#my fics: tiarw
Text
Time is a Roulette Wheel: Swain WIP
SFW
There's been a raven following you around since you started approaching Noxus occupied territory. It's more annoying than you thought it would be, honestly–getting jumped by a shadowy cabal of assassins would be a pain in the ass, and if you're going into negotiations with the Trifarix you'll need the upper hand of surprise. No, you carefully do not use your powers while Swain is watching, even though it's a huge pain in the ass. You can't even get rid of them, either, because the one person you ask when you get a moment of fucking privacy seems to think they're just crows. Even though they're a) too huge to be crows, and more importantly b) have six glowing red eyes. A side effect of Noxus hemomancy, the ferryman says cheerfully as he takes you across the gulf to Shurima. The so-called crows don't seem to be inclined to cross the open water, and the one that's been tailing you watched balefully until your ship disappeared into the distance.
Another raven is on you as soon as you disembark. You're not the only one, either–travellers of interest all seem to get a corvid escort. It follows you in the days it takes you to travel out of town, into contested territory, to the City under siege by Noxian forces. You don't bother learning it's name–they’ll change it soon. It's in a key location to expedite trade routes between the existing Noxian settlements, but it's resisted capture so far by virtue of its defences, natural or otherwise. The city sports a grand wall, set against the edge of a narrow ravine on one side and a mountain on the other, the city was accessible only by a great drawbridge–by the same turn, though, it was constrained in size and relied on it's status as a trade hub to sustain its populace. Currently, you believe the Noxians plan was to starve them out, but that had its own complications–the city was dug in for a seige, and the Noxians had to keep their own troops fed and safe from the Shuriman wildlife, not to mention the resources required to sustain an extended seige. That makes it the perfect place to make your point.
The raven follows you as you trek your way out to the ravine. The mountain blocks the moon, and a lone figure without a light passes without notice.
(It was always dark, in the Void, yet you could still see. You thought that was just the way it was. It didn't occur to you until after that it was you that had changed.)
You reach the edge of the ravine, the wall towering overhead. The raven perches on a jagged rock nearby. You lean over the abyss, holding out hand out towards the wall, and you don't pull time backwards so much as you tear it away like peeling wallpaper. Back, before the walls were built, and then further still, to when the desert had water and the streams eroded this cut into the earth. The stone around you blurs, reality ripping at the edges, and then the city stands undefended.
You turn to the raven. It blinks, one eye at a time, so that it's never not looking at you. “Tell Grand General Swain I’d like a word. I’ll be in Tereshni.” You glance back at the city, now swarming with the beginnings of panic. “I can put the walls and the ravine back after you have the city, don't worry.”
The bird cocks it's head, and then takes flight north. You wait until it's gone, and then rewind yourself back to the room you rented. You're safe, for now–the ravens probably knew you'd paid for the place, but they couldn't get in on their own, and it would take at least a few days for Swain to arrive from Noxus Prime.
The world spins into little fractals of darkness, and you feel sleep dragging you down like a riptide. Undoing centuries like that will take you out for a week at least, but you have no doubt Swain will send someone after you before then.
Here's another trick you learned from your time in the Void; whatever brings you back, it brings you back perfect. Sleeping in the Void generally ended with you dying anyway, but if you really can't afford to be out that long, well. It's not like dying is anything new for you.
—
You come back a few hours later, clean up after yourself, and then sleep until morning. A polite knock wakes you.
You're greeted by a man in military uniform, who bows his head at you. “We're here to escort you to Noxus Prime, per Grand General Swain’s command,” he says. “Are you ready to depart?”
You blink. “What's your name?”
“Colonel Garrett, ma’am,” he says. “And you're Iso…?” He trails off, searching for a last name. On the rooftops around your rented room, ravens peer intently down at you.
“Yes,” you answer instead. He blinks. “It's like seven am, Garrett. I'm going to get breakfast, and then we can go.” You grab your bag off the side table, sweep past him and head for the market.
There's a whole squad you hadn't seen in the courtyard beyond your door. Garrett falls into step beside you, and they fall into step behind him. The pastry vendor you stop at doesn't even charge you.
—
They escort you to a private ship, and from the ship a carriage. Your escort spares no expense, though nobody exactly expects them to pay–the one thing they don't bend over backwards to accommodate you on was getting to the capital quickly. Before long, the looming plateau of Noxus Prime pierces the horizon. The gate guards let you through, and you're taken to a tower near the center of the city. There, you're taken to a refined yet reserved sitting room, and Garrett bids his farewell. A maid comes in to serve out tea, but other than that, you're alone.
You're sure this is a power play of some kind. You're sure it's also no coincidence that the assortment of artfully arranged finger foods are all the sort of thing you like. You are kind of baffled that Swain's magic demon arm that fed on secrets was being used to set the snack menu, but also, you're not complaining. It didn't take an army of spying birds to figure out that you're food motivated.
Swain comes in about five minutes later. He sweeps into the room, and he has the sort of commanding presence that makes him seem grand without doing anything in particular, an air about him that demands attention when he's doing something as utterly mundane as entering a room. You can't even attribute it to the glowing demon arm you know he has, because it's hidden behind the imposing coat he wears over his shoulders. He sits elegantly on the couch across from you, and does not say a word. You get the distinct impression that he's sizing you up.
You blink at him. “Did you want some tea, or can we get straight to business here?”
His expression doesn't change. “Let's. You brought down the walls of Bitharix to let our troops in. Why?”
You nod. “I figured you wouldn't take my offer seriously without a gesture of good faith, and a show of power.”
He inclines his head. “That is the Noxian way, yes. What is it you seek?”
“I'm from a world beyond the Void. I want to go home. If you agree to help find me a way back, I'll be your weapon for a year,” you tell him evenly. You figure it was better to be concise here. Swain does not strike you as a man with an open schedule.
He considers you clinically for a long moment. “I assume there's a reason you elected to bring this offer to me specifically, and not the Trifarix?”
You nod. “You’re the one with the demonic arm that eats secrets. I figure if anyone knew how to get me home, it would be you. I can also guarentee that if at any point during my employment the demon in your arm happens to take control of you, I can undo it.”
His eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. “And how do you know that?”
“About your demon, or that I can fix you?” You ask. He doesn't answer. You shrug. “I know a lot of things about this world. I know about the Immortal King that built the bones of this city, I know about the Black Rose and their experiments, and I know who you have on staff to kill you if you ever lose yourself to that arm of yours. I also know that all the promises in the world don't mean shit when it comes down to it, so you can test my powers however will make you believe me.”
He considers you. Then he says “Very well,” and then explodes into crackling red energy. It's only years of instinct that moves you from the path of the arcing scarlet lightning that fan across the couch you were just sitting on, flickering back in time to stand just by the doorway. The air burns, and you watch as shadowy wings flare from his back as he comes to hover in the center of the room. He looks almost disinterested, the fucker.
You flicker back to the now ruined couch, darting aside from another blast of eldritch energy, and as you close the distance between you a blast soulfire rips through you. The burning wound it leaves barely lasts for a second before you rewind it, and as you reach your hand out towards him you watch your skin crack and burn from being too close. Then, you rewind him, until that burning shadow recedes, and he lands on both feet with an infuriating grace. He examines the shining red of his hand for a moment, and then looks up at you, now unharmed and more than a little annoyed.
“Acceptable,” he says with a nod. “I will vouch for you before the Trifarix. There will be a meeting in the morning. In the mean time, you may avail yourself to Noxus’ hospitalities. Good day.” He inclines his head at you, and then sweeps out of the room just as swiftly as he came in. As he leaves, Garrett enters again, now followed by a small squadron of maids. You have the distinct feeling that you've somehow been played.
“Is he always like that?” You ask Garrett, pointing at the door Swain just left through.
“I'm sure I don't know what you mean, ma’am,” Garrett says placidly, pointedly not looking at the destroyed room around you. The maids begin to pick up the shattered china.
You open your mouth, then groan. “Crazy fucking Noxians,” you mutter under your breath, and wave a hand across the room as you rewind it to its pre-Swain state. One of the maids squeaks in surprise.
Garrett blinks once, and that's about the extent of his display of surprise. “I'll show you to your accomodations, then?” He asks. You nod, and as he turns and walks out of the room, you grab one of the macarons off of the newly restored biscuit platter. If you're going to get ambushed at your job interview, you're at least getting sweets out of it.
#league of legends x reader#league x reader#reader fic#leauge of legends#x reader#f!reader#reader#my fics: tiarw#swain lol#WIPs
9 notes
·
View notes
Text
Time is Roulette Whee: Swain WIP Pt3
“I'm not allowed to make deals with you anymore,” you tell the raven sternly on your next outing. “Also, that was very rude. It's not like dying is new to me, but some warning would have been nice. Not that I think you can talk, per se. I mean, you have those creepy whispers, but I don't know the demonic language. I can probably guess what you're trying to get at, though, and no. I'm not letting you rip my head open for juicy tidbits, and also, I'm not making any bargains to free you from Swain's control. Anything you know he knows anyway, and he's less likely to fuck me over than a literal demon. Especially one that very rudely let's me get my throat shrapneled from the inside.”
The raven caws from your shoulder. “Yeah, that's what I thought,” you grouch.
—
You don't do much over the next month, honestly. Once every few days or so, a raven arrives with an envelope clutched it's beak, and inside is a time you're to arrive at Swain's office, wrangle Raum under control, and chat. He seems to like talking to you, or at least you assume that's why he keeps doing it. You do occasionally feel like you're on the business end of a reconnaissance mission, but you can't imagine knowing your opinion on yordles somehow gives Noxus an edge on their many conquests. No, at this point you figure that Swain just has an intense demeanor that makes him seem like he's always doing something important, even when he's just asking you how your days been, or how you're settling in, or your thoughts on the book you were reading. That last one might be a reminder that you're under constant surveillance, actually, but it's not like you particularly care. Spending years in a nightmarish hellscape completely isolated save for the inhuman monsters trying to kill you kind of maxed out your lifetime requirement for alone time. Besides, you're pretty sure the birds can't open doors or unbar windows, and if you really wanted privacy you could always rewind yourself to Piltover or something. Still, you leave your window open for the birds most days.
—
The bird on your windowsill caws to get your attention. You wave it over without looking, focused on your book and your breakfast. Noxus probably would've been higher on your list of leads if you knew their food was so good, honestly. Who knew artisanal bread and cheese could elevate a grilled cheese sandwich so much?
The bird lands on your table, Swain's fancy envelope in beak. You wedge your bookmark in place and take it with your clean hand, breaking the crimson red seal and fishing the card out one handed. “Three pm,” you read aloud, tossing the card back on the table. “Standard Raum wrangling duty, it seems.”
The bird croaks at you. You shrug. “I don't make the rules.” You rip off a piece of crust to feed to it, then frown. “Come to think of it, how do you work, anyway? Does Swain see everything you see, or do you just report the important stuff to him?” You frown. “That would be awkward. He is technically my boss. That being said, respect for authority was never my strong suit.” You consider the bird a moment, then turn back to your meal. “Ah, whatever. He has like a hundred of you running around. I'm sure he's not paying attention to me telling you about embarrassing things I did in primary school. Hell, maybe it'll convince him to stop having you follow me around.”
—
“I can hear everything you say, and no, the inanity of your conversation is not going to convince me to leave a mage of your caliber unchecked,” he says by way of introduction that afternoon.
You blink, shutting the door behind you. “I’m not a mage.”
He raises a brow. “Oh? How does one traverse the Void without magic, then?”
You shrug as you seat yourself across from him. He changed the chair out shortly after your first visit–it’s nicer now, with actual padding. You wonder if that's for your benefit, or if someone got the other one broken over their head. “It's a secret. Hand,” you wiggle your fingers at where his left arm lies hidden inside his imposing military coat.
“Would you tell me in exchange for a recommendation to a cake shop?” He asks, placing his red-lit palm in yours. His tone is dry, but there's an edge of sincerety there that makes you think he's not entirely joking. “They make a lovely lemon meringue.”
You click your tongue. “Sorry, no dice. Besides, I'm sure you can figure it out from the tidbit your birdie already got out of me.”
“I understand it was a Voidspawn that took you from your world, and I take it your powers are a result of harnessing whatever you found there,” he says offhandedly. “What I don't understand is how you came to be here.”
You glance up at him. He has that look again, the one that makes you feel vaguely like a butterfly pinned to a board, like he wants to peel you open and see what's inside. “If I knew that, I probably wouldn't still be here.”
“Hm. I hope you know I won't be opening any Void Rifts on your behalf,” he says casually. “Far too much cleanup.”
“If you can find me a trajectory through a hellish nightmare void that defies time, space and euclidean geometry, I will personally slaughter every Voidspawn from here to the nearest Shuriman Rift,” you say cheerfully.
He raises a brow. “Not overselling yourself, I hope?”
You shrug. “I don't die. Don't strictly need to eat or sleep because of that, either. And believe me, I know how to kill Voidspawn.”
“You also take several hours to revive,” he points out. “Hardly time efficient.”
You shake your head. “Reality is…rigid, here. Inflexible. Not the Void. Those things bring a little bit of nothingness with them. Makes it easy to change things, change me.” You frown at his hand, trying to find your way around your curse. “First time I died after coming here, it was morning by the time I woke up, and I was not happy about it.”
“Hm. How fast would you say, with exposure to Void energy? Minutes?” He peers intently at your expression. His brow hitches. “Seconds?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” you say breezily. “And if you don't mind, I'd rather change the subject, before I say something I shouldn't and end up spitting blood in your face.”
He grimaces. “Very well. What would you like to speak about, then?”
You blink. “Yknow, you're different from what I was expecting.”
He raises a brow. “Oh? And what did you know of me, before you met me?”
You open your mouth, except you have no idea how to answer that question. “I don't think I can fully answer that,” you say slowly.
“Partially, then,” he says.
You frown at him. “Hey, you were following me for weeks before we met, and you don't see me interrogating you about what you know about me, other than that I like lemon meringues.”
He blinks. “I did not know you liked lemon meringues, just sweets. And putting aside what you have willingly divulged to my birds, I know that you're stubborn, intelligent, pragmatic, and more ruthless than you like to pretend you are. You go out of your way to help others, but pain doesn't seem to phase you anymore and without that nothing in this world seems to pose any real threat to you, so the life-threatening risks you take aren't particularly high-stakes for you. You subject yourself to the mundanities of human life your powers could erase the need for–food, water, rest, walking to places you've been or practicing a knife when you could unmake a city. You don't shy away from your powers, so you must not think they pose any threat, but you don't use them as a crutch either–that leads me to believe you mistrust them, perhaps that they'd desert you once you return to your world. Please, correct me if I'm wrong on any of those counts,” he says, spreading his free hand invitingly. You don't. “There. I've told you all I know about you.”
You raise a brow at him. “I know you didn't tell me all that just to hear about yourself,” you say dryly, and release his hand. “But if you really must…I know you get kick out of getting under people's skin.”
He smirks. Whatever answer he was looking for, that was apparently good enough. He's handsome when he smiles–well, he's handsome all the time, but in the same way a classical statue is, a cold and untouchable sort of beauty. When he smiles, that wicked little twist on his lips, it makes him look human. Not quite approachable, but at least like someone that lives on the same plane of existence as you. “I can neither confirm nor deny. You may restore the walls of Bitharix tomorrow at your convenience. That will be all.”
“Yes, sir,” you say with a mock salute, rising from your seat as he returns to his work.
“The shop is called Halcyon, and it's near the war memorials,” he says as you turn to leave. You look back to him, taken aback.
“Are you just telling me that because I wasn't expecting you to, and you like throwing me off?” You ask skeptically, though there's mirth in your voice.
“I decided I should reward you for your rare approximation of respect,” he drawls.
“If I'd known I got a reward for being a good girl I'd have done it sooner, sir,” You say teasingly, because spending years in the Void talking to yourself just to stay sane has really done nothing good for your already tenuous brain-mouth connection. Swain looks up at you, brow raised, and the satisfaction you derive from his taken aback expression is almost enough to cancel out the fact that you just hit on your boss.
…Your boss, Jericho Swain, Grand General of Noxus, who you have to look in the eye in a scant few days. Who, judging by the smirk curling on the edge of his lips, has no doubt cottoned on from your deer in headlights that you weren't just fucking with him, and you've completely lost why opportunity to play that off as a joke.
Welp. He might think you don't use your powers as a crutch, but you've never left somewhere so quickly in your life. You make your escape before he has the chance to say anything.
—
He doesn't call on you for a few days after, and you almost, almost put the incident out of your mind. You've had more embarrassing fuck-ups, you're sure, and honestly everything you've been through kind of puts social blunders into perspective on an odd way. You decide not to worry about it.
—
“What is that?” Swain asks, squinting at the paper bag you've deposited on his desk.
“A lemon meringue?” You say, plopping into your seat and wiggling your fingers at him.
“Why is it here?” He says. He doesn't even look at you when he puts his hand in yours, busy opening the packet to peer inside, as if you've somehow put a bomb in a clearly labeled baked goods bag.
You blink at him. “It's for you?” He gives you a blank look. “I figured you liked them, since you didn't know I did and you brought them up anyway. If you don't want it I'll take it. You were right, though, they're amazing.”
“Hm. No, I'll take it. My thanks,” he says. There's a strange look in his eye when he regards you. “Is there something you want?”
You consider him. “People don't often just do nice things for you without wanting something in return, do they?”
“Implying you don't want something from me?” He asks.
You pointedly do not think about your last encounter. “Well, sure, but you know what I want.”
“Do I?” He says, his voice low and considering. His palm is warm in yours. You're so fucking made.
You resist the urge to squirm. You've spent years in the Void, whatever this is can't be worse. “Look, if this is about what I said last time–”
“It's not,” he says easily, completely derailing what was about to be a very awkward apology about your lack of professionalism. Not that you'd ever had much of that. Before you can ask what the fuck that means, he hands you a sheet of paper. “In any case, your services are required in Ionia. We will be departing tomorrow morning. The details are there.”
You scan the piece of paper, which is part mission detail and part itinerary. “We?” You ask, flipping the page over. “Wait, you got the Leviathan back? Didn't Gangplank steal that?”
He grimaces. “Yes. Captain Fortune returned it after she deposed her predecessor, as a gesture of peace towards Noxus.”
You glance up at him. “Did it work?”
A smirk pulls at his lips. “For now. Bilgewater is more useful to me as it is now. Besides, bringing that mis-managed shantytown to heel would be far more effort than it's worth.”
“Would be useful to have serpent callers on staff, though,” you point out idly. “If there's one thing I'm not going to miss about this world, it's the sea monsters.”
“A fair point,” he says thoughtfully. “Though I must say that relying on the favor of a god sits ill with me.”
You shrug. “Can't say I know much about Nagakaborous, but gods can be brought to heel like anything else. Look at Aurelion Sol.”
He gives you a sharp look. “The celestial dragon? What about it?”
You blink. “Oh. I suppose that would predate your demon. The Aspects enslaved it using a magic crown and bent it to the will of the Ancient Shuriman’s, creating the god warriors which ultimately led to the civilizations downfall. As far as I know he's still floating around Targon doing their bidding. When I tracked him down, he refused to help without the crown being removed, and putting aside how long I'd be comatose for if I tried to undo however many thousands of years, I'm pretty sure he intends to blow up the planet if he gets free.”
There's a predatory gleam in his eye. “I see. What else do you know, about the Aspects?”
You raise a brow. “If you're expecting me to sit here and lay out the secret history of Runeterra, you're at least buying me dinner.” Shit. Wait. You've done it again.
He laughs, rich and dark. He turns his hand in yours, his clawed fingertips brushing over the inside of your wrist, where your pulse is currently thundering through your veins. “I can give you so much more than that, dear girl. Tell me, what is it you're craving today?”
…You're so fucked, and what's worse, he knows it.
—
Once you scraped your brain into your head, the first thing that came to mind to request for dinner that didn't involve clothes coming off was steak. You spend an hour comparing your understandings of the Aspects, Mount Targons general political landscape and possible resources, and you go into a impassioned aside about how the cosmic dragon that created the stars in your sky was a pretentious prick. He does, in fact, get you dinner–which is to say, the tower has its own kitchen staff, and he invites you to dine with him. He's actually very cordial–for all that talking to him sort of feels like you're somehow being played, he also holds open the door and pulls out your chair. You notice he only uses his demonic arm in front of you–in the hall, he keeps it tucked away in his coat when you're walking, but as soon as the serving staff have filed out of the room he's back to normal.
“How many people know about Raum?” You ask, cutting into your food. It is, of course, excellent.
“Only the Trifarix, Katarina Du Couteau, and you,” he says. “More convenient to have our enemies underestimate me as a cripple, and those who witness my powers firsthand don't tend to survive the experience.”
You glance at him. “Is it really that bad, that you lost an arm?” He raises a brow at you, and you wave a hand. “Not as in–look, I've been dismembered before and it fucking sucks, but what I mean is…I don't think having two arms is what makes you dangerous.”
For a moment a bittersweet smile pulls at his lip. “Things were different under Darkwill. Martial strength was all that Noxus valued, and that is one of the many reasons it was rotting from the inside. It's a mentality some still share, inside Noxus and out.”
You snort. “Like it matters how good someone is in a fistfight when they have a fortress and an army?”
“Some would describe that as cowardice,” he points out mildly.
“I'd call it pragmatism,” you retort. “Do you frequently say the opposite of what you mean just to see if people will agree with you?”
He smirks. “No. But I don't particularly care for most people's opinions.” Implying he cares about yours? “Wine?” He offers.
(The wine is, of course, as excellent as the food.)
—
“When you said morning, you did not say pre-sunrise,” you grouch, huddling under your new coat. The wind is bitingly cold in the harbor; Swain seemed unbothered by it, though it sends his coat flaring dramatically around him. The upper deck has a balcony that leads directly to his quarters, and he cuts an imperious figure overseeing the Leviathan's launch.
“Not a morning person, I take it?” He drawls, as if he doesn't know damn well from his birds.
“There are three things that wake me up in a good mood–sex, food, and coffee, in that order,” you say archly. “And I don't imagine you have an eggs benedict and a vanilla latte under that coat.”
He raises a brow. “Unfortunately, no.”
Hm. That's a surprisingly lukewarm response. You pause, finally taking a good look at him. “You look tired,” you say, noting the shadows under his eyes. Exhausted would probably be the better term.
“Yes,” he agrees. “There was much to do before we left, and I hadn't planned on our talk being quite so engaging.”
You hold out your hand and wiggle your fingers at him. He glances at you curiously, but places his gloved hand in yours. You rewind him back to rested, and his brows hitch. “Convenient,” he notes.
“I'm not doing that on the regular, and I don't care how efficient you'd be if you didn't need to sleep,” you tell him bluntly, releasing his hand. “Even without the physiological side effects, there are deep-seated psychological ramifications to not sleeping you really do not want to mess with.”
“I'll take your word for it,” he says. “I appreciate the assistance, but the reason I called you here is because there's been a slight change of plans. You'll be serving as my primary bodyguard for the duration of this trip, not just part of my entourage.”
You raise an eyebrow at him. “Do you need a bodyguard?”
“No, but the Ionians’ don't know that, and I'd prefer it to stay that way,” he allows. “That does however mean that I expect you to stay by my side, unless I explicitly order otherwise.”
You nod. Internally, your head is in your hands. You're sure that being next to him all day will have only positive effects on whatever bizarre game of cat and mouse you're in with the man. Which, now that you think of it, you're not entirely sure if he's trying to seduce you, use you for the good of Noxus, or just enjoys fucking with you. Probably all of them, to some extent or another.
He turns to look at you, considering. Then he looks back over the still-grey horizon. “Your quarters are there. I suppose I won't take issue if you chose to return to bed. We are still in Noxian waters, after all.”
And little acts of kindness like that are doing nothing to help you make up your mind.
#league of legends x reader#league x reader#reader fic#leauge of legends#x reader#f!reader#reader#my fics: tiarw#swain lol#swain x reader#WIPs
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Time is a Roulette Wheel
Viego: Pt 4, finale
League of Legends | Viego x F!Reader
Chapters: Prologue | Viego: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
Read the whole thing on AO3 here
NSFW: Oral (f!receiving), fingering, penetrative sex, overstim
Summary: Turns out that Runeterra isn't the only place that has a Void. Plucked from your world into one of a video game with nothing but stolen time powers, an inability to die and a middling recollection of lore, you're prepared to do just about anything to get back home again. You just have to find the right Champion to help.
The restorations get more tiring. Viego is careful with who he brings you, though you have no idea how he can tell how old the souls are. You don't complain, but he seems to notice how drained you are after. You think you're doing well to pace yourself, until one day after the newly restored souls have been sent off, Viego goes very still.
“The mist is rolling in over Bilgewater,” he says tensely, his eyes focused on something very far off. “There will be a Harrowing.”
You straighten, concerned. “Can't we do anything? I mean, before anyone dies?”
He glances at you, brow pinched. “I will go,” he decides. “Every wraith banished back to the Isles is one that cannot hurt anyone for a time.”
“You know I'm coming with you,” you say. He gets a very pinched look on his face, and your tone steels. “Viego, I know you're worried about me, but I am not staying here while people are getting hurt. I'm going, and you know you can't stop me, so you may as well watch my back.”
He searches your eyes for a moment, then sighs and holds out his hand. “Very well. Let us go.”
You take it, and mist envelops you. You've never traveled through his mist awake before, and it feels a mix of diving into ice cold water and walking through a car wash. You can't see anything for a moment, not even your own hand.
The mist clears just enough for you to make out Viego's form just ahead of you. He raises a hand, and as he waves it the mist curls back in on itself, creating a bubble of clear but filmy air around you. You recognize Bilgewater by the rickety dock-streets under your feet, and more than that, the man in a trifold hat who runs full tilt past you swearing at the top of his lungs. Viego immediately strides in the direction he ran from, releasing your hand to pull his sword from nowhere. He spares you a single worried look, before the first wraith breaches the mist and he grimly turns to the task ahead.
The wraiths don't target Viego at first–he’s one of them, after all, and has no precious life force to siphon. You, however, are a different story. A dozen wraiths spills from the mist, and you raise your hand to freeze them mid-leap scant seconds before Viego cleaves through three in one swing. He spares you an appreciative look before he dissolves into mist himself, and then is behind you, running through another you hadn't seen. You finish the rest in front of you with a fan of thrown knives, instantly teleported to their destination by force of habit.
You work your way through the streets like this, you controlling the crowds and him dispatching them with quick and brutal swings of his blade. Pretty quickly, the wraiths start to target him too, and he seems to have much less concern for his own health than making sure nothing touches a hair on your head.
“If you die on me, I'm gonna kick your ass,” you say tersely, catching him by the elbow as he appears close to you, a wraith already impaled in his blade. He blinks as the gashes left by the wraith's claws close, the dark mist that was leaking from the wounds vanishing.
“I will endeavor not to disappoint you,” he says dryly, and effortlessly swings his zwei with one hand to catch two leaping wraiths at once. Inappropriately, you get the sudden urge to pin him to a wall and kiss him senseless, but you're going to ignore that. Effortless displays of force did something for you, noted, moving on.
“It's him! It's the King!” Someone yells, and you turn to see someone standing at the edge of the mist looking strongly like he doesn't know which way to run. “He's here to kill us all!”
Out from behind him stumbles a stocky woman desperately trying to support a bleeding man. “Oh, shut your fucking trap, Harold,” she seethes, turning to look at the both of you. “You ain't here to kill us, right? You brought me auntie Sash back, so do me a favor and fix this lug up ‘fore you gotta pop him back out the mist too, yeah?” She gestures at the bleeding man. Viego looks vaguely appalled, and she clears her throat. “Uh. If’n you please, your majesties.”
You stifle a laugh, and walk up to touch the man's shoulder. His wounds vanish, and he slurs what you think is a thank you. The woman nods sharply. “Many thanks, milady. Now, if I could suggest you bring that murder machine you call a husband up to the slaughter docks, he’d have a right fine time killing all the mist beasties there,” she offers you a sailors salute and proceeds to march out the way you came, her companions scrambling in her wake.
“Why does everyone assume we're married?” You say aloud. When you look back at Viego, he's scraping some spectral wolf thing off his blade. Murder machine you can't deny, but husband? You're not even wearing a ring.
“Can we please focus on the task at hand, dearest?” He says. That was probably why. You make a face and march towards the docks.
—
It is a long, long time before the wraiths begin to thin. With them out of the way, Viego corals the worst of the mist away, pushing it back out towards sea with his mouth set in a grim line of concentration.
The citizenry begins to emerge from their hiding holes as he does, and the murmurs echo around you so loudly they become completely indecipherable. Viego sends the rolling wall of mist away, creeping slowly back out over the water, and lets out a harsh breath of exertion.
“Are you okay?” You ask, touching his elbow. There's nothing to rewind, though–whatever effort he's expended isn't the physical kind.
He nods tightly. “It was still hungry. Difficult to control, after we interrupted its meal.”
“Your majesties!” A familiar voice calls. You turn to see your ferryman, no worse for wear save for a gash across his arm. “On behalf of Bilgewater, thank you for your assistance.”
“You know I'm not actually a queen, right?” You point out, reaching out to heal his wound.
“Legal particulars ain't never mattered much to me, my lady,” he says smartly, completely missing or deliberately ignoring your point. “I'd invite you to the post ‘hooray for not dying’ celebrations, but from the look on milords face and the way you're swaying on your feet, I reckon he'll be wanting to take you home shortly.”
“I'm not swaying–” you protest. Viego catches your shoulder to steady you before you overbalance. “Alright, yeah, I spoke too soon,” you relent. He leaves his arm around your shoulders, you notice.
Viego inclines his head at the man. “We will require your services the day after tomorrow, Captain Brigg. I'm sure there are those we could not help, and Iso will want to return them as soon as she is able.”
“The day after?” You ask. “I can–” he casts you a look that brooks no argument, and you resist the urge to pout.
“I'll be seeing you then, milord,” Brigg agrees amicably. “Have a good evening, your majesties.” Viego nods, and as the last fleeting tendril of mist curls around you, you disappear.
He takes you directly to your bedroom, and you really do hate to admit it, but he's right–now that the adrenaline has passed, you can barely stay on your feet. Viego gently lowers you onto your bed, and then kneels to take your boots off.
“You don't have to–” you begin, flustered.
“I know,” he says, as if it's the most natural thing in the world. “But I want to.”
You're too tired to argue. Instead, you sigh and struggle out of your bodice and skirts, until you're just in your chemise. Viego stands as you shuffle under your covers, and on the very brink of unconsciousness, you feel him press a kiss to your hairline. “Rest well, my heart,” he murmurs into your hair. You want to sit up and ask what exactly the fuck this thing between you is, but you can't help but sleep.
—
In your dream, Viego is on his throne. He hasn't seen you yet as you walk around it, but when he does he smiles so warmly it makes your heart jump. You get that insatiable urge to be closer, to touch that perfect porcelain skin, and you can't think of any reason not to. His hands settle on your thighs as you climb into his lap, and he kisses you like it's the most natural thing in the world. He's warm, despite the plumes of mist leaking from his heart, and when you mouth along the column of his neck his skin feels as alive as any others. He gasps, rolling his hips up into you, as you grind down into that delicious friction–
You wake with a start.
“Viego, if I took you to a bar, would you wingman for me?” You ask the ceiling muzzily. Predictably, he is indeed in the room.
“What does that mean?” he asks, puzzled.
You open your mouth to explain, then immediately think better of it. He'd make you look bad by comparison, with a face like his. “Nevermind.”
“Are you well?” He asks, tone considerably more concerned.
“Yeah,” you sit up, rubbing your face. “How long was I out for?”
“All night and most of the day. It is around sunset now, I believe.” Viego says. He sits on the bed next to you and hands you a plate. “Here, eat.”
You stare down at the sandwiches for a moment before taking them from him. You can tell he made them himself–he still sucks at cutting tomatoes. “The ferryman came by,” he explains casually as you eat. “Some of the citizens wanted to send their regards, which apparently in Bilgewater consists of a vast array of gold and alcohol. They're holding a vigil over the bodies, instead of burying them at sea.”
“I suppose you'd better find those souls then,” you muse. “I imagine we'll get some strongly worded letters if we're late.”
“No need,” he says. “They've all found their way to the castle already. I suppose nothing can stop the Bilgewater rumormill, not even death.”
You start to get up, putting the plate on your bedside table. “They're here? I should–”
Viego pushes you back down against the bed with a hand flat against your collarbone, right over where his triangle of mist would be on him. You hit the soft pillows with a faint whuff. “You should rest.”
“Viego–” you begin to argue.
“Iso,” he shoots back in a tone that clearly brooks no arguments. “You only just awoke. I will not have you putting yourself back into a coma. We said we would return them tomorrow, they will wait until tomorrow.”
You stare each other down for a long moment, but Viego holds resolute. You sigh. “Y'know, the last man who pinned me down in bed was a lot more fun.”
A flash of something dark flashes across Viego's face. He leans in, putting one hand on the pillow next to your head to support his weight, while the hand still on your chest comes up to stroke the column of your throat. His gaze, already so piercing in its uncanny glow, bores into yours. “I do not expect you to reciprocate my affections, but that does not permit you to make light of them,” Viego says dangerously. His hand reaches your jaw, his thumb just barely brushing over your parted bottom lip. “I am a greedy man, and one day you will have me wanting more than you are willing to give.” You let out a trembling breath, and he’s so close–
And then he sits back, stands up, and vanishes into mist.
“What the fuck?” You ask the empty room, dumbfounded.
—
It's not so much that you avoid Viego for the rest of the night. You're not sure you could avoid him, if he was particularly set on finding you. It's just that you're so fucking confused you have no desire to do anything but pace around your room.
You'll admit, you've been avoiding so much as considering the idea that Viego has feelings for you. Most likely because it's pretty obvious that you have feelings for Viego, which absolutely was a horrible idea, because Viego's defining character trait was being irrevocably, obsessively, head-over-heels in love with a dead woman.
…Except the Viego you know has done his grieving. The Viego you know came to terms with his wife's death and found other things in his past and future to live for. The Viego you know didn't have his story end in the Hallowed Mist, pinned to the scene of his wife's last true death for all eternity. No, he's changed and grown and remembered who he used to be, before death robbed him of everything but the thing he held most dear. The Viego you know has, now that you think about it, been pretty straightforward about his feelings, and you just deflected every time because you were staunchly refusing to address the possibility out of…what? Fear of rejection? That you were reading him wrong, and he would be disgusted by the thought of anyone who wasn't Isolde, thereby ruining your friendship forever?
Your eyes catch on the music box, still on your dresser. In the drawer in the bottom of that dresser sit the notes you wrote, detailing your every foiled attempt to get home. Somewhere deep inside, you still held out hope that you'd find something, anything that could take you back. If you said yes to him, you'd be saying yes to staying in this world. Forever, probably. Neither of you can die or age. The only thing that could take you from him is if you left of your own will, and the thought of having him and then being forced to choose between him and home petrifies you.
You groan, throwing yourself back onto your bed. God, you just had to uncan these particular worms, didn't you? You couldn't have just…fucking repressed all of your feelings forever. Not that that's fair to Viego. Who you've been flirting with and then immediately brushing off when he reciprocates. No wonder he got fed up with your shit. You're stricken with the urge to rewind yourself back to Ionia and disappear into the woods forever, but then again, he'd probably follow you.
He doesn't show up when you pad down to the kitchen to make dinner. The solitude makes you antsy–it’s the longest you've been truly alone for months now. Viego has practically been your shadow, and having him gone for so long makes you uneasy in a way you didn't expect. You make yourself something quick and easy, and leave a portion out for him in case he decides he wants any, before quickly making your way back to your room. You do not sleep well.
---
The next day, Viego is waiting outside your door. You give him a slightly stilted hello, incredibly aware of yourself in his presence in a way you never had been before, and you walk in awkward silence to the Great Hall where the shades gather. The clamoring of the dead is preferable to whatever the fuck this is, and you're glad for the distraction just as much as you are that you can help. The ferryman even makes the trip up to the castle this time instead of meeting you at the docks, and about an hour later he departs with the grateful newly not-dead of Bilgewater in tow. Leaving you back in the awkward silence hell.
“I apologize,” Viego says before you can figure out what the hell you’re supposed to say to him. You give him a questioning look. “For yesterday. I was agitated and got…carried away.”
You stare at him, even more thrown off than before. “I…” Fuck it. You couldn't avoid it forever, and this is killing you. “Viego, how do you feel about me?”
His brow furrows as if you're asking a very strange question. He hesitates a long moment before answering, searching your face for some indication of what you're actually asking. “I love you,” he finally says. “You saved me from myself, and I hope to one day become a man worthy of your affections.”
That confession, delivered as if he was stating an obvious and self-evident fact of the world, floors you. “But why?” You insist, flabbergasted. “Because I just…happened to be the person who freed you?”
He frowns. “Of course not. You taught me a different way to live, and gave me back parts of myself I did not even know I had lost. You treated me with kindness and honesty, and every day you drive me to be better just by existing.” He looks at you earnestly, as if willing you to believe him.
“I–” your voice trembles. Fuck, are you crying? You are. Viego's entire counternance softens, and he steps up to cup your face.
“Oh, my heart, what troubles you?” He asks softly, wiping your tears away.
“I love you,” you hiccup. His eyes widen in shock. “But if I love you, then I can't–I couldn't bring myself to leave, Viego, I couldn't–”
“Then don't leave,” he says softly, urgently. “Stay with me.”
You shake your head. “You don't understand, I can't…I can't give up on them. What kind of person does that make me, if I give up on them?”
“My heart, my love,” Viego croons. “Moving on is not a betrayal. You taught me that. You have fought so hard and for so long, and now they would want you to rest, to find peace and happiness where you are.”
You dissolve into sobs against his chest. He holds you tight, stroking your hair and whispering soft assurances into your hair, until you're so exhausted from everything that you can't help but sleep.
—
Viego is beside you when you wake up. You know, because he's toying with your hair. You open your eyes to find him laying on his side on top of the covers, head pillowed on his arm.
“How often do you watch me sleep?” You ask. “Be honest.”
He thinks about it for a moment. "Do you remember the first night I brought you back here, and you told me to focus on something in the room?” He asks. You nod. “I chose your breathing. I found it comforting, and I still do.”
“Is that your way of saying ‘a lot' while not technically answering the question?” You ask.
His lips quirk in a smile, and he shrugs noncommittally. You're struck with the urge to kiss him, so you do. It's a simple press of lips, but when you pulls back Viego looks stunned.
And then he's on you, devouring your mouth like it's the first water he's seen in years of drought. He pulls you closer with one hand and cards the other through your hair and tilts your head at an angle just so, and, god, he really was a heartbreaker, wasn't he? He had to be, if he could kiss like this.
“Iso,” he breathes against your lips. “My heart, my beloved.” His lips move along your jaw, down your neck, and you gasp. His mouth latches on your pulse and you have no doubt you'll have a mark there tomorrow.
“Viego–” you gasp, only for your voice to trail off into a needy whine as his teeth scrape along the junction of your neck and shoulder. You grab onto his hair for stability, and he moans when you accidentally tug. The sound goes straight between your legs. “Fuck,” you breathe.
“That can be arranged,” he murmurs, looking up at you from beneath those pretty lashes. You nod frantically, and the grin he gives you is absolutely wolfish. He levers himself up so he can pull the covers off you, and you’ve never been so angry at how many layers women's clothing in this world has. Still, Viego is amazing at multitasking–he nips at your throat as he unlaces your bodice, leaving open mouth kisses down your chest as he pushes your chemise down to free your breasts. You gasp as his mouth closes around a nipple, and he slips an arm under your back as it arches, pulling you ever closer to him. You take the opportunity to wrap your legs around him, and he makes a needy little noise against your skin.
His free hand slides up the outside of your leg, rucking your skirts up, and for one delicious second he rolls his hips into yours and good lord, he was packing. Then he’s between your legs, slithering down the length of your body so quickly you're half certain he becomes mist to do it. You yelp as he snaps off your garters with his teeth, and obligingly raise your hips so he can slide your underwear off. You get the impression he would be remorseless about tearing them off you, and you like this pair–
He laps at your clit and moans like it's the most delicious thing he's ever tasted, and thoughts evaporate from your head. You grab his hair again, this time to hold on for dear life, and you swear he whimpers as you fist your hands in it. You'd be worried you were hurting him, if he wasn't still going down on you like his life depended on it. You roll your hips up against his face demandingly, gasping yes right there–
Viego isn't satisfied with making you cum once. He gives you barely enough time to come down before he's easing those long fingers into your drenched pussy. He sucks on your clit and curls his fingers ruthlessly up into you, noting what makes you twitch and cry out with pinpoint accuracy, until he's reduced you to a trembling mess.
“Viego–” you gasp, tugging his hair. He doesn't even seem to register the motion, so you do it again but harder. He comes up, mouth glistening with your juices and eyes glazed, looking somewhere between indulgent and lust-addled and vaguely annoyed you're interrupting him.
“Yes, my love?” He purrs, curling his fingers up in you again. You moan, rolling your hips, and his eyes track your face intently.
“Get up here,” you order as soon as you can form coherent sentences, beckoning him with one finger. He complies immediately, and oh, that's kind of nice, isn't it? You kiss your taste out of his mouth, and he whimpers, rolling his hips against the mattress. “And get this off,” you continue, pulling at his coat. He sits back on his heels to comply, and from this angle you can see his cock pressed painfully up against his pants, neglected save for whatever friction he got against the bed. You sit up and palm him through his pants, feeling him throb, and his hips jump against your hand as he lets out the most desperate noise you've ever heard a man make.
He leans back over you, kissing you desperately as he undoes his belts with one hand. His cock springs free as he shoves his pants halfway down his thighs, and he buries his face in your neck and moans as he drags his length through your folds, once, twice, then finally, he pushes his cock into you. Even with his relentless preparation earlier, the stretch almost burns, and just when you think there can't be more his hips jump and there is. His grip on your hips is almost bruising, and when he finally hilts himself in you, you're both trembling.
Then he begins to move, almost like he can't help himself, dragging his cock out in one slow movement before slamming back in with a moan. You're not sure Viego is even capable of getting tired, because he fucks like he isn't, furiously pistoning his hips like he isn't making an absolute mess out of both of you. He's noisy, too, moans and bitten-off pleas and slurred praises, you're so tight and wet and perfect, my love, my heart, come for me, yes, just like that–
He moans gutterally into your ear as you clench around him, thrusting into you as deeply as he can before he cums. His hips don't still, and with a start you realize he's still hard. “Forgive me, I need m–mhh, more,” he slurs, already starting up another brutal tempo even as his cum leaks out of you. “You–ah, you feel so good, please, let me–” his speech dissolves into needy incoherency. He grips your knees and pulls them up and together, practically folding you in half, and it changes the angle of his thrusts in such a way that has you whimpering. When you cum, it's to a stream of praises and an absolute lack of any noticeable change in his pace.
Perhaps it's to be expected for breaking a century long dry spell, but Viego is insatiable. His thrusts turn sloppy as he chases his own release and he practically sobs as he cums in you again. He sits back, and he's a mess, hair stuck to his face and cock still dripping with your combined fluids. You think he's done, but apparently the sight of your abused hole dripping with his cum does it for him. “One more?” He pleads, and those puppy dog eyes do not belong on a man whose cock is twitching against his stomach.
Ah, fuck it. You roll onto your knees and and give him your best come hither look, aided by the no doubt completely fucked out look you must be sporting. He almost growls, and then he's on you.
—
“I…apologize,” he says sheepishly. “I may have gotten carried away.”
You crack open an eye, and he's looking at the bruises he's left on your hips. “You know I could fix those, right? I'm not doing that because I like them.”
He blinks at you, except his eyes are glazed in such a way that tells you he's thinking of something dirty. “You will be the death of me,” he muses.
You snuggle back against his chest, and he wraps his arms around you. “Been there, done that, dying is overrated. You're stuck with me.”
He kisses the spot underneath your ear, and he sounds utterly sincere when he says, “And how lucky I am.”
#x reader#reader fic#reader#league of legends x reader#league x reader#leauge of legends#viego x reader#crossposted on ao3#my fics: tiarw
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Time is a Roulette Wheel
Viego: Pt 1
League of Legends | Viego x F!Reader
Chapters: Prologue | Viego: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
Crossposted on AO3 here
SFW
Decided to break this up into parts because Tumblr is a Super Functional Website, but you can read the full thing on AO3.
Summary: Turns out that Runeterra isn't the only place that has a Void. Plucked from your world into one of a video game with nothing but stolen time powers, an inability to die and a middling recollection of lore, you're prepared to do just about anything to get back home again. You just have to find the right Champion to help.
Viego is handsome even with his face frozen in a rictus of rage and despair, you'll give him that much. You can fault Vex for a lot of things, but her taste in faces wasn't one of them. That being said, you're pretty sure the only reason she told you where to find him was so you'd leave her alone, so whatever crush she had on him was clearly skin-deep. Still, you were lucky to run into the edgy little yortle–navigating the shadow isles wasn't exactly easy. The mist was still thick, the dead still restless, and the castle itself still a mess of floating broken ruins. You could've been here for weeks before you found him. Not like you don't have the time, though.
The mist is warm when you lower your hand to Viego’s face, and it hums on your skin in a way that vaguely unnerves you. You wind his past around your fingers and twist, rewinding his months of imprisonment until you reach the moment of his defeat. Then, ever so carefully, you creep his time back and watch the mist creeps down his face, to his shoulders and torso. You freeze it there, just free enough for him to speak, and he looks tiredly up at you.
“Are you here to kill me?” He croaks.
“No,” you answer honestly.
He closes his eyes. “How disappointing.”
Your purse your lips, suddenly uncertain. You suppose that answered that question–you weren't sure if he was actually awake in the mist this whole time. He must have been, if he's not still raging and wailing from watching his wife die before his eyes again. You'd been expecting him to try and kill you, to yell and scream and generally just lose his shit. You'd been planning to exploit that for your benefit. This, the utter defeat in his voice, you weren't prepared for. “I'm here because I need your help,” you say, trying to project confidence into your voice. “I’m not from this world. I need to find a way to get home, to get safe passage through the Void to worlds beyond Runeterra.”
He slowly opens his eyes to half-lidded, looking up at you dispassionately. “So you came to me?” He gives his still-frozen body a derisive look, skepticism dripping from his every word.
“You scoured the world for anything that would bring your wife back, I figured you might've found something,” you explain evenly. “That, and all my other leads either couldn't help or wanted to kill me, so I'm running out of options.”
He doesn't look impressed. You sigh. “Look, if you help me, I can help you.” And here you pause, because you know what you're about to offer isn't yours to give, but goddamnit, you just want to go home. “I know what you want, and I can give you it.”
His eyes widen slightly, and for a moment he looks heart wrenchingly hopeful, and you think for one glorious moment that you've got him. Then his expression shutters, and his mouth pulls into a thin line of grief. “I suppose you're offering to give me Isolde, then?”
You pause, but after a moment hesitantly nod. This wasn't what you were expecting. He was supposed to be obsessed, wasn't he? You thought he'd leap at your offer, but he just looks…tired. Like you're ripping open an old wound and he's sick of hurting–not offering him everything he's ever wanted on a silver fucking platter like you are. “Whole. Alive. Exactly as she was before she died.” You say, trying to impress upon him that you're offering exactly what he wants.
He snorts bitterly. “She is gone, specter, dead in the truest of ways.” His tone is mournful as he casts his eyes up, through the broken ceiling to the mists swirling overhead. “I cannot feel her in this world no longer.”
He's not listening. You guess you just have to prove it. You reach out and touch your fingers to his forehead, and in your hands you twist the past until centuries fold beneath your fingertips. The sun and moon flit overhead as you rewind, the walls rebuilding themselves from the onslaught of time and decay. He gasps, then chokes, as all at once he is human again, and you stand in the living past of his dead kingdom. There is an echo of the Void in your voice when you say, “Time is mine to command, Ruined King. She may be gone, but I can bring her back, just as she was the day before the poison touched her.”
Viego looks up at you, utterly human and trembling, and you decide your point has been made. The present pushes harshly back against your manipulations, and you let it snap back to it's rightful place with a wave of your hand. Viego is once again a broken thing bound to the floor of his ruined homeland, and he…begins to laugh. It is most assuredly not a happy sound–rather, it's as if he's about to transition into sobbing any second. “Cruel fate,” he moans, and you realize as he looks up to the heavens that he is indeed crying; slick black tears as thick as oil which wisp into mist at the edges, sure, but tears nonetheless. “The one my heart most desires detests me, rejects me in favor of the oblivion I laboured to free her from, and you offer her to me once more?”
You shift uncomfortably, only to lurch as you realize you're swaying on your feet. That little demonstration took more out of you than you thought–time wasn't as malleable here as it was in the Void, and bringing so much back from so long ago was more difficult than anything else you've done since you got here. Viego is still wailing and moaning almost incoherently, and you really don't want to pass out in front of him. “Give it a think,” you say as casually as you can manage. “I'll be back.”
And with that, you walk away with measured steps that hopefully disguise how unsteady you feel, physically and otherwise.
---
You're not sure how long you're out for, but Viego seems to have composed himself by the time you come back. At least a day, maybe two, but it's hard to keep track of time when you can't see the sun. He regards you evenly as you approach, and before you can speak he announces “I decline.”
You blanch. “You what?”
“I. Decline.” He says purposefully.
Shit. You hadn't planned for this. He was your last concrete lead, everything after him was a shot in the dark. “Why? Don't you want your wife back?” You ask, baffled and more than a little panicked.
He closes his eyes as if your words pain him. “More than you can possibly imagine. But Isolde…it is time for her to rest. I see that now.” When he opens his eyes they stay low, gazing down into the weeping hole in his chest. “I thought that she would love me no matter what became of me, as I did her, but I was wrong. I thought that we could be happy together, if only I could find a way to bring her to my side once more.” His tone is mournful, but when he looks up at you his gaze is no less resolute for the pain in them. “My Queen has made her decision. I will not cause her more pain than I already have.”
You blink, desperately searching his expression for a crack, for some indication that he's just putting up a brave face. Then you sigh deeply, and practically collapse onto the cold stone floor. You may as well– no point pretending to have it together anymore. “God, the first time you exhibit a fucking iota of self-awareness just had to be when I was relying on you being a selfish prick, didn't it?” You gripe, though you sound like you're on the brink of crying. The bastard just had to have time to self reflect, didn't he?
He has the gall to look offended. “I'm not so thick as to ignore condemnations from the person I hold dearest.”
You roll your eyes. “The first time you brought her back she stabbed you with your own sword, and then you decided to try doing it again. I would think she was pretty clear about her feelings on the matter the first time.”
He jerks back slightly, which is as far as his bonds will allow. “She…what? I don't…” he casts his eyes down, brow furrowed in thought. “Isolde was the one who killed me…?”
You give him a scrutinizing look, but he seems genuinely baffled. “You don't remember,” you realize, remembering that single line of text in his bio.
He shakes his head faintly. “I had wondered what could have shattered her soul so thoroughly,” he says, voice so soft you're not actually sure he's speaking to you. “My blade and those waters…so that is what happened.” He tilts his head back to look up at the black mist choking the sky, and laughs bitterly. “I truly do destroy everything I touch, don't I?”
You don't have a response to that. You wonder if you should leave, but summoning the strength for that seems like a Herculean task right now. Where should you go next, anyway? Track down more voidspawn? None of the Void's other servants you've found seemed amicable to helping you so far, and the Voidspawn themselves seem mostly concerned with trying to eat you. You hadn't found Ryze yet, but that was just hoping his poorly defined magic crystals somehow could help.
“Your home,” Viego says some time later, interrupting your thoughts. You'd almost forgotten he was there. “Where is it?”
You shrug one shoulder, your body feeling like one big dead weight. “Far. Beyond the stars and the Void, in a world where all of this is nothing but a story.” You wave your hand around you vaguely. It was the best way to describe ‘you were a video game character’ that didn't end with you covered in blood.
He's quiet for a moment. “In my study,” he says finally. “There are notes on the Void. I thought it might hold the answers to returning Isolde to me, but the toll it would take on her fragile soul would have been too great.”
You don't bother to hide your surprise when you look at him. “You…why?”
He sighs. “You speak as if you know me, which means you must know that I am…” his brow furrows. “What did you say? Ah, yes. A selfish prick. But Isolde…Isolde was kind, and selfless, and everything I am not. If I am to make my transgressions up to her, wherever she is now, then I should start by trying to be the kind of man she would have wanted me to be.”
You pause, considering him. He seems genuine, if no small amount grief stricken. “Hard to do that stuck in there,” you point out, testing the waters.
He shrugs as much as he is able. “I cannot say I blame them, the doll and the sentinel. I did kill them. I suppose this is as close as they could get to doing the same to me.”
You tilt your head, examining him closely. “What would you do, if I let you out of there?”
He looks at you warily, but seems to seriously consider the question. “I am…unsure,” he says slowly. “I have lived with but a single purpose for so long, I don't…”
“Vengeance?” You suggest. “Isolde is off the table, sure, but wreaking havoc on the world that dared to take her from you? Covering the continents in black mist and turning it into an unliving graveyard of cursed souls?”
He grimaces immediately. “No, that's not…she would not have wanted that.”
You stand, dusting off your clothes. “That's good enough for me.” You reach your hand out to him, and the Hallowed mist recedes into its needles, the thread falling limply from his wrists without Gwen to guide them. He slumps as it goes, as if he weren't prepared to hold his own weight up. He flexes his hands, and when he looks up at you he seems confused. You can't blame him. You're not even fully sure why you're doing this–just that leaving him here, trapped in this nightmarish stasis surrounded by the memory of everything he's lost, seems wrong.
That doesn't mean you fully trust him, though. “If I hear about you causing problems, I will find you,” you say casually. “I don't know if you can die, but I can stop time from ever passing for you again, and that's basically the same thing.” You glance at the needles still stuck in the stone. “You won't be awake, at least.”
He stands gingerly, and then nods grimly. “If I fail her again, I will be counting on it.”
---
You're expecting that to be it. That you'll go your separate ways, possibly until such a time he turns out to be fully crazy and you have to kill him. Instead, he shows up a week later while you're pouring through his notes. You only notice him because of the reflection in the dusty glass in the study's single intact window.
“You have shit note-taking skills, y'know that?” You say somewhat accusingly. “Beautiful handwriting, but shit note-taking.”
In the reflection, you see him he shrug casually where he's leaning against the doorway. “Academics were never my strong suit, ‘tis true.”
You turn around, holding out a sheaf of yellowed parchment and pointing to it accusingly. “What the fuck is this supposed to say, anyway?”
He leans forward, blinking at the offending word. Then he gives you a skeptical look. “Rest. It says, rest.”
You whip the page back to face you, squinting. “What? How is that an R? How is that an S?” You glance up at his skeptical expression, then flush. “Look, I wasn't taught cursive, gimme a break.” You toss the paper back on the desk. You're pretty sure it's useless to you. All of it is. “What're you still doing here, anyway?”
He gives you a blank look, as if he doesn't understand the question. “Where else would I go?”
You raise a brow. “I dunno, somewhere less miserable? What, are you planning to mope around here forever?”
He looks around as if you're referring to this specific room. “The idea has its appeal,” he says, almost to himself.
Somehow, the thought of him wandering around his ruined castle for eternity like some sort of kicked dog is both depressing and irritating to you. Like he's giving up, when you've been fighting so long and so hard the very idea revolts you. It has to–you don't have any other option. “Didn't you say you were going to try and be the kind of man Isolde wanted you to be?” You ask, probably a bit too sharply. He glances at you, surprised and a little on guard at your tone. “I can't claim to have known the woman, but somehow I doubt she wanted you to spend eternity in what is possibly the most depressing way anyone could spend eternity.”
He looks away, mouth a thin line. “I would not be so sure, after all the pain I caused her.” You open your mouth to argue, and then remember that she did kill him.
“Look, was she a spiteful person?” You try instead.
He recoils as if the thought offends him. “No, of course not.”
“Then she wouldn't want you to punish yourself like this,” you say.
His brow furrows, though you're not sure if it's in confusion or irritation. “And what would you know?”
You shrug one shoulder. “I am a spiteful person, and if you tried that shit on me I would've tried to kill you the second time too.”
“Ha!” Surprisingly, Viego laughs. It's a dry, self-depreciating sound closer to a bark than anything, but it is a laugh. “What am I to do, then? How can I possibly begin to undo what I have done?” His tone as a challenge, and you're about to snap back, but when you look in his eyes he just looks horribly, terribly lost. This is a man who has lost everything that meant anything to him, you realize, and he's desperately struggling to find his way back to the line. You've been there, and despite yourself, empathy tugs at you.
You let out a heavy sigh. “Look. Did she love you, before all of this? When you were alive?”
He opens his mouth, then pauses, brow scrunching. “When we were alive, yes, we were in love.” he finally says, his voice slow as if he's not entirely sure of his own words.
“Then she would've wanted what anyone wants for their loved ones after they've gone. She wanted you to find a way to be okay without her, to be happy without her.” Your voice is measured, with an edge of imploring. You weren't good at the whole conversation thing even before the Void happened, let alone during emotionally charged conversations.
He gives you a look that is all at once bitter, mournful, and as if you're suggesting something both impossible and idiotic. “There is no happiness for me without her.”
“You're like a broken record, y'know that?” You say archly. “Yes, she's gone, and I know how much that hurts, believe me, but that grief isn't all you are. You were happy before her, you can be again.”
He blinks oddly, a strange haze entering his eyes. “Before…Isolde?”
You nod slowly, suddenly unsure. “Yes. You were a prince before you two met, right? Nobility?” You pick up a random note and gesture at the fancy, curling script there. “You obviously had a lot of calligraphy lessons. Did you enjoy those?”
He stares at the paper as if he's never seen it before, then at you in apprehensive confusion. “I don't remember.”
You sigh, tossing the paper away. “You said you weren't very academic, so I suppose that makes sense.”
“Did I?” He murmurs, touching his mouth. “I don't…it seemed like it was true when I said it, but when I think back, there is nothing.” His hand travels to his cheekbone, and he frowns. “I recall that I look like my father, but I can't even remember his face, or why I know that to be true. Nor my mother, or anything of my childhood, my past…anything. Anything but Isolde.”
You blink. You thought he had just been obsessed with her because of love, but maybe it wasn't just that–if Isolde was all he remembered, all he had left, of course he would become fixated. If she was the last thing on his mind when he died, when he was trapped in that sword…you guess it wasn't a stretch, that she's the thought he would hold onto while everything else fell away over the centuries. “Dying really did a number on you, huh?” You muse.
His hand falls to the ragged hole in his chest. “The mist takes everything from those who are too weak to withstand it. Everything they are, everything they have ever been. I did not think I…” he trails off, and you both watch as plumes of mist roll from his broken heart to the floor, and he laughs bitterly. “But of course. How does one remember that they have forgotten something, when all reminders have been destroyed by their own hand? Why would I be spared the curse I created?” That seems like a rhetorical question, so you don't respond.
A long moment of silence passes, Viego deep in thought. It seems wrong to interrupt him, and you don't exactly have anywhere better to be right now. Eventually, he looks up at you, face creased with concentration. “I think,” he says slowly, “I enjoyed horseback riding, through the forests. I remember I wanted to take Isolde, but she did not know how to ride and horses scared her terribly, and I recall being very disappointed, so…I must have wanted to go. I must have enjoyed it, if I wanted to share it with her.” His voice gains certainty as he speaks, as he reasons out something so basic about himself from what little memories he has.
You make a decision, then and there. “Come with me,” you offer, except it comes out like you're telling him.
He blinks at the non-sequitor. “With you? To where?”
“You can go anywhere your mist goes, right?” He nods, confused, and you hold out your hand. “Gimme your sword, then follow me.”
“My sword?” He repeats, uncomprehending.
You wiggle your fingers at him impatiently. “This place is super depressing, Viego, and I've got a long list of places I'd rather be. So you can either let me borrow your sword, or you can stay here and be miserable. What'll it be?”
For a long moment he just stares at you. Then he gives a disbelieving little laugh, and raises his hand above yours. The blade materializes in it as if he were already holding it, before he drops it into your waiting palm. The moment it touches your skin, a strange flash of sensation travels up your arm, like dousing yourself in cool water. Your arm sinks with the sudden weight of it, but you manage to avoid dropping it. You grin at him, pleased. “Okay, now follow me,” you say, and rewind.
You pick a few months ago, when you were passing through a lush woodland. You pull yourself back to that time, then let the past push your intrusive presence back to the present where it belongs. Teleportation in two easy steps, if only to places you've already been.
For a long moment, you think Viego isn't coming. His sword is cold in your hand, thin sheets of mist dripping from it onto the grass, and by God is it heavy, so you stab it into the dirt. When you look up, Viego is there.
He looks around, brow furrowed. “Where are we?”
You shrug. “Somewhere in Ionia. I wasn't keeping track. I don't have any horses, and I somehow doubt they would tolerate you, but we can walk. See how you feel.”
He gives you a puzzled look. “Why are you doing this?”
You pause, and your voice is soft when you reply. “Because I know what it's like, to lose so much of yourself that a monster is the only thing you can be if you want to survive. And because I'm trying to find my way back to being the kind of person the people I love would want me to be, too.”
There's something unreadable in his eyes when he looks at you. Then, he draws his sword from the ground, and as it disappears into mist he begins to walk. Without a word, you follow. Somehow, leaving him alone seems cruel. For all that he's probably insane, he also strikes you as terribly, unbearably lonely.
He doesn't speak, and the silence begins to wear on you, so you do. You tell him about your world, how different it is, how you relied on machinery instead of magic. It's a dangerous game, feeling out the edges of what you're allowed to say, but it's also somehow freeing. To say you converse would be a stretch, but for all that his expression says that he thinks you might just be delusional, he seems intrigued by the world you describe. His questions are tinged with skepticism, especially when you get into trying to explain the Internet. You even get a laugh out of him as you offhandedly mention that your mystical worldwide library that contained the accumulated knowledge of your entire species was obviously largely used for disseminating pornography.
As night falls, for the first time, Viego comes to a stop and looks at you. His eyes are oddly bright in the dark, and his crown casts a dramatic glow over his face. He's looking at you like he can't quite make sense of you. “I do not know your name,” he finally says.
You guess you hadn't actually introduced yourself. As always, your real name rises to the tip of your tongue before you swallow it back. “You can call me Iso,” you say instead.
His lip quirks, and he gives you a very princely half bow, though his movements are slow as if he's following half-remembered steps. “Viego Santiarul Molach vol Kalah Heigaari, at your service.”
You laugh as he straightens up. “You can remember all that, but not whether you like calligraphy?”
“I did not like calligraphy,” he says decisively. “And my penmanship is middling at best. I suspect your standards are simply low.”
And then he vanishes.
“Bitch?” you say, disbelievingly, to the empty clearing
#x reader#reader fic#viego x reader#league x reader#leauge of legends#league of legends x reader#f!reader#crossposted on ao3#my fics: tiarw
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
Time is a Roulette Wheel: Swain WIP Pt4
It's a week to Ionia on Swain's behemoth of a ship. You have dinner in his very classy quarters, and you talk about literature, the secrets of the universe, and on day two he brings out a Xa’h board, which is remarkably similar to chess but with slightly different pieces. You'll admit you may use your powers just a tad, to give yourself just a tad more time to think. You end the night tied–one win, one tie, one loss, after he adapted to your ‘unconventional strategy’. The next night you teach him chess, and he thrashes you.
Ostensibly, you're guarding him. Your little dance of not-quite flirting continues.
---
Your iteniary in Ionia consists at first of visiting select cities so Swain can make speeches and menace the local populace into maximum efficiency. After that, you travel out into contested borders, and that's when Swain puts you to work. Sometimes it's geography that needs changing, battles that need overseeing. In one place you uncollapses a building ravaged by a manastorm, in another you unbuild a wall and let an army in. You wear a nondescript cloak, get in, and do what you do, and get out. You figure Swain doesn't want to put your face to your deeds when he only has you for a limited time. Better it stay some unspecified Noxian sorcery than the work of an asset that they'll eventually lose. It's a preferable arrangement for you–maybe it was the years of isolation thing, but you never liked attention when it comes to crowds.
“They’ll be treated fairly,” Swain says. He doesn't turn to look at you when you appear back by his side, but somehow he always knows you're there.
You look out over the city, the one that will soon sport Noxus banners, and find you don't really feel much of anything. Maybe it's because for some ungodly reason, you trust him, trust that he'll do right by his people, that this isn't conquest for conquest's sake. Or maybe it's because he's right, and caring is a face you put on to feel human, that giving a shit is just something else the Void carved out of you. “What happens to them?” You ask anyway.
He glances at you. “They have seven days to swear fealty, or to leave. It's the same courtesy I extended the houses of Noxus, and every city Noxus has taken under the Trifarix’s banner.” He looks back at the city, frowning. “Darkwill left deep scars on Ionia, and I expect they think me the same as him, power hungry and cruel. It will take time for them to understand that isn't the case. I suppose I could–”
You’re both distracted by a choking noise behind you. You whip around just in time to watch the guards drop, their throats opened by invisible knives. Swain lashes out with his demonic hand, a crackle of eldritch energy wracking through the guards and their assailants. A cry of pain, as the guards drop, four masked figures shimmer into visibility. They each split into illusionary clones, all launching at Swain at the same time–
And you freeze each and every one in place. “My thanks,” Swain says congenially. He makes a circuit across the room, dragging his clawed hand through each assassin, and flesh or illusion his hand passes through each throat regardless. One, two, three–the last one, he skims his claw across their throat, but doesn't cut. You let the others drop. “If you wouldn't mind reviving the guards?” he requests politely, turning to look at you as he flicks the blood off his clawed hand.
You circle around the suspended assassin, reach your hands out towards the guards, and raise them back to life. It's a testament to their professionalism that they don't freak out.
One of them clears his throat, reaching up to rub where the cut just was. “Did we…die, Grand General?”
“Yes,” he says. “You may thank Iso for your continued existence. For now, take this one to the holding cells.”
“Yes, sir,” they say in unison. You unfreeze the assassin, and they both utter thanks as they walk past you to detain him. On their way out, you're pretty sure you hear one asking the other if this will affect their performance review.
“Does that happen often?” You ask, dragging your foot through the bloodstains and rewinding them back to clean.
“Occasionally,” he allows, frowning thoughtfully in the direction the guards went. “Ionians are willful, and their magic makes them unpredictable,” he sounds distracted, as if his attention is elsewhere.
You glance down at the blood staining his sleeve. “Do you want me to fix that for you, or…?”
He looks back at you, then at his sleeve, as if he's only just noticed the blood there. “That would be appreciated, yes,” he says, holding his hand up for you. You tug on his sleeve and rewind it to clean, and he regards your work with something akin to appreciation. “And you have my thanks for earlier, as well. That could have been much messier without your assistance.”
Professional, you remind yourself.
—
“Can I ask you a strange question?” You ask. “Bearing in mind that I can put your guts right back outside your body if you tell anyone about it?”
The soldier whose guts you did indeed just put back in their rightful place blinks at you, then at the next person you're resurrecting from the dead. “Y'know what, sure. Why not,” she says with a full body shrug, and then a wince. You were only healing the life-threatening/ending injuries to conserve your energy, so her arm is still broken.
“Does Noxus have any rules against, y'know, workplace relationships?” You ask, gesturing vaguely.
“No?” She says slowly. “I mean, you get in trouble getting caught hooking up in the barracks and shit like that, but assuming you're doing your job…no?”
The soldier under your hands comes back to life with a wracking gasp, hands flying to where the arrow in his neck had been. “What about dating your superior?” You press, shaking the blood off your hands.
“Why…” she pauses, glancing over at where Swain stands across the tent, urgently discussing something with their warhost commander. “Oh. Shiiiit.”
“I died,” the newly alive man gasps, struggling to sit up. “I died, Valcine–”
“Yeah, you and everyone else,” Valcine, apparently, says dismissively. “And Captain's gonna make us run laps until we do again cuz of it, you can bet your ass over it. I mean, c'mon, we crumbled out there as soon as those wind mages showed up, we're better than that.”
The man gives her an appalled look. “Wh–we don't even get a day off? For dying?”
She rolls her eyes. “Man, bring it up with the union or something, I don't care. Now fuck off, I'm trying to have a conversation here.” The man staggers off, grumbling, and she leans forwards intently. “Seriously? Grand General Swain?”
“I can kill you slow and bring you back and nobody would ever be able to prove anything,” you remind her. She laughs.
“Oh, don't you worry about that. I've got no intention of pissing you off, and even less of pissing him off,” she jerks her head in Swain's direction. You give her a confused look, and she shrugs. “I never seen anyone treat him as casually as you do and not have their head taken off.”
You blink. “I thought that was just because I'm useful.”
She raises a brow. “Ma’am, all due respect, this is Jericho fucking Swain we're talking about. This is a man demands respect from the biggest and baddest in the whole world. I don't believe he'd let a single thing slide if he didn't want to. Plus, I'm pretty sure I saw him smile at you earlier, and I've never seen him do that without borders changing hands. Point being, if that man is capable of having a soft spot, he's got one for you,” she says, sitting back and crossing her legs.
You don't know what to say to that. “I…suppose?” You hazard. “I thought he was just…less intimidating once you got to know him.”
She looks at you like you're insane. “Look, I can't say I know him, but by all accounts, that is not fucking true.” You frown. Somehow, that seems lonely to you–to represent so much that no one saw the person underneath. “Anyway, to answer the question you definitely didn't ask, also no. Noxus is a meritocracy, and we don't tolerate incompetence. If there was any kind of quid pro quo fuckery going on, it'd be found out pretty quick if some fuckwit got into a job they didn't earn and couldn't handle. You do your job, your personal life is your personal life, no questions asked.”
“Huh,” you say. “That's…good, I suppose.” You reach out and restore her arm. She blinks at you, then at it. “You'd better get back to it.”
“That I should,” she allows, tilting her head. “Take care, ma’am. And good luck with…all of that.”
—
One minute you're in a carriage headed for the next settlement in your grand tour, and the next the side of the mountain explodes. Your carriage is sent tumbling down the cliffside end over end before slamming into the ground with an almighty crash, although admittedly that sound could have just been the ringing in your ears from slamming your head into the wall. You look outside, except the carriage is almost on it's side and the rightmost window of the carriage looks up the steep cliff you just came down, which is now occupied by a fucking rockslide. You lurch out just as the first boulder strikes the window, freezing it and the rest in place before they can crush you. Your head spins from pain and exertion–the rocks you had froze had more rocks piling on top of them, and reality dearly wants to reassert laws like gravity.
“Iso, are you okay?” Swain asks urgently. His voice is very close to your ear, and it takes you a moment to register that you landed on him–or rather, he caught you, because his demonic arm is wrapped around your waist, your back pressed to his chest. You crane your head back to look at him, your hands still outstretched to the rockslide you're keeping in place. He looks at you intently, and his face is very close to yours. It's dark now, the rockslide blocking out any light from outside, so there's only the soft red glow of his arm. Not that the dark bothers you much these days–you can still see his face clearly.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have very pretty eyes?” You say vaguely. It's true–usually they're a dark sort of hazel, occasionally gold-flecked in the sun, but the way the red shines off of them right now makes him look almost ethereal.
He frowns, raising his human hand to the back of your head. His glove comes away wet with blood. “You're concussed.”
You blink. “Am I?” You ask vaguely, and then rewind yourself. The haze in your mind immediately lifts, and you wince. “Okay, yeah, I was. Are you okay?”
“Aside from the army of rebels up on that cliffside waiting to finish us off, yes,” he says dryly. Newly unconcussed, you realize that red gleam in his eyes isn't a reflection–no, his eyes have taken in a ghostly shadow of Raum’s as he sees through the demon's eyes. “It appears they're waiting to see who crawls from the rubble so that they can pick them off from a distance.”
“Did anyone else make it?” You ask.
“Not anymore,” he says grimly. “The rocks did most of the work. I take it our continued survival is your doing?” You feel more than see him nod at the rocks, frozen midway through crumpling the carriage like a can. The half-broken window is suspended in midair, a freeze frame shattered glass about to explode into your face. You nod. “How long can you hold that for?”
You shrug. “A few hours, at least. Wouldn't count on me being much good after, though.”
He's quiet for a moment, clearly thinking. “We'll wait. They aren't searching the rubble, and it appears we've taken the brunt of the rockslide. With luck, they'll assume we've died and depart.” You nod your agreement. He's quiet for a moment. “How long is it, before you're unable to bring someone back from death?”
You hesitate. “It's not really a question of how long for them, it's how long for me. I do too much and I render myself comatose. Death is harder to undo than an injury–the souls gone, and bringing something like that back from the Spirit World is a lot to ask from a reality that doesn't like what I'm doing in the first place. Putting aside that some people just can't handle dying…I dunno, how many were in the convoy?”
“Sixty three,” he answers immediately.
You think. “Assuming that we can recover the bodies…if I can get to them within a few days, I'd say it'd take me about a week?” You hazard.
He's quiet for a moment. “There were good men and women in this escort. I should have seen this coming. If it weren't for your quick thinking, we would both be crushed under rubble right now.”
“Given the timing, I'd assume they have access to the same invisibility as the last people who tried to kill you, and for all your vision you don't get truesight,” you point out. “In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that was just a test to see if you could see through it.”
He shifts his weight, so you're more sat between his legs than laying on top of him, though you can still feel his chest rise with every breath. “Did you want me to move…?” You offer, though there's hardly anywhere else to go in the half crushed carriage.
“You’re the one stopping us from being crushed to death. In this situation, you can do whatever you please,” he says mildly. He does not move his arm from around your waist.
“Oh good. You're much more comfortable than the wall.” You drop your head back against his chest. He's warm. You sit in silence for a while–ironically, your sense of time has never been good. “I don't like waiting,” you mutter.
“I couldn't have guessed,” he drawls. “Tell me, how long have you been in Runeterra for?”
You squint at nothing, thinking. “...almost a year, now.” You hazard. “Coming to you wasn't at the top of my list of ideas, no offense.”
He shrugs. “None taken. Had I had the option, the celestial dragon would have been my first choice too. Correct me if I'm wrong, but…you haven't truly stopped in all that time, have you? Always moving relentlessly towards your goal, until you came to me.”
“Not true. Sometimes I stopped to get very, very drunk,” you rebute. You can feel it when he laughs. “It's not just that, though. Sitting still like this would've gotten me killed, back…well, you know.”
“When you were taken into the Void,” he supplies. You don't answer. His human hand comes up to your chin, gently urging you to look at him.“How long were you there?” The uncertainty on your face must show, because his lips thin. “Do you even know?”
“Linear time and I don't have the best relationship in places that have celestial bodies to track the days with,” you say with a shrug. Somehow looking him in the eye is difficult, even though you're pretty much spooning–like he can see parts of your past that you don't even particularly like looking at. You look down instead, and realize you've been fidgeting with the feathery down of the arm around your waist. Well, really, petting. Swain hasn't objected, though, which you take as tacit permission–he really doesn't strike you as the type to tolerate–anything he doesn't actively want, really.
“Can you feel it? The other arm?” You ask softly, idly dragging your fingers into the down. It's oddly soft, for being made of glowing eldritch energy. You had a roommate with a pet bird once, and you vaguely recall that they like being patted against the feathers. You wonder if it's the same for him.
“Like it was my own flesh and blood,” he says. “Albeit one that is attempting to stage a revolt against the rest of my body.”
You snort a laugh, only to squeak as Swain's gloved hand comes out to cover your mouth. “Hush,” he murmurs into your ear. “They're climbing down to check for survivors.”
You're so, so fucked. Is he doing this on purpose? You focus on keeping the stones frozen, and not doing something clinically fucking insane like putting his fingers in your mouth. You can be normal about this. You're great at acting normal.
What passes next is perhaps the most agonizing ten minutes of your life, and for once it has absolutely nothing to do with the people who are actively trying to kill you.
“They're gone,” Swain finally murmurs. He doesn't move his hand. You're going to go insane. You bite his finger, gently closing your teeth around the warm leather and putting just enough pressure to sting. He clicks his tongue, but moves his hand. “Careful, girl.”
“You're one to talk,” you mutter. “Can I move the rubble off us now?”
“If you'd be so kind,” he says. You reach out and rewind the rubble, back up the clifface and into the mountain it was broken off of. The newfound light is almost blinding. Swain stands, lifting you up with him with the arm around your waist, and you vaguely wonder if his demonic arm is stronger or if he's just like that. He's certainly not a small man, by any means. He lifts you out of the carriage, and you do your best not to think about any other contexts where he might have his hands around your waist as you swing open the door and climb out. He's tall enough that he barely has to climb to do the same.
“They aren't far,” he says as he dusts himself off. “We need to move fast–Iso?” He looks at you in alarm, and you realize you're swaying.
“You know how I said that if I used my powers too much I'd pass out?” you mumble. “That, um…took more out of me than I thought. Sorry.”
The last thing you see is his alarmed expression, before you pass out.
—
You wake up in a bed. You sit up, alarmed, only to immediately see Swain in an armchair by the bed. You're in a farmhouse of some kind, though judging by the layer of dust over everything it's been abandoned for some time.
“Back with the living, are we?” He observes mildly. He's idly flicking through a book on herbology.
You frown. “I was dead?”
“A figure of speech, my dear,” he says, snapping the book shut with one hand and placing it on the bedside table. “We should be safe here. Reinforcements will arrive within the hour.”
You consider him. “You could've left me there,” you point out slowly.
“I could have,” he allows. “However, I feel as though you're either underestimating your worth or overestimating how difficult you are to carry.”
You sit up, swinging your legs off the bed. “So you carried my unconscious body through the woods, while actively being hunted, even though I can't die, can't be captured and can't even really be hurt in any way that matters?”
“Yes,” he says easily.
You consider him. “Why?”
He tilts his head, oddly similar to his birds. “Exactly what answer are you hoping to get here, Iso?”
“A straight one,” you counter. “You risked your life for me when you know damn fucking well that there was no risk to mine, and this entire trip has been one enormous game of chicken. I want to know what you want from me.”
He leans back, considering you and his next words. “I enjoy your companionship,” he finally says, tone matter-of-fact. “If you were so inclined, I would like it to continue in a personal capacity. I can honestly say that my regard for your abilities has little to do with my interest in you as a person, but I won't pretend that I don't fully intend to utilize them, and you, for the good of Noxus. I have no doubt that you intend to use me to serve your ambitions as well. However, I don't see any reason that has to get in the way of our relationship.”
You blink. That was upfront, but you suppose you probably should have expected that from Swain of all people. The man had been very clear about what the expectations were for you working for him–you suppose this was no different. “You understand that I'll be leaving as soon as physically possible, right?” you say cautiously. If you were going to have an adult conversation about your relationship, that seemed like an important thing to be clear on.
He raises a brow. “I am aware, yes.”
“And you're sure you're not seducing me for the good of Noxus?” You continue.
He laughs. “Should I be flattered that you think me so selfless? No, but I suppose you're entitled think and do whatever you please.”
You consider him, reclining in a beaten up armchair as if it were a throne, and you think fuck it. “I'll hold you to that,” you say, and proceed to climb into his lap and kiss him. He responds immediately, winding his feathered arm around your waist, the other threading through your hair. His kiss is both hungry and meticulous, like taking you apart with his mouth alone is his god-given purpose, and when you part you feel out of breath in ways that have nothing to do with the air in your lungs.
“You know, I was planning to have this conversation with you after we returned to Noxus,” he says mildly, tucking your hair behind your ear. If it weren't for the hungry gleam in his eye, you'd be offended at how unaffected he seemed. Still, you're struck with the urge to crack that composure.
“Best laid plans and all that,” you say somewhat breathlessly. You go to mouth down his neck, but his hand shifts to the back of your neck and tightens, tilting your head back like an unruly cat.
“If I am to have you, it will not be in some run-down shack in enemy territory,” he says, his tone almost idle if not for the undercurrent of steel.
“If I wasn't pretty sure I'd pass out immediately, I'd teleport us back both to Noxus right now,” you say.
He smirks, and his hold on your nape softens, his hand coming up to caress your cheek instead. “Patience, my sweet.”
You lean into his touch, feeling oddly like a cat looking for affection. “Because that's notoriously my strong suit.”
He chuckles darkly, and you're sure the little shiver that goes through you doesn't escape his notice. “Oh, I'm sure you'll learn.”
#league of legends x reader#league x reader#reader fic#leauge of legends#x reader#f!reader#reader#my fics: tiarw#swain lol#swain x reader#WIPs
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
Time is a Roulette Wheel: Swain WIP Pt2
SFW
Not me spending like an hour in the weeds of the fandom wiki trying to reconstruct a timeline for Noxus. Apparently after Swain killed the previous Grand General and established the Trifarix council he pulled back most of the warhosts but maintained a bunch of coastal territories in Ionia and Shurima, which is roughly when I'm setting this, but also at some point in the future he decides on Ionian Invasion Pt: Back In The Saddle Again re: the awaken cinematic, which apparently isn't even necessarily canon?? Anyway I'm extrapolating a bunch of information about Noxus' current political climate from those two things
----
They give you a nice room in what you take to be a guest wing, and Garret departs again. There are guards outside your door, which you aren't sure if you're to take as a threat or a luxury. You aren't really in the mood for their oppressive hospitality, though, so as soon as the doors close you rewind yourself to the streets outside.
Your latest raven sights you almost immediately. There's lots of them outside the palace–you assume because that's where Swain is. You make it to the block outside the tower before you stop and turn to look at it, exasperated. “Come on then,” you wave it over. It flits down to the fence next to you, cocking it's head at you. “If you're going to be following me around anyway, I'd rather know where you are,” you say, offering it your arm.
It blinks, one eye at a time. “I'll tell you a secret? Something no-one else in Runeterra knows…” you coax. It caws softly. “Alright, you drive a hard bargain. Two.”
The raven steps onto your arm and caws. You grin. “Okay, let's see…hm. When I was six, I stole all of my friends glitter pens and blamed it on a boy who was mean to me. Then I felt bad, so I threatened him into writing an apology note and planted it and the pens back in her bag the next day.”
The raven caws harshly at you. You shrug. “I never said they were ground-breaking secrets.” Nevertheless, the bird settles on your shoulder when you lift your arm up to it, and you set out again.
You walk without any particular purpose, just exploring the City. You were somehow expecting it to be more depressing, but despite the grim and brutality architecture the people are lively and vibrant. It reminds you of Bilgewater, but with less outright crime, honestly. The market hawkers holler offers across the street, beside you a woman argues sharply with a weaver about the cost of a bolt of silk. A vastayan man on a street corner does an elaborate fire-breathing display, and his hat is piled with coin. Nobody apologizes when they knock into you in the busy streets, but not once does anyone try and lift your purse. You eventually find your way to the markets, where you permit yourself to buy a few books and a glass figurine that catches your eye. You usually prefer to travel light, but here's hoping that you'll be staying here for at least a while. You get skewers from a food stall that smells irresistible, and you feed chunks to the raven as you walk back. You suppose that they must be like normal ravens to some extent, because it accepts the food easily enough.
The raven departs with a soft caw as you make your way back to the tower, the sun setting in the distance. You rewind yourself back to your room and read until your dinner is brought.
—
If you were counting your entire stint in the Void as a single incident, meeting the Trifarix is the second most stressful thing that's ever happened to you. It's like a job interview, except you're pretty sure they're going to try and kill you if you don't get the job.
You're led into a cavernous throne room, with the Trifarix seated at a simple stone table at the foot of the empty throne. Swain sits in the center, Darius on his right, and to his left the Faceless in their many layered robe. You sit across from them, feeling distinctly like you should be wearing something nicer. Your guard escorts fall back, and Swain prompts you to recount your offer.
What follows next is the most exhaustive hour of negotiation you've ever been party to. The Faceless asks where you got your powers. You explain that you can't explain, and then go through all of the unpleasantness of proving it by hacking glass up on their table. Darius wants to know what exactly you have to offer Noxus, the limits of your powers, whether you can be sent to the front lines. You tell him you're immortal, and then when he laughs in your face, you say he can behead you and prove it if he's fine waiting a few hours for you to come back. He kind of pauses, then, and either the seriousness in your offer or the shard of mirror glass still sitting on the table seems to convince him, because he's a tad less rude after that.
Swain seems more concerned with the terms of your agreement than your worth to the empire–what your duties will be, for how long, how each party will assure the other that they're fufilling their end of the contract. He doesn't know off the top of his head how to get you home, but he suggests several promising avenues a team of mages and researchers could pursue. The Faceless suggests you work for them until they find a way to send you home, you point out that that motivates them to purposely delay or fail their research to keep you here. You suggest that you work for them for a year regardless of their findings; at the end they either send you home, or you fuck off elsewhere. Swain suggests a ten year term with updates. You point out that if you find out that they're trying to fuck you over, you’ll unmake this entire goddamn city around them. Swain points out, almost idly, that that would disproportionately affect the citizenry, and you don't really have a rebuttal for that, so you relent and amend that fine, you'll just kill all of them, but that's a much less dramatic threat. Darius laughs. The other two do not.
You settle on a three year term.
---
“Garret, be honest with me, are you reporting my every move back to the Trifarix?” You ask wearily, on your way out of the meeting.
Garret blinks. “Not specifically. Of course I'll be honest if asked, but to be frank, ma’am, they have better ways to keep tabs on you.”
You grimace, glancing up at the birds on the rooftops around you. “That's fair. Why were you assigned to me, then?”
“If the need arised, to kill you,” he says evenly.
You raise a brow at him. He doesn't look any more dangerous than your average Noxian, but there must be some reason he was the one assigned to take you out. He looked Ionian–maybe some form of magic that would take you off guard. “Unlucky.”
“So I hear,” he says dryly. He stops in front of your new residence, a two story in a nice looking part of the city, or as nice as Noxus' imperious architecture gets. “This will be your new residence. Someone should have already been by to drop off your citizenship documents. Welcome to Noxus, ma’am.”
“You won't be escorting me anymore, I take it?” You extrapolate. He shakes his head. “Can I ask you a personal question, then?”
He blinks. “Not standing out here in the street, no. You may invite me in for tea, however.” He fishes a set of keys out of his pocket and hands it to you.
You crack a smile, open the door, and then turn to stand inside it. “Could I invite you in for tea, Colonel I don't know your first name Garrett?” You say with your best approximation of an Ionian bow.
“You may, Madam Iso I don't know your last name,” he responds in kind. There's the edge of a smile on his lips, which is as expressive as you've ever seen him.
“I don't actually know if I have tea,” you say as you close the door behind you. “I didn't bring any.”
“I don't drink tea,” he says plainly. He goes to sit at your new couch, politely folding his hands in his lap. “You may ask your question.”
You sit across from him, bemused. “Are all Noxians this abrupt?”
He inclines his head at you, akin to a bird. “We value our time. Was that your question?”
You laugh. “No. I wanted to ask, and you can feel free to tell me to fuck off if it's too personal, but…you're Ionian, right? Why are you here, in Noxus?”
He pauses for a moment. “That is very personal, yes. May I ask why you want to know?”
You pause a moment, mulling over your words. “Because…look, you know what I did in Shuriman. I work for Noxus now, and honestly there isn't a hell of a lot I wouldn't do to get home, but…all the same, I want to know what I'm getting into. What I've done to those people.”
He sighs. “It was…different, for me. My village was poor, and we had little to resist with when Noxus came almost a decade ago, under Darkwill’s rule. It was brutal, and I lost people I cared for in a hopeless attempt at resistance. The army raided our temple for relics, and we were told to bend the knee or die. I bent.” He spreads his hands to indicate to his practical Noxian garb. “I thought our lives would be as senseless and cruel as the army was. For a time it was. Then Grand General Swain deposed Darkwill, and things changed. The world opened to us. My sister pursued an education in history, my son an apprenticeship in smithing. We were recognized for the worth of our craft rather than the blood in our veins. I miss my wife, yes, and my son his mother, but we are fed and content.”
You look down. “Does that make it worth it?”
His lips thin slightly. “The spring does not justify the winter. They are merely things that happen, and we weather them.” You sit in silence for a moment, before he offers “Grand General Swain is just, as far as I have seen. He has inherited his predecessors' wars, but there is a purpose there where Darkwill only had tyranny and madness. He is not war-like by nature, I believe, but securing Noxus' future relies on stabilizing the borders of our acquired territories.”
“So that makes the brutal expansionism justified?” You ask dryly.
He shrugs. “Justification is the tool of a dishonest conscience. I know who I am and what is valuable to me, and I know what I must do to have it. So do you. That is why you are Noxian now. The citizens of Bitharix will have a choice to make, whether they value their lives or their ideals, and then they will either be dead or they will be the same as any other Noxian. I can tell you that the Trifarix cares for the wellbeing of Noxus. I cannot tell you if Noxus' wellbeing is more valuable than that of Shurima’s, but here is where I live, here is where I thrive, and so here is where I will serve. Whether the same can be said of you is your own decision to make.” With that, he rises to his feet and offers you a bow. “I will be going now.”
You nod. “Thank you, for your assistance, and for your advice.”
He nods. “Whatever path you choose to walk, I hope that you walk it with surety.” And then he turns and leaves.
You sit in silence in your new Noxian house for a few minutes. Then you abruptly decide this situation calls for ice cream and hop to your feet.
—
“Birdie, do you know if this place has ice cream?” You ask the raven that flies down to the fence next to you. It caws harshly, and you get the sense it's offended. “Oh, come on. I'll tell you a real secret this time if you bring me somewhere nice,” you offer enticingly. It caws again, this time somewhat uncertain. “C'mon, it's riiight on the tip of my tongue, can't you just taste it?” you taunt.
The raven stares at you so intensely you think it might actually be able to, and then hops onto your shoulder and caws in the direction of the markets. You beam and set off.
—
“God, I really needed this,” you tell the bird appreciatively as you devour your chocolate chip cone. “I know you're a demonic entity whose reporting my every move to Swain, since I'm under contract now, here's a secret for free: that man stresses me the fuck out.” The bird caws in what you take to be agreement. “I know, right? It's the resting bitch face, I think. It makes me feel like I've forgotten my homework or something.” You shudder.
As you finish your cone, the bird caws at you impatiently. “Alright, you did good, I guess you earned it,” you relent with a sigh. It hops onto your knee and peers up at you intently. The words rise to your tongue unbidden. “The thing that took me had a name, but I haven't been able to remember what it is since I killed it. I try, and it's just…white noise, like blood in my ears. I don't even know why I knew it's name, it's not like it ever told me,” you say forlornly. Then you blink. “Wait. I shouldn't have been able to say that. How did you–”
The raven crows triumphantly, and then pain beyond anything your curse has ever given you rips through you.
—
You wake up on a plush couch. You sit up groggily, only to realize you have no idea where you are.
“You weren't lying about your immortality, it seems,” Swain observes mildly. He's at a large desk, writing something. You're in his office, it seems.
You rub your throat. “What happened?”
“Raum suppressed your curse long enough to draw out a secret, and you paid the price for speaking where you shouldn't.” Swain says. He signs the page at the bottom, puts his quill in his inkwell, and then steeples his hands and looks at you. His expression is neutral, but there's an intent glint in his eye you aren't sure what to make of. “You were found with about a dozen shards of glass protruding from your throat. You have been dead for…” he glances at his desk clock. “Approximately one hour and twelve minutes.”
You blink. “That was quick. Usually takes longer here.” You look down at the couch you're on, which is covered in what is most likely your blood. You rewind it clean with a grimace. “Why bring me here?”
“For one, to verify your claims of purported immortality. For another, we need to discuss your duties. I had intended to give you some time to settle in, but given the circumstances it seems best to be expeditious. Do you need anything, before we continue?”
You frown. Your mouth tastes like blood. “Water would be good.”
He produces a pitcher and some glasses from a side table hidden from your view by one of his enormous stacks of paper, and gestures for you to sit across as he pours. “What do you know of Raum?”
You settle yourself across from him and drink. It tastes faintly of lemon. “Demon who eats secrets. I know generally what you can do with his powers, but I don't have the specifics of how you control them.”
He nods. “I see. Suffice to say, Raum becomes more difficult to control if I overuse his power, or if he's…overfed, shall we say.” He gives you a pointed look. You wince. “I purposefully let him loose to see if you could contain him unassisted. Not only did you accomplish that, but your intervention significantly weakened his bids for control. As such, part of your duties for your time with Noxus will be assisting me with Raum’s ongoing containment, starting now.”
You blink. “Now?”
“Now,” he repeats, unimpressed. “May I remind you that you fed him a secret capable of leveling a kingdom so that you could find the best ice cream parlor in Noxus, and now I am paying the price.” His voice is so dry it rivals the Shuriman dunes.
You wince slightly. “Yeah, that's fair. Give me your hand.”
He blinks. You hold your hand out towards him and wiggle your fingers expectantly. His lips thin slightly, but he complies. The leather of his gloves is warm, and you can feel the shape of his past beneath it, but… “Something's not right,” you mutter, opening your eyes. “Other hand.”
“Pardon?” He says.
You furrow your brows. “Give me your other hand.”
“This wasn't necessary last time,” he points out warily.
“Last time, I was being actively fried with demonic energy, which gave me a physical connection to Raum’s timeline,” you point out. “Now, I'm pretty sure there was a term in my contract that says you're not allowed to eldritch blast me just because you really want to, so I suppose you're just going to have to give me your hand.”
He lifts his hand from where it lies hidden under his coat, and if it were a word you thought could be physically applied to Swain, you'd say he seemed hesitant. Alas, it's not, so you go with wary instead. It casts a soft red glow across your skin, and when he finally places his palm in yours, it has the oddest sensation of electricity–a current that's just strong enough to hum under your skin, but not to hurt. Other than that, it feels like a normal hand, though admittedly one with long curling claws and feathers at the elbow.
“Satisfied?” He asks dryly.
“Yes,” you agree easily. You shut your eyes and begin to work–it’s strangely difficult, like every inch you wind Raum back he tries to regain. “This will take some time. He's not happy about it.”
“Hm.” He hums in response. “Tell me something. Why Bitharix?”
You blink at him. “It was in an important strategic location to connect trade from the coastal cities, and a sustained seige would cost too many resources, leave your forces too exposed for too long. Plus, I figured altering the geography of an entire city would be the fastest way of getting my point across.”
“Why not Port Alkaline?” He counters. “It was closer to Tereshni. It's an important coastal stronghold with strong walls.”
You furrow your brows. “I figured you were planning to blow their wall up and then just build it back. It's not nearly as thick, and you had more stone shipped in than you'd need for the those big ominous arches you like to build.”
“And do you know why we build the arches?” He pushes.
You frown. “It’s an ever present reminder of Noxus' presence, and their resources, as well as a defensible structure? Why are you…” you pause, narrowing your eyes at him. “Are you quizzing me?”
“Hm,” he hums noncommittally. “You mentioned you could restore the walls, and the Bitharix ravine.”
You nod. “Sooner would be better. Longer something is the way it is, the more it wants to stick. Won't take me long, though, I can go back to anywhere I've been before without much effort. Same goes for Alkaline, if you do end up blowing their wall.” You pause, listening. “...can you hear that whispering?” You ask.
“Constantly,” he agrees. “Best to ignore it.”
You frown. “Can you tell him to shut the fuck up?”
“I truly wish so, but no,” he sighs.
You open your eyes and squint down at his feathered hand. “Hm. Maybe if I…” and here, you slow the rhythm of Raum’s existence to a crawl, until there's quiet in your mind. Swain looks at you in what might be surprise, but doesn't comment. You sit in blessed silence for the few more minutes it takes to claw Raum back to what feels like a reasonable equilibrium. “Hm. Is that better?”
He removes his hand from yours, flexes it experimentally, then nods. “Yes. You're dismissed. I’ll send for you when I have need,” he returns to his work.
You stand, apparently dismissed.
“Oh, and Iso?” He calls as you turn to leave. “If you have any more pressing questions about local cuisine, please refrain from making bargains with my birds.”
You consider him. “...in that case, do you know where I can find a good seafood mornay? I've got a craving for fish.”
He gives you an unimpressed look. You're fully expecting to be ignored, but apparently he decides answering you is the fastest way to get you out of his office. “Sailmaker’s Bounty, on the east side. Now begone.”
“Thanks, boss!” You chirp with a grin before you close the door.
#league of legends x reader#league x reader#reader fic#leauge of legends#x reader#f!reader#reader#my fics: tiarw#swain lol#WIPs
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
Time is a Roulette Wheel
Pyke: Pt 3
League of Legends | Pyke x F!Reader
Chapters: Prologue | Viego | Pyke: 1 - 2 - 3
Read the whole thing on AO3 here
SFW
He’s on deck tying nets. It's simple work, but time consuming. Over, around, cinch, repeat. Shanks is chattering to him about something or other, but Pyke's long since started tuning him out.
Across the deck, Iso laughs. He glances up without meaning to. She's talking to the wind mage, Addison; they need to stay on deck while they channel the breeze, and they like company. She tucks her hair behind her ear, blown loose by the wind, and he watches for a moment as she mimes something to accompany whatever story she's telling. He's never been the type to get distracted by a pretty face, but something about her draws him in like a fish on a line. Always has, ever since that first day when he realized she was one of the few honest things about a dishonest town.
He notices a suspicious silence. He glances to the side to see Shanks watching him, or rather watching him watch her. There's a grin on the other man's face he doesn't like. “So, when you finally pop the question, am I gonna be your best man?” Shanks crows, elbowing him in the side. Pyke lets his unimpressed glare be all the answer he needs, and Shanks leans back, hands in the air. “Alright, point taken, you scary motherfucker. God, you're the only man who could ship out with a real bed and a beautiful, talented woman to warm it and still be as sour as an old fucking lemon, y'know that?” He doesn't bother to respond to that. Over, around, cinch. Shanks presses on, undeterred. “You are gonna ask her to marry you, right? Truso’s gotta be paying you enough to afford a nice ring.”
His hands pause on the net. “Never thought about it,” he grunts, and that's true enough. Pyke's never been good with sweet words or grand gestures, not unless she wanted him to kill a giant fish for her. She's never mentioned wanting to get married. Was it even the same, where she's from? He's never asked, and she gets antsy when her past is brought up–he would too, if answering the wrong question had him coughing up glass. He looks at her and thinks my wife, and that's a pleasant enough thought. Never thought he'd be much of a husband, though. Never thought he'd find anyone he wanted to stick around for in the first place, either.
“Unbelievable, you are!” Shanks scoffs. “Haven’t thought of it, Bearded Lady’s hairy tits, man. How’d you land her, anyway? Certainly wasn't with your shining personality.”
Good question. Shanks is a pest, but he's not wrong. He shrugs. “She picked me.”
“C'mon, gotta be more to it than that,” Teal, another harpooner, plops down on the deck next to them. He makes no move to help with the netting. “How'd you meet? Bar?”
“He'll tell you if you help with the bloody net,” Shanks offers in what he probably thinks is a tantalizing voice. Pyke shoots him a glare, but Teal picks up a rope and starts working, and his knotwork is respectable so he supposes letting them pry into his personal life isn't the worst trade.
He sighs. “Buddy down at the slaughter docks nearly had his arm taken off, heard her clinic was good at stuff like that. She gave me a decent price, so I came back when I busted my leg. Lost my purse, but she offered to let me work it off porting for a personal project. Gig was decent, so I kept it on the side.”
There's a moment of silence. “That's it?” Teal says expectantly. “Nothing else?”
He thinks back. “We played cards a lot?” He says hazily.
Teal squints at him. “And she just, what, randomly decided to jump you one day?”
Over, around, cinch. “Pretty much.” Not that he hadn't been just as surprised. Plenty of looks linger on his arms and his muscles, he's not blind. He's got a mean face and a sour attitude to go with it, though, and not many women want to stick around for that. He'd been pleasantly surprised by her interest, but if you'd told him then she still wouldn't be sick of him in a years time he'd have thought you were full of shit.
“You motherfucker, I had money riding on this,” Teal hisses. “I thought for sure there would be alcohol involved.”
“I mean, why you?” Shanks laments. “Just why?”
“Because he's loyal and considerate and handsome, and if I hear this question again I'm going to start disinfecting wounds with vinegar,” Iso says mildly, her arms crossed. The other two were so focused on him they didn't notice her walking up. Shanks startles so badly he almost goes overboard, and Teal ducks his head in shame. Pyke staunchly continues his work, though that's really not a combination of words he would have expected anyone to apply to him.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Shanks says sheepishly, Teal mumbling the same. She nods, gives him a smile, and walks off.
“...you know we're just giving you shit, right?” Shanks says a moment later. “We're happy for you, really.”
“Shut up and tie the line,” Pyke sighs.
---
They collect more sea-beasts than they can store and start heading back a day ahead of schedule. No Jaull-fish yet, but you refuse to let your guard down until you're both safely back on shore.
You've thought about asking him to quit before. You're comfortable enough without the money. Seeing him out here changes your mind; this is his element, and he's worked damn hard to be here. You can't ask him to give that up for something that might not even happen now.
(Putting aside if he even would, just because you asked, but you don't want to think about that)
A week out from home, you're woken in the middle of the night by yelling. You push yourself up off of Pyke's chest muzzily, and he makes an irritated noise. There's a bell going off in a rhythmic pattern; Pyke listens for a moment before groaning “Pirates.”
You clamber to your feet and quickly start changing into your day clothes. Pyke, likewise, sits up and starts shoving his feet into his boots, grumbling. Despite being such an early riser, he hates being woken up. He shrugs on his cloak and passes you your knife belt, before rolling his shoulders and trudging out the door.
The deck is lousy with sailors running to and fro, getting ready to receive the ship plowing towards you. “Iso, good!” Truso catches you by the shoulder, stuffing what has to be far too many flintlocks in his belt. “I don't know how comfortable you are in a fight, but–”
“Pretty comfortable,” you say easily. He sags in relief.
“Perfect, as you were then,” he gives you a thumbs up and then immediately spots someone with a keg of something they shouldn't and strides off, yelling.
“Doc!” A sailor you vaguely recognize appears by your side. “If someone gets hit by a cannonball, how much of them needs to be in one piece for you to fix em?”
“Why?” You ask warily. He points at the railing, where Shanks is swinging a pair of bolas wrapped in a wet cloth.
“He reckons he can land it in a cannon barrel before it goes off, so it backfires,” he explains.
You look at Pyke in wonder. “How the fuck have you not died already?”
He shrugs.
—
“I get it now!” Shanks announces, huddling behind a crate as he frantically reloads his pistols. “She's with you because she's fucking crazy!”
Pyke barely spares him a glance. Any second now this bastard shooting at them is going to have to reload, and then Pyke is going to yank him onto their deck and stab him in the face–
Iso goes launching onto the enemy ship, using the crate they're covering behind as a step up. Love of his life plunging headfirst into active gunfire aside, he's not one to waste an opportunity, so he stands and launches his harpoon into the gunners shoulder and drags him against the railing Iso has just landed on. She doesn't even spare him a glance, just kicks him hard in the temple and moves on. Pyke doesn't make the conscious decision to go after her, but nonetheless finds himself halfway across the deck.
“That's what I'm fucking talking about!” Shanks yells as Pyke scales the rope still stuck between gunner and the railing. “Crazy!”
She moves like she has no concept she could even get hurt. He crests the railing in time to watch her throw knife after knife, hilts to throats and skulls and eyes. Two men approach from her side–he rips his blade from the body and throws it at the furthest one's knee, piercing it from the side, and pulls the rope taut to trip the other. She turns and launches a knife into his head before he even hits the ground, but in her distraction another pirate pulls a sword on her. He yells before he even registers the warning leaving his mouth, and she turns in time to take the blade through the shoulder instead of the throat. She kicks, sending the man stumbling back, and then rips the blade out of her shoulder and cuts him down. There's barely even blood on her shirt, how fast she healed herself. No pause in her movements from the pain, just focus in her eyes as she moves to the next target.
“Iso!” He yells, voice harsh with anger and adrenaline and a bone deep fear he's never quite felt before. The next pirate between them gets his blade to their throat, and he doesn't stop to look as he rips it out of them, just keeps heading her way. She glances at him as he approaches, and it's like she doesn't even recognize him for a moment. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” She blinks, and the fog clears, like she's coming back from somewhere far away. She glances down at the tear in her shirt where the blade was like she's only just noticed it.
“I liked this shirt,” she says mournfully. Someone swings at her, and she ducks under it and plants a knife in their gut.
“Stop getting stabbed, then,” he suggests tersely, catching a sword swing on his harpoon blade. “There's no fixing dead.”
She has the audacity to snort at him as she knifes the wielder of the blade he's fending off. A tide of sailors floods the deck, heartened by their charge. He sticks close behind her, watching her back and creating opportunities for her to strike, and together their knives cut bloody swathes through the pirates. He's never had much problem with fighting pirates, but there's a new viciousness in him with her on the line. It's a swift battle, but brutal, and they come out on top.
After, Iso fixes up their wounded, and Pyke watches her. Not for the first time, he's struck with the sensation that he's caught a glimpse of a ghost, that someone she used to be rose to the surface for just a moment. She fights like a pit rat, like someone who's been doing it so long that fighting feels like home. Her hands are soft and she doesn't have any scars to speak of, but she fights like she ought to. She has a past, and he won't ask because she can't tell, but he wonders.
She tucks her hair behind her ear as she sends the last of the wounded off, and blood smears on her cheek. He frowns. He knows where she keeps the clean cloths, at least–she’s particular where she puts things back home, and it's the same here. She gives him a soft smile when he kneels down and starts cleaning her hands off.
“You scared the shit out of me out there,” he tells her. She looks sheepish, at least. “I know you can fix yourself, but that doesn't make watching you get hurt easy.”
She shrugs one shoulder uncertainly. “I just…I’m used to it, I guess. Didn't have much choice, back when…” and she pauses, swallowing, feeling the edges of her curse.
He wants to ask, but knowing her she might just try to answer, so he doesn't. He folds the cloth over and wipes the blood from her cheek. “Goes both ways, y'know,” he says instead. Her brow creases in confusion. “You die, I'm gonna kill you.”
She laughs. “You don't have to worry about that.”
A knock on the door frame. “Cap wants you, Pyke,” he glances over to see a sailor, one of the men who prepares the sea-beasts for transport. “We’re stealing their grog and sending the survivors off with enough to get to land.”
Iso perks up. “There are drinks on the table?”
—
He forgot Iso is a lightweight. She doesn't tend to drink much at home, though most drinks in Bilgewater are watered down piss anyway so he's never thought much of it. The tipsiest he's ever seen her was at a going-away party for one of her regular patients and his old crew mate, a newly-wed couple off to try their luck in Piltover–to be fair, he'd also probably had too much to drink, because his only clear memories of that night are arriving, a cask of Freljordian mead, Iso trying to jump him in the back, and then trying to walk home carrying her while she mouthed at his neck and did her level best to wreck his tenuous self-control. This is probably as bad.
She's singing a shanty from her home, and aside from the fact that he's never heard of a place called France, it's hardly any different from the ones he's heard. She bellows the last line, and someone else picks up with another song as she catches her breath. She turns to look at him, eyes bright, and the way she smiles at him does something funny to his insides. He's not exactly sober either, he'll admit. She makes her way across the galley to the corner he's claimed–he’s not one for being the center attention, and everyone wanted a piece of hers after the stunt she pulled.
“Pyke,” she croons as she reaches him, half falling against his side. She rests her head against his chest and looks up at him through those pretty lashes of hers. He winds an arm around her waist, and she’s so soft that sometimes he feels like he's committing some sort of sacrilege just by touching her. His hands are made for bone and salt and blood, not softness or sweetness. “I can't believe your name is actually Pyke. I thought that was a nickname. Cuz of the, y'know,” she mimes throwing a harpoon. “Although I don't know what it'd be short for. Pycheal!” she says, then bursts out laughing at her own joke.
He frowns down at her. “That's like saying Iso is short for…” he pauses, struggling with his limited vocabulary. “Isometric?” He's pretty sure that's a word he's heard her say before.
She laughs. “Fuck, I dunno, maybe it is. I just picked it.”
He looks at her curiously. “Not the name you were born with?”
She shakes her head. “Wasn't allowed to use my old one, when I came here.” She gestures at her throat and he nods in sudden understanding. “I dunno why. Most of the rules make sense, but my name? Why the fuck does that matter?” She looks off into the distance, frowning. “All the Voidspawn have weird names. Maybe it's just important for them.”
He blinks. His understanding of the Void goes as far as that it's a big problem somewhere far away from here. “What does that have to do with…” he pauses, then shakes his head. He doesn't need to know, and she probably shouldn't answer.
She looks up at him again, this time with an odd look in her eyes. Remorseful, almost. “Sorry I got stabbed. And for jumping on the pirate ship. People kept calling me crazy and I realized that that's because that was a crazy thing to do, and I thought that if you did something crazy like that I'd be pretty mad at you, so. Sorry.”
He must be drunk, because the next thing out of his mouth is “D’you wanna marry me?”
She blinks at him. “Like, now?”
It's not a no. He swallows, trying to conceal the way his heart is flopping in his chest like a beached trout. “Sure.”
She squints. “Do you have a ring? Do people even use rings here?”
“Doesn't have to be a ring,” he says. “Buhru tradition is a trophy from a hunt. My ma got a shark tooth."
She blinks up at him, then pokes one of the shark teeth he wears on his belt. “Okay. Give me that one.”
He looks at the tooth she's pointing at. “What, just that one? You don't want a…special one?”
“That one is special, it's yours,” she says earnestly. “Some big fucking fish tried to kill you, and you said no. Just keep doing that, keep coming back home to me, and I'll marry you as many times as you want.”
He's not good with words, and his tongue feels thick in his mouth, so he just reaches over and snaps the tooth off its chain. She beams as he hands it to her, and he watches in bemusement as she bends down and undoes one of the leather laces for her tall boots. She fishes a knife out and cuts it halfway, and then sets the tooth against the wall and strikes it in the center as if her knife was a chisel. It cracks into two halves, the edges slightly jagged where they fit together, which she binds up as pendants with her improvised leather cords. Her creations complete, she stands up on her toes to loop one around his neck.
He swallows harshly as the bone settles against his skin. She hands him the other and turns around, pulling her hair out of the way, and he’s never been so careful about tying a knot in his life. When it's done, she turns to smile at him, and there isn't a thing on this earth that could stop him from kissing her in that moment.
—
You wake up with the worst headache you've ever had. You groan, throwing your arm over your eyes to block the light.
“Not even magic fixes hangovers, huh?” Pyke rumbles. You decide that wedging your face in between his arm and his side is much more effective means of blinding yourself.
“Aren't you supposed to be doing, iunno, sailor stuff?” You croak.
“Cap’n gave us a honeymoon off,” he says. His fingers trace up and down your spine. “May have had a few words with him about my wife getting stabbed under his employ.”
Oh yeah. That happened. Vague memories return to you about necklaces, and then Shanks insisting on doing a ceremony, and then a lot more drinking. “Do you think Shanks is actually a priest?” You wonder aloud. He claimed very loudly to be, but by that point he was also insisting he had personally executed the pirate's captain, so.
“Does it matter?” he asks.
You suppose it doesn't. It's Bilgewater–not like there's a marriage registry. Laws are only laws insofar as anyone can be fucked to enforce them. If Shanks said he was a priest, then fuck it, you may as well be married now. You lift your head up and rest your chin on his chest, next to the pendant. He cracks one sea-glass green eye and looks at you, not quite smiling but as at peace as you've ever seen him, and you think no, it really doesn't matter. You're happy right here, right now.
—
“Tell me again,” you grit out.
The captain–no point remembering his name, he's a dead man walking anyway–shifts from foot to foot uncomfortably. “There was a Jaull-fish. It almost sunk the ship. Pyke was already in the water, and the lines snapped–”
“Don't fucking lie to me,” you snap. “You cut the lines.”
He flinches, and tries to cover it with a scowl. “Ma’am, I know it's tough to hear, but I don't appreciate what you're insinuating–”
“I'm not insinuating anything,” you hiss. “You know what you did, and if you weren't already as good as dead I'd kill you my fucking self. Now get out of my house.”
“Ma’am–” he tries. You hurl a knife at him, and it embeds itself in the wall next to his head. He gets the message and leaves.
After, you sag against the floor. Stupid. Stupid, stupid man got himself eaten by a stupid fucking fish, and you were a stupid idiot for thinking that he wouldn't. It wasn't even the Terror–when he left, he said it was named something stupid, something to do with Guppies. Why was it still a Jaull-fish? What changed? What didn't change? What the fuck do you do now?
You scrub your wet eyes, trying to reign your breathing in. Fine. So he got eaten by a fish. He'll come back. With a list of names being manipulated by fish from the bottom of the world, sure, but he'll come back, and you'll fix him. You just have to find him first.
—
“Wh-what do you want with me?” The sailor asks, after he wakes up. One convenient thing about being a doctor is no one thinks much of you buying chloroform.
“Me? Nothing,” you say, watching him struggle against the rope. “But Pyke does, and I've got some strong words to have with him.”
His eyes go perfectly round. “P-Pyke’s not…he's dead, lady, I-I’m sorry, but he is, I saw him go down myself–”
“I know,” you say grimly. “That's why you're here.”
—
“Pyke?” You say cautiously. He looks up at you as he rips his blade from the sailors throat. You're not broken up about it–you’d followed the man for weeks before you got a chance to nab him, and he was a real piece of shit.
Pyke turns to look at you, and it's like seeing double. That's your husband, the man you've grown to love over the last two years, and it's the corpse you were expecting to see ever since you met. He looks almost the same as the day he left, except there's a trifecta of scars running across his face and his eyes glow with an unearthly blue. You already miss his eyes, the sea-glass green, the warmth in them. Now he looks at you like a stranger. “Pyke, it's me,” you urge, willing recognition into those awful blue eyes.
His eyes narrow. “You look…familiar. What's your name?”
“Iso,” you prompt, cautiously approaching with your hands up. The list is already in his hand from the last guy, but surely he already knows the names on it–was the Deep manipulating it already? Was he ever after the crew that got him killed? He glances it over, then frowns and shakes his head.
“That's not…” his voice is thick with confusion and his eyes are hazy. Then he glares at you. “Tell me your real name.”
You blink, an awful strangling feeling between hope and despair straining your voice. “How do you know that? Think, Pyke. You know I can't tell you.” Another step.
His eyes go to the list again. “Iso…Iso?” He mutters under his breath. “I don't know an…” he shakes his head furiously, clutching it with a groan. You wait with baited breath. For one glorious moment, there's a spark of recognition in his eyes–and then it fades, fogging over. He tilts his head, as if he's listening to something you can't hear, then shakes his head. “You're not on my list,” he says.
You're close enough. You launch yourself at him, sweeping his legs out and pinning him to the dirty warehouse floor. You feel him trying to come apart under your hands, his edges going damp and indefinite with seawater that isn't quite there, but you grip his time tight and force it back, back–until you can't anymore. It's the same feeling you got when you tried to rewind yourself back home, that something had changed so fundamentally that what you are and who you were are only connected in your mind, that the past was so far away nothing could ever bring it back. That the man you know is the gone.
“No, nonono,” you plead. Pyke looks up at you with blank, uncomprehending, blue eyes. “Give him back, you piece of shit. Give him back to me!”
“What are you–?” You can stop him from turning to sea mist under your hands, at least, wind him back to solid. He's trying to leave. Fucker. “Get off me.”
You grip him by the collar and pull him up, searching his eyes for something, anything. “Can they hear me, your new bosses? Can you hear me, you fish fucks? I'll kill you. I've killed bigger and worse and you picked the wrong man to take.”
He hisses under his breath, apparently giving his newfound ocean powers up and resorting to good old fashioned violence. He swings, and you duck back in time to avoid taking a fist to the face, but as your balance shifts he surges up and throws you off him. For a moment he looks at you, obviously torn, and then he vanishes.
“You motherfucker,” you seethe into the empty night.
—
You hunt him more intently than any bounty hunter. You don't really stop him from killing anyone, mind–near as you can tell everyone he kills makes Bilgewater a better place, but honestly in a town like this you could throw a knife in any given direction and accomplish that. You don't know where he goes when he's not on the hunt, but he only seems to come up in proximity to a dead body. Still, you dog his every step like a bloodhound. He doesn't quite try to kill you, but you obviously unsettle him, and he does everything in his power to avoid you short of giving up a kill.
“Who are you?” He demands, after the third time you track him down. “Why won't you fuck off already?”
You fish your pendant out of your clothes. “I'm your wife, you ungrateful fuck, and when you finally get your memories back in that thick skull you're gonna feel like a real asshole.”
His fingers go to his cloak, where his matching one would rest underneath the fabric. “A wife? No, I don't have a…” and this is the part that shits you off the most. That moment of clarity where he almost, almost recognizes you, and then it slips away. He clutches his head, and there it is, the cusp of understanding dragged away by whatever voices drive him now. He looks back up at you, and there's something oddly desperate in his voice when he grits out “You're not on my list. I don't know what you're trying to do or who you think I am, but you're wrong. Leave me alone.”
“Not happening,” you hiss, even as he turns and dives into the water. He's right, though, as much as you hate to admit it–this wasn't working. Being around you wasn't jogging any memories, and if it was, the Deep smothers then back down. Maybe you needed to go directly to the source, then.
—
“This is new,” you note. Pyke's blue eyes stare at you from the reflection of the water. You were only on this pier to drink your woes away–he's never sought you out before, and despite yourself, hope rises in you. “Is it cuz I killed that Jaull-fish?”
“You what?” He says, confused.
You sigh. “Guess not. Didn't help, by the way. Don't know if you've ever tried to negotiate with a giant murder fish, but they don't fold easy, even when they're drowning.” You rewound miles of ocean to before it was ever a sea just to air-drown a fucking fish, and it still got you nothing but a raging headache, a week comatose, and some increasingly exaggerated rumors about yourself, courtesy of the boat you paid to bring you out there.
He's quiet for so long you would've thought him gone, if not for his reflection in the water. Then, he sits heavily next to you on the docks, his blade in his lap. “Deep calls to me,” he says slowly, like he's not sure how to explain it. “In a thousand voices, all of them wanting blood. You make them go quiet, and they don't like that.” He presses his thumb to the edge of his blade. “They don't like that you call to me, too.”
You slide him a sideways look. “Do you even still have it?” You ask tiredly. “The pendant?”
He hesitates a long moment, as if he's struggling to focus. Then he fishes it out from under his cloak and looks at it, brow furrowed. You sigh. “You made me a promise, on that tooth. You said you'd come back home to me. But you're not home, and you're not even you, and I don't know if you'll ever be again.” You scrub your face with your hands. It's been months since he died. You're so, so tired. “I don't know how to fix you, Pyke, and I…I don't even know if I can.”
“I don't…” he says slowly, then shakes his head. “My head’s not right, I know that. Things keep changing on me, and most of the time that doesn't matter to me, but with you I feel…” he trails off.
“Feel what?” You prompt.
“When you're drowning, it starts to feel like home, like peace. It's breathing again that hurts the most.” That burbling echo in his voice goes distant, and you don't have to look to know he's gone.
You drink alone on the pier.
—
You haul your equipment out to the hill again. Hiring another porter seems like a pain in the ass, and you made a lot of money off that Jaull-fish, so you buy the land and build a cottage on it. Clinic gets less traffic now that people think you're some kind of sea-god, anyway.
—
Sometimes you see blue eyes watching you from the dark. He never comes close, and you don't either. He made his choice.
—
You find it. Your world, or something that looks so close it makes your heart ache. You project it onto a full-length mirror frame and you watch the world that used to be yours go by, until the sun fully sets and the crystals in your telescope dim and your world slides out of focus again. The mirror shows nothing but your own reflection, slumped to your knees before it. You hadn't realized you were crying until you see the tear tracks on your face.
You sit there, in the dark, for a very long time.
—
Pyke stays gone, until you turn around one day and he's right there. “Fish finally convince you I need killing?” You ask dryly. It's the only reason you'll let yourself think of for him being here, and they're about to be real fucking disappointed if that was the case.
His wide eyes, which were fixed over your shoulder, fly to you. “No, that's not…” he shakes his head, and then drops his knife, holding his empty hands up imploringly. “Don't go. Please.”
Your brow furrows in confusion, and you follow his gaze to your mirror–he’s arrived just as the sunset hit your telescope, as the light cast a window to your world into your home. It probably said something about you, that for all that you've watched that mirror every day for the past month, your chest burning with grief, the second he shows back up you completely forget about it. You turn back to him slowly, heart in your throat. “Pyke?”
He takes a step towards you, and then pauses like he's not sure he should. “I remember now. The Kraken Priestess, she did something to me, and I…I'm sorry. I know I hurt you, and I know my head still isn't right but I…” he looks at you pleadingly. “I’m here. I came back home to you.”
“Took your fucking time,” you say, voice tight, and throw yourself into his arms.
—
After you're done crying, and then punching him in the arm, and then kissing him senseless, you curl up on the couch in front of the fire.
“I don't know if it's the same, if that's really back home,” you explain softly, your head on his chest. He doesn't have a heartbeat anymore, but somehow he's still warm, still smells like the sea. “Looks like it is, but honestly, even if I could figure out how to actually get there without opening a gaping hole in this reality, there's no guarentee it'd be where I came from. And that's putting aside that it's been decades since…” you trail off, your curse at the cusp of burning in your throat. Honestly, nature of parallel worlds being what it was and with your fucking luck, you'd probably end up in the KDA universe or something stupid like that.
“I wouldn't blame you, for leaving,” he says, voice rough and low. “I'd hate it, but I wouldn't blame you.”
You glance up at him, at his blue, blue eyes. Then you swing yourself up to sit in his lap, cupping his face between your palms. He wraps his arms around your back, letting you turn his head this way and that, examining his face. The well-healed ridges of his new scar, and the glow of his eyes–they make his gaze seem much more piercing than before, like a shark. He's gotten paler, too–not much sun where he spends his time, you suppose. He still looks like him. “Why are you back now?” You ask softly. “What changed?”
He's quiet for a moment. “What Illaoi did…put a new voice in my head, one that wasn't the Deep demanding blood. The Mother Serpent is a thing of flow, of moving towards what you want, and after that anger was gone…what I wanted most was you.”
You make a reminder to yourself to heal every Buhru you meet for free. “Is it gonna stick?” You ask, voice thready with uncertainty.
He glares at nothing in particular. “It will. I'll make it. They want me to do their killing, I'll do it on my terms.”
“How do you know they won't just…stop keeping you alive?” You ask hesitantly. Your fingers trace over his chest, next to his pendant, where a heartbeat would be if he had one. It scares the absolute fuck out of you, that your powers can't help him.
“Don't think they can, not anymore,” he shrugs, careful not to upset your balance. “Whatever I am now doesn't belong just to the Deep, Mother Serpent saw to that.”
You hesitate a moment. “I don't care, about the whole…Blood Harbor Ripper thing,” you tell him. “I mean, maybe I would if those people weren't complete fucking scumbags, but apparently the fish have morals, so whatever. It's just…you know those people you kill aren't what you think they are, right? They weren't there when you died.”
He's quiet for a long, long moment. “I know. At least, sometimes I do. Deep gives me a reason to hunt, but I've never been much fussed about killing people who deserve it anyway.” He looks up at you, frowning. “I'm…crazy, I know that much. I know I'm not what you married, anymore.”
“You are,” you insist. “I knew…I mean, I didn't want to admit it, and by God did I try to stop it, but…I knew this could be you, and I married you anyway, and I meant what I said when I did. I don't care about…fucking eldritch murder fishes, or their hitlist, or that you're only breathing when you need to talk. As long as you keep coming home to me, that's enough,” you tell him earnestly.
He lets out a soft breath, and a rough hand comes up to cup your cheek. “I love you. You know that, right?”
You lean into his touch. “Obviously. I love you too.”
He chuckles. “Good, ‘cause I haven't told you that I'm going to the Shadow Isles to kill Gangplank yet.”
You blink again, this time in confusion. “Wait, what? Why? Didn't Fortune already kill him?”
He shrugs. “Apparently not. Deep wants him dead, Nagakaborous wants him dead, I get to renegotiate my contract if I kill him. Everyone swims away happy.”
You frown. “I'm obviously coming with you. And before you get all fussy, I can take care of myself, I literally can't die, and I'm not letting you leave me again."
He blinks. “You…can't die," he repeats.
“Did I not mention that? I swear I mentioned that,” you say sheepishly.
He looks at you, blue eyes searching yours, and then sighs. “Not like I'm in any position to doubt. Besides, Fortune’s probably gonna be happier to see you than me.” You give him a confused look, and he shrugs. “Swimming to the Shadow Isles would take too long. Fortune wants him dead, Nagakaborous wants me to kill him, Fortune recruited Nagakaborous' priestess to help her kill him. And she has a ship."
“So you were gonna just show up and ask to join the murder party, because she hired someone whose god hired you to help kill a guy who should already be dead?" You summarize slowly. He nods. “Well, okay, yeah, Fortune probably wants Gangplank dead more than she cares that you're a wanted murderer. Wait, do the fish want you to kill Fortune?”
He shrugs again. “She's near the bottom of the list. I don't work overtime for free.”
You can't help it. You laugh, dropping your head against his shoulder. “What, like you're getting a salary? A benefits plan? You should unionize.”
“I'm their only employee, I've got all the bargaining power in the world,” he says easily. He cups your cheek, turning your face to his so he can kiss you softly. “They're not keeping me from you again, I swear it.”
You lean into him, feeling him warm and solid and here, him, finally just him. Your husband, the man you love and the man you've dreaded him becoming since you met and the man you knew deep down he was always going to be. You don't know what exactly the Deep wants with him, or where the wind blows from here, but you know you're going to face it together, and that's enough for you.
#league of legends x reader#league x reader#reader fic#leauge of legends#x reader#crossposted on ao3#f!reader#reader#my fics: tiarw#Pyke#pyke x reader
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
Time is a Roulette Wheel
Pyke: Pt 1
League of Legends | Pyke x F!Reader
Chapters: Prologue | Viego | Pyke: 1
Read the whole thing on AO3 here
SFW
It's not that you even knew it was Pyke. You're running a clinic out of Bilgewater while you try to calculate the very specific angle you need to break the universe at to get you back home, because you can import just about anything there with no questions for the right price. And, well, there's always someone who needs healing in this place, so you're not wanting for customers.
He comes in dragging a co-worker whose arm had been near taken off by a sea-beast that wasn't quite dead. He says, urgently, that the man needs his arm to work, he doesn't have much to pay with but he'll give you a portion of his pay for as long as it takes.
“Flat rate for all fresh injuries,” you remind him, reaching out to touch the man's arm. The space around his bleeding arm blurs, and he yelps as it abruptly returns to its undamaged state. You've gotten in the habit of leaving the bloodstains–makes the healer act more believable. You don't want any bigger fish getting bright ideas about your powers–being a simple healer suits you just fine. “That'll be 30 gold.”
They both look floored. The injured man turns nervously to the other, who sighs heavily and says, “I'll sort it, don't worry. Get back to your kids.”
The formerly injured man ducks his head, thanking you both profusely as he scurries out of your clinic. You're left alone with his friend, who digs out a purse and begins counting out coins. He's a handsome fellow, tall and dark-skinned with sharp features. He's got the strong arms of a dock worker, and tattoos you've learned to recognize as Buhru. Unlike the Pyke you remember, his eyes are a sea-glass green and he has dark curls that fall past his ears. He has a bandana tucked around his neck, but most slaughter dock workers do to keep the smell of guts out. His voice is undistorted by the depths, a deep baritone that inexplicably makes you think he has a good reading voice, and he's wearing plain workers clothes with no distinctive fish jaws to speak of. So no, you don't recognize him.
He sets the last coin down, nods at you, and walks out. That, you think, is that.
Except next month he comes in with some other poor fuck. This one, at least, pays for himself–Pyke just drops him off, nods at you, and walks out again. Not that you know his name at this point. Two weeks later he's back, and you're about to ask who he's hauling in this time when you notice the limp.
“What did this?” You ask curiously as you roll up his tattered pant leg to reveal an ugly set of bruises and broken skin. He hisses when you touch it, and you think it might be broken–honestly, you're not too far off the docks, but he must be one stubborn motherfucker to make it here.
“Caught in a line,” he grunts as you pick out the worst of the debri. “Got dragged halfway down the dock.”
You wince. “That'll do it, yeah.” You rewind the wound and quickly wipe the blood off. Then you pat his (very solid) leg and stand. “Good as yesterday.”
He stands experimentally, then nods. Same as before, he goes for his coin purse to pay, then pauses. He checks one pocket, then another, then the first one again. Then he sighs deeply. “Must've lost it when I was getting dragged.”
“You work on the Red Docks, yeah?” You recall. He nods, and you whistle lowly. “That'll be long gone by now, then.”
He gives you a look that's half guarded, half pleading. “Give me a day and I can put the gold together.”
You consider him, or more accurately the corded muscles of his arms. “Tell you what. You're a big guy, and I'm in need of a strong arm for a personal project. When's your next day off?” He gives you a wary look, and you roll your eyes. “I'm not asking you to kill someone or smuggle drugs or anything like that, I just need some equipment lugged around. I'll pay twenty an hour for your time, and we’ll take the first hour and a half out your debt. Deal?”
He hesitates a moment, then sticks out his hand. “Deal.”
You shake on it, then immediately wince when he practically crushes your hand. “Oh christ, you really are strong,” you say, shaking out the sting.
He looks slightly abashed. “Sorry. Butcher's habit. I'll be back…day after tomorrow, should be?”
You nod. “Anytime around noon is fine, but we probably won't be getting back into town until dark. That fine?”
He nods. “Yeah.” He pauses a moment, then ducks his head. “Thanks.” And then he just leaves, as is his way.
—
He shows up at noon exactly. You feel a bit bad about making him haul your equipment crates down to the ferry, but he doesn't seem overly strained by the work, which leads you to believe your last porter was just trying to pad his hours. The ferry takes you to one of the islands about forty minutes out, and he lugs your equipment up to the hill. He's good at following instructions, and it takes less time than you'd expect to get your contraption set up.
“Okay, now we just have to wait for it to stabilize,” you say, dusting your hands off.
“What…is it?” He says slowly, examining the precarious mass of bronze and crystal.
“It’s a telescope that looks into the space beyond existence,” you say distractedly, opening up your bag and rifling through it. “Here,” you hand him a wrapped sandwich.
He blinks at it like he's never seen one before. You wiggle it impatiently at him, and he takes it almost automatically. You set your own aside so you can pull out your thermos and pour both of you a cup of ice tea. He takes that with no small amount of skepticism either.
“What is this?” He says, sniffing it. He sips, then makes a face that gives you absolutely no information on whether he likes it or not. “It's sweet.”
“It’s fruit tea,” you say, sipping your own. One nice thing about having time powers is it's just as cold as when you pulled it out of the icebox.
He gives the sandwich the same suspicious once over, though this one he doesn't eat. “This coming out of my pay?” He asks.
You raise a brow. “What? No. Jeez, what kind of shitty bosses have you had?”
“Won't argue shitty, but that's normal on the docks,” he says, eyeing you consideringly. “Must be well off, if you can afford to be nice.”
You shrug. “Always people who need healing in that city, and I'm not under anyone's thumb, so I actually get to keep what I make.”
His gaze shifts, now filled with a mix of both wariness and respect. “Not easy in a town like Bilgewater.” You shrug again, and he seems content to eat in silence.
“So how long’s it gonna take?” He asks, after you've eaten.
You make a so-so gesture. “Haven't tried this configuration before. Shortest it's ever been is ten minutes, longest is an hour.” You give him a considering look. “You play cards?”
–
He whips your ass in Bilgewater threecard, but you make a comeback in snap. You pause occasionally to fire the machine, but the viewfinder shows nothing but Void, so you adjust the crystals and return to the game. As sunset approaches, you adjust the crystals to catch the light, and you both squint on as the thing begins to hum and glow. You peer into the viewfinder excitedly, spinning the dials as you try to home in on anything that looks like reality–
Then it sparks and gives out. “Slut motherfucker,” you groan, throwing a card at the contraption.
“Didn't work?” He extrapolates.
“Nope!” You say with fake cheerfulness, grumpily getting to your feet to start taking the thing apart. “C'mon, that's it for today. Help me pack this piece of shit up and we'll head back.”
It's just getting dark by the time the ferry lands. He helps you lug the crates back home, and you count out his pay.
“It's a good thing you showed up yesterday,” you muse, scooping his pay into a separate bag. “Had to lay off my regular guy after he tried to steal my stuff.”
He glances up at you as he tucks the bag into his pocket. “You're out of a porter, then?”
You know that look. “It’s not regular work,” you warn. “And, uh, some days there will be a risk of getting slightly blown up.”
He gives you a considering look. “Define ‘risk’.”
You make a so-so gesture. “I mean, I'll let you know if I'm doing anything dangerous, but let's say…iunno, one in twenty? Promise I'll fix you up for free if that happens, though.”
He shrugs. “Fine with me. I'm down at Heimlich House most days. Ask for Pyke.” He inclines his head at you, and then walks out. It's probably for the best he does, because you're left staring at his back in sheer disbelief.
—
It's not, like, 100% Pyke Pyke. You think. You ask about him at the pub nearby, and Bard behind the bar asks if you mean tall Pyke, short Pyke or Pegleg Pyke.
“Tall Pyke?” You guess. He's certainly not short, and unless they're somehow talking about his dick, he's got both his legs too. “Buhru tattoos, green eyes, doesn't talk much? Hired him for a porting job, thinking of inviting him back on the regular. You think of any reason I shouldn't?”
“Tall Pyke, nah, he's the good one,” Bard says with a laugh. “Hard worker, sticks up for his crew. Mean motherfucker if you do him dirty, sure, but I don't reckon you're the type to go fucking anyone over. I'm sure he'll do you right, whatever you're hiring him for.”
You nod, sliding him a tip. “Thanks Bard. Hey, you got any of those battered fish things?”
So maybe it's not him. Apparently it's not an uncommon name–or was it a nickname? Not like Bilgewater had much in the way of legal records, honestly–nicknames were as good as official here. You just showed up and told people your name was Iso, after all. Him being called Pyke didn't mean it was Pyke, destined to be eaten by a big fucking fish, Blood Harbor Ripper Pyke. He isn't even a harpooner, he works on the slaughter docks. You're sure it's fine. Probably.
#league of legends x reader#league x reader#leauge of legends#reader fic#x reader#crossposted on ao3#f!reader#reader#my fics: tiarw#Pyke x reader
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Time is a Roulette Wheel
Viego: Pt 3
League of Legends | Viego x F!Reader
Chapters: Prologue | Viego: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
Crossposted on AO3 here
SFW
Summary: Turns out that Runeterra isn't the only place that has a Void. Plucked from your world into one of a video game with nothing but stolen time powers, an inability to die and a middling recollection of lore, you're prepared to do just about anything to get back home again. You just have to find the right Champion to help.
Viego doesn't follow you while you're in public. That's probably a good call, considering his past, and especially considering you've found yourself in Bilgewater. You finally tracked down Ryze, and he had approximately fuck all useful to say. You spend the week trying to decide whether you should just steal the World Stones and hope they magically give you some insight on how the fuck to get out of here, but you're also pretty sure taking those things out of this world would end it, and you're not that far gone. That doesn't mean you’re not so miserable about the decision you spend the next few days drowning your sorrows in the most moderately priced swill Bilgewater can offer. If there's anywhere a girl can get bed, board and booze for a reasonable fee, it's here.
After Viego showing up almost daily for the last two months, you kind of miss him. Maybe that's why you get shit faced drunk on overpriced wine alone in your tavern room that night, instead of going to a bar like you have been. You have no idea if Viego has some way of knowing what you're up to before he shows up, but you're halfway through the bottle by the time his boots appear in your periphery.
“What are you doing?” He asks dryly. You blink up at him.
“Is it not obvious?” You drawl, taking a sip from the bottle before offering it to him. He stares at it, brow furrowed. “Oh, don't tell me you've never tried getting drunk, either.”
He rolls his eyes and takes the bottle. “I have. It didn't work.” He drinks, then grimaces. “What is this swill?”
“Maybe you just didn't have enough?” you suggest, ignoring his other comment. Of course he'd have opinions on wine, the elitist. He drinks again, so it can't be that bad.
“What I meant was, what are you doing drowning yourself in cheap wine?” Viego reiterates. You make grabby hands at the bottle, and he passes it back to you empty. Bastard.
“It was not cheap,” you insist, and then have the bright idea to rewind the bottle to full. “Aha!” You crow when it succeeds.
“Iso,” he says, in a tone that is attempting to be patient.
“I'm just–” you stop, take an excessively long swig, and then slump back against the wall. Your cramped room doesn't have anywhere to sit save for the bed. Maybe you should've gone to a bar. “I'm stuck. I'm stuck in this shitty world and I'm never going to get back home because no one fucking knows anything and I have tried everyone. I've tried the mages, the Voidspawn, the chosen of the fucking gods, I've tried you–” you gesture agitatedly at him. “--and no one knows a single goddamn thing that can help me! And even if I could figure out how to get back into the Void and survive a second trip, I'd probably just end up in some other shitty fucking world!” You fail your arms out emphatically, and Viego takes this opportunity to snag the bottle from you before you spill it.
“How did you come to be here?” He asks. “In this world?”
Your lips thin with discomfort. “I can't tell you,” you say reluctantly.
He looks almost offended. “You have been inexplicably aware of my most painful and humiliating moments, even ones I myself do not remember, and you refuse to share your own story?”
“That's not–” you cut yourself off with a frustrated noise. “I mean I literally can't tell you, it doesn't…” he looks like he doesn't believe you. You sigh deeply. Maybe it'd work this time. It's not like he's alive, after all. “Alright, have it your way, but I'm only trying this once. I was–” and there it is, the burning, stabbing pain rending your throat into ribbons. You gag on your own blood, and Viego lurches towards you as you begin to cough up the shard. His hands are on your arms as he drops to his knees before you, looking so fearful you almost feel bad for him, even though you're the one eating glass right now.
It passes quickly enough. You grimace as you wind your timeline back to before your little demonstration, the blood and pain vanishing in a heartbeat. Only the mirror shard remains, which you cast aside with disgust.
He looks stricken. “I–are you injured? What was that?”
“I'm fine now,” you assure him, a little sheepishly. “It's just…my powers have rules. That's one.”
He lets out a breath, hands lowering from your biceps to rest on your forearms. “Do not do that again,” he orders harshly. “I do not care what the circumstances are.”
“You don't have to tell me twice,” you say with a shrug.
He gives you an unimpressed look. “Don't I? Why in the name of good sense would you possibly do that, simply because I asked?”
You shift uncomfortably. “I thought it might work this time,” you say, and your voice sounds small. “And if anyone could understand what I went through, it'd be you.”
He just looks at you for a moment, but you can't quite bring yourself to meet his eyes. Then, he stands, only to throw himself onto the bed next to you. The wine is in his hand again, though you have no idea where it went before. “Have you tried writing it?” He suggests.
“Doesn't work,” you say morosely, only to squint incredulously at his big armored boots. “Boy, get your fucking boots off my bed.”
He blinks at them like he's only just remembered he's wearing them. “Apologies,” he says, passing you the wine. The whole armored shin debacle is apparently held in place by a few buckles, and somehow seeing Viego's socks is more surreal than the fact that he's here at all.
“Have you considered wearing something that isn't what you died in?” You suggest, poking at a frayed lapel.
He blinks at said lapel, picking at the tattered clothing with a frown. “Is that what happened?”
Right. He didn't remember. “I mean, I assume you weren't rocking the half shirtless look for fun,” you say, poking him in the exposed midriff. He's not cold like you were expecting–save for being as pallid as a ghost, he feels perfectly human. You do it again, because huh, he's actually built, which you knew because of the shirtless thing and the abs and all but it's a little different when his abdomen feels like a fucking rock–He catches your hand, and you realize that oh yeah, you're drunk and should probably be thinking better of harassing the guy with the giant sword.
“Iso,” he says warningly. That's a new look on his face–Viego is no stranger to inner turmoil, but this time he also sort of looks like he can't believe this is a situation he actually has to deal with. Which, same.
You pull your hand back with a shrug, sipping your wine instead. “Just saying.”
He gives you an unreadable look, then demands the wine with an imperious beckoning gesture. “I must be able to summon the Mist unimpeded in battle,” he says before taking a sip, gesturing to the pitch cavity in his chest.
“So we bring you to a tailor who can make you a titty window,” you say easily. Viego chokes on the wine and then on his laughter. He's handsome when he's happy, you note.
He's looking at you oddly, his expression somewhere between strained and flustered. “I said that aloud, huh?” You note.
“How much of this have you had?” He asks, holding up the bottle and swishing its contests. You're grateful for the change of subject.
“Uh. Most of it?” You shrug. “I don't hold my alcohol well, historically.”
“Can't you just…” he makes a spinning gesture you realize is meant to evoke a clocks hand.
“If I wanted to be sober I wouldn't have gotten drunk,” you point out. To prove your point, you snatch the bottle back.
He does a little mouth shrug. “A fair point.” For a moment, he just looks at you, and hell if you've ever known what goes on in Viego's head but he looks almost discouraged. “Is it so bad, staying here?”
You slump. “I…” you don't know how to answer that. You scrub a hand over your face, trying to find an answer you're allowed to give. “The only thing that's kept me going is getting back to them. To my family. Everything, the pain and the endless fighting and all the times I thought I couldn't get back up again and then I did, it was for them. And now I…” your breath catches.
“You don't know how to live without a purpose,” Viego says like he understands, and you guess he would. “Without someone to live for.”
You rub your face. “I just…what was the point of it all? Why am I still here at all, if I can't go home?”
“There is no point,” he says calmly. “Life is cruel and senseless, and there is no reward for enduring the pain it so keenly inflicts on us. But we are not yet dead, so we must go on.”
You slide a sideways glance at him, at the hole in his heart. “I don't think I can die,” you say morosely.
He gives you a crooked half smile. “Then I suppose you and I will just have to find something to live for, hm?” He reaches for the bottle, and then grimaces. “Starting with some better wine.”
—
You smuggle him into a wine shop, using an oversized cloak (turns out he can turn the magic crown thing off, but he does not like it and will not specify why beyond making a face) and a pair of sunglasses you picked up on a whim in Piltover (“What are these things? Iso, I cannot see.”). Once you get to the shop, he spends the next forty minutes trying to explain the difference between a dry and sweet wine to you. He then spends another twenty arguing with the sommelier about trying to pass off a Malbec for Merlot. You're pretty sure his shitty disguise does not hold up for the time he spends leaning over the counter emphatically gesturing at the man, but this is Bilgewater, and if the sommelier knows who he is, he doesn't give a shit beyond the fact that he's trying to haggle.
You walk back with Viego at your side, still grumbling about the sub-par availability. You point out that they are under constant siege not only by huge murderous fish, but also by undead armies, which probably affects trade routes. You ask whether that's something he can, y'know, stop, and he sighs.
“The mist is as alive and hungry as the rats in that gutter,” he says, nodding at said gutter. “It is outside my control, unless you want me to usher in another Harrowing and make things worse. I'm very talented at making things worse, you see.” He spreads his arms with a self depreciating grin. The bag of bottles he's carrying clinks concerningly.
“Can't you, iunno, command the wraiths to chill out or something?” You try.
You can't see his eyes past the ridiculous sunglasses you have him in, but you're sure he's rolling them. “Can you command the gutter rats?”
You shoot him a reproachful look as you open the door to your inn room. Luckily, it faces out to the street, so you don't have to go through the attached tavern. “Hey, have some respect. They're trapped in eternal undead torment because of your fuckup, remember?”
He seems abashed for a moment as he follows you in. “I did not mean…” he sighs, taking off his sunglasses and tossing them on the table. “If you took the rats and put them in, say, someone's house, they would panic and start biting, yes? Because they are scared and hungry and all they know how to do is to hurt or to run. It is the same with the wraiths. I can bring the mist to a place, and the mist brings them, but I can only directly control a scant few from a horde.” He gestures up at his crown, which he apparently rematerialized when you were distracted. You suppose that's how the possession thing worked in the game, too. He hesitates a moment, then continues in a reserved tone, “I know their plight is because of me, but I have no way to undo what I have done, for them or myself–” and then he pauses, fingers on the clasp of his cloak, staring at you.
“Can I help you…?” You say slowly as the silence drags on.
“Yes,” he says. “I think you can. When we met, you made me human.”
Your eyes widen. “Is that…something you want?”
He pauses as if he's not sure how to answer that, then shakes his head. “Not for me, for the wraiths. If I bring their souls to you, can you restore them?”
“I…” you pause, considering. “I guess? I mean, it'll be harder the longer they've been like that, but if it worked on you I don’t see any reason it wouldn't on them.”
He nods sharply, and all of a sudden Viego is on one knee in front of you with a beseeching look on his face. “Come back to the isles with me.” You stare, and the look he’s giving you is almost pleading. “You were looking for a purpose, and I am looking for redemption. We could find it together. Please.”
“Why?” You say, blunt as anything.
His brow furrows. “What do you mean, why?”
You lean forward, looking him dead in the eye. “Viego, the Shadow Isles are ancient and the dead are countless. What you're asking of me will take years, and making them human again doesn't undo all of the suffering they've already been through.”
“Do you think I don't know that there is no fixing this wretched mist?” He shoots back, clearly affronted. “You restored my humanity, once, and my heart ached no less fiercely for it.”
“So why? For Isolde? Do you think she'll somehow forgive you, if you ‘undo’ what you did?” you persist. You know you're pushing too hard, but somehow the thought of him asking this of you for her irritates you.
“Isolde is gone!” He snaps, and you realize he's trembling. “She is gone, and every day my traitorous heart forgets a little more of the pain of losing her. I know there is no forgiveness for what I have done, in the dead or the living, but is it so wrong to do as she would have wanted in her memory?”
“I–” you realize, looking at his shaking hands, that you're being an asshole. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. You…you know you can't be mad at yourself for moving on, right?” You ask gently. “You’ve grieved for long enough. Not hurting when you think of her doesn't mean that you didn't love her, that you don't love her still.”
He looks up at you for a moment, gaze oddly vulnerable, and then rests his forehead on your knees. “I know this in my heart. It is my mind that thinks it is a betrayal.”
“Well, stop it,” you say, and he gives a laugh that is almost a hiccup. “If you're betraying your wife by being happy then I'm betraying my family by not suicidally flinging myself into the Void on the vanishingly slim chance that I'll end up back home.”
He rolls his head to the side so he can give you a narrow look. Incidentally, this also means his head is now fully resting on your lap. “That's ridiculous.”
“Exactly,” you say. “But if you're going to hold yourself to an insane standard of authenticity in pain then you're going to have to hold it against me too, so checkmate.” He smiles ruefully, and before you can think better of it you card your fingers through his hair. It is insanely soft, and you can't help but be jealous because there's no way there's hair care products in the Shadow Isles. Does that mean you'd have to import some? Wait, why are you assuming you're agreeing? You had some great ethical standpoint about this a minute ago–oh, right, not letting him use you for free moral absolution. “Tell me again. Why do you want me to come with you?”
His eyes, which at some point closed while you were playing with his hair, slide open. “Because it is within our power to help. Because they were my people and my responsibility, and I failed them. And, to be very honest, because having you with me eases my heart, and I am at my core a selfish bastard.”
You laugh disbelievingly, and he smiles hopefully up at you. Maybe it's the look in his eye. Maybe it's the lingering wine in your system, or the fact that he's right and you have nowhere else to go. Maybe it's just that you inexplicably have a soft spot for him. Whatever it is, you say yes, and he smiles so brightly you instantly understand why Isolde married him on the spot.
Then he insists on trying to educate you on wine, and you get through 3 out of 4 bottles before he is forced to admit you simply have no taste.
(You also get so shitfaced drunk that you fall asleep on his chest, trying to see if he still has a heartbeat. He must also be, because he lets you.)
—
You give Viego a week to find a dozen of the most recently reaped souls, while you make other preparations. It's difficult to convince any ferry to come to the Shadow Isles, but you need a way for the freshly risen to make it back to civilization. You agree that he'll wait offshore for a day, and when you light a lantern he'll come to shore for the passengers. He makes you pay half upfront because he thinks you'll die.
When you appear at Viego's castle, he is instantly by your side. “Iso,” he greets, as if he's relieved you came after all. You think he's made some sort of effort to clean up, because he shows you to a room that is downright nice. He's clearly gone to some effort to find furnishings mostly unravaged by time and the Ruination, including the bed you restored; if the lost kingdom of Camavor had one thing going for it, it was apparently talented carpenters supplied with good quality wood. He assures you that he'll provide everything you need to assist with your work–he still has access to the coffers, after all, and Bilgewater merchants don't ask questions if there's gold on the table. He doesn't know what kind of food you like, but if you let him know he'll do his best to acquire it. His posture is ramrod straight and his accent is out in full force, and you are inexplicably reminded of coming over to a friend's messy apartment while they scour through their pantry looking for something edible to serve because they're too embarrassed to admit they've been getting takeout for a week.
“Viego,” you interrupt his stream of courtly assurances as you walk back to the main hall. “What are you so nervous about?”
His nose wrinkles, affronted. “Nervous? Me?” He repeats skeptically.
“Iunno, whatever you want to call the fussing,” you say, waving a hand at him.
“Fussing–” he repeats, offended. You give him an unimpressed look, and he relents. “I…suppose I might be a little on edge. If I had hosted such an important guest with such poor hospitality when I was a prince, I would be a laughing stock.”
You mutely point at yourself, baffled. He rolls his eyes, and there's the Viego you know–haughty, single-minded, and a little bit of a bitch. “Yes, of course you. You are healing the wound I made in the world for no reward but the deed itself. If the kingdom of Camavor still lived, you would be lauded as a saint and courted as an asset to the kingdom.” He pauses, looking into the middle distance. “If I am remembering correctly, I believe father would probably have tried to marry us.”
You blink, utterly unsure of what to make of that information. “He would've?”
Viego shrugs. “I was quite charming then, and seducing you would be a convenient way to secure your allegiance to the kingdom.”
“What, implying you're not charming now?” You tease.
He stops and turns to look at you, and you almost run into his shoulder. You brake in time to avoid a collision, but it leaves you much closer than anticipated. When Viego looks down at you there's an oddly searching look in his eyes, but it quickly vanishes from view as he leans down to murmur in your ear. “Should I be, to keep you by my side?”
You shiver without meaning to and hope he doesn't notice. “Alright, point taken, heartbreaker,” you say, quickly stepping past him and praying to any god who will listen that he doesn't see the flush on your face.
---
The first lot of souls Viego summons for you aren't hard. You lay your hands on the filmy substance of their being and spin their time back, back, to the sharp rending tear where they became something else. There is a strange ripping sensation you can't describe as their physical bodies snap back into place around their souls, summoned from whatever flotsam graveyard they were in at Bilgewater, and then there is a trembling woman in front of you. She immediately begins to weep, thanking you profusely and begging incoherently to be allowed to go home, and you cast Viego a deeply uncomfortable look.
He looks no more at ease with the situation than you are, but he steels himself and says in a far gentler voice than you expected, “You are safe now. No harm will come to you here. I cannot give back the time and pain that was taken from you and for that I am sorry, but you will return to your home and your family unharmed.”
She looks up at him, voice choked and shaky. “Y-you're him, ain't you? The Ruined King? Y-you’re letting us go?” Her eyes flick to you, and a realization flashes in them. “T-then you must be the Queen he was looking for! C-congratulations, your majesties, I'm happy, I'm truly happy for youse–” and she dissolves into hiccuping sobs that you don't feel comfortable interrupting just to say ‘no, actually, we're just friends’. At the same time, you're stricken with the completely inappropriate realization that that wouldn't even be entirely true if you did say it, because if he wasn't grieving his double-dead wife you probably would've tried some horrendous pickup line on him by now.
None of those are thoughts you're ready to deal with however, so you turn and restore the next soul.
—
After the shaken crowd is delivered to a shellshocked ferryman, it occurs to you that he didn't correct her, either. You ask, over a dinner of roast meat and veg (he's very remorseful about you cooking your own food, but you flat out refuse to leave it in the hands of a wraith he's pretty sure used to be a chef).
His eyes slide away from yours uncomfortably. “I thought it might be easier for them to believe in my intentions that way.” He looks down, idly pushing a wedge of potato with his fork, which is very unlike him because Viego usually has impeccable table manners. “And it is true, in a way. I am a changed man, because of what Isolde said to me, and because of what you have done for me.”
“What, are you gonna propose to me?” You joke, your mouth running ahead of your mind in a desperate attempt to break whatever this strange tension is.
He blinks at you. “Would you like me to?”
You try for a smile. “I’m joking, Viego.”
“I am not,” he says evenly.
You squint at him, trying to figure out which of Viego's insane personality traits you're up against now. Maybe he just didn't know how to have close relationships that weren't, in one way or another, legally family? Then you recall your conversation in the hallway earlier. “You don't have to marry me to get me to stay, calm down. Plus, can you imagine trying to get a priest out here?” You try for humor, and then belatedly remember that you should probably track down Yorick while you're at this ‘freeing the damned’ thing. Though he's been dead for a long, long time, and he could probably wait until you've found everyone who still has living relatives. “Wait, is that even how weddings work here?”
“Yes. At least, it was in Camavor. A priest and a ceremony and a grand party,” he says, looking almost wistful. “What does courtship look like, where you are from?”
“I mean, the same as here, I guess?” You hazard. “You meet someone, you spend time with them, go on dates, y'know, get dinner and walks in the parks and stuff like that?” He seems oddly unsatisfied by that answer, and you shrug. “I wasn't exactly royalty, so my relationships were probably a little more casual than whatever you were imagining.”
He raises a brow. “I have had my share of casual relationships in the past, you are aware?”
You almost choke on your food. The smile on his face is almost rogueish, and when you look at it like that, you can perfectly picture him flirting his way through the castle staff. “So you were perfectly capable of being normal about it, but you just decided to immediately propose to Isolde on the spot?”
He shrugs. “I know my heart, and I knew I wanted to give it to her. For now it, and all the weight it carries, is mine alone once more.” You're about to ask about the for now part, but he looks up at you seriously. “You know that they will not all be so receptive, the wraiths. There will be those who are angry and vengeful, and those who have been so broken by the mist for so long that they will not know how to be any other way.”
“I know,” you say. “I did think this through before I agreed to it.”
“You were also very drunk, and reportedly part of your reasoning was that I am ‘cute when I'm begging’,” he makes air quotation marks to ensure you know that he is directly quoting you, and his wolfish grin lets you know exactly how much he's enjoying your obvious dismay.
You blanch. “I said that part aloud too, huh?” He responds by laughing at you. You groan. “Look, be that as it may, I had a whole week to change my mind, and here I am.”
“Here you are,” he agrees, and there's something so terribly affectionate in his voice you think you must be imagining it, but it's there in his face when you glance at him too. Gods, he really is handsome.
You hurriedly return to your food, before you can say anything stupid like, say, suggesting he show you the other other blade of the Ruined King. Viego is your friend. Viego’s defining personality trait is being a widower. Viego is not someone you can casually proposition, even he's decided that teasing you is a form of high entertainment, the fucker. God, maybe you just need to get laid–spending all your time around the near-shirtless ghost king was doing numbers to your psyche.
—
You do not find the opportunity to seek a no strings attached hookup, because your time is taken up either sleeping or restoring the souls of the damned. Viego was right when he warned you–in the next lot, a burly man waits long enough to get used to having limbs again before throwing himself at you with a howl. You barely have time to blink before Viego intercepts him, blade at the ready. He swings, and you cringe, expecting a spray of blood, but at the last second Viego glances at you and twists his blade so that he strikes the man with the flat of it instead. It's still an incredible amount of force behind solid (ghost?) steel, so the man goes sprawling, wind knocked out of him.
“You will show her respect,” Viego hisses, standing over him. “I understand your rage and your hate towards me, and I cannot blame you for that, but she has saved you from damnation and you will not raise a hand against her.”
The man spits at his feet. Viego lets out a hissing breath, but otherwise doesn't react as the man picks himself up–only to once again throw himself at Viego, who easily bats aside his wild swing before grabbing him by the throat. “I do not want to do this, but if you cannot behave yourself–” Viego says in the approximation of calm, mist curling up and around the man's head into a glowing crown. All at once, the man stops struggling, and as Viego releases him he complacently goes back to his place in the crowd. The others look at him nervously, an uneasy whisper circling through them.
A woman in a heavy woven shawl steps forward. “Um, your majesties,” she begins nervously, because apparently something about you and Viego just screams ‘married couple’ to the newly risen, “Is he…okay?” Her eyes flit between the crown on the man's head and Viego’s sword, as if she's not sure which is more worrying.
“He will return to himself after you leave the Isles,” Viego explains placidly. You nudge his side and give the sword a significant look, and he glances at it like he forgot it was there before vanishing it into mist. “I will ask the ferryman to keep an eye on him, do not worry.”
She looks at the man for a moment, then ducks her head gratefully. “Well, I thank you for your graciousness. I'm sure he will too, after he comes to his senses.”
After that, he stands a little closer to you while you raise the shades.
—
“How does it work?” You ask, after Viego has seen the risen off to the ferry and you've had a chance to stop swaying on your feet. You like to sit in the gardens, and Viego thins the mist enough to let a soft glow of sunlight through. Viego sits next to you on the stone bench, so close you're almost touching. He’s by your side pretty much constantly these days, save for when you're sleeping or bathing–though, you also wouldn't be surprised if he watched you sleep just to have company. “The whole…possession thing?”
Viego looks up at you from the book he was reading. “It simply does.”
You turn to him, incredulous. “What, that's it?”
He shrugs noncommittally. “I cannot explain how I summon my sword or compel the mist to move, and the crown is the same. I wish it to be so, and so it is.” You squint at him, and he shuts his book with a soft sound. It always boggled your mind that he perfectly remembered what page he was on without any bookmarks. “How does your manipulation of time work?”
You open your mouth, and then realize he's got you cornered, because you're not sure how to explain that either. “You could find out,” you challenge instead.
His brows knit. “You don't mean…?”
“I do,” you confirm.
He frowns. “No.”
“What, you'll marry me but you won't put a crown on my head?” You joke. “C'mon, I'm giving you my explicit permission.”
“That is not–” he begins, then shakes his head. “Everyone I have used my crown on seemed quite distressed by the experience. I would not do the same to you.”
“Was that because of the crown, or because of the sudden and unexpected loss of bodily autonomy paired with you using them to try and kill people?” You say dryly. He frowns, but doesn't answer. “Look. I'll admit, I'm curious, but more importantly…if I'm unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, and we need my powers, I want you to be able to use them. So, please.”
He goes very still, and you belatedly realize exactly what he's picturing–you, unconscious and hurt, unable to rewind your own wounds. “If I were able to deny you anything, it would be this,” he says, sighing deeply. You eagerly turn to face him, crossing your legs on the bench like a kid. For a moment he just looks at you like he's regretting all the choices that brought him to this point, and then begins to strip his gauntlets off. You're sure he could avoid stabbing you with their pointed ends, but Viego also treats you like you're made of glass sometimes.
He cups your face between his palms, and his hands are so much warmer than you expected. You're suddenly stricken with the intimacy of this pose, with you two so close. His eyes flick down to your lips, and for a moment you think he's going to kiss you–
And then a cold sensation snakes it's way into your blood, like drinking ice water. It spreads throughout your limbs until you feel numb from it, and Viego’s eyes glaze as the crown forms on your head.
“How strange,” he says distantly. “It's as if the entire world is singing a song only you can hear.”
You try to move your hand, but nothing happens. Still, you can still distantly feel his hands on your face, as if your skin was so chilled it barely recognizes the touch. You try to project the thought that you're fine, that it's a bit weird but honestly not that bad, but you have no idea if it gets through. “I can feel it, when you struggle against me,” he says softly, and, hm, maybe it's for the best that he can't hear your thoughts, because you've gone somewhere absolutely filthy with that. “I have never held a soul that trusted in me so, that did not rail to reclaim itself.” There's a strange look in his eyes, somewhere between awed and something much darker and deeper, and it occurs to you that you have willingly placed an insane amount of power in his hands. Then again, you already offered him everything you could think to give, and he said no.
Viego sits back, and unbidden your hand raises to one of the shattered pots in the garden. You feel second hand as he fumbles along its time, his brow furrowed in concentration, before slowly winding it back. When it sits whole again, the chill fades, and your body is your own once again. You flex your hands and wiggle your toes, feeling sort of like your limbs had just fallen asleep but without the pins and needles. You then realize Viego is looking at you anxiously.
“If we ever go to Shurima, you're doing that to me,” you say casually.
“Excuse me?” He says, bewildered.
“It was like going into a nice cool swimming pool,” you describe, tapping your chin as you try to find the words. “Or opening a fridge. Wait, you don't know what that is.” You frown. “Also, I hope you recognize how good I am at this time stuff now, it is not easy.”
He laughs, instantly relaxing. “Of course, my heart, I am forever in awe of your talent and grace,” he gives you an exaggerated little head-bow, and you're so busy preening that the pet name doesn't even register until a moment later. Then, you promptly find it very important to start rambling about how, you know, you should try replanting something in this garden, since it's getting sunlight anyway. The indulgent look on his face as he agrees yes, whatever you want, does nothing to still your heart.
—
“Are you sure–” Viego begins.
“Where do you intend to find a chef who's gonna come to the Shadow Isles?” You ask pointedly.
He blinks. “I'm sure that for enough coin…” he catches the look on your face, then sighs. “Very well, I see your point.”
“If you want to help, I'm not going to say no,” you suggest instead. He looks down at the carrots as if he's never seen one before. “You've never cooked before,” you realize, and he has the grace to look a little abashed. His discomfort with you cooking your own meals makes a little more sense–he must feel like he's making you do servants work, from his lofty frame of reference as literal fucking royalty. “Okay, here. Wash your hands.”
He blinks. “You want me to…?”
“To wash your hands and then help me cook,” you confirm. “I'm not a guest, Viego, I live here. I know you've got your own ideas about what hospitality looks like, but where I'm from, if you're cooking for someone they damn well better help you chop the veggies.”
He looks bemused, but complies. You gesture for him to take your place in front of the cutting board. “Hold the knife like this, cut off the ends, slice them like so.” You demonstrate, hip bumping into his as you lean across to the board, and then hand him the knife.
The concentration on his face as he tries to match your cuts is rather endearing. He glances at you for approval, and your nod and smile seems to bolster him, so you start on cleaning the mushrooms. The ingredients aren't exactly the same as what you're used to, but you've managed to put together a respectable assortment for a stir-fry. Your ferryman, Captain Brigg, was very skeptical about the crates of fresh produce you procured him to haul back, but him and his crew also treat you with an odd sort of reverence now that stops them from asking questions. Still, you've got enough of a stockpile of ingredients frozen in time to last you for a few months.
You talk Viego through what you're doing, why you should cut the carrot thin and the bell peppers thick, how you're hoping this soy-sauce like substance from Ionia works the same way as what you're used to, but it's also made from a nut so you're not sure. He asks you about food from your home, and you spend fifteen minutes complaining about having to cook rice manually. He doesn't seem to mind when you automatically slip into bossing him around–your mother always said that idle hands in the kitchen were volunteers who didn't know it yet. He does stiffen slightly whenever you pass behind him, and it takes you a bit to realize it's because you're automatically putting your hand on his lower back so you can squeeze behind him–not that the kitchen is particularly small, but rather that he is not a small man. It also takes you a bit to realize that that part of his back is bare, because he's still wearing nothing on his torso but that ripped open doublet. You've long since figured out that Viego likes being touched, but maybe that was a bit much even for him.
He hovers around even after you don't need his help with prep anymore, watching you stir and experiment with the ranges of sauce you have on hand. “Okay, try,” you announce when you're satisfied, taking a spoon of your hard work and blowing it cool before holding it up to him. Viego doesn't hesitate, and you're momentarily struck with the sensation that this, spoon feeding the Ruined King stir fry you press-ganged him into helping with, is a ridiculous situation to be in.
“It's nice,” he says, touching his lips. You try not to be distracted by the motion.
“Does it need anything? Salt, pepper?” You prompt, scooping some up for you to try yourself. Needs pepper. You look at him expectantly, and his face creases like it does when he's thinking hard.
“Pepper?” He says hesitantly, and you beam at him. He was teachable, and that was better than a majority of your exes.
—
You struggle with the corset for about three minutes before you give up. “Viego?” You call, because he's never far these days. The air goes cold on the back of your neck, but there's a suspicious silence. When you crane your neck around, he's there staring at you.
“Can you help me lace this?” you prompt, gesturing at the partially done back of your corset. The dress is a deep navy color with silver embroidery on the long flowing sleeves and skirts, and the silvery ribbons that make up the back have been making themselves a true pain in the ass.
He blinks, as if just realizing you're there. “I suppose,” he says tersely, sounding almost puzzled as he examines your work. “What have you done?”
You shrug, turning back to the mirror. “Corsets weren't common in my world, and all the ones I've worn came pre-laced. I didn't think it would be this complicated.”
He hums, and you repress a shiver as his fingers brush the space between your shoulders. He's taken to wearing his gauntlets off, when you're just around the castle. “How strange. Why the change from your travelling attire, then?”
You shrug. “This might sound strange to you, but I get tired of wearing the same things all the time, even if I can keep them clean and fresh forever.” You smooth down the front of the dress, admiring the fabric. “And this is such a nice dress.”
“It was made with skill,” Viego says. You glance back at him, and he makes a tutting noise as your hair falls across your back. You do not succeed at suppressing the shiver as he brushes it back over your shoulder. “And you look lovely in it,” he continues, and you're sure you're imagining the husk in his voice. You meet his eyes in the mirror, and they're hooded with a feeling you don't want to name, so you cast around for something to say while staring fixedly at your reflection.
“I look like I'm going to a ball,” you blurt.
“This is a dinner dress, not a dancing one,” Viego says, blessedly accepting your sudden change in subject. “At least, not in Camavor. The skirt is too long and the bodice too stiff.”
You shrug. “I've never been to a ball. Can't even dance.”
He spins you around so you can see his offended expression. “Excuse me?”
You blink at him. “We didn't really have them, where I'm from? Unless you were really rich, which, I most certainly was not.”
He waves a hand. “No, no, not that. You don't know how to dance?”
You blink, taken aback. “No?”
“Outrageous. Give me one moment,” he says, and then disappears into mist.
“What–” you have enough time to say to the empty room before he reappears, this time with a dented hunk of metal in his hand.
“If you would be so kind?” He asks, holding it out. You touch it, and the tarnished metal flickers back into the shape of a music box. “My thanks. Now…” he winds it, places the box on your dresser, and lifts the lid. In it is a beautiful figurine of a bird in flight, and out twinkles a lilting melody. You stare, flabbergasted, as he dips into a very princely bow and offers you his hand. “Lady Iso, may I have this dance?”
You laugh disbelievingly, but take his hand. “Viego, I don't know what I'm doing.”
“That is why I'm showing you,” he says easily, placing one of your hands on his shoulder and keeping the other held aloft. His other hand goes around your waist. “This one is simple, just follow my steps.” It's similar to what you vaguely remember a waltz to be, except you seem to be stepping in a pentagon rather than a square and there's a lot of spinning. Still, you feel like he's overestimating your abilities, because you struggle to match his steps.
“Eyes up,” he chides when your gaze drifts to your feet. You blink up at him, offended.
“How am I supposed to see where I'm stepping?” You ask, offended.
“Do you need to look at your feet to walk?” He retorts. You stick your tongue out at him, and you're so close you can feel it when he laughs. “Don't think so hard about it. Just listen to the music and stay with me.”
He's talking about the dance, you remind yourself. Suddenly, keeping your eyes on his is difficult, so you stare somewhere off his left shoulder instead. “How do you remember all of this?” You ask, brow furrowed as you try to match his steps without looking.
“I’ve always loved dancing, ever since I was young,” he says, sounding pleased he remembers the fact. “I remember my brothers would tease me, because I preferred my dancing lessons to my swordsmanship ones.”
You look up at him curiously. He doesn't talk about his family often, though you're not sure if that's because he doesn't want to or because he doesn't remember much about them. “I suppose you've had a lot of practice, then?”
He spins you, and you think that returns you to the first part of the steps. “Yes. I attended whatever balls I could, even the ones hosted by those on poor terms with the Crown.” He reels you back in with a little flourish. “My brothers teased me for that, too.”
You're about to ask more, but you trip over your skirt. Viego catches you easily, though you smack your face against his aggravatingly solid chest. “That is why this is not a dancing dress,” Viego says, and his tone is light but his expression when you look up at him is tinged with want. You realize you're very, very close, his arm still around your waist and your hands on the bare skin of his torso. Your chest is pressed to his, and you're abruptly aware of how much this corset emphasizes your cleavage. His eyes are half-lidded, his lips parted and looking oh so soft–
Whatever this moment between you is, it's interrupted by the dissonant click of the music box playing it's last note. Viego steps back and bows. You clumsily mimic a curtsey, and he looks up at you with a crooked smile that makes your heart ache. You staunchly refuse to examine why.
#x reader#reader fic#f!reader#my fics: tiarw#league of legends x reader#leauge of legends#league x reader#viego x reader#crossposted on ao3
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
Time is a Roulette Wheel
Viego: Pt 2
League of Legends | Viego x F!Reader
Chapters: Prologue | Viego: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
Crossposted on AO3 here
SFW
Summary: Turns out that Runeterra isn't the only place that has a Void. Plucked from your world into one of a video game with nothing but stolen time powers, an inability to die and a middling recollection of lore, you're prepared to do just about anything to get back home again. You just have to find the right Champion to help.
Again, you're expecting that to be the last you see of him, but now with a vague hope that maybe he'll figure out how to be a decent human being again. Again, you're wrong.
“Are you well?” He asks, once again appearing from fucking nowhere. It's a fair question–you’re covered in blood. However, he asks it like he's just caught you doing something strange, and not like you're half dead on the floor.
You wave a vague hand at him from where you're slumped against a wall. “Trying to converse with things that's literal only purpose in life is to eat you is…bad. It's bad. I would not recommend it.”
He tilts his head, brow pinched. “Would you like me to kill it?”
You blink, surprised and inappropriately a little flattered by the offer, but shake your head. “God, that would be nice, but no.” You grimace down at your blood soaked clothes. You should rewind them, but you're so fucking tired. “Time is harder to manipulate here than I'm used to, and Voidspawn heal fast. If I could just…fucking smite them, I'd be fine, but no, I've gotta follow the motherfucker around stabbing it just enough to slow it down while I try to convince it to divulge trade secrets to me. Hence,” you gesture around you at the bone spines and discarded throwing knives, and then at your blood stained clothes. You…should probably go, actually. Cho’gath would be healed up soon, and it's probably coming back for round…fuck, you don't know, thirteen? You groan and begin the arduous process of trying to lever yourself up the wall when your legs feel like jelly.
Viego offers you a hand, and you're so tired you don't think twice about taking it. His gauntlets are cold against your skin. The world sways disorientingly as you stand, and you blink muzzily at his concerned expression as you try to remain upright. “Hey, Viego?” You say vaguely. “Do me a favor and take me somewhere…not here, if I pass out. I think Cho’gath will probably come back and eat me, otherwise.”
His brow creases and he opens his mouth, presumably to ask you what the fuck you're on about, and that's all you see before everything goes black.
–
You wake up to the musty smell of old linens. You groggily pry open one eye to confirm your suspicions that yes, obviously, Viego brought you to the Shadow Isles, of course he did. In fact, Viego is seated on what looks like it used to be a couch, watching you. His posture is tense, and the mist pouring from his heart is particularly thick. It takes you a moment to realize the room is decaying around you, thousands of years passing in seconds.
You sit up, waving a hand in the general direction of the walls, and everything blurs for a moment before returning to the way it was. Well, the way it was like last week, no point actually restoring anything. That being said, you're surprised the blankets don't disintegrate as they pool around your waist. “Are you watching me sleep?” You croak. He doesn't answer, but his lips do pinch a little. “You know that's a weird thing to do, right?”
He sits back finally, his posture going from ‘inches from ghost zwei’ to ‘this may as well be a throne’. “Did you find what you were looking for?” Subtle change of subject, but you don't push him on it. God knows it took you long enough to figure out how to be a person again, it would be the height of hypocrisy for you call him on being abrupt.
You sigh deeply. “Nope. The Voidborne are put here with the burning desire to consume all of reality and exactly enough intelligence to not get killed doing it. The finer points of interdimensional travel are, as far as I can tell, lost on them.” You rub your temples tiredly. “That is, if they're even deliberately designed. If what we know as the Void is really just an allergic reaction of true nothingness to reality, they could just be the antibodies.” He's looking at you like he has no idea what you're talking about and this is somehow your fault. Again. You sigh again, crossing your arms on your bent knees. “For the moment, my only bet is to keep my ear to the ground and hope.”
For a moment you sit in silence. “I know what it feels like, to be so far from home with no way back,” he offers somberly. You glance at him, then at the ruined room you're in.
“Do you even remember what it was like, before?” You ask quietly.
He hesitates. “Some. I do not know how much I can trust my own mind, but…some.” He glances up at a molded painting hanging on the wall, now so faded you have no idea what it was meant to depict. “I think…this room belonged to my aunt. I remember she had a very ugly painting of her late-husband, which was funny, because she was the one who had him assassinated.” He frowns at the rotting frame. “For…a mistress? No, no. No, he was addicted to gambling, and bet away…” he pauses, then laughs under his breath. “He bet her favorite horse. He won, but she was so offended that she changed his will to bequeath all of his belongings to the horse instead, and then arranged for him to have an accident on a hunting trip. His son was very upset.”
You laugh disbelievingly. “Over a horse? There’s no way she got away with that.”
His brow furrows in concentration. “She was planning to cut ties with the family anyway, I believe. Too many gambling debts. The son was arrested not long after, or killed, I'm not sure. He was in no position to contest the verdict, in any case.”
“Huh. And you put me in your aunt's room because…?” You trail off expectantly.
He blinks at you as if he doesn't understand the question. “It was the first room I found with an intact bed.”
You look down at the fraying, musty sheets. “This is intact?” You look up at him, suddenly concerned. “You aren't sleeping in here, right?”
“I do not sleep,” he replies.
“You can't, or you don't need to?” You clarify. He doesn't answer. Your eyes narrow. “You haven't tried.”
“I had more important matters to attend to,” he says, managing to sound very pompous about it.
You roll your eyes. “Well, you don't anymore, and furthermore just laying down with your eyes closed is still more restful than what you've been doing, which I assume is brooding in the seated position. Get over here.” You pat the expanse of bed next to you, and under your hands it reverts to a state of newness, the faded covers becoming plush and clean in lush blues.
He blinks at you, uncomprehending. He opens his mouth as if to argue, and then closes it. Shockingly, without another word, he stands and crosses to the other side of the bed, and lays down on top of the covers. The mattress sinks under his weight, but the bed is so outrageously large that there's still plenty of space between you.
“Okay, now close your eyes,” you instruct.
“I remember how to sleep,” he says, sounding annoyed.
“If I know you, Viego, you're just gonna think about how miserable your existence is,” you say calmly. He doesn't contradict you. “So here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna pick something in the room to focus on, a sound or a sensation or a smell, like the texture of the blankets or something. You're gonna try and keep your attention on just that thing. If your focus starts wandering, whether it's to something unhappy or just a thought, simply note what it went to and then gently bring your attention back to your anchor.”
“And this is supposed to make me happy?” He says dryly.
You shake your head. “No. But being just okay is the first step to being happy, and not torturing yourself is a skill that needs practice like any other.”
He doesn't say anything further. You take a moment to reflect on the fact that you're teaching fucking meditation techniques to a dead king from a video game. That being said, mental health awareness was abysmal in this world, you can't imagine Viego was taught any distress tolerance skills back when he was alive either. You guess the job just fell to you then.
You don't remember falling asleep, but you wake up to Viego's gentle breathing. When you look to your side, he looks like a classical painting, pale eyelashes brushing high cheekbones, lips slightly parted. He also sleeps like a vampire, ramrod straight with his hands folded on his bare stomach, his crown still casting a soft glow over his pale skin. You're struck with the urge to see if the hair splayed out on his pillow is as soft as it looks, but you don't want to die any more than you already have today, so you leave it.
You inch your way out of bed so as not to wake him, and are about to rewind yourself away when he makes a pained little noise. His brows are furrowed, and his arm is flung out to the empty side of the bed. He whimpers again, and you can see the faint glow of his eyes darting around behind his lids. You remember that this is a man who simply chose not to sleep at all for however long he's been back, rather than sleep alone. You wonder if he slept at all, after Isolde died, before she killed him.
You slip back under the covers, his arm still over your waist over the thick blankets, and his expression slowly smooths. As you listen to his breathing even out, you wonder what in the genuine fuck you're doing.
He's gone when you wake up again.
—
You are reluctantly forced to admit that this may be a regular occurrence. This is your life now, you guess–you’ve imprinted the Ruined King like he's a lost duckling, and he follows you around exactly like one. It's certainly not for the change of scenery, at least–you’ve heard rumors of Ryze in Ionia, so you're just wandering around hoping to run into some trace of him. Viego, apparently, sees fit to wander with you.
He shows up while you’re pouring over your notes, trying to find something, someone, anything you missed, and he criticizes your handwriting. He appears behind you while you're walking and laughs when you startle so badly you drop the trail rations you were eating, as if he doesn't even notice the knife you were about to launch into his skull. He ominously hovers behind you while you're setting up camp and rudely doesn't let you know he's there until you're halfway through singing a very crude song, upon which he asks what a brazilian wax is. Now, he appears in a swirl of mist while you're being jumped by bandits and beheads their leader.
“I’d rather you hadn't done that,” you sigh, approaching the still-cooling corpse. You had been trying to talk them down, before Viego appeared from the sudden roiling mist looking like wrath incarnate. The rest of the bandits are fleeing in terror, and Viego pauses mid-stride where he was obviously about to chase and cut the rest of them down.
“What?” He asks, obviously baffled and a little affronted.
“I said, I’d rather you hadn't killed that guy,” you say a little louder, kneeling down by the man's body. You touch his shoulder, and the body disappears, only to reappear instantly exactly as it was before Viego cut his head off. The man promptly chokes on his own spit, clutching his own neck as he recalls what just happened to him. You stand, brushing your skirts off, and the bandit stares between you and Viego with wide, panicked eyes.
“P-please, I have children, I-I just–We weren't gonna hurt youse, I swear, we just wanted to spook you into giving up your gold, please, they ain't got no one but me–” he babbles, dropping to his knees.
You reach into your bag and pull a few coins from your purse. The man flinches when you hold out your hand. “Alright, enough of that. Take this as an apology for the beheading and get out of here.” His eyes flick between the gold, you and Viego for a moment. Then he snatches the coins and almost trips over himself trying to run away while also bowing and thanking you profusely.
“They were going to kill you,” Viego points out irritably.
You give him an unimpressed look. “Do you think I'm not capable of defending myself?”
“No, but I don't see what the point of letting such people live is,” Viego argues, dropping his sword. When his hands leave it, it disintegrates into mist as quickly as it appeared.
You squint at him disbelievingly. “You really weren't cut out to be a king, were you?” He gives you a deeply offended look, and you rub your face. “Okay, look. Do you know where we are right now?”
He glances around, eyes lingering on the plants on the road and the trees in the forest. “Ionia, I believe.”
You nod. “And are you aware that Ionia is currently being invaded by Noxus?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” He asks, annoyed.
“It has to do with the fact these people are just trying to survive,” you point out, equally on edge. “If they wanted to kill me and rob me, they would've ambushed me instead of putting on this big show of surrounding me and demanding I hand over my valuables,” you explain, gesturing around you. “Would they have killed me if they needed to? Probably, yeah, but that wasn't their goal. Did you actually look at them? They're starving men trying to find a way to make enough coin for them and theirs to live.”
“You believe his story?” He asks dryly.
You tilt your head at him, baffled. “It's not an uncommon one. Please tell me this isn't the first time you've considered there could be complex socioeconomic factors behind criminal activity. You were a king.”
His eyes go slightly unfocused, as they always do when you bring up his past. “I…” he trails off, clearly deep in thought. “I left such matters to my advisors,” he finally recalls, with what looks like a lot of effort. “It was not, ah…something I was taught how to handle.”
You squint at him. “What do you mean, you weren't taught? You were royalty, you're literally raised for it.”
He shrugs, clearly agitated. “I wasn't meant to be king. I was the youngest prince, I was taught court etiquette and fine arts, not governorship.”
“Then why the fuck were you put in charge?” You ask, baffled.
He pauses. “I don't know. I don't remember. I just was.” He shakes his head, as if trying to dispel an unpleasant thought. His foggy memory clearly frustrates him.
You sigh, relenting. “Look, I understand you were just trying to help, I just…I don't like people dying because of me. I know you don't remember dying, but it sucks, and bringing people back from it is a huge pain in the ass.”
He eyes you warily. “You're not about to pass out again, are you?”
“That happened once,” you defend yourself, before realizing that it's probably a real concern as far as he knows. “But if I do, feel free to bring me back to your creepy castle. Hey, that bed is still nice, right?” You ask as the thought occurs to you. “I wasn't sure it'd stick. Big changes sometimes don't.”
He blinks, and this is a new expression on Viego–abashed. You hadn't spoken about that night, but he clearly feels somewhat awkward about it, because he's avoiding your gaze like it burns. “Yes, it is,” he says tightly, then clears his throat. “Anyway, I came to make a request of you.” Viego loves to change to subject when he's uncomfortable, you've noticed.
You tilt your head, intrigued. “Oh?”
He closes the space between you, and from inside his torn coat produces a faded book. “Could you restore this for me?”
You take the thing carefully, because it looks like it could crumble to dust in your hands. “What is it?”
“I do not know. I found it in the castle and I recognized the spine, so it must be–” you wind the book's time back, and in your hands the crisp gold text ‘Sweet Savage Love' stares back at you. You look up at Viego, and he has his eyes closed as if he's hoping whatever force is keeping him alive will spontaneously fail.
“You used to read bodice rippers?” You ask gleefully.
“Apparently,” he sighs deeply, taking the book from you and flipping it over. You crowd up against his side to read the back cover, standing on your tippy toes. Instantly, you see why he remembers it–it's a love story between a prince and a commoner. He lets out a soft huff, and tucks it into his jacket once more. You don't like the tiredness in his eyes.
“So you were always a sap, huh?” You muse. You feel the urge to try and cheer him up, which is insane because Viego’s defining character trait after being the wife guy is being miserable. “Maybe I should get you some new ones. I'm sure the art form has advanced in the last thousand years or so.”
“Perhaps I should kill you after all,” he muses, looking down at you, though his tone is so lamenting you don't think he's being serious. You realize you're still very close to each other, arms touching, and he hasn't moved away. Then again, he probably hasn't had much in the way of casual physical contact since he came back to life. You're sure that had no long lasting psychological ramifications.
“As if,” you say casually, knocking your shoulder against his as you flounce off. You're not sure if you mean, as if you could or as if you would, but it gets your point across.
–
Viego is sort of like a cat, you realize. He doesn't really ask for attention so much as he hovers around you until you give it.
“You still eat, right?” You say casually, stirring your pot of stew. You're getting good at noticing when he appears by the drop in temperature. He doesn't respond, and you look at him to find a familiar pinched look on his face. He's seated just inside the ring of your firelight, lounging on the ground as if it were the most comfortable seat in the world. You wonder if he practiced that pose. “You haven't tried,” you guess from his face.
“There is very little to eat in the shadow isles,” he says, a little defensively.
“And yet you seem to spend an awful lot of time out of it,” you note, amused. You then immediately pause as a thought occurs to you. “Wait, how do you keep following me, anyway?”
He tilts his head to the side, as if he's a curious animal. “I’m not quite sure. The Mist clings to you as if you were a wraith, but you are not bound by its borders. It follows you, but can find no purchase on your soul with which to keep you. It's as if you are alive and dead all at once.”
You blink, then sigh deeply. “That figures.” You fish two bowls out of your bag and begin to ladle stew into it. He looks puzzled as you hand him one, and then even more so when you plop down next to him and start eating.
“Don't tell me you're too good for beef stew?” You say teasingly, nudging his knee with yours.
He blinks as if he's coming out of a trance. “I don't believe I've ever had this dish,” he says, and to your relief begins taking off his gauntlets. You hate to think whose insides those things have got on them–he’s still wearing the same clothes he died in, after all, give or take magically blasting half his shirt off.
It takes you a moment to actually process his words, but when you do you turn to him aghast. “Beef stew? You've never had beef stew? God, what's the fucking point of being royalty if they didn't even feed you right?”
He’s looking at his food like he's not sure what he's supposed to do with it. His hands are oddly delicate for the heavy gauntlets he wears, with the long slender fingers of a pianist. “Stews were considered commoner food. Usually we would be served roasts or fish or…” you hand him a slice of sourdough you cut earlier, and he blinks. “Or bread, yes.”
It's kind of adorable how he watches you use your bread to scoop stew into your mouth before doing the same, as if he wants to be sure he's doing it right. His eyes widen slightly when he takes the first bite, and you have to hand him two more slices of bread before you finish your one. You were expecting to have leftovers, but there's something satisfying in watching him eat.
After, you clean your bowls and the pot with a twist of time, and then lay your bedroll out next to the fire. All the while, Viego sits and watches you. Normally he would have left by now.
You pause as you're fluffing your pillow. “You know, you're welcome to stay,” you offer, because you're pretty sure he will if he wants to anyway, and you offering first makes the whole situation seem slightly less insane. It's not like you mind the company–wandering around Ionia isn't the most entertaining on its own. “I don't have another bedroll or anything though.”
He inclines his head in what you think is acknowledgement, and doesn't move. Like a cat, you think as you climb into your bedroll, just wanting to exist in the same space as you. Or maybe it just gets to be too much for him, in the skeletal remains of his old life, and yours is the only face still friendly to him. You look at him in the firelight and see a lonely, lonely man who just wanted, for a time, to not be alone.
He's gone in the morning, of course.
#reader#f!reader#reader fic#leauge of legends#league of legends x reader#league x reader#viego x reader#my fics: tiarw#crossposted on ao3
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
Time is a Roulette Wheel
Prologue: All Roads Lead Home
League of Legends | F!Reader x Various
Crossposted on AO3 here
Chapters: Prologue | Viego: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
SFW
I'm trying to get into the habit of making regular updates, so I'm starting with crossposting my new League of Legends x Reader fic.
Summary: Turns out that Runeterra isn't the only place that has a Void. Plucked from your world into one of a video game with nothing but stolen time powers, an inability to die and a middling recollection of lore, you're prepared to do just about anything to get back home again. You just have to find the right Champion to help.
Prologue: All Roads Lead Home
Turns out, it's not just Runeterra that has a Void, that has Watchers. The Void is a space beyond existence, between worlds, a nothingness impossibly given shape by reality, warped into being by something completely antithetical to itself. The difference is, the things in the Void in Runeterra reacted to reality as one does to a particularly itchy bug-bite. The things in yours reacted more like a kid who put that bug in a jar, and then shook it around to see what it'd do.
You're visiting family when a hole rips open in the ceiling of your bedroom. Out reaches a hand, except it's not really a hand, because it has teeth for nails and mouths for fingers and a bulging stomach for a palm. You sit, rigid with fear, as it creeps down. Something like a tongue lolls down from its mouth, layered with so many eyes it hardly has skin, and it skates right over you to your sister, asleep in her bed across the room from you. It picks her up delicately, almost dainty in its movements, and a different kind of fear bolts through you. You're up so fast you almost trip, heart thudding in your throat, and throw your lamp at it. Except it's still plugged in, so it just makes an ungodly clattering noise. It lashes out with its tongue at the noise, and you go flying across the room, crashing into the mirror built into your wardrobe door. It hurts, of course it hurts, but adrenaline is a hell of a drug. You get up, a mirror shard gripped in your hand so hard it cuts, and you swing at the thing wildly. You manage to lodge the shard in its eye, and it drops your sister with a shriek that makes your ears hurt.
Then, the thing makes a strange noise, and you realize it's laughing. In a voice that is barely a voice it says, “Ahhh, this one has more fight. You'll do, little thing.”
And then you're asleep. When you wake up, you're in the Void.
—
The thing keeps an eye on you, literally. It's set into your palm like a tick. It watches your every move, and it's never so interested as when you're fighting for your life.
It takes you a while to realize it's why you can't die. Or, well, you can, but you come back. Every time you come back, the eye is closed, and it's the only blessed moment of privacy you get in this monstrous shithole. It also takes you some time to realize it's not just bringing you back, it's bringing you back in time, to before you were hurt. Your clothes reknit and undirty, your still-healing scratches vanish. You learn to use its powers for yourself–to freeze the thing that's lunging for your face, to accelerate a thrown bone spear until it instantly appears in its target, to dodge by suddenly being where you were thirty seconds ago instead.
You don't know how long you're in there. You don't know how long it takes you to track down the thing that took you, and kill it. You don't know why it laughs when you rip its guts out, why it slurs out congratulations until it can't speak anymore. You do know that you take its power, all that energy with nowhere to go but into its last living vestige in you. You also know that having the ability to manipulate time doesn't mean manipulating space, and trying to rip yourself back in time to before you were taken kind of just rips a hole in everything. Except where you are is barely anywhere, and so you fall into the parts of the Void that are so deep they aren't anything, and you aren't anything either.
And then you wake up in fucking Runeterra.
—
You learn about the rules pretty quickly. You crash land in a crater, and a nearby village is lucky enough to find you and kind enough to watch over you for the week you sleep. When you wake up, they ask you your name, and when you try to answer you cough up a single jagged shard of mirror glass. The shard. The eye might be gone, but even dead, that thing still finds a way to fuck you over.
You can't tell anyone anything about your time in the Void. Your name is confiscated, as is the fact that this whole universe was some shitty game. The edges of what you're allowed to say are difficult to map, considering you'd really rather avoid coughing up glass. On the bright side, you still can't die, and time is still yours to control.
You repay the village by healing some sicknesses, rewinding the ill to their hale and healthy times. Luckily you're not in Demacia, and your apparent magic doesn't garner many questions. Then, you gather the supplies you need for a long trip, and set out.
Someone in this fucking world has to know how you can get back home, and you've got a shortlist of everybody whose somebody in this place. You're immortal, and you have all the time in the world. You just have to find the right Champion.
#x reader#League of Legends x reader#league x reader#ao3 crosspost#reader fic#league of legends#reader#my fics: TiaRW
6 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
angelpastriez
on hiatus
girlfriendkisses
Kisses From Your Girlfriend!
nsnousworld
NSNOUS
justme-stefi
Just scrolling tumblr
meltykitcheeen
Just a blog