Chapter Text
Speed was a hard learned lesson beaten into Ekko from the very first day he could remember. Speed equaled survival. Every Zaunite knew that. Children were taught to run before they learned to walk. To leap before they learned to crawl. As a child, he’d learned to be fast. He ran everywhere. Took shortcuts where he could. Made shortcuts where he couldn’t. As a child, Ekko learned how to be faster than Pilty blue and the whoosh of batons. He’d always been too fast for Enforcers. Too fast for the world to catch him.
But Ekko hadn’t learned to be fast by himself. With every duck into an alley, every leap that clanged the tin roofs like bells, every burning breath in his lungs, there was always that flash of blue in his periphery. Blue that seemed to glow even in the dim streets of Zaun, a beacon guiding his escape. Ekko may have been fast, but she was just a hair faster. Always had been.
His heart thumps in his throat as he thinks of her speed now. She could pull that pin, throw herself into the dark before he dragged the chain back. She stands too close to the edge, the harsh metal of the bomb gripped in her hands like a lifeline. He pants, smoke rising off of his clothes. Hot blood creeps down his face, snaking its way down his jaw. In the aching silence, he hears it hit the metal ground like a bullet. He hadn’t been fast enough the last three times. Not fast enough to convince her to stay, just fast enough to bring her back. Over and over. Even now, on the edge of destruction, she is still just a step ahead of him.
She doesn’t wait for him now. Her hair glows in the split second between pulling the pin and the drag of the chain, and even as he shouts ‘Wait!’, he’s still drawn by that beacon of blue. She’s stitched back together again before his eyes, skin melded back together, blood shooting back into her veins, and Ekko doesn’t know how much more of this he can take. It might not be enough to be fast. For once, speed might fail him. Exhaustion blooms through his muscles. Ekko takes a breath and leans against the rickety metal railing, bones aching from the bombs’ brief impacts. He lets the silence linger and something about the way he settles into the metal seems to intrigue her enough to hesitate.
He lets out a tired chuckle, “Always a dance with you”. Jinx crooks her head even more, a furrow appearing between her brows. Ekko takes the moment to look at her. She’s rail thin, clothes in tatters. She’s missing so much of what cemented her as Jinx in his head. Besides the one still cradled too tenderly in her hands, there’s no bombs hanging from a belt wrapped around her hips. Her arms are bare and it only draws his eyes to the bones in her wrists, the sharpness of her collarbones and elbows. Her hair is choppy, brushing above her shoulders, and Ekko is too aware of the absence of her long braids, the ones that always whipped like lightning around her body as she moved. She doesn’t look like Jinx anymore. Doesn’t even look like Powder.
It’s her eyes Ekko is drawn to now, as the pink studies him with a weight he’s never seen. Her makeup smudges around them, the grime on her face cut through by long-dried tears. There’s nothing behind her eyes now. No glint of familiar playfulness, elation, concentration. Not even rage. Just resignation. She looks so tired, Ekko isn’t sure how she’s standing. He wonders how long she’s been awake.
Her exhaustion is contagious and Ekko lowers himself onto the half step, the weight of the Z-drive digging into his shoulder.
He tries to lighten the weight of her gaze. “I think I’m just gonna sit here a minute. See if I can talk an old friend out of blowing us up?” A tired smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. For a moment, he thinks that maybe he’s finally been fast enough. Then the pink leaves him and she toys with the pin around her finger.
The rasp in her voice pulls at his throat. “I’m tired of talking”.
His shout reaches her faster than he can.
Her gaze is almost tender as she holds the metal closer to her chest and falls forward, eyes sliding shut so slowly. He watches her fall in slow motion, mirroring the thumping of his own blood inside his head as he rushes forward, finding the handle and pulling. Even in slow motion, she’s somehow too fast for him.
She’s pulled back abruptly, like he’d yanked her back instead of the Z-drive’s handle. The speed almost seems out of place now. Her form returns to its place on the precipice, only the motion of her choppy hair an indicator of her plunge.
It hits Ekko that maybe he’s been going about this the wrong way. He takes a breath in, slow and deep. The words come to him as though they were waiting to be spoken. In the back of his mind, blue swirls around him like smoke and the ghost of a laugh echoes in his skull.
“You know, I learned from someone—” Pink meets him again and the furrow is back. The Z-drive hums and whirs— “very special, that no matter what happened in the past, it’s never too late to build something new.”
It’s the first time she’s looked at anything but his face or the bomb in her hands. Ekko follows her gaze to his side, to the tiny metal monkeys still rotating slowly in the Z-drive. He watches as they come to a halt, cymbals crashing one last slow time. Ekko looks back up at her, the shift in her eyes barely there. But he sees it.
“Someone worth building it for”.
She meets his gaze, intrigued and sad and tired and—
The bomb falls from her hands. It cracks against the metal fan then disappears into the abyss. Ekko doesn’t listen for it when it reaches wherever it’s going. He lets his grip stray from the Z-drive’s handle and reaches out tentative hands towards her. She sways where she stands, but Ekko knows he can be fast enough to reach her if she tips too far this time. Relief catches in his throat.
She doesn’t say anything when he wraps his hands around her forearms and pulls her toward the center console, away from the edge. She follows numbly and collapses into him. Ekko stills for a moment, unsure of what to do. His hands hover over her back. The last time he was this close to her, he’d been straddling her hips with her blood on his fists. He’d paused then, too. A new stillness hangs in the air.
Ekko slowly wraps his arms around her frame, one hand coming to rest on the nape of her neck and the other pulling her closer by her hip. The moment his hands settle, she releases a breath and sags against him. Her face rests in his chest and he slowly lowers them to the floor, leaning against the center console. She settles between his legs, curled sideways. Ekko breathes in and out, slowly and as steadily as he can muster. He knows she can feel the thump of his own heart against his chest and he does his best to slow it down. Anything to calm her down, ground her. A voice in the back of his head doesn’t let the irony of this moment go, and Ekko curses the world that finally gave him everything he’s dreamed of only at the expense of everything else. What might he have said about holding her like this five years ago?
She stays strangely silent, no sob or sound escaping her lips and it takes Ekko a few minutes to realize that maybe she can’t cry anymore. The dull numbness in her eyes wasn’t the beginning; it was the end of whatever she had gone through. Ekko wraps a hand around the dip of her waist and pulls her a little closer. His fingertips burn where they meet her skin. They trail along the line of her ribs, too easily, and Ekko wonders when the last time she ate was.
He lets her rest against him for what might have been hours or maybe just a couple minutes more before he feels her shift against his chest. He honestly thought she’d fallen asleep with how still she was, how even her breathing had turned. Her head of blue rises a little and she looks up at him. Ekko’s breath hitches in his throat.
She’s so pretty, even in this state, it almost hurts to look at her. Up close, the sharpness of Jinx is more obvious compared to the friend he used to know. Her cheeks are gaunter, her features carved with an edge he doesn’t remember in 11-year-old Powder. However, the pout in her lips is identical. She’s grown into herself, the contrast between her and her child self clear. It’s the sharpness, along with her coloration that sets her apart from the grown up Powder he spent the last week with. She’s pale, skin hued almost grey from the sickly light of the undercity, as though she’d never seen sun before. The color under her eyes not darkened already by running black makeup is tinged purple. Her hair hangs in her face, but even with its choppiness, as though done without thought, he still finds himself mesmerized by its color. He reaches a hand up and brushes it back unconsciously.
The pink in her eyes no longer glints with the faint trace of shimmer that he knows must flow through her blood. Only the exhaustion pushes through. He swallows, unsure of what he could possibly say to take that emptiness away. But he doesn’t have to say anything. She speaks first.
Her voice is cracking and quiet and so defeated that Ekko feels a vice clamp around his chest.
“I… don’t know what to do.” She mumbles the admission, eyes painted downward.
He brings his hand to rest against her neck, fingers trailing along the bottom of her jaw. His voice is quiet, even in the cavernous lair. “That’s okay. We can figure all that out later.” Ekko doesn’t say that he also doesn’t know what to do.
She gives him a small nod, but pulls away from his embrace. He resists the urge to pull her back and his skin grows cold again. She sits up, shoulders slumped and slowly raises her hands up, studying them. Grime and dirt cake her skin, digging under her chipped blue and pink nails. Ekko notices that her cuticles are torn and bloody, self-inflicted. He doesn’t know what happened before he found her, but she’s filthy. She rubs at some of the dirt on her knuckles aggressively, as though trying to smear it off. Her face falls when it doesn’t do anything. She slumps into herself again.
A thought crosses Ekko’s mind and he realizes there is something he can help her with. He scans the cavern around them. The fan blades they sit on jut out into the walls, but she’s carved her space out, just like Powder had in that alternate universe. Though it’s clear Jinx lives here, maybe has for a long time, in this dark echoing space, where Powder only ever worked. He spots an old claw foot bathtub down the end of one of the fan blades. Ekko looks back at Jinx, who watches him with a weary heaviness on her eyelids. He hesitates, unsure of how she’ll react to his next words.
“Would it help to… clean up a bit?” He braces for her bite.
Instead, a line knits between her eyebrows and she frowns, “Like, put stuff away?” She looks around the place, as though trying to find what they might clean up. The place is pretty tidy, all things considered. Ekko laughs a little, just an exhale.
“I meant, maybe it would help if you bathed. Changed your clothes.”
The line smooths out and she thinks about it. After a moment, she lowers her eyes and nods slowly. Ekko perks up. He rises and offers her a hand. He’s surprised when she takes it. She places nearly all her weight on him and he’s once again reminded that he doesn’t know the last time she slept.
The tub is stained blue and when Jinx levels with it, she stills. Ekko doesn’t understand why, but it’s not the time to ask. He wonders, briefly, if the tub even works, but then he notices mismatched pipes snaking up the wall. He looks at Jinx next to him in awe. She’s still staring at the tub, focus far away.
When she doesn’t move to run the water, Ekko extracts himself from her grip and kneels by the taps. He turns one and water rushes out, rust red and a little smelly. Jinx stands near him staring at the water and she sways again. Her eyes are half closed and she looks almost like a sleepwalker. After a minute, the water clears and Ekko breathes out a sigh of relief. He feels it. It’s getting warmer. He’s both shocked that she managed to get running, hot water down into this place and also completely unsurprised. Warmth blooms in his chest. Genius and madness. Even if it does sound like the water drains into the abyss haphazardly.
He lets the water run until it’s hot, then plugs the drain. He finds a bar of soap sitting on an overturned box next to the tub. He lathers it up in the hot stream of water, sending bubbles into the bath. The hot water doesn’t last very long, however, and he turns it off before it can cool the tub down. The tub only sits about half filled, but Jinx is small enough that he thinks it’ll work. Ekko turns back to Jinx, who hasn’t moved. Worry knits it way back into his chest.
He stares at her and she glances up at him, a pout on her lips. He asks, “Do you need anything else? Do you have any other clothes to change into?”
There’s a shift in her eyes at the question and relief overtakes him. She gives him a small glare, just the tiniest glint of playfulness in her eyes.
“What do you think, Boy Savior?”
He smiles back at her. “Okay, so where can I find them?” She rolls her eyes at the coddling, but gestures with her head towards the neon tent erected on the other fan blade. Her bangs shift with the motion, catching the low string lighting.
“I’ll be back.”
He’s off before she says anything else. An orange patched-up couch sits inside the tent, and he’s reminded inexplicably of the worn old couches he used to sit on with Powder in the basement of The Last Drop. They used to make forts and hide until Milo came along and dismantled them. Ekko smiles at the first memory with her that hasn’t hurt in a while. Then it hits him that that’s probably the very couch. Behind the couch is a mat covered in a messy pile of old pillows and blankets, like a bird’s nest. A crow, maybe. It’s so Jinx he almost laughs. It dies in his throat when a life-size dummy sitting on the couch catches his eye. It’s familiar and his last meal churns in his stomach. He knows who that is. Was. He ignores it because too much has already happened today. He finds an old trunk and pulls it open. Stray pieces of clothing are strewn along the bottom, but he finds an old top and bottoms that don’t have as many stains, though they still smell a little like gunpowder. There’s a box of undergarments as well and Ekko’s face heats up in the coolness of the cavern as he grabs at the first thing he can reach.
It’s not until he’s almost reached the tub again that he registers that Jinx is already sinking into the water, her clothes carelessly piled on the floor. She’s nude and he freezes, his eyes following the slope of her shoulders, the curve of her spine, the powder blue patterns that trail down her—
Ekko clamps a hand over his eyes. “Jinx! I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…” he sputters his words out as his face heats up even more.
A snort rings out in the cavern and her voice reaches him.
“Geez, what are you, twelve?”
The lilt in her voice prickles at his skin, and he rolls his eyes, still covered, at the teasing. Some things never change.
He ignores the jab and asks, “You decent now?” He uses what little vision he has of the ground to approach her, stopping when a claw of the tub comes into view. He peeks out from between his fingers. She’s submerged in the water now, the soap hovering along the surface of the water keeping her privacy.
“You don’t have to cover your eyes, you know. I don’t care.”
The playfulness in her voice is gone, and as he lowers his hand, she’s resting her head on her knees, pulled against her chest. Ekko sets the clothes down on the ground near the box, ignoring the ridges of her spine as she shifts. Her head tilts sideways, cheek resting on her knee, and looks up at him through strands of blue. Something catches in his throat because she looks so young like that. So small. He forgets that the Loose Cannon of the undercity, Silco’s attack dog is still a year younger than him. A kid like him.
She mumbles against her wet skin, “Can you hand me that?” Her eyes drift upwards towards the taps, to an old coat stand that has two worn towels hanging on it. He assumes she means the hand rag.
She takes it and drags it into the water with her, blue steam spiraling up in the lighting. Making sure his eyes stay on her face, that they don’t skirt downwards towards the water that’s too low to hide her fully if she unwinds, Ekko asks, “You need anything else before I go?”
Her head shoots up, eyes wide. “Where are you going?” There’s a desperation laced into her words. He frowns and tilts his head in confusion.
“What do you mean?”
Her lips part and he’s suddenly aware of a cloud of fear behind her exhaustion.
“You’re leaving?” Panic overtakes her voice and it rises in the quiet.
Ekkos brows knit together. “I didn’t think you’d want me here when you’re bathing.” He tilts his head in the direction of the tent. “I was just gonna go sit over there and wait for you.”
The tightness behind her eyes loosens and she lets out a breathy, “Oh.” Her chin slumps back on her knees and she reaches out a bare arm, dragging a finger in swirling patterns through the water. The lithe muscles in her arms flex with the motion. Her eyes stay fixed on the water and Ekko almost misses her next words they’re so quiet.
“Stay here with me?”
She’s pointedly not looking at him. The motion of her hand is too casual. His heart stops, he’s sure, for just a second. Then it jumpstarts again, pounding loudly in his stomach. He can honestly say this wasn’t a situation he’d ever find himself in and there’s a buzzing in his head. But she’s still sitting there in the water slumped into herself with defeated eyes, as though she’s sure the answer will be no.
“Of course… if that’s what you want,” he answers softly.
Ekko pulls the overturned box to the end of the tub and sits down with a heavy sigh. He turns enough to give her privacy, guilt running through him at the jolt of excitement in his veins. He keeps the blue in his periphery. He’s nervous about letting her out of his sight for too long. She hums lightly as she washes her hair, a tune he feels like he should recognize. Ekko studies his hands, studies the graffitied neon doodles and words that dance along the fan blade, all while a gentle dripping of water fills the cavern as she rinses soap away. She moves to her face, scrubbing at the smudged makeup running down her cheeks, under her eyes. She moves languidly, as though frozen and only just now thawing out.
Ekko forces the sloshing of water against the tub to the background as he waits, thoughts racing along. He can’t believe not an hour ago he watched her try to kill herself over and over and now she’s asking him to stay while she takes a bath. Then he remembers that a few hours even earlier, he’d danced with a version of her like something out of a story. Held her close as they swayed and twirled. Ekko shuts his eyes tight, trying to remember the softness of her hands in his, the sweetness of her scent, but the soap Jinx uses now is quickly overtaking the memory. That reality already seems more dream than reality, slipping further and further into myth. His mind returns to Jinx and a sudden need to look at her takes over his racing thoughts, an irrational fear that he’ll look away for a second and she’ll disappear forever.
His eyes land on the nape of her neck, where dark blue plasters against her pale skin, the contrast so alluring he can’t help but stare for a moment. She drags the rag along her right arm and he’s drawn to the pale blue clouds inked along her skin. They’re interrupted by patches of fresh skin, scar tissue stretched and healed over. He notices a patch just below her shoulder and it reminds him of a splotch of paint. Ekko swallows when he remembers how she got those marks. He’d dislocated his bone from that same blast, but his injuries didn’t have the same external reminders like hers. The tattoos trail down her shoulder, along her back and into the murky water, where they disappear from his sight. He knows those same colors wrap along her chest, her ribcage and dip below her waistband, too visible with her free way of dressing. His mouth dries at the sudden aching curiosity to see just how far they reach.
Then she adjusts and her shoulder blades flex and he’s reminded where he is. That she’s trusting him to stay with her in this state and guilt floods over him. He shoves his face into his hands and releases a muffled sigh.
Her humming pauses, then she says, “You’re too quiet back there. Penny for your thoughts?” She drags the rag along her other arm.
He watches the back of her head and swallows around the truth. As subdued as she is at the moment, she’s still Jinx and Jinx likes to shoot at problems.
“I was… wondering about your tattoos, actually.” It’s the truth, or close enough at least.
He follows the clouds again, tracing them with his eyes. She turns her head, blue smoothed back and her face on full view now. Without her makeup, her exhaustion hangs heavy beneath her eyes, unbidden. Her dark lips roll into a pout and she looks up at him with narrowed eyes. His heart jumps again.
“What about my tattoos?” Her eyebrows knit further as though suspicious, but something in the tilt of her lips makes Ekko think she already knows the direction his thoughts had slipped.
He panics, just a little. But she hasn’t shot yet.
“When’d you get them?” He’d never really given it much thought, but they had always seemed to be part of Jinx, another level of separation from Powder. One day she’d appeared with them, shot at him as he burned a barrel of shimmer, and they’d been cemented as something she’d always had. She’d been young, probably younger than appropriate for the way the ink curls around her skin. For where the ink spreads. He tries to imagine how Silco might have responded, but he comes up blank. Silco, even now, seems more myth than man. But then again, Jinx had always seemed to do her own thing, even under the thumb of Silco.
Her eyebrows raise at the question, and she twists around to lean against the back of the tub to face him. He pointedly ignores the light swell of her chest, visible for a second until her knees are pulled back up and she wraps her arms around them. She leans her head against the rim, blue spilling over the side and stares at something in the dark, eyes roving back and forth lazily. Ekko forces his gaze to her lips as they move, ignoring the way her chest presses against her skin.
“I got ‘em when I was fifteen. Don’t really remember why. I think I was having a bad day.” She lets out a wry chuckle. “Guess that doesn’t mean much.”
Ekko studies the line of her jaw. There’s a strand of hair plastered to the skin there. She swallows, her throat bobbing. The heat on his skin rises.
“I blanked a little during it, but I don't remember it hurting a lot. I think the guy was freaked out”— Ekko thinks again about the blue that drifts across her breast, presumably down her hip and he frowns. Fifteen.
“I mean—“ she giggles unexpectedly, a fond smile spilling from her lips, “—he turned, like, white when I told him what I wanted. I think he thought I was gonna shoot him when he was done. Which is a little stupid.” She snorts. “What if I wanted more?”
Ekko can sympathize with the guy’s concerns. He shifts on the box and toys with the knee of his pants.
“He begged me not to tell Silco who did it. It was kind of funny how serious he was, but Silco never really gave me shit for it.” Her voice grows smaller. “I liked that about him. He always took me seriously. At least with shit like that. He didn’t treat me like I was some dumb, useless kid, like Vi or Vander or Mylo or any of the others.” A brightness leaves her eyes, going as fast as it came. “It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s gone and they’re gone and she’s gone and I’m here.”
Ekko pushes his less than friendly feelings for Silco down. Without thinking, he reaches out a hand, hovering so close to her arm, he can feel the heat from the water rising from her skin. But he doesn’t touch. His skin burns as though he has. He looks away, shoving the hatred he has for what Silco turned Powder into away before it shows on his face. She doesn’t need that right now
He startles at a hand on his wrist, eyes flashing up. Her nails, the paint chipped and dull, brush against his skin. She’s looking at him curiously and he stills under her pink stare.
“You never made me feel like that either.” Her arm rises out of the water and her chest is no longer fully covered. He refuses to let his eyes wander downward though, not when she’s looking at him so softy. Soft is a word he never imagined he’d use for her. Soft is supposed to be Powder, in his mind. Soft is his best friend and their couch forts. Soft is the glint in Powder’s eyes as they fix an old toy. But soft is all Jinx’s expression is now.
Her voice is raspy when she continues, “I always felt so cool and grown up when I was with you. I liked that you’d come to me with your projects for help. Or when we’d practice the moves Vi taught us.” Now that her words come easier, it’s like she can’t stop them from flowing out of her. She traces circles on his wrist bone, eyes fixated on the motion.
He watches her face, mesmerized by the way her eyes shine in the low light, how a strand of hair has escaped and fallen back into her eyes. Her mouth turns upwards and he follows the line of her lips as they move. The pressure on his wrist is intoxicating and he’s struck by the desire to pull her against him. She smells nice, like the soap she used, and it’s just a little floral. Not enough to mask the scent of gunpowder that still lingers on her skin, but it works somehow.
It hits him too suddenly and his heart slams in the same rhythm it did when the other Powder leaned in, crowded against him. He’s in dangerous territory and his heart tugs in its place within his chest and he feels like he’s twelve again watching blue shine like a beacon in front of him and—
“Hey, Space Boy? Earth to Ekko?” He’s slammed back down and finds Jinx staring at him expectantly. The nickname juts out at him. Powder’s words echo identically in his head.
“What?”
She smiles like he’s the crazy one. “Geez, you were about a million miles away.” She pats him on the wrist. “I need to get out. Can you grab my towel?”
And just like that, Ekko is pulled back into that pitch black cavern sitting on an old box on a fan blade. He nods stupidly and turns his back before she rises out of the water, which is murky with grime and blood and god knows what else. Droplets of water echo through the place as they hit the metal ground, but he refuses to turn even as she says, mockingly behind him, “Wow, who knew the Boy Savior would have such a gentlemanly side. This what they’re teaching you down at Firelight school? Where was this when you were bashing my face in?”
Guilt shoots through him, but her voice doesn’t darken. He listens to her dry off, tug on clothing, but doesn’t turn until she says, “I’m decent now, Saint Boy.”
She’s in the clothes he brought her, hair hanging around her chin and face fresh. It does nothing to hide the bags beneath her eyes, but that’s not his biggest worry anymore. She looks more relaxed, enough that Ekko isn’t scared she’ll blow herself up if she’s left alone again. Despite her words, there’s a peculiar expression on her face.
He doesn’t expect her next question.
“Ekko, where’ve you been?” He stills at his name, but looks at her. She’s biting at the inside of her cheek and it’s the first time she’s looked anything close to worried since he dragged her away from the edge. The tired in her voice is back.
The words are hard to force out. “What do you mean?” He can’t look at her because something in his mind is convinced she’ll see that dreamlike perfect (almost) world reflected back in his eyes.
“I haven’t seen you since…” the bridge, “… and I heard you’ve been missing for months. No one’s seen you in months. I thought I’d…”.
She thought she’d killed him. Just like the others. He watches her flinch as though someone spoke into her ear. She bats at the air to her right like someone swatting a fly and drifts towards her desk. He follows without thinking. She toys with a wrench, then asks, “Why does that machine have my monkeys in it?”
He’d nearly forgotten about the Z-drive. It sits abandoned on the console.
His hand twitches a little when she picks it up, but she just studies it.
“Would you believe me if I said you helped make it?” He figures the truth might be easier, somehow. She glances up at him, frowning. Then, without warning, she pulls the handle and drags the chain upward.
“—Wait!”
His hand twitches a little as she holds the Z-drive, studying it intently, her frown deepening.
“Would you believe me if I said you helped make it?” She looks up at him suddenly, eyes darting between the Z-drive and him. They land on the Z-drive and she yanks the handle.
“—Wait!”
His hand twitches as she holds the Z-drive, but her eyes are wide, glinting in the light. She looks so much like Powder, with her excited eyes and short choppy hair, he has to shake his head to push the thought away. She’s acting odd.
“Would you believe me—”
“—if you said I helped make it?” She finishes his words before they leave his mouth, her own lilting and a little teasing. A manic smile draws across her face.
He frowns, then zeros in on the hand still resting on the Z-drive’s handle. His eyes narrow.
“Did you…?”
“I can’t believe you made a time loop.” Her chest heaves with the discovery, a familiar wild look in her eye. She stares down at the spinning monkeys in amazement, but then her expression slowly falls. She studies him for a moment and he notices how she lingers on the ruined paint smudged along his face, the dried line of blood from his eyebrow and the cut on his lip. She takes a step forward as her eyes dart to the edge of the fan down into the darkness of the cavern below. The smile fades completely. She’s always been too smart for her own good. He watches her swallow.
Her voice cracks. “How many times…?”
Ekko flinches, but he doesn’t let his stare falter.
“Five.”
He lets the words sink in for a few seconds. Her expression is hard to read, but he thinks she deserves to know.
Then she laughs. It’s cynical and humorless, but it’s a laugh. She sets the Z-drive back down on the console and leans against the desk.
She gives him a sideways look. “Finally lived up to the name I guess.”
“Huh?” Ekko’s not sure how to respond. He wasn’t sure what her reaction would be to finding out she’d killed herself five times, but this wasn’t it.
“The Boy Savior succeeds at last.”
Her words hit like the sting of her slap all those years ago. But they don’t hurt as much as they did back then. He doesn’t smile, not exactly.
“I’d have done it as many times as I needed, if that means anything.”
Jinx frowns at him, but it’s not as heavy as it could be. “Why would you do something like that for me? I’m a lost cause, remember?”
Ekko takes a step towards her. She doesn’t move. Something claws at his chest, as though desperate to get out. “I was wrong. You were never a lost cause. I just…” He licks his lips. The taste of his final moments in that dream lingers. “…It was just easier to think that.” His knuckles burn with a phantom ache, and he thinks about all those chances he’d had to make that fatal blow. He’d always found an excuse not to.
He steps in again, eyes roaming over her face, searching. “It wasn’t until recently that I realized it. I was… wrong.” The truth sits heavy on his tongue. He’s not sure if he should tell her yet. There’s a wideness in how she’s looking at him. The pink of her eyes had shocked him at first, but he knew there could’ve been no natural way to recover from that explosion. Shimmer pink. He pushes that away, but it’s hard because the watercolor blue of Powder dances across his memory again.
“That’s who you were talking about, right? Before?”
He falters. “Before?”
Jinx leans forward, her gaze intense and focused. She’s so close he can smell the clean scent of the soap still lingering on her skin, in the dampness of her hair. He fights the urge to pull her back against him. She clarifies, still with that strange intensity, “When you were trying to stop me from blowing us to smithereens. You said someone special.” She leans away and hoists herself up to sit on the desk. A piece of dark blue falls in her eyes, a droplet of water falls onto her cheek and runs its course. “You meet someone? Is that where the Boy Savior’s been? Convinced him we all have good in us or something sappy like that?”
Ekko’s not sure where the conversation is going, feels like it’s slipping away from him. She’s taken the wheel, but he’s still going to try to keep a hand on it too. “…Kind of. But it’s not… like that exactly.”
She raises an eyebrow. “So you did meet someone. What’s that got to do with me? Or that time loop.”
If she had been anyone else, Ekko’s not sure what he’d do. The truth seems so far-fetched, he might as well say he’d died and come back, met Janna herself. But then again, this is Jinx. Powder. She’d already done that, and the guarded way she looks at him, her eyes wide and wary, forces the truth out before he can think anymore.
“It was you.”
“Me?”
“I… messed with the Arcane. It sent me somewhere. Like here, but… different. You were there. You helped me get back. Well, a version of you did.”
There, the truth. Kind of.
There’s a long silence, broken only by the slow drip drip drip of the remnants of the tub draining into the abyss. He watches her mull his words over, a small furrow forming between her brows. He has to look away. Maybe he should have eased into it a little more. Told her about Heimerdinger, then the wild rune, then the alternate insane reality where he had basically everything he’d ever wanted. He starts to panic. What if she thinks he’s lying? There’s still hundreds of things that could be a weapon in her capable hands on the workbench she leans against.
“And they say I’m crazy.”
But the tease doesn’t match her expression. When he looks up, she’s thoughtful, staring at the Z-drive sitting innocently on the desk.
“Those are my monkeys.”
The statement echoes through the cavern and Ekko shivers. A small rising hope in him is starting to think she might believe him. She looks back at him, and it’s with that same dissecting expression, as though she’s studying blueprints or a fascinating piece of invention. She jumps down from the workbench and stalks towards him, eerily similar to the same way she always moved during the Firelight raids. Too comfortable, too at ease in her place on the food chain. But the fierceness is absent from her muscles. She reminds him of a stray cat he’d once come across. He’d held out a piece of his meager rations and it had approached him the same way: curious, wary, and hungry. Like the cat, he simply lets her approach.
She gets within two feet of him before she stops, looking up at him with intense contemplation. When they’d been kids, the inch or two of height she had on him had been a point of triumph for Powder, something to brag about. That wasn’t the case anymore. He’d grown, at some point and despite everything, and now had two or three inches on her. The little Ekko in his head cheers and he has to hold back a tiny smile.
She croaks, “How?” It reverberates in the cavern and through his bones.
“I’ll tell you, but…” His eyes leave her face and take in the cool cavern she lives in. A chill runs up his spine at the thought of her living here, in this eternal dark. With only freaky makeshift puppets and neon scribbles for company. He makes a quick decision.
“…but I’d like you to come with me first. There’s a place I want you to see.” Want. Need. It’s all the same. He would have thought he’d been hit in the head too hard six months ago, but too much has changed for that to bother him anymore.
“Making me wait now?” She clicks her tongue and takes a step back. “Fuckin’ tease.” She doesn’t look as disappointed as her words sound.
Ekko laughs breathlessly. “I promise I’ll tell you. Is there anything you’d like to bring with?”
She scans the dark neon cavern lazily. It seems there’s nothing because she just shrugs and heads towards the door. He stumbles at her sudden readiness and pulls the Z-drive onto his shoulder. They reach the exit and she turns to look at the giant coat he’s holding out to her. She frowns up at him.
“I don’t know if it’s light out and last time I checked, you’re still being hunted by every blue belly Piltover can spare.” She shrugs again, but accepts the coat. She pulls it over her shoulders and it comes down to her knees, but she pulls the hood up anyways. Ekko reaches for the owl mask on his belt and follows her through the rusted door.