Too Late To Love You

GUYS IM A GENIUS HOLD UP

imagine Jayvik (instead of exploding galaxy-style) are transported to that reality without Hextech that Ekko and Heimer were in before. imagine that there's no Jayce or Viktor there. imagine that they have a pact to never re-invent Hextech, that they move to the undercity and just lay low and have a domestic little time

oh my god yall new AU dropped

☆ 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕞𝕒𝕔𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕖 𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕝𝕕 ☆

hm

have a quick jayvik while I test my new drawing equipment

i'm losing my mind thinking about how everything from jayce’s visit to the commune in act 2 to the battle of piltover in act 3 was always a rescue mission.

this man said, “send me back. i won’t fail.” jayce returned from the alternate timeline with ONE task. get to viktor. talk to him. TOUCH HIM. try again. and hope that it's different this time.

the expression on his face as he kneels isn’t hopelessness or him gearing up to try some last ditch effort to save tomorrow. jayce was NOT laying down arms in surrender and this is NOT the look of despair or defeat.

its the look of realisation. that THIS is the moment he he’s been waiting for — the moment he has been fighting his way to since he came back from the alternate timeline. it’s him rooting himself with utmost trust in viktor. in the two of them. in his love for viktor. in their love.

jayce didn’t even know much else beyond the fact that viktor has cycled through different timelines and different runestones, hoping to find salvation. and that he needs to reach this exact moment in time — where he kneels in submission before viktor on top of the hexgate. the penultimate point at which he can show viktor he cares; that he’s here and that he wants to see; that he understands — as he always has; that he still loves him and always will.

because at the end of it all, that’s what mattered. their unconditional love for and understanding of one another is what tore the seams of the cosmos and ultimately stitched them back together. it had to be them. it was always them. in every timeline and in every possibility.

it was here that he realised this is it. right here. this is the moment.

there's other things going on in these snippets but one thing im quickly finding out writing the two mages au from viktor's pov is that he's lowkey falling hard and fast for mel. which i definitely didnt expect but straight up i think her skill and capability with magic + perceived put togetherness is making him kind of idolize her. and she's probably going to have some complicated feelings about that given her perfectionism and difficulty being genuine and vulnerable with people

it took me two whole weeks to create this illustration... do you think it was worth it? 😂 a small tribute to the finale of the second act of arcane and one of my favorite scenes from the series. even now, i feel like crying every time i rewatch that final scene.. poor isha 🥺

A lone star shines brightly

Honestly? I’d be super curious to see more “Jayce got sent to the Powder reality” or just any other reality where he inhabits his own body there (so not S2 Jayce/S1 Viktor fic I mean fic where Jayce gets the Ekko treatment) but where Jayce just… tells the truth about being from an alternate universe right away?

Because really, if ANYONE would accept the possibility of alternate universes RIGHT AWAY, it would be Viktor, or Heimerdinger, or in general people from the circles that Jayce very much moves in as someone working on the theoretical edge of science.

The reason I’m thinking about this is I feel like I’ve seen a few of these fics now where a lot of sort of predictable drama gets generated by Jayce trying to blend in and pretend to be his AU self with absolutely nothing to go off of, but to me that seems 10x more difficult and prone to disaster than just… trusting that his science buddies will be open to the possibility that a very weird scientific event is happening to the guy who was fiddling with HARNESSING MAGIC WITH SCIENCE and needs some help right now.

Idk, maybe it’s my penchant for thinking in straight lines. Maybe I just need to write it. But I also genuinely have a story… Frustration? With unexamined tropes and stories that immediately assume that talking about or asking for help about the magical or supernatural things happening to the characters would get them consigned immediately to some insane asylum.

Like, unless someone has a HISTORY of struggles with reality, I think most people are willing to play along a bit. If one of my friends or even my partner ran up to me and said “I know I look like myself but I’m actually from another dimension inhabiting my counterparts’ body and I need your help getting back.” Idk, I’d like to think I’m pretty genre savvy and have a decent sense of humor. I’d be willing to play along until they get tired of the game or provide me with some hard evidence that something legitimately out of this world is happening. I’m not going to immediately have them arrested or committed, ffs, even if they’re my worst enemy. I MIGHT check in with someone close to them to ask if they’ve been acting strange lately or if they have suggestions in case this person is legitimately having a psychological event of some kind, but again, my first response isn’t to freak out at them, it’s to ask for more details and get a sense for what’s going on here.

But to get back to Jayce, in general, he has people in his life experimenting with the bleeding edge fringe of theoretical science and I think he could count on a fair number of sympathetic and even helpful ears. At least, people willing to entertain his hypothetical for a bit if he brings it up as a possibility rather than a thing actively happening to him right now. I think he’d definitely have more success going to an AU Viktor or Heimerdinger and asking for their help with such a theoretical scenario than he would stumbling around trying to pretend to be his alternate self when he has no frame of reference for what this AU’s self is even like. After all, Jayce is a scientist, not an actor, and he knows it. He can give a speech but I’m not sure that translates to like… playing along with an entire life that isn’t his, full immersion LARPing type stuff.

And for the record, it’s not so much that I’m critiquing these fics. I get the reason for the tropes and how they generate the drama and the plot for the story the author wants to tell. It’s more that it’s a trope I’ve seen turn up in a few unrelated authors’ fics and that always gets my trope-contrarian brain buzzing with, “Ok but does this trope MAKE SENSE? Would Jayce or anyone in his situation be actually under so much pressure to disguise what happened to them as this story is implying they would be? Would anyone actually get locked up or in trouble for floating that they’re their AU self? Heck, wouldn’t it almost be SAFER to bring up the hypothetical, even as a joke, just to see if it’s like a known experiment in this world or a thing that regularly happens that everyone knows about, or at least to make some allies amongst your AU loved ones, rather than stumbling around getting in ACTUAL trouble in a world that could have completely different laws or customs than you’re aware of?”

Tropes, people! They should be interrogated!