MARCH. O1
The universe in which they had both existed, she had died and in truth, it was no one’s fault but his own. He knows this, but he is also aware of the weight of reality. He cannot live without Mel. There is no era of magic without her, and despite his popularity and power, Jayce finds that life has lost its luster. There is nothing here for him but a horrible, gaping emptiness where love once lived.
Ezreal finds him on the edge of the yawning abyss, and saves him as Viktor once had. Only, this is not Ezreal. This is not the Ezreal he knows, suited up in some strange creation that reminds him too much of Zaun, of shimmer, and dead children. Yet, this Ezreal’s eyes and his manners are the very same. I’m not from this timeline, Ezreal tells him. He explains to Jayce the multiverse, the passage of space, time, and reality, and how in every future, there exists a version of them. “Your sister, Caitlyn, hunts me down timelines, though she can never catch me.” Ezreal laughs as he says it, sitting leisurely beside Jayce at the edge of the building as if he belongs there.
“How can you be here, if you are not the Ezreal I know? How can you talk to me so easily as if you and I are not strangers?” Jayce asks, incredulous at the mention of Caitlyn.
“Because,” Ezreal sighs, looking out at a glittering Piltover despite its scar, “there are people who’s souls we would know anywhere, whom I would be friends with in every timeline. You are one of them.” A Jayce says nothing else as they watch the sun fall on the marble of Piltover, because somewhere in his heart, he understand. Somewhere in the folds of reality, it makes sense to him.
“Show me how,” Jayce entreats Ezreal later, when the two of them are wandering through the Lanes in search of Ekko. Jayce needs to find her, in the past, in the future, in a different universe, if he must. To be without her is to be without air. He is breathless by his own doing.
“There is a possibility,” Ezreal begins, face uncharacteristically somber, “that fate meant for her to die. It is possible that in very timeline, she belongs to the Wolf and the Lamb, and not to you.”
“We all come to Kindred one day,” Jayce tells him, clenching his fists at his side. “I just need more time.” He needs an eternity with Mel.
“She may not love you, in these other universes, Jayce. Or perhaps she may love that timeline’s version of you, or even worse, she may love someone else completely. And if you see her, won’t your heartbreak worsen? Knowing that she isn’t yours?” The air smells of charred dreams and vivid spices as Jayce inhales, and he knows the possibilities but hope refuses to give up, and so Jayce does not give up. “No matter what, I must see her alive. Only then can I continue to live.”
He jumps from timeline to timeline to see her. The suit Ekko and Ezreal help him craft tears through the fabric of of time, the very essence of worlds with little thought. It is exhilarating in a way Jayce has never experienced, and he finds himself in different Piltover’s, different Frejlord’s, different Ionia’s, some of them savage, all of them beautiful. He sees Caitlyn too, and sometimes, there are versions of her that are suited, just as he is, but armed with a plasma gun. He does not allow her to see his face as she calls him fugitive across the years.
Time passes strangely in the suit and the strangeness of it is reflected across other timelines. Or perhaps he is the anomaly; he has not consulted Ezreal on the matter. The first time Jayce sees Mel, he watches her grow up and meet another version of himself. They do fall in love, and Jayce leaves that strand of time, knowing that at least they are happy. In some strands, the two of them do not meet at all. More often than not, they are on opposing sides, and it feels like the timeline Jayce came from is a one off, a fluke of fate that allowed them to be together for the moments they were. It makes him bitter.
He jumps from timeline to timeline to save her. In other strands of time, she is already gone, or he is already gone, and in those strands, he spends his time keeping her in his line of sight, making sure that she lives. He makes it a point never to interact with her. Part of him feels that she may not love him again; the other part is sure the two of them will fall in love with the other once more, and when fate sees it, she will be taken away from him once again. He cannot survive a separation such as this.
Thus, he watches her live her many lifetimes, none of her the same Mel he first loved, and yet she remains unchanged. In one she is a warlord, wreaking havoc across the continent at her mother’s side. In another, she is a queen, in yet another, she a dancer, a painter, a wife, a killer. And Jayce, he finds that he longs for her still, even when she is bloody, even when she is in the arms of another man.
He loves her across timelines, in his dreams where their souls touch, and in his waking hours, when he feels the phantom of her memory moving beneath his skin. He loves her until the Kindred comes for him.
