player plot | when my time comes around, pt. 5

[cozen]

WHO: Everyone!
WHAT: Everything's fine and we're going to have feelings about it.
WHEN: August 15 9:49
WHERE: Primarily the Gallows! But potentially anywhere.
NOTES: We made it! You are all free of my tyrannical plot grasp! There is a final OOC post with some notes + space for plotting here.

This is a timeline where, some mild chaos aside, things for the last month have carried on as normal. Riftwatch hasn't lost anyone at all. There were no funerals. The work continued. The late afternoon of August 15 may find people at their desks, in the midst of meetings or debriefs, in the library, in the sparring yard. Or maybe afield, seeing to errands or meetings or missions somewhere else in Thedas. Maybe, if they are particularly unlucky, they are deep in conversation with an ally or embroiled in combat with an enemy agent at the precise moment when the magical connection between two realities closes and the diverging timelines snap together into one existence.

At that moment, everyone forgets what it is they were just doing. Instead they remember what they might have been doing in the world where a third of Riftwatch's number was lost, despite their hands suddenly occupied with the normal business of handling pens or swords or books they don't recall picking up.

For the always-living, it may feel as though they have been magically transported somewhere new mid-thought. For the dead—the formerly dead, the might-have-been dead—it will feel as though they have just woken up. Perhaps they'll have a vague sense of a dream they now can't recall, in between their last conscious moment amid the blood and screams in Granitefell and awakening just now in a quieter world, or perhaps they'll have a sense of nothing at all.

For a few hours, the worse world will be the only one anyone can remember. Over time, memories of the other world—the only one that really exists now—will filter in, competitive with other memories in a way that might require everyone to double or triple check whether they wrote a letter or completed a mission in that timeline or this one. But the memories of death and dying will never fade into anything less real.

Comments

[pathlit]

Like ink spilled across thick parchment, his body language gradually shifts to reveal the recollection sinking in. The pinch of his brows, sight inward; the introduction of turbulence to his breaths, as if agitation arises with no clear etiology; the clenching of his hand around the hilt of the pocketknife, knuckles pale. He casts a troubled glance over his shoulder, but even that is hesitant, as if he fears what he might see.

The sky is unremarkable in its content. Beyond, the grungy silhouette of Kirkwall. Between them, the sea. The sea. The ground, scorched and muddied (by ruined supplies and the bodily fluids of the dead and injured). The sky, dark and heavy (with burning material, organic and not, living and not). The noise, unintelligible (in the cacophony of screams both panicked and delighted, the clang of metal against metal, the thud of an arrow hitting wood or a body, the roar of insatiable fire).

With a grimace, his eyes squeeze shut, nearly recoiling as his mind tries to reconcile the information immediately before it with the vague sensations confined to its skull, but the details fail to emerge. Exhaling, Jayce stares down at his hands, occupied by an apple and a pocketknife, while gnawing unease suggests something heavier is supposed to be in their stead.

Slowly shaking his head, he glances at Viktor. Viktor, who is looking at him.

Uncertainty creases his expression. "Something strange just happened," he says quietly.

[grindset]

Meanwhile, in a daze just on the verge of sharpening, Viktor has taken quick stock of the pieces laid out before him—this is the drill from the expo. This and the beater, and the disassembled peeler, they're in a box under his work table. He hasn't looked at them in weeks, let alone taken them out. Fortunately, the parts he holds are delicate only in shape, not in structure, for his fingertips have gone death grip pale.

His partner is here, right here, on his feet, vital and vibrant in the sun. Speaking to him.

"What did?" His joints are tight in anticipation. His body is a coiled spring. "What happened?"

It's plain as daylight that he isn't asking to find out—he's asking to confirm.

[pathlit]

In lieu of an answer, Jayce stares at him, eyes narrowing just the tiniest bit as he tries to piece together the puzzle of an image incomplete to him -- incomplete and, perhaps, shunned. His gaze falls to the bench. His body follows, knife folded and slipped into the pocket of his trousers before he occupies the space next to Viktor without so much as a "may I?", verbally or otherwise. The sun is relentless, but that's why they're out here, right?

To get some air, some natural light?

Because Jayce wanted to get out of the work room for a bit and Viktor indulged him.

Because Jayce followed orders and turned around with the rest of the group who were en route to Granitefell. Because three panicked voices over the crystals warned them--

With a sharp gasp, he realizes the pressure on his neck comes from his own hand, wrapped around his throat like the jaws of a beast. He flinches away, knocking into the slimmer body beside him, and instinctively glances at Viktor, distressed and ready to apologize. Instead, what spills from his tongue is a statement as fragile as it is astonished.

"We went to Granitefell. I... I died."

[grindset]

Jayce comes to him, and sits—just sits, like it's not miraculous that he can. Folds the knife away, carries an apple, with hands that shouldn't be holding anything at all. Jayce comes and sits while he all but vibrates with suspense, and bumps against him, knocks their shoulders together in a burst of physical proof.

And there's the leather cuff, the wrist around it restored to completeness—muscle tone, skin flush with life—

Drill pieces roll and rattle against each other as the whole tray is pushed decisively aside; it dumps half its contents on the way down and skids in a clatter along with the rest. Viktor is on his feet, suddenly ablaze, exclaiming:

"Yes! You did! And we changed it!"

[pathlit]

This apple, stubbornly grasped, feels a tenuous link between Jayce and whatever sliver of sense remains to anchor amidst the confusion. His fingers dig into its flesh when Viktor surges up, reversing their positions; he stares with widened eyes and parted lips through Viktor's excitement.

Like an old engine sputtering to life, his mind struggles to catch up. Suddenly, from memory comes Gela's voice: The Research team helped us decide what to say. The Research team helped us. The Research team.

His expression runs through several iterations: puzzlement, realization and incredulous awe, with his whole body leaning forward through the latter. "You altered time. You saved us. How?"

[grindset]

"With a machine! With magic!"

In lieu of pacing, he briefly pivots toward one scuffed half-step and makes up the difference with his hands. Frenzied enthusiasm commands his every gesture.

"We restored the Magrallen to working order, modified it— the four of us, Tony and Stephen a-a-and Wysteria, and of course myself. It took weeks to work out. We were half insane by the end of it. But we did it! We tore the Veil, and it opened not upon the Fade, but to a point further back in time."

He slows, now, to a lift of one shoulder, to the breathless and crooked tug of a smile. To sum up:

"We made a gate. We sent some people through it, and... and here you are."

[pathlit]

It's a lot. A lot to take in, comprehension still lacking in several areas, but what do the details matter right now? Simplified to the basic components that grant his presence, what their team accomplished is a miracle.

Except there is no divine process to whom credit is due. No, that rests solely with the individuals who worked themselves to, as he says, half-insanity to achieve the unthinkable. They've tampered not only with space, but time. Surely the latter bears significant consequences. Surely they've already considered such things and deemed the risk worth the potential reward.

Lives within their company. His life.

It is no longer not much of anything. It is the exact opposite and his chest swells with it, this haphazard amalgam of emotion threatening to overwhelm. Gentle and indisputable, it grows and grows, pressing into his lungs and rendering him breathless. Viktor's enthusiasm commands not only his own gestures but Jayce's attention, too. Not once has his gaze strayed, and though his smile blooms late, it does bloom with open admiration.

Softly, he says, "You saved my life. Again." Then, setting the apple down beside him, Jayce rises and embraces the smaller frame of his partner. He stands there, arms wrapped around Viktor's shoulders; he closes his eyes and breathes, basking in the deceptive simplicity of existence. Curiosity threatens to disturb this inner quiet. Indeed, he'll ask a hundred questions and then some, but now--

Turning his face into Viktor's hair, he says, "You're incredible, you know that?"

[grindset]

Viktor can hardly reconcile this moment with reality. More than enthusiasm, it's like tearing loose a breath he's kept at pressure for days, weeks, and not gently—days and weeks of thrashing, fighting and burning, desperate. They were all four of them desperate, overclocked, ragged, their fearsome synergy fuelled by the delirium of unstoppable purpose. And this, this moment of feverish revelation—the material fact of his partner being well and whole—this is the permission he needed to come to rest.

It isn't so simple as stopping; he wasn't built to stop. But he slows, and watches Jayce stand. He looks up at him until he's close, until those arms begin to lift, and as they enfold him, he bows his head to meet it. The weight and warmth of it loosens his shoulders and thickens his throat. His face creases silently. (Heart still racing, engine still running, even as he's held.)

Jayce says something, then, and he closes his eyes. Both his hands come up to gather fabric, and they hang there, pulling the shirt taut across Jayce's back. Seconds go by. The two of them standing in simplicity, together, breathing. The wind moves their hair. The ocean keeps its rhythm far below.

[pathlit]

The touch of those hands on his back fills him with an ache bone deep. He hugs Viktor tighter as if he were a charm of protection, as if holding him closer might shield him from this grim fact: that he'd died and hadn't even recognized it in the moment, context instead providing the conclusion. How enticing it is to focus on the terrific and terrible triumph of the effort messily pooled together by the fractured remains of Riftwatch.

But those hands -- their pressure against his body is sweeter than either. The smell of his hair, foreign and familiar -- a scent persistently him despite adjusting to an entirely other world. The subtle push and pull of his chest with each breath taken like the politest fuck you to that which erodes him. The manner in which they stand together is perfectly complimentary like the rest of them, and if Jayce pulls back just a little further, adjusts his angle just a little further, burrows into Viktor's sphere just a little further--

He doesn't crush him, but he buries -- buries his face into the curve of Viktor's neck and breathes in deeply, salt and sweat, leather and persistence. He holds onto it, then releases it in a steady sigh, heat sinking through the layers of fabric separating them. Drawing back, his arms relax, but linger.

[grindset]

It's the pressure of his knuckles, the flats of his fists resting on Jayce's flanks, hooked tight on his shirt, clinging without resisting. He can pull away, if he likes, or—or tuck in closer and fill Viktor's collar with a sigh—

And it's like blowing on a cinder. Like warming hands in the cold. Jayce draws him in, and breathes him back into himself, imbued with a life renewed. His breath washes over that old, gentle thing, shrouded in nacreous layers of doubt and grief and yet still gleaming after so long. Hope comes up swiftly to mantle over it—a febrile hope, honed to white-hot ambition, a very recently necessary state that has yet to fade. This is what stirs him at last.

"Your own work saved you," he says, into the space between them as it grows, and then meets his partner with water-bright eyes. "Our work."

(His work.)

[pathlit]

Recognition dawns slowly. Brows rise. Lips part. Wide-eyed, Jayce looks at him with tentative excitement. "You mean... Hextech? Here?"

[grindset]

Viktor nods, just the once.

This is something he's been missing dearly. This look, this particular rising of voice, elation held in suspense—it's like watching the morning sky warm for dawn's arrival. Watch him summon the sun:

"Hextech. Here."

[pathlit]

Viktor’s nod of confirmation tugs an exhaled laugh of joyous surprise from him. Those two words, just like the two hands grasping his back, carry enormous strength; they allow—no, encourage him to celebrate, to forget about the atrocities witnessed and experienced, and instead focus on the here and now. The sheer magnificence in being here, now—and with the very thing that brought them together—it burns through him like a lit fuse.

Nearly bursting with delight, Jayce grasps Viktor’s arms. “Here! Without the crystals?” But he is and isn’t asking, plowing on as he takes a half-step back, hands flying outward. “That’s— That’s remarkable! How? How can— without a catalyst— there must be some overlap, the magic, it—“

Having been pacing a tight circle, he abruptly comes to a stop and stares at the ground for a second before glancing up at Viktor. Awe softens his enthusiasm. Stepping closer, hand returning to Viktor’s arm, he leans forward to place a chaste kiss on his partner’s forehead.

“You’re incredible,” he says again, drawing away with an affectionate smile, because he cannot share what his heart wishes to say. “You all are—but take some credit this time, all right?”

[grindset]

There it is. There he is. A look, a voice, the sound of a laugh—that Viktor can miss these things reminds him that they've re-seeded themselves in his memory. His mistake, his betrayal, is by degrees being excised from the functions of his mind. And now, crucially, even his guilt has cause to unravel: had he traded the other way, had he given up the runes to keep the face of the smith who wrought them, he wouldn't have known how to save him.

Jayce conveys the magnificence of now with the whole of his body, grabs him, flings off joyful fragments. His answer is a soft outburst of breath—it brings with it an open smile, shakes him in little pants of laughter, all but silent. He's nodding, yes, without the crystals, yes, the overlap.

He's— stunned, for one fluttering moment.

Jayce has always shown affection through self-starting entitlement to his personal space. This is a nudge beyond, yes, but Jayce has a lot of feelings—big ones, all the time—and what he's feeling now must vastly outstrip simple gratitude. How else could he express it? These notions arise and resolve themselves in a snap of static. Understanding arcs between them: this moment transcends everything.

Still, he is, as ever, himself: "Oh, I don't, eh... you know it's not about that..."

The crookedness of his lingering smile says he's feeling pretty damn good about himself right now (and the blush pink of his ears doesn't not support this).

[pathlit]

This obviously shy satisfaction pulls on his heartstrings. Jayce wishes he could praise him beyond the boundaries of their partnership, but this must suffice. His chest aches with the bittersweet warmth that comes with Viktor's acceptance of his affection, strikingly unremarkable amidst everything else right now.

"Reputation opens doors," is his mirthful retort, stepping away. "You gotta tell me all about it, V."

And Viktor does -- tell him quite a bit about it, anyway, as they gather their little inventions and make their way to Viktor's room, though not without several detours along the way (and Jayce eventually excusing himself when the air feels thick, nerves humming with the threat of unraveling -- a simple I'll meet you there that sounds more composed than he feels). They manage to talk for hours and hours with an excitement that borders on nostalgic, hands moving this way and that, precious paper scribbled upon until no viable surface remains. Jayce extracts himself only long enough to grab them food and drink, though he barely touches the former. Apprehension lingers in the periphery; lively discussion keeps it at bay.

If he tells Viktor that he's just closing his eyes for a moment, then it's just because he's tired. They've been talking for hours. The information is dense and wondrously complex. If he falls asleep, then it's only because he's already comfortable sharing his space with Viktor for nearly a decade. It isn't because he's uncomfortable with being alone.

It isn't because he's dreading when his own thoughts fill the space instead.