the horrors...
ficlet/art in the spirit of jayce angst week. (under the cut, cw: suicidal thoughts) *holds my little traumatized optimist gently*
The thoughts, when they come, arrive vivid and terrifying.
They blended into something physical when he dreamed at night—if it was night. (In the darkness, he could not work out the hours.) There was no time in this place, just the beaten cycle of his body clinging to a mangled rhythm, forcing him awake when he wished he could sleep, and making him dream when he feared the visions that came when he closed his eyes. He was dying, he knew that. He felt it in his body, hollowing out under his ribcage. He felt it in his mind, which stopped caring about the filth he slept in. In his soul, which stripped him naked to the truths about himself.
The fire came alive on nights like this. Became the only living thing left to judge him. Mel burned with the light of the sun, beautiful and alluring and filling him with glittering lies. The Professor’s quiet voice, heavy with the weight of centuries, pressing down, down, down, into his lungs until the guilt choked in his throat. Ambessa’s dark eyes, the lick of her breath against his neck, telling him to go on, take it, destroy the world. And Viktor…. oh god, Viktor.
It should have been his body split on the concrete, his blood and his bones on the floor of the council room. Viktor was never supposed to be there. Trying to buy freedom for his people, when it had always been Piltover who’d failed them. Viktor, who paid the price of a freedom they could not even purchase in the end. Viktor, who told him, I was supposed to die , as if saving his life was wrong, as if his existence was a sin to be blotted out by a world that never loved him. Why did Viktor leave him for that, for loving him?
Maybe it would have been better if Viktor hadn’t found him in his apartment that night. If he’d never met him at all.
The thought caught in his throat, tight against tears that had long since dried up.
He wondered why he didn’t just end it all right now, take the sharp edge of obsidian over his wrist and watch the dim slit of sky fade into black. He was so young back then, fearless and righteous that when he went, the world would know what they’d done to him. But now he was afraid. Afraid with the fear of tasting true death, of feeling it frail and emaciated in his arms, of watching it wheeze rhythmically through metal tubes, of hearing it say, as if he’d always known, How much time do I have?
The death of breaking off a piece of your heart and watching it shrivel and wither into nothingness, taking your soul down with it and leaving your body behind…. That was the death he feared above all else.
He could not lose Viktor, he would not lose Viktor. And despite everything, he’d do it again—let Viktor look into his eyes again with that vicious glare, telling him he shouldn’t have brought him back.
I’m so sorry.
(A/N: originally published on AO3, not complete, later chapters will be much darker, so please be warned. his experience in the ravine is so important to me & I enjoyed exploring that & projecting (as you do)
