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collidescopeeyes · 8 months ago

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

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