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I don’t remember what my father used to sound like.
I don’t, either.
I remember that he hated sweet stuff. And he loved showing me the forge on every occasion he had.
Maybe that is what truly matters remembering.
There is a stain on the kitchen wall that doesn’t seem to go away.
Ximena Talis tries to get rid of it every day, of course she does. It sits next to Tiberius’ picture, one she herself had taken during their honeymoon. The cream-colored wall seems to twist around it—it’s ugly, a dark thing that appears to always sit at the edge of her vision. She scrubs at it with soap after she leaves her dishes in the sink; soaks it in a baking powder solution that doesn’t seem to dent it at all.
She recalls that the stain had been there for a long time, even before the everything that had transpired. It didn’t bother her back then. For a reason she is not interested in discovering, it does now.
It is morning, and light is filtering lazily through the halfway-shut blinds on her windows. Ximena walks through the hallway, pressing a kiss on her index and middle fingers, and then touching them on another picture of Tiberius that is placed on the wall. He stares at her with crinkled laugh lines next to his eyes, holding a smiling little boy that is looking at him as if he hung the stars.
It’s always been one of her favorite pictures. The paper is slightly faded, from all the times she has greeted him good morning with a press of her fingertips.
She passes the living room, giving a half-hearted glance to the perfectly stacked blankets on the couch. She can’t remember the last time she sat on it.
(Before, she used to complain about how it was way too soft for her old back. It seems so juvenile, now that she has no one to complain about it to.)
The kitchen is still. The air holds a collective breath inside it, despite the fact it is the room she uses the most. She passes through it, makes her breakfast, lunch, and dinner, cleans, scrubs the stains on the wall—yet nothing seems to change. Each and every time she enters it again, it is as if her presence had never been in it.
(She didn’t use it a lot, before. Perhaps the walls still remember that.)
Ximena grabs one of the mugs in the sink, stands next to the counter as orange flames heat up her handmade tea boiler. A logo, proudly showing off a T, stares at her from the boiler’s side. She looks at the ground instead.
Once her mug is filled to the brim with a flowery-scented tea, she slowly ambles back towards the living room.
(“Imported straight from Shurima,” he’d reassured her. Ximena had complained about the price. He’d waved her off, placing a hand on her shoulder, and he’d replied, “I don’t want you to miss home.”)
The stain on the wall stares at her as she leaves the room. A neighbor had tried giving her a suggestion, a few weeks ago—some warm water and vinegar, Ximena, it works wonders!—and she had replied she would try. She still has not. She suspects it would not work.
The living room’s only purpose is connecting the kitchen to the hallways, the hallways to the balcony. She’d spent lots of time in it before everything, knitting and mending up fabrics and clothes people would bring her. Ximena had not needed to work, of course—but sitting on her hands would simply drive her up a wall. He had teased her about it relentlessly, telling her, the need to use our hands runs in the family, with a golden grin.
Her sewing tools have been perched on the coffee table for months. She frowns at the slight layer of dust gathered on it, and decides she’ll clean it later.
She starts walking to the balcony, then—frowns. Stops.
Jayce’s room door is ajar.
She frowns, because she does not remember leaving it so. She frowns, because she is looking at it.
Ximena doesn’t go into his room often. At least, she does not think she does. Once or twice a day, at most—she used to enter it less, before, when she only had to clean it and keep it tidy in case he ever needed to sleep there. She still wants to keep it that way. She doesn’t know what for.
Her left hand reaches forward, detaching from its place curled around the steaming mug. Fingers graze the dark wood, pushing it timidly. As if seeing if it truly can move.
The hinges, of course, do not creak. Nothing in her house does.
(It was something he was so proud of.)
The air in his room is anything but still. The windows are shut, the door is always closed, and yet she can feel it shifting. The room seems to echo—with memories of drawers left open; notebooks being thrown on a desk hastily; sheets remaining unmade on the bed; posters being tacked on the walls with careful hands. She can see all those things happening, out of the corner of her eyes. When she turns towards them, only furniture greets her.
She feels herself take a step into the room, then another, and then one more, until she’s standing in front of a photograph attached to the wall. The smiling faces of the Hextech inventors stare at her—the picture had been carefully cut out from a newspaper on the day the Hexgates had been opened to the public. The headline had read Wonder Duo Creates Magic!, but Jayce had only cared about salvaging the image. He’d grabbed her scissors and traced it carefully, then put it in a frame, and hung it up with steady hands.
Ximena remembers his face, the moment he had done so. He’d looked proud, gleeful, incredulous, taken. And she had looked in the exact same way at him.
She glances at the Jayce in the picture, and has to suppress a chuckle. His smile is strained, the bags under his eyes only rivaled by the ones on his partner’s face. They both hadn’t slept a wink in the weeks leading up to the inauguration, she remembers it clearly: she had resorted to bringing them food whenever she could, warm soups and quick sandwiches they could scarf down between one miracle and the other.
Jayce hadn’t cared about how he had looked in the image. It was one of the last times he felt that way. He’d looked at it, and said, “You know, V threw up on my shoes before getting on stage. He does that a lot,” as if that had been the most important thing that had happened that day.
Ximena had laughed, and put a hand on his cheek. Pressed a kiss to his brow.
She had never outwardly told him she is regretful for what she had felt the day he managed to create Hextech. She thinks of the council threatening to banish him, to send him away from the place she had put him through hell to get to—and she cannot find it in herself to feel sorry for the things she had told them. They saved him, kept him in Piltover, and in the end, he managed to prove her wrong. She is not sorry for stepping in, no—she is sorry for having stopped believing in him in the first place.
Ximena whispers this, sometimes, to the picture hanging on the wall. She tells him she is sorry. That she should have known better. That the horrors that transpired later do not negate the wonders he had created. She thanks the other, as well—Viktor, standing with Jayce’s hand on his shoulder, giving an uncertain grin to the camera that moreso looks like a sneer. She thanks him for giving his son an opportunity, for returning his purpose to him, for having been by his side where she couldn’t.
Jayce had returned, after that first time. When she thought he was gone, disappeared under the Hexgates. She’d waited, for months, while enforcers—while the Kiramman scion—told her they were looking for him in all places they could. Months of standing in his room, of sneaking behind enforcers to try and get to Zaun, to look for answers where they would give her none. But he’d returned.
Ximena knows, he was not well. Unrecognizable, a stranger in his own skin. She had asked him if he knew where Viktor was, after a while—she had tried looking for him, to no avail. Jayce had darkened, had told her he did not.
Ximena always knew when his son was lying.
She does not know what happened between the two partners, nor does she think she truly needs to. Jayce had reached out to her, the day before the Noxians truly attacked. Told her to evacuate, and then to remain locked in her home when she replied she would not. She had asked him to remain with her, he had replied he would not.
(“I need to talk to him,” he’d admitted in a whisper, as if he wanted to hide the words from himself, too. Ximena hadn’t needed to ask who he was referring to. “I just—I know that I can help him. I know I can…” he’d trailed off, then, stared at her with wide eyes. Hoping that his mother would know what he meant, understand how he felt, even before he did. A young boy’s principle, to find reassurance in the fact that mother always knew.)
Jayce had not returned. She knows that this time, he will not.
A harsh breath exhales from her lips. She presses a kiss to her fingertips, and places them on the two scientists. She’ll have to dust the room in the evening, make sure the bed is properly made.
When she turns away from the picture, she almost sees the two laugh between themselves in the corner of her eye. Animating the still image that will conserve them as they were, forever.
Her tea is still warm in her hand. She walks out of the room, softly closing the door—she leaves it ajar, in case the air inside wishes for more space to move in. It’s silly, she realizes. But Jayce never closed his door all the way.
Finally, she softly steps towards her balcony. Her footfalls make no sound, aside from a tap, tap, tap, that gets muffled on the carpet. The house seems to make more noise than she does.
The air outside is humid. It is not warm yet, the lazy dregs of winter still permeating the air and leaving no space for the budding beginnings of spring. It’ll come soon, perhaps a week—and yet for now, the sky is a pink-ish blue, tinged by the rays of the rising sun. Clouds streak the canvas, white lines that stretch on to infinity.
She always sits facing the docks. The city is still under repairs, and in the middle of it, standing above all else, rest the Hexgates. No one had touched them yet, afraid, after their lead engineers had both disappeared. The Kiramman girl had come to her, a few times, asking Ximena for her blessing: she wants to create a statue dedicated to them.
Ximena had replied she would think about it. The Kiramman girl had not pushed.
In the morning, she does not want to look at all of that. So she sits to the docks, where the Noxian ships had departed, where cargo and people show up every day. She likes imagining stories for all she sees—thinking of where they came from, why they got here. Tiberius used to do it with Jayce, and would purposefully come up with such unrealistic concepts that Jayce, in all his self-righteousness as an eight-year-old, would get angry and tell him what their stories actually were.
She does that too, now. Sometimes. A woman disembarks from a ship, holding a poro in her arms, and she thinks, she lost all her money to buy that poro, because she was told it was a magical creature that could make wishes come true. Then she realized she had been scammed, and now she’s trying to hunt down the man that sold it to her.
Ximena chuckles softly, and brings her mug to her lips. She and Jayce had explained the game to Viktor, once—one of the rare occasions he had agreed to have dinner at her house. Viktor had hummed, looked at the docks, and proclaimed: “That man is a shapeshifter.”
Jayce had told him that was not outrageous, because shapeshifters actually existed. Viktor had disagreed. Ximena had spent the next three hours listening to them argue, a fond smile on her lips.
The sun has almost finished setting. Ximena drinks another sip of her tea, and places it on the ledge of her balcony, resting her left hand upon it. She enjoys the sound her metallic fingers make when she taps on it: a soft clink, clink, that is pleasant to the ear.
Out of the corner of her eye, then, she sees it: a small, white butterfly, gleefully batting its wings and slowly coming towards her. When she turns to it, there it remains: it’s little, smaller than her palm, and seems to gracefully dance in the soft breeze that moves the last of the winter air around it.
Ximena holds her breath as it comes closer, and carefully places itself on her index finger. Perhaps it is fascinated by the ornate metal, perhaps it just needs a place to rest. Ximena doesn’t know, nor does she need to.
She watches with wide eyes and a careful smile on her lips, and softly says: “Hello.”
The butterfly moves its antennas up and down, and then gracefully bats its wings once more, and resumes its dance in the air. It moves in twists and turns, heading towards the docks.
Ximena watches it until it disappears, swallowed by the horizon.
Sometimes, I think all I can truly remember is the sound of your voice.
Always so dramatic.
It’s what is worth remembering.
…Mh. So it is.
Four weeks after the Noxian invasion, the bakery down the street re-opens.
Hector Noringway is walking to one of the massive aid tents to get food for him and his daughter when he sees it, and he does not know why it shocks him as it does.
He used to go weekly, before everything. An older lady ran it, accompanied by her son—Hector would buy fresh bread, make small chat, and continue on his day. It had not been insignificant, per se, but… unremarkable. A small part of his routine, something that simply was.
Four weeks after Piltover is irreparably changed, and a small shop returning is what does him in.
He stares at it for a good while, unmoving. People flow around the busy street, stepping on the uneven pavement—sections of it are still broken up, damaged and torn. The roads will probably be one the last things that gets fixed up.
Hector told his daughter he’d be gone for forty-five minutes, as he always does. There are always massive lines at the aid tents, despite all the volunteers that offer their help to smooth out the process. They are filled with people who push, beg, shout, cry. He had told himself he wouldn’t bring his daughter there, unless he could help it.
But surely, a little diversion wouldn't be the end of the world.
His feet are carrying him to the little shop before he realizes it.
It appears empty. No people are going in, or coming out of it—all the Piltovans are walking around it, not sparing it a single glance, too engrossed in talking, counting up money, carrying bags, or staring at the pavement. It gives Hector a strange feeling; he wonders, deliriously, if he is the only one that can see it. If the bakery is something out of time and space, a liminal illusion that exists only because he turned to look at that exact moment.
It’s ridiculous. It makes him shiver.
Surely more people should look at it, at least realize it’s there. He wants to grab the woman that passes him, ask her, Can you see it? Don’t you realize? It was there before. And now it’s back, but it’s not before anymore.
A little gangle of enforcers pass him, heading for the bridge. They’re carrying stacks of boxes with various labels, and he distantly realizes they’re part of the relief group that has been created for the Undercity. He has not bothered to ask more about it, he simply knows that every four days they send supplies over the bridge, to aid in the numerous reparations that are required.
The Ex-Councilor Medarda had been the one to announce it, along with the Kiramman heir. None of the enforcers look too thrilled about it.
Hector arrives at the bakery, stops in front of it. The little bell atop the door is probably still there, it will chime to signal his arrival, and the old woman behind the counter will greet him as she displays more pastries, and then shout “Boris! Clients!” to her son in the back of the shop. Hector will buy a cookie for his daughter, tell them “have a nice day,” and not think of them until the week after.
He breathes, opens the door. The bell chimes.
Only the son stands behind the counter.
Zeke pulls on his respirator with a grimace.
It’s tugging on his facial hair, pinching his skin and leaving marks all over his face. It’s too tight for him, he is aware, but it’s also the only one he was able to get his hands on, and he’ll take what he can get.
Doesn’t mean he won’t complain about it, of course.
He deftly weaves through a group of people loudly making demands to the latest group of enforcers the topsiders have sent. They’re trying to get a word in, but can’t quite manage to overpower the Zaunites’ brashness with their unflinching fake Piltovan politeness. Zeke sees their fingers clench and unclench over their belt, looking for batons they are not allowed to carry in their streets anymore.
It should be relieving. It mostly makes him feel hollow.
A woman next to him shouts, “What the fuck are we supposed to do with three crates of food? There’s thousands of us!”, and the crowd around her hollers a few yeah’s in agreement. The main enforcer, standing in front of the rest, looks at her with a gaze that clearly communicates his distaste.
“Ma’am,” he responds, “More will come in four days. As it’s been for the last two weeks.”
“It’s still not enough!” the woman replies, and her voice shakes. A few of the people around her pat her shoulders and back, spurring her on. “You think you’re helping, but you’re just doing the bare minimum to say you are!”
The enforcer’s eyes become even harder. Zeke can’t see his jaw, but it is probably clenched. “It’s what the Council has decided, ma’am. Of which now you people are a part of,” he replies, and his words become almost a hiss when he says you people.
The woman barks out a hollow laugh. “Please!” she scoffs, sarcasm dripping from it. “We all know electing her was to make us quiet. More subservient, no? They probably won’t let Sevika do shit! Just keep her there to make all the fucking Zaunites happy and sated.”
It’s the last straw. The enforcer’s eyes widen in anger, and he shouts, “You can make her fucking resign, if you’d prefer!” and the crowd erupts.
The enforcers have respirators. They’re glinting, polished to perfection. Zeke tugs on his own again, and trudges on.
The respirators have become a necessity for Zaunites as well, at least when walking down the main district—which is where most people are. Ever since the Last Drop had gone up in flames, the fumes of the roaring fire had mixed with the already chemical-filled air, and created a thick blanket that still refuses to leave the area. It’s nauseating, dangerous, and even more problems atop the ones Zeke already has.
Children run past him, carrying bags of what he presumes is food, judging by the desperation with which they’re clutching them. One of them almost trips, bumps into Zeke, and shoots him a dirty glare—as if the fault is his, for daring to walk down the street. It makes Zeke exhale a laugh.
Despite the dangerous air and the enforcers’ word of advice to remain home to stay safe, all the streets are filled. People loudly advertise their wares, even offer things for free, and those booths are the more swarmed ones. A group of teenagers with masks, Firelights, are the ones with the most people around. They’re handing out bottles, offering to repair broken respirators.
Zeke’s eyes wander to the wall behind them. There is graffiti there, painted with clearly talented hands. It reads ACCEPT THE HERALD, BE HELPED, and shows a tall figure with a cane. His face has been covered with unintelligible scribbles.
He surpasses the mass of people by the Firelights, and heads more towards the site of the fire, where the Last Drop used to stand. People are less likely to come this close—some refuse because of the danger, some out of a sense of emotional attachment to how important the place used to be.
Zeke doesn’t really care. He had only gone to the Last Drop once, in his twenty-four years of life, and never felt any particular way about it.
Some others, like him, have taken to doing what is necessary. The remains of the place had mostly been ashes, of course, but some valuables could still be found—unopened safes that made it through the blazing inferno, coins that had managed not to melt, bottles, music discs. And people have, of course, not let them go to waste.
Perhaps what he does is ugly. Robbing a place that had gone up in flames isn’t good, per-se. He doesn’t think the other Zaunites care, not if it means surviving one more day. He never knew the proprietor of the bar, or even the one before him, but if they were half the Zaunites people paint them to be, then they would not fault him or anybody else for what they do.
He arrives at the remains of the Last Drop, and squints against the pungent air around. He tightens the respirator even more against his face, and resigns himself to how much his brother will make fun of him for the marks he’ll surely have.
His gaze moves up, following some of the piping that had remained intact. It’s completely black, jutting up in thin lines that climb towards the sky, like all the buildings around. Always trying to move away. To distance themselves.
The Last Drop being gone opened up a portion of the horizon, and Zeke is able to see part of Piltover from where he stands. All the buildings are shining, as golden as they’ve ever been. The Hexgates are, in part, destroyed. He never cared about them when they were functional, much less now.
The Council building stands tall. It’s been rebuilt to perfection. Its windows are polished, colorful, and reflect the sun’s rays. Its golden archways are a marvel to behold, climbing up, up, towards a perfect roof. It’s as if nothing had ever happened to it.
Zeke sighs, moves his eyes away. Gazes back at the ashes of the Last Drop. He tells himself he’ll look for something valuable enough to get his brother the doll he wanted.
For a while, though, he just stares. Wonders if the owners had liked to polish the windows, too.
Sometimes I wonder if anything at all will change.
People always do, V.
For the better, or for the worse?
Ha, I don’t know. No one does. That’s the fun part.
There is a soft breeze wafting through the air, and Caitlyn thinks it annoying.
Many things she previously hadn’t minded—or even enjoyed—are now more difficult to stand, ever since the loss of her left eye. Sensations are heightened, yet dulled; certain actions that had been a given simply are not anymore. The eyepatch she wears for convenience’s sake (and that Vi has grown fond of) itches after she sweats under it, which the breezy air only accentuates.
Caitlyn forces her mind to halt the complaining. She closes her eye, and inhales deeply.
The light wind might be irritating, yet the things it produces are not. The countless violet petals around twirl in the air, creating an entrancing dance that feels weightless. Swirling patterns, pirouettes and dips. She can hear the melodious music her mother always had a penchant for listening to in the background, directing their light movements.
Filtering through them, the sun’s rays reflect in the pond ahead. She’d specifically requested for the statue to be built there—in front of the water, its bronze creating ripples and twin images on the crystalline surface. As the sun sets, it is absolutely enthralling. Petals keep dipping on the water, residing there without breaking the surface tension.
The statue’s silhouette is warped and distorted as its shapes contort on the water, but Caitlyn would know its shape anywhere: after months of scrapped concepts, builds and rebuilds, she can perfectly trace the imposing yet soft figure of the Man of Progress blind.
Jayce’s figure is as striking as the public saw him. Tall, with wide shoulders, his coat fluttering in the wind in a spectacle of bronze. And yet, Caitlyn can see the influence her meddling had on the final result. Instead of looking defiant, staring at the horizon with a confident smirk he’d learnt to paint on for the public, the true Defender of Tomorrow the people knew, the statue is holding in his left hand an Hextech Gem. His gaze is on that: soft, awestruck, still the young man that would ramble endlessly about the beauty that resides in the Arcane.
(She doesn’t like to think about how hollow his eyes had felt, those last few days. His features had been twisted in an approximation of determination—an hollow caricature of it, she had thought grimly. Caitlyn hadn’t known how to approach him. Nobody had.)
(She thinks she will regret it for her entire life.)
At Jayce’s right side stands a small desk, covered in faux-blueprints, measuring tools, and a blacksmith’s hammer. And Jayce’s own right hand is poised atop the desk, right next to where a walking crutch is leaning.
Caitlyn had insisted—to put it mildly—for Viktor to be commemorated as well, for the statue to be in remembrance of the Men of Progress. And the new Council had refused to make the proposal even leave the room, despite her and the Ex-Councillor Medarda’s pushing. Councillor Shoola had been the only somewhat sympathetic one: she had actually listened to Caitlyn’s pleas, for once, and she had been the only remaining Council member that had even known Jayce and Viktor.
Her soft, curated words still had their usual steel edge, of course. Caitlyn could tell she had already made her mind up, even while entertaining her proposal. And, in the back of her mind, she does understand. Most people had not bothered to learn another half of Hextech even existed when Viktor was simply a scientist—they simply know him as the being that almost ended the entirety of the cities. Think of how the public would react, a new Councillor had replied, seeing a second figure standing there, looking into who he was, and realizing he’s the one that murdered a loved one of theirs. No. Absolutely not.
Councillor Sevika had looked at her with pure, unfiltered contempt all the times Caitlyn stepped in front of the Council. As soon as the vote had been opened, she had refused.
(She understands that, too.)
And so, a compromise had been reached. Viktor’s crutch, the one constructed by Jayce himself, leaning next to him. One of his fingers brushing the handle delicately.
I’m sorry, she still thinks each time she sees it. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.
She imagines Jayce swatting her on the back of the head. Viktor barely glancing at her, muttering that he doesn’t even care. The thought pulls her lips up.
Caitlyn sits on the circular brass base of the statue, and the breeze moves her hair to and fro. She lowers her eye, and stills it on the small drawing painted on the base, next to her legs: a neon pink stylized monkey. The hands that made it had been clearly trying to replicate a style they are not used to, much shakier and unsure than the ones of the original author. But, Caitlyn knows, it’s the thought that counts.
(Oh, she thought the Council would be livid at Vi. She got the proof, very quickly, that none of them had even visited the statue since its unveiling, since none of them ever brought it up.)
(Only Councillor Sevika had, Vi had told her. Nothing more than a nod and a pat on the back, but still.)
The pink doodle has little marks next to it, now—small drawings in blues and yellows and greens and purples, done by different hands. She’s never seen anybody actually draw them, so perhaps the Zaunites use the cover of night. Nevertheless, Vi smiles each time she sees a new one.
It’s then that a voice pipes up from behind her.
“Sorry ‘bout the wait, captain,” Vi greets, and Caitlyn doesn’t bother suppressing her eyeroll. Her lips tick upwards.
“Apology not accepted,” she replies as Vi basically falls seated beside her. “I ought to have you scrub the entire deck for your lateness.”
Caitlyn has accepted that leaning into Vi’s pirate jokes is her best course of action. They do not seem to have any intention of stopping.
At her remark, Vi groans theatrically. “Again?!” she exclaims, and a snort escapes Caitlyn at the absolute vexation in her tone.
They dissolve in soft giggles, ones that taper out naturally as they both resume staring at the pond ahead of them. The violet petals initiate a new ballet routine, and her mother changes the music in the background. Caitlyn thinks of the ridiculous way she’d bob her head when she put on a more “exciting” vinyl. Ooh, this one has more movement to it, she’d say, don’t you think, Caitlyn?
Next to her, Vi exhales loudly and leans her head on Caitlyn’s shoulder. One of her fingers traces the pink doodle next to them, going over the shape of the teeth, the circular eyes. “They looked so simple,” she mumbles, “And when I tried making it, I almost lost my shit.”
Caitlyn huffs out a breath that resembles a laugh. “It came naturally to her,” she replies. She’s not going for comfort, not now. They both know comfort is not what they’re after, when they are here.
“I guess, yeah,” Vi agrees, and then falls silent in that way that means she is thinking of something to share. Caitlyn waits, knowing it’ll come.
“I used to call her my little mouse, you know?” she finally admits, her voice soft. “Before… everything. Back when she was Powder.” Her voice doesn’t break on that name, anymore—and Caitlyn doesn’t know how to tell her how infinitely proud she is.
“Really?” she hums, moreso a prod than a real question.
“Yeah,” Vi affirms, her voice becoming livelier. “She was so small—well, compared to me. And her face was, like, all soft, and her cheeks were super round.” A soft laugh. “And she used to basically squeak when I tickled her. Then, when she started building her inventions, she decorated the first ones with doodles of mice and rats.” Her gaze is still on the pond, her fingers caressing the drawing of the monkey. “She’d paint them all blue. And tell me they were her, uh, explody-fun alter-ego.”
At that, Caitlyn snorts. “That does sound like her.”
Vi hums affirmatively, taking one of Caitlyn’s hands with the one not on the doodle.
A few minutes pass in silence, with both of them enjoying the petals’ performance. The surface of the lake is still utterly still, the breeze not intense enough for it to become disruptive. Caitlyn’s eye itches, she ignores it.
She doesn’t know why that particular memory comes to her, then. It simply does. There probably isn’t a reason, she thinks, much like it happened to Vi. She only knows that she opens her mouth, and asks: “There’s a bedside table in my old bedroom. Do you remember it?”
Vi hums to show that she is listening, but doesn’t take her eyes away from the lake. She thinks about the question, and then shakes her head. Caitlyn understands, she’d been in her old room a few times, and a tiny bedside table certainly wasn’t important enough to remember.
“It has a beveled corner,” she starts. “It’s been that way for years. More than a decade, probably. I can’t really remember when it happened.
“I had been five, perhaps six, and was spending my afternoon by jumping on the bed. I felt… light, weightless. Then, ah, I think my foot landed in the wrong way, or maybe I lost my balance, or maybe it was something else entirely, but—I slipped, and my head landed directly onto the corner of the little table with a crack.
"Later, while I was sobbing uncontrollably, my father was dabbing at my forehead with a damp cloth. And my mother told me, you have to be more careful, Cait. See what happens? Don’t do that again. She sounded worried, I think. It’s not like I realized it, at the time.
“As soon the door closed behind her, I just started jumping again.”
An undignified laugh snorts out of Vi. Her wide frame shakes with it, and Caitlyn can’t help but be pulled into it, as well.
“Now that definitely sounds like you,” she teases, and Caitlyn rolls her eye sarcastically.
“Ha-ha,” she fake-laughs, and then breathes a bit before continuing. “The point is, it’s been beveled for years. And no-one, not even my parents, really even noticed.”
Caitlyn follows a petal as it lowers on the pond. It remains seated there as countless others still swirl around it, and she can’t help but imagine it as a small orchestra conductor. “The first year I met Jayce, I brought him to my room to show him all the sharpshooting prizes I had won. I wanted to boast.”
Next to her, Vi chuckles softly, not enough to interrupt her. “He was all prim and proper. He was terrified of displeasing my mother in any way. He walked around the room all stiff, and I could see the moments he remembered to act politely, because his back would straighten from the natural slouched position he had.”
She shakes her head fondly, a smile tinging her words. “As soon as he got to the prizes I had on my bedside table, he said, ‘this thing is broken, have you noticed?’ and I was so shocked that I didn’t even respond. He misunderstood my shock for disdain, because he paled and started spluttering, ‘or maybe it was made that way! I’m sorry, I don’t know much about design and stuff. Sorry.’”
Caitlyn finally dissolves into giggles as she remembers the truly ridiculous figure Jayce had made. He was already so tall and large for his age, yet he’d always looked small and meek. At least to her, and at least in the beginning.
“He was always so observant,” she finishes. “He knew what I was thinking even before me, sometimes.”
Finally, a sigh. The first one of their conversation that is tinged in pure, unfiltered regret. “I couldn’t even do that for him,” she admits, remembering his hollow eyes before the battle at the Hexgates. How none of his words had seemed true, to the point he himself probably did not know what he had wanted. Caitlyn had seen all of that, and had told herself, I will talk to him after everything.
(She thinks part of her had known there would not be an after. She doesn’t know what that says about her.)
Vi doesn’t comfort her, because she knows Caitlyn does not want comfort. She intertwines their fingers, and tilts her head to press a soft kiss to Caitlyn’s cheek, under her eye. She doesn’t say anything else, because she doesn’t need to.
They stare at the violet petals as they continue to dance. The sun’s rays glint on the statue behind her, the brass becoming warm and pleasant to the touch, and Caitlyn can’t help but think they had chosen the perfect material for it.
Do you have any regrets?
Too many to mention. But you are not one of them.
All lies still.
It has for a long time. Years, decades, if those mattered at all—why should one keep count, when there was nothing to keep count for? People, places, stories.
The mage heaves himself atop the ruins, next to the statue of its protector.
The destroyed Hexgates still stand, somehow. He’d thought of it as taunting, at first. The only thing he’d wanted to fall, after the solitude set in, after the realization came, still stood. Unflinching and unmoving. Protected.
(It felt fitting. Why should he get what he wants, he’d reasoned: the one time he did, the world collapsed.)
Weird flora covers the golden metal. He’d spent years studying it closely, fascinated by its qualities. It resembled deep sea plants, mosses, barely-alive vegetation that grew in numerous colors. Staring at it for too long made him think of dark skin and curly hair, of thin glasses and research ended too soon.
The tempest that surrounds the Gates is never ending. It swirls, rumbles, rages on, yet remains away. He doesn’t know why. If he tried hard enough, he’d be able to figure it out, but he likes imagining it is simply because of the immense will of the statue guarding them. A last frontier.
Despite the storm, despite the foliage, despite the dragonflies fluttering around, all lies still. The air doesn’t move. The mage feels as though he is a projection: not truly impacting surroundings, not leaving a trace.
(He doesn’t try particularly hard to. He is terrified of unbalancing it further.)
All is frozen in time, yet at the wrong moment. He’d raged against it, at first. Of course he had. He’d done anything in his power to reverse everything—the world, of course, never listened to his pleas, much like it had always done.
And so, it remains here. A storm raging in pure stillness, vegetation growing and mocking him in its aliveness, a protector defending what does not need to be defended.
(Sometimes, the mage thinks perhaps the statue is protecting him. It’s a juvenile desire, of course. He is the one others need protecting from.)
During the decades, he always finds himself back here. It’s his home, after all, ruins and all. Smooth alabaster skin, multicolored moss, hammer set into the golden arch.
He grips his tall staff, lowering himself to the ground, and leans against the statue’s back. It’s not warm, of course, and he doesn’t expect it to be. Not anymore.
His breath comes out of him in a tired grunt, years of pains accentuating every movement. He feels his age every day, and he thinks it more a blessing than a curse. His voice is rough, gravelly from the disuse. The only place he talks is here, the only one he talks to does not respond.
The mage finds a comfortable position, and then lowers his hood. The stillness around him makes his skin tingle, more muted where the Hexcore’s designs had been. He’d always kept his hood up, at first, a weird sense of shame and disgust flooding his senses. He’d grown past it, of course. The only one who could see him there had never cared.
He sighs and closes his eyes, leaning his head on the statue behind him.
Despite the years, it still feels as solid as ever. Time has carved it open, plants growing in every nook and cranny, filling the joints and blooming over marble. It should, by all logic, be splintering at the seams. It should crumble to dust each time the mage looks at it.
It hasn’t. Every time he turns his gaze to it, though, his soul still fills with a little dread.
A dragonfly zips around him, and it’s gone before he realizes. Many of them like fluttering around, safe from the storm. The protector of the Hexgates offers them a safe haven. The mage wonders if they know the world has ended, if they know they should not be alive. He wonders if they would even care.
He inhales, waits for the words to form in his mouth. Then, he speaks. “It has worked,” he announces softly, and the stillness around him waits with bathed breath.
“One of them has. Their world is saved,” he finishes. His words are calm, placid. Spoken carefully, with the kind of surety only a lifetime can give. He doesn’t speak more than he needs to say, but then again—he wasn’t prone to doing that even before everything.
The statue behind him doesn’t answer. The mage had stopped hoping for it long ago, yet it still stings. It’s a scab that refuses to heal, one he keeps scrubbing pink with his own hands. He knows, anyhow, that his words are being received.
The protector of the Hexgates waits for him to continue, and so he does.
“I can feel them, even now,” he muses, his lips slightly tugging up in the remembrance of a smile. “I doubt they are aware of it, of course. I wonder what it feels like.”
The storm around them rumbles with lighting, a great white crack that splits open the clouds. None of the vegetation moves, none of the dragonflies flitting around seem to care. The mage’s eyes follow the shape of one of them as he speaks. “Freeing, I would imagine.”
(He had started doing everything to be free, had he not? It’s so distant, now. A memory belonging to someone else.)
The mage moves one of his arms, watching as the dozens of shards engraved with runes shift. They clink against each other, small sounds that ring like bells in the quiet around. The ionian valleys he had found them in had been overflowing with energy, calling his name. It had been tempting to remain there, cradled in that embrace.
He’d thought of the statue, forever guarding a dead world. And he’d returned to it with no hesitation.
Arcane energy flows through him. It always does. Being in tune with it means living with it as a constant companion, feeling its whims, its wants, its destructive desires. The arcane rarely acts of its own volition, he knows. It waits to be called upon.
It has been, it is, and it will be as long as everything exists. And even then, it will become the pervasive nothing that will fill every nook and cranny.
Ever since his mission had ended, ever since one reality had found the best ending it could, a presence lurks within it—one that feels like a buzzing passing by, a joining of spirits that aren’t aware of the form they inhabit. They are alive, yet they are beyond. They are joined in harmony.
The mage perceives them, sometimes. He does not know what they say, or what they do. He is aware they are there. It is the same way with the stone protector, he muses. He doesn’t have confirmation his words are being heard, nor that he is not alone where he sits. But he is aware.
A dragonfly flutters by the mage and perches itself behind him, upon the statue. The mage’s mind flickers with a memory: the man that the statue had once been had been terrified of insects.
“There is nothing else to say,” the mage continues. His voice doesn’t raise. “They succeeded. The world will mourn them. And then, it will forget them.” There’s no sadness in his words. He knows it is simply how it works. “I doubt the two will care, when it does.”
The mage doubts they will care of anything that isn’t themselves. They are the arcane, now. They surely know how fickle a concept time is.
He sighs, and leans his head back against the statue again. He rarely sits in front of the statue, or even beside it. It makes the stinging worse, he has realized. There is an ache there, whereas before there was emptiness, and before there was warmth.
Change. Ha. Nothing can seem to stop changing, even in a world where everything has supposed to have ended.
There is silence where there should have been words. There is marble where there should have been warm skin. There are dragonflies where there should have been death.
The husk of the stone protector seems to whistle as a slight breeze passes through its hollow holes.
A corpse is only such because of what it once had been.
I don’t know what I am.
Do you remember what you were?
Yes.
How long did it take you, to understand that?
…I’m not sure I ever fully did.
Then, what is the rush?
A web interlaces, overlaps, stretches across infinitely finite spaces, realities, times, locations. It unites and separates the souls cradled within it: every single person that has been, is, and will be; they all exist at the same moment when one watches from the outside. The separations they convince themselves exist—time, death, anger, war—still never manage to tear the thin membrane that connects all.
Viktor and Jayce cradle it in their hands, and pass their time marveling at it.
(Time perhaps isn’t the right word, but they have not yet decided how to define it. Time is a fickle concept, one that was once scary, but is now frighteningly simple.)
They talk, yet they don’t. How does one say things that the other already knows? They spend infinite stretches in complete silence, entranced by it. I know you more than myself, one thinks, and neither of them knows which one has thought it.
It should be terrifying. It simply feels like breathing.
They know the people they love have died, are dying, will die. They look over them, and mourn, and hold their presences in their palms. They feel small, yet infinite.
I wonder what you would have looked like if you had grown old.
Do you?
Yes. Whether you would have wrinkles, or gray hair, or eh… crooked teeth—
Wow.
—and what your voice would sound like.
Ha. I don’t know. I was terrified of it, honestly.
Mh. It’s funny.
What is?
I was terrified I wouldn’t get there. And, well. I guess I didn’t.
The arcane shifts. Movement, and the thin webs interlaces tighter.
…Maybe we can imagine it.
You want to play-pretend, like children?
Yes. I’ve seen you old, and you saw that too. Well, one version of you. You were quite handsome.
Please. I was not.
Says who?
Anyone with eyes.
…You know, I was so… surprised by seeing you, because—it was you, but you had wrinkles. And gray hair. And white streaks in your beard. And, I… I was scared of not getting to see any of that, too.
…You never said so.
I thought… it doesn’t matter what I thought. I think those signs were what made you handsome. For the first time, I saw a you that had lived, and that was the most beautiful thing of all.
…You’re so dramatic. Always.
Mom used to say I have a big heart.
Yes, and an even bigger head.
Probably.
…I think you would have looked beautiful, as well.
Somewhere in the world, a butterfly bats its wings.
And the universe watches in awe.