands. Benzo stands at the counter, fiddling with something. There is no Ekko, and a part of Viktor is disappointed at the fact that the boy will not be able to see the fruits of his labour.

“Ah, Viktor!” Benzo calls. He’s grown more cheerful over the months Viktor has been down here, even though Viktor hasn’t said a word about what he’s doing. He supposes it doesn’t matter too much, not when Viktor is providing him with a living. “It’s been a while since you’ve come by. What can I do for you? No little Piltie following you around today?”

Despite the joke at Jayce’s expense, there’s something nice about being so obviously Zaunite—like they all know he belongs down here. “He’s busy,” he replies with a chuckle. “He’s not always following me around, after all.”

“Could have fooled me,” Benzo says jovially. His eyes wander, lingering on the flower. “That your project?”

“An extension of it,” Viktor replies. He strides towards the workbench and places the chamber in front of Benzo. “These flowers convert the noxious gasses from the fissures into breathable air. I have been growing them. I have a field of them, actually—”

“A field?” Benzo says. There’s wonder in his voice. There hasn’t been a field of flowers in the Undercity in… a very, very long time, Viktor knows. He wonders if anyone can even imagine it. “Viktor, how have you managed this?”

Viktor hums, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. “Your books helped,” he says—a non-answer. “As such, this is for you.”

Benzo stares at it for so long that Viktor almost thinks he’s made some kind of mistake. “Viktor, I—”

The door slams open, and Viktor startles out of pure instinct. Then, the sound of laughter, loud and mischievous. Ekko runs in, followed by little Powder, a joyful as she was in so many of Vander’s memories. They both stop when they see Viktor in the shop, entirely different expressions on their faces. Powder seems shy, shifting back until Ekko stands ahead of her, while he stares at Viktor with something akin to excitement.

“Powder, Ekko, come here,” Benzo says, waving them towards the counter. “Come see what Viktor has brought for us.”

He spends far longer than he expected explaining the flower and the chamber to Ekko and Powder. She doesn’t ask many questions, content to let Ekko ask whatever he wants. And he asks a lot—about how the contraption works, about where they can put it, about how Viktor managed to grow it.

And when Viktor reveals that he has grown and entire field, both children’s eyes light up with joy. “Can we see it?” Ekko asks.

He thinks, so suddenly, of the little girl Vi and Powder had brought with them to the commune. Isha. She would be only just born, perhaps, not yet an orphan. A sweet child, not unlike the Powder before him now. A consequence of so many things, but her death is not one he can blame on himself.

He still feels guilty anyway.

“I don’t see why not,” Viktor says, forcing a smile through the guilt. “But perhaps another day, hmm?”

Postponing it doesn’t seem to deter them, a brightness in their cheeks as they inspect the flower and its chamber. Powder runs her fingers along the glass and Viktor can’t even be mad about the smudges she leaves in her wake, not when her eyes are so wide with wonder.

“How many have you made?” she asks. She doesn’t look up at him, but he doesn’t mind.

“This is the first,” he answers. “Though I will be building many more in the coming weeks.” He does have many cuttings ready for planting now, almost too many and never enough time to build all the chamber he needs.

Powder hums, almost a mimicry of him. “Can you bring some to my place?” she asks. There’s a brightness to her that he hadn’t seen when she’d come to the commune. The years had been cruel to her in his world. He doesn’t want to see that happen to her again. She’s intelligent and creative—crude, but inspired, he’d called her creations once, the memory distant and devastating.

She, like Ekko, will grow up to be a wonderful example of what Zaun could be.

“That was next on my list,” he tells her, and he smiles in the face of her bright grin.

“Can I have one for my room?” she asks. “Mine and Vi’s? We share.”

She’s sweet and innocent and filled with more expectations for life that any one person can grant her. Still, he acquiesces. “I don’t see why not,” he says, and the smile she shoots Ekko is worth putting in the extra work to make another chamber.

Benzo chuckles at them from where he stands over them, arms crossed over his chest. “If these work like you say they will then Vander will want to see them,” he says. “This is… I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t think anyone’s ever even tried to do this.”

“Not to this scale, perhaps, no.”

Benzo pushes his glasses further up his nose. He looks overwhelmed, but pleased, and Viktor can’t help the little thrill that runs through him. Success, that’s what it is. Success at a job well done and a job that will continue. Because once Vander has his hands on the flowers, everyone will want one.

Viktor thinks again of the mass production issue, but that is something to broach with either Vander or Jayce.

He will tell Jayce about this, and perhaps they will share a drink together again, maybe even in the Last Drop, surrounded by his work. It feels only right. Or it will, once he gets it in there.

“I’ll speak to him about it,” Benzo says. He reaches over the counter to clasp a hand on Viktor’s shoulder. “He’ll come to you. That would be the best way.”

There was something in his words, in his eyes, that Viktor didn’t quite understand. A tenseness, a worry. He thinks of Silco, of the developments that might be there. It’s a difficult thing, reconciliation, but the fact that it is happening at all says so much, no matter how tense and uncomfortable it might make certain things.

There’s a smile on his face. He can’t get rid of it—wouldn’t even if he wanted to. Benzo takes the flower and hangs it above the counter like it’s something to be proud of. And it is. It’s the beginning of many changes in the Undercity, Viktor hopes. A better Undercity. An independent Zaun.

It is, strangely, Viktor’s first thought of having a happy life here, despite everything he has lost. That thought feels like progress, like healing.

Jayce would have loved to see this.

~*~

“Huh, I never even thought about it like that,” Jayce says, frowning down at the papers in front of him. It’s been a while since Viktor has seen him, weeks Jayce has spent heavily researching for Hextech before giving up and coming down to the Undercity for help once again.

He travels his own way there now that Viktor no longer lives in Piltover, but it feels like he has less reason to come down, what with the flowers flourishing beyond the window. It’s good. It hurts, but it’s good.

“It is worth a shot,” Viktor replies. He knows the solution to this problem already. It was the same one they’d had in his universe. The Atlas Gauntlets had been almost impossible to hold for a long time, the metal unwieldy and far too heavy for the average miner. It was a matter of adjusting the Gemstone to hold the weight—or the Crystal, in this case.

It will not work entirely well. Jayce has yet to figure out the Gemstones. He’s getting ahead of himself, but he always did.

“You see this so differently to me,” Jayce says. He pinches the bridge of his nose, only a little bit frustrated. “I don’t know how you do it.”

Viktor shrugged, running his finger down one of the equations. “Fresh eyes,” he says. “And… These equations are complex but not difficult, if that makes sense.”

“Maybe only to you,” Jayce huffs with a laugh. He closes his notebook and puts it in his coat pocket, and Viktor knows he’ll be thinking about the problem for the rest of the night. “I’ll take a break for now. You said you had somewhere you needed to be?”

“Mmm, the Last Drop,” Viktor replies. On a workbench are four of his chambers, just the amount Vander had requested from him the week before. “Help me carry these?”

He has not yet had time to procure a trolley or cart, and he cannot sacrifice mobility for the flowers. One at a time was his plan, hours taken out of his day to transport his gifts. But Jayce is here, and he is far stronger than Viktor will ever be. Strong enough, in fact, to carry three of the chambers at once.

It is not a long walk, not in comparison to the journey between the field and Piltover, but the people in the streets eye them warily. The metal and glass that make up the chambers could easily be sold for enough for a meal or two, and Viktor knows how tempted these people would be. Something stops them though, something that could be curiosity or guilt or plain exhaustion.

He wants to help them. The commune had not grown just flowers, after all.

Another project for another time. First and foremost, the flowers. Breathing is of more import than eating.

The Last Drop is closed to customers when they get there, and Viktor pauses for a moment to gather his bearings. His medications don’t treat his leg, and he still needs to take breaks to adjust it, make sure it’s moving the way a leg normally should. Perhaps getting his leg brace early would be a beneficial idea. Perhaps that too would prolong the need for the back brace and the inevitable wheelchair.

He hates that thing, hates how it looks on him, how it takes up so much of his body, how much the notches in his spine ache when it’s cold. But he loves it to, for the way it helps him. Though he’d rather not need for a long time yet.

He rests against the wall of the bar, letting the bricks take the brunt of his weight, and stares the quiet and empty space around him. The fountain is still doing little except dribbling water into a murky pool, but two teenagers sit on its rim like it’s the most wonderful thing in the city.

“I want to fix it,” Jayce says, nudging Viktor with his shoulder like there’s a joke he’s missing.

“I think there might be more important things,” he replies, though he can’t help but find it sweet.

Jayce shrugs, not so easily brought down. “I think having things that look nice help too, you know?” he says. There’s a smile on his face, something knowledgeable and still a little bit naïve. Privileged, is perhaps a better word. “Even when things are hard, there’s something around that will make you feel a bit better, even if it’s just for a little while.”

Viktor makes a noise in the back of his throat, listening to the water land in the basin with fat plops, watching the teenagers whisper to each other like they don’t care. There’s something to it, isn’t there?

But Jayce hasn’t yet learned to read his expressions, and he stammers out an explanation. “I mean, that’s just what I think, you know? It helped me, when I was younger, after my dad died—”

“Jayce,” Viktor says, a smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. “You don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to. It makes sense. Why don’t you talk to Vander about it after we deliver these?” He shakes the chamber in his hands gently for emphasis.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t mind telling you about my life,” Jayce replies, but he turns away from the fountain anyway.

There’s a content smile on his face when Viktor pushes off the wall. It stays when he knocks on the door and brightens when Vander welcomes them in. He’s polite where Viktor is quiet—it’s not as if he needs to sell himself now; that had been done when Vander had come by his field little more than a week ago, told by Benzo to visit him.

The Last Drop is different in the daytime: quieter, more like a home than a bar. Laughter rings out from somewhere below, loud and raucous, a sound that can only be made by children. Vander guides them both through the collection of worn tables, speaking with a curious Jayce, but Viktor’s gaze is locked on Silco.

Viktor had never met him in his universe, seen him only through the memories of Vander and so many of the other people in his commune. It is not enough to know him, but it is enough to understand how different and strange it is to see him behind the bar, scrubbing at glasses with a single-minded focus, as if their presence was not of any importance to him at all.

“Silco!” Vander says, leaning heavily against the bar. He waves in Viktor and Jayce’s direction. “I told you about Viktor. This is Jayce.”

Silco gives them both a once over, looking at Jayce far more critically than he does Viktor. He lingers ever so briefly on the cane like he knows the history behind it. Maybe he does, in the same way most people from Zaun do. “You’re not what I expected,” he says, though not even Viktor can tell if it’s a compliment or an insult. Silco’s gaze drops to the chamber. “Are those the… contraptions Powder told us about?”

“Wasn’t it Benzo?” Vander asks.

“Powder was much more enthusiastic about it,” Silco replies with a shrug.

Vander chuckles at him, then nods towards a door towards the back of the room. “Let me go get her. She was excited to have one of these in her room,” he says.

Viktor can’t help but smile at the memory. “She might have mentioned it.”

“She will draw all over it, just so you’re aware,” Vander tells him.

He remembers the graffiti in the lab, remembers the pink and blue on a bomb that Viktor had once been tempted to let kill him. “A little bit of art won’t disrupt the plant,” he replies, more light-hearted than he expects. “We’ve brought two for the bar as requested, and a fourth for your own living spaces.”

It wasn’t what Vander had asked for, specifically. He’d wanted them for the bar and the children, but it was Vander he needed to sway, and a fourth would hopefully do it. From the surprised smile on the man’s face, he was on the right track.

“Silco, tell Jayce where he can hang them,” Vander says, and then he disappears downstairs, where the sound of laughter and yelling grows ever louder.

“I don’t work here,” Silco mutters, but he comes out from around the bar anyway.

There are only a few seconds between Vander leaving and the hurried sound of footsteps on the stairs. “Viktor!” Powder cries, and he cannot for the life of him think of why she would be so excited to see him, not when she’d been so shy in Benzo’s shop.

She runs for him, reaching out. He thinks again of what she became in his world, that broken girl, and hands her the flower chamber with a smile. She yells her thanks as she darts for the bar, dumping it loudly enough on the wood that Viktor’s winces. The rough treatment will not damage the chamber, but he cannot help it. There are crayons in her hands between one blink and the next, pinks and purples and blues.

“Ah, told you,” Vander says from the doorway. He’s smiling fondly at his daughter, who doodles away on the metal without a care.

“It is hers to keep,” Viktor replies. He takes a seat at a nearby table, resting his cane on the back of the chair and stretching out his leg.

Jayce and Silco talk in hushed tones on the other side of the room, Jayce atop a table and desperately trying to hang one of the chambers from the rafters, Silco with his hands on his hips next to him and providing little help outside of pointed instructions. There’s something so strange about it. Viktor does not know if they’ve ever interacted. Despite the shock of seeing his Jayce’s memories, he only ever saw that other world, like Jayce had been desperate to show it to him. And only that.

He had been. He had been. It was the only way to make him see, make him understand that what he was so determined to do will destroy the whole world. It had been the opposite of everything he had ever wanted, the opposite of the commune, born from rage and heartbreak and the medical intervention of a doctor just as desperate as Jayce to save the person he loved.

“Are you alright, Viktor?” Vander asks. The words pull him from his thoughts, and he finds himself embarrassed, cheeks flushed. “Is there anything I can do? We should have something for pain around here.”

“No, no, I’m quite alright. I’m simply tired. This has been a lot of work.” A long time. Years in the making.

There’s an empty space within him. A hole that cannot ever be filled. He has been working around it for so long, determined not to see it. But it’s there. It’s always there. It will be with him for the rest of his life. He will not ever try to fill it—was that not why he had rejected this Jayce’s advances?

He’s so tired. He notices it only as he speaks. Utterly exhausted from all the work and everything that came before. But he does not want to stop, cannot stop, because there is still so much to make up for.

Five chambers are not yet enough to apologise for the lives he took or the thing he became. Hundreds might not be enough, but he will still try.

There are faces in the doorway. Vi’s and Mylo’s and Claggor’s. They watch from the darkness of the stairs like they’re cataloguing everything in the room. These desperate children, he will keep them alive. He already has, in a way, by changing things enough that they never went up to Piltover. Vander and Silco did the rest. That, Viktor had no control over whatsoever. The world moved around him, as it should.

Vander hums, taking the seat across from him like they’re discussing business. Perhaps they will be, if Viktor has his say. “I can imagine,” he says, watching Powder at the bar. “This was just you?”

“And Jayce,” Viktor says.

Another hum, and Vander’s gaze wanders to wherever Jayce now is. “Surprised someone from Piltover would go to this much effort,” he says. Viktor has seen his memories, seen the old enforcer sheriff and the deal they had. He says none of this, of course.

“Jayce is a good man. He only wants to help,” he explains. “I saw his research and showed him mine, and we agreed to work together. None of this would be possible without him.”

It is strange, to be reminding people of Jayce’s role in things. Once, it had been the other way around. And perhaps some of that had been Viktor’s fault, but who could blame him for not wanting to mingle with the elite of Piltover? They were people who only looked down on him, only saw him as an assistant of Jayce’s and not the sole reason Hextech had even been allowed in the first place.

But this is Zaun, and Piltovans so often do not bother with it. Jayce is an exception to the rule.

“You trust him?”

“I do. With my life.”

Vander nods like it’s enough, and Viktor knows it is. From everything he’s seen of the man, he knows that if a Zaunite trusts a Piltovan, there is a good reason for it. He wonders, ever so briefly, if Vander would trust Vi’s judgement after what became of Caitlyn Kiramman. It is not a question he will ever get an answer to, not one he needs an answer to either. Curiosity never stops.

“Well,” says Vander, as Silco takes the third and final chamber somewhere upstairs where Viktor’s eyes can’t follow. Jayce makes his way to Powder, who somewhat shyly tells him about what she’s trying to draw. “I’m sure there’s some way we can thank you for all this.”

Viktor glances at the space around them. The flowers, hanging from the bar and rafters, are almost inconspicuous. They blend in. The suit the Undercity.

“I want the Undercity to thrive,” he replies. He doesn’t say Zaun, not yet, not to Vander. “I want them to breathe and eat and work without fear. I want them not to feel the weight of Piltover above them. I can help them breathe, but not on my own. I have all the flowers, but I can’t make enough of these chambers, even with Jayce.”

“So you’ve come to me,” Vander says.

“So I’ve come to you.”

The silence between them is not uncomfortable. Viktor spares another glance, following Vander’s gaze. Vi and the others have meandered into the bar, watching Powder draw and asking Jayce a million questions. It’s sweet, the smile on Jayce’s face. Viktor remembers the early days of their partnership and all the times young Caitlyn had come to visit them. Given the chance, Jayce would have been a wonderful father, if it was something he had even wanted.

The fact that he does not know makes him ache. So many years dedicated to each other and there’s still much he doesn’t know about his partner. The hole in him is a terrible thing.

Vander smiles at the sight, and then he heaves a long sigh. He holds a hand out across the table for Viktor to shake. “I’d never seen anything like your field,” he says. “But if they do what you say they do, then, well, I’d be happy to help.”

~*~

Things move quickly after that, weeks and weeks passing in the blink of an eye. Busy weeks, cramped weeks. They blur into months of work and tending to his field. He readies chamber upon chamber and sends them off into the Undercity, uncaring of who receives them as long as someone does.

Vander and Silco help him build them, sometimes bringing Mylo and Claggor and whoever else wants to learn along with them. Ekko and Benzo come by more regularly that Viktor expects, and Ekko retains so much of the information Viktor gives him. Sometimes, Jayce is there, but his visits become less and less frequent as the weeks move by.

He’s getting ready to present to Heimerdinger, he tells Viktor over drinks once. Another celebration of all their work. He’s going to credit Viktor as an associate on his work, and it makes Viktor’s heart pound painfully in his chest. Even here, he knows the Council and Piltover will not recognise him for his work, even if the Professor decides to allow him to create Hextech. That won’t happen though, he knows. And it knows that this time it will not result in Jayce’s exile.

“If it goes poorly,” Viktor tells him, hand clenched tight around his drink, thinking of where they met in his universe. “Come here. There is always work to be done.”

“Thanks, Vik. I appreciate it,” he says, but Viktor can tell that he’s only humouring him. Jayce has so much faith in people to see his vision. But Heimerdinger is Heimerdinger. It will never work. Viktor does not ever tell him that.

And so, Jayce’s appearances are few and far between. It aches the way it always does: pain at seeing him and being reminded of who he isn’t, and pain at his distance. Still, the work gets done and Viktor’s flowers bloom.

And bloom.

And bloom.

In the months that follow, with Vander and Silco and Jayce’s help, Viktor can’t walk down a single Undercity street without seeing his flowers hanging from above doors or in windows. It makes his heart flutter in his chest every time he sees it. They are spreading, and Viktor hears whispers of joy about them in the streets.

There aren’t many people who know he’s responsible for the new beauty in their homes and streets. It’s Vander who does most of the deliveries, him and whoever he can get to help it. They are the ones who explain what the flowers can do. That’s easier; Viktor wouldn’t be able to do it himself, not without it taking far longer than it should. He goes with them on occasion, if only to see the grateful looks in peoples’ eyes. For the most part, he lets Vander do the social work.

But, sometimes, strangers hear about his field and the sprawl of yellow, and they come to visit.

Viktor does not let them stay long, does not let them even think about living near him. They have their own homes. If they don’t, he guides them to Vander, but he cannot let them stay. He has does that once, and the consequences of it will haunt him for the rest of his life. He is the only one that will live by the field, but he does not mind watching people walk through the flowers for hours on end. They look at peace for the first time in their lives, and they smile at Viktor gratefully when they leave.

It is how things should be.

There is a day, weeks after the chambers spread through the Lanes, that Viktor leaves his makeshift lab to see Sky among the flowers. She’s young, younger than he ever knew her to be, but it is not a reason for how different she looks to the one he knew in the commune with him.

She wanders through the flowers with her notebook in hand, stopping every few metres to scribble something down. Viktor watches from the doorway, a tentative smile on his face. For months, he has wondered where she was. It is good to know she is safe.

He only notices that something is off when she passes by him to leave, smiling politely, smiling shyly. Her entire face is different, proportions a little bit off, her eyebrows so much thicker than they were and her air not quite as frizzy. He does not talk to her, words trapped in his throat and an apology thrumming through him. Shock freezes him.

The Sky he knew in the commune was built from nothing more than his own foggy memory of her. It was never truly her, merely a mimicry born of guilt that the Hexcore latched onto. When she passes, she looks like she wants to talk to him, but he runs from her like a scared child. He hides himself away in the cramped and uncomfortable bathroom, and vomits until he tastes acid on the back of his teeth.

Sky never deserved what happened to her, and he couldn’t even do her the justice of remembering her properly.

She’s gone by the time Viktor gains the confidence to walk back outside, the field silent around him.

If she ever returns to the field, he does not see her. It is almost better like that. He can imagine she’s at the academy, learning everything she wants, without him there to ruin her life. She will live, and her dreams will come to fruition.

~*~

He lives, for a while, in the house that once belonged to Vi and Powder and their long dead parents. He does not once consider it his own, despite how scattered his belongings become, and he knows Vander doesn’t either. He sees it in his face every time he swings by to do another delivery. Grief and regret.

He longs to leave it, if only out of respect for Vander and the children. He says as much to Vander one night months later, as the sun sets after a long day of deliveries across the Undercity. They stand together in the courtyard outside the Last Drop. Flower chambers hang across the space, and Viktor breathes so easily.

“I have another favour to ask of you,” he says to Vander. They’re sitting by the fountain together. It spouts water as it should. Jayce had fixed it only the other week; it had only needed some tweaking by the spigot in the end. Fixed, it is beautiful, and Viktor finds himself spending many minutes resting on the lip of it.

Vander laughs and claps a hand on Viktor’s shoulder. He’s rougher than Jayce, but there’s something so painfully kind in the movement. “Viktor, after all this, you can ask as many favours as you want,” he replies. “What is it you need?”

“A home,” he says, and the wind whooshes through the courtyard in affirmation—in greeting, in welcome.

He shows Vander the patch of flat and empty dirt not far from his field the very next day. It is calm and unassuming without the war tents. It is perfect, he knows it, though there is little around that can be used to build with. He knows it will take a long time, but he can imagine something small made from brick and wood and metal, something that would fit in with the rest of the Undercity. Something his.

Vander hums and ahh’s at the space, wandering in circles and making plans in the comfort of his mind. “We can make it work,” he says eventually. “Though it won’t be quick.”

“I did not expect it to be,” Viktor replies. He glances over the expanse of the field, at the home he has accidentally made for himself, that little dot of grey among the flowers. “As long as you do not mind me staying where I am for the time being.”

“Of course not. Trust me, they wouldn’t mind either. I think they’d be glad to see their home used for something like this,” Vander tells him. He sighs and in his eyes, Viktor can see memories of a time long past. “They’d always wanted to see the Undercity prosper. It is, with you. Or it will be.”

“Zaun,” Viktor says. He knows it is not so often spoken of. He does not know if Silco still speaks of it in the quiet when it is just them. It is something he has been holding on to for longer than he has realised.

Vander hisses in a breath, one that so slowly morphs into a sigh. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Zaun.”

And then, suddenly, in a matter of a few short days, there are people where his home will be. He recognises some of them. Vander, of course, and Vi and her brothers. And someone he recognises to be a much younger Sevika. Among them as well are faces he knows from the commune. Memories upon memories haunt his dreams every time he sees them, and he can only hope that there are differences in their lives that he will not ever know.

It takes them a long time, but it is time Viktor spends building more chambers and tending to the flowers. They grow and grow and grow, like there was never anything wrong with the soil or the air in the first place. The crystals shard need never be replaced, but the flowers must always be looked after.

Jayce sees the foundations of Viktor’s new home when he comes by to check on the water filtration system again. Routine maintenance and upgrades. He looks happy, but he almost always does, and he tells Viktor that Hextech is progressing fine. It is strange to not be working on it with him, like something is missing, but it sits in the same place in him as the hole does. And he knows that it is not Hextech he is truly longing for. It never was.

Viktor goes with him back to Piltover for a check up on his medication. He does another scan and learns soon after that the illness in his lungs is all but gone already. The doctors tell him that he’s lucky he caught it so early, it was simple to treat. They tell him that he’s in remission. It is not a word he ever expected to hear, but it sits heavy in the air anyway. He still needs to take his medications for a while longer, but he does not need to worry about his breathing.

It happened quicker than they expected, the doctors tell him, especially for someone primarily residing in the Undercity.

He wants to scream at them when he hears it. Instead, he nods and thinks only of the home he will soon have down there and the joy that spreads so slowly through the streets.

When he returns, alone, there are bright yellow flowers hanging inside the elevator.

If anything changes politically, he does not hear much about it. He knows that Piltover’s Council know about his flowers. Jayce has told him of the few conversations Heimerdinger has had with him regarding it. Jayce laughs about it and tells him of the frustration evident in the Professor’s voice. A gifted child, Heimerdinger had once said about him, more than his circumstances and smarter than the Undercity.

Someone destined to burn to nothing before they’d ever gotten started.

Viktor remembers every word the man has ever said, and he hates all of them. There is almost too much satisfaction in him not only at the fact that he will live, but that he has done more on his own than Heimerdinger ever expected of him. A diamond in the rough he may be, but Heimerdinger had never thought he would be more than an assistant.

Still, the Council does not come down to the Undercity to see him. Heimerdinger ignores his existence they way he had since Viktor put in his resignation. If they ask about the flowers more than a handful of conversation with Jayce, then he does not hear about it. Vander does not tell him anything either, but he can feel the change in the air. He can feel the hope that comes with the ability to breathe.

Things will be better; he will be there to see it.

He hopes sometimes, in the dead of night, rolling on the tiny bed in an attempt to get comfortable, that Heimerdinger fumes over the fact that he doubted Viktor so often. He hopes he regrets so many things.

Viktor keeps these thoughts to himself and watches as construction of the house continues. The people who come by to help thank him for his work, tell him that they haven’t breathed so easily in a long time. Some of them take more chambers home, to friends or family or workplaces. The flowers spread and spread and spread, further than he ever thought possible, until they touch every corner of the Undercity. They live in the fissures, the one place he dreamed they would be, and they convert the noxious gas before it ever dares reach the mouths of the people who still live down there.

Before he knows it, his home is built and standing tall in the place Ambessa Medarda once stayed—once destroyed his commune for her own selfish gain—and he moves his belongings and work in with the help of Vander and Vi and Jayce.

The flower cuttings sit pretty in his new workspace, and the window above the workbench provides a view of his field. It’s small, his new home, exactly as he wanted it, and it’s perfect. He can see Zaun in the very shape of the rooms and the slant of the room, the mixture of materials and textures used to make it. He can see himself in the belongings that so quickly scatter the space—the clothes and the spare cane, the furniture and knickknacks he took from his apartment in Piltover, the books he has read a hundred times and the ones he bought from Benzo. It is his and his alone—and it is Zaun.

They throw a housewarming for him, Vander and his family. It is a strange thing, not something he is at all used to, but he cannot say no to them, not when Powder asks so politely. It’s small, nothing more than Vander and his family, Benzo and Ekko, and Jayce.

They laugh and they drink and Viktor eventually finds himself sprawled across his new couch with a pain settling in the muscles of his calf, but he cannot find it in him to care, not when he is surrounded by so many people who care about him. He did not have this in his own world. There was no one outside of Jayce who truly saw him for who he was.

It hurts that it can only happen here, like this. But he lets himself be as happy as he can. The hole within him burns when they eventually leave him to the silence of his new home. His Jayce should have been there. His Jayce should have seen this—the joy and the care and the understanding.

It is what they had always dreamed of.

He works and he works and he works. The flowers flourish and he writes up plans to expand the field for crops. He still has a stash of crystal shards, but the number will dwindle quickly, and Jayce has grown busier and busier. It will take time, but the thought of it doesn’t worry him anymore. It will be done when it is done, the flowers are still his priority. They will be for many years to come.

So, he works. He builds his chambers and tends to his flowers, and he watches people walk through the field. Vander comes and tells him that there is an abandoned factory that can be fitted out to build more chambers quickly, ones that can be brought to him to fit the plants into. There are people out there who will build one for themselves as payment for their work. It is a system that will work.

And then, in the dead of night long after the start and the end of it all, Viktor realises that it has been almost two years.

He sobs into his pillow, pain in his legs and his back and his heart. Two years of this. Two years of being both alone and surrounded by people. Two years of mourning a man he has loved almost from the moment he met him.

Two years and many more to come. Viktor isn’t sure he is ready for it.

~*~

It is a quiet day, a slow day. Viktor takes a few cuttings from one of the younger rows of flowers, placing them gently in the trolley he lugs behind him. A gift from Benzo, adorned with the wonky and wonderful art of Powder. The little faces she has drawn on the metal make him smile whenever he looks at them.

He breathes in, smells the freshness in the air, and closes his eyes for a few long seconds. There is no one else around and the quiet is comforting after so many days of being surrounded by people. Vander and his little crew, constantly bringing him chambers. Visitors, longing for the freshness that surrounds him. His only company is the flowers. Right now, that’s all he needs.

Behind him are the metal arches. He still will not stand under them. He doesn’t think he ever will. Too many memories. Too many mistakes. But they are a good reminder.

Viktor opens his eyes an unknowable number of minutes later. Nothing has changed. There is only the flowers and the dull sunlight and the Vi and Powder’s old home in the distance. He walks towards it. There are still a handful of jars and other materials scattered in there that he has been procrastinating on picking up. Now is as good a time as any.

There’s a calmness washing over him as he wheels the cart down the small hill towards the decrepit little building that had so temporarily been his home. It is so all encompassing that he doesn’t hear the pounding footsteps echoing around the chasm leading to his field until he is halfway down the hill.

He stops and takes a deep breath to steel himself. In all the time he’s been here (almost two years, a terrible part of his mind reminds him), he has not heard such urgency. Not since his own hurried run through Piltover to find Jayce.

Worst case scenarios run through his mind. Vander, coming to tell him that something terrible has gone amiss with the flowers. Powder or Ekko, panicking at a sudden enforcer presence in Zaun. Anyone, revealing that something terrible had gone wrong in the world. Or Jayce, telling him that Hextech had failed.

Or been approved.

He slows to a stop as the footsteps grow louder, louder, louder, and then suddenly silence. There, standing by Vi and Powder’s—and his—old home, is Jayce. Even at such at distance, Viktor can see his chest heave as he skids to a stop in the dirt. They stare at each other across the field, Jayce framed by grey brick, Viktor by the yellow waving in the breeze.

“Jayce?” Viktor says, but he knows he’s too far away to be heard. But he can’t help it, because there’s something hovering around him. Something like the blue electricity of Hextech. Something like the stars and the universe and the blinding white of their bodies in the astral plane of the Arcane. Something mystical and wonderful and only seen when Viktor had been sure he was about to die.

It is not something he should ever see on this Jayce.

The realisation comes slowly, too slowly. It doesn’t sink in until Jayce is already running towards him, scrabbling across dirt and loose stones. He doesn’t move, knees locked and his fingers stiff against the handle of his cane, even as Jayce runs and runs and runs. His eyes are wide, his hair plastered to his forehead and Viktor’s name on his lips.

And Viktor knows. There is no one else this can be. His Jayce.

The handle of the cart falls from his grip, and he takes a few fumbling steps forward. His mind is a rush, his legs moving without his control and struggling as a result. But Jayce is there, barely a few feet away, arms outstretched to catch him.

The Arcane flows around him like a halo, the infinite universe stretched through the empty air. If Viktor looks close enough, he can see the Jayce that was with him in the astral plane, hair and body white, fingerprints on his forehead, longing in his eyes.

And then he’s stumbling, falling to the ground. It’s quick, not even a second, and then strong arms wrap so tight around him before he can land. Jayce is warm in his arms, the prickle of electricity sharp against his fingertips.

“Jayce?” he says again. He can’t help it.

It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. How he came to be in this universe, or how Jayce is here now so many months later. But he can’t deny it. He knows without a doubt that this is his Jayce. There is no one else this could possibly be.

There’s a hand on the back of his neck, tugging him up. He grabs for it, wraps his fingers around a solid wrist, and knows that this is the same position they were in so long ago. But their foreheads do not press together. Viktor opens his eyes, and there’s Jayce. His form shifts between soul and body, white ethereality and the solidity of clothes and skin. Underneath the magic and the universe is the Jayce he has spent almost two years getting to know. There are tears in his eyes and a flush to his cheeks, and Viktor does not understand.

“We’re alive,” Jayce hisses. Laughter bubbles from him, near hysterical. “We’re alive! I didn’t think—I thought—we were supposed to finish it.”

Viktor cannot speak. The more he looks into Jayce’s eyes—his Jayce—the more he realises. Jayce’s last memories are that of the astral plane, are that of holding Viktor close and believing they would die. Viktor has had two years to come of holding onto that knowledge and understanding it, but here is Jayce, and he is struggling.

“We did,” Viktor whispers. “It’s finished. This is somewhere new, somewhere safe.”

And it is. He has made it safe, almost like he was preparing for this.

Jayce stares at him, eyes darting over each part of his face like he’s trying to memorise it. For him, it wasn’t so long ago that they faced each other like this, hundreds of souls floating in the aether around them and the power of the Arcane in their joined hands. Viktor had known then that Jayce loved him, had always loved him, and that Jayce knew his feelings were returned. He had been ready to die like that, content with the knowledge and the feeling of Jayce around him. Content with the Zaunite promise of love and affection given to him at the very last minute.

And then he hadn’t died, and Jayce was still gone. But he’s here now, despite how impossible this feels, and they love each other. They have always loved each other. He can see it settling in Jayce’s face, the knowledge and what it means for them. This is the last thing Jayce remembers, despite the fear that would have been coursing through him.

Living means something new. Living means making up for the mistakes of the past. Living means leaving regrets behind. Viktor can see Jayce realise this in a matter of seconds. Two years of progress for Viktor over in the few short seconds Jayce stares at his face.

“Viktor,” Jayce say, like he’s in awe of him.

The hand on the back of his neck shifts to cup his cheek, thumb rubbing under his eye. He leans forward, and Viktor can’t help but meet him in the middle, even though his mind has yet to catch up with the fact that Jayce is here. And then they’re kissing. It’s a soft and gentle thing, nothing more than a desperate press of lips, and Viktor can feel wetness on his cheeks. Tears. He’s crying. He can’t stop it.

As quickly as it started, they’re pulling away from each other. Jayce stares at him again, and there is so much hope and sadness in his eyes. For him, the cave and the other universe and the Herald were not so long ago. He has not yet come to terms with any of it, but he will not be alone for it. He can see it in his eyes, so many memories, so much pain. But Viktor will be there. Viktor will look after him.

He kisses him again. He can’t help it.

He kisses him again and again and again. This thing he was never supposed to have. This man he had believed was dead for months and months, simply had not travelled to him yet. A gift from the Arcane. He can feel it whispering all around them, rewarding him, flowing between them like it had two years ago..

“I’ve missed you,” he whispers against Jayce’s lips. “I longed for you.”

“I love you,” Jayce replies. He kisses Viktor’s lips and cheeks and forehead. “I should have said it back—back there, but there wasn’t time. I love you, Viktor. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The words are wonderful and terrible, and Viktor leans back to hold Jayce face in one cold hand. “Why are you apologising?” he asks. “My choices were my own, in the end.”

“You would not have made them if not for me,” Jayce tells him, straight and to the point, so very angry with himself. It does not escape Viktor’s notice that this is the second Jayce he is now years ahead of. Like so many things, it is not fair. But these conversations are ones he has never had before.

It is a truth Viktor cannot deny, and he will not try to. “That may be the case,” he says. He makes sure his voice is soft. He does not want to hurt Jayce more than the man has already hurt himself. “But I forgive you. I forgave you while you were gone. And I forgave you still while I was here.”

“While you were here? Viktor—”

But Viktor simply kisses him again, long and slow and desperate. He does not think he could ever let him go again, does not think he could ever get used to be able to touch. Years of denying himself, in his universe and this one. His hands shake with the potential.

“Come with me,” he says when he pulls away, his eyes still closed. His hand drops down to grab Jayce’s. “Let me show you what I have made for myself.”

It is easy to pull Jayce along with him, like he had in the commune with the body of a child. They follow an opposite path, past all the flowers and beyond where the commune had once been. Jayce does not say a word, but Viktor can hear him breathing, and it is the most wonderful sound he has ever heard.

It almost feels like a dream, but the warmth of Jayce’s hand in his can’t be anything but real. After all this time, he has gotten Jayce back. After almost two years of mourning and making up for everything he has done, the Arcane has decided to thank him.

His home is quiet when they return. Jayce still does not speak, but when Viktor looks over his shoulder at him there is a sense of wonder in his eyes. He stares at everything, gaze moving from one thing to the next like he’s not quite sure what the focus on. And when he sees Viktor looking, he smiles, small and tentative. It is nothing like the grins he once had. It aches, but it is an ache that will heal.

It is no longer a hole that will never fill.

“This universe is so much nicer than… than the other one.”

Jayce’s voice is so quiet. He remembers it being passionate, booming, even to the very last moment, but now it is quiet, like speaking takes more effort than it should. Viktor longs to apologise, but it would only be hypocritical. He already knows that he is forgiven. He has known it for almost two years.

“I know,” he says instead, and he pulls Jayce through the doorway. “Things are better here, I promise.”

They stand in the middle of Viktor’s dining room, staring at each other in silence. Viktor can’t help but be in awe of the way the Arcane flows around them both, visible only to each other, and he knows he looks the way he did when he was with Sky, with the Hexcore. He wonders, briefly, if Jayce thinks he’s beautiful, and he knows already that he does.

Beauty in imperfections, and he is made of them.

There feels like so much to say and yet, nothing at all. They’ve already said enough, haven’t they? They love each other, they saved each other. They were supposed to die together in the infinite embrace of the Arcane, but they’re here, together, given another chance to live.

And Viktor has missed him more than he can ever say.

He kisses Jayce with a fervour neither of them expects, and relishes in the way Jayce moans against his mouth. His cane clatters to the ground, but he does not need it, not now. The pain in his leg will not stop him from running his hands up Jayce’s sides, tugging him with insistent hands towards the small bedroom, and pushing him down onto the bed.

Jayce holds him like he’s something precious, undresses him slow and careful, and presses gentle kisses to each patch of skin he reveals. There’s no back brace in the way, just the flushed and healthy expanse of Viktor’s torso, scars under his pecs proudly on display. Jayce kisses each of them and looks up with Viktor with awe-filled eyes.

“I love you,” Viktor whispers, and he pushes at Jayce until he lies flat on his back. Their clothes land in a pile on the floor next to the bed, and Viktor wonders briefly if they should slow down, if they should talk more about this, but he has been waiting for years. He wants, more than anything.

Jayce’s fingers are warm when they slide into him, Viktor’s wetness easing the way. Viktor props himself up, one hand splayed across Jayce’s chest, and presses back against his fingers. Moans fill the air, and Viktor can feel Jayce’s hard cock against him.

Jayce is beautiful below him, hard and needy. He pulls his fingers out when Viktor’s trembling, his hands find purchase on Viktor’s hips, guiding him ever closer. Viktor rides him until they’re both panting, breathing into each other’s mouth and whispering names amid groans. He feels full, Jayce so big inside him, and he can’t stop leaving wet kisses against his neck and chest.

All the while the Arcane buzzes and thrums around them. They are made of it, he can see that now. He has been made of it since long before he came here. It pulses through them, part of their souls, tying them together.

His leg aches, but the pain feels distant. Jayce’s hands on his are like a brand, burning against his skin, clutching tighter and tighter the closer he gets. Neither of them will last long; Viktor can feel it building deep in his gut, but they will have many more chances for this. All he wants right now is to be as close to Jayce as he possibly can.

Jayce runs a hand through his hair, using the other to move Viktor faster and faster against him, taking over when Viktor’s legs grow sore and tired. He’s beautiful, and Viktor says as much against his jaw. And then the hand on his hip is moving to the core of him.

Viktor shakes apart only a few seconds later, trembling with the aftershocks, thighs bracketing Jayce’s hips. He doesn’t pull away, but he does move slower, luxuriating in the feeling of Jayce in and around him. It doesn’t take much longer for Jayce to follow, spilling inside him with a twitch of his hips and a moan of Viktor’s name.

In the silence after, Viktor lies atop Jayce, his head pillowed on his chest. He listens to his heartbeat, feeling the rise and fall of every breath. He knows that somewhere deep down in that mind and body is the Jayce of this universe, just like the Viktor that once was in somewhere in his own. Guilt sits like nausea in his stomach. The Jayce of this universe was kind to him, helped him when he had no reason to, but he was never his Jayce.

He can only hope that wherever he is in the body, he’s happy and safe. The Arcane will be kind to him, to both of them. He can feel it.

Jayce presses a kiss to the top of his head, fingers running through the long strands of his hair. “There’s Hextech everywhere,” Jayce whispers. He sounds scared. Viktor doesn’t remember hearing him sound like that ever, not even when they were face to face in the Hexgates. There, he had been only determined. “It’s all through the Undercity. I could see it, like I can see you. I don’t… Do you think we can get rid of it all?”

Oh, Jayce. Viktor hasn’t made it clear. Jayce doesn’t know just how long he has been here.

So Viktor tells him. It takes longer than he expects to recount almost two years of his life. He tells him about arriving, about finding his counterpart, about going down the Undercity and finding the field and everything that came after. Jayce interrupts, at the start, the moment he learns just how long Viktor has been here. He’s distraught, apologetic, but Viktor silences him with a single look.

And then he continues, going over his decisions in the Undercity, making the first cuttings and reaching out to Jayce. And then everything else, all of it, not a single thing spared.

“It was sweet,” he says at one point, after telling Jayce the single ill-advised almost kiss. “Knowing that you love me in every universe.”

“I would,” Jayce replies. It is so painfully true that they spend more than a few minutes in silence.

“And I, you,” Viktor whispers, running his hand down Jayce’s chest. “But only this version of you.”

They share another kiss as the field slowly darkens around them.

And then Viktor tells him all the rest. He doesn’t look in Jayce’s eye, staring at the pale wall of his bedroom instead. He is not ashamed or guilty for what he has done, but there is a sudden sense that his choices would not be the ones Jayce would have made after everything they had done, no matter how much better the world is for it.

“I… I am careful. I can feel the Arcane,” he says at the end of it. “There’s no blood, no shimmer, only the earth and ground. Everything is natural. The Arcane prefers that. I will not let anything happen to it. I know better now. Believe me, Jayce, there is nothing inherently wrong with Hextech, only with us and the way we used it. We will be better. I have been better.”

For a while, Jayce says nothing. Viktor feels him breathe, long and stuttering. “Two years,” he says eventually.

“I thought you were dead,” he says. He’d said it earlier, but it feels important to repeat, like a justification.

Jayce pulls him closer, as if that were possible. “I thought it would put us here at the same time,” he whispers. “I’m sorry you had to wait so long for me.”

Viktor doesn’t say he’s not. He doesn’t want to lie. It had been agony some days, believing he was alone in the knowledge of everything they had done. Instead, he pulls himself up so that he’s face to face with Jayce. “You’re here now,” he says.

Jayce smiles, and there’s a months old ache in his eyes. Their lives were never what they should have been, but they’ve been given this chance, and finally, Jayce is here with him. They can live out the rest of their lives without fear of what the world will turn into. They can simply live and be happy.

And deep down, that is what Viktor has always wanted.

“Will you show me your flowers?” Jayce asks. He kisses Viktor’s cheeks, looking at him like he can’t believe he gets to have it. Viktor almost can’t believe it either, some tiny part of him convinced that he will wake up from a wonderful dream, but it all feels so real. “I want to see what you’ve made.”

Viktor hums and falls back against him, smiling at the way Jayce tightens his grip again. There’s so much to show him, so much they have done. And so much they will do now, together. “Rest first,” he replies. “And then I’ll show you everything.”