he was a bird, I was an arrow [jayce + viktor]

[hexsteel]

for hexera

both of us sure we were sword and a sparrow
still, when we flew, we never knew

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[hexsteel]

"I'm here?" Viktor sputters, baffled and beyond shock, because that's just about the only response he can come up with. "My presence isn't the shocking variable, here!"

Has it really been a year since Jayce died? Because as he's gathered close and brought to rest his forehead against Jayce's, it feels like both an eternity and no time at all since he last saw him. Suddenly, that memory of their last day together -- nothing out of the ordinary, just a typical day in the lab, a casual kiss exchanged as Jayce had left for the night -- seems extraordinarily vivid. It's his scent. It's exactly the same, and yet--

He's not the same.

Viktor puts his hands on Jayce's shoulders and eases him back, enough so that he can look at him properly. And as he does, his expression crumples, because what the fuck has Jayce gone through? There's a new scar through his lips, haggard lines at the corners of his eyes, his hair is longer than it's ever been, and the beard-- that's new, to say the least. But how can Jayce have gone through anything? He was dead. That typically marks the end of one's life experiences.

"You died," he stresses. "How can you be here? Why do you look so different? How is this at all possible?"