Chapter Text
Ekko’s got her in a blindfold now, and no doubt about it, Jinx likes it. Not in a kinky way, though that is something she’d like to try now that she thinks about it; might stop the flashbacks, and already has the same benefit as turning off the lights. Which is that, though hallucinations are scarier in the dark, removing every other visual cues takes power away from some of them: no matter how scary, or disturbing, or upsetting they are, she can tell them to fuck off, strong in the knowledge that they aren’t—and can’t pass as —real.
Right now though, the appeal of being blindfolded is how much the vulnerability of it cuts straight through the fog that likes to linger around her, how it readies her for anything coming their way. Though Ekko’s hand leading her forward is sure and warm and steady, it can’t shield Jinx from the fizzy taste of danger on her skin, the thrill of unexpected possibilities and chaos loosening her joints.
They’re moving through underground metal tunnels; she can tell from the scent, the echo of their steps, the weight of the air. The oxygen here is purer than she would have expected round these parts of Zaun; they must have been moving ever so subtly up in the fissures the whole time, though the floor doesn’t feel sloped, and there haven’t been that many stairs.
They stop. Ekko maneuvers some kind of mechanism in front of them, and with a whistled pshhh , what she guesses is a gate opens. She gets a whiff of disconcertingly even cleaner air; light shines through the blindfold and her closed eyelids, brighter than she would have guessed was available at this level.
“There’s a step,” Ekko says, and she reaches out with her left hand to find the frame of the gate, the other secured in his.
There’s noise outside, and she can tell it is outside; something about the difference in the air pressure, the way noise travels, the sudden unfamiliar warmth on her skin, the lack of humidity compared to the tunnels. Voices; a lot of voices. Laughter. Hoverboards.
Kids.
Jinx stiffens, but Ekko doesn't notice, it seems; he’s leading her outside the tunnel, into whatever compound this is. It smells like greenery and like dirt, like clean , earthy dirt; kinda like some parts of topside, though she knows they haven’t travelled that far. The ground under the soles of her boots gives way a little, confirming she’s walking on soil rather than stone or more metal. Something whooshes past her and she nearly jumps out of her skin, free hand skipping to her holster—empty. Ekko made sure she left all her weapons behind.
Firelight . She’s fought enough of them that she knows this is one of those hoverboarding punks, and duh, of course it is, this is their hideout Ekko’s brought her to… Yeah, but none of this is making her feel any safer, actually. He might have decided they're not enemies anymore, but that says nothing about the rest of them.
Jinx tears off the blindfold and winces at the bright sunlight for a second, closing the small distance between herself and Ekko with fists raised, hoping he can defend them both if needed while her eyes accommodate. She can feel the heat radiating off his skin, the tightness of his muscles underneath, but it's a different tension than hers; he's not preparing to fight.
She blinks rapidly so the mess of golden green light above them resolves into leaves, thousands of them, through which sun rays are scattering into this big smokeless… compound? Clearing?
A gigantic tree looms over them, its twisting trunk and branches hosting a number of cabins; people are hoverboarding up and down around it, and the only screams she hears are ones of delight. There are kids everywhere , in between the massive roots, on the boards, running around them in bands. She bites her lip hard enough that it bleeds into her mouth.
Kids weren’t mentioned when she agreed to come here.
As her gaze moves sharply down the trunk, it falls onto a tall vastaya, his large bat ears pointed straight at them. She recognises him in a flash. He was in Stillwater; one of the prisoners she’d let out who’d… touched her shoulders as they walked out, free. Freaks .
Most of their hair—though not his—was blue then, like hers; some from birth, others, ridiculously, dyed. As a symbol of… of what, exactly? Some kind of chickenshit rebellion.
Jinxers , Sevika had called them. Ridiculous.
“Their hair dyed blue,” the ghost of Mylo mocks, suddenly loud in her ear, “like you dyed Isha’s.”
She winces away from his looming presence over her shoulder— ignore, ignore —forcing her thoughts back to Stillwater. All of them, imprisoned because they decided to follow her example. Blowing shit up, putting up middle fingers in the face of topside. Cheap copycats.
But they’d seen her it seemed, in that prison. Really seen her—whatever that meant. There hadn’t been a big clamour when she’d announced herself and let them out of their cells, no wild adulation. Just silence, soft smiles, and intent eyes on her. Their hands pressed on her shoulders, one after the other, as they slowly walked past her, heading out. Like… like recognition. Like gratefulness. Like respect .
Shows what they knew. Respect, her ass . As much as she wanted to believe it afterwards, busting some randos out of prison once didn't make her a hero.
Try as she might, she couldn't be one when it really counted.
An orange scribble of Isha’s form flashes between them, but she blinks it away.
The vastaya Jinxer moving towards them is probably not a danger, though Ekko seems to believe otherwise, stepping in between the two like the hero he is, hands raised to prevent a fight neither of them wants to start.
“Scar, wait!”
Both she and the vastaya—Scar, apparently—freeze, their eyes still locked over Ekko’s shoulder.
“The big, fat hero,” Scar greets her in a low baritone.
She blinks, a bitter smile tugging at her lips.
“Firelight. Never thought I’d see one of you join my cult.”
Ekko looks thrillingly confused at the exchange.
“Yeah, well…” the vastaya shrugs. “When you started blowing up Piltover and Stillwater, it was hard not to follow. Power vacuum and all.”
Ekko looks from one to the other, uncomprehending, and she turns the bitter smile into a smirk.
“Surprise, boy saviour. Meet your girl counterpart!”
The vastaya’s pointed gaze moves from her face to Ekko’s without appreciating the joke.
“Where you been, boy? It’s been weeks . We thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“Long story,” Ekko says. “But looks like the two of you have one just as long to tell…”
She sticks to Ekko’s side, trying to focus on his words and the conversation, but the men’s voices fade in the background as the chattering and laughing of children all around them gets louder. Isha’s face flashes over some of the smaller kids’ heads and she stumbles back a step.
“Come,” a voice says from far away.
Ekko's. Boy saviouring as usual. A tugging on her arm; her eyes focus on his hand pulling hers. Her fingers are covered with dye, suddenly. Blue dye. Bile gathers in her throat.
“Scar, I’m sorry—I’ll come back and tell you everything later. I’m fine—I promise.”
“You look it,” the other says. He sounds reproachful.
Ekko has no snappy comeback; she feels like she could come up with one if time weren’t so damn fuzzy. One hand floats down to her hips to check her pockets and holster as she stumbles after him; this feels bad, and nothing makes the bad go away like firing at it.
Empty pockets and holster; the circle of Ekko’s hand around her wrist a warm manacle. He moves her away from the tree and its torrent of children, more and more everywhere she looks, pulling Jinx through the insubstantial crowd. The children burst into smaller versions of themselves, eyes golden and hair brown-blue. Brown then blue. Brown under the blue.
He takes her back into the tunnels, and reality staggers into her bodily when the gate closes behind them, cutting off the noise. Some of it, anyway.
Cutting her off from the children.
Her cheeks are cold; she tries to touch them and her fingers miss a few times, before succeeding. A thin film of liquid.
“—okay?”
She looks back up in front of her. Ekko’s hands on Isha’s shoulders. A shake of her head—hands on the backrest of a chair.
“—wanna sit?”
She turns around and sits. Misses the chair and drops to the floor; the jolt of pain in her butt clears the haze a little more. She blows air through her mouth, slowly; it hitches only a few times before she can do it properly. Searches her pockets and holster again. Empty.
“Jinx.”
Ekko’s on one knee down in front of her, holding her hands, face intent and worried.
“Are you here?”
“I do,” she jokes.
Good one. He doesn’t seem reassured.
“Jinx,” he repeats. “Can you hear me?”
I’m not deaf , she wants to say, but Isha flashes behind him, one little chubby hand on his shoulder, the other shooting directly at her. POOW, Isha’s lips say, silently. Jinx's tear ducts sting with acid.
“POOW,” she echoes, and blinks. A fat tear traces a line of fire down her cheek, then another. Isha’s form wavers then vanishes in a cloud of pink, and the searing of the delicate skin under Jinx's eyes slaps her right back into the present moment. She wipes the burn onto the back of her hand, then when that hurts, against the side of her trousers.
Through the veil of Shimmer, Ekko’s face is clear and sharp now, no blurring around his edges. No sounds from outside anymore; not since the gate closed, she thinks. Must have imagined the rest.
“Jinx,” he repeats, and she wonders if she’s missed the first few times he said her name. He’s saying it like she did.
“Ekko,” she says in the same tone. “Echo chamber much?”
His shoulders sag with relief.
“You scared me,” he breathes, dropping to the floor next to her.
“I’m unarmed.”
He lets out a chuckle.
“Not reassuring enough, somehow.”
“Last time he saw you lose your shit like that,” Mylo's disembodied voice hisses in her ear, “you shot his friend with the pink hair. And exploded some more of his green flying roaches, too.”
The ghost’s breath is icy against her skin and she raises a shoulder as a shield, but a horrible shudder goes through her anyway.
“What are we doing here?” she asks, standing up abruptly. She almost doesn’t lose her balance. “You’re taking me to your lair to parade me around the few Firelights I didn’t kill?”
“ No! ” Ekko protests, and her palms itch for the butt of a gun, a grenade, something to explode the situation away.
“For me to finish them off?”
“Of course not!”
She paces around the room, hands pulling at the roots of her chopped hair for lack of something more explosive to grab onto, the tugging on her scalp disrupting the unintelligible, accusing whispers around her. Coming here was a stupid idea. Wasn’t it? She has to decide to leave now, to walk out—of the room, back into the tunnels. Not outside; far from outside.
“All those kids,” she says, and her mouth forms weirdly around the words, like she’s repressing a grimace. Mylo says the next words alongside her. “ All up in bits .”
“Jinx!” Ekko’s voice is reproachful and his eyebrows are pinned together, the way she’s gotten used to seeing them over the years since the two of them found themselves on opposite sides. Before last night. “You’re not going to blow up anyone here.”
“You don't know that ,” she says, unable to push the panic away. “It doesn't matter if I pull the pin or not–everyone ends up dead! You didn’t tell me about the fucking kids Ekko—I'm gonna fucking curse them all…”
But he sighs and stands up, and she has to stop in her tracks because he's in her path—again, always in her way—and softly pulling her hands out of her hair.
“I can’t be here,” she insists, but he just shakes his head and doesn’t reply.
Her fingers snag in her hair, so Ekko uncurls them one by one, smoothing them slowly between his own, massaging her hands until they stop looking like claws, until her shoulders droop and the pink slowly vanishes.
He doesn’t try to say anything else, and Mylo retreats in the shadows, silenced. Isha had the same effect when she started spiraling, Jinx remembers painfully; the little girl’s quiet stilled her voices.
Her eyelids press more tears out of her eyes, and those ones don’t sting as much. She lets her forehead fall to Ekko’s shoulder and he puts his arms around her. Soft. Solid. Warm.
Real.
Isha , her mind insists as more tears spill out. Isha. It feels like a cry, like anguish. Isha!
Every time she thinks she’s got it under control, the brutality of the loss punches her in the gut again, the fucking impossibility of Isha’s absence crushes her ribcage. Her last moments are carved forever into Jinx’s eyeballs, ready to jump out at her from every corner of the world. Jinx’s own last scream for the little girl keeps bouncing inside her head. ISHA! NO, ISHA!
Too little, too late. Too far from her girl to save her. Too slow to react. Too restrained by her sister’s arms.
She wants to say this, explain herself to Ekko, but words are so insignificant in the face of the massive hole ripped into her chest, into the world. All she can do is let him hold her through the jolts of agony, wet face pressed into his warm neck, body propped up only by the solidness of his own and the strength in the circle of his arms.
“ Isha ,” is the only word she can squeeze out.
Ekko holds her tighter.
“Isha,” he repeats, and it sounds like a confirmation; like, really, this one word was enough for him to understand it all.
Isha .