Chapter Text
Jinx kissed Vander on his forehead as they fell for what felt like an eternity. And suddenly, Jinx was a child again sitting on her bed and waiting for a kiss goodnight from her dad at the end of a long day of causing mischief. She remembered how warm his lips were on her forehead and smiled solemnly into Vander's eyes, she knew that she would never feel that tender love again.
Clink
Jinx withdrew the pin from her homemade bomb and pressed the explosive against her fathers chest, crying softly. For a split second she felt the arms around her loosen, she heard the dying wish of her already dead dad:
“Live”
She felt it in the beat of his heart and the fur on his face, she saw it in the widening of his empty pearlescent eyes … and she jumped.
She jumped to live, but living without love was no kind of living at all.
She jumped to survive.
She sprung from his arms just before the explosion hit. Blue and pink electric powder propelled her into the air duct on the wall of the hexgate tower. The surge from her bomb was hot like war, but just enough to get her in there.
Her legs hung out the side and her feet scrambled for purchase. The air duct was huge, but equally as unstable with hardly anything to use as leverage. Beneath all the debris that had accumulated there was smooth slippery titanium - nothing she could use for grip. Eventually her shoes found a sliver of friction on the outside wall, which she then used to finally slide onto the cool hard metal. It took her minutes that felt like hours to get fully into the air duct using the crumb of willpower she had left.
She collapsed.
Her exhaustion took hold and she felt as though she was melting into the tower, maybe it would be easier if she did, maybe she wouldn’t have to fight anymore. But she couldn’t rest yet, not when she felt a purpose calling her. It’s why she kept going for so long - she was supposed to be someone or do something. She had to have a purpose or what was the fucking point.
She couldn’t be crying - her breathing was slow and her body didn’t shake, she wasn’t plagued by happy memories - the tears fell anyway. She felt empty - but not like before, no, like a baby bird who doesn't yet know it needs to learn how to fly, unburdened and winged. Like an angel that does not yet know of Lucifer's fate and hasn’t learned to fear God. Her tears were warm, but the paths they left were cold and when they dried they felt like cracks in her skin. Cracks in her beating heart.
She was alive. She had to keep going or the past would catch up to her, and she was too physically wounded to pay attention to her bleeding heart.
“One step at a time.” Some chalky purple vision whispered in her mind. The voice went as quickly as it came. She ignored it.
Jinx huffed out a breath, readied herself, and with clumsy movements finagled herself to a standing position. Hunched, but standing. She was exhausted already, her hand against the wall to keep her steady, her eyes trying to close.
Still, she pressed onwards. Her legs felt like weights, her head like clouds and she found it difficult to keep the two working together, like a chicken without a head and two left feet. What did that even mean? Where was she even going? Home probably, she should go home… but where was home?
Isha was her home once.
It didn’t really matter because her legs were moving anyway, they took her out of the air ducts and through the bruised city of Piltover, still dusty with the remnants of war. Somehow it was beautiful, littered with white scars that crawled up the sides of buildings and over the tired dead bodies. The white twinkled in the dusky sunlight. Jinx paused for a moment - how could something so horrible look so beautiful.
She meant only to stand in awe for a second but she caught sight of a boy whose orange hair glowed like marmalade in the sunset. He looked up and straight at Jinx like an owl locked onto its prey. He couldn’t have been older than 14, sitting, holding who was probably his mother in his arms. And as he stroked a bloody thumb over and over again on his mother's forehead, spreading blood there like jam on toast, he didn't cry. He didn’t scream either. He just wasn’t anymore. Jinx threw up bile right there in front of the boy who didn't even blink.
And then she kept moving. Rushed. She turned away and let her eyes fall closed, but on her eyelids she saw the marmalade boy - and in the marmalade boy she saw Isha - and in Isha? She saw herself.
There was her bleeding heart again and it made itself known this time in the gritting of her teeth, the clenching of her fists and the pained scream that clawed out of her throat as she ran. Was she running now? Yes she was, and it hurt her feet and the screaming hurt her throat, she was a wild boar stalked by its hunter. She was a boar that screamed for freedom.
When she opened her eyes again it was because she felt water on her shins. She had run to the river that bled under the progress bridge.
So much for progress she snickered to herself. Sure maybe Piltover and Zaun had united against Viktor's army for this war, but that wouldn’t last, peace rarely did.
She looked to the bridge, to the Jinx and Ekko of the past. Metal hit metal; flesh hit flesh; death followed them both with a watchful eye. She wondered briefly if he had survived the final battles in this war - but she scoffed at the thought - of course he survived he’s Ekko for gods sake.
She looked shamefully down at the river, away from her memories, and saw her reflection in the quiet, rippling water. The girl who looked back at her was the same girl that fought on the bridge, long blue braids, blue eyes and an angry heart. Her jaw clenched, that’s not her anymore, she swished the water gently with one of her legs and the reflection changed. The water revealed tired pink eyes, her messily cut short hair, and the splatters of paint all over her body. She mourned the girl she had been when anger blinded her to her sorrow, when her naivety told her she couldn’t lose more than she already had. Looking at herself she saw something broken, an overused tool or a rusted gun.
She had to look away when the tears came unexpectedly streaming down her face, they sounded like raindrops where they hit the surface of the river. She took a slow breath and prepared herself to dive in when she caught another glimpse of herself in the setting sunlight that bounced gently off of the ripples of water her tears made: she saw a woman. A woman who made bad decisions and was still carrying the burden of her forebears. She saw a woman who couldn’t let go.
So she let go.
Jinx dove into the depths of the muddy river. It wasn’t too far to the other side, but the water felt thick like syrup and the cold seeped into her core. Her limbs were stiff, her clothes felt heavy with water and as she swam further and further away from the shore, she heard a quiet rumble from the city behind her. The rumble grew slowly, and as it got louder it became more distinct, with different pitches and different rhythms; she recognised the sound of crying.
The city was crying. Her sister was crying.
Jinx scrunched her face, and refused to hear the noise. She didn’t feel sad, she didn’t feel angry, she didn’t. Feel. Anything. She couldn’t, or she would let herself go back to the very same sister she’d left behind. A cycle that, she realised, just had to stop.
She knew the path to Zaun’s lower levels like the back of her hand, so when she finally emerged from the river's uncomfortable embrace her legs took her there without prompting.
Journeying through the city was quick, but oddly quiet, usually chatter and scheming reverberated off dingy surfaces and echoed down narrow streets. Tonight though, loss materialised as a loud silence, fluttering about like a malevolent pixie without care for age or race or gender or goodness. Loss touched the souls of anyone and everyone; Jinx knew this well enough by now and would even go as far as to say they were old friends. Childhood friends.
Painful memories resurfaced as she passed quiet people on the streets. Some were huddled with each other for comfort and others curled up on themselves, now with no one to hold or to hold them. The people of Zaun couldn’t bring themselves to cry for their dead, instead they became empty in their mourning, so tired of violence. In place of hearts, the people of Zaun festered wilting flowers and rotting fruit. Jinx stumbled through the abandoned garden of people and didn’t stop or linger, she kept her head down and her shivering to a minimum. She didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention or malicious eyes in the heart of the poisoned city.
Eventually, she made it to the caves where she and Isha and Vi had once walked together - hand in hand in her deluded memory. She could still feel the warmth from Isha’s little hand if she tried. Actually she was quite warm now.. too warm.. hot even. Her muscles had relaxed from the exhaustion of trying to keep her warm with shivering, the sudden release of pressure on her veins sent rushes of warm blood through her body making her feel as though she was boiling. Her lips however, were blue, and her eyelids were drooping; making her vision blurry.
She was hypothermic, dangerously hypothermic. Her breathing was shallow, it had been for a while now. It worsened when she noticed - and started to panic. The cave was suddenly too dark and the bioluminescence too bright, she didn’t know where she was, or who she was. Walking was a struggle now, there was a ball and chain of guilt and regret clasped around her neck, choking her and dragging her down. Her fingers dug into the side of the cave wall where she tried to stay standing, loose rocks snuck under her nails where she scraped them as she fell to her knees.
Thud
She hit the ground. It should have hurt but it didn’t, in place of pain was a tingling sensation, a certain indescribable numbness from the cold. Jinx giggled deliriously as she tipped forwards face first, her arms were too weak to catch her - not that she would have tried to anyway. And she was still laughing even after her face kissed the floor, if fact it made her laugh harder. Eventually though, she cracked and her hysterical chuckling became gasping, wet sobs. She blubbered there until she passed out, mumbling a slurred and forlorn:
“…why can’t I die…”
Before the familiar thrum of Zaun sung her to sleep like a lullaby.
‿̩͙⊱༒︎༻♱༺༒︎⊰‿̩͙
Jinx drifted into a temporary consciousness when her body registered that it was being moved. The world looked hazy through her dilated, bloodshot eyes; bioluminescence became gentle twinkling lights that spun as if she were the earth and the universe was dancing around her. She huffed out a feverish whimper at the jostling she received when she was hoisted into the air. Her pain received some sweet words in return that were unfortunately incoherent and muddled in her brain.
And before a single thought could cross her mind, she was gone again, being carried ever so gently by the slim muscular arms of an everyday worker.
Quiet giggling woke her up for a final time before she was knocked out for good, and she managed to tune in on a conversation she could just, but barely hear. Two little girls, who couldn’t have been older than 15 and 10 years old:
“It’s blue like the sky“
“No, don’t be silly Juniper it’s blue like water”
“Not like our water”
“Sea water then”
“More like river water”
The older girl huffed, and when the younger girl (Juniper?) started to speak again the older girl sighed so loudly that it turned into a groan, drowning out Juniper's words that were now sprinkled with giggles at the older girl's antics.
A small smile spread across Jinx’s face as she let the girl's voices fade into the background. Her head rested against a shoulder, and through the skin she could hear pulsing blood underneath - evidence of a beating heart. She rested there like a freshly born babe held for the first time.
Jinx was completely dependent on an absolute stranger, and she should have been afraid, she should have been expecting missing organs when she next woke up, or for her likeness to be changed again. But as she was carried, her head now tucked against the mystery man’s neck, she registered soft vibrations from the man’s throat - he was humming. And against her own instinct, she leaned into him and let her mind drift, thoughts slowly becoming wisps of wind that stroked her face and her hair.
She drifted off again.