Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She was Powder again, if only for a few seconds. She couldn’t even begin to describe the childlike rush of excitement that chilled her spine when Ekko had pulled out that stupid stopwatch. It was enough to make her forget they were fighting. She wasn’t really going to shoot him, she never did. Even when she was shooting at him he was always somehow conveniently faster than her, through no particular skill of his own. This would be no different. And maybe she was still soft on him, and maybe he’d get a few good hits in, but he was soft on her too. He wouldn’t hurt her.

At least that’s what she thought up until his pipebat was at her throat and his knuckles were splattered with her blood. It didn’t hurt, and part of her felt like she deserved it but the softness in his eyes is what spurred her to move. If she was going to die she supposed dying with someone she loved and who once loved her wasn’t too bad of a way to go.

Her fingers weren’t shaking when she pulled the pin of her hand grenade and laid it gently to the side. The last eight seconds they would have together could last a lifetime. She closed her eyes when she felt Ekko’s weight shift off her but a small metallic clink opened them back up. She saw her hand grenade in the air above her, spattered with pink and blue paint like everything she touched, for only a second before it detonated and she was engulfed in an eruption of pink smoke.

The reaction was instant. Smoke burned and suffocated her lungs, shrapnel sliced through her exposed skin, and the pressure of the shockwave tore through her body until each and every delicate muscle was limp with enervation. She weakly attempted to open her eyes in search of the firelight, but searing pain forced them shut again and perilously lulled her into deep unconsciousness.

•••

Fire woke her up. Her skin was on fire, her insides were on fire, the entire right side of her body burned and burned. Angry bright chem-lights loomed down on her with wicked intent to sting her eyes each time they flashed open. She could not place this room, had no memories of it. Her screams caught in her throat mixed with sobs and pleas for the pain to stop. Each shriek of desperation caused acrid remnants of the toxic chemicals she inhaled when her grenade detonated to mar her insides.

Was this death? Was death cruel and awful and not merciful as she had once believed? Maybe, she wondered, maybe the pain a person experiences in death reflected the pain they inflicted on others. Maybe death was a punishment. A sharp jab in her arm had her struggling against tight leather restraints strapped to her head and extremities. Agony shredded through her veins, illuminated in a shimmering pink. Shimmering. Shimmer.

No! NO! She tried to shout but only managed incoherent howls of torment and even death couldn’t stave off her visions. Her sister was there. Where had she come from? She was younger now, the same as she was when she left her. When she renamed her and broke her heart. Powder was with her too. Stupid, naive Powder, with that deteriorating stuffed bunny she clutched as if it were an extension of her sister’s love. They were happy once.

“You know, Powder, you’re stronger than you think.” Her sister's words cut like ice, instantly freezing her scorching body. She had no idea just how strong her little sister had become.

“Vi?” She tried to ask, but her voice was weak, hoarse with exhaustion. Another jab in her left arm set her body aflame again. Shimmer ravaged her veins, eroding her bloodstream. She had been shot, stabbed, beaten, experienced pain that could make even a masochist like her flinch. Nothing compared to shimmer.

“I’m so sorry, Powder.” Her sister, older once more, spoke again the words she told her when they had been reunited for those brief few minutes. Before she showed up. Before the firelights separated them again. But if Vi was sorry, why did she have a gun to Powder’s head? Her sister fired before she could object and Powder evaporated like a mist into her. The enforcer.

“Your sister is Jinx.” She had said and she was clutching her stuffed bunny. Her sister's love. Who was she to deserve Vi? Was it not bad enough that Vander chose to work with them for what he believed to be the safety of the undercity. Like father like daughter, only Vander’s daughter didn’t just work with the enforcer, she loved her. Those stupid doe eyes Vi ogled the snake with made her sick.

“No!” She pleaded as shimmer tore through her chest and into her heart, melting and calcifying it beyond repair. “No, don’t! No!”

It didn’t seem to matter to the enforcer that she was killing her. In fact she appeared to smile more and more with each agonizing scream that came from her lips while her besotted sister stood behind her, content to let her sadistic dark lover torment and destroy her. How little did Vi truly care for her to replace her so easily?

“I understand this must be painful.” The enforcer began with a cruel giggle to her words. “I’m afraid it will only get worse.”

The enforcer tapped at a syringe filled with shimmer, an inhumane grin on her face. Why wasn’t Vi stopping her? Her sister wasn’t even looking at her. A flash took the enforcer away, replaced by the doctor Silco had brought her to when she was younger. What was he doing here?

Another flash and the enforcer was back leaning in with the syringe bringing it ever closer to the side of her head as she thrashed and screamed against her restraints.

“No no no! NO!” She saw the doctor one last time as the needle made contact with the inside of her ear, then all was black again.

•••

Jinx woke up alone, not literally but rather figuratively. At first she was only aware of the fact that she had been unrestrained. Sticky, dried blood caked her hands and the underneath of her fingernails. Unsteadily she slipped off the surgical table she had been strapped to. Why was there so much blood? What had they done to her? The doctor was gone, Vi and the enforcer too.

Her chest heaved still burning but no longer from the smoke. This burning was different, colder, and somehow more sinister. Shimmer. She dragged her shaky feet over to the doctor's overly cluttered desk. Bobbles and bottles fell over and shattered as her hands stretched over the desks' surface desperate to steady her aching wobbling body.

She knew something was off before she even looked in the oval desilvered mirror that sat atop Singed’s workspace. Her skin was pallid, much more pale than normal. Her vision was clearer though her eyes still burned with inflammation. Her eyes. Tears sprung in the corners of them as she stared into the glowing pink irises that had replaced her once soft blue ones.

“No.” She choked out softly, her bloodstained hands reached up to gently caress her face. Cold fingers slowly traced the deep black veins that stretched from her eye sockets to her cheeks.

No no no no no no no no! Jinx sobbed quietly, unable to accept this new reality so outlandish even the voices in her head had nothing to say about it. Mylo should be laughing at her, he should be teasing and basking in her misery. He wasn’t even there with her, hidden in the shadows, but someone was.

In the corner of the dusty mirror’s reflection she could see him. Slumped over in a chair behind the table she had just gotten off of, unrestrained and unconcerned, was Silco. She turned, slowly, hoping that by the time she faced his way fully he would be gone and this would be another trick of her botched mind.

But there he was, in that battered metal chair, sleeping. Had he been here this whole time? Did he watch the doctor and that enforcer experiment on her? Watched and did nothing to stop it, to spare his daughter who he claimed to love.

Jinx could feel her hand curling into a fist but was powerless to stop it. Silco had always promised her he’d never let her get mixed up with his shimmer dealings. He promised. She built his weapons, killed his enemies, and he kept her safe, gave her a home, let her be whoever she wanted to be. That was the deal. He lied. Again.

He lied about her sister. Vi wasn’t dead, she was in Stillwater. No. Her balled up fist came up to strike her own temple at her disloyal thoughts. That wasn’t Silco’s fault. He didn’t know. It was Marcus, Marcus told him she was dead. Marcus lied, and she killed him so they were even. Right? Marcus took Vi away from her, he deserved to die didn’t he?

No. He had to have known. He had to have known about Vi. Silco controlled the undercity, he knew everything. There was no way he took a paltry Piltover sheriff at his word. No way he didn’t conduct his own investigation. And even if he didn’t, even if he didn’t, she was still standing before him corroded with shimmer. She was a monster. No better than the weak destitutes he scraped off the streets and drugged up to do his dirty work. What was now the difference between her, his daughter, and any of them?

Jinx turned away from Silco’s sleeping form, she couldn’t even look at him. She couldn’t remember a time in which she had been more angry at anything. She had half a mind to hit him now, to wake him up and demand answers before he had the time and opportunity to concoct another story to spin for her.

Silco would answer for this undoubtedly, but not yet. She wanted him to stew. To think about what he’d done, where she’d gone, when she’d pop back up, and what exactly would happen when she did. Wondering and waiting was never Silco’s strong suit, but she would make damn sure to disappear from his life until she was ready to confront him. Someone else would answer for this in the meantime.

•••  

Piltover and Zaun differed in more ways than just class and wealth. Piltover’s air was thinner, colder, and lacked resilience much like its residents. The people of Piltover didn’t know what it meant to survive because their prosperity and resources afforded them the ability to live.

Their gold trimmed buildings and their lush organic gardens were nothing more than a slap in the face to those stuck in the undercity, forced to breathe toxic air and drink polluted water. The people of Piltover were soft. Sheltered. Weak.

Seven people in particular were the most spineless of them all and they controlled everything. The prestigious Council of Piltover. Each councilor was selfish and treacherous in their own unique ways. Some favored fortune, others power, but one thing for certain was that more than half didn’t know the first thing about governing a society and none of them knew anything about governing Zaun.

Jinx knew the name Kiramman. The noble Kiramman house had long been one of Piltover’s wealthiest and most powerful families. Still, the ostentatious family crest that adorned flags outside the Kiramman’s estate zapped at Jinx’s brain. Not just an enforcer, but a rich, privileged, elite enforcer. Honestly, she was doing Vi a favor.

From the shadows she watched four golden doves dance in timed jerking movements. Cameras she realized, one on each corner of the mezzanine that looked over a lush back garden, one on a fountain spewing cold crystal water, and one straight above large decoratively carved French doors leading directly into the estate.

Each bird turned ninety degrees every four seconds. The bird on the left of the mezzanine and the bird above the doors moved clockwise while the other two moved counterclockwise giving Jinx four seconds of unmonitored movement to get to the flower covered trellis of the mezzanine and four more seconds to get up it to the third floor balcony where she could easily slip inside a window.

Eight seconds. Eight seconds to get across forty yards and up three stories. She was already fast, and if this shimmer was going to be good for anything it damn sure better be good for this.

The birds turned, their whirring mechanical insides softly clicked them into place two birds faced west, the others east. Four more seconds and three would face north, the other south, leaving the back gardens free. She could feel her blood cool and her heart race with anticipation. The shimmer zapped her brain again ready for stimulation. Tick, tick, tick, click.

Jinx flew, faster than she ever thought possible. The golden birds clicked into place again. By the time she got to the trellis it dawned on her she might have moved so quickly she could have run in front of the cameras and they wouldn’t have even picked up on her. The birds clicked into place once more. Eight seconds and she wasn’t even winded.

She was right in assuming the windows to the Kiramman estate would be unlocked. So closely monitored they surely assumed they’d see any threat coming before they ever reached the stone walls. They really should have known better.

Jinx pushed open a window and swung her legs inside. This entire damn mansion was bigger than the entire block of The Last Drop where she and Vi grew up. Who the hell needed this big of a house? The marble floors had been buffed and shined to reflect anyone walking above it. Tall opulent walls of green line with paintings and photographs stretched endlessly down the corridor. Jinx didn’t even know where to begin.

She kept to the walls hoping to avoid any creaking floorboards and did her best to remain in the shadows. Soft and soothing violin played somewhere in the house and echoed through each of its cavernous rooms. Her hands closed around a set of golden door hands and tugged only to stop short, locked.

She moved on to the next, also locked. The music grew louder the further into the estate Jinx got until she could just barely see a hazy golden glow from an open door on the other side of a grandiose foyer. She slunk through the balcony shadows, ignoring her desire to stop and stare at the rich luxury this house was bathed in. So much art and decor, the manor was practically a museum.

The rousing violin music was deafening by the time Jinx arrived at the cracked door. Rose and bergamot scented steam escaped into the hall as she pushed the door open wide enough to slip inside. Running water drowned out any sounds her heavy boots made as she wandered around the Kiramman’s magnificent golden bathroom. Shelves were lined with oils and bath salts, cabinets filled with fluffy warm towels and silken robes. No wonder rich people took so long to shower when they had all these novelties to play with. Bathtime in Zaun consisted of a tub of cold water and a bar of pine wax. No one ever looked forward to getting in and everyone loved getting out.

Jinx knelt down on the tile over a pile of discarded clothes. She gingerly pinched a swatch of navy fabric and lifted the garment up for inspection. The enforcers uniform. She turned her head towards running water, unable to see anyone lost in the excessive clouds of steam billowing around. This was certainly the last place the enforcer would expect to find Jinx. Perfect.

She took a plush cream washcloth from its home inside a crystal basket and balled it up in her fist. How oh how would the enforcer be able to see anything when she got out of the shower if her mirror was so fogged up? Jinx used the washcloth to wipe it down, taking her time before returning to the abandoned uniform. She sat on top of a counter with the navy and gold trimmed dress, carefully folding it so it was ready for the enforcer when she was done.

Wasn’t she just so lucky Jinx was there to help her out?

Chapter Text

She was losing her. It didn’t matter how hard she pushed herself or how keenly she ignored the burn in her calves as she ran, Vi was simply too fast for her. Which was good for Vi, who had already disappeared around one of Zaun’s many back alleyway corners, and bad for Powder, who was still hopelessly in the enforcer's line of sight and now unsure of where to go next. 

They had lost Mylo and Claggor several blocks ago. Mylo and Vi had both shouted directions to follow at the same time, Powder followed her sister and Claggor had followed Mylo. She didn’t have the time to look back to see if one of the three enforcers chasing them had diverted to follow them as well. They would circle back to each other eventually. Hopefully.

Powder tripped over her feet as she rounded the corner Vi had disappeared behind, knocking heavy metal bins and wood stacks across the alley behind her to slow down her pursuers. She could hear them collide with debris and shout curses in her direction but made no attempt to slow down. She wouldn’t stop until the only thing she could hear was the sound of her own heavy breathing. 

She shot down a passage to her left not knowing the very end of it would turn her around back towards the enforcers. Halfway down that second alleyway she veered into an alcove and crouched behind a stack of rotting wooden crates. Her entire body was shaking and she covered her mouth with a trembling hand to stifle her breathing. They had already lost Mylo and Claggor, now she lost Vi, if the enforcers cornered her she was done for. She only had one explosive left, one she had colored to look like a quill crab and named Spike. And she really didn’t want to bet on Spike any time soon. 

The enforcers stopped just outside the cramped alcove Powder found herself in. She held her breath, unable to think clearly. There was nothing, nothing in this nook that could help her. Her eyes frantically searched her surroundings, no sticks, no pipes, not even any dislodged bricks she could try and throw. 

“She gotta be here somewhere, go back down ‘round that corner we passed, I’ll check through here.” The gruff voice of one of the enforcers called out.

Shit shit shit. Powder pressed her back up against the brick wall as the enforcers devised their plan to split up. She bit the tip of one of her fingers that was covering her mouth. It was the only thing keeping her from desperately screaming out for Vi, knowing full well she was long gone. Metal tipped boots scraped against cobblestone and Powder could feel her entire body grow cold in terror. Her heart raced so quickly she half thought it might explode, which she wouldn’t even mind if it got her out of this. 

The painfully loud click of a searchlight illuminated the alcove and Powder closed her eyes as the light shined back and forth. Maybe if she didn’t see it, it wasn’t happening. Maybe Vi would come back and get her out. Maybe-

Glass shattered in the distance followed by shouts from the other enforcer. The one in the alcove clicked off his light and turned on his heels, taking off toward the commotion. For a moment Powder remained where she was, crouched behind those moldy crates, fingers bright red from being bitten. When she finally uncovered her mouth and took in a gasp of air she collapsed onto her knees, unable to keep upright after the prolonged dread sucked any and all strength out of her. 

Slowly, Powder pushed herself off the brick wall and dragged herself to her feet. As quietly as she could she stepped out from behind the alley crates and stuck her head around the corner. There was no shouting, no footsteps, no sign the enforcers were even there. She took another deep, relieving breath and turned the corner. She moved to peer down the passage she assumed the enforcers went down when quick hands grabbed her arm and pulled her back into the alcove.

Powder opened her mouth to scream but it was clamped shut by her furious sister, standing before her sweaty and seething. 

“What the hell was that?!” Vi demanded in a hushed whisper, lowering her hand from Powder's mouth once she realized who had grabbed her. “What happened back there?”

“Vi!” She gasped out her sister's name and threw her arms around Vi’s middle in relief. “I couldn’t find you. I thought I lost you.”

Vi was tense, angry as hell, but softened after a moment and wrapped an arm around Powder in return. Nothing ever mattered to Vi more than her safety. And Powder knew she was in for a lecture, which is mostly what kept her latched around her sister's waist until she was pushed away.

“What the hell happened?” Vi asked again with her hands on her hips, awaiting an explanation. “Why did you try to smoke bomb the enforcers?”

It was important to note, to no one other than Powder, that she didn’t try to smoke bomb the enforcers, she did in fact smoke bomb the enforcers. That was thanks to Ekko, who had given them to her earlier that afternoon at Benzo’s. While the others discussed scoping out a shipping freight full of Piltovian goods getting ready to export out of the Sun Gates the next afternoon, she and Ekko had worked on crafting a devious distraction. It wasn’t enough to evade the enforcers, they needed to scare them, to keep them out of the lanes for good.

“I was trying to scare them.” Powder began in that soft timid voice of a child who knows they’ve screwed up. “I didn’t know it would only last a few seconds.”

An oversight she would be bringing up the next time she saw Ekko. As the smoke bombs were his invention she figured he would have known a thing or two about how well they actually worked. 

“They weren’t bothering us!” Vi covered her face with her hands, desperate to not let Powder see the frustration on her face. 

True they were not. Instead they had taken it upon themselves to meander around the river market harassing stall owners for marketing licenses they knew damn good and well no one had. They might have gotten mixed up in a chase they didn’t belong in but dozens of vendors wouldn’t be facing indebting fines anymore. For today anyhow.

“They would have found a reason to! Once they were done making up reasons to bother Huck and them they would have rounded on us!” She tried to stick up for herself but whether she liked it or not altruism was synonymous with stupid in Zaun. “We just thought-“

“We?” Her sister uncovered her face, a new and different look of anger began to color her cheeks. “Who’s we?”

Shit. She thought about lying but Vi would see right through it. She thought about evading but Vi would refuse to drop it. She could only hope Ekko wouldn’t mind her slip up.

“…Little man.”

It was subtle, Vi’s reaction, yet the slight twitch of her eyes and curl of her lips was deafening.

“You don’t listen to what Ekko tells you!” She shouted, no longer concerned with keeping her voice down, “You listen to what I tell you! And I have told you time and time again not to fuck with the enforcers!”

“I’m sorry-“

“Do you think they won’t separate us?” Vi continued, cutting off Powder’s attempt to apologize. “Do you think they won’t send me to Stillwater or the Dredge? Do you think they won’t send you to Hope House? Vander can’t save us if they catch us!”

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes and spilled over her cheeks. She hated when Vi yelled at her. Why didn’t she ever learn? Why did she always have to cause problems?

“I’m sorry, I thought-“

“Well stop!” Her sister cut her off again, “Stop thinking and listen!”

I thought I was helping. Her unspoken words rattled around in her head suddenly meaningless. She just wanted to help, that’s all she had ever wanted. Why did she ruin everything? She wiped the tears that had gone cold from her face with the tattered sleeve of her makeshift gloves as Vi took a deep breath to steady herself.

“Let’s just get home.” Vi sighed, peering around the corner of the alleyway, making sure the coast was clear. “Where’s Mylo and Claggor?”

“I don’t know.” Powder cleared her throat not wanting to sound too pathetically whiny as she spoke. “We got separated just as we were getting out of the seam.”

Vi turned to her sister in a newfound panic. “What do you mean? Which way did they go?”

“I don’t know! They-“

Her words cut short at the sound of loud cacophonous bell tolls echoing in the distance. For a moment they froze, staring at each other as they listened. Chime. Chime. Chime. 

“Shit.” Vi’s reaction was instantaneous and she took off down the alley without another look in Powder's direction.

Powder fled after her begging her to wait, her worn boots slipping on cobblestone and burning lungs slowing her down, getting her left behind, again.

•••

Jinx hummed to herself softly, spinning her tastefully spray painted pistol in one hand as Caitlyn’s eyes began to flutter open. Her eyes darted frantically around their surroundings. Around the dilapidated, seemingly abandoned bell tower they were in. Around her wrists that were restrained to her chair. Around Jinx, sitting on the very edge of the bell tower's platform that had once presumably been secured with a railing.

“Good morning sleepyhead.” She cheered to Caitlyn when she realized the enforcer was awake. “How’s the head?”

Knocking Caitlyn out was easy, getting her dressed was the difficult part, which was more annoying than anything else. Turns out house Kiramman security could be disabled by fingerprint checks, they should really invest in guards.

“What do you want with me?” Caitlyn asked, pointedly ignoring Jinx’s attempt to throw her off her guard. Her air dried hair laid slack against her face, disheveled and straggly.

“I just want to talk.” She shrugged and stood to walk around the platform that overlooked what appeared to be a decrepit chapel two stories below. “I don’t suppose you know where Vi is, do you?”

“No.” The enforcer spat with pure venom coating her words, “And even if I did I wouldn’t tell you.”

“I figured.” One of Jinx’s hands delicately stroked the fraying red bell ropes hanging from the tower's vaulted ceiling. “That’s okay. We’ll just have to bring Vi to us.”

Caitlyn looked once more around the tower, unable to truly see anything between the boarded up windows and Zaun’s foggy gray atmosphere. “Where are we?”

“Bardugo Bell Tower.” Jinx told her, turning her attention back to the tied up enforcer. “Have you heard of it? It’s famous. At least around here it is.”

She gave a small shake of her head though her eyes wandered in the back of her mind as if searching for recollection.

“Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to know about some paltry old bell tower anyways.” Jinx continued, “It’s a great story though. You see, years ago, the Bardugo family lived in the quarters below the tower and they tended to the tower and grounds blah blah blah. Well one winter, things had gotten really bad. Wind chill was lethal, pipes were frozen, merchants didn’t even have the clothes on their backs to sell, so the Bardugo’s opened up the chapel of the tower.”

She motioned to the large open expanse beneath them, filled with overturned furniture and black mold. “They let groups of destitutes and drifters come and go so they could have a roof over their heads until spring came around. And Piltover, didn’t really like this. In their eyes, the Bardugo’s were running a business which meant they should be making a profit which meant they should be paying them a portion of that profit. But the Bardugo’s refused. They said what they were doing was charity, to help people.”

“Well one night,” Jinx continued, seating herself cross-legged on the dusty wooden floor in front of Caitlyn, “Right after the Bardugo’s had gone to bed, a fire broke out in the chapel, and despite the fact that two enforcers were already conveniently on scene, the fire brigade couldn’t get through the doors. They claimed it was barricaded. Of course no one was able to prove what really happened, and our completely honorable sheriff deemed one of the destitutes inside responsible, but Zaun never forgot. The city of course condemned the bell tower and kicked the Bardugo’s out; it's been abandoned ever since.”

Caitlyn stared at Jinx puzzled for a moment, still unsure of what they were doing here. “Maybe it really was an accident. Someone could have unintentionally blocked the door and started a fire trying to keep warm.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Jinx agreed, getting to her feet. “If it weren’t for the fact that the doors open outward.”

Jinx watched the enforcers eyes widen in understanding and waited for a rebuttal that never came. The Bardugo Bell Tower was important to Jinx for two reasons, the first being a reminder of where Zaunites stood in the eyes of Piltover, and the answer was beneath their gold plated shoes. The second was no less important, but much more personal.

“Vi and I used to play this game when we were younger-“ Jinx began, then cut herself off, “Sorry, no. A game implies this was something we did for fun and not because our lives depended on it. Vi and I had this survival technique when we were kids. If we were being chased or if we were in trouble and we were separated, we’d come to the bell tower. Two tolls meant we were safe, three meant come help.”

Jinx’s hands roamed the bell cords once more almost nostalgically. She gripped the loops tightly and locked eyes with Caitlyn as she pulled them, once, twice, three times. The sound of the chimes was deafening, and the tolls echoed throughout the thin walls of the tower leaving an unpleasant ringing in the girls’ ears.

Caitlyn flinched as Jinx pulled a sharp knife from the holster around her thigh. She twirled the tip of it on her fingers and looked Caitlyn over with unjust contempt. Stupid enforcer. In her stupid uniform. Jinx was almost sad she didn’t bring along the stupid matching hat. Mylo’s screeching laughter broke her concentration and Jinx shook her head hoping to silence him, now wasn't the time. 

“So did he pay you to do it?” She asked Caitlyn, sauntering over to her, still playing with her knife, “Was that part of the deal? Are you his new little lapdog sheriff?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Caitlyn tried, shaking her head, “I haven’t done anything.”

“Don’t lie.” The edge of Jinx’s knife was against Caitlyn's throat before she could blink. “You know exactly what you did. Was this part of your little plan to get to Vi? Inject me with shimmer, make me out to be crazy so Vi would leave me for good? Well guess what? Vi is never going to leave me, not again, and I’ll make sure of it.”

“Please!” She begged, closing her eyes full of fearful tears, “I haven’t done anything to you I swear! Vi and I have nothing to do with each other, we were just looking for information on Silco.”

Flashes of white and dissonant whispers assaulted Jinx’s sense and she pulled away from Caitlyn. Her hands pawed at her ringing ears wishing the noise would stop. Just the sound of Silco’s name was enough to set her on edge right now. Pathetic. The hushed whispers seemed to say. All that shimmer and you’re still so weak.

“Shut up!” Jinx shouted at the empty expanse beckoning in the distance before turning back to Caitlyn. “I know you’re lying. I saw the way she looked at you. Vi would never associate with an enforcer let alone be soft on one.”

“Enforcers aren’t monsters you know.” She started but Jinx cut her off with a laugh.

“Really? The people who murdered our parents aren’t monsters? The people who chased little kids through the streets with guns and burned down safe havens aren’t monsters?” Jinx could hear the sounds of whistles and shouts in the back of her mind, miserable memories from what felt like a lifetime ago. “I knew you Pilties were stupid but I didn’t think you were delusional as well.”

Maybe they had more in common that Jinx cared to admit. Caitlyn didn’t know anything. More proof that she had Vi under some form of manipulation, and Jinx knew manipulation when she saw it. The enforcers crocodile tears wouldn’t work on her. 

“Please.” Caitlyn pleaded again, “I had nothing to do with any of that and I would never hurt Vi.”

Jinx smirked and toyed with the knife in her hand again. “You won't get the chance.”

A gust of cold night air blew in through the front doors of the tower as they swung open. Soft, hesitant footsteps shuffled around the chapel below.

“Powder?” Vi’s voice called out, worried and wary.

“V-“

“Ah, no no.” Jinx cut off Caitlyn’s attempt to warn Vi with a thick cloth gag tied around her mouth and a whisper in her ear. “You’ll ruin the surprise.”

“Powder?” Her sister called out again, “Are you in here?”

Jinx pushed Caitlyn’s chair over to the edge of the platform and peered down into the vestibule Vi was standing in. “Hey, sis. We missed you.”

Vi looked at her sister, but only briefly before her eyes turned to Caitlyn, tied up and gagged, her face tear stained and terrified.

“What’s going on?” She asked, not moving a single muscle, as if Jinx were a wild animal she was trying not to startle. 

She couldn’t see Vi as she was now, standing in a burned down bell tower, confused and scared of what her baby sister was getting her new friend mixed up in. Jinx could only see the Vi who stood behind Caitlyn in Singed’s laboratory grinning foolishly at the enforcer while she screamed and begged for the pain to stop.

“I never wanted this.” Jinx told her sister, gesturing to herself with her knife. “I never wanted anything to do with shimmer. And you let her inject me. You let her change me.”

“What are you talking about?” Vi’s brows furrowed and she looked back and forth between Jinx and Caitlyn, desperately struggling against her restraints. “I’ve been with her this whole time she didn’t do anything to you.”

Memories came rushing back in her mind, flashes obscured her vision and she flinched away from them. No, Vi wasn’t the same. She had been younger at first. Okay, so maybe Vi wasn’t there. But the enforcer-

Whispers shrieked in her ears bringing with it haunting laughter at Jinx’s anger and confusion. Singed. The enforcer had been transforming into the doctor each time Jinx saw her. A trick. Had it all been a trick of her mind? Another delusion she couldn’t separate from reality. 

For years every pink hair girl she saw stopped her dead in her tracks. Every burley middle aged man made her hands shake. Every trencher in a pair of goggles subjected her to waves of anguished nausea. It was all the same, a trick. Her useless guilt ridden brain punishing her and driving her mad.

“N- no!” She pointed the barrel of her gun towards Caitlyn causing her to flinch and cry out under her gag. “You’re lying! I saw you! I saw both of you!”

“I’m not lying Powder, I swear.” Vi held both her hands up in an attempt to appear more innocent, “I tried coming back to you on the bridge but he got there first. I saw him take you away. He had guards with him a-and Caitlyn was hurt. I couldn't stop him.”

“I told you to stop calling me that!” Jinx’s face burned with anger. The enforcer was hurt. Silco was taking her away to be injected with shimmer and she chose to go with the enforcer instead. 

Silco. Jinx’s stomach turned and she dropped her handgun to the floor. Silco was there. No tricks of her mind, no flashes of illusions. He was there. In that stupid chair, watching. He had taken her to Singed before when she was much younger, when her mind had first started acting up, bringing her to tears on a daily basis, unable to do anything but aimlessly smear crushed chalk against every surface in Silco’s office she could find. The doctor had suggested a small dose of shimmer every day to calm her nerves and stimulate her mind. Silco took no part in it; he flat out refused Singed's suggestion.

It wasn’t until she was older that Jinx understood why Silco didn’t want her taking shimmer. She saw it first in the customers who came into The Last Drop, who had inhaled shimmer so much to the point their noses grew necrotic and were cut off. She saw it in the chem-baron, Margot’s, clients who abandoned their families and depleted their savings for just one more taste of the shimmer laced kisses they could only find in her brothel. She could even see it in Silco, who needed to inject a small dose of the drug into his poisoned eye everyday to keep infection from spreading. 

Shimmer was toxic and she was full of it. She could feel it corroding her bloodstream still, causing her heart to race and her skin to sweat. She craved the speed of it, she so painfully wanted to give into the power it gave her. 

How could he do this to her? She thought as she curled in on herself and stepped back away from Caitlyn, who had stopped struggling in her chair. She was ready. She was ready to die as her former self. The version of her who chased firelights in the summer and snuck into the New Piltover gardens to pick strawberries and laughed until she cried. She was supposed to be Powder. She was supposed to die on that bridge, her and Ekko together. Ekko.

“What about Ekko?” She asked, suddenly snapping her head back up to face Vi. “Where was he when you came back to the bridge?”

Vi shook her head. “I- I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”

The boy savior. She had called him as more of an insult than anything else. He was the only person Jinx knew who might even consider helping her and she very well may have killed him.

“Where are they?” She abandoned her attention on Caitlyn completely, no longer interested in demanding retribution from her. “Where are the firelights?”

“Drop the knife.” The enforcer's voice rang out harsh and formidable and Jinx turned to find she had escaped her restraints and was pointing her own gun at her. “Vi, don’t tell her anything.”

It was an amusing sight she had to admit, seeing the prim and proper Piltover scion holding such an out of place weapon. She looked as though she should be holding state of the art custom weapons all gold rimmed with clean straight lines to match her uniform. It was especially amusing as Jinx knew without a shadow of a doubt Caitlyn wouldn’t be shooting her, not tonight anyhow.

“You know, I think I’m starting to get it.” Jinx said nodding to her sister, “She’s rich and powerful and certainly not ugly. But how can you stand that badge she hides behind?”

“Powder, please.” Vi begged, “We can start over. We can leave and-“

“Vi, she can’t be let go! You have no idea what she’s capable of.” Caitlyn stood her ground, keeping Jinx’s handgun aimed directly at her head. She placed her finger on the trigger, ready to shoot, no hesitation, not a single tremor in her hand.

It was so easy it almost wasn’t fun. Jinx took another step towards Caitlyn, her hands raised in mock surrender, one still clutching her knife she had no intention of dropping. She didn’t have time for this, if Vi wouldn’t tell her where the firelights were, she’d find them herself. 

“I will shoot you!” Caitlyn warned, a slight quiver in her voice. 

“You won’t.” Jinx wondered briefly if the enforcer had ever killed anyone, if she had ever even shot anyone. Did she know the rush of adrenaline it brought? The dizziness? The muscle weakness. The feeling of her blood running cold? 

“Caitlyn please.” Vi begged, “She’s my sister.”

It almost made Jinx hesitate. The desperation in Vi’s voice. Her emphasis on the word sister. After seven years in Stillwater Jinx had no doubts her sister yearned for life to return to normal, but she couldn’t go back. Too much had changed, she had changed. 

“How about I give you some advice, sheriff?” Jinx teased, she could feel the shimmer in her blood begin to heat, it needed to come out.

“What sort of advice could someone like you possibly give me?” Caitlyn asked with an arrogant breathy laugh.

It was quick, it was like breathing only easier, Vi’s shouts of panic were almost lost in the sensation. Between one blink and the next Jinx was upon Caitlyn, the front of her enforcer's uniform balled up in her hands as she held her over the edge of the platform. Jinx’s gun pressed into the hollow of her throat, the trigger squeezed tightly under Caitlyn’s finger.

“Make sure a gun is loaded before you point it at someone.” 

Jinx released the front of Caitlyn’s uniform and grabbed her handgun from her as she elbowed her off the platform. Someone was screaming, maybe both of them were, Jinx couldn’t be sure and she didn’t really care. She was already fleeing the bell tower through the large arched windows surrounding the bells. She had a new objective in mind, and it didn’t involve the enforcer or her sister. 

Chapter Text

It was a considerably cool night and despite the perpetual breeze, Jinx was dripping sweat under a thick gray canvas cloak. As much as she wished to be rid of it, she didn’t need to be recognized right now. She really wished shimmer had granted her the power of hindsight, if it had she wouldn’t have had to spend most of her night traipsing around from one end of the lanes to the other.

Priggs Industries, a notoriously sordid factory complex, was nestled deep within the slums of Zaun. The deeper into the fissure Jinx went, the harder it became to breathe. Air quality in Zaun was disgraceful in every part of it, but the slums were the worst. Factories upon factories churned out and dumped toxic waste into the sewers and water supply all day, every day. Jinx was no stranger to less than ideal surroundings, but she tended to steer clear of the deeper parts of the undercity. Unless, of course, she was visiting Priggs.

The towering complex was home to a variety of different assembly lines and industrial mills spanning its various levels, but Jinx was in search of one workshop in particular. In the buildings lowest level poorly guarded by an always sleeping and very elderly security guard, was the Future Steel Forge, where Zaunites manufactured steel beams, gears, weapons, and whatever else Piltover ordered them to create until most of them dropped dead on the assembly line from the scorching heat of its furnace. 

Jinx pressed a large red button on the security desk, unlocking the main entrance to the forge. The guard, Alonzo, according to the tag on his jumpsuit, snorted in his sleep and shifted positions. In the middle of the night when the forge was empty of workers, it was almost peaceful. The raging fires had died down to smoldering embers and there was no constant pounding of anvils to leave Jinx’s ears ringing as she made her way along the abandoned walkway.

Hidden in a carved out storage room in the back of the factory was the treasure she frequently broke into Priggs to steal, smokepowder. Highly flammable and wildy reactive the forge workers used smokepowder to ignite their retorts, Jinx found it to be particularly useful in explosives. She unhooked a small satchel from her belt and began filling it with the dark acrid smelling substance.

Her lengthy walk to the south of Zaun gave her plenty of time to think, and Jinx had done her best to do nothing of the sort. There was no good in thinking at this point, it was either go big or go home. She didn’t want to give herself the chance to think about what she was doing, if she did she had no doubts she would come up with a reason to justify what Silco had done to her and forgive him. And she didn’t want to forgive him, which she didn’t think was fair.  

Silco always forgave her, no matter what. It didn’t matter how big of a problem she caused him, didn’t matter how many missions she botched, didn’t matter how many of his people she screwed over. He cleaned up her messes and forgave her, always. She could extend the same sentiment to him, right? 

Circles. She was going in circles. The shimmer in her veins bubbled to the surface the more worked up she got, desperate for release. Jinx stifled her urges as best she could as she tied her leather pouch, now half filled with smokepowder, back around her belt loop.

Without a second thought, she began her climb back to the surface. She had more important things to focus on. Like what the hell she was going to do if Ekko wasn’t even alive. Did he die angry with her? Did he die hating her?  

Missing your boyfriend?

Mylo’s insufferable whispering broke her out of her daydream and she scowled. For someone who never had anything interesting to say he sure said a lot.

“Shut up.” She snapped at the open air around her. He always teased her about having a crush on Ekko. When she was younger and he was…alive, he was relentless. Sometimes his mockery got so bad it made her resent her feelings for Ekko, just a little bit.

He doesn’t miss you.  

What did Mylo know anyway? They weren’t kids anymore, whatever she felt for Ekko then was long gone, a fleeting childhood crush, never anything serious. 

Back on the surface of Zaun, Jinx made her way to Harbinger, an abandoned apothecary that sat kitty corner to an old drinking den. Another victim of her frequent kleptomania, the owners of the apothecary had left it almost fully stocked when they packed up their things and left.

She snuck around back, through the alleyway that connected the apothecary and tavern, and shoved open the back door that never closed properly after she stuck tufts of wool into the latch. Jinx liked coming to Harbinger. Despite it sitting abandoned, it always smelled of anise and fresh mint. It was a shame she was about to destroy it.

In the small office room behind the front desk, where someone had once set up space to mix up salves and medicines, Jinx skimmed through vials and tubes in search of the last glittering silver bottle of salt she left behind the last time she was there.

Jinx hummed softly to herself as she dumped the chunky bits of salt into her pouch of smokepowder and mixed them together. She continued her little song as she walked back out of the apothecary, not bothering to shut the door this time, it was all she could do to keep the dissonant whispers ringing in her ears at bay. 

She walked along the building's perimeter, her bag of salt and smokepowder tipped over in her hands and leaving a trail behind her. Once she had gone around the apothecary she walked diagonal across the alleyway and began circling the tavern. No one ever went to this tavern, and Jinx doubted anyone would miss it. She poured the remainder of her concoction into a small glass vial and placed it in the middle of the alley where her trails of smokepowder crossed over.

She was exhausted. All this walking around and kidnapping and thinking. Enough already. Unfortunately, she realized as she climbed the rusting fire escape of a tall brick building a few streets over, she would not be getting any sleep any time soon. At least not enough sleep, not that she’d slept more than four hours a night the last seven years but that was neither here nor there. 

Jinx sat on the very edge of the brick building's roof, an old schoolhouse by the looks of it. From her perch she could see the two buildings she had surrounded with powder and if she squinted, her shimmer touched eyes caught the tiniest glint of streetlights shining across the glass vial between them. 

Her fingers gently roamed the cold metallic bullets that lined one of her various belts slung across her waist and landed on the last one in the row. Jinx plucked the green capped bullet from its spot and loaded it into her gun. She only had one of its kind, only one shot to do what she came here to do.

She raised her pistol and aimed it directly at the glass vial full of salt and smokepowder. This better work. She bit her tongue to keep her hands steady and without a second thought shot a flaming green flare through the air. 

The vial shattered on impact allowing its contents to ignite and splatter across the cobblestone alleyway. Like a row of dominoes the lines of smokepowder Jinx poured around the two buildings erupted in a wall of flames. From her position she couldn’t see very well see exactly what she had done, but from further away, and more importantly higher up it was clear. Two buildings kitty corner to each other, forming a perfect hourglass of caustic green flames. 

Jinx tucked her gun back into its holster, laid on her back atop the dirty, cold schoolhouse roof, and looked into the night sky. She might have tried to get some sleep while she was up there if it wasn’t for Zaun’s blaring sirens alerting nearby enforcers to summon the fire brigade. If nothing else, it was a good night for a fire.

Zaun’s terrible air quality robbed its citizens of many things, but Jinx’s biggest grudge was the stars. Light pollution and smog made them practically invisible, even up on the surface. Sometimes it felt like stars were made up. A magical, childlike, invention of twinkling lights that peppered the night sky and told stories to its viewers. When she was younger and not yet prone to committing crimes against humanity each time she left the house, Jinx would often sneak up to the surface and across the bridge into Piltover. Not to steal or stalk but just to lay in the gardens and watch the stars. 

It was one of, if not the only thing, that brought her peace after that night. Everything had changed, but the stars had not.

•••

Hot tears spilled down Powder’s cheeks despite sharp intakes of sniffles that pitifully attempted to keep her emotions bottled up. She didn’t know how she hurt her arm, but blood dripped from a deep gash near the side of her wrist and splattered on the concrete below. 

“Hold still, you’re still bleeding.” Ekko wrapped a thin cloth handkerchief around her wrist and held it down tight, blood seeped through the fabric and stained his fingers sticky red. 

She couldn’t hold it in any longer and let out a loud sob that might have echoed through the sewer they were hiding in if not for the heaps of trash around them. Powder prayed she didn’t need stitches, if the cut would stop bleeding on its own she could just wear some gloves and hide it from Vi no problem. But if Vi saw it, she knew she wouldn’t be able to lie to her sister. Her all-knowing, undeceivable sister.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Ekko lightened his grip on her wrist and shifted on his knees in front of her, “I have to keep holding it shut, I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“No it’s not you.” She sobbed with shaky gasping breaths. Her wrist didn’t hurt, not really. The adrenaline from the chase and her fear of being found out by Vi superseded any physical pain. “Vi told me to leave the enforcers alone, she’s going to be so mad at me.”

I have told you time and time again not to fuck with the enforcers. Vi’s command was clear, don’t engage with the enforcers and don’t let Ekko convince her to. She was going to be furious, even more angry than she was about the smoke bombs. Stop thinking and listen. 

“She’s not going to find out.” He tried to reassure her but his words fell on deaf ears. Every horrible outcome was already deluding Powder’s mind, making her tremble. “No one knows it was us and we don’t have to tell her. We’ll go to Benzo’s before you go back to The Last Drop and wash up, she’ll never know.”

Powder sobbed again and pushed Ekko away from her but allowed him to maintain pressure on her arm. “She was so mad about the smoke bombs. What if she makes us stop being friends and we can’t see each other anymore?”

“She’s not going to do that.” He moved to sit beside her, trying to catch her eye but unable to sway her focus. “You know Vi would never do that. She might be mad but she’ll get over it, she always does.”

Vi wouldn’t do that, and Powder knew she wouldn’t, but she couldn’t help but wonder what if. It was such a horrible game she played with herself and she wished she knew how to stop but it was endless, always unwarranted, and the longer she played the more far fetched the what if’s became. What if she couldn’t see Ekko anymore? What if she never stops jinxing jobs? What if they all leave her behind because she can’t get her shit together?

She threw her free arm around Ekko and buried her face in his shoulder letting her tears soak into his shirt. “You’re my best friend. You’re my only friend. I don’t want to be separated.”

“We won’t be.” He wrapped his arm around her and hugged her in return. “I’d never let that happen…you’re my best friend too. I’ll never leave you.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

•••

The sound of shifting feet sat Jinx straight up and brought her back to reality. Her eyes burned with a desperate longing to close again. Had she actually fallen asleep up there? 

She peered down at the two buildings she had set on fire, most of the flames were already doused in water leaving puffy clouds of white smoke in their wake.

“Well it took you long enough.” Jinx said, standing up with a small stretch to look around the rooftop for the source of movement. “Come on out I know you’re there.” She continued when no one made themselves known.

Her eyes darted around to other nearby rooftops, all quiet and void of occupants. Still, she knew when she was being watched, the paranoid mind might be wrong ten times a day but never eleven. 

“I’m not here to fight.” She tried. Though she certainly would if she had to. She knew it had to be them lurking in the shadows. The pilties were far too loud, they would have made a big show of storming the roof to cuff her. Of course that would be contingent on them knowing she was the one who set the fire to begin with and considering the artistic liberties she took with her art project she had a feeling the enforcers would be investigating different suspects.

Suspects who needed to wrap up the theatrics and come out already.

“I just want to talk with your leader!” Jinx splayed her arms out, annoyed and impatient. “I have a proposition for him so stop skulking and send him out here!”

She looked around the vacant rooftops again and sighed. This was such a stupid plan…and about to get even worse.

“Look I know you’re probably here to shoot me but I’d really rather you didn’t.” She got down on her knees and held her arms up together in surrender, “How’s this? Take me as a prisoner if you have to, I’ll go, I told you I’m not here to fight.”

Well really now this was just juvenile. She spent her whole night setting this up and Ekko didn’t even have the decency to come tell her to fuck off. Just loitering in the shadows was low, even for him. 

“I know one of you guys is dying to knock me out! Come take a swing!” This was getting sad. Jinx could hear Mylo’s obnoxious laughter in the back of her mind. Told you he didn’t miss you. She shook her head hoping to dispel him but to now avail. 

Maybe she should just go back to Silco. He had his reasons. She was dying after all and yeah she did that to herself purposely but he didn’t know that. He brought her back because he loved her and here she was trying to plot revenge on him.

“Forget it.” She mumbled to herself and moved to stand, ready to make her grand exit and hole up in her hideout until she figured out what to do. 

The haunting dull hum of a hoverboard stilled her movements. Jinx watched a shadow grow closer and closer to her until it was at the edge of the schoolhouse rooftop. The hoverboards rider dismounted and placed the mechanism into a slot strapped across their back.

The figure was tall and well built. They towered over Jinx, blocking out the few dim street lights behind them. A pale white mask covered their face like all the firelights. This one resembled a wolf with sharp barred teeth. The mask might have concealed their face but there was no hood in either of the twin cities that could conceal the enormous bat-like ears that stuck out from either side of the firelights head.

“You’re not Ekko.” Jinx huffed, not bothering to disguise her irritation. The wolf turned their head sharply to each side cracking their neck with loud unbothered pops. After moments of silence save for the shouts of direction from the fire brigade down below, they spoke, their voice deepened and altered by their mask.

“Ekko is gone.”

No.

The words chilled Jinx to her core and for a moment, just a moment, it was enough to truly want to give herself up to the firelights for entirely unselfish reasons. She killed him. He was her friend and she killed him. She was just about to ask if he meant that Ekko just hadn’t returned yet when a soft whizzing sound cut her off. She barely even heard it, and once she did it was already too late. 

Jinx only managed a gasp of shock and the brief acknowledgment of a dart in her neck before whatever was coating it numbed her veins and her eyes went black. 

Chapter Text

It was dark and only a little cold in the room Jinx woke up in. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but her arms ached viciously, handcuffed to what felt like a metal pipe behind her. She ran her hands up the smooth metallic surface and gave it a few quick taps with her knuckles. The metal pipes were solid and thick, most likely there for structural integrity rather than acting as a conduit, it was doubtful she would be able to find any couplings along it to manipulate. 

She tried to adjust her eyes to the darkness and figure out her surroundings but even her shimmer enhanced sight couldn’t make out more than slim cracks of light shining through what appeared to be the only point of entry. Jinx pressed her weight against the metal pipe behind her and pushed herself up off the ground, cursing at the pain of her sore legs as she went. She swept the metal tips of her boots across the ground, hard tread plate flooring hissed and clinked with each bump she passed over. 

Jinx tried swinging a leg out in each direction in search of anything near her but found nothing on either side. Her first form of contact came when she began stepping around the pipe she was cuffed too and ran her boot into something hard, angular, and metal if the reverberating clanking sounds were any indication. They had her in some sort of storage room. 

“Hello…?” She gently spoke into the dark room. With no response she began shuffling around the pole again. “Anyone in here with me?”

It was around the time Jinx gave up her incessant pacing and sat back down that she started to regret her decisions. She should have just gone back to the bridge and looked for Ekko herself instead of publicly flagging down his guerilla warfare entourage and semi intentionally framing them for arson in the process. In her defense no one paid her to think things through before she acted. No one paid her at all actually, most of her antics lately had been for shits and giggles. 

Maybe she could have gotten Silco to inject Ekko with shimmer as well. He would have done it too. Anything for his beloved Jinx. She couldn’t help but think over and over again; would he forgive her for this? Would he still love her if she killed him?

Her rumination was interrupted by loud squeaky hinges as the door to the room opened bringing a blinding flash of light with it. Jinx flinched from the light and closed her eyes as two figures entered the doorway and let it slam shut behind them. When she opened her eyes again she found a much softer lantern had been lit and illuminated the once dark room in a pale yellow light. 

She was definitely in a storage room, metal shelves lined the walls cluttered with boxes of scrap metal and various planks of wood. To her right sat, what she must have hit her foot on; a row of grated lockers holding electrical cords and wires that connected to a wide rectangular power generator.

 Her eyes moved to the two figures before her. One was the tall beastly man with bat ears and a wolf mask that had confronted her on the schoolhouse roof. The other was much shorter and slimmer and wore a mask resembling a pointy faced fox under a dark hooded cloak.

For a while they just stared at each other. Jinx looked back and forth between the two of them, unable to decipher their body language with their faces and expressions hidden. 

“So…are you going to uncuff me or?” She shook her head in confusion, “What’s the plan here? Interrogation? Torture? Indentured servitude?”

The smaller figure stepped forward, standing next to their tall companion. They looked up at him but his eyes remained fixed on Jinx, seemingly contemplating something.

“Do you guys want something?” Jinx asked, getting impatient. She never was fond of playing these kinds of silent games. Games should be loud and explosive. To her surprise it was the smaller firelight who spoke to her.

“You let yourself get captured. Why?” Their voice was soft and melodic even with the muffled distortion their mask provided, a girl, she decided. 

“…When you said Ekko was gone,” she started, ignoring the firelights question. “Do you mean he hasn’t come back or he’s gone gone?”

The two firelights exchanged a glance, one of them scoffing indignantly. The burly bat eared one finally spoke.

“You blew him off a bridge. What do you think?”

Truthfully, Jinx hadn’t been thinking. Not since she watched as Vi heard the gunshot Marcus embedded into Ekko’s chest and rushed back to make sure her enforcer was okay. One gunshot? That’s all it took for her to come running back? She set off a damn grenade and what did Vi do? She stayed with her. She only bothered to come back when she knew her precious enforcer was safe.

Jinx could feel the shimmer bubbling in her veins the angrier she got. Malevolent whispers alternated from ear to ear teasing and mocking her. Poor baby blue, they jeered, reveling in how quickly everything had gone wrong. Her negative sentiments only fueled them further and further.

“Do you need to use the facilities?” The fox masked firelight asked with a deep sigh.

“…No?” Is that seriously what they came in here for? Jinx wondered as her fingers began tracing four metal dots spanning the outer edge of her handcuffs.

The girl lifted a small canteen slung across her chest off her shoulder and unscrewed the cap. Jinx watched hesitantly as she knelt before her, lifted it up to her lips and held it there.

“Drink.” The firelight commanded but Jinx pulled back, unwilling to take blind orders. “It’s water. Just drink it, if we wanted to kill you we would have shot you on that roof.”

She tilted the canteen up and cold water poured into Jinx’s mouth and down her chin. She took a few drinks before leaning away, letting the water spill on the ground in front of her. Fleeting as it was she was grateful for it, she hadn’t realized she was thirsty until that very moment.

The firelight stood and recapped her bottle. “This door is being guarded around the clock, from multiple angles, you try to leave and you’ll be shot on sight so don’t try anything stupid.”

Jinx wasn’t a fan of that, it sounded like a challenge and she liked a challenge. The firelights, in her experience, were all talk. She’d seen them fight countless times and they weren’t killers. An order that no doubt had come from Ekko. When it came to the firelights, everyone deserved a second chance. Or third or fourth it would seem if the person in question was Jinx.

The same could not be said of the Chem-barons. Half the time it felt like some of them would go out of their way to find reasons to kill each other, just for fun. With such common interests it was strange how much most of them disliked Jinx, and how little she respected them. Silco was the only thing keeping them from ripping each other apart for sport. 

Jinx watched as the two firelights spared her one last glance before leaving the room without another word. Her fingers returned to the metal dots spanning the edge of her cuffs, capped screws keeping the locking mechanism in place, if she could get the caps off the cuffs would become mere accessories. As stimulating as the two backup firelights seemed, if Ekko wasn’t there, she was clearing off. 

The caps on her left cuff were all secure, she tried to pry them off, tried scraping them against the metal pipe, nothing swayed them. Her eyelids began growing increasingly heavy and became harder and harder to open each time they closed. Jinx snapped her eyes open and sat up with a sharp intake of breath.

“Just water, huh?” She asked out loud with a shake of her head. Her fingers trailed down her right cuff. Capped, capped, capped, uncapped. Her head buzzed and zapped each time she tried to force herself back awake. If she could just steady her hands…

and…

unscrew the bolt…

•••

She was on the bridge again. The air was thick and heavy with smoke and ash. Marred bodies of enforcers were pushed up against barricades and splattered against each other. Each flash of the broken searchlight revealed more and more pools of blood as the carnage slowly settled.

“Don’t do this, Jinx.” Ekko was standing in front of her, hand outstretched to keep her at bay. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

It was always going to end like this. It didn’t matter what she did or what he did or even what Silco did. They would just be delaying the inevitable. She killed everyone around her, that was who she was after all, a jinx. It made sense that she would end up killing herself. Getting revived by shimmer was the only thing she might have been able to avoid, but it was too late.

“Come with me.” The firelight said to her, taking a step towards her.

“I tried.” She managed to choke out. “You weren’t there, it was too late.”

She spent so long not wanting to go with him. So long thinking she didn’t need to. Silco was good to her, he loved her, she was useful to him. That’s all she wanted. Maybe Ekko could have been as well but it was too late for that now too. 

“It’s never too late.”

But it was, because that grenade was in her hand. She didn’t even remember pulling it out, it was as if it had always been there, waiting for this exact moment. This time, it all happened in slow motion. She could see the moment Ekko began to run towards her, a grimace on his face as if he was trying to fight back against his own movements. She didn’t shoot, she didn’t fight back. Let it be the end this time.

Ekko was upon her again, sorrow distorted his eyes but she couldn’t look away no matter how hard she tried. Had he been this anguished before?

“Just do it.” She begged him, but his grip on her was already loosening.

“I can’t.” 

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

She closed her eyes as her thumb pulled the pin of her grenade but this time she didn’t reopen them, she didn’t want to see him leave. If she kept them closed they could be together again. She hoped, anyway.

A flash took her away from the bridge and onto a rooftop. Not the schoolhouse roof she had recently visited but a different one she hadn’t seen in many years. She leaned against a brick chimney on the very edge, tears streaming endlessly from her face. 

Her braids weren’t yet long enough to even reach her lap. She hated this memory, had relieved it in her dreams hundreds of times since it happened, and each time all she could think of when she woke up was how badly she wanted it to have ended differently.

Footsteps shuffled hesitantly on the roof behind her but she didn’t turn around. Initially she hoped it might have been Silco, there to tell her he wasn’t angry with her, he still loved her and to come home. Then she thought it might be one of Silco’s men, there to make her pay the price of the job she had fucked up that afternoon. But a very small and quiet part of her thought, or rather hoped, that just maybe it was Vi. Back from the dead and there to forgive her and take her away so they could be sisters again.

But she didn’t think she could handle the sting of letting her delusions get one over on her again. So she didn’t turn around, not even when the person behind her spoke up.

“Are you okay?”

•••

Jinx woke in the firelights cold storage room vastly more tired than she had been when she fell asleep. Whatever they had laced her water with was slow going through her system. The lantern the firelights left there had died out and her eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness once again.

Everything ached and she still had no idea how long she’d been sitting in this room but she could no longer see light outline the door in front of her. She pushed herself up off the ground and attempted to stretch her legs and crack her back in the limited space she could move. If she was to leave, she needed to be ready and that did not involve stiff joints.

Her fingers once again began roaming her cuffs in search of the missing screw cap. She found the open screw at the bottom of her right cuff, it was tightly flushed but she had plenty of experience building her inventions with microscopic fragments to do a little damage.

She cracked her knuckles and took a deep breath before lining the corner of her fingernail into the crevices of the screw. Jinx pushed and twisted, stopping only when its resistance threatened to break her nail. She took another deep breath and tried again, pushing and twisting against the flat screw head. Her finger slipped and her hand shot downward pulling the cuffs taught against her wrists. She let out an irritated laugh and yanked the cuffs hard against the metal pile she was chained around.

Nearby footsteps stilled her movements and Jinx watched as the door swung open to let in the large bat eared firelight carrying a new softly lit lantern. He was alone this time, his smaller female companion either remained outside or was off elsewhere entirely. The great hulking man placed the lantern aside and stood tall before her.

“We’ve had discussions and your fate has been decided unanimously amongst the others.” He explained in his mask disguised voice, “Do you have anything to say?”

She eyed the firelight up and down, his uniform was the same as it had been earlier, except for the gun strapped to his hip. Her gun no less. So they were planning on killing her then she realized. Jinx figured she had two choices, she could beg which was beneath her and a little pathetic, or she could request that they execute her somewhere other than this stuffy room and make her escape from there.

“Are you going to do it in here?” She asked, nodding to her colorfully spray painted pistol he bore. 

“No.” He straightened up a little and gave a small cough, unsure or unwilling to share the full story with her. “The others…wish to witness the spectacle.”

A public execution? Maybe the firelights weren’t the sheepish softies she thought they were if they were voting for the firing squad to be their nighttime entertainment. She chuckled softly to herself, a gesture mimicked by Mylo lurking somewhere in the dark.

“Then, no.” She told him, “I have nothing to say. Not here anyways.”

The firelight nodded. “If that is the case, is there anything we can-“

His question, whatever it was, was interrupted by the fox masked firelight who threw herself into the room, out of breath and frantic. Unable to explain herself in her state she gestured to him and let out a wheezed, “Come.”

The firelights spared her no last glance and took off through the door together. She heard no shouts or movement in the few seconds the door was open, it was unlikely they were in trouble. Whatever the reason for their sudden departure, it was now or never to get out of her cuffs.

Jinx forwent fooling around with the screws and began winding the chain connecting the cuffs together as tight as she could get them. She cursed herself for wasting her time and not doing this in the first place but that was something she could laugh about later. The chain of the cuffs knotted up and she twisted her wrists against them, ignoring the sting of them cutting into her skin. Her hands slipped and the chain fell loose again, still intact. Mylo laughed wickedly behind her. Better hurry baby blue, hurry before they come for you.

“Shut up!” She snapped and began winding the chain up again. Her body began growing hot and she could feel the shimmer in her veins bubbling to the surface causing sweat to bead across her forehead and along her spine. 

She could hear shouting now from beyond the metal door and that foolish delusional part of her briefly thought it could be Silco’s men coming for her like she had believed in the past. Maybe he had put out an all-points bulletin to scour Zaun in search of her. 

With the chain tightened against itself she began pushing the cuffs against her wrists again. Her heart was racing, the cuffs slipped against sweat and whatever blood they had managed to draw from her. The voices were growing louder along with heavy thudding footsteps making their way towards the door. 

With a groan she pushed the cuffs together with all her power and stumbled backwards into the metal pole when the chain snapped apart just as the storage room door flew open.

Her eyes snapped to the door, gleaming with shimmer and ready to rage when she caught sight of the figure blocking her exit and backed down. She instinctively kept her arms behind her, giving the illusion that she was still cuffed as Ekko looked her over.

His dark skin was marred with ash, scrapes and bruises. His clothing was torn and ragged. The bullet casing from where Marcus shot him was still buried deep in the front of his overalls. His face, however, was not the soft and sorrowful one she had seen in her dream. To say he was furious would be an understatement.

“You’re alive…” Jinx gasped, unaware she was holding her breath until that very moment.

“No thanks to you.” He spat out with hatred and contempt lacing his words. “They told me you were here and I just didn’t believe them. What the hell are you doing here?”

She swallowed her words, unable to speak them aloud anymore. She needed help. Silco lied to her, betrayed her, let her be injected and tormented. She couldn’t stop the flow of thoughts once they began. One half of her brain held the line while the other fought her own defenses, trying to keep her from truly hating Silco. Each time she remembered seeing him in that chair after she woke up, a different memory of everything good he had done for her clouded her anger. 

Ekko moved towards her, a noticeable limp slowing him down but his wrath kept him moving. Before she could react his hand was around her throat pinning her against the metal pipe behind her. She coughed and gasped for air under his unrelenting grip.

“You have thirty seconds.” He hissed, “What the hell do you want?”

“Saved.” Jinx managed to choke out.

Ekko released her and she sank to her knees on the ground sputtering. She looked up to see him staring not at her, but at his own hand that had just been around her throat as if shocked at his own actions. 

“I was supposed to die.” She began, a hapless drone drowning in the severity of what she was saying. “I was ready to die but, he found me. He saved me but…it…changed me. I- I didn’t want this. He told me- he promised me he’d never do this-“

She looked up at Ekko who no longer looked ashamed of his recent transgressions but rather stood before her with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. She laughed bitterly, she was a fool for believing Ekko would still think she was worth saving after their fight. Both of them were supposed to die yet somehow neither of them did. Did that mean nothing to him?

“You have nothing but nerves to ask for help after years of hunting and destroying my people.” Ekko shook his head in disbelief. Was this not what he wanted? Did he not spend years tracking her down trying to get her away from Silco?

“I never tried to kill you in all those years.” She reminded him indignantly. 

“You tried to blow me up not two days ago!” His voice was growing louder the more they spoke, truthfully Jinx couldn’t remember the last time they had a conversation this long, even if they were arguing. “You killed my people and that killed me.”

“You also tried to kill me?” She countered, her blood was still crusted to the inside of her nose where he had struck her. “And I wasn’t trying to kill you technically, you just happened to be there.”

Ekko scoffed and turned away from her in disbelief. They could do this all day, Jinx had nowhere to be. Except the gallows apparently. 

“I thought you were dead!” He shouted, turning back to look at her. His expression was somewhere between resentment and desolation. “I thought I watched you blow yourself up!”

“Well I would have if someone hadn’t launched my grenade into the sky.” It was taking nothing but pure force of will to not bring her hands around her front and gesture with them while she spoke. 

“Oh I’m sorry?” Ekko laid his hands against his chest in mock sorrow, “Did you want me to apologize for not letting you kill yourself?”

Jinx sat back against the pole and looked away. He didn’t get it. What was she supposed to say that he didn’t already know? For a while, neither of them said anything. It was as close to civility they had gotten in a very long time. Each time she looked at him he stared for a few seconds longer, his gaze always ending on her eyes. She could feel her cheeks burn with embarrassment under his watch and had to fight the urge to tell him to stop looking at her like that. 

Their silence was finally broken by a deep sigh on Ekko’s part. “If I let you go, would you go back to him?”

It was a question Jinx had been avoiding asking herself the last few days because as much as she’d claim she didn’t know the answer, the truth was that she was unwilling to admit it.

“I don’t know.” She answered after a few quiet moments. “Are you going to kill me?”

“Not tonight.” He took a deep breath, his eyes vacant, lost in thought. Whatever it was he truly wanted to say, he kept it to himself. Tired and still limping from the injuries her bomb had inflicted upon him, Ekko turned and made for the door, pausing as his hand hovered over its handle.

“Why’d you do it?” He asked, keeping his focus directed at the door. 

“Because you wouldn’t.” It wasn’t until he was about to kill her that she realized she would be fine with it. All her pain and all her anger could be gone, it would have been so easy. Why could things never just be easy for her? Ekko nodded in understanding and left through the heavy metal door without another word leaving her alone again and much colder than she could ever remember being. 

Jinx had been so jarred by Ekko’s return and their conversation that she briefly forgot she had broken out of her cuffs. She stood and took a moment to fully stretch out her limbs, popping and cracking several joints in the process. Voices on the other side of the storage room door pulled her attention and she crossed the room to press an ear against its icy metal surface.

The firelights on the other side were unmasked, their true voices much softer and hushed as they argued amongst themselves.

“Are you serious?” A male voice demanded, “Eve’s not even in the ground yet and you want to exonerate her killer?”

“You know it’s not like that.” Ekko replied, a slight edge in his voice. “We have rules, she’s not just free to do as she pleases.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The male voice continued and Jinx was willing to bet any amount of coin she didn’t have it was the bat eared brute speaking. “It’s the precedence it sets. She spends years working for Silco, helping him distribute shimmer, letting our children be sold for experiments and trade labor, killing our people, and you want us to forgive her? How can you ask that of us?”

“There isn’t a single person here who hasn’t fucked up one way or another.” A softer voice, the fox masked firelight, Jinx assumed, spoke up. “I’m not saying we should roll out the welcome mat, but if she truly wants to change, our ideals and identities are meaningless if we don’t at least give her that chance.”

“She doesn’t truly want to be here.” The other firelight interjected, getting more agitated. “She’s mad at Silco right now, what’s going to happen when she isn’t angry at him anymore and wants to go back to him? We’re the ones who are going to pay the price and it’s going to be on your head and none of them are going to forgive you when that happens if there’s even anyone left to do it. You can’t let your history with her supersede the safety of your people.”

“Enough.” Ekko chimed in, silencing his fellow firelights squabbling, “I’m well aware of the risks her presence brings, both physically and emotionally. I know our people want to see blood but Fallon’s right, our entire mission is second chances and maybe she doesn’t deserve one, but maybe she’s the key to finally turning the tides of this war. Jinx isn’t Powder. Whatever we used to be is long gone, and regardless this decision isn’t mine or even yours to make. We’ll revisit this in the morning. I’ll address the others shortly.” 

One of the firelights scoffed but made no other response. Their footsteps faded as the group walked away from the storage room entrance and Jinx returned to the pole she was no longer cuffed to but still expected to be by. Ekko’s words played over and over in her mind as she lowered herself to the ground and laid across the cold metal flooring. Whatever we used to be is long gone.

Whatever that meant.

Chapter Text

Sleeping on a cold metal floor was much more comfortable than expected when Jinx could actually lay down on it. Her groggy, drug induced, sleep had been riddled with dreams, delusions, and nightmares she’d rather soon forget. Some of her sister, some of Silco, but most were of Ekko.

It was rare Jinx slept in long enough increments at a time to reach rem sleep but when she did it was never pleasant. She oftentimes felt as though her dreams were a punishment like the voices in her head. A way to remind herself that she had done horrible things and that everything that happened was her fault. She couldn’t forget even if she wanted to.

Her dreams of Ekko would go one of two ways. The first and less frequent ones were made up of the very few cherished memories Jinx had of growing up in Zaun. Every happy memory she could recall having involved Ekko in some capacity. Before everything went to shit he had typically been the mastermind behind most of Vi, Mylo, and Claggor’s sneaky escapades through the undercity. He had a certain knack for spying on Benzo’s customers that the good natured shopkeeper was never able to figure out, or at least he never let on that he knew.

 Even when Mylo convinced Vi not to let Powder tag along, Ekko always made sure she was included. And when Powder was left behind, he always had something to keep her occupied with so she didn’t feel alone. She never told him but it was one of the reasons she liked him so much back then; he saw her.

The other dreams of Ekko consisted of three distinct moments Jinx believed were responsible for the derailment of their relationship. The first, a memory from when she was fourteen and Ekko was fifteen, two years after she had been taken in by Silco. There was a lot from that time in her life that she had forgotten by means of repression but that memory clung to her senses in every conceivable way. In her dreams she remembered it in such perfect detail that it would leave her nauseous, empty, and sweating when she finally woke from it. Sometimes she wished she could go back and do it all over again, just to see what would happen. But ‘what if’ was a dangerous game she didn’t like to play.

The second dream was a memory that took place two years after the first. Part of her believed Ekko had given up on her by that point, but now she wasn’t so sure. She did not particularly like this dream for the same reasons she didn’t like talking about her feelings or over analyzing her emotions or admitting to her delusions; she didn’t like being vulnerable. And it was without question that that memory contained the one and only moment of vulnerability she had allowed herself the last seven years. It was one of those moments most people would look back on with embarrassment years later, Jinx however, looked back on it with fervent desiderium.

And the third, she had only dreamt of once but she fully believed it would be making several more appearances alongside the others, happened only three days ago. When Jinx detonated a bomb in a last ditch attempt to end the cycle of self destruction she seemed to be trapped in. It didn’t take long for the ‘what if’s to settle in, she had attributed that to being tied up for two days almost immediately after the fact. What if they hadn’t fought? What if he had gone through with it? What if she had surrendered and gone with him?

This is no fun. A quiet whisper sang into her ear, prompting Jinx up from her position on the floor. How long were they going to keep her in this stupid room anyways? The lantern left there by the other firelights was dim and close to going out, she picked it up from its place atop a metal crate and carried it over to the rooms shelf lined walls. The chain of her cuffs might be broken but they were still tight around her wrists and begging to be removed.

She dug through boxes of scrap metal, broken gadgets, gears, washers, and various loose wires she had no doubt she could rig into some form of an electric tripwire if need be. Plotting against the firelights was definitely no way to convince them to help her but it was second nature to always plan for the worst.

Eventually Jinx stumbled upon a bundle of thin copper wire. With the last shreds of light she had left she jammed the wire into the ratchet slot of her right cuff and tightened it against her wrist, disengaging the interlock. The unlocked cuff clattered loudly to the ground and she rubbed at the tender bruises she’d given herself trying to bust the chain open the previous night before repeating the process on her other cuff. She twisted her wrists and stretched her arms, pleased to finally be fully freed.

With her first order of business out of the way, Jinx continued rummaging through boxes, crates, and drawers in search of a small science experiment, humming softly to herself as she went. There was simply nothing quite like losing herself in a project, it was one of those things that truly quieted her mind, especially once she finally cracked the sequences needed to exact her innovation. It was a thrill that could not be beat. 

Along with the first dead lantern the firelights had left in there, Jinx sat cross legged on the cold metal floor and began taping two frayed copper wires together, leaving a bit exposed on each side. The first side, she twisted together to create one strand of wire, and the other side she wrapped one strand around the tip of a loose battery. She opened the side to the unlit lantern and carefully pressed the unwound wire against the other battery tip, making sure to keep her finger on the thick tape she wrapped around it. With the wire heated up she pressed it into the thick wooden rod in the lantern's center, wildly sparking it back to life. 

She was just beginning to dismantle her jerry-rigged lighter when heavy footsteps approached the creaking metal door to the storage room and swung it open. Before she could even look up to see who entered she was thrown back against a stack of crates and encased in sticky yellow crystals.

“What the hell is this?” Jinx hissed as she struggled against her new yet alarmingly more abhorrent restraints. She had seen the firelights use these crystals before, but she never cared to pay close enough attention to them to figure out how they worked. Frankly, she never thought she’d be on the receiving end of them. 

Ekko entered the room, flanked by the bat eared man aiming a gun at her, and crossed over to where Jinx had just been sitting. “What were you building?” He demanded, “A weapon? An explosive?”

“A lighter, you freak.” She explained, her voice wavering as she continued to struggle inside the crystal. “You and your screwball friends left me in the dark for two days, I thought a lantern might liven the place up. What is this place anyway? It's a little cluttered to be a jail cell.”

“It’s a boiler room.” Ekko stood from his squatted position above Jinx’s science experiment, seemingly satisfied with his investigation that confirmed she wasn’t in fact building a bomb out of a discarded battery and two taped copper wires. Though Jinx was sure she somehow could if she wanted to.

“Then why is it so cold in here?”

Ekko shook his head and scowled. “You’re not off to a great start here. Breaking out of your restraints, crafting a potential weapon-“

“Two things I wasn’t told I couldn’t do.-“

“Shut up.” Ekko was clearly in no mood to play, he took apart her makeshift lighter and tossed it in a drawer alongside her broken cuffs then turned to his companion behind him. The two exchanged no words, only brief nods, prompting the tall burly firelight to exit the still open door, leaving them alone. 

Jinx’s eyes curiously followed the man as he left into the bright and sunny space encompassing her dark room. What part of the undercity could they possibly be in that it was sunny? “Where are we?” She asked Ekko, her eyes still glued to the open door.

“Base.” He offered her with no further explanation, “The exact whereabouts are none of your business at this moment.”

She turned to look at him. He stood before her with his arms crossed over his chest and that familiar angry scowl on his face. She couldn’t remember when that look became his default expression, even many years after their paths diverged he still looked at her with hope in his eyes. Hope that had been clearly snuffed out by her. 

Ekko crossed the room silently and sat down on an upended crate. He was no longer limping, apparently either healed or pretending he wasn’t injured, though Jinx couldn’t figure out why he’d pretend around her. He never tried to prove he was tough before. 

“I’ve had some time to think.” He started, his eyes dark and fixed on her, “Not even close to enough time, but it’s one of the many things we’re short on around here. You are not our friend. You’re not our ally. We don’t owe you anything. Except maybe a taste of your own medicine.”

We? Our? The Ekko who spoke to her was not speaking as the one who used to hold her hand while they crossed sewer rapids and stole her shiny pieces of plump red fruit. This was firelight leader Ekko, and certainly not her friend.

“What is it exactly you want from us?”

She sighed, she had yet to say those words out loud. Mostly because she was afraid that once she said them, she would no longer mean them. “The doctor. He- he’s the one who did this.”

Her ears began to ring as flashes of the doctor's face, disfigured by the hextech explosion she caused years ago, burned in her mind. She could feel the shimmer swirling in her veins along with phantom gashes of pain in each spot he injected her. The memory was overwhelming, shaking, clawing, and prying at each individual nerve in her brain. Jinx’s hands struggled against the crystals her chest and upper arms were encased in, desperate to pull at her hair and dig into her scalp in hopes of getting the debilitating recall to stop.

“Jinx!”

The ringing faded, subdued by Ekko’s shouting, and replaced by the sounds of her own labored breathing. Jinx’s eyes darted around the room wildly before landing on the tall boy before her. His hardened expression had just barely shifted into concern but it was enough to ground her.

“I want him dead.” She muttered coldly, then let her eyes fall back to the ground.

“You don’t need our help for that.” Maybe she was being paranoid but she thought she heard a hint of a laugh in Ekko’s voice. “We both know you’ve killed plenty.”

“Singed has resources I don’t know how to handle. Genetic mutations, chemically altered botany colonies, and something big in some secret closed off room in his lab.” Jinx started to explain, the biological part of science had never been Jinx’s strong suit. Physics, engineering, and pyrotechnics on the other hand… “He is well guarded, practically untouchable even by Silco. And I-“ her words caught in the back of her throat as her heart began to race anew. “I don’t-“

“You don’t what?” Ekko asked, impatient and feigning disinterest.

“I don’t want him to know it was me.” She finished. “I know you think I’m some perfect lapdog but I’ve fucked a lot of things up for him and he- he never gets angry at me. The doctor’s death will cause an avalanche of bullshit in the undercity. I don’t know if he’d forgive me.”

For a moment Ekko stared at her incredulously then let out a deep strained laugh as if it was the only possible reaction for him to come up with. “So you want us on the hook for it? You want to put an even bigger target on our backs, like Silco isn’t paying the Piltover enforcers enough to hunt us down and kill us for the shit that you do! Are you insane or are you stupid because I genuinely can’t believe there’s any other reason you’d come here with this bullshit.”

“It’s not like that!” Jinx scoffed, though she had to admit Ekko made several valid points that didn’t mean she couldn’t persuade him.

Ekko cut her off before she could continue, clearly not done with his tirade. “And what do you think is going to happen? You think Silco’s not going to figure out what happened? You think he’s going to think the man dropped dead of his own accord? You think he’s not going to find out where you are and just let us get away with galavanting around the fissures with his daughter, killing his colleagues?”

“I’ll make something up!” She offered, growing a little more desperate the more Ekko chiseled away at her plan, “I’ll tell him I got captured and put in the asylum! He’d believe it!”

“Okay so we help you kill the doctor, then what happens?” He asked. “Now we’re not just a thorn in their side but we’ve got a gun to their head, they’re not going to let it slide, we need better protection.”

Jinx waved her hands as if to tell him to go ahead and offer up a solution. “Like what? Weapons? I know how to build them, don’t I?”

“The doctor isn’t enough.” Ekko stood and crossed the room, his eyes remained fixed on Jinx’s, unwillingly to miss even the slightest reaction she might give. “Silco needs to die too.”

This was what she was afraid of. She had done her best to avoid truly thinking about her situation because deep down she knew the truth. The truth that Ekko’s second in command had warned him about just the night before. Jinx was angry at Silco, no doubt. But it was just that- anger. She would forgive him, stupid thing that it was, but she knew she would. Silco had given her a home, a life, unconditional support and affection, she couldn’t betray him. Not like that anyhow.

“Look. I don’t care about screwing over the chem-barons.” She began, taking a deep breath to steady her head and gather her thoughts, “Shit I might actually enjoy fucking with some of them. Their dealings, their businesses, their money, consider it yours to do with what you wish. I’ll enhance your weapons, I’ll even build you new ones. But I’m not killing Silco. I can’t.”

“And if I kill him?” Her eyes met Ekko’s, the brown eyes she had remembered to be soft and warm were cold, steel, and full of resentment, “Are you gonna stop me?”

Her eyes fell as she considered his words. Betray the people who help her, or betray Silco? Betray the people who hate her or betray the person who loved her. “We can work something out.” She offered, she needed time to assess the damage working with the firelights would cause before agreeing to any other plan. “He loves me. We’re family. I can’t just turn my back on him.”

It was slight, the blow her words landed on Ekko. His eyes narrowed, clearly wanting to say something but decided against it. “He mutated you just to keep you alive. That’s not love, that’s control.”

Now it was Jinx’s turn to be taken aback. Ekko didn’t understand, and she knew he never would but that was fine, he didn’t need to understand he just needed to accept her. 

“Will you help me or not?” She asked after several minutes of ear splitting silence and nausea inducing eye contact. 

Ekko closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I once promised you I’d always be there for you. Granted I didn’t know you’d adopt a crime lord and become a terrorist at the time but…if you agree to our terms and our rules, then I think I can try and make good on my promise. Better late than never, right?”

“What rules?” Her arms fell slack in her lap as the sticky yellow crystals shattered around her and released her from her disgusting sap prison.

“Come with me. I have some people I want you to meet first.” He extended his arm down to her and for a moment she just stared at his outstretched hand. After everything, all the fights, all the arguments, all the blood. He still stood before her, and offered her his hand.

She took his hand and pulled herself to her feet, her head slightly spinning from dehydration. She followed him out of the boiler room door where the bat eared man rejoined them. As Ekko and his second began descending a rusty metal staircase, Jinx remained frozen, her eyes fixated on an enormous flourishing tree despite the intense burn the shining sun seared into her eyes. The sun. What part of the undercity was this?

“Jinx?” 

She forced her eyes from the tree and looked down at Ekko watching her from halfway down the stairs. “Is that a real tree?”

He ascended the stairs once more and stood next to her on the small elevated platform outside the boiler room.

“You know, your sister said the same thing.”

Harsh whispers clouded Jinx’s mind and she squeezed her eyes closed at the sound of that stupid enforcer's cacophonous laugh. Her hands covered her ears briefly and she let her fingers entangle and pull at her hair when she slowly removed them.

“Where are these people then?” She hissed, no longer entranced by the firelights tree.

He motioned for her to follow him and they descended the stairs. Annoyed as she was at the mention of her sister, Jinx couldn’t help but remain in awe at her surroundings. Grass swayed in a breeze softly below her feet, wind chimes played a welcoming melody somewhere in the distance, children laughed and skipped rope and chased a fluffy barking dog in circles, and most notably the air was clean. She wasn’t suffocating or taking quick shallow breaths, she could actually deeply inhale, something her lungs no doubt greatly appreciated.

As Ekko took her around to the other side of the massive tree her footsteps became heavy and hesitant. Partially due to the crowd of a dozen or so people standing before a small wooden platform but mostly due to the huge expansive painting on the wall above the platform. She didn’t know where to look first. Into the eyes of her brothers she inadvertently killed, who still haunted and harassed her daily. Into the eyes of the father who died trying to protect them. At her sister who up until a week ago she believed to be dead. Or at herself, at the chubby cheeked and gapped toothed girl she used to be, Powder.

She hadn’t realized she’d halted her movements entirely until Ekko returned to her side and took her arm to escort her the rest of the way to the platform. Jinx looked out at the crowd of sour faces before her, it was certainly not all of the firelights but rather a select few groups and she wondered why they weren’t all there.

“Kneel.” 

Jinx turned around to look at Ekko, partially in disbelief at his order, but he only nodded in confirmation. She begrudgingly did as she was told and sank to her knees on the splintering wooden platform, noting Ekko’s second standing close behind her. She briefly wondered if this was where they were planning on executing her if Ekko hadn’t intervened when he did. 

“Firelights.” Ekko stood in front of her on the platform and addressed his people who looked at him reverently. “You are all very aware of the person who kneels before you. Her reputation certainly precedes her. She comes to us, of her own volition, her own free will, in search of solidarity. Each of you have your own reasons to turn her away. Each of you had your reasons to vouch for her execution. I’d like to take this time to give you the opportunity to air these grievances, and share with Jinx your pain and suffering. And I would then like to ask, not for your forgiveness, but for your acceptance that under the guide of the firelights may Jinx take accountability for her actions, atone for her transgressions, and fight alongside us for the good of our people and for the undercity. I understand that this is a big ask, and an even bigger display of trust, but as your leader, I hold myself fully responsible for her rehabilitation, whatever may come of it.”

All eyes that should be on the annoying, yapping, boy savior were instead fixed on Jinx, and she suddenly felt uncomfortably exposed. Why was Ekko sticking his neck out like this for her? The amount of sappy bleeding heart trust the firelights had for each other made her nauseous. 

Ekko gestured to an emotional woman holding a piece of paper, being comforted by her husband. “Saoirse, please come forward.”

The couple took a few steps closer to the platform and the weepy woman’s shaking hands unfolded her paper. “I- I-“ her words turned to sobs each time she tried to speak no matter how hard she tried to steady her voice. “I hadn’t-“ 

The paper crinkled in the woman’s hands as she pressed it against her husband's chest and cried, her sobbing getting the best of her. He put one arm around her and she covered her face with her hands, as her husband read aloud her letter instead.

“I hadn’t spoken to my father in twenty years, not since he abandoned his family in the fissures in pursuit of the great Piltovian dream. Despite his worthless past gambling addiction that put his family on the streets he placed his bets well when became an enforcer and married a prosperous commander's daughter to begin his replacement family. I thought I had no love left for him but when he contacted me a year ago my heart broke all over again. Even though I was no longer 10 years old I was still a little girl who longed for her fathers love.”

Jinx closed her eyes to keep the stinging she felt from forming tears. Ekko was not as clever as he thought he was.

“For a long time I did not respond to his requests to meet with me because I did not want to feel weak but eventually I gave in. We agreed to meet on the docks of river Pilt where he took me fishing when I was younger. However, on progress day, Officer Leon Romer was one of six enforcers killed in an explosion in the academy district caused by Jinx. I now not only am grieving the loss of my father but the loss of my opportunity for reconciliation and forgiveness which was cruelly taken from me.”

Alright well that’s a bit dramatic, Jinx thought. “I mean you can still forgive him-“

“Quiet!”

Ekko’s furious voice silenced not only Jinx, but also the surrounding firelights not within the crowd talking and playing amongst themselves.

“This is not an open mic discussion.” He hissed, “They are going to speak and you are going to shut the hell up and listen.” Jinx put up her hands in surrender and turned back to the crowd.

“Thank you, Saoirse. We’re sorry for your loss.” He nods his head to her and her husband as they step back into the crowd then gestures to another group within it, “Dax, please step forward.”

An older man surrounded by three teenage boys stepped towards the platform, none of them particularly weeping much to Jinx’s satisfaction.

“Uh, hi, My name is Dax. These are my sons; Hollis, Jack, and Riley.” The boys looked up to Jinx with the same blank expressions most children in the undercity develop by the age of sixteen when they realize whatever future they’re planning is unobtainable beyond simply surviving. “My wife, Vera,” Dax continued, “Was a blessing, truly. Despite our circumstances she was always happy. She loved unconditionally, was fiercely loyal, she was everything to us. A few years ago she caught a bad cough. We thought it was just a cough but when she went to the doctor he told her she had miner’s lung. They prescribed her shimmer to ease her symptoms and it went downhill from there. Her dose stopped being strong enough and she started scouring the streets for more and more. It disfigured her. Rotted her from the inside out. It wasn’t until after she died we found out not only did she not have miner’s lung at all, but the doctor she went to wasn’t even a real doctor.” The man began to tear up and one of his sons put an arm around him. “She was such a bright and loving person, and she was taken advantage of. She did not deserve that. None of us do.”

Yes, obviously, shimmer is bad? Jinx thought. It’s a drug isn’t it? That’s why Silco wanted to keep her away from it. How was it her fault some lady didn’t have the good sense to get a second opinion and immediately started lighting up.

Ekko thanked Dax and the man and his sons returned to their spot in the crowd. “Lastly, Micah, please come forward.”

A young man barely a few years older than her and Ekko stepped forward along with a small half chirean girl with flaming red hair who couldn’t be more than five years old. Jinx thought Micah had nodded in acknowledgement to her before remembering the tall beastly man standing behind her. She turned to look at Ekko’s second who had removed his white wolf mask, a chirean, just like the girl.

“My name is Micah, this here with me is Peri.” The young girl held her hands against her chest in front of her, nervously picking at her nails and avoiding looking at the platform. “Peri is my niece. Her father, Scar’s brother, was killed during an unrelated incident about three years ago.”

Jinx turned and looked at the chirean behind her. Scar…part of her wondered if he made that name up himself. His real name was probably something absurd like Greg, or Seymour.

“Peri’s mother, Eve, however, was a very well respected firelight and an incredibly loyal and caring woman, who I was proud to call my sister.” Micah stopped talking to clear his throat as he began getting choked up. “Eve was shot and killed on an airship on progress day during a shimmer dismantlement that could not have gone more wrong. We want to leave this world better than how we found it. For Peri, and for all the people of the undercity who’ve lost so much for nothing in return.”

Eve. Jinx looked at the man and his niece searching for recollection in their faces. She shot a lot of people on progress day, especially on the airship. Who was Eve…her eyes widened in recognition when Peri finally looked up at her. The wacko with pink hair. She had looked so similar to Vi, Jinx couldn’t have stopped herself from freezing up even if she wanted to. Even once she realized Eve wasn’t Vi she couldn’t get her sister's face out of her head along with all the horrible things she had said to her the last time she saw her. 

I told you to stay away! Why did you leave me? Because you’re a jinx!

“These few instances barely scratch the surface of Jinx’s crimes.” The sound of Ekko’s voice pulled Jinx from her unwelcomed daydream. “But your experiences have weight and meaning and they will never be forgotten.”

Okay so all the firelights hate her and really just want her dead, that was old news. Jinx really didn’t understand what the point of this grand production of Ekko’s was. She has more important things to think about than feeling guilty.

“Jinx.” Ekko began, addressing her directly. “If you truly want what we discussed earlier, these are our terms. One: until it has been decided otherwise by the entire court, you will not attend court meetings, you will not be let in on court decisions and you will not have a voice within the firelights. Two: you will attend sunrise introspection every single morning and our twice weekly shimmer rehabilitation group sessions without complaint and without fail. Three: you will not be permitted weapons of any kind, nor will you be permitted to leave base without supervision. Four: your name will be added to the daily chore roster which will include caring for livestock, cleaning the bunks, and preparing meals. And lastly, you will assist Enver for our monthly funeral rites in two days for those we have lost. Are you agreeable to these terms?”

None of it sounded particularly interesting really. And most of it sounded like she was about to become their unofficial prisoner. But if she wanted Singed dead, what other choice did she have?

“Sure. I guess.” She shrugged and looked to Ekko, who was unamused.

“Saoirse.” He turned from her and addressed the weepy woman once again, “Do you believe Jinx should be given the opportunity to abide by these rules and live here amongst the firelights?”

She wiped her tears on her sleeves and took a deep calming breath. “Yes.” Despite being agreeable, her words came through clenched teeth.

“Dax,” Ekko faced the second group, “Do you believe Jinx should be given the opportunity to abide by these rules and live here amongst the firelights?”

“Yes.” The man nodded and wrapped his arms around his son's shoulders in comfort.

They don’t though. Jinx wanted to interrupt and ask why they were agreeing to something none of them clearly agreed with but remained silent, lest Ekko scold her again.

“Peri.” Jinx’s attention shot to the little girl clutching her uncle's side. She hadn’t anticipated a little girl would be the deciding factor in this trial. “Do you believe Jinx should be given the opportunity to abide by these rules and live here amongst the firelights?”

“Yes.” Her voice was soft and sweet and the slight lisp in her words brought a small smile to Jinx’s face. Powder had a lisp too.

Ekko bowed his head to the crowd of his people then once again extended his hand to Jinx, still kneeling on the ground. 

“Welcome to the firelights.”

Chapter Text

Jinx couldn’t tell what she was more annoyed at, her fervent desire to lay in the grass below the firelights tree and stare into the sun for hours before going off and exploring every nook and cranny of the base itself, or the boy savior and his annoyingly tall chirean friend escorting her through the premises at gunpoint and denying her her newfound longing to do fuck all.

Despite Ekko’s helping hand, the scowl on his face told Jinx enough, he wasn’t happy about their situation. The irony was not lost on her considering if she had appealed to the firelights six years ago, Ekko would have been doing backflips across the cracks of the fissures. Unfortunately for her, it wasn’t six years ago and there were few things as undoing as the passage of time. 

The indignant glares of each and every firelight she passed might have been enough to send her packing if she didn’t have more important things to worry about. They could be mad at her all they wanted as long as it meant Singed was dead in the end. And who knows, maybe they’d at least get a kick out of bossing her around for a little bit. 

After the jury had cleared away post-trial, Ekko rambled on a bit about expectations and pointed to a few crudely built shacks and doorways. Whatever he was saying went in one ear and out the other as Jinx was significantly more busy trying to steady her reeling head. Far too much had happened in the last week for her to keep track of.

In her opinion, having a funeral for your past self, having your estranged sister come back from the dead, and killing yourself in an explosion then being resurrected by your dads own personal mad scientist are all things that should have at least six months of adjustment time between them. But nothing in her life could ever be easy, or normal for that matter.

“Meals are at seven, one, and seven.” Ekko continued rambling on as they walked and Jinx only half heartedly wondered what parts of the conversation she had missed, “Because you’re to participate in sunrise introspection I won’t schedule you for morning meals but you will be expected to alternate between afternoon and evening.”

The more Ekko spoke the more questions Jinx had, the main one being how in the hell did the firelights have the time to cause as many problems for Silco as they do if they’re so busy down here playing house? She could not for the life of her wrap her head around the fact that each time she saw Ekko and his gang out and about starting shit this whole place was sat waiting for them to come home. This one abandoned sewer system that somehow grew such a miraculous tree also housed nearly a hundred zaunites that gardened and tended to a little flock of chickens and taught their kids arithmetics and spelling on a chalkboard under the sun. This place was everything she wished she had when she was younger.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Huh-?” Her attention pulled from the group of children being lectured in the grass back to Ekko. “Yeah no I’m listening.”

Ekko crossed his arms over his chest. “What was I saying?”

“What? I don’t know, you were gabbing away about chores.” Would it kill him to give her a minute to just stand here and stare? He didn’t need to show her everything and explain everything right now and she doubted he would be doing anything important anytime soon with his hobbling leg he was still pretending wasn’t injured. 

“No! Damn it, Jinx, pay attention!” He turned away and continued walking with Scar towards a steep, unreliable looking staircase that led to a framed opening in the sewer wall. “There are nine entrances around the premises that lead into the barracks.” He pointed to rust faded writing that labeled the top of the doorway, “two-southeast, will get you closest to yours. All of them are interconnected but there’s no need to go wandering around the passages and they’re all guarded at all times anyways.”

She wondered what exactly it was Ekko thought she was going to get up to in the sewer tunnels to warrant him reminding her that they’re well guarded and shook her head. He’d get bored of being on edge soon enough. 

“You’ll be in block E with Fallon.” Jinx followed Ekko and Scar into the musty, mildew scented passage. Fallon…Fallon…why did that name sound so familiar? “The inner tunnels are less difficult to navigate than the outer tunnels but still tricky especially at night, keep an eye on the orange squares at the corners of each hall. If they’re on your left you're going in, if they’re on your right you’re headed out.”

She squinted her eyes in search of the alleged orange squares and could only just barely make them out, no thanks to the dimly lit, hazy, green chem-lamps that flashed softly in each corner of the sewers passages, the only form of lighting within them. 

In a small alcove at the end of the tunnel was a rickety metal ladder Ekko began climbing. Jinx looked to Scar who motioned for her to follow him, then joined them, bringing up the rear and making sure she was cloistered between them at all times. Maybe it was because he wasn’t human, or maybe he really was that well adjusted, but Jinx found it nearly impossible to read Scar. His expression, it seemed, was permanently neutrally unpleasant. 

The ladder landing housed only one door, a small painted plaque visible under another slowly flashing green chem-lamp labeled it ‘E-52’. Ekko swung the door open, its rusty hinges squeaked so loudly Jinx ground her teeth together. Sneaking in or out of there would be impossible. 

Inside a young girl with tanned skin and a mound of curly hair lounged on a metal framed cot with a book in her lap. The room was brightly illuminated by sunshine from an open door near the foot of the girls bed. On the opposing wall was another cot, made up and unused. Two racks took up the space between the beds, one lined with clothes, bags, and a singular fox shaped white mask. Ekko’s third, Jinx realized. She couldn’t be surprised they put her with one of the guards, but she rolled her eyes internally nonetheless. They don’t trust her, they don’t want her here, yada yada yada.

“Fallon, this is-“

“Powder!” The girl slammed her book shut and jumped off her bed with a beaming smile, “I’m Fallon, nice to finally meet you properly, Ekko never shuts up about you.”

Jinx recoiled and stared at the girl's outstretched hand in revulsion as the sound of her former name rang in her ears and caused her heart to thud. She would come back to the ‘Ekko never shuts up about you’ part later.

“It’s Jinx.” She said definitively and shot Ekko a dirty look, pointedly ignoring Fallon’s attempt at a handshake. “Powder is dead.”

Ekko raised a hand to stop Jinx before she could continue. She didn’t doubt the rage he could see in her eyes. “We’ll talk later. Find Fallon if you have any questions in the meantime.”

The two firelights left the way the three had come, leaving Jinx and her new, still pleasantly smiling roommate alone. So not only did Ekko still refer to her as Powder amongst his friends, he apparently talked about her frequently and Jinx wasn’t sure which part bothered her the most. 

“Sorry about the mix up.” Fallon started, awkwardly shuffling on her feet under Jinx’s heated stare. “We all knew who Jinx was but with Powder being on the memorial wall and all we all sort of assumed you two were separate people.”

“What changed?”

The firelight smiled sheepishly, a thin bush spreading across her cheeks as she realized she probably shouldn’t be telling this to Jinx. “Ekko’s reaction to you being here. I’ve never seen him like that before. I think that’s when most of us pieced together who you were to him and why he-” She cut herself off, definitely divulging too much information. “I mean you would have thought we told him you had come back from the dead.”

“He probably did think that.” Singed’s terrifying face flashed in her mind and she turned away from her roommate to squeeze her eyes shut in a vain attempt at dissipating the images. “I guess now he’ll just have to settle for dead to him.”

“What happened between you two?” She asked as she picked her book up off her bed and sat with her legs crossed at the foot of it. “It was always ‘Powder Powder Powder’ with him. We had to look for Powder. His friend Powder once told him this and he and his friend Powder used to do this. Then one day your face was up on the wall and he never told us why.”

Jinx knew exactly what had happened. Fallon didn’t even need to tell her when her picture was painted on that wall, she knew what the tipping point was and she was far from keen on recounting the story to a complete stranger as though they were sitting on stools, sipping juice at the Last Drop and reminiscing on their younger years together.

“Is there somewhere I can wash up around here?” She asked instead of answering Fallon’s question. She didn’t care to rehash the past, it served no purpose, especially not when it followed her around and haunted her every waking moment against her own free will. 

“You know what? That is a great idea!” Fallon jumped up from her bed and lifted the mattress where neatly folded pairs of tan cotton pants and white tank tops sat pressed against the metal frame. She handed a set to Jinx then grabbed one of her own and set the mattress back down. “Follow me.”

Oh Jinx was going to kill her. Nosey, newsy, and oblivious? She was doing the firelights a favor. How had Ekko put up with her for so long? 

Reluctantly, Jinx followed Fallon back down the passage she, Scar, and Ekko came up, the little orange squares to the right of them guiding the way out. If the tunnels inside connected each of the barracks together, she wondered if they also connected to the outside tunnels, which would explain why the barracks passages were so well guarded. 

Despite being from the undercity and having ventured through most of the fissures at some point, Jinx had next to no idea where the firelights base could possibly be located. Even the air on the surface of Zaun was grotesque and heavily draped in coal exhaust from departing ships. How nice it was of Piltover to keep Zaun’s steam engines in use and keep their air dense while they were able to ship their goods via the Hexgates and smog controlled airships. There wasn’t a single nook of the undercity Jinx knew that could cultivate anything that wasn’t a titan arum, and even that was a rarity after the chem-barons dug up and rehomed almost all of the ones native to the undercity to propagate in their greenhouse for profit.

Her eyes still burned at the sight of the sun when she and Fallon returned to the base’s courtyard. Ekko was nowhere to be found, but Jinx could see Scar resting in the shade with a small bundle of blankets swaddled in his arms. Just one big happy family the firelights were…

Jinx followed Fallon into a small blue painted and tin roofed shack. The room itself was sweltering to be in and smelled of rust and earthy citrus. Six linen lined tubs separated by thick stained curtains sat in a semicircle in front of a roaring fire. Fallon placed her pile of clothes in front of one of the tubs and grabbed a stack of cloths from a nearby pile. She handed a few to Jinx then began pumping a lever that hovered above each of the six tubs.

“You’ll get the water from here.” She explained, nodding her head to the pipes above where Jinx stood, “It’ll be cold so be careful not to splash too much.

Jinx put the clothes and rags she was still holding down and reached up for the lever, which was surprisingly difficult to pump up and down for so long. As warned, freezing water spilled from the pipes in a long gushing stream and filled the tub generously. When she was satisfied with the amount of water she stopped and turned to find Fallon using a short handled shovel to scoop heaps of hot rocks out of the fire and into a pail. 

Fallon groaned under the weight of the pail and handed it to Jinx. “Here, dump this in the water.” 

Despite this feeling oddly primitive, Jinx did as she was told and dumped the burning rocks into her tub of water. The rocks hissed at the freezing contact and Jinx was enveloped in a cloud of steam, leaving her only able to hear the hissing sound of Fallon’s own water being heated. Jinx set the now empty pail aside and closed the curtain around her tub. She couldn’t recall the last time she had a proper bath. It was simply far too much of a hassle with no access to hot water. But this water, while heated in what she thought was an asinine way, was nice.

Her fingertips gently skimmed the surface of the warm water and she eagerly began unbuckling the clasps of her top. It clattered to the stone ground along with her belt and boots as she hastily pried the boots off her feet. Jinx swung one leg over the edge of the tub and pushed herself up on the ledge. For a moment, she just sat there, letting her feet swing back and forth in the warm water.

“There should be a basket with soaps in it by the wall,” Fallon’s voice called out, disturbing Jinx’s peace. “If you don’t have any just let me know”.

With an irritated glance in the firelights direction Jinx knew the girl couldn’t see, she slowly lowered herself into the tub until she was fully seated on the still warm stones and the water was rippling gently across her chest.  She could fall asleep here, she realized. Enveloped in warmth and moderately safe, what more was needed? 

She began untwisting one of her braids, tossing clips and casings to the ground as she went up her long length of hair. She finger combed a few knots out near the base of her skull and moved on to the other braid before leaning back against the wall of the tub and closing her eyes. Her mind couldn’t help but wander into a bathing room not at all like this one she found herself in recently. One that was lined with gold and paid for with blood. That had unlimited free running hot water. That smelled like bergamot and looked like oppression.

What did Vi actually see in that stupid enforcer? It wasn’t money and her personality was far from anything to write home about. Was she just absolutely insane in bed? Or had Vi been taking lessons from the Jinx academy of self sabotage during her stint in Stillwater? 

She hoped she never had to see her sister googly eyed over that stupid piltie ever again. And if that meant never seeing her again…then so be it.

Jinx shook the hatred from her head and rummaged through the tubs side compartment for the alleged soap, indeed finding several little cubes of citrus and sap scented fragments. She wrapped one up in a cloth and submerged it in the water allowing it to foam up and lather in her hands. 

“So what’s the deal you and Ekko made?” Fallon asked, her voice loud and intrusive over the sounds of splashing water and the crackling fire. “He said something about experimental botany, but actually now that I think about it he might have been talking about the professor then.”

Her voice was like every horrible noise Jinx had ever encountered all at once. Every squeaky, rusty hinge. Every shattered glass. That sound thin plastic made when clammy fingers rubbed against it. Did she hear herself when she spoke? Had anyone ever told her before?

“You know I will say, as awful as everything you’ve done is, I am impressed I can not lie.” She continued to ramble on, “I mean you’re an engineering genius, imagine the things you could do if someone like you had the means to study at the academy. You’d make Jayce Talis look uneducated.”

If she lowered herself just a little more she might be able to drown herself…

“And that’s not to say Jayce isn’t smart of course he is, he invented Hextech after all but there’s something about him I don’t know he just looks dumb you know what I mean?”

“Fallon?” Jinx interrupted, finally.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

The girl laughed softly. “Not much of a talker are you?”

“No.” She wasn’t. And if being subjected to Ekko’s third was to be her fate indefinitely she might just let Singed live. Thankfully, the firelight did in fact shut up, and the only sounds were once again splashing water and crackling fire. 

Jinx dragged the soapy rag across her neck and collarbone, savoring the feeling of warmth dripping down her chest. She scrubbed the bloody and filthy backs of her hands and washed the dried skin from her forehead and cheeks. 

Her body was still covered in the ash and debris from the bridge. Still coated in grim from when she was alive. She began to scrub her skin harder, faster, until it burned. Jinx could feel every inch of herself where Singed’s needle touched, it set her skin aflame and her breathing hitched becoming ragged the more she scrubbed. 

“Stop it.” She whispered softly to herself as tears pricked the corners of her eyes and fell into the bath water. She couldn’t get the feeling of those restraints off of her. No matter how much of the little citrus cubes she used, and no matter how many of the little rags she scoured into threads, she didn’t feel clean enough. Her ears began to ring as memories flashed through her mind again. Voices laughed at her, reveling in her torment. “Stop it!” She demanded again.

She was vaguely aware of Fallon saying something to her again but the girls annoying voice had faded into the background along with her retreating footsteps. Jinx abruptly stood from the water, causing it to splash over the sides. She swung her legs out of the tub and promptly upended it as soon as she landed her feet on the ground. The water flooded the ground and swirled slowly into a drain in the center of the room.

Jinx wrapped herself in one of the linen cloths Fallon had given her and sat on her knees, heaving and sputtering as she collected the cooled rocks to throw back into the fire. Always a mess, she was always a mess. There was always something. Why was there always something? Her fingernails dug into her skin, still burning at the memory of Singed’s shimmer injections. 

“Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it!” Her voice grew louder and more panicked as she pulled at her hair and clawed at her ears, desperate for a reprieve she couldn’t grant herself.

She didn’t know how long she sat on her knees with her head buried in her lap, her fingernails digging into the back of her head. When her breathing had finally slowed and her brain finally quieted she lifted her head back up. The room was exactly as she had left it, nothing broken or shot up. This was new, almost peaceful.

Jinx finished cleaning up the aftermath of her bath and dressed in the clean but drab clothes she was given. She silently wrung as much water from her hair as she could and rebraided it. By the time she was done she noticed the sunlight outside the bathhouse had disappeared almost completely. It had been far too long of a day for her liking. She collected her discarded clothes and headed out, back to the second southeast tunnel that would lead her to her room. 

The courtyard was considerably emptier at night than it was earlier but no less spectacular. People had retreated to little balconies outside their barracks, beautifully decorated with twinkling lights and strings of colorful pennant flags. Somewhere in the distance a lilting tune was strummed and accompanied by a little choir of singing voices. 

No one was fighting, no one was stumbling drunk in the streets. No one was sleeping in the dirt begging for coin or scraps or shimmer. Jinx peered up at the tree, at the winding staircase and varying levels that accompanied it. At the very top Ekko stood with his back to her, leaning against a railing and chatting with someone she couldn’t see. This was where he was trying to take her this whole time…

She turned from the firelights who were more or less ignoring her as she walked through the empty and unwelcoming field. Back inside her and Fallon’s bunker she chucked her discarded clothes on the floor below the metal rack she should have hung them up on and flopped down on her bed. Much to Jinx’s delight, her roommate wasn’t there and that foolish part of her hoped she might actually get some rest. 

•••

Her legs were growing sore the longer she stayed in her crouched position in the rafters of Silco’s office at the top of the Last Drop. The office that once belonged to Vander yet now housed no memory of him. His furniture had been replaced, his photos had been destroyed, the only thing that remained of its previous occupant was the blue-haired girl waiting for her father to return.

For weeks now Silco had been grumbling about things going missing in his office. When the first thing to go missing, a silver antique pocket watch, resulted in the intentional suffocating death of one of the crimelords goons it was conveniently immediately returned. Afterwards, much smaller things decided to go missing. Ash trays, lighters, paperweights, unimportant miscellaneous items all swiped for a very important makeover.

Jinx was hiding all of Silco’s newly refurbished gadgets in the little crawl space she discovered, as well as the space itself, and it was finally time to show him just how crafty and sneaky she’d become. If only he’d come back from his stupid meeting already. She’d been waiting for him for nearly two hours when he swore he’d only be gone for one.

Her ears perked up as Silco’s door slowly creaked open, followed by silence. Something was wrong. Where were his heavy thudding footsteps? Where was the draft of sweet cherry tobacco smoke that followed him everywhere? Jinx leaned over one of the attic’s support beams and peered down, everything looked like it should…except for the hooded masked figure creeping closer and closer to Silco’s desk.

She watched as they rooted through his desk drawer and read file after file of trade agreements and balance sheets. Oh this was good. A new plan began dancing around in her mind. This poor sweet fool wouldn’t know what hit them. Sure, she could show Silco how good she’d become at hiding and spying or she could show him she could be a fighter too. He kept her hidden from the world as much as possible, told her it was part of her training to keep things quiet until she had perfected her skills but this? This was an opportunity too incredible to pass up. 

Without taking her eyes off the intruder, her thin calloused fingers felt behind her for the mother of pearl carved knife she’d nicked from Silco’s back pocket a week ago. The handle was cold and smooth in her hand and she gripped it tight as she inched closer and closer to the edge. Her heart began to race, this had to work. 

The figure let out a frustrated groan and stepped back from Silco’s desk, now was her chance. She dropped down from the rafters, rattling the room when her feet hit the ground. Jinx used her free hand and all her strength to jab the masked being in the stomach, when they doubled over she elbowed the side of their face, sending their mask flying. Her knife found the underside of their chin and she backed them up against the wall, pinning them with all her weight.

Easy. So easy Silco was going to be so impressed when he-

“Ekko?” 

Her heart began racing anew and her stolen knife clattered loudly to the ground as she looked over her once dear friend. His eyes were still so soft and warm- but tired. How had he grown so much in such a short period of time? His white hair fell in small twists piled on top of his head, no longer buzzed short like she remembered. 

“Powder?” Tears welled in Ekko’s eyes and he threw his arms around her, squeezing her so tight she could barely breathe. “Is it really you? Are you really here?”

He pulled back and cupped her cheeks in his hands. She instinctively nuzzled into them as hot tears spilled from her eyes as well. “What are you doing here, Ekko?” She asked, barely even registering the crack of emotion in her voice.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” His hands remained on her face, gently stroking her cheeks, brushing loose strands of hair from her eyes, as though he were afraid that if he stopped touching her she would disappear entirely. “I’m gonna get you out of here, everything’s gonna be fine, I’m gonna bring you home.”

Jinx laughed softly and scrunched her nose in confusion. Bring her home? Where? She was already at the Last Drop. This was her home, it had always been her home, never stopped being her home.

“What are you talking about?” She tilted her head away but Ekko’s hands stayed, unwilling to give her up.

“It’s okay, Powder. We’re gonna get you out of here.” His voice was shaky and emotional and part of him sounded like he just woke up from a dream. “I have this place, you’ll love it there, it's completely hidden, you’ll never have to see him again.”

She reached up and pried Ekko’s hands off her, pushing him away as she did so. “Never see who again?”

“Silco? What has he been doing to you? Has he hurt you?” Ekko gently caressed her arms, turning her from side to side, looking for any signs of trauma. 

Jinx irritatingly brushed his hands away again and stepped back. How strange a feeling it was for the hands that once held her so lovely now felt like a nuisance upon her skin. 

“I’m fine and this is my home, I’m not going anywhere.” She couldn’t put her finger on exactly why Ekko’s insistence was rubbing her the wrong, it just was. He just breaks in here out of the blue and tells her he’s going to drag her away? He didn’t even let her explain- hell he didn’t even ask her to explain. 

“Powder are you talking about-“

“Stop calling me that!” She reached down and picked up Silco’s knife she had dropped in her initial shock upon recognizing Ekko’s face and stuck it into the soft wooden surface of his desk. “It’s Jinx now. I’m not going anywhere. Not with you.”

“What’s he done to you?” Ekko’s voice was panicked, a silent plea laced his words: come with me. He reached for her but stopped short of grabbing her arm at the sight of anger in her eyes. “Is it shimmer? Has he been drugging you?”

“Oh because I can’t actually think for myself?” Why didn’t he understand? She was happy here. She could be herself with Silco. She could be explosive and experimental. She could be silly and adventurous. This was the best thing that could have happened to her. He should be happy for her not trying to take her away.

“It’s just us now.” He tried to reach for her again but she pulled away. “Everyone else is gone. Vi-“

“Vi left me.” She hissed. He had no right to throw her sister in her face, not after he just accused her of not being able to stand up for herself. Something she hadn’t been good at until Silco. “She left me in the rain, freezing, crying, and bloody. He saved me. Gave me a home. He teaches me anything I want to know, he supports me. He never gets angry with me or belittles me. He doesn’t hit me or make me cry or make me feel useless.” 

Her heart was racing faster than she thought possible as her brain struggled to keep up with her emotions. Happy, confused, angry. It was too much. “You should leave.”

For a moment Ekko just stared at her, eyes wide. Even though no words were spoken, it was an exchange neither would soon forget. After a few deep stabilizing breaths, he shook his head. “Not without you.” Ekko grabbed Jinx's arm and pulled her towards the door.

“Let me go, Ekko!” Jinx fought against him, pulling and twisting her arm from his unrelenting grasp. She dug her boots into the ground, refusing to be moved any further. He squeezed so tight and she struggled so hard she could feel bruises blooming against her skin. “I said let me go!” She yanked her arm free and without thinking struck the side of Ekko’s face when he turned back towards her.

The slap reverberated through the room and the boy stumbled back in shock. Jinx stared down at her own stinging hand in horror but quickly clenched it into a fist. “I don’t want to be saved. Get out of here. Before I call Silco.”

Jinx could be forgiven for not knowing at the time just how much her refusal of Ekko’s help would change things for the both of them, or how much the memory of it would haunt them. But Jinx was used to being haunted. What was one more monster if not herself?

•••

“Rise and shine, the sun will be up soon.” 

There were three things that Jinx knew for certain. She didn’t not sleep well in new spaces especially if there were enemies around, she was the furthest thing from a morning person, and right then in that exact moment she hated Ekko.

“Waking me up before the sun has risen is the worst thing you’ve ever done.” Jinx mumbled into her pillow, “And that includes you trying to kill me.”

“Sunrise introspection, everyday. Get used to it and get dressed, I’ll be waiting outside your door.” Ekko’s footsteps retreated and became muffled behind the heavy metal door to her and Fallon's room. Part of her wanted to stay in bed for no reason other than just to see what he’d do about it. The thought of him hauling her out of bed and bringing her to the courtyard by tossing her over his shoulders brought a thin smile to her lips. Maybe tomorrow.

She dragged herself to her feet kicking and screaming on the inside and cursed herself for her lack of wardrobe. Surprisingly the sunless, wet, metal tube the firelights lived in was freezing. Perhaps being a good little participant could convince Ekko to let her raid her hideout for a new pair of pants, or at least a sweater. Her favored crop top while moderately stylish left little to the imagination and was also more than borderline useless at keeping her warm.

Jinx sat on the edge of her lumpy mattress and laced up her boots. This was all so useless. She and the firelights had a common enemy, why were they wasting her time and making her play games and jump through hoops to get to Singed. They needed to be planning and scouting. If she could get Ekko to take her to her lair and somehow convince him to let her bring fishbones back with her, they would already have one huge advantage over him. His weird little mutants were no match for a rocket launcher.

Three quick taps on the door set Jinx’s teeth on edge. “Come on let’s go, we don't have all day.”

She rolled her eyes and finished knotting the laces of her boots with an annoyed groan. As promised, Ekko stood waiting for her on the small balcony just outside her room. Even in the dim light she could make out his atrocious orange scarf he wore around his neck, covering the front of his overalls though these ones seemed to be new, no longer marred by a bullet hole in the upper abdomen.

“Ekko, come on.” She started as she began following him down the ladder and into the sewer passage. “This is a huge waste of time, we need to plan, the sooner this is over with the sooner we can get out of each other’s hair and go back to pretending the other doesn’t exist.”

The firelight continued on ahead, not looking back at her. “Planning takes time, which we’re doing. In case you forgot, you’re not allowed in on these meetings. Just because you don’t see it happening doesn’t mean it’s not and believe me, the sooner you’re out of here the better.”

“Which is a ridiculously stupid thing to do,” She sped up trying to keep by his side, but Ekko’s long strides were too much for her. “You really think you can create a plan better than someone who knows the chem-barons inside and out? Who knows half their dealings and schedules. This only works if we trust each other-“

“And I don’t trust you.” Ekko whipped around to finally look at her, halting his movements and almost causing her to collide with him. “I made you a promise- not because I really care about helping you but because tearing down Silco’s empire has been our goal since day one and you claimed the death of the doctor might just do that. We’re not doing this for you, you’re just the one who brought it to our attention. I told you, you’re not our friend, you’re not our ally. Shit until two days ago I don’t think any of us would have been wrong to call you our enemy. So no, you will not be in on operations. We move when I say we’re ready to move and in the meantime, this is what you’re doing. Got it?”

Heat coursed through Jinx’s blood as she looked at Ekko and she couldn’t help her eyes from narrowing in resentment. “You know Silco isn’t as bad of a person as you think he is.”

“Oh yeah?” Ekko asked with a dry laugh, “In what way?”

“He’d never talk to me like that.”

Ekko moved towards her, taking short tepid steps until he was face to face with her. “Well then why don’t you go back to him?”

“Maybe I will.” She stepped closer to him as well, until they’re noses were nearly touching, breathing the same air. Her heart hammered in her chest, she wasn’t the type of person to get close to someone like this. She much preferred to taunt from afar.

“Maybe you should.” 

She held his stare, maybe she should go back to him. At least he lets her in on his plans. At least he treats her with respect. At least he’d do anything in his power to keep her safe. The memory of Silco sitting slumped over in a chair in front of her surgery table flashed behind her eyes and along with it came the familiar burning sensation of shimmer as it pulsed through her veins, caressing her in a gentle reminder that she was no longer fully human. Her gaze faltered and she closed her eyes to shut out the memory. Damn Ekko.

“Let’s go.” Ekko finally backed down and made to continue out of the passage. “We’ve wasted enough time.”

The morning fog still clung to the ground when they finally made it outside and to a small group of about two dozen firelights standing in front of a much older woman with waist length gray hair. She smiled fondly at Ekko and gave a nod of acknowledgment in Jinx’s direction. 

Ekko walked her over to the woman and introduced the pair. “Jinx, this is Raya. Raya, Jinx.”

“Well I’ve heard a myriad of things about you but I never thought we’d come face to face.” Raya’s voice was deep and elegant, somewhere between condescending and truly having a sensual cadence to her words. 

“Raya leads introspection every morning so you’ll be seeing her a lot.” Ekko explained briefly, “All you gotta do is stand there and follow her lead.”

“Whatever.” Jinx muttered under her breath and left the two of them to stand on the outer edge of all of Raya’s other participants. 

While the crowd parted around her Jinx’s blood began to cool and her mind couldn’t help but go back to Silco. Was he worried about her? Did he know where she was? Was he looking for her? Surely if he was sooner or later an army of chem-tanks would come crashing through these walls, wherever they may be.

For so long Silco was all she had. Every woe she faced, every heartache she’d encountered, had all been brought to him. Jinx watched the way the firelights spoke to each other, how they hugged on each other. It came so naturally to them, being a friend. Jinx didn’t think she knew how to be a friend anymore. She wondered if she and Ekko could ever be like that again. If he’d stop pissing her off anyways.

“Good morning, everyone.” Raya greeted the crowd and extended her hands outwards from her sides. “Let’s all begin with deep breathing. Take in the fresh air. Allow its chill to wake you.”

Oh this was going to be really weird wasn’t it. Jinx thought as she followed Raya’s instructions. Deep breathing? Spiritual yoga? And this is the biggest undercity threat to Silco’s empire? 

“And as you inhale, bring that breath to the very top of your lungs. Hold it for just a moment, and on it place what weighs heavy on your heart. Allow that burden to be consumed. Feel it lessen, as you slowly exhale that breath out.”  

Jinx did her best to blend into the crowd of firelights but found it difficult to keep the expression on her face quiet. These people were so strange. Thinking about their feelings was counterproductive, how was she supposed to repress them if she thought about them? Jinx’s preferred relaxation technique was pulling the pins from her grenades and watching them explode against chasm walls in her hideout. 

It was great! It was energizing! And it didn’t involved whatever the fuck Raya was doing folding herself in half and wrapping her arms around the backs of her knees. Begrudgingly Jinx followed suit though refused to admit the bones cracking in her spine as she stretched was actually divine. 

“And as the sun takes its place in the sky, allow us to give it thanks.” Raya stood back up and brought the palms of her hands together in front of her chest. “By light we see, by light we’re free, rising sun grant strength to me.”

Alright, that’s it. She was out. This was a cult, and not the fun kind where they sacrifice each other and then dance around high on hallucinogenics. No, the firelights were just weird, for free. She detached from the group and walked away shaking her head, determined not to look back at the few around her who noticed her absence.

“Go back.” Jinx’s escape was cut short by Ekko who stood directly in her path with his arms crossed.

“Uh uh, no way.” She moved to walk around him but he only stepped in front of her again. 

“You agreed to this.” He reminded her, and she could feel a fight coming on.

“Well I’m sorry I didn’t realize I was signing up to join a cult full of wackos who worship the sun at the time.” Jinx threw her hand back behind her, vaguely gesturing at the crowd of people still doing small stretches.

Ekko scoffed as though Jinx’s words personally offended him. “It’s not sun worship, it's meditation and reflection. The sun is a symbol of renewal and rejuvenation and every day we live to see it rise again, and our portraits don’t go up on that wall is a day topside and Silco haven’t beaten us.”

Jinx snapped her head away at the sound of Silco’s name and did her best to ignore whoever’s grating laughter she heard in the back of her head. “It’s just a bunch of breathing and stretching, why does it matter if I do it or not?”

“Well for starters telling you what to do is kind of fun.” Ekko offered her a cocky smile she returned with a scowl, “And second,” he continued, “It’s a grounding technique. It’s supposed to help you concentrate on the important things so that the little things don’t overwhelm you.”

“I’m don’t need your help staying underwhelmed, thanks. But I’m sure you’re great at it.” She mimicked his saccharine smile and intentionally bumped into his shoulder as she walked past.

“You know, if you keep at it maybe just hearing Silco’s name will stop feeling like a knife to the chest.”

Fucker. Jinx stopped dead in her tracks but refused to look back at Ekko, instead she kept her eyes fixated on the open tunnel entrance leading to her room. Two days back together and he already knew how to push her buttons. It was like they had never even been apart.

“Get back in the circle.” He commanded, “Find Scar after breakfast. He’ll have something for you.”

Sunrise introspection as it would turn out didn’t end as horribly as it had begun. Once Raya stopped with her questionable and uncanny affirmations, the exercises were somewhat enjoyable, which was something Jinx would not be sharing with Ekko even if he had a gun to his head.

Despite being more than ready to return to her room, Scar found Jinx after her quick breakfast of some kind of porridge she had no real interest in eating. She clearly hadn’t found him soon enough but he didn’t show any signs of irritation on his face. Perhaps it was the little bundled up baby of his that gave him his docile patience. 

“Here.” He said, handing her a folded up heap of white plasticy fabric. “Put it on over your clothes.”

She unfurled the fabric to reveal a full body jumpsuit that bunched tightly together at the wrists and ankles and snapped closed with buttons running down the front, much like a baby onesie. 

“I don’t know how you’re going to but…” He handed her a thin hair net after she had donned the chemical scented coverall he gave her. “Try and get your hair in it.”

She looked at the hairnet confused then back to Scar. “What’s all this for? Where are we going?”

“To the morgue.”

Chapter Text

Despite already being so deep in the fissures, the firelight’s base somehow had even more secret levels. Inside one of the surrounding passage tunnels laid a hidden trap door, disguised as one of the tread plate flooring tiles. Scar pulled a key from his pocket and used it to pop open a barely noticeable hatch before gesturing for Jinx to descend into the crawl space. 

She looked at the chirean, who towered before her, as if he were crazy but he only motioned for her to get moving again, they only had all day after all. Reluctantly, Jinx sat on the cold metal floor and lowered her feet onto the crawl space's rusting ladder. Each movement she made caused the horribly textured plastic jumpsuit Scar had made her don to crinkle, squeak, and hiss.

At the base of the ladder, far below the surface was a narrow dimly lit hallway, leading to a single wide door. Scar took the lead, pausing in front of the door and knocking loudly three times. 

“Come in.” A deep voice on the other side announced.

Scar pulled a lever fashioned to the side of the door and stood back as it swung open. Inside was vastly different from the sticky musk draped hall they were currently in. Blinding bright lights illuminated a cramped sterile white room that instantly chilled Jinx’s skin under her coveralls. Multiple fans and air ducts blew freezing air through the space and up into a large ventilation system on the center of the ceiling. 

And of course Ekko was there, leaning against one of two long metal tables the room housed, conversing with an older grey haired man. Didn’t he have more important things to be doing? The table he leaned against was bare but Jinx could see a stark white cloth covering an oddly bumpy surface on the second table and began to get the feeling she was not going to like whatever was about to happen. 

“Jinx, I’d like you to meet Enver.” Ekko pushed off from the table and introduced her to the grey haired man next to him. 

“Nice to meet you, young lady.” His accent was choppy and drawling at the same time and Jinx couldn’t help but wonder what part of the undercity he was from as he extended his hand out to her.

Jinx shook the man’s clammy, calloused hands and her eyes wandered back to the white sheet. “What are we doing down here?” She asked warily.

“Enver is an undertaker.” Ekko explained, moving to grab a few supplies from a tall magnetized cabinet behind him. “When we’re able to recover our dead, he cleans them up and makes them a little more presentable so their families can see them one last time. You’ll be helping him today.”

“There’s nothing to it really.” Enver told her, placing a few instruments on a gleaming silver tray in between the tables. “Piltover’s elite have a more involved and demanding process but we don’t have the means for such luxury down here. It’s much more modest than topside, I assure you.”

Jinx’s blood froze considerably as her eyes locked onto that silver tray lined with scissors, needles and thread, injections, and bottles of vibrant foul smelling chemicals. Ringing started in her ears followed by haunting echoing laughter as she backed up and into Scar who steadied her back upright. 

“I- I don’t- I can’t-“ her breathing quickened, unable to focus on anything or anyone other than the needles Enver had placed out. The room seemed to shrink around her, growing dark and static in her eyes. The bright white room flickered, giving way to a dark dingy green lit room that had been branding into her memory. 

“It’s alright.” Enver placed a small towel over the tray of instruments to hide them from her line of sight. “There’s no sense in her being here if it will only trouble her.” He told Ekko pointedly. “I care for the dead but I am not in the business of upsetting the living.”

“Jinx?” Ekko asked, tilting his head to get a better visual of her expression. 

She slowly came back to her senses, just barely aware of the fact that Ekko was waiting for some kind of response from her. Jinx looked him over and the dissonant whispers started anew. Why was he looking at her like that? Like he was now suddenly concerned about her well-being as if he hadn’t told her he didn’t care if she was there or not hardly three hours ago. 

Her panic quickly turned to indignation and she shoved Scar’s hands off her shoulders. “I’m fine.” She told him flatly, her brows furrowed in anger.

Ekko silently huffed and didn’t bother to disguise the roll of his eyes as he handed Enver the few things he pulled from the cabinet. “Like I said, we only do this when we’re able to recover our people. Due to the where and the how we’re not always able to, especially if it turns into a crime scene which so often happens when certain other people get involved. That being said, we were only able to recover one person this time despite losing five.”

Certain other people? Jinx scoffed, Ekko was so full of himself. Sure she had a rap sheet a mile long, but the firelights were far from innocent. Or did ambushing and raiding the facilities owned by the chem-barons but run by innocent civilians not count if it was in the name of vigilante justice?

“I’m sure you remember Eve, right?” Ekko pulled the white sheet back from the table revealing a mass of pink hair and yellow skin and the entire room went silent.

Not that no one was talking but Jinx absolutely, positively, could not hear them. Any and all noise was muffled, drowned out by the blood rushing in her ears. Her eyes refused to blink, refused to look anywhere other than the erratic strands of pink hair. She looked like Vi. Why did she still look like Vi?

The edges of her vision blackened until the only thing visible was the dead firelight on the table in front of her. Her skin was sallow and splotchy, her eyes were cloudy grey and sunken in, and her jaw remained wide open, her muscles no longer working tirelessly to keep it shut. Not Vi. Not Vi. Not Vi. Not Vi.

Her thoughts began to glitch, screeching in her ears and blinding her eyes. Each lapse took control of the body in front of her, changing the moment she recognized it. Mylo, Claggor, Vander, Vi. Mylo, Claggor, Vander, Vi. Faster and faster the images repeated themselves until they blurred together. Mylo, Claggor, Vander, Vi. Mylo-Claggor-Vander-Vi.

It was her own sharp intake of breath that snapped her out of the cycle. Either Ekko hadn’t noticed she’d drifted off, or he didn’t care. Only Enver watched her from the corner of his eyes, his arms crossed over his chest, uninterested in whatever Ekko was talking about. 

“Miss Jinx, are you sure you are alright?” The old man asked.

Jinx’s eyes were still frozen on that pink hair. That could have been Vi. She thought it was when she shot her. How was she supposed to explain that? If she never saw someone with pink hair ever again, it would still be too soon.

“Jinx?” Ekko’s voice dug sharp talons into her head and she had to stop herself from audibly groaning. Had the sound of his voice always been this grating? 

Not Vi. She could be certain the girl in front of her was positively not her sister. She never was.

“I’m fine. Go away.” Jinx raised a hand to Ekko’s face to stop him from asking anymore questions and noted the roll of his eyes. Thankfully, and without another word in her direction, he and Scar made for the large doors they had come in.

“Let me know if you need anything, we’ll be back in an hour.” Ekko said to Enver, before letting the door swing shut behind him, leaving Jinx and Enver alone with a dead body.

•••

“Right.” Enver turned from jinx and grabbed a long rubber hose that hung on a rack behind him and connected it to a sink. “I don’t think I’ll be having you do nothing, I’m sure watching will suffice, but I’ll still ask if you’d like to.”

With the water from the sink making its way through the extension hose and coating the slick metal surface of the table, Enver removed the white cloth the rest of the way. 

Jinx stared at the firelight partly curious but mostly empty. She looked so cold. There was no warmth in her skin that was yellowing and mottled in her hands and feet. There was no light in her dry sunken eyes. Was this what she looked like when Silco found her on that bridge? Empty? Was that what she looked like now?

She watched as Enver sprayed her body down with water, it mixed in with the caked blood and that clung to her skin and left rusty trails on its way down to the drain. 

“Like I was saying,” Enver started as he lathered a rag up with a harsh mint scented soap, “We don’t have the same luxuries as topside. Our accessible chemicals are rudimentary at best and truth be told I’ve found we're better off to just not use them.”  

He scrubbed the girl down with his rag, leaving clusters of bubbling lather in its wake. He was so calm and unphased, Jinx wondered how many times he had done this to get to where he was, unaffected by her nakedness or the quiet stiffness of someone he most likely knew and cared for. How odd it must be for him to care for the firelight in front of her killer, with nothing but kindness and concern in his voice. 

“Would you like to dry her off?” Enver asked, pulling a thick scratchy looking towel out of a nearby cabinet.

“No. Thank you.” She answered, probably far too quickly. 

Enver nodded in understanding and returned the white sheet covering to the firelights body once she had been dried then wheeled his silver tray closer to his side. “I’m going to uncover this now, alright?”

“Yes, fine, whatever.” Jinx waved him off, her white jumpsuit still swishing with every movement. She was far from soft by any means. One bad reaction and now all of a sudden she needed to be coddled? It took her by surprise is all. She was fine.

The towel Enver had placed over his tray had been pulled back only slightly. Just enough to reveal what he needed at that moment, which was apparently a pair of tweezers and two small round pieces of plastic. Jinx leaned in just a little bit to inspect Enver’s instruments better. The small pieces of plastic were dotted with several holes, as if someone had been bored and absentmindedly stuck them with the tip of their pen repeatedly.

“These will help keep her eyes closed.” He said, answering Jinx’s unspoken question. She watched with her brows furrowed together as he used his pair of tweezers to lift up the firelights eyelid and slide one of the spiked plastic caps over her eye and fought the urge to rub at her own eyes just from the sight of it. 

“I don’t understand.” She began, finally ready to ask questions. “What’s the point in all this? Aren’t you guys just going to wrap her up and stick her in the ground?”

Enver cleared his throat slightly, not in annoyance but almost amusement. “For starters, it is about respect. Regardless of what we’ll do afterwards, everyone deserves the dignity of being cleaned up one last time.” He picked up the other plastic cap and repeated the process of inserting it in her other eye. “Second, she has a family who wishes to see her. A bath is a must but these other cosmetics are simply to put others at ease. Her young daughter, for example, should see her as though she were sleeping and not how she was when you first arrived.”

Jinx hummed a bit to herself at the thought of the firelights family coming to see her like this. She had seen all of her family members after their deaths. Her mother and father, her brothers, Vander. Seeing them did not make her feel better and she doubted having the blood washed from their faces would have made a difference.

Enver returned the tweezers to his silver tray and covered them with the towel before pulling it back from the other side, revealing the giant injection needle that has caused Jinx’s panic to begin with.

“What is that?” She asked, backing away from the table slightly.

“This will help close her mouth.” He explained as his eyes narrowed on a small wired screw he placed in the mouth of the injector. “It will secure these screws into her tops and bottom gums so I can tie them together with the wires. A little barbaric I know, but effective nonetheless.”

Jinx watched hesitantly as Enver pushed back the girl's top lip and lined the injector upright just above her teeth. He couldn’t possibly be serious. This was a joke. This was some weird, sick, fucked up, evil joke they were playing on her. Before Jinx could vocalize her thoughts, Enver squeezed down on the handle. The excruciatingly loud crack of the device echoed around then giving way to another fit of ringing in her ears. 

She closed her eyes before she could see Enver line the injector up with her bottom lip but there was nothing she could do to stop the sound from assaulting her ears. It was somehow louder the second time, and as familiar as every bullet she shot from her gun, every punch she’d ever thrown, and every bomb she’d pulled the pin on. Sickening laughter and her own sister's unintelligible whispering danced in her mind for a moment after then stopped abruptly when she opened her eyes back up.

“There.” Enver muttered to himself as he twisted the wires together and clipped away the excess. “Sleeping at last.”

•••

Jinx looked over what Enver had done in disbelief, she really did look like she was sleeping. “Now what?”

“Now,” He began collecting his tools and returning them to their homes inside different drawers and cabinets. “We wait for the others to return and say goodbye. Then we prepare for the ceremony.”

“Ceremony?” 

The hiss and swish of the double doors opening behind her pulled Jinx’s attention away and she turned to see Scar accompanied by Micah and their niece she had already forgotten the name of. Her eyes were downcast and her little half cherian nose was pinker than normal as though she’d been sniffling and rubbing it.

“Ah, very good. Right on time.” Enver came around the table to greet the others who tried their best not to acknowledge Jinx’s presence. “Right over here, if you will.”

Jinx moved away from the little group and pressed her back into the far wall. Did she still need to be here for this? She watched as Scar approached the metal table, trying to keep his expression as neutral as possible in front of his niece. 

Micah knelt down in front of the girl and brought his hands up to rest against her cheeks. “Okay, do you remember how we talked about seeing mommy one last time?” She nodded her head but said no words, only letting out a little sniffle. “She looks a little different now but it’s okay. When you see her, I want you to remember how brave she always told you to be. Can you do that?” Another nod. 

He looked to Scar for confirmation who seemed to agree that she was okay, then lifted her up and sat her on the edge of the table her mother was laying on. Jinx watched as the little girl quietly ran through a multitude of emotions in her face, confusion, hope, sadness, but never anger. 

“She’s sleeping.” She said, not so much a question, though her soft timid voice sounded unsure. 

“Do you have anything you want to tell her, Peri?” Scar asked as he stepped forward and gently brushed a strand of hair from Eve’s face. 

She shook her head then slowly, to Jinx’s surprise, laid her head down against the dead firelights chest and wrapped her arms around her in a hug. Micah snuffled and wiped glistening tears from his cheek with one hand while the other softly scratched Peri’s back in little circles of comfort. It was the sort of soft intimate gesture that made Jinx’s chest feel heavy, the kind that her sister often used to help her fall asleep at night.

When she was ready, Peri pulled herself away from her mother, with a blotchy face and blurry eyes, and let Micah lift her off the table and place her back down on the ground. Micah took a moment to look Eve over then nodded to Scar in confirmation that they were ready to leave. 

“Thank you, once again, Enver.” Scar told the old man who had returned from waiting in the shadows. “You’re incredibly appreciated.”

“I look forward to the day you no longer need of me.” He told him in return and the two shook hands, briefly pulling each other into an informal hug. 

Scar pulled the lever for the door and headed for the hidden hatch ladder that would lead them back up to the surface. Jinx’s curiosity was getting the better of her and she couldn’t help but wonder what the relationship dynamic between the two brother in laws could be. Were they friendly? Did the deaths of their respective siblings bring them closer? Did they hate her as much as the other people at her trial seemed to have?

Jinx began unzipping the white coverall she was still sweating in, all too ready to be free of it, when she noticed a pair of cloudy green eyes on her. Peri held Micah’s hand while he said his thanks and goodbyes to Enver but stared at Jinx in fascination and it began to dawn on Jinx, that the girl might not very well know she was the one responsible for her mother being on that table.

Her head buzzed as she tried to piece things together. At her trial, Micah only mentioned Eve was shot and killed, but never said by whom. If Peri was smart she probably could have assumed Jinx was responsible and that’s why they brought it up in the first place. But the girl was barely five years old, how smart could she be?

“I like your hair.” 

The silence such a simple and insignificant statement made was uncomfortably palpable and heat began spreading across Jinx’s face as she felt all eyes in the room shift to her. She stood, frozen, halfway through removing her gross sweat slick plastic suit with her eyes locked on Peri who in turn was ogling Jinx’s low hanging braids.

“…Thank you.” She replied barely above a whisper, unable to think of anything else to say. She quickly finished removing her coveralls and haphazardly tossed it to the side.

“Let’s go.” Micah tugged his niece’s hand and made for the door, without a second glance in Jinx’s direction. 

Jinx was unaccustomed to silence. Most of the time she begged for it. She pleaded with the whispers and laughs and taunts to just shut the hell up for five minutes at the very least, usually to no avail. But now as she stood in a freezing cold underground bunker, staring at one of her braids her fingers had been absentmindedly toying with, she craved some sort of noise. She’d even take Fallon’s ramblings if it got her out of the awkward sticky quiet the dead firelights daughter had left behind.

“A child’s forgiveness is not difficult to come by.” Enver began, answering Jinx’s unspoken plea. “Children are oftentimes taught at a young age to accept half-assed and ill intended apologies for the sake of civility. A child will always forgive, but more importantly and very rarely do they forget.”

Her eyes finally broke from their staring spell and looked over at the firelights undertaker who had covered Eve completely and was wrapping her rather snuggly in a second sheet.

“It is the trust of a child that tells a story no amount of accepted ‘I’m sorry’s ever could.” He watched Jinx take in his words and offered her no more. Forgiveness. Trust. Is that all these firelights ever talked about?

“Can I go now?” She asked, trying and failing to keep a pinch of petulance from her voice.

Enver nodded. “Of course. Our work here ended ages ago.”

•••

It wasn’t until the moon was high in the sky over the expansive opening of the firelights base did Jinx find out what the ceremony Enver had mentioned truly was. 

Jinx found herself sitting on a platform high up on the trunk of the firelights tree, leaning on the wooden fencing for support and allowing her legs to dangle over the edge. In front of the memorial mural was a large wooden box, presumably containing Eve, along with a table full of lit candles, flowers, and portraits of four other firelights Jinx didn’t recognize but probably also had a hand in killing.

An impressive crowd of what could only be all the firelights in total gathered around. Jinx spotted Peri clinging to Micah’s leg with one hand and holding a candle with the other, unable to wipe away free flowing tears from her rosy cheeks. 

Jinx had never been to a memorial service before, none that she can remember anyway. It was a luxury most people in the undercity couldn’t afford. She was sure Vander had done something to honor her parents when she was young but at the time she still had chubby cheeks and all of her baby teeth. Whatever he had done was lost on her. And when Vander and her brothers died…

“Shut up.” She hissed at the incessant laughter that haunted her, thankful that no one was around to hear or question her.

Ekko approached the crowd with a small basket filled with slips of folded paper. Names of the deceased to be burned and scattered in the wind for Janna to take them away from suffering. 

“There is never an easy way to start these.” Ekko began, his voice shaky and unusually unsure of himself. “The pain of losing someone you love is far greater than any physical wound. We oftentimes believe grief is pain and while it is painful, it is not pain. Grief is the love we have that we can no longer give to others and with nowhere to go that love weighs heavy on our chests and demands to be felt. We stand as one. A sentiment topside often throws around with no real value behind it. But here, tonight, your loss is our loss. No matter how difficult the road ahead is, the sun still rises at the end of it.”

Ekko was wrong. Grief was pain. Love is the cushion that softens the heart until it breaks and grief is the shadow that marches permanently behind it. The best course of actions was to never love. That way there would be no need for grief.

“I have here, the names of those we have lost recently.” Ekko continued, holding up the little basket he held. “Let us remember them.”

Jinx watched the crowd of firelights shift and move about. Each name Ekko read from the slips of paper, a different group came forward with a candle they used to burn the slip followed by a few moments of silence. Eve’s paper was burned by Scar who had been given the candle Peri so she could be held by Micah instead.

When they were done the massive crowd disbanded and gave way to smaller groups who sat together in the grass and spoke in hushed voices. Some played quiet tunes on guitar, others just held each other and Jinx couldn’t understand why it bothered her so much.

“Nice view, huh?”

Jinx startled at the sound of Ekko’s voice and she turned in time to see him sit on the edge of the ledge beside her.

“What are you doing up here?” She asked, returning her eyes to the firelights below. “Shouldn’t you be with them?”

Ekko shrugged. “I said my piece. I don’t think anyone would appreciate my hovering.”

And yet here he is. Jinx thought to herself with a conceited smile.

“About earlier,” He started and Jinx could feel him watching her for the slightest bit of reaction. “Enver said you seemed uneasy. I figured you would be but, I’m sorry if it was too much. That wasn’t my intention.”

“Yeah I know what your intention was.” She spit out, surprising even herself with how biting her words were. “And I don’t want to talk about it. Especially not with you.”

She could see Ekko nodding to himself out of the corner of her eyes but he made no attempt to leave, instead he watched the firelights below alongside her. Jinx didn’t know when Ekko had become such a thorn in her side or if they could ever even be friends again. She had been so angry lately nothing else mattered more than getting back at Singed and Ekko was helping her. Not out of the goodness of his heart, he had his own agenda after all but still.

“Ekko…” Her voice was soft as she stared at a large pair of painted charcoal eyes before her. It had been nagging her ever since she saw it. With so many things she didn’t understand, she could at least scratch one thing off that list. “Why am I up on that wall?”

“You know why.” He looked at the mural as well, and Jinx knew exactly who in it he was looking at.

“I want to hear you say it.”

Ekko swallowed thickly and toyed with splinters in the railing, unsure of where to start. “That night, at the factory was…probably the worst day of both our lives. What that kid did to Benzo…I still see it sometimes when I close my eyes. I can still smell the blood I hosed off the cobblestone. I thought losing Benzo would be the worst of it but when I went back to the factory after cleaning up what I could…it was a knife to the chest over and over again each time I found one of them. Vander…Mylo…Claggor…”

The sound of their names caused them to flash repeatedly before Jinx’s eyes. Never as they were when they were alive. Never smiling, or laughing. Always how she found them after. Bloody and broken.

“When I couldn’t find you or Vi, I went crazy.” He continued. “I ran through the streets like my life depended on it checking all of our old haunts. I rang the tolls in the bell tower once a day for a week. That was around the time the rumors began to die down and the story solidified. You were all dead. Killed in the explosion. It felt like I was lugging around a sack of spare parts for weeks. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t breathe. Did nothing but wander around and listen. People couldn’t stop talking about the new leader of the underground. How he was introducing hundreds of new factory jobs creating some new miracle drug.”

The weeks after Vander’s death was a blur for Jinx. Endless fighting in the streets, brawling in the bars, Silco watching her every move with unusual fascination as if she were a new pet he was amused with. Jinx shook the thoughts from her head, unable to recall her version of events and listen to Ekko at the same time. 

“I knew it was bullshit, I saw what it did to that kid, saw what it did to Vander. But none of that was what caught my attention. It was one conversation in particular between Sevika and a couple of washouts she was gambling with, talking about how ‘yeah yeah Silco’s great and all but he’d be even better without that scared little girl he let cling to his hip.’ And they all laughed except Sevika. She told them “careful how you talk about his baby blue, he’s killed for less.” And it was a long shot, god I know it was a long shot, the child could have been anybody but I had to know, I needed to see exactly who she was or I’d drive myself crazy.”

Baby blue. Jinx had heard the chem-barons refer to her with that boring insipid nickname for years. She knew it was Sevika who started it.

“So I started doing what I did best.” Ekko went on, “I hid in crawl spaces, I rigged seeing ports in meeting chambers, I staked out the Last Drop for months, following Silco wherever he went every time he left. I couldn’t find any evidence that he even had a child at all let alone who it could be. He was expanding his empire so quickly I couldn’t keep up. I started recruiting other kids off the street to spy for me in exchange for a place to stay in Benzo’s shop. We started doing what we could to fuck with Silco, small at first, stupid little rumors, arranging meetings between Silco and potential clients to discredit his reliability, whatever we could do to slow down shimmer from spreading.”

The rise of the firelights, that was something Jinx did remember well. It was very amusing just how much a group of street kids could get under Silco’s skin. Of course the fact the firelights were run by Ekko was something she didn’t find out until a long while after.

“After a while finding the girl felt impossible but I wouldn’t let it go and eventually I had to tell the others why it was so important to me, who I thought it might be. To my surprise it only made them more determined to help me. When I asked Scar why he told me it was because he didn’t want to see another face up on that wall. He had lost so much by the time we met. Both his parents, his sister. He and his brother became like brothers to me, I don’t think I would have made it as far as I did without them.”

“That day in Silco’s office…I was desperate. It was an insanely stupid thing to do breaking in like I did but scouting had gotten us nowhere in two years. I was looking for something- ANYTHING. A hidden safe house, a secret storage unit, I don’t even know…and then there you were. Jumping me from the ceiling and putting a knife to my neck. When I hugged you it felt like all the bullshit I went through the last two years had finally been worth it. All the people I watched die, all the time wasting errands, every cold sleepless night was all worth it because I was right and it was you. You were taller and your hair was longer and you smelled different but it was you and you told me to get lost. You called yourself Jinx and somehow it hurt more than when you hit me. It felt like I was in that factory again, searching through rubble for some kind of memory of our friends. I painted you on the memorial that night. No one asked me why and I don’t think I would have told them if they had. That kind of grief…it changes you.”

Love. Jinx sat up a little straighter and turned to Ekko, who was still looking at the portrait of Powder, with a sad empty hollowness in his eyes. She had broken his heart and never thought twice.

“Can I ask you a favor?” Jinx toyed with one of her braids, unsure if Ekko would agree to her ask, “I know I’m not allowed to leave unsupervised but, I’d like to make a trip to my lab. There’s some things I want to get, clothes and stuff.”

Ekko remained facing forward, pointedly avoiding Jinx’s gaze. “No one in this collective will tell you this because we value respect above anything else but you being here has caused more discomfort than anything else you’ve done to us. It makes me feel like a traitor to my people. I’m supposed to protect them from threats like you and I let you in instead.”

“I- I don’t-“ Jinx’s heart began to race, what the fuck was she supposed to say to that? “I don’t know what you want me to say. Do you want me to leave?”

He stood up from his seat next to her and took a deep breath. “Be ready at nightfall tomorrow. We’ll give you an escort.”

Chapter Text

It was easy, Jinx realized. Keeping to herself was undoubtedly the easiest task she could accomplish within the firelights. When she walked through the courtyard, most pointedly averted their gazes, yet their shoulders still tensed as though she might spring herself on them like an unpredictable feral animal. The only person who made an effort to speak to her was her bunkmate Fallon, though Jinx was beginning to believe she was only doing it to annoy her and not out of a genuine desire to get to know her. Not that Jinx wanted anyone to get to know her.

None of them would understand. It all felt so black and white to her, the way the firelights saw her. They saw the weapons she built but not the eccentric mind that buzzed with excitement when the puzzle pieces finally fell together. They saw her vibrant and peculiar graffiti but not the whimsical artist trying to bring the mildly pleasant parts of her visions to life. They saw Silco’s daughter but not the scared little girl who had been kept in a regressed stasis for so long it felt like she would never get up. And even if they could see who she really was beneath their preconceived opinions of her, would it even make a difference?

Jinx sat with her legs dangling off the edge of the narrow balcony outside of her and Fallon’s chambers. She leaned her head against the wrought iron fencing her legs were slotted between and watched the firelights carry on amongst themselves. Most had finished dinner by now though some were still finishing up. Jinx’s own stomach burned softly in hunger that she ignored. Inconveniencing herself was far easier than interacting with the others. 

The others who did not want her there, who felt betrayed by Ekko’s decision to aid her in what could potentially be a suicide mission. She wondered if they knew the full extent of her deal with Ekko or if that was exclusive to just Ekko’s inner circle. It didn’t matter. Once it was done and over with and Singed was in pieces, they’d never have to worry about seeing her again.

Besides, she had more important things on her mind that afternoon, specifically how they were going to get into her hideout. Physically accessing it was simple enough, it was the probability of Silco’s men staking the place out that was the issue. The last time Silco saw her she was dead and being injected with shimmer. She was certain that her disappearance and deafening silence since then had him quietly panicking.

If she was right, there was going to be a fight, and not just between the firelights and Silco’s men. It was also not just the matter of the coming fight Jinx needed to think on, there was absolutely, undeniably, no way in hell Ekko was going to let her bring a custom built rocket launcher into the base without a damn good reason, and she doubted “because it’s mine and I want it.” was going to be good enough for him. There was a very slim chance there even would be a good enough reason for him.

It was not just fishbones she wished to retrieve from her hideout. If she could manage to pack away the hextech crystal she had stolen from the academy along with the golden boy’s notes, they all would have an advantage over Singed, no matter how annoyed Ekko might be at it.

While the others had not let Jinx in on their decisions for how the night would go, she had her suspicions. She would not be allowed any weapons, foolish on Ekko’s part really, he would also not trust her to go into her sanctum alone, however, if she could manage to convince him that Silco’s men posed enough of a threat, she had begun banking on the possibilities of him having whoever goes with them stand guard. Ekko would be much easier to manipulate and distract if it was just the two of them down there. 

Still, no part of the night would be an easy feat, and Jinx quietly hoped they could manage it without all hell breaking loose, not that she would particularly mind if it did, life had been feeling a little dull the last few days.

Once the last amber glows of sunlight dipped somewhere beyond the horizon, Jinx abandoned her balcony post in search of familiar albeit unfriendly faces. She found Ekko along with Scar, Fallon, and two other firelights, speaking in hushed whispers near what Jinx assumed to be one of the base's hidden entrances. 

Scar tapped Ekko’s shoulder when he saw her approach and nodded in her direction. The firelight leader turned to face her as he closed the drawstrings to a pack of gear he had been rifling through and handed it off to one of the others.

“You ready?” He asked, double checking his pockets and belt were properly tightened and stocked with weapons.

“Not really.” Jinx shrugged and looked all of them over, “What exactly is the plan here?”

Ekko knelt to the ground and began lacing up his boots. “Not much to plan is there? Get in, get out. Air quality is poor and visibility is low. We stick to the shadows, don’t make any trouble, and hopefully I won’t regret agreeing to this.”

Regret agreeing to this? What, like Jinx forced his hand? He very well could have told her no. It’s not like he was some patron saint for allowing her the privilege of going to her own damn hideout to get her own damn belongings. Did he want her to thank him profusely? To get on the ground before him and bow her head? Dick.

“And what about Silco’s men?” She asked, crossing her arms, annoyed at her own stream of thoughts about her once dearly beloved friend.

“What about Silco’s men?” Ekko finished tying his boots and stood back up and Jinx couldn’t say she was particularly fond of his unnecessarily accusatory tone.

“He hasn’t seen me in over a week and the last time he did, I was dead.” She pointed out, as though the problem was so glaringly obvious she couldn’t understand how the others hadn’t seen it before. “He had people watching all my usual haunts before I disappeared without a trace. You think we’re just going to slip in unnoticed? He’ll be there the second he hears I’ve been spotted.”

“Then I guess we’re gonna have to be quick.” He said simply with a nonchalant shrug then pulled a long thick purple cloth from the front pocket of his jumpsuit and held it out for her. For a moment she just stared at the cloth, a string of angry words balled together in her mind. “Do you want to tie it yourself or do you want me to?” 

Jinx scoffed and tried to ignore the sharp claws of laughter that muffled in her ears. “You can’t be serious.” She tried looking past Ekko, to the other firelights waiting for them, but they all pointedly ignored her gaze.

Ekko simply held the cloth out to her again and she angrily snatched it from his hands. It was so ridiculous and quite frankly offensive, that they believed she’d rat out their location as if she didn’t have better things to do. How many times did she have to say she didn’t care about anything to do with Silco’s empire for them to get it. 

Sure she built him whatever weapons he asked for and exploded whatever rivals he deemed necessary but that was different. That didn’t involve caring about the politics behind it. She did it because Silco asked her to, because he trusted her, and because it was the only way she knew how to help. There was something so intimate about the feeling of being needed to Jinx, it was something she’d not only never understand, but also never get enough of.

Jinx tied the purple cloth around her eyes a little too tight in her anger at Ekko’s request and tried not to shudder at the feeling of ice cold fingertips gently pulling her arms behind her. The difference in the heat of Ekko’s body behind her and the chill of his touch sent goosebumps across her arms and she hoped her quick sharp inhale of breath was not as audible to the others as it was to her. 

The mechanical clicks of the handcuffs locking into place brought Jinx back to reality and she was instantly annoyed by the sound of Ekko’s voice in her ear. “Let’s not do anything hilarious, I’d like as few casualties as possible.”

“Do you really think I’m going to snitch out your location?” She huffed, unsure if she was even speaking in his direction anymore. “Don’t you think I have better things to do?”

“Not really.” Was his only response.

A gloved hand belonging to one of the other firelights wrapped itself around her arm while the base's heavy rusted entrance screeched open for them. The hand gently tugged her into motion and began guiding her through the labyrinth of tunnel systems that surrounded the area.

Jinx would be lying if she said she hadn’t tried to guess where the firelights base could be just from its appearance alone. She had spent a considerable amount of time in the sewers running and hiding from enforcers when she was younger but the undercity systems were so complex she doubted even the maintenance engineers knew them fully. And if the firelights had been living here unnoticed for as long as Ekko claimed, these systems had to be abandoned by the city.

Close enough to the surface to receive sunlight, but far enough away from topside that no one bothered them meant they were on the south side of the fissures. And an abandoned system meant it had been redirected elsewhere and refashioned in favor of newer technology, which meant they were either near the wharfs or the Sungates, and considering the fact that the air didn’t reek of salt and rotting fish, Jinx favored the latter. 

That’s not to say even abandoned sewers weren’t revolting. Every splash of her boots in the thin stream of water they walked through made her skin crawl, even worse was when the water sprayed against her legs. They had been walking for what felt like forever. Up and down, left and right. Sometimes they’d stop at the end of one channel then turn around and go back the way they came. If Jinx didn’t know any better she’d say even the firelights were lost in their own labyrinth.

But Jinx did know better. They were not lost, they were walking her in circles. Leading her through the tunnels in an nonsensical and arbitrary path that she wouldn’t be able to remember or recreate no matter how hard she tried. Unnecessary on their part, they had her blindfolded and were severely overestimating her sense of direction. 

None of them spoke as they trekked through each channel, no one so much as cleared their throats. The only sound came from their boots echoing off the pavement and the nightly chitter of firelights filtering above them. Part of her wanted to ask them to remove her blindfold just so she could see the little glowing green bugs, she always was fond of them after all.

When they finally reached the surface exit of the tunnels, Jinx was far from relieved. Ekko wasn’t kidding about the air quality being poor that night. Her lungs had already grown used to the deep satisfying breaths being around a giant tree allowed her to take. 

The firelights seemed to quicken their steps now that they were in the open and Jinx could feel the coolness radiating from the brick exterior along with dull echoes of the firelights hushed voices told her they had entered into another service duct. 

“We’ll take the south entrance, head east until station square then north by the Alcove flats. After that we’ll access the fissures from the Boundary convoy.” The voice was muffled and difficult for Jinx to understand, she and her escort appeared to be bringing up the rear of the group. 

“Why are we practicing going all the way topside?” Another muffled voice asked the first. “We can access the fissures from the Eastridge Toll House, it’s six blocks away.”

The first voice did not respond but it was clear by an exasperated snap of fingers that the second had said too much in so few words. So the firelights base was near the Sungates, as Jinx had expected. It didn’t mean much, their labyrinth of abandoned tunnels was still a great deterrent to most, not that she’d be sharing that information with anyone if she had any say in it.

The others were silent once more as they continued they’re trek across Zaun and just as Jinx was beginning to wonder when they’d remove her blindfold the group came to a stop. Cold hands gently grabbed Jinx by her shoulders and turned her in circles over and over again until her head was dizzy and knees weak. 

“You can take it off now.”

Apprehensive hands shot to the back of her head and quickly pulled the bow she had tied, letting the purple cloth that had warmed over her eyes fall to the ground. The firelights all watched her, all masked she made a point in noticing. Their pitch white animal themed masks elicited a knee jerk reaction to reach for a gun she didn’t have, that she tried her best to stifle. They were not her enemies at this moment, they just looked stupid.

“Aren’t you at all concerned about being spotted with me with those masks on?” She asked as the firelights' eyes all remained on her. “If you’d have left them off you could be anyone in Zaun, but everyone knows who wears those dumb masks.”

“Just lead us to your hideout.” Even disguised behind his owl mask, Ekko’s voice was tense and weary. Jinx found it hardly interesting but definitely amusing Ekko chose such a wise creature to bear resemblance to. Sure Ekko was smart, but he certainly wasn’t wise.

“Aren’t you going to uncuff me?”

“No.”

Jinx groaned loudly in annoyance but shoved past the wall of firelights and began their walk through the commercial part of the lanes. What in the world were they thinking wearing those masks? They were quite literally in Silco’s domain, every single person down here was loyal to him or at least too afraid of him to be anything else. The anonymity their masks provide only works when they don’t use them.

If the firelights wanted to take the long way into the fissures then she would take them the long way to her hideout. That’s what she told herself anyway, that she was doing this to be petty and not because the thought of being so close to the Last Drop made her skin itch and her neck sweat. How long would it be before she was able to see her home again?

She might not have the privilege of being a part of their strategy meetings but she felt as though she was entitled to at least some information. What was the point in keeping her in the dark other than it being a power play? Just one more thing for Ekko to hold over her like the chores and meditation and cleaning dead people weren’t enough. 

As they approached an abandoned mining colony on the outskirts of the lanes, Jinx jingled her cuffs. “Okay, I need my hands back now, can’t get in without them.”

“Fine. But don’t try anything.” Ekko warned as he begrudgingly unlocked her cuffs.

“Do you ever get bored of saying that?” She asked as she snapped her free hands up to her chest, gently rubbing at her sore wrists. “Or is it like a nervous tick and you just can’t stop yourself?”

She couldn’t say for certain because she couldn’t see his face, but Jinx was almost positive Ekko was contemplating cuffing her again and using her blindfold as a gag this time. 

“Enough games.” He said, unamused and confirming Jinx’s suspicions. “Where’s your hideout?”

She motioned to the abandoned mine. “You’re looking at it.”

“I’m looking at an empty mining shaft.” He passed a glance and an apparent unspoken order to the others who broke off in groups to investigate the area for anything suspicious.

“You’re so smart.” She offered him with a sickeningly sweet impertinent smile. “Has anyone ever told you how smart you are?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re not funny?” The firelights around them were trying their hardest to not glance either of their way and Jinx began to wonder if they had ever truly seen Ekko riled up before.

“No.” She smiled again and tossed one of her lengthy braids behind her shoulder. “So what’s the top secret plan here? Are we all going in or..?”

The firelights all looked to Ekko who once again nodded in their direction in an unspoken code. They really were annoying.

“I’ll be coming with you, the others will stand guard.” He explained, and adjusted the heavy pipebat that hung on a strap across his back.

That pipebat- 

Flashes of their fight on the bridge momentarily stole her sight. She could never forget the look in his eyes when he pressed that bat to her neck. Eyes that were supposed to be full of love and warmth were instead full of rage, sorrow, and fear. He had been moving on adrenaline alone, if he hadn't stopped to look into her eyes when he did he very well could have finished the job. She wouldn’t admit it but she so desperately wanted to know what he saw when he looked at her that made him stop the way that he did. Why, after everything, did he choose to spare her, not knowing it would kill her anyway.

“Hello?” Ekko waved a hand to catch Jinx’s attention and she shook her head back into reality. She hadn’t even realized she had been staring.

“Right. This way.” She mumbled, then started towards the mining lever. This was perfect. The firebugs out here, the two of them down there. She could get what she needed and distract Ekko well enough to get what she didn’t.

Jinx pulled the lever and leaned against the lift's safety rails as its rusty chain squeaked and whined the whole way down into the shaft. Ekko watched her every move and she cursed his stupid owl mask for concealing his emotions from her. He looked like he belonged to one of Margot’s weirder more outlandish brothels. 

The lift came to a halt on the edges of the forgotten and inactive drill Jinx called home. All her gadgets and experiments laid in disarray across the four wings that spanned across the crack in the fissures they were nestled in. She took a deep breath as she stepped off the lift, taking in the sweet burnt rubber and mud scent of it.

She flipped a switch, illuminating several strands of string lights and neon signs providing her a dim haze to rifle through her things in. Jinx made her way over to her desk where her blueprints and drill still sat from the last time she had been down there. The schematics for her firelight bombs were so simple yet so beautiful to look at. She desperately longed for the days Silco let her waste away down here for weeks on end tinkering and experimenting until her eyes were bloodshot and her brain was fried. Those were definitely the days.

Jinx wrenched a tawdry canvas duffle bag out from under her desk and tossed her papers and drilling bits in along with her welding goggles and gloves. If Ekko wouldn’t let her around weapons, maybe she could at least convince him to let her put together furniture or something. Her hands needed to be busy. The busier her hands were the less time her mind had to ruminate.

She piled most of her desk top into the bag, whatever she could get her hands on it didn’t matter. Pieces of scrap, unfinished bottles of questionable drinks stolen from the Last Drop, cosmetics, toys, paperweights, all got thrown in with little to no care for the items. 

There were a few items in particular she didn’t want Ekko to see her swipe, however. She looked over her shoulder only to find the boy not even looking at her. Instead, Jinx found him intensely studying the glow in the dark graffiti that decorated each blade of the mining drill they stood atop. Great, she wouldn’t even have to trick him into averting his eyes as she nabbed one of her handguns and tucked it into the front pouch of her duffle. 

She moved over to an open chest filled to spilling with random pieces of clothes and loose fabric she stitched into some form of acceptable garment. Whatever it was, practically aside, she shoved as much as she could into the bag. A gentle chiming forced her attention back to Ekko who was reaching up and touching the various baubles she kept hanging from the mining drills upper railings.

“Hey, don’t touch those!” Jinx tucked the remaining scraps of fabric into her back before standing up and crossing over to him. She had strung up those decorations so long ago she no longer remembered which ones contained detonators and which didn’t.

“This place…” Ekko started, slowly turning in place to stare at every bit that has caught his eye. “It’s incredible.” He had taken his mask off, and hung it precariously from a loop on his belt allowing his eyes to shine with genuine wonder.

Jinx set her bag down and went to stand next to him. She never really saw this place as anything tremendous. She loved it because it was home but truth be told it was cold, uncomfortable, and smelled terrible. Still, there were few other places in the undercity she felt safer than in her own hideaway cave. No one had ever come to bother her except for Silco and she never minded having him in her space, he never said how he felt about it but she doubted he marveled like Ekko did.

“It’s just a bunch of junk, Ekko.” She said plainly, eyes pointedly skimming over her stuffed dolls bearing her departed brothers likenesses, then returned to her desk in search of what she really came here for.

“It’s not just a bunch of junk.” Ekko protested, still gazing absentmindedly in awe. “It’s inspiring. You took this jammed up drill in the dirt and turned it into something special. All your inspirations and dedications and notations are literally written in the walls here it’s…beautiful.”

There was something in his tone that stopped her hands from rummaging in the drawer full of bits she had opened. He was…sad. Jinx turned to look at Ekko and found him staring at her, no longer interested in her eclectic decor or botched science experiments.

“What?” She asked, shutting the drawer that did not contain what she needed.

“It’s just…” Ekko shrugged and glanced around once more quickly before finding her in his eyes again. “I spent so long wondering what your life was like these years…it always seemed so dark and lonely to me. I only ever saw you in passing but you were always so angry when I always remember you so happy. I guess I just…have more questions now than I thought I did.”

She hadn’t expected Ekko’s words to strike something in her but they did. Her heart quickened the longer she looked at him. His eyes were soft, the way she remembered them. The way they were when she was the happy girl he remembered. When she felt a lump form in the back of her throat and tears threatened to sting her eyes she turned away.

“It is dark and lonely down here.” Was all she said before continuing her rummaging.

Why was he doing this now of all times? She didn’t need to be distracted, she needed to focus. Focus on where the everloving fuck she left that god forsaken crystal. It wasn’t on her desk where she thought she left it, it wasn’t in any of her drawers. She knew she hadn’t left it in any of her chests nor had she hid it in any of her stuffed dolls as she often did with valuables.

Her skin was growing hot the more frantic her search became. Mylo’s obnoxious laughter echoed in her brain, more hysterical than usual. You lost it! 

“I didn’t lose it!” She hissed under her breath as she began digging through a box of old and broken tools she hoped the crystal had fallen off her desk into.

“What are you looking for?” 

Her outbursts were beginning to draw the attention of Ekko who had abandoned his pursuit of exploring her hideout like a museum to stand at attention behind her. She waved him off annoyed and offered him a muffled groan instead of an explanation. 

Okay. She told herself. Forget the crystal. The crystal was useless without the runes to activate it. Runes she kept hidden in a dusty outlet crawl space along with the master weapon she’d been working on. Jinx breezed past Ekko to the other side of her desk and yanked the trapdoor open with shaking hands.

No.

Her breathing became erratic as she stared into the empty crawl space. Her notes and weapon were both gone. No no no no no no no. Insidious laughter raged on and she no longer had the ability to try and silence it.

Not gone, not misplaced, stolen. They had come and cleared out her space. Her space! They had come in here and taken her things. No. No! It wasn’t right, it couldn’t be right. Because who would do that? The only person who knew she had it was Silco and he wouldn’t do that! It was here, it had to be here somewhere!

She stood up from her crouched position on the floor and returned to her desk. Whispers and laughter brought ringing to her ears as she tore into her desk drawers, upending them and knocking things to the ground.

“What are you looking for?” Ekko asked again, watching the pile of discarded content grow bigger and bigger.

“Shut up!” Jinx shouted and moved on to a chest of spare parts she dumped out onto the ground in its entirety. “Everyone shut up! I’m thinking!”

Her limbs were shaky and cold though her face remained flushed. Where was it? Where was it? Where was it? Jinx’s digging and excessive panicking nearly drowned out a flurry of crashes and shouts from above.

“We have to go.” Ekko announced and put his mask back on.

“Just give me a minute!” Not now! Not now! She left it down here she knew she did!

“No, now! We need to go!” He grabbed her arm, forcing her away from the pile of junk she had been uselessly sorting through. Her research, her crystal, her weapon, really was gone.

Jinx grabbed her duffle bag from the ground as she and Ekko ran by on their way back to the lift out. She barely had time to switch off the electricity before Ekko was starting the ascent and hauling her up with him. On the surface the four firelights that had come with them stood still, circled around four cloaked men.

One of the men removed his hood once Jinx and Ekko resurfaced revealing a young generically handsome face overshadowed by brown curls that fell into his eyes.

“What are you doing here, Taliesin?” Jinx said in greeting as she stepped in front of Ekko. A runner for Silco, Taliesin was far from one of Jinx’s favorite goons. He never knew when to mind his own business, no matter how good it was for him and considering he just got in the way of her getting her hextech back now was a really bad time for him to not mind his own business. 

“Baby blue…” He purred in an almost singsong voice. “You look like hell. What have these thugs done to you?”

Jinx rolled her eyes at not only the sound of her irritating nickname the chem-barons liked to call her but also at the sound of Taliesin’s grating voice. “You’re not fun or interesting to talk to so get to your point if you have one.”

“Silco’s been tearing the undercity upside down looking for you.” He said with a sneer, his eyes bright with excitement that forewarned trouble. “I’ve never seen the man so nervous before. I expect he’ll be very pleased we found you.”

“Silco should be worried.” She told him as she casually walked a little closer. “And he’s gonna stay worried.”

In a flash, as easy and as quick as breathing, Jinx pulled the gun she had stuffed in the front of her duffle and fired. The sound of the gun captured everyone’s attention who watched Taliesin stumble backwards, stuttering with a hand instinctively covering his bloodied chest before he crumpled to the ground.

For a moment time stood still. All eyes were on Taliesin, not Jinx or the gun in her hand, but on the boy who unknowingly picked the wrong job and paid the ultimate price. Once the reality of what had happened hit, chaos erupted. 

Silco’s goons split up and went after a different firelight each who in turn did their best to dodge and evade every attack. Streaks of green lit up the area as the firelights mounted their hoverboards and took to the skies. They seemed to be doing their best to incapacitate Silco’s men rather than actually hurt them. That just wouldn’t do.

In the midst of movement and clouds of kicked up dirt Jinx aimed her gun again and fired. A second man crumpled to the ground. As she reloaded her handgun, eyes fixed in her next target, her arms were forcibly pulled behind her. 

“Let me go!” She put all her strength in pushing herself forwards, angrily twisting in an attempt to free herself.

“Drop the gun!” Ekko’s voice was stern and calculating. Now was absolutely positively not the time for him to play the pacifist savior. It was life or death and for once, Jinx was choosing life.

“Damn it, Ekko, get off me!” She tried kicking behind her in hopes of landing a hit with no luck.

“Not until you drop the gun!” His grip tightened and she was nearly forced to drop it purely from loss of circulation to her hand. Enough already. They didn’t have the time to fight Silco’s men and each other.

Jinx felt the shimmer in her blood bubble to the surface, hot and demanding. She wrenched one hand free from Ekko’s grasp and used it to elbow him in the face. He involuntarily released her other arm in pain as blood began to gush from his nose. 

She fired her gun recklessly and watched as the bullet buried itself into the neck of a cloaked man. He fell on top of Taliesin while the fourth and final of Silco’s men turned on his heels and began to flee. Jinx’s hands had begun to shake from adrenaline but she aimed as best she could in his direction pulling the trigger just as her body was slammed into and thrown to the ground.

Her errant bullet instead found its way into the shoulder of an insect masked firelight who fell from their hoverboard with a loud shout. Angry whispers from the left of her forced Jinx into movement and she rolled to her side under Ekko’s weight, narrowly avoiding a blow from Scar who had arrived by their side to help restrain her.

Ekko straddled her lower back, pinning her right arm behind her with such force Jinx could feel bruises blooming in her skin while Scar began attempting to pry the gun from her other hand.

“Let go!” Ekko shouted, trying to reach up to help Scar but struggled to maintain his hold on her thrashing.

She fought against Scar’s claws that dug into her fingers leaving lines of angry red blood. With all the strength her roaring shimmer could give her she pulled the trigger again. The bullet zoomed through the chaos and clouds of smoke, stopping only when it met the backside of the final cloaked man’s knee. The man began stumbling, stuttering and cursing in terror as he lost his ability to hold himself upright and fell into the fissure.

Safe. They were safe.

Finally, Jinx relaxed. Scar took her gun and she didn’t fight Ekko who yanked her left hand behind her and cuffed her. Once she was cuffed he took off to attend the firelight she had shot who was on the ground clutching their shoulder. Scar pulled her to her feet and pushed her forward to regroup with the others.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to shoot you.” She huffed out at the firelight Ekko was helping to their feet. “If someone hadn’t have knocked me over I-“

“Shut up!” Ekko whipped his head around to face her and though she couldn’t see anyone’s faces, she knew they were unhappy. He pulled the slip of purple fabric from his pocket and tied it tight around her eyes. “We’re leaving and you are not going to say another goddamn word.”

•••

The walk back to the firelights base took half as long as it did than when they left, and Jinx assumed they did not bother with walking in circles to confound her this time. Not a single word was spoken and the tension around them could be cut with a knife.

When they got back, Jinx would explain herself. The firelights don’t know Silco the way she did. They weren’t thinking clearly. She did what needed to be done, a decision they never would have made that could have put them in far more danger than they ever would have realized.

The rusting groan of the base's door closing behind them and the release of her handcuffs came at the same time. When Ekko removed her blindfold, the firelight she had shot was being helped across the field by Fallon and the other firelight Jinx finally recognized to be Micah.

“Take this to her room.” Ekko’s voice caused Jinx to turn around and she watched him hand her duffle bag to Scar. “Remove anything she shouldn’t have.”

The cherian did not look pleased with his task but nodded in acceptance of his role anyway. Ekko stood with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face while Scar walked away and Jinx couldn’t tell if he was waiting for her to speak first or just for Scar to get out of earshot before he went off on her.

Jinx didn’t give him the opportunity to decide. “I made the right decision and I’m not going to apologize for it.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you!?” He moved towards her, angrily shoving her with one hand as he yelled. “I have told you we don’t kill people! Silco might have let you get away with whatever the fuck you wanted but that’s not how we do things around her! We make plans and we stick to them!”

“If I hadn’t killed them they would have told Silco I was with you! Everybody knows who you are, if you had just left those stupid masks off you could have been anybody in Zaun!” Jinx was more than prepared to fight him on this. She was not in the wrong, not this time. “He would have sent his full forces after you!”

“I don’t care if he sends the entire goddamn undercity after me!” His voice was growing louder, nearly echoing in the silence the middle of the night afforded the base. “I will not disregard my principles for anybody, especially not you!”

Jinx laughed, an exhausted and delusive laugh. “Then why don’t I just go? All of this has been nothing but a nightmare. I wanted Singed dead, that’s it! That’s all I wanted! I don’t want your forgiveness or your friendship or to play anarchy with your friends!” Jinx grew dizzy the longer she spoke. She was so angry she couldn’t even put her thoughts into words. None of this was what she wanted, all she wanted was to have died on that bridge. “So if none of you want me here and none of you like how I handle things then I’ll leave! And we can go back to pretending that we don’t exist to each other!”

Fuck. Her own words brought a prickle of glistening tears to her eyes and for what? She and Ekko have ignored each other's existence for years, she was used to it. There was no reason to be upset about this not working out, it had been a long shot anyway and she knew that before she even started it.

“Absolutely not.” Ekko’s top lip curled as he hissed out the words. “You know too much about us now and I have no reason to trust you no matter how many times you say you have more important things to do than ruin us. The only way you’re leaving is in a box.”

She laughed again, bitter this time, at the memory of Eve in her box but also at the memory of Ekko, refusing to administer the final blow. “Yeah? And who’s going to have the nerve to kill me? Because we all know it’s not you.”

In the few seconds it took for her words to sink in, Ekko was already moving. He pinned her to the ground, one arm being held by his hand, the other by the tip of his boot while his arm pressed against her neck, light but tense enough to warn he’d push harder.

“The only reason I didn’t kill you before is because for a minute I thought that just maybe you hadn’t completely killed my best friend but I was wrong.” He seethed, “If you hurt any of my people again, you die. If you try to leave, you die. If you do anything that suggests you’re still loyal to Silco, you die. And I’ll use your own gun to do it.”

Jinx only scowled at Ekko as he moved off of her and turned away.

“Go to bed. Introspection starts in five hours.”

Chapter Text

Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.

Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.

Jinx sucked in a breath as she stretched her hands up as far above her head as she could get them and held it. One, two, three, four, five. She found out very quickly Raya’s incessant spiritual ramblings could be easily ignored and that stretching actually did wonders for her back that was so often found hunched over and aching. 

The stretching, of course, was not the reason Ekko insisted Jinx attended introspection but seeing as how Ekko was determined to beat Silco and Singed to a pulp to take their place at the top of her shit list she didn’t really care about his intentions, because if she had to truly reflect on her current feelings for the firelight, Enver would be getting a new body bag. 

It was the same story over and over and over again. Part of her felt like Ekko was intentionally trying to misunderstand her. He could tell her he didn’t care if Silco comes after him until he’s blue in the face but at the end of the day he didn’t even know the half of what Silco could do. If Silco found out they were keeping her and decided to do something about it, it would be as if the firelights never even existed when he was done. The firelights would become a cautionary bedtime story, a local legend, the type of story to tell around campfires to scare little kids. 

And he had the nerve to scold her. To belittle her and make her out to be deranged. She saved them! She saved their asses and they didn’t even realize it. They should respect her, they should trust her. They followed Ekko so blindly they didn't even recognize the danger he almost put them in. 

Jinx had to admit, his threat was cute if not also obnoxious. It was a power play, nothing more. He talked big and maybe it made him feel better about his own shortcomings but Jinx knew without a shadow of a doubt Ekko did not have what it takes to kill someone, least of all her. The only thing that truly bothered her were the words he spoke that had done nothing but echo through her head for the last six hours. 

“I thought that just maybe you hadn’t completely killed my best friend but I was wrong.” 

As if she was not the one who had suffered from the death of Powder the most. As if she was not standing directly in front of him instead. As if their entire past was a figment of her imagination and that she was no more than a memory used to harbor anger and fuel his vendetta against Silco and topside. If she never saw him again after all this was said and done it would still be too soon.

Jinx did not remember how introspection ended or when breakfast began. This was something she was afraid of, if she started to run on autopilot there was no telling how quickly she’d lose control. She had half a mind to suck it up and ask Ekko to let her put together furniture if it meant she could build something. Menial chores would not cut it. Of course he’d say no, that’s far too dangerous, giving a vandal like Jinx a hammer, she might swing off the deep end with it and destroy the entire collective as though she were Jayce Talis himself.

Her breakfast of a fishy thinned rice porridge grew colder and colder as she absentmindedly stirred it and stared at a group of firelights bundling up in coats getting ready to head out. She spotted Peri and her fiery red hair getting her little blue coat zipped up by her uncle who wrapped a scarf around her head then hoisted her up onto his back and carried her through a large round entrance with a few others.

Memories of being younger and carried up to bed by Silco began clouding up her mind. Sometimes she would pretend to be asleep just because she knew he’d scoop her up and make sure she was tucked in tight. Now that she was older she was almost certain Silco knew she wasn’t sleeping but carried her to bed anyways because it made her happy.

She missed him. She didn’t want to admit it but it was getting harder and harder to deny it. Jinx was sure he had good reasons for doing what he did and maybe they were selfish reasons but who was she to decide who gets to be selfish. Maybe once Singed was dead she could hear him out and he could hear her out and they could move on. What was the alternative?

There was no one else who was going to support her unconditionally. No one else would pick her up when she was down. No one else would risk everything to bring her back to life after she had given up.

To hell with it. The ruminating whispers in her head dissipated the moment she had made up her mind. Jinx abandoned her morning bowl of mush where she was sitting and ducked past a group of kids skipping marbles as she headed into the dark rusting tunnel passage that led to her and Fallon’s bunk.

She was over it. Over this place and their stupid tree and their stupid rules and their stupid leader. Maybe she should have just hid in her hideout until her anger blew over. Jinx knew she was overreacting when she set those two buildings on fire and let herself get captured. She knew and she didn’t care. She let her emotions get the better of her- just like she always did.

In the cramped room she shared with Ekko’s chatty third, she quickly kicked off her boots and began unbuckling her many belts, letting her ratty striped pants fall to the floor. No one here would miss her or even notice her absence and by the time anyone important realized she was gone it would be too late. She yanked a pair of tight fitting pants on and fastened their clasps around her waist with steady hands. It had been so long since she had a clear head. Well, mostly clear.

Jinx wrapped one of Fallon’s puffy green jackets around herself and tucked her braids into the hood. She just needed to learn how to cool off. Once she figured out how to relax before reacting everything would be fine, and she couldn’t do that here. Not with everyone watching her every move waiting for the bomb to go off. It’s like they thought she went around shooting people for kicks. 

With a quick swipe of Fallon’s white firelight fox shaped mask, Jinx abandoned everything she had brought into the base just the night before. Her bag sat unpacked yet rummaged through at the foot of her bed. She really didn’t pay much attention to what she shoved in there in the first place so she wasn’t sure what all Scar confiscated if anything but none of it was worth much to begin with. Certainly nothing worth carrying with her. She slipped the fox mask over her face and clicked it into place, securing its seal around her cheeks and jaw. 

She didn’t take one last glance at her room before kicking her discarded pants under her bed and heading back out the way she came. Far more people than usual noticed Jinx as she walked across the courtyard in her stolen garments, a few even waved in friendly acknowledgement to her. She couldn’t tell if the laughter she heard was in her head or off in the distance, either way she wanted to be rid of it.

“Heading out.” She announced to the young boy standing guard at the entrance she saw Micah and Peri exit through just a few minutes ago.

“Heading out?” He asked, and for once Jinx was grateful for the white mask and the anonymity its muffled disguised voice provided. “Aren’t you supposed to be on Jinx duty this morning?”

Jinx duty? What the fuck was ‘Jinx duty’? Was that what Ekko called paying Fallon to annoy the absolute piss out of her night and day?

“She’s where she needs to be. Patrol reported a crack in the tunnels last night, I want to make sure they’re not on the verge of collapsing.” She fumbled to come up with something believable yet not suspicious, but since Fallon was so well liked, she probably didn’t even need to explain her actions. “Besides, Baby Blue is fuming after last night. I’m steering clear.”

He laughed, deep and jovial. “Oh I don’t blame you. I wasn’t on guard last night so I didn’t get to witness the fight but I heard it was good. I was a little skeptical about him letting her be here but I’m glad Ekko isn’t taking any of her shit.”

What? First of all, a ‘fight’ is a gross exaggeration of what happened between her and Ekko last night. The last time they actually fought multiple people including herself died. If that was a fight she was losing her edge. Second of all, the idea of Ekko not taking any of her shit gave Jinx half a mind to turn around to go find him and see just how much of her shit he wasn’t taking. 

“We’re all better for it.” Jinx agreed through gritted teeth. Whatever would get him to stop yapping and open the damn door already.

“Isn’t that the truth.” He turned and unlatched the locks to the door allowing it to swing open. Jinx nodded in thanks and made her way to the exit. “Hey,” just as she was about to cross the threshold she felt a hand grip her shoulder, taking everything in her to not immediately gut punch the man, she tensed instead. “I’m glad you made it back last night. Are you on patrol tonight? We could sneak up to the market, try our hand at haggling?”

“Uh I- I don’t know yet. You know how Ekko is.” She chuckled awkwardly and gently attempted to slip away from his grasp.

“Oh I know.” The guard laughed along with her. “Ever since Jinx showed up it’s like he forgot how to act. Even when he isn’t with her you can tell he’s thinking about her like, priorities, man. Silco first, your girlfriend second.”

“She’s not his girlfriend!” The shock and loathing in Jinx’s voice was drowned out not only by her mask but by the incredibly annoying voice of the last person she wanted to see right now.

“Fallon!”

Jinx clenched her fists at her side and turned from the still open base exit to watch as Ekko rushed across the courtyard. Speak of the devil and he shall come to ruin everything once again because it’s his favorite pastime.

“What?” She spit out then cleared her throat and composed herself. She was not Jinx right now. She was not angry at Ekko, they were trusted advisers to each other. “What…can I do for you?” She nodded to herself. Very smooth recovery, very natural. At least the hideous taunting laughter in her mind seemed to think so.

“Where’s Jinx?” He asked, out of breath and in disarray. This was a good look on him, the more out of control and desperate he looked the better. Of course he’d never show the real her anything but cool and calculating. “I couldn’t find her after introspection and shimmer support starts in half an hour.”

Oh perfect that’s exactly what she needed, to sit down with a group of strangers so they can tell her her feelings are valid and that she’s not alone. Newsflash, she was alone. None of them could even begin to comprehend what had happened to her, not seven years ago and certainly not now.

“She’s in our room.” Jinx told him, probably far too quickly. “I don’t mean to speak out of turn but…do you really think it’s the best choice to send her anywhere right now? Maybe we should just let her cool off for a bit.”

Ekko scoffed at the idea, which she didn’t think was that crazy. “Jinx is the way that she is because Silco let her do whatever the hell she wanted, no questions, no consequences. Last night was…bad. We just need to find a way to work things through before they escalate like that.”

“Maybe letting her in on our plans might help.” She offered, if either of them had any brains at all they no doubt would have realized she wasn’t really Fallon by now. Clearly there was just a bunch of hot air where their brains should be.

“You suggest this every meeting.” Ekko said with a roll of his eyes, “I told you, it’s too much of a risk. We know the surface level of Silco’s operations. We know what he lets us know. We have no idea of the extent of Jinx’s shimmer potential, no idea of their communication abilities or technology, we don’t even know that she came here of her own free will. The Jinx I know would have told me to piss off and left from the get go, the fact that she’s stuck around this long despite all the random bullshit we keep making her do means she’s either incredibly desperate, which isn’t like her, or she’s here for other reasons. We can’t trust her.”

So they were giving her random shit to do just to annoy her. Annoy her into leaving nonetheless. Jinx had assumed this from the start but the confirmation was thrilling all the same.

“Well maybe you don’t know Jinx as well as you think you do.” The idea of Jinx being a spy for Silco would be funny if were it not entirely plausible. The task had been toyed with and workshopped for quite some time but she had always adamantly told Silco no, which he respected for a few months before finding more reasons as to why she should. Over and over again they'd dance with only one ending in sight.

“And you don’t know her at all?” Ekko countered, a look of incredulous confusion on his face, marring his should be soft eyes. “I don’t know why you’re always sticking your neck out for her, she doesn’t even like you.”

“I’m just saying, she’s not Powder anymore. You know the memory of her, not her.” Shut up shut up shut the fuck up. Her mind would not stop talking, and neither would she apparently. She could have been halfway through the tunnels by now if it weren’t for Fallon’s stupid boyfriend and her stupid boyfriend, allegedly.

“Where are you even going?” He asked, crossing his arms and pointedly diverting the conversation.

Ah fuck, what was her story again? “The tunnels have a…crack that patrol found. I’m making sure it’s not collapsing.”

“What tunnels? When did this happen? Patrol didn’t tell me anything.” Ekko shrugged his jacket off, revealing his toned arms that flexed as he chucked the jacket aside and opened a trapdoor full of equipment.

“The southern exit.” 

“The southern exit?” He stopped his rummaging and stood back up, “We never even use those tunnels?”

“That doesn’t mean we can let them collapse!” She cracked her knuckles as if determined to fix them by hand if need be. “Never know when we’re gonna need them.”

Ekko waved her off, clearly finding her reasonings superfluous. “Let me find Jinx real quick and I’ll come with you, I want to see the damage.”

“No need!” She bit her tongue as he turned back to look at her with one eyebrow quirked. “I’m sure it’s fine, I’m just gonna take a quick look. If it’s really bad I’ll come back and get you.”

“Fine, but be careful.”

Jinx nodded and rushed through the exit before anyone else could find reason to stop her. The tunnels were cold, dark, and disgusting. Granted they were in a sewer but, damn. Her boots sloshed through thin puddles of water that soaked into the concrete, giving fat pads of moss something to leech onto. 

Ideally, she needed to avoid the southern exit tunnels since someone would likely come running when Fallon didn’t return, however that would involve knowing where the southern exit tunnels were. She remembered a maze game she and Vi used to play when they were younger. Mylo always swore up and down the quickest way out of the maze was to make as many right turns as possible. Mylo was also an idiot, but it didn’t stop Jinx from turning right at the first crossroads. 

The first right led to a second right which led to a third right which led to a dead end. Irritated, she turned back and took the left turn instead, which led to another dead end. She groaned and returned to the second right turn she made. She didn’t care if she had to climb up the slimy dripping vines to get out of that stinking sewer she would do it.

The firelights were doing nothing but intentionally toying with her, Ekko thought she was a spy, and all she wanted was to sleep in her own amalgamation of pillows and cushions she called a bed in the rafters of Silco’s office. They were probably never even going to keep their word and help her kill Singed. All this was some moronic wild goose chase to get her to give up or go crazy so that they could end up killing her in the end like they wanted to to begin with. 

Well good luck with that, bug boy. Jinx thought as she kicked a rock down the hundredth passage she walked with her. Eventually she tired of her breath heating her face and unclasped Fallon’s fox mask from her cheeks. The cold air was a welcome relief though the deep breath she took was not. 

She tossed the mask to the ground and turned around when she found herself face to face with another dead end. What was the point of these sewers if they didn’t lead anywhere? No wonder the city closed them up. As she meandered through another passage she couldn’t remember if she had been through before she stopped and leaned against the damp concrete wall. 

She needed to think. Aimlessly wandering would get her nowhere fast. Even if she wanted to go back to the firelights she had no clue how to get back at this point. Jinx cracked her back as she pushed herself off the wall and started walking again. If she was ever hoping for a dead end, it was now, but no.

“Jinx!”

“Oh my god.” She muttered with a whine as Fallon jogged towards her, her discarded mask swinging from a clip on her hips.

“Oh thank god!” The firelight clasped her hand to her chest in relief as she fought to catch her breath. “I thought I’d never find you. We have to get back, fast.”

Jinx scoffed and started walking away from her. “Pass. How about you tell me how to get out of here and we can part as friends, or allies at the very least.”

“What?!” Fallon followed behind her, and the shimmer in Jinx’s veins began bubbling to the surface, itching to burst out and fight. “Please, we have to go back. Ekko thinks you’re in support group right now, he’s going to freak out if he finds out you’re gone.”

“I actually don’t care about what Ekko’s gonna do if he finds out I’m gone.” She shrugged and looked over her shoulders at the exasperated and desperate firelight as she continued to walk. “I imagine he’ll start out huffing and puffing and then maybe yelling, which I have to admit I’d actually love to see, his nose gets all scrunched and he gets all weepy because he can’t actually get mad to save his life. And then once he's done tearing up because he feels bad about being mad at you guys, he’ll order you guys to hunt me down, which I’ll be at The Last Drop by the way, and you guys will get crushed because you don’t know anything about fighting the chem-barons, not that you’d let me in on any meetings to explain that to you guys because you think I’m a spy but anyways, after you all die he’ll call it off and curse me forever for being the worst evil thing that ever happened to him and I don’t care.”

Her words were laced with venom but they left her cold inside. How was Fallon supposed to believe her words when Jinx didn’t even believe them herself? Most was true, the firelights would be decimated if they went after Jinx, which is why they’ve mostly left her alone whenever they encountered each other on jobs. But Ekko…no. She could feel bad about Ekko later, right now she was still mad at him.

“Jinx, please.” She begged again, “Ekko will never find out if you come back with me. I won’t tell him, I don’t want Archer getting in trouble.”

Archer? Archer..? Did she know an Archer? “Oh! Your idiot boyfriend who let me go no questions asked? Maybe he should get in trouble, he’s bad at his job.”

“Please, I will do anything.”

Jinx stopped in her tracks, the offer was certainly tempting. “Why do you trust me?”

“What?” Fallon stood up straight in confusion, an errant hand absentmindedly brushing thick coils of hair from her sweat slick face.

“When I was wearing your mask and trying to get out the gates Ekko asked me, well you, why you’re always sticking your neck out for me.” She explained. “So why are you?”

She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly, as if she was embarrassed or didn’t know where to begin. “When I met Ekko I was…in a really bad place. I was seventeen, my mom had just died, my dad was in Stillwater and my friends and I were reckless and stupid.” She shrugged, not knowing if that was enough information for Jinx, when she didn’t say anything, she kept going.

“We discovered shimmer when we pickpocketed some guy on the bathysphere. We didn’t know what it was but like I said we were reckless and stupid so we took it.” Fallon smiled grimly at the memory of her younger days. Up until that point Jinx had no idea how old she was, she would have guessed Fallon was still seventeen if she didn’t know any better. “It’s unbelievable how quickly it is to get addicted to it. I think we did it twice before it was all I could think about. I hallucinated it, I dreamt about it, every flash of bright purple light caught my attention, I was deranged.”

“My sister fought me tooth and nail, every. Single. Day. To get better, to get help. For the longest time I hated her for making things so much more complicated than they needed to be but at the same time I was grateful for her because she was my sister and she would always be there for me. But I was wrong.” Fallon took a deep breath and leaned against the cool concrete wall slowly leaking water down the sides.

“I came home one day to find all the windows boarded up and all our stuff gone. She left a letter to tell me that she was done watching me destroy my life and that she was moving to Ionia. Ekko took me in and we fought. Every. Day. I told him I hated him, he told me he didn’t care. He wouldn’t give up and I could never figure out why. Then one day the portrait of a blue haired little girl went up on that wall and all the light, all the fight just disappeared from him. He still fights for us. Fights to protect us, for the future he thinks we can have but his heart hasn’t been in it in a long time. At this point it feels like revenge or…spite. So I told myself that I would never give up on anyone, the same way he did for me. Even if it means sticking my neck out for someone who’s tried to shoot me and killed a bunch of my friends.”

Fallon pushed herself up off the wall and started talking again before Jinx could interject. “And I know, I know, we all have our sad stories or whatever but we don’t have to be our sad stories. We can move on, we can get better.”

Jinx was quiet for a moment as she took in the firelights words. Did Vi feel the same way about her as Fallon’s sister did. Was she done trying to save her?

“What if I don’t want to be better?” She asked.

“Maybe you don’t.” Fallon tossed her hands up as if to say ‘I don’t know.’ “But wouldn’t it be nice to figure that out yourself instead of being told who you’re supposed to be? Come back. Please?”

She hummed softly to herself. Go back to the firelights and be tormented by Ekko’s nonsensical task list or go back to Silco and continue to be his beloved weapon. Be hated and have her revenge, or be loved and be dismissed.

“One condition.” She said finally, after minutes of palpable silence.

“Anything.”

“I’m done fooling around.” Jinx told her. “We’re going after the doctor and I am to be included in every single meeting, plan, or conversation that takes place about it.”

Fallon nodded gently to herself as she thought Jinx’s request over. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“No,” She countered. “Swear it.”

“I can’t make any promises-“

“Then I’m not coming.”

“Oh, come on!” Fallon huffed in frustration, but in Jinx’s defense, making things easy was never something she was interested in. “Ekko is adamant about keeping you deaf, dumb, and blind to our movements. He trusts me but he’s still our leader. I can't just overrule him, he needs to be convinced, which I can work on.”

Jinx was quiet again for a moment as she thought. “Fine! Just get us out of this dump.”

Fallon’s sigh of relief could most likely be heard through the entire undercity and she ushered Jinx back the way they came through the tunnels. She had no idea how Fallon knew where she was going when every passage was unlabeled and looked exactly the same but sure enough they returned to the large round gate Jinx had fled through roughly an hour beforehand. 

Several quick methodical taps against the door and it was shifting, slowly opening up and allowing sunlight to illuminate the darkened doorway Jinx and Fallon stood in.

“You found her!” Archer gasped upon seeing them and brushed the hair from his face in visible relief.

“And you’re bad at standing guard.” Jinx muttered as they made their way inside and allowed the heavy metal door to close behind her along with the thought of leaving. 

Fallon clapped her hands together and looked around quickly to assess who all was watching them. “Okay. Shimmer support started half an hour ago, if you go now-“

“I am not going to support group, I told you I was done fooling around.” She interjected. Of course Fallon never promised she could get her out of Ekko’s fools errands, but Jinx had a sneaky suspicion she could weasel it out of her too.

“If you go to support group right now no questions asked I will not speak to you for twenty-four hours straight-“

“Where?”

“Green room.” The firelight gestured to a small shamrock painted shack built into a second floor landing snaking up the firelights massive tree.

Jinx glanced over at the building and ignored the sense of dread she felt in the pit of her stomach as she sarcastically saluted Fallon and headed towards a winding poorly made staircase. “I look forward to not hearing from you!”

•••

The little shack that housed the firelights shimmer support groups appeared to ordinarily be one of the children’s school houses if the stick figure drawings and alphabet stickers that decorated the walls were anything to go by. All eyes were on Jinx like deer stuck in headlights while she stared back in awkward silence from the doorway. Five firelights sat in a circle of metal chairs, all looking downtrodden and morose, except for one.

In the center was a young woman with bright flushed cheeks and dark eyes who beamed at Jinx as she entered as if the sight of her was the highlight of her day.

“Jinx, it’s so good to see you.” She smiled as she spoke, keeping her tone sincere and clear. “I didn’t know if you were going to make it. Please, have a seat.”

Jinx ungracefully shuffled into the room letting the heavy metal door slam behind her, causing several of the group participants to jump. She slowly slumped into the last cold folded metal chair and sank down, instinctively allowing her horrific and frankly offensive posture take form.

“Everyone, this is Jinx.” The woman informed the group, as if her dad was not the one who distributed the powerful drug that put them in this very room to begin with. “She’s Ekko’s very good friend, so we’re excited to have her here with us.” She turned to face Jinx and with that same warm, practiced smile. “My name is Kier. Perhaps you would like to share a little bit about yourself? How shimmer has affected you, maybe?” 

“No thanks.” She scoffed and crossed her arms. “I’m not an addict and I’m only here because Ekko made me come, and he’s not my friend.”

Powder loves Ekko! Powder loves Ekko! She surreptitiously dug her fingernails into her arms as taunting remarks from her childhood danced in her ears. Her having a crush on Ekko was Mylo’s favorite joke.

“Do you think Ekko gave any of us a choice about being here?” A girl around Jinx’s age with blotchy dark skin and tightly coiled braids asked with a haughty laugh.

Kier held up her hand to quiet the murmurs spreading amongst the others in agreement with the girl who spoke up. “Addict or not, shimmer plagues you all the same. We can see the truth in your eyes. How did they get to be that color?”

Her words were like a slap to the face and the room grew dark to showcase a different uncomfortably familiar place that Jinx was trying her hardest to forget. Only two things remained visible. A blood soaked table, and the silhouette of someone slumped over in a chair before it. 

How could you? How could you? How could you? Her fingernails dug into her skin again and her teeth bit down on her cheek as a lump formed in her throat. He promised to keep her away from shimmer. He promised. 

“Would anyone like to share their story to help Jinx better understand that we are not here to judge each other?” Kier’s voice brought her back to reality. Not that it was any better than her delusions.

A man probably the same age as Kier raised his hand. “I don’t mind.”

“Thank you, Orson. Go ahead, we’re listening.”

Well, they were. Jinx wasn’t. Orson launched into a dreadfully long story about him quitting his job as a street sweeper to run shimmer for one of Silco’s goons but decided not to tell his wife. She didn’t know what she thought shimmer support would be but it definitely wasn’t this. Despite Orson being the one speaking, all squinty, snarled, and angry eyes were on Jinx still.

She couldn’t read their thoughts but she could certainly make them up. They didn’t think she belonged there, her presence was counterproductive, blah blah blah. Jinx didn’t quite hear the end of his story but she thought it had something to do with getting caught in underground fighting rings to pay for the shimmer he had stolen from Silco. It wasn’t until she heard her name that she realized he’d stopped talking.

“Jinx?” Kier had her hands folded delicately in the lap of her dark blue trousers. “As you can see, this is a safe space. We won’t push you to share, but talking through things will help you heal. If you would still rather not, we can try again next week.”

Jinx thought for a long while. On the one hand, none of them would really care or be sympathetic to her situation. On the other hand, it might make them uncomfortable enough to leave her alone.

“There’s really not much to tell.” She began with a shrug. “I died, semi-intentionally, Silco found me and had me tied down and injected with shimmer against my will repeatedly until I came back to life.”

The silence that filled the room was uncomfortably loud apart from one objectively horrified “Oh my god.” That was muttered under one of the participants' breaths. The look in their eyes shifted from irritation to pity. Awh, looks like they feel bad for you, baby blue. Irritating voices in her head pinpointing the sudden change of the group caused Jinx to sit up a little straighter in her chair.

“Damn.” A scrawny kid even younger than Jinx was the first to speak up. “That must have been awful.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

They all spoke at once. Hushed and murmured tones voiced their sympathy for Jinx then went quiet again, until the girl who had countered her earlier spoke up.

“So you killed yourself?”

“Orla-“ Keir held a hand out to the girl to slow her down. “Jinx doesn’t have to answer that if she doesn’t want to.”

Jinx brushed Kier off. “No- I mean, I didn’t kill myself. Well I did but, it wasn’t like that. I was trying to kill… someone else but I mean I knew I’d die too-“

“So you killed yourself?” Orla asked again, this time not so much a question but rather a statement that Jinx had confirmed her previous query.

“No!”

“Alright.” Kier silenced them before a true argument could erupt and she faced Jinx. “Would you say that trust is very important to you?”

Well obviously? Who in their right mind would find trust to be unimportant in any aspect of their life. “Trust is the only valuable currency people down here can afford.”

If someone couldn’t afford something in coin, the trust that they would follow through with a task for payment was what got a lot of people through tough times. Jinx never really had to worry about money living with Silco but she remembered being young and taking a trip to Benzo’s with Vander where they traded various scraps of equally valueless items in exchange for drink or information. A vast majority of The Last Drop patrons sealed business deals with secrets and blood rather than money. Money meant nothing to the people who didn’t have it. 

“And do you trust the person who had you injected with shimmer?” Kier asked and Jinx stiffened. 

She could feel her fingertips grow cold and her ears flush hot. Of course she trusted Silco. He’d never done anything to suggest she couldn’t. He did everything for her, made countless sacrifices, hell sometimes he’d kill his own men for speaking ill of her one too many times. If the roles were reversed she couldn’t say she wouldn’t also make the same rash decisions.

“It was out of love.” Was all she said.

“If that comforted you in any way you would not be suffering” Keir told her, instantly rubbing her the wrong way.

“I’m not suffering.” Jinx hissed. Once again everything was so black and white to them. They couldn’t possibly begin to understand the complicated dynamics at play behind the situation.

Nonetheless Kier persisted, chipping away at Jinx’s calcified exterior. “You are very angry, all the time. You feel like your trust has been broken though you defend the people who have hurt you out of love and loyalty and you came to the people you have actively fought against for years for help because you did not believe you could trust the person you claim did this out of love. Those are not the actions of someone at peace.”

Jinx slumped back down in her seat. Alright, pack it up, playtime’s over. Kier didn’t know anything. She knew a few things, somehow. But she still knew nothing and Jinx wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of proving her right or telling her anymore. She didn’t speak for the rest of the meeting and instead opted to zone out while Keir continued to validate everyone’s feelings and make observations no normal person should be able to make.

Afterwards, Jinx found herself leaning on a balcony railing overlooking the firelights base outside of the green room shimmer support was in. She watched Ekko sitting in the grass with his back against a wooden chest, Scar’s chubby infant daughter in his lap. The kids around him all blew bubbles that she tried poking and popping with her short arms and limited movement. She wished she could be one of those kids, carefree and laughing. Safe and well fed. Why couldn’t this have been her childhood?

The door to the green room closed as the last of the support group left and headed down the spiral staircase to the side of it. A few soft footsteps and Kier was standing by the ledge next to Jinx.

“I know it’s a lot to ask but I hope that you’ll be a more active participant in the future.” Her voice was so soft and sweet it made Jinx sick. Just the sound of it felt like a promise that she’d always try to be understanding of whatever anyone would say.

“Don’t count on it.” Jinx mumbled and busied herself by picking peeling paint off the rail.

Kier took a deep breath. “I meant what I said.” She began. “You’re very angry but not at us, not even at Ekko. I can’t tell if you’re angry at your situation or your past or yourself but it isn’t us. The satisfaction you’ll receive when the revenge you seek has been executed will only be temporary and you’ll find something new to be angry at afterwards. You need to find the true cause of your anger to truly heal it. I can help you if you’re willing.”

“I don’t need nor do I want your help!” Jinx snapped, she couldn’t help it. It was all anyone ever wanted to do. Jinx was wrong and they needed to fix her. Not accept her the way that she was, broken bits and all. “I told you I was only there because attendance was one of Ekko’s requirements, not participation. I don’t need to get in touch with my feelings, I don’t need to ask for anyone’s forgiveness, and I’m fine just the way that I am.”

“You’re fine with the memories that haunt you?”

“Listen,” She twisted to face Kier, getting as close to her as she could to get her point across. “You don’t know me, you know what Ekko told you and he doesn’t know me either. Even if I told you every single tragic intricate detail of my life you wouldn’t understand me because no one does. I’m a monster, I’m a jinx. It’s who I am, it’s all anyone will ever see me as. So give it a rest because there is no saving me.”

Kier was silent for a while and Jinx turned away, triumphant she had gotten the message through. She should have known she was wrong.

“Understanding and acceptance are often confused with one another or thought to be two sides of the same coin.” She started, “but there can be understanding without acceptance and acceptance without understanding. People neither accept nor understand you because you don’t let them.”

“Silco understands me.” Jinx spat out. Silco always had.

“Does he?” Kier asked. “Or does he understand what he’s taught you to believe?” 

Before Jinx could respond, Kier was gone, making her way down the spiraling staircase and leaving Jinx to think not only about how little she understood herself but how much she couldn’t stand her.

•••

Dishes, Jinx discovered, were a wonderful chore. Repeated movement, precise stacking of dozens of wooden bowls, and best of all a partner who hated her and kept quiet the entire time. As much as she liked causing a fuss about doing anything Ekko asked her to do, she really was bored.

The weepy red headed woman from her trial, Saorise, silently scrubbed dishes beside Jinx and handed them to her to dry once they were clean. Neither of them had spoken a word to each other since they arrived shortly after lunch which was just fine with Jinx. The only thing she really wished for was music, she did miss blaring her music loud enough to cause her hideout to collapse into the fissure it was stuck in. As far as ways to die were concerned it was considerably cooler than blowing herself up on a bridge in Piltover. 

As they finished up, Saorise offered Jinx a hollow smile. “Did you get to see your sister before you came down here?”

“What?” The wooden utensils in Jinx’s hand snapped in two. Vi? Here? Vi was there?

“They came to visit Ekko a little bit ago in his office at the top of the tree.” She told her, “I think they were bringing an update on that gem they found.”

The gem they stole from Jinx. 

Jinx shook her head. “They?”

“Her and that enforcer.” Saorise gritted out the word with as much disdain as Jinx normally did. “Ekko said we can trust her but she’s a Kiramman-“

She was gone before the woman could finish her sentence. Vi was there. In the firelights base. And she brought that insipid enforcer with her. And Ekko let her. The winding stairs to the top of the tree felt endless even with the speed her shimmer afforded her without request. Her footsteps slowed just outside an open door filled with pleading voices.

“Ekko, please. Do you know anything about where she might be?” Caitlyn. Her brain clawing voice was just as grating as Jinx remembered.

“Look I know…she’s changed- I- I get that now.” Vi’s words were carefully crafted, like there was something specific she wanted but couldn’t say it or maybe she didn’t know how. “She’s still my sister, I just- I want a chance to try and change things. I owe her that much.”

Ekko cleared his throat. “I know why you want to find her.” Jinx couldn’t see them but she figured he must have been speaking to Vi. “But why do you want to find her?”

“You still don’t trust me. I understand.” Caitlyn might be believed to anyone topside, but Jinx could see through her words in an instant. “We both want a chance to set things right.”

And what did the two of them believe setting things right entailed? Because if Jinx knew her sister, Vi’s version included them becoming one big happy family again and Caitlyn’s involved her being locked behind bars in Stillwater until she wasn’t able to tell the difference between night and day anymore. 

“I’m sorry.” Ekko said, entirely unsympathetic. “I don’t know anything. I haven’t heard or seen from her and considering the fact that she just tried to kill me, again, I really don’t care.”

Vi sighed deeply, the worry in her words increasing. “She didn’t just up and disappear, she asked for the firelights specifically. Have any of your people seen her?”

“I doubt it.” He once again remained flippant in his response. “They report everything they see, no one has mentioned her and believe me none of them would protect her.”

Except for…him? 

“Come on.” Footsteps shuffled inside the room as Caitlyn spoke, “I want to get back before the council meeting starts. Let’s see what they have to say then we’ll work out our next steps.” 

Jinx quickly spun on her heels and dipped inside the room next door to avoid being spotted. She crouched behind the door and was instantly distracted by the realization of where she was that she almost didn’t notice Vi and Caitlyn walking by. At the sound of their exit Jinx stood and walked around the room. A bookshelf illuminated with a string of chem-lights lined the far wall packed with thick, dusty, moldering tomes and stacks of unbound papers. 

On the side she stood on was a wardrobe, left open but impeccably organized with garments and weapons. Jinx had half a mind to try and swipe one but he would notice. Just like he would notice if she rummaged through the chest seated below a glowing lantern that no doubt held undefinable treasures of mystery, next to a fluffy bed a bit bigger than hers and made up with a plush yellow quilt and plump pillows.

“Jinx?” She jumped at the sound of her name and turned to find the owner of the room himself in the doorway. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

“What did they want?” She asked, immediately deflecting from the conversation.

“You.” Ekko replied in a matter of fact tone. He immediately turned to close his wardrobe door, quickly looking over for any discrepancies inside.

Jinx crossed her arms, annoyed at the situation and the fact that Ekko felt the need to double check his belongings. She had wanted to steal them but still. “Yeah, I heard. Why’d you tell them you didn’t know where I was?”

“Did you want me to hand you over?”

“No.”

“Okay. So the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you, Ekko’.” He held out his hand, motioning for her to repeat after him but she only smacked it away.

“Go to hell.” She was surprised he didn’t call her out or reprimand her for listening in on their conversation. His words would have held no weight as the leader of the spying on people squad but Jinx was starting to think he liked hearing himself speak. 

To her even bigger surprise, Ekko laughed, then grew a little more solemn. “Listen…last night. We can’t have things like that keep happening.”

“Yeah, you already told me all this, you don’t have to keep repeating yourself.” She waved him off, “Killing people is bad, you won't stand for it or you’ll kill me. I got it the first time, I’m not an idiot.”

“No, that’s not-“

His words were cut off. Not by Jinx but by the shouts and screams of people below. Ekko rushed from the room followed quickly by Jinx. They sprinted as fast as they could around the trees' never ending spiral staircase and into the crowd of firelights gathered by the front entrance.

“Clear the way!” He shouted pushing past people to reveal a grim sight.

Micah knelt in the grass soaked in blood, refusing to be attended by anyone. He sobbed violently as he clutched a small blue coat spattered with violent blotches of red. 

“They took her!” He cried, holding the jacket to his chest and face. There was so much of it it was nearly impossible to tell where the blood was coming from. “They took my baby girl!”

No one could get a straightforward answer out of Micah no matter how much they tried. His speech was strained and laced with sobs. He pushed away everyone who tried to move him in any way until someone managed to snag the buttons on his shirt and tear it away revealing several stab wounds varying from shallow to deep across his chest and abdomen. But the wounds weren’t what caught Jinx’s eye. It was the intricate symbol that had been faintly branded into Micah’s collarbone. The symbol of The Hush Company.

Chross.

Chapter Text

It didn’t take long for the shock keeping Micah’s body upright to run its course and let him collapse into the arms of two firelights who carted him off to god knows where. He spent hours in and out of consciousness, trying his best to spell out the constantly changing story of what happened while he and Peri were out.

The gist of what he managed to spit out that remained constant was relatively simple. They were visiting family in the east side junction when Micah had noticed two men that had appeared at the stall next to them no matter which stall they visited. He thought they were safe when he finally managed to pull Peri away from a table of jewels and out of the square but the men cornered them just outside the entrances to the Firelight’s sewer passages. 

From the looks of the bruising and wounds on Micah, it wasn’t much of a fight. Jinx knew Chross’s men, they fought dirty, got off on it even. That’s exactly why they got hired in the first place, and why any self respecting business would cut their losses and acquiesce when he decided their business was now his. For someone with one foot in the grave, Chross sure had one hell of a will to go out as dishonorable as possible. A reputation that preceded him was better than none at all, apparently.

Once Micah had been taken away to be looked over a few firelights tried their best to wash away the trail of blood he left behind him. None of them spoke to each other in hushed voices or worried whispers. Instead they only looked at each other but their expressions were loud, they were worried. Worried for the well-being of the little girl who was taken, and worried for what that meant for the safety of everyone else. What was to stop the chem-barons from coming after any one of them or their children?

Jinx sat on a stoop and stared blankly at the firelights as they finished their clean up and dispersed in silence. What did Chross want with Peri? The chem-barons were far from interesting to Jinx now that she was older but when she had first been rescued by Silco she desperately wanted to be of help to them. 

Most found her annoying at best and a liability at worst, Chross especially. Margot was the first chem-baron who didn’t treat Jinx coldly when she first came onto the scene a few years earlier, but rather she found her amusing like she was Silco’s ostentatious yappy pet, which really wasn’t better.

Chross’s network, The Hush Company, was the most lethal of all the chem-barons. They shot first and asked questions later, one of the few things Jinx actually respected about him. His network was rotted to the core with hitmen, forgerers, dubious foreign trade, and most notably trafficking. Without Chross, Silco’s factories would be devoid of workers and the streets free of shimmer. If anything happened to Silco, it wouldn’t be long until Chross took his place.

The only thing that kept Jinx from making a definitive decision on where Peri was, was not knowing why they took her. If they took her just to take her and send a message, she could be at Hope House with all the other orphans, being starved and abused by the caretakers who hated kids more than they hated their own lives. Hope House was where most of Silco’s child workers came from, anyone strong enough to fight back was strong enough to man machinery in their eyes.

But if she wasn’t at Hope House and she wasn’t being put to work in a factory…Jinx’s eyes roamed the area where Micah collapsed and began walking towards it, unable to stop herself or understand why. She reached down and picked up what she assumed to be a towel left behind by the firelights who cleaned up but in her hands she could see clearly the little cobalt blue coat Micah had desperately been clutching.

She turned it over in her hands. The fabric was cold and torn at the collar as if she had been yanked by it when she was taken. A few of the buttons had come loose or popped off entirely and soaking up a huge stain across the front and sleeves of it was Micah’s blood from him holding it to his chest in comfort. 

The coat, by all means, was ruined. It was scrap now, to be cut up and used for patches or for rags. But if they cut it up, Peri wouldn’t have a coat anymore when she came back. Jinx mindlessly folded the coat in on itself and draped it over her arm. 

There had been a time where she had been covered in blood and her garments ruined. As much as she wanted to salvage her clothes, the stains were nothing more than a hideous reminder of what she had done, as if the voices that taunted her every waking moment weren’t enough. Peri hadn’t done anything wrong. She didn’t deserve blood stained reminders of what happened on her clothes.

Jinx found herself in the bathing room, going through the motions of filling a bucket up with little to no thoughts racing in the back of her mind. She couldn’t think right now, not with that giant stain on Peri’s coat. She submerged it into the bucket of freezing water, not bothering with heating rocks before ringing it out as best she could with her numb fingertips. 

She submerged it again, squeezing tighter this time, trying to soak up and squeeze out as much of the bloodied water as she could. Jinx dumped the bucket of cold water out on the ground and filled it up again, this time adding little cubes of the citrus and sap scented soap the firelights kept stocked.

Scrub. Soak. Squeeze. Scrub. Soak. Squeeze. Over and over she repeated her movements, mindlessly, wordlessly, until beads of sweat formed on her forehead and her hands ached with cold and fatigue. Even after the water began to run clear, her little blue coat sported remnants of blood, permanently stained into the fabric.

Not good enough. Jinx stood and stepped away from the basin, her pants and gloves drenched and dripping in water. She left the bucket where it was and set off to the room she and Fallon shared. Fallon, along with Ekko, Scar, and several other firelights disappeared soon after someone had finally managed to haul Micah away. Wherever they were, Jinx was positive they were concocting a hairbrained scheme that wouldn’t even get them to Chross’s front door step. She’d deal with that later.

Right now, there was a coat with stains, and it was unacceptable. There was a little girl who was missing her coat and she was probably very cold and very scared. Jinx yanked open her duffel bag of random things still zipped shut at the foot of her bed and began digging. She was going to fix this. She was going to fix this because she could fix it. Because she wasn’t somebody who just destroyed things, contrary to popular belief.

You can’t save her. 

“Shut up.” Jinx hissed at the whispers creeping down shoulders and enveloping her in doubt.

They took her because of you.

“Shut up!” There was no proof, no evidence whatsoever that she was why Peri was taken. Chross’s men snatched kids all the time for no reason at all. No one knew she was here. She killed the men who came to get her when they visited her hideout. No one knew.

She’s gone and there’s nothing you can do about it, Jinx.

I told you to stay away!

We can’t trust her.

She jinxes every job.

All the voices began at once slowly overlapping each other until Jinx couldn’t recognize who was speaking. “I said shut up!” She reached into her bag and chucked the first thing she grabbed across the room. A glass jar filled with loose gumbands and tacks shattered against the wall and scattered across the floor. 

Her chest violently heaved as she breathed deeply in and out. Silence filled the room, oblivious to her outburst and she returned to rummaging through her bag. She pulled out a thick metal tube nearly full with her signature neon pink paint and a small grin spread across her face as the idea came to life. She rooted around a little more until she found a small metal tin filled with loose charcoal she used to make smokepowder and jumped to her feet. This would work, it had to.

The bucket sat still and cold right where Jinx had left it. She upended it, letting the water soak through drains and into the ground. As she filled it back up with new water she dumped in her tube of pink paint and tin of charcoal. The colors swirled together in opposing patterns and Jinx removed her gloves and set them aside before mixing it together with her hands, creating a deep shade of purple. 

Jinx’s numb fingers trembled as she picked up the blue cloak and submerged into the tub of dye saturated water. She squeezed the coat letting the fabric soak up as much dye as possible. Once she rung out as much of the water as she could, Jinx held the coat up to the light. The dark purple shade of it obscured any lingering stains, making it look almost brand new. Hopefully Peri wasn’t too attached to the blue. 

Back in her quarters with the sopping wet, now purple coat, Jinx dug through her duffle again. She distinctly remembered packing away some cloths and sutures for turning them into clothes but as she dug for pins and needles she started to think maybe she had just looked at her bin of sewing scraps.

In a flurry, bringing a swift gust of wind with her, Fallon burst through the door and grabbed her firelight mask off her bed. It wasn’t like Fallon to not say anything to her even if it was a simple greeting and Jinx stopped her right before she could rush back out the door.

“Wait!” She jumped up from her position on the floor and looked the firelight over. Fallon was cloaked head to toe, every inch but her face covered. They were moving out. “Where are you going?”

“We’re still calculating I have to get back.” Fallon once again made for the door and Jinx followed.

“I’m coming with you.”

“Jinx-“

“You swore you’d get me in and I have information on who took her, I know his operations.” Jinx stood her ground as she watched Fallon’s mind race for a reason to tell her to back off but it was clear the only thing that would stop her from following Fallon to wherever the other firelights were meeting was being physically restrained or knocked out. 

Fallon sucked in a deep breath and groaned, she didn’t have time to argue, and Jinx had no problem using it to her advantage. “Fine, let’s go.”

The heavy steel door to their room slammed shut behind them and Jinx followed Fallon through the poorly lit passage back out into the main courtyard of the base. The usual clusters of people laughing, playing, and training were nowhere to be seen. Everyone had shut themselves away inside their bunkers for the night, in the wake of such tragedy, the firelights mourned together.

“And don’t say anything when we get in there for the love of god,” Fallon spoke up as she ripped the coverings off a hidden trap door at the base of the tree. “Ekko is already going to be mad you’re there and we don’t have time for you guys to argue in circles for an hour.”

What annoyed Jinx the most about her and Ekko’s recent tiffs was that at the end of the day they both wanted the same thing. Ekko might have wanted a little bit more than Jinx but they had a common enemy. Someone they should be taking all their grievances out on instead of each other.

 A small part of Jinx that wanted to remember Ekko as the kind, sweet, boy she once knew repeatedly toyed with the thought that Ekko was still angry with her for the day she kicked him out of Silco’s office. There were a lot of things Jinx wished she could do over, but she always went back to that day whenever she thought about it. 

If Ekko played nice, she would too. He was the one who started all their petty squabbles, starting with that damn morning meditation, which he didn’t even go to. What did he know about grounding? Jinx might be impulsive but Ekko was resentful, which wasn’t any better, no matter how cool and collected he tried to paint himself.

Fallon slung her mask through a loop in her belt and descended a rusty, creaking ladder. The underground bunker was closed off by a locked mechanism that Fallon unlocked with her fingerprint. Inside, cramped over a map sprawled over a table, was Ekko, Scar, and two other firelights Jinx didn’t recognize. None of them paid any mind to them until Jinx joined them at the table.

“What is she doing here?” Ekko asked in a voice of pure exhaustion and annoyance as he looked up from the table and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“She has information about Peri’s abduction.” Fallon stood with her arms folded in front of her and Jinx splayed her purple stained fingers over the outstretched map. They had circled and blocked off several locations, none of which had anything to do with one another or even Chross.

“What are all these markings?” She asked, pointing out deep red splotches circling buildings near the wharf, boundary markets, and alcove district. 

“Don’t worry about it.” Ekko shooed her hands away from the map with his own. “Fallon, get her out of here, we don’t have time for this.”

“No.”

The entire room fell deathly silent and all eyes turned to Fallon who, to Jinx’s surprise, held her ground and did not waiver. Fallon took a deep breath and continued, never once breaking eye contact with Ekko. “She knows more about the criminal enterprises in the undercity than any of us could ever imagine and part of the deal you made with her for being here was giving us information. She stays.”

Ekko sucked in a deep breath and clicked his tongue as he thought, his eyes narrowing on both Fallon and Jinx standing right next to each other. “Scar?” He asked, keeping his eyes pointed on them. “Any thoughts?”

Scar scowled at Jinx. Years of resentment for all that she’d done in Silco’s name branded his face with anger and frustration. “If it gets Peri back then I don’t care.”

“Fine.” Ekko crossed his arms and nodded towards the map. “What do you know?”

“Well first of all, what are all these markings?” She asked again, waving her hand over the map of uselessly and irrelevant circled locations. 

“Hotspots.” He explained, “Known drop off sites, factories, shimmer dens, and a few henchmen’s private homes. It’s amazing that someone who does their dealings so loudly can still be so private.”

Jinx took a red capped marker from Ekko’s hand and smoothed out the map. “That’s because you’re focusing on the wrong people. Silco might be the kingpin but he has half the undercity working for him and shutting the hell up about it.” She gazed over the map and circled three new locations. “Finn and Renni use shimmer to make weapons. Margot diffuses it in her brothel to keep people wanting more. Smeech…irritates everyone, and Chross does the networking.”

“What kind of networking?” Ekko asked, his tone just barely hiding a hint of suspicion in her words. “And what are these places you’ve marked?”

“Any kind of networking.” She pointed to the circle furthest away from her on the map. “The Myriad Distillery. Silco’s second largest production site, and well known for unpaid child labor. A lot of the kids there are working to either pay off their parents' debts or they’re paying to keep a roof over their head at Hope House.” She moved further down the map to a circle she drew deep in the fissures. “Hope House Orphanage is packed with kids whose parents have died or abandoned them. There’s a very good chance Peri is there.”

Scar shook his head as he looked over the map desperately searching for something to make sense. “Peri wasn’t abandoned, she was taken.”

Jinx chewed at her bottom lip. How honest with them did she really want to be about the realities of the chem-barons' vile practices? Would they blame her for it? Turn their disgust and outrage towards her for being complacent and turning a blind eye to those who suffered at their hands?

“What aren’t you telling us?” Ekko demanded, leaning in close enough to see her eyes dilate if she dared look up at him.

“A part of Hope House also serves as a…short term prison, for lack of a better word.” She confessed and anxiously tapped the red capped marker against the table with a gentle and slow rhythm. “If the kids in the distillery step out of line, rebel, anything like that, they’re sent to the brig. There Chross’s goons and the orphanage directors monitor and decide what to do with the kids. Sometimes they get sent into the mines as punishment but…sometimes they’re shipped off to Noxus.”

Jinx slid the marker slowly across the map and pointed to her final circle, the Stillwater side docks. After the creation of the hexgates most of Piltover’s merchandise was shipped via the air, but a lot of Zaun’s exports, mostly weapons and toxic chemicals, were considered too volatile and temperamental put in the hexgates. No one wanted to risk a reaction that could potentially destroy the very thing that had generated Piltover so much money. 

“So what does all this mean?” Ekko pressed, “Where is she?”

She shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t know everything after all. They knew as much about Peri’s whereabouts as she did. “There’s a chance they put her to work in the distillery but it’s far more likely that they’re holding her prisoner in the brig and…because she was taken and not abandoned it’s even more likely they intend to ship her off.”

“But why?” Fallon spoke up for the first time since defying Ekko’s authority, fishing for the final piece Jinx was reluctant to give them. “You said that was for kids who rebelled. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

Jinx hesitated once again, nervously looking from the map to Scar and back again. What was she supposed to say that didn’t sound awful? That didn’t make her feel guilty just for speaking even when she didn’t agree with the sentiment.

“What?” Scar asked as Jinx switched from glancing towards him to glancing everywhere but at him.

“Because she’s chirean.” She confessed with an uncomfortable sigh. “They’re rare in other parts of the world and incredibly intellectually adept. Other regions and city-states pride themselves on having chirean engineers and project developers. They use them for their brains and consider it a sign of status to have them in their communities but behind closed doors they’re treated horribly. Like decorations or exhibits. Even being half human…someone must have decided she was worth something.”

Ekko stepped back from the map and stretched his shoulders. “Alright. Everyone gear up. We’re heading out in fifteen.”

“Wait, where are you going?” Jinx asked with her arms splayed in confusion. “Do you even have a plan or are you just going to rush in and hope for the best?”

“This is how we do things around here.” He told her, clearing the table and beginning to pack his pockets with various hidden trap weapons. “We’ll work things out on the way, time isn’t on our side and this isn’t our usual kind of mission. If you’re right and she’s getting shipped off somewhere we have twelve hours- maybe, before the first cargo ship departs in the morning.”

Jinx scoffed in aggravated frustration. “No wonder you’ve barely managed to put a dent in Silco’s operations all these years-“

“Yeah, no thanks to you.” Ekko cut her off, “Funny how no one ever died on missions you didn’t show up to destroy.”

Because that’s what she did. She destroyed things. Years and years of not being good enough she finally found something she was good at and it was ruining everything. Jinx clenched her hands into fists as her own name echoed through her head. 

“What do you want? An apology? You’re not getting one!” Jinx couldn’t help the way her voice rose in anger, and she dug her fingernails into her palms to stop the tears that threatened to sting her eyes. Ekko was the only one who used to understand her. When everything was wrong with Vi and Mylo and Claggor, Ekko was there. She never knew how much it would hurt to realize he was as foreign to her now as she was to him. 

“You knew what it was like for me to feel so useless.” She hissed at him across the table, leaning forward as close as she would dare. “You knew how I felt every time I got left behind and told I only ever made things worse and I am not sorry I sided with the only person who ever saw value in my potential.”

“I saw value in your potential!” He leaned across the table as well, ignoring the other firelights attempts to calm him down. “You were never alone, Jinx! I never casted you aside or pushed you away; you did that all on your own! And look where it landed you! I reached out for years and all you did was fight me and you expect me to just let that go? To trust you again after everything you’ve done?”

“Enough!” Scar’s rough hands pulled them away from each other. “The plan is simple, we can’t anticipate the complications that might arise so we need to be ready for anything and there’s no point in wasting time hashing out every possible outcome. We get in by whatever means necessary and take whatever we can find if not Peri then information from whoever knows something-“ He turned to Ekko and held a hand up before he could speak. “And she’s coming with us.”

Scar tossed a white raven fashioned mask at Jinx without another look in her direction. She caught the mask and regarded it with nothing short of contempt. Why was everything she had nothing to do with somehow still her fault?

“What are we going to do with her hair?” Fallon asked, looking Jinx over from head to toe.

Jinx lifted one of her braids and let it fall delicately from her hands. They were looking rather worse for wear but she appreciated the chaotic look. It certainly suited her. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“You mean apart from the fact that it’s five feet long and neon blue?”

She shot Ekko a look, their argument, perpetual as it was, was far from over. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried to understand Ekko’s feelings all these years, but had he tried to understand hers? He had no idea the real reason they made so little headway dismantling shimmer all these years was because of how frequently she convinced Silco that they weren’t a threat.

Every time he wanted to infiltrate them, to burn them from the inside out, she would double back. Tell him all about how easily she defeated them, how little of a threat they posed. She weaved intricate stories about how weak their leadership was and how going after them would be a waste of time, money, and resources. If it wasn’t for her meddling and easy fabrications, the firelights wouldn’t have ever made what little progress they did, because they would all be dead.

“I can put it up.” Was all she said then took off with Fallon to get a tighter fitting hood and longer sleeves to conceal her tattoos. 

Neither she nor Fallon spoke as they dressed her in a long sleeve shirt and pinned her hair up before wrapping it in cloth and covering it with a tight fitted hood. The tension between her and the other fightlights had been palpable ever since her outburst with Ekko. She didn’t fault them for it as they probably knew very little about who she really was and what she and Ekko had once been to each other.

Maybe if they knew that she once was soft and kind they would understand. Maybe if they could have seen the little girl who laughed and played and just wanted to be useful they would accept her. Then again, Ekko knew and he most certainly did not.

“Thank you.” Jinx finally said just as they made their way out of the room, freshly garbed and unrecognizable. There was more she wanted to say but couldn’t find the words, but Fallon didn’t seem to mind.

“Never give up, remember?” She nodded and they left, joining the others near the moss covered entrance of the base.

“Alright.” Ekko announced to the four other firelights that stood at the entrance with them. “Masks on, we go quickly, we go quietly. Keep your eyes open and wits about. Anything could happen.” He spared a glance at Jinx before placing his white owl mask over his face and disguising his voice. “And behave.”

•••

Jinx sat on an abandoned rooftop on the surface of Zaun as freezing night winds pelted her face and instantly cooled the hot tears that coated her cheeks. Silco was going to be so mad at her. He had given her one job. One simple job; guard Smeech’s shipment as they loaded it onto the docks. She didn’t know they were going to show up.

Those damn firelights with their stupid masks and flares. She hadn’t even been paying attention. By the time she could react the dock boys had been shoved into the water and the shipment set ablaze. She should run. Just leave and never return. If she never went back she wouldn’t have to see Silco angry with her. 

Her body shuddered as she struggled to steady herself from another round of sobs. Because you’re a jinx! Always the jinx. Always the screw up. The footsteps sounding behind her should have set her on edge but she did not fear them. In fact she hoped it was Smeech or one of his henchmen, there to make her pay for the shipment she had lost. 

But really she wished it was Vi. She wished more than anything she’d come back, hear her pleas, accept her apologies and run away with her, just the two of them. But it wasn’t Vi, or even Smeech behind her.

“Are you okay?”

She didn’t bother wiping her eyes, it somehow felt more embarrassing to wipe them away than to let them fall. “You here to rescue me again?” Jinx asked bitterly.

“Sorry…” The voice grew quiet and almost bashful. “I didn’t realize it was you.”

Jinx turned her head and looked at Ekko who stood a few feet away from her on the rooftop. He must have been nearby and came to investigate the poor lost soul he’d hope to find when he heard her sobs. He was so much taller than the last time she had seen him, when she had struck him and kicked him out of Silco’s office after he spent years searching for her.

“Mind if I sit?” He asked, pointing to the ledge she was dangling her feet over.

“Are you gonna push me off?” Her voice was grave and defeated.

“Are you going to push me off?”

She halfheartedly chuckled and turned back to the city’s smog filled skyline. Four years of little to no contact and he still knew how to make her laugh even when she didn’t want to. The warmth he brought when he sat down on the ledge next to her made her instinctively want to snuggle up next to him. She fought back the urge and merely looked at him instead. 

His eyes were still soft as he gazed upon her and she could feel him fighting back the urge to brush her hair from her face and wipe her eyes. Was it possible for two people to still love each other if one had been so cruel? Did he forgive her for what she’d done?

“What’s wrong?” He asked quietly.

Jinx sniffled as her lip began quivering again. “Nothing.”

Ekko scooted closer to her as he took his coat off and wrapped it around her shoulders. He hesitated for only a moment with his arm draped against her as she tensed with his touch. It wasn’t a question of whether or not she’d give in, it was when. The moment Ekko relaxed his arm around her she leaned against him in the familiar embrace she didn’t want to admit she so desperately missed.

His hand slowly and gently caressed her cheek as his thumb brushed away a tear. “Don’t do that. Don’t shut me out.”

When his hand remained on her jaw she reached up and pressed her own hand to his and leaned into his touch even deeper. She wished she could have remained there forever. She wished that when she had felt Ekko’s forehead press to hers, she had leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his lips. She wished she hadn’t heard the clattering of a white owl shaped mask fall to the ground from the pocket of the coat draped around her shoulders and pull her attention away from the boy who only wished to comfort her.

Because then all she could wish was that she had never even been on that rooftop at all.

•••

Hope House was much larger than Jinx had anticipated. The massive orphanage that was carved into the bedrock loomed over them with dark menace. By all accounts the outside of the building looked abandoned. Windows were smashed, doorways were boarded up, and the siding was cracked and crumbling.

The firelights took to silent, tactical communication that Jinx couldn’t quite understand once they entered the fissures. She kept an eye on Fallon, who seemed to be the best at showing her what needed to be done. 

Ekko signaled to the rocky hill cliff eclipsing half of the building's front. They scaled the rock quickly and quietly. At the top, Ekko took something from his belt and threw it through an open window, when no reaction sounded from inside, they began climbing in.

A thick layer of mining dust covered almost every surface of what appeared to be a potential bedroom. Four wire framed beds with straw stuffed mattresses lined the far wall. Each mattress was beyond filthy and falling apart. This could have been her and Vi’s fate had Vander not taken them in. 

They stalked through Hope House as silently as they could despite the constantly creaking floorboards underneath their feet. Each desolate room offered them a disparaging glimpse of the lives of the kids who lived there. Peeling wallpaper gave way to thin termite eaten walls. The glass of shattered windows remained on the splintered wood flooring. Though what Jinx found most concerning of all, no one was there. 

There were no children huddled together for warmth or performing any household chores. There were no orderlies ensuring the kids behaved and berating their existence. The building was as abandoned as it appeared and while the vast majority of kids there worked in shimmer factories it wasn’t all of them, and the ones who did typically didn’t all go at once.

As they entered the building’s notably empty main large foyer that should have housed several workers monitoring the comings and goings, the firelights regrouped.

“What kind of game are you playing?” Ekko’s disguised voice hissed under his mask. The others all looked to her as well, mistrustful and probably annoyed.

“I’m not!” She tried defending herself, though it wasn’t exactly looking good for her at the moment. “I’m just as confused as you are. There should be dozens of kids here at least.”

Scar grunted in a quick warning to not start shit. “Let’s keep moving. Where’s the brig?”

“Should be at the center.” Jinx told him. “Where the cells are built right into the rock.”

They pressed ahead through a set of double doors at the end of the foyers hall. The further into Hope House they got the worse the lighting became until their only source of light came from dim, nearly extinguished chem-lamps that infrequently sconces the walls. They approached a tall, solidly built door labeled ‘PRIVATE’.

“This must be it.” Ekko breathed with a sharp intake. A quick tap to the door handle revealed it to be locked and Fallon quickly began digging in her side pouch for something thin and pointed to pick the lock.

The tools she sought however, were not necessary, as one quick blow to the door handle by Scar’s steel tipped boot blasted it off the hinges. Inside the locked door was so devoid of light there was no other option but to light a torch as they scoured empty cell after empty cell. 

“Alright well if she isn’t here then we need to get to the docks-“ Jinx began only to be cut off by Ekko.

“Wait- wait!” He shouted and motioned for everyone to join him. “Over here!”

Everyone rushed to the far corner Ekko had found himself sequestered in to find not Peri, but a little boy no more than seven, sitting on the dirt floor of a cell and shielding his eyes from the brightness of Ekko’s arguably dim torch.

“Hey, kid, are you okay?” He asked as he started opening up the caged cell door.

“Woah, wait, be careful!” Jinx put her hands in front of the doors lock before Ekko could get to it. “This entire building is abandoned, you think they’d accidentally leave behind just one child? He could be a plant.”

“He’s five.” Ekko shoved her aside and continued dismantling the door locks.

“Oh I’m sorry, captain cautious.” She jeered, “Do we suddenly trust kids potentially involved with Silco?”

The locks clicked open and the door swung inwards. “We do when they’re five. What is wrong with you?”

Was he joking? He spent how long mistrusting every little thing she did, not that he had any reason to trust her but still. She thought he’d at least know how to spot a trap when it jumped up and bit him in the face.

“What’s wrong with me?” Jinx gasped. “What’s wrong with you? You don’t find any of this suspicious?”

Ekko rounded on her, tired, annoyed, and still angry with the fact that Scar insisted she came with them. “What I find suspicious is the fact that every single one of your claims about this place have been wrong and now you’re in such a hurry to get out of here. Why? Do you know something we don’t?”

“I told you I’m just as confused as you are!” She got as close up to him as she dared and pettily jabbed his shoulder. “When are you going to come to your senses and realize I’ve been on your side this whole time? Do you not feel stupid every time you speak to me? Because you definitely sound fucking stupid.”

“Do you really think-“

“Enough!” Scar’s voice boomed so loudly dirt and debris shook from the ceiling and gently dusted down on them. “You both sound fucking stupid now focus!”

He was right. Annoying son of a bitch that Ekko was, squabbling with him would do them no favors as long as Peri was still missing. Scar shuffled into the cell and crouched down next to the boy, still sitting terrified with his knees to his chest.

“Hey, everything’s okay.” His voice was so soft and gentle compared to the loud bellow he had just done. “What’s your name?”

“…Joey.” The kid whispered in a timid, barely audible tone.

“Nice to meet you Joey, my name is Scar.” He knelt down on the ground next to the kid and offered him some water out of his canteen. “Joey, where is everyone? Why are you all alone here?”

“The angels took them all away.” He told them. “I was hiding cause I didn’t know where they were taking us.”

Ekko crouched down beside Scar and took his mask off, in hopes that a friendly face would ease the boys discomfort. “Who are the angels?”

“The ladies who take care of us.” He finally accepted Scar’s offer of water and took several deep gulps. “They’re not angels but that’s what we have to call them.”

“Why did the angels take everyone away?” 

The little boy shrugged. He had been hiding when everyone was taken away and Jinx couldn’t imagine how terrified he must have been to realize he’d been left alone, locked away for what he could only assume to be the rest of his life.

“Joey, we’re looking for a little girl.” Scar told him. “Her name is Peri and she’s got really bright red hair. Did you see her come through here?” The boy looked around the group nervously with tears welling up in his eyes. “It’s okay, Joey, you’re safe with us, okay? We’re going to get you out of here I promise. Can you tell us anything?”

“She wasn’t here long.” He sobbed. “The angels brought her down here because she wouldn’t stop crying then they came back and took her away. They’re putting her on a boat.”

Scar and Ekko exchanged a quick look. “How do you know they’re putting her on a boat?”

“They marked her arm and put a tag through her clothes.” Joey used the tattered sleeve of his shirt to wipe his eyes. “They did the same thing to my brother.”

They stood up and Ekko helped Joey to his feet then put his mask back on. “Alright, let’s get out of here, get him to the base and get to the docks. No time to waste.” He hoisted Joey up onto his back and the little boy clung to Ekko as if he were his lifeline.

As they headed for the private door to the brig a door slammed shut upstairs followed by muffled shouting. 

“Shit.” Jinx whispered under her breath. “It’s a trap. Chross’s men were waiting for us.”

“We can handle it.” Scar pulled a heavy pipe bat from its securing across his back and lead the group back to the foyer where six of Chross’s henchmen stood in formation in front of the open door that revealed even more outside.

A tall man sporting a bowler’s hat and sunglasses with a dark ‘one’ tattooed on his forehead casually strolled through the open door.

“I’m so glad you got our invitation.” He mused, swinging a cane in circles as he walked around the room. “It’s all work work work these days. We never get to play anymore. I’ll ask you one time, and one time only. Answer correctly and you might get to live. Answer incorrectly and I’ll shoot you right here and now because I’m already tired of wasting my valuable time hunting for some brat I couldn’t give less of a shit about. Now, where’s Jinx?”

“We don’t know.” Scar answered firmly.

One smirked, a sick and sadistic grin that only highlighted his expanse of wrinkles. “Wrong answer.” He cocked his gun, and fired.

Chapter Text

The gunshot was a diversion. 

To anyone else maybe, but Jinx had been anticipating it from the moment One turned his ugly face around the corner. The moment everyone’s attention was fixated on the barrel of his smoking gun, the other six standing guard in the foyer attacked. 

The firelights, bless their hearts, hadn’t thought to give Jinx a weapon. Or rather they did think about it and decided against it. In the split second it took for One to fire his gun directly at her, Jinx decided the best solution was to disarm him and keep his weapon for herself. Something she was sure Ekko would object to, but she’d deal with that later. 

Shimmer zapped through Jinx’s system faster than she could think, faster than she could react, and in an instant she was rushing forward, missing One’s deliberately errant bullet by a hair. The others were moving behind her. Fat wads of sticky yellow sapling crystals encased two of the henchmen, gluing them to the floor where they stood. 

“Five minutes!” Someone shouted amidst the chaos. 

In retrospect, it wasn’t Jinx any of them, firelight or other, should have been worried about. It was Scar. She was mercifully thankful to not be on the receiving end of any of the blows he dealt. A roving henchman, attempting to herd them together, was knocked down as he ran past the raging chirean when his weighted pipebat loudly crashed into the front of the man’s kneecaps. 

Jinx couldn’t differentiate between shouts coming from her partners, her enemies, or her own head. One shot a furious line of bullets that chased after her as the shimmer ravishing her system propelled her towards him. Each bullet that missed her only made him more angry and sloppy with his aim.

With his finger on the trigger threatening to shoot again, Jinx slid across the floor beside him and grabbed his arm on her way back up, turning his weapon inward on himself as it fired. He cursed loudly in pain and dropped his gun as his own bullet buried itself deep into his hip. Jinx grabbed the discarded gun and struck him twice, once in the gut to distract him, and once in the side of the head with the grip of her new weapon. She huffed in satisfaction as he crumpled to the floor in a defeated heap. They had no idea just what kind of weapon Silco had created.

She was wary about shooting in such an enclosed space especially when smoke and dust was obscuring the air and the white raven mask she wore drenched her face in a film of hot sweat, but when the crystals encasing the two henchmen began cracking, her doubts settled. Jinx managed to pull the trigger once, getting one of the men in the back of his knee, causing him to stumble and fall forwards just as Ekko swept by and clubbed him with his bat. 

The man that had been left in the sap crystals raged as the remaining bits broke around him and freed his feet. Jinx aimed and made to take fire. Click click. 

“Shit.” She cursed under her breath and tried cocking the gun back again. Click click. Of course, only Jinx would be lucky enough to snatch a gun that was out of bullets. 

It was all she could think as the man barreled towards her and tackled her to the ground before she could react. His weight was suffocating and she tried to twist and turn out from under him. Her movements were of no use and when he wrapped his hands around her throat she dug her fingernails into his wrists. To the man’s credit, though he did shout in anger more than pain, he didn’t release her as she coughed and sputtered, unable to breathe.

A loud thunk was what loosened the man’s grip on Jinx’s throat and she gasped, taking in as deep a breath as she could as the man was shoved off her. She looked up at her savior standing before her with an outstretched hand and his stupid owl mask. Jinx swatted Ekko’s hand away and pushed herself up off the ground. She didn’t need him, she could have handled it. For a moment the two just looked at each other and though they couldn’t see each other's faces there was an aura of understanding between them. Ekko wasn’t angry that she had a weapon, and he appreciated her fighting alongside them.

As the dust began to settle Jinx surveyed the bodies scattered across the foyer all either unmoving or groaning in pain. Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see Ekko reach towards her and her heart began hammering in her chest and she couldn’t put her finger on why. She looked down and watched as he gently laid a hand on her forearm and she was grateful he couldn’t see the emotions clouding her face. Was he checking to see if she was okay? Was he thanking her? Was he going to say anything or just stand there?!

“Hey, over here!” 

The moment broke and Jinx turned to see a dog masked firelight she didn’t know helping Fallon to her feet as she gasped and kept her hand pressed to her chest. She rushed to her side, any thoughts of Ekko vanishing when she saw the blood seeping through her garments. 

“What happened?!” Jinx asked, searching her over for more wounds and finding another open gash on the side of her thigh. 

“I’m okay.” She sputtered as the adrenaline in her system wore down and the pain started to set in. “I’ve been shot before, I’ll be alright.” 

Jinx ripped part of her jacket into strips and tied them tightly around her leg. Ekko knelt down beside Jinx and she tried her best to ignore the heat of his presence as he pressed a handkerchief against the wound and wrapped it up with his scarf. Fallon gritted her teeth and squeezed the hand of the man who kept her upright as they worked on her. 

“We have to get out of here.” Jinx warned, “They’ll wake up or they’ll send more.”

“Not so fast.” Scar’s deep voice boomed as he crossed the room and stood in front of One’s crumpled and whimpering form. Wuss . 

Scar’s sharp metal nail attachments scraped against One’s scalp as he yanked him up by a fistful of hair and dragged him into a sitting position against the wall. 

“Where is she?” He asked, his hand still tightly coiled in One’s hair.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” One cried. Cocky wasn’t a good look on him and apparently pathetic wasn’t either. Why in the world did Chross even waste his breath on this man let alone his money?

Scar released the man’s hair, smashing the back of his head against the wood paneled wall behind him and pulled a shimmering silver glaive out from its holster on his back. “Wrong answer.” Was all he said as he pressed the tip of the glave into the bullet wound he’d accidentally given himself.

“She’s on a boat!” He screamed and Jinx had never been more stimulated by the firelights before. Interrogation? Torture? She underestimated them. Though she couldn’t help the nagging question of why Ekko was letting Scar do this. If it had been her he would have lost his mind. Was fucking around a privilege only Ekko’s friends were allowed?

“ What boat ?!” Scar demanding, digging the glaive deeper into One’s hip.

“ Ah! ” The man gritted his teeth and sputtered with pain as he tried to choke out an answer. “P-passenger liner. P-p-priggs industries cargo. Nox-Noxus.”

The glaive slid out of One’s hip with a sickening wet slick and Scar placed it back in its holster. “Now we can go.”

“Wait, where’s Joey?” Jinx’s eyes scanned the room and her heart dropped as she searched each cluster of bodies for signs of the scared little boy they brought into the crossfire. She looked behind the desk, inside a broom closet, and under the stairs all to no avail. “He must have gone back down to the brig.”

She didn’t wait for anyone to reply or come to any further conclusions before bursting through the heavy wooden door that led to the sealed off and locked away section. This place was a nightmare. An orphanage that was supposed to be a safe haven for these lost kids was really a prison in disguise.

Jinx supposed they should be grateful they had emptied it out before trapping them in it. Grateful for the tiniest modicum of human decency Chross could muster up. But what happened to the kids who were here? Where did they usher them off to? Would they get to return? Were they sent somewhere worse?

A million questions raced through her mind, none of them anything she had the ability to deal with right now- or even at all. She found Joey back in his cell carved out of the rock, crouching on the ground and covering his ears with his hands, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Hey, buddy.” Jinx knelt beside him and tried not to feel hurt when he flinched at the gentle pat she placed on his shoulder. 

“Is it over?” He asked in a soft and trembling voice.

“It is.” She told him and he lifted his head up to look at her. “Let’s get out of here. We’re gonna take you somewhere safe, okay?”

Jinx turned her back to him and let him climb up to wrap his arms around her neck and legs around her waist. She hoisted him up with a small huff and headed back out into the foyer where the rest were finishing tending to Fallon and taking supplies off of Chross’s unconscious underlings.

She refused to put Joey down the entire way back to base. He clung to her so tightly she didn’t think he’d let her even if she wanted to. The way his head laid against her shoulder blades and his slow steady breathing made her think he had fallen asleep back there and it broke her heart to think about what the others would think to see them returning with a child who wasn’t Peri. 

Lugging around an extra thirty-five pounds slowed Jinx down considerably and she even fell behind Fallon who had been limping along through the sewers with the help of the dog masked firelight. Despite there being nothing she wanted more than to take her sweaty mask off, it was her saving grace when she noticed Ekko had fallen into step beside her bringing up the rear of the group. 

“Making sure I don’t run off?” She asked, not bothering to hide the snark in her voice. Nothing he did made any damn sense and she had had just about enough of his mood swings.

“I’m just walking next to you.” He told her almost amused at her accusation. “And I doubt you’ll be running anywhere with a sleeping kid strapped to your back.”

Jinx huffed, not amused. As light as Joey was, her arms were screaming. “I should have made you carry him.”

They were quiet for a moment as they walked alongside each other and Jinx would be lying if she said it wasn’t nice. This was the closest they’d gotten to civility in years. The fact that Ekko agreed to help her in the first place had plagued her mind for weeks. He didn’t trust her, he didn’t like her, he resented her for choosing Silco, so why help her? 

Ekko had claimed to be honoring a promise he made to her when they were children but had his promise really been that deep? She wouldn’t have faulted him if that promise was null and void in his mind after all the fight and killing and mind games they engaged in for seven years. Part of her had forgotten all about it anyway. 

So many of her memories had been eaten away by the trauma that haunted her mind. Nights of endless giggling and sleepovers in Benzo’s shop. Haggling in the market. Spying on enforcers for information on Piltover’s elite and excitedly reporting back to Vi and the others. All gone. Washed away down the drain never to be seen again.

Maybe that was for the best. Maybe being friends with Ekko again would only make things harder in the end once Singed was dead and they went their separate ways. Maybe they were never really meant to last and had been doomed from the start without either one of them ever knowing.

•••

Exhausted and sweaty they finally made it back to base where Fallon was promptly escorted away to have her wounds looked at. 

“Get him settled and bring him to Saoirse.” Ekko requested as she slid Joey off her shoulders and onto the ground where he rubbed his eyes still half asleep. “Meet back in the con under the tree when you’re done. Code is seven-six-nine-three-three-seven.”

He took off without another word and Jinx held Joey’s trembling hand and walked him up a flight of rickety stairs to the green room where shimmer meetings were held. 

Saoirse looked up from parchments of arithmetic problems she was crafting for the kids to practice when the door creaked shut behind them. “Oh, you guys are back! Did you find her?” She hastily gathered up her papers and set them in a neat stack. 

“Sort of.” Jinx muttered with a shrug of her shoulders. “We know where she is now but it isn’t where we went.” She brought Joey further into the room and introduced him to Saoirse. “Ekko asked me to bring him to you.”

She knelt down in front of the little boy and held her hand out for him to take. “Hi, I’m Saoirse. I teach the other kids here how to count and how to draw and spell.”

Her face was bright and joyous, an expression Jinx had not seen from her thus far which she had attributed to the fact that she had to actually be around her to see her which she doubted Saoirse was a fan of on account of the whole murdering her dad situation. It wasn’t like Jinx didn’t understand how Saoirse felt, she also suffered a deep loss by her own hands. Maybe it would make her feel better to know that.

Saoirse stood up and took Joey’s hand from Jinx’s. “Let’s go get you some clean clothes and something to eat. How does that sound?”

Joey’s murmurs of agreement and gratitude faded as they left and retreated down the tree stairs. Jinx had fully intended to follow them and take herself to the con like Ekko had asked up until an open filing cabinet caught her eye. She peered out of the small window in the green rooms door, making sure Joey and Saoirse were gone before heading over to the little brown tower labeled ‘Kier - SS’. 

She quickly skimmed through the drawer of files, each labeled with the names of different firelights that attended shimmer support group. In the very front of the lineup, as if it were the last file that had been written in, was hers. Her name was scrawled across the tab in big bold letters like a warning: JINX .

It wasn’t a question of whether or not she was going to go through her own file, it was how fast. Surely Ekko and the others were waiting for her but they could wait a little while longer. She laid the file down on the desk Saoirse had been grading papers on and flipped it open.

Participant: Jinx.

Age: 19.

Eye Color: Pink. - (shimmer induced.)

Hair Color: Blue .

History Provided By: Self ( ) Family ( ) Other (x) 

Family History : Biological mother - deceased. Biological father - deceased. Biological sister - alive. Adoptive brother - deceased. Adoptive brother - deceased. Adoptive father - deceased. Adoptive father - alive.

Is Participant In Contact With Living Family?: No.

Appearance On Arrival: Considerably malnourished, pale, sickly.

Session One: Jinx was irritable in attendance and initially unwilling to speak. Does not believe she has any dependence on shimmer, not in active addiction. Jinx revealed she had been injected with shimmer against her will, which does upset her, however she did defend (x) who was responsible for her shimmer injections as it saved her life after attempting suicide. Does not believe she attempted suicide. Shows signs of attachment issues and possible Stockholm syndrome - further sessions can rule out the latter if she participates more, little is known about her relationship with (x) at this time. At baseline Jinx shows signs of depression and aggression, i.e., revenge seeking, negative self image, verbal altercations with authority figures, threats of elopement. No concerns for safety at this time.

Support Provider Notes: Spoke with Jinx after group to offer additional support, she was uninterested and mildly hostile. Jinx spoke very poorly of herself, referring to herself as a monster and insisting there was no saving her. Will speak to Ekko about giving her more constructive things to do in downtime to keep her mind stimulated. Jinx seems unwilling to accept or admit she needs help, more time is needed to build up trust. 

Jinx slammed the file shut and stood from the table with a huff. Kier was a quack, simple as that. Jinx wasn’t like the others who came through here, she didn’t need to be psychoanalysed and to put meaning on every little thing she did or said. Sometimes she just did things for the sake of doing them, what was so wrong with that? Did there have to be a rhyme or reason for everything? And why did they all feel the need to constantly believe Silco held her hostage against her will as if she didn’t have a mind of her own and could make her own decisions?

She closed her eyes as flashes of that night on the bridge came flooding back to her. Even at his angriest, Ekko’s eyes had still gone soft on her. She wasn’t nervous when she pulled that pin that killed her. She wasn’t sad or scared, she was grateful. And yet here she was, reading through the notes of yet another person who thinks they can fix her. They had no idea that the only person who could fix her was the one who broke her, and she was never going to see her again.

The devious and ugly file found itself back where it came from and Jinx shut the file drawer firmly, ready to pretend she never saw it in the first place and Jinx was very good at pretending. 

She left the green room, slamming the door shut behind her in anger. They were going to have to drag her kicking and screaming back to that support group and pry her mouth open to get her to talk. The blinding rage she felt burned her cheeks as she stormed across the courtyard and over to the hidden hatch that housed the con. The only thing she couldn’t figure out was whether or not she was mad about what Kier wrote, or mad that she was right.

Jinx’s bubbling emotions warped her head and she messed up the code to the door three times, each time it flashed red with error, a frustrated groan escaped her lips with little difficulty. Focus focus focus . Her own thoughts hissed at her but when she put in the wrong code for a fourth time she had half a mind to try and kick the door down, the only thing that stopped her was the door swinging open from the opposite side.

“Where the hell have you been? Get in here.” Ekko tugged her into the con by her arm and she yanked herself out of his entirely informal grip.

Scar softly paced back and forth in front of their large sprawled out map, deep in thought. It was only the three of them now with Fallon being stitched up by the others they were with the first time they were down here. The tension in the room was disgustingly thick but Jinx was grateful that for once she wasn’t the cause of it.

“Alright.” Ekko placed his hands on his hips as he went over and over something in his head. “The plan is simple. It’s four, the morning ships depart at seven on the dot so we have three hours to get there, get Peri, and get out. We cannot be on that boat when it departs.”

“And how will we be getting on the boat?” Jinx asked, not entirely sold on the plan just yet. 

“We’ll be buying tickets.” He explained with a shrug as if it was the most simple explanation possible. “Scar will be standing guard on the docks posing as a worker, you and I will purchase two last minute third class tickets at the dockside vendor. Last minute tickets means the lowest and furthest rooms on the ship, closest to the engine rooms and cargo storage. We check in, find Peri, and ‘conveniently’ forget something onshore. No one will pay any attention to two low class passengers, if anything they’ll be hoping we don’t get back on the boat.”

Jinx took a deep breath and thought it over. It was as good a plan as any, and there was no time for anything else. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Here.” He tossed her a patch woven smock and a belt fashioned with a large pouch. “Lose the cloak, put that on over your clothes.”

She unclasped the buckle keeping the hood that covered her hair in place and laid it aside. As she donned her new garments she watched as Ekko also exchanged his oversized parka for a smart waistcoat, and cleaner, more dignified boots. 

A flash of blue caught her attention and her hand went up to twirl around the strands of hair that had fallen into her face. They’d notice her like this, she needed that cloak.

As if hearing her thoughts, Ekko appeared beside her with a small pot of thick black paste. “Turn.” He mumbled and she did, allowing him to spread globs of the dye over her exposed hair. His hands were gentle and methodical as he pasted each individual strand. Her heart hammered in her chest just as it had back at Hope House when he touched her arm. There was no rational reason for her to react to his touch the way that she did. 

No rational reason as to why all thoughts in her head immediately vanished and a chill ran up her spine causing a shudder she could only hope he didn’t notice. No reason why her cheeks flushed when he moved in front of her and gently coated the strands that framed her face. 

“This color doesn’t suit you.” Ekko’s voice was barely more than a whisper as he finished coloring her hair. His hand lingered on the side of her face and he slowly tucked a stray fly away behind her ear.

“You really really know how to make a girl feel beautiful, huh?” Her tone was mocking and feigning offence but she couldn’t help the smile that crept across her lips. It was so easy to fall into step with Ekko. She should push him away or smack his hand out of her hair, anything but continue to stare into his eyes so intensely a dull ringing began in her ears. Why was his hand still cradling the side of her face? 

“Are we ready now?” Scar didn’t even attempt to mask his impatience as he fitted a black newsboy cap over his head and slung a sack over his shoulders.

The bubble burst and Jinx pulled away from Ekko at the same time he stepped back from her. Suddenly feeling nauseous, dizzy, and hot she mumbled some sort of agreement of readiness while buckling the pouch Ekko had given her to her belt. They definitely, unquestionably, should never do anything like that again. 

“Why don’t you two go on the boat together and I’ll stand guard?” She offered. It was the least she could do after all she was pretty good at causing a diversion if need be.

Ekko cleared his throat decidedly. “No. Scar blends in with the dock workers better. We don’t want any extra attention on us. No tricks, no theatrics, no surprises. In and out.”

•••

In the hour it took for them to get to the Stillwater docks from the firelights base Jinx decided she no longer liked Ekko’s plan. Not because she had a better plan or because she didn’t think it would work but rather because she didn’t particularly like the idea of being alone with Ekko.

She couldn’t recall the last time they had a civil conversation and they had an almost perfect record of turning every conversation into an argument lately. That coupled with the weird, nauseating, skin tingling, dizzy feeling she got when Ekko had been ever so carefully coloring her hair was enough to steer her clear of him forever. Or at least until she could get her useless emotions under control, something she was famously able to do.

When they reached the end of the incredibly long line at the ticket vendor booth, Scar split from them and went to the very edge of the sea docks to pointlessly move crates around. Unsurprisingly no one, not even the actual dock workers, questioned him. They were all far too busy lighting up their tobacco pipes and eyeing up everyone boarding the boat.

They made their way to the front of the line agonizingly slow. Jinx for once had nothing to say as Ekko’s presence beside her crept around her in a blurry shroud of uncertainty. He clearly had something he wanted to say but for reasons unknown he remained silent. This was ridiculous. She was acting like a fool for no reason, and determined to stop, she crossed her arms over her chest and took a step away from the unsettling embrace he had wrapped her in. 

A sharp ringing accompanied by laughter haunted her ears and a quick glance to her side would reveal Ekko staring at her perplexed as though he could piece together the never ending puzzle of what was wrong with her just by looking at her.

“ Stop it !” She hissed under her breath, without a peek in his direction.

“Stop what?” He asked, now more confused than before. “You stop!”

“Stop staring at me.” 

“Stop being weird!”

“Next!”

Their hushed whispers were cut off by the burly, annoyed, and clearly underpaid woman running the ticket booth. “How can I be of service to you today?” She asked, her tone meaningless and dry. She had most likely asked that question a hundred times that morning alone and Jinx didn’t blame her one bit for the burnt out look in her eyes.

“Two passenger tickets for the seven am departure.” Ekko dug through the pocket of his waistcoat and produced four silver cogs. 

“Names for the tickets?” The woman, Hester, if her name tag was to be believed, asked him as she flipped through a large book of stubs and tore two from the very back.

Ekko stumbled over his words, looking frantically at Jinx for assistance. Names! Why the hell hadn’t they thought of names? 

“Claymore!” He finally spit out too late and a little too loudly. “And…Sterling.” He gestured to Jinx who offered her best ditzy innocent smile to the woman.

“Right…” Hester scrawled their clearly fake and incredibly stupid names on the tickets and slid them across the counter to Ekko. “Departure is in an hour, make sure your person and all your belongings are onboard by then, the ship waits for no one. Next!”

A wave of panic rushed over Jinx and she could see the same thought process on Ekko’s face. One hour . They had an hour to search the ship's entire cargo bay and find Peri or else they’d all be taking a lovely spring vacation to Noxus. 

“Don’t panic.” She whispered as they made their way to the boarding dock, “I’m a lot faster than you think.”

“I’m not panicking.” A lie if she had ever heard one.

Two men in well pressed white uniforms stood at the door to the ship. “This way please!” They ushered all incoming passengers towards them with stiff waves of their arms. “This way please for inspection!”

Jinx looked at Ekko, his face had quickly turned ashen. Oh they were so fucked. He probably had a different weapon hidden in both sleeves of his coat and tucked into each of his boots. The second they were patted down he’d be hauled off in handcuffs and jailed before either of them could blink. 

“Tickets?” One of the men with a decoratively curled mustache reached out for the little slips of paper Ekko handed him. “Please step aside for inspection.”

Ekko stood still with his arms outstretched as the other man patted up his sides, under each arm, then up and down each leg. “Excellent. Please step forward.”

Jinx breathed a sigh of relief she hadn’t realized she was holding and assumed the same position Ekko had. He stood cautiously behind the man gently patting her sides with one hand continuously rubbing his chin. What was his problem? She shot him a confused look that he pointedly averted until the man in the white uniform stood up straight after finishing patting down Jinx’s legs.

“And your bag, miss?” He asked, one arm folded neatly behind his back, the other gesturing to the large pouch Ekko had given her.

“What about my bag?” It was at that moment Jinx realized she hadn’t bothered to actually look inside the bag that weighed heavily on her waist. She shot another glance at Ekko, now looking at the ground. 

“Please open it for me so that I may search its contents.” He once again motioned to the pouch looped through her belt.

A million and ten thoughts raced through Jinx’s head as she slowly reached up to pull the frayed drawstring open. Time seemed to slow and she couldn’t stop the steady repeated question. What did he do? What did he do? What did he do?  

The pouch fell open and Jinx caught one final glimpse of Ekko’s tense expression as she peered down at the bright pink and blue spray painted handgun nestled along the seams.

“Weapon!” The man announced, shattering the bubble of trust Jinx had unknowingly placed around Ekko. “Weapon! Fetch the Master-at-Arms!”

“Wait! That’s not mine!” She shouted in vain as she struggled against the three men who appeared to restrain her. “Let me go!”

“Take her down below!” 

Jinx pulled and twisted to try and free herself from their grasp but it was no use once they slapped cold metallic cuffs to her wrists. She watched as the man in white who patted her down in the first place held Ekko back, keeping them separated.

“What did you do?!” She yelled, the shimmer in her blood boiled and only fueled the anger she felt. “What did you do ?!”

It was unnerving just how quickly she began unraveling. She had no idea how much she trusted Ekko up until that moment. Up until he watched her be dragged away in handcuffs and said nothing . He didn’t even struggle against the guard holding him back. He didn’t even look at her!

No wonder he was so adamant about her getting on the boat with him instead of Scar or tearing into her for shooting Chross’s men back at Hope House. Two for the price of one, they got to get Peri back and get rid of her at the same time.

Her face burned hot with embarrassment as she thought about how charmed she’d been just standing so close to Ekko earlier. How his gentle touches brushed over each strand of hair, how hoarse his voice had been when he whispered to her. It was all an act. A stupid foolish act that she had fallen for.

Was she truly that desperate for the warmth affection brought her? She should have known better than to have been so easily manipulated. And Ekko should have known better as well. He should have known if he wanted to get rid of her, he should have killed her, because this time she wouldn’t hesitate.

They cuffed her to a pole in the Master-at-Arms office. A feeling she knew all too well and quite frankly didn’t care for. The officer himself wore a dark navy uniform and looked entirely unamused as he angrily filled out paperwork and glared at Jinx. 

“Couldn’t even wait to set sail before causing problems, eh?” His accent was thick and jarring, nothing like the degenerates of Zaun or that affluent of Piltover. “Makin’ me do paperwork before the sun’s even come up, I should throw you overboard for it.”

Jokes on him, she’d like that. He could toss her overboard all he liked and she hoped he’d leave her handcuffed when he did.

“Alright, let’s get this over with.” He lit a fat cigar and took a long puff. “Name?”

“Sterling.” Apparently. She once again cursed Ekko’s stupidity. Maybe it wasn’t all bad. Maybe he was doing what he thought was best for her. Sending her off with a new name, to a new place where her past wouldn’t define her. Where she could start over and- wait, why was she making excuses for him right now? She wasn’t going anywhere until she drowned that man in the river like a mongoose alongside Singed.

“Reasons for travel?” 

She clicked her tongue against her teeth as she thought, not bothering with inconspicuity. “Taking a vacation.”

He squinted his eyes at her and silently wrote something down. The intoxicating scent of his cherry cigar made Jinx sick to her stomach. For so long she had associated it with home. The sweet earthy smell clung to every inch of Silco’s office. It soothed her to sleep when she was anxious and wrapped her in comfort when she was sad. She was a terrible daughter. 

It was fine. She would make up for it, however she needed to. After what felt like forever she finally managed to unclasp the safety pin keeping the frayed hem of her sleeve together. The Master-at-Arms was a large man but she didn’t need to be stronger than him, she needed to be faster, and there was no question that she was.

Jinx pried the pin open as far as it would go trying her hardest not to prick her fingers too many times. She slotted the long end into the mouth of the cuffs and tightened the cuff around her wrist. Just as she heard the familiar click of the ratchet mechanism being disengaged a knock on the door stilled her hands from fully releasing herself from the cuffs.

An enforcer entered the room fully garbed up head to toe in the standard Piltover uniform of navy and gold. A gas mask to protect them from poor quality undercity air gleamed and anger began bubbling in Jinx’s system again. What did this freak want? Was their ruse that obvious that they sent someone to remove her from the boat before they even left? 

The enforcer bowed in front of the Master-at-Arms. “Master, the captain has requested your presence at the helm. He has questions about security before our departure. I’ve been sent to watch your prisoner until your return.”

“Oh it’s always somethin’ with that man.” He huffed and groaned as he stood and made to move around his desk. “Forty minutes ‘til we leave and the bastards got questions, why wouldn’t he?”

If nothing else, he certainly like to hear himself talk. Jinx watched with disgust as the man shuffled out of his office then turned her attention to the enforcer currently leaning against the now abandoned wood desk.

“Did you make sure to taste his boots when you bowed?” She asked to disguise the sound of her yanking her cuffs open. She kept her hands behind her back to keep up the illusion of being restrained and waited.

The enforcer pushed himself up from his laxed position  and meandered over to her, leaning just in front of her. God she wished he’d take off that mask so she could spit in his face. “I don’t think that’s any way to speak to an enforcer, young lady.”

“What are you gonna do about it?” She sneered, “Hit me? You’d like that wouldn’t you?”

A shrug. “Maybe I would. I guess you’ll have to-“

His words were cut off as Jinx pounced, knocking him prone. He shot back up and grabbed the free end of her dangling cuffs, trying to restrain her again but she pulled free and landed a swift kick to the back of his knee. He fell to the ground where she planted another kick to his ribs.

“Stop it!” He shouted as a flurry of blows continued pelting him from all angles. “Jinx, quit it!”

She instantly stood up straight and stopped swinging as the enforcer removed his mask. “Ekko?!”

He offered her an uncertain grin and shrugged. She resumed her hitting, now not trying to harm him but rather using him as a punching bag to rid herself of her frustrations. Ekko swatted at her hands, telling her to stop with each blow she landed but she refused. 

“You planted a gun on me!” She yelled, shoving him just as he had begun to stand up.

“I didn’t plant a gun on you!” Ekko kept his hands outstretched, putting as much distance between them as possible. “I gave you a gun! As a sign of trust! I didn’t know they were going to search us!”

“Oh bullshit!” Jinx smacked his outstretched hands away. Stupid, dumb, idiot, bastard. The tirade of insults muddled together in her brain until she couldn’t even pick out a single one to call him. “You got me sent to boat prison, you dumb son of a bitch!”

“Well I’m getting you out now!” He reached out for her still cuffed wrist but she pushed him away again.

She had no words. Nothing more to shout at him, not yet anyway. All she could do was shout incoherent huffs of agitation as she found the safety pin that had fallen to the floor and released her second cuff without Ekko’s assistance. She made a gesture that implied wanting to strangle him and made for the door. “And take that uniform off, you look stupid!” She shouted on her way out.

He caught up with her, now enforcer uniform-less, as she waited for the lift that would take them wherever they needed to go. 

“I’m sorry.” He tried, “Did you really think I’d have you arrested?”

“Shut up.” Jinx hissed. She was too angry to think let alone forgive- or even accept. She had thought that, and if she thought about how ridiculous it sounded she would never recover from the embarrassment of believing it in the first place.

The lift dinged as it opened up for them and they stepped inside. Ekko turned a gilded metal dial to face the ‘T’ level and pulled the lever, shutting the door and beginning their descent into the dark frigid bowels of the ship.

They were running out of time. They had thirty minutes, if they were lucky, to scour the entire cargo wing. By the time they reached the cabin that had been assigned to them with the purchase of their tickets, Jinx wasn’t even interested in poking around to find anything worth stealing. 

At the very end of the hallway stood two doors each painted white and labeled in red lettering. The one on the left read ‘Passenger Stairs’, the other was labeled ‘Private’. With no time for questions, they opened the door to the right and found themselves face to face with an iron grate staircase leading down into a dingy, dusty storage room. 

Ekko rushed down the staircase and Jinx followed him close behind. The cargo bay was massive, spanning almost the entire length and width of the ship. Almost every square inch was stacked high with crates, barrels, boxes, cages, and even motor vehicles. 

“Shit…” The sound escaped Jinx’s lips without her even thinking. They could do it. They had to.

“Peri!” Ekko called out and began racing up and down the lines of stacked crates. “Peri!”

Back and forth they ran with each call of the little girl's name going unanswered. Time had never moved so quickly as it did with each passing minute making Peri’s rescue feel more and more hopeless.

“We should have brought Scar.” Jinx muttered to herself. She ripped the fabric off the top of a crate labeled ‘Produce’ and yet was still annoyed when the opened box revealed a trove of honeyfruit. 

Ekko shook his head in disagreement as he rifled through adjoining containers. “It wouldn’t have made a difference. If anything he would have made things worse. Peri is like a daughter to him, he wouldn’t be thinking straight.”

Jinx thought about how unhinged Scar had been at Hope House. His blows were damn near lethal, and he certainly didn’t shy away from inflicting pain to get what he wanted out of One. “I’m sure he would have come to his senses after you tore into him.”

“What are you talking about?” He asked, not looking up from the next bay of crates he was investigating.

“When we got back from Hope House?” She reminded him. “Before I joined you guys. You didn’t give him a stern talking to?”

Ekko paused long enough to look at her as if she was out of her mind. “About what?”

“What do you mean about what?” Jinx stopped her investigation as well and waved her arm in a vague gesture of surprise at his ignorance. “He beat the shit out of that guy! He shattered some guys' kneecaps? He stabbed One and twisted the knife for information?”

“Yeah?” 

A high pitched laugh echoed through the cargo bay. Now Jinx actually felt like she was in fact going crazy. She caught sight of her reflection in the window of a car door and flinched. The darkness of her hair compared to the paleness of her skin made her look sick and ghastly. No wonder Ekko told her she looked like shit. 

“What happened to ‘we don’t kill people’?” She asked him in a crude mockery of his own voice. 

Now it was Ekko’s turn to be confused. “Yeah I said we don’t kill people. I didn’t say we didn’t cause problems.” He jumped off the stack of wooden pallets he had climbed up and moved onto the next. “What? You think Silco’s been paying the enforcers to hunt us down because we’ve been asking him nicely to stop producing shimmer for seven years?” He laughed, actually laughed at her. “No. He hunts us down because we set his factories on fire and cut the hands off his goonies.”

“You are such a hypocrite!” Jinx shouted at him, completely abandoning her rummaging of crates in favor of procuring a nice spot on the hill she was about to die on. “If that had been me you would have lost your fucking mind.”

Ekko withdrew from his search as well, getting as far up in Jinx’s face as he could to get his point across. “If that had been you, you would have shot One dead without a second thought and we would have never gotten the information out of him we needed. And in case you forgot, you did fight. You shot several of his men and I didn’t have a problem with it, did I?”

“Unbelievable.” Her voice shook with rage and it took everything in Jinx to keep her hands from shaking. “ Unbelievable ! This whole time you’ve been shaming me and trying to make me feel bad and feel guilty for everything you’ve done when you’re no better! You’re just as destructive as I am!”

“Oh please.” He waved her off and his dismissal of her only made her more angry. “Name one person, other than yourself, that Silco’s ever actually helped. What? He created a highly addictive hallucinogenic that triggered a chain reaction of street wars, drug trafficking, and a homelessness epidemic out of…the goodness of his heart? Because Zaun really had a crying need for all of those things. He did it for money, power, and control. He destroyed everything Vander spent years building and I bet he’d be mortified to see you helped him.”

Her skin burned red and the familiar zaps in her head returned as angry voices ranted in her ears. “Don’t tell me what Vander would think!” She shouted, shoved him hard against a stack of crates that wobbled back and forth on impact. “What do you know about what Vander would think! He wasn’t your dad!”

“You’re right he wasn’t my dad!” Ekko yelled back, getting so close to her face their noses were almost touching. “Because if he was my dad, I never would have embarrassed his legacy by allying myself with the man who killed him and my brothers!”

Jinx shrunk back and she could see the look of instant regret on Ekko’s face, but it was too late. Suddenly her eyes were being flashed by the bright blue explosion again. She could feel the weightlessness of being blasted off that ledge and falling to the ground. The memory of finding Mylo and Claggor buried and bleeding under rubble forced a choked sob from her throat that quickly turned to hysterical laughter.

“Silco didn’t kill Mylo and Claggor!” She laughed again, feeling pools of warm tears line her eyes but locking them onto Ekko’s anyways. “I did.”

The silence that filled the space between them was different than average silence. This silence flooded the space around them with every disloyal regret either of them had ever experienced. Ekko’s chest heaved up and down as the revelation settled in him. He had no idea what really happened that night. He had seen the bodies and assumed. After all, why wouldn’t he? He was the only one who never saw her as a jinx before. 

“What?” He asked in barely more than a whisper and Jinx couldn’t pinpoint the look he was giving her. Was it sorrow? Pitty? Guilt? Part of her, the part that believed all the horrible things anyone had ever said about her to be true, believed it was betrayal.

“I spent so long trying to make those stupid bombs.” Jinx couldn’t stop laughing. She couldn’t imagine just how insane she looked as her face flushed red and tears stained her cheeks yet she only laughed hysterically instead. “And then you send us to some fancy apartment in Piltover where I found those crystals. All those useless smoke bombs I created that did nothing more than make people cough! I finally make one that works! The first one that actually worked and it ruined everything ! My entire life!” Her anger had emerged again and she pushed Ekko away. “ You sent us there! You want to act like this is all my fault? You gave us the tip in the first place!”

“Jinx…I- I didn’t-“

Whatever Ekko was going to say, an excuse or an apology, Jinx didn’t care, there was nothing to save between them anymore. The loud blare of the ship's horn and forceful lurch of its departure silenced them both and glued them where they stood.

“Shit.” They looked at each other as the realization hit, the ship was taking off .

“Peri!”

“Peri!”

They split up running in opposite directions looking through every pile of ropes and supplies possible. Jinx thought she heard a muffled cry for help and paced in circles around the pallet of boxes she was near.

“Peri?!” She shouted, trying to pry open the edges of each crate. “Where are you?”

Muffled repeated knocking drew Jinx down to a crate tucked away at the very bottom of a precarious stack labeled ‘Live Animals’

“Peri?!” Jinx tapped at the box and listened for the soft cries that came from inside. “Ekko! Over here!”

He was by her side in an instant, quickly pulling Jinx’s confiscated handgun he had hidden in the back belt of his pants. He used the handle of it to bash into the nailed up edges of the crate. Wood splintered in every direction and as soon as an opening appeared in the corner he handed the gun to Jinx and ripped at the wood with his bare hands. It broke in uneven pieces that flew away and clattered to the floor.

“Peri!” When enough of the crate had been demolished the little girl rushed from it and into the arms of Ekko who held her close, afraid that if he let go he’d lose her again. She shivered, still dressed in the thin green smock she had worn under her blue coat the morning she and Micah went to the market. 

“We’ve got to get out of here.” Jinx announced as she stood and surveyed the room. 

“And go where?” Ekko asked, still cradling a crying Peri. “The ship’s already left the dock and we can’t exactly jump overboard without causing a scene.”

“Sounds like we need to cause a scene to hide the scene.” She scanned a row of barrels that lined a far wall, something about that was terribly familiar and that’s when it hit her. This ship belonged to Prigg’s Industries and they were most likely transporting weapons and forge supplies to Noxus. Those barrels were full of smokepowder. “Peri…is there anyone else being transported down here?”

“What are you doing?” Ekko picked Peri up who gave Jinx a little shrug of her shoulders. 

“He said it was just me.” Her voice was so soft and sweet, nothing else mattered than getting her back home and that was enough for Jinx to ignore Ekko’s questions and demands for an explanation as she took aim and fired before he could stop her.

The explosion rattled the ship and a siren began blaring along with loud flashing red lights. The ship lurched forward, the cargo bay was safe for now but the sound of water flooding the surrounding compartments spurred them into action.

“Let’s go!” She grabbed a hold of Ekko and began sprinting through the rows of crates as water slowly began spilling over the ship’s bulkheads and drowning everything in its wake.

They made it up the stairs and through the ‘Private’ labeled door they had initially gone through. Amidst the chaos, the lift that brought them all the way down there was inoperable as crew members rushed from room to room evacuating guests. 

“In here!” Jinx whipped open the door leading to the passenger stairs with such force she nearly ripped it off its hinges. Ekko ran up the stairs as quick as he could, the weight of having to carry Peri with him slowed him down far more substantially than he had anticipated. 

“Put her down.” Jinx huffed, sweaty and out of breath. They had stopped on a landing between the ‘D’ and ‘C’ deck. Ekko did as he was told with no question as he also struggled to catch his breath. She knelt down and motioned for Peri to jump on her back. Jinx stood back up with a groan and started up the stairs again. How the hell could a little girl so small make them so winded?

A hell of a lot slower than anticipated, they finally burst through the door leading to the top deck of the ship to find it in utter chaos. People screamed and shoved past one another trying to get to emergency dinghys and enforcers blew ear piercing whistles trying to get everyone’s attention. 

Jinx took a quick look back to shore, they had only gotten no more than a hundred yards from the docks. “Okay, let’s do this.”

“Wait wait wait!” Ekko grabbed her as she was lifting one leg over the railing and pulled her back. “Peri can’t swim.”

“What do you mean Peri can’t swim?!” And why didn’t he tell her this before she flooded the ship that he definitely knew she was about to flood?

“Where would you like us to teach her to swim?” He asked, “In the river?”

Jinx shrugged. “Well it’s where she’s gonna learn unless you have a better idea.”

Ekko looked anxiously between Peri and the docks that were becoming smaller and smaller as the ship continued to sink into the water. “Can you swim with her on you?”

“I guess we’ll find out.” She climbed over the rail once again and held on tight as a loud whistle came in their direction. 

“Oi!” An enforcer shouted, directing two others in their direction. “Do not jump from the ship!”

“Sorry!” Jinx motioned for Ekko to climb over the rail with her as the enforcers closed in and watched as he scrambled over the top with pure terror on his face. “No time to lose!”

She jumped without a second thought and held her breath as she broke the water's surface. The ice cold water stung and burned her skin the moment she went under and she could feel Peri’s arms slipping off from around her neck. Jinx kept herself afloat just barely as she tried to yank the girl back up onto her back.

“Quit kicking!” She shouted as Peri coughed, sputtered, and flailed behind her. A loud splash in the water told her Ekko had joined them and Peri’s arms found their way around Jinx’s neck again as he lifted her up onto her back. 

Jinx’s arms and legs burned the longer they swam and if it wasn’t for the shimmer pumping through her veins she would have very likely succumbed to fatigue before they reached the docks. 

Disgusting mouthfuls of foul river water splashed down Jinx’s through as Peri’s tight grip forced her to breath through her mouth. “Geez, kid, lay off the windpipe!”

The closer they got to the docks the more they could see what awaited them. Enforcers surrounded the area, checking anybody who came by for information or injuries. 

“The drainage pipe!” Ekko shouted, nodding to a large round opening covered in vines and sludge. He swam ahead of them up to an algae covered ladder that he just barely gripped enough to pull himself out of the water. 

Ekko sat on his knees inside the opening of the drain and lifted Peri up off of Jinx’s shoulders and onto the safety of the concrete ground. Jinx pulled herself up halfway, coughing and sputtering water from her mouth. Ekko reached out for one of her arms and pulled her up the rest of the way. 

For a moment they sat there catching their breath. Ekko held Peri close and gently rocked her while Jinx heaved up bile and whatever lingering river water remained in her system over the edge of the pipe.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here.” She groaned as the waves of vomit finally stopped. Somewhere between the ship and the sewer, the river had washed most of the black dye out of her hair and it once again fell in two braids down her back as her tightly coiled updo became undone.

There was so much they needed to say to one another and yet when Ekko stood to walk beside her, Jinx could think of nothing. She never thought he could be so cruel as to not only remind her of the worst day of her life but also throw it in her face about how ashamed her father would be to see her like this. To know his own daughter caused the explosion that killed his sons and led to his own death.

This was where they needed to draw the line. They were done, this couldn’t continue. This cycle of fighting and petty jabs at one another. Jinx felt worse than she had when she woke up on that surgery table covered in her own blood and laced with shimmer.

“Jinx…”

She held up her hand. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say, because she knew she would forgive him, just like she forgave everyone who had hurt her in her desperate need to be loved and deemed useful. No more.

Footsteps thudded through an open passage beside them and Jinx instinctively aimed her waterlogged handgun in the direction they came from. To her relief, Scar burst through the other end of the tunnel.

“Scar!”

“Peri!”

Peri split from Ekko and raced down the sewer, practically throwing herself into her uncle's arms. He held so tightly Jinx was surprised the poor girl could still breathe. Scar cursed and kissed the top of her forehead repeatedly as he sobbed how thankful he was that she was okay. 

He peered over to them and through misty bright green eyes warned them that he had questions that would be answered as soon as they were home.

•••

Exhausted was an understatement. Jinx could practically feel every joint and muscle in her body creak and ache with every movement she made. Peri had been warmed up and brought to Micah who was still in recovery from his injury but elated to see his little girl again.

The joyous reunion lifted the spirits of all the firelights who resumed their morning activities now at ease and their feelings of safety returned.

The same feelings of ease and comfort could not be felt in the con where Jinx and Ekko sat uncomfortably while Scar paced in front of them, fuming and confused.

“What happened?” He demanded.

Jinx spoke first, not willing to let herself be the cause of Ekko’s leadership coming into question again. “The cargo bay was just too big. We couldn’t find her in time.”

Any other information wasn’t necessary. Peri was back, she was safe, Micah was alive, all was well. Her getting arrested and arguing with Ekko until they were each blue in the face was irrelevant. 

“You wanna know what I think happened?” He asked, shooting all the well knowing looks between them.

“Of course.” Ekko nodded and motioned for him to continue. “You know you’re always welcome to speak.”

Scar just looked at them in outrage. He didn’t need to speak, they both knew exactly what he was going to say. I think the two of you couldn’t shut the hell up and stop fighting for more than two minutes to get your priorities straight and find her . Instead, he said nothing. What’s done was done and he turned on his heels and left the con without another word.

Once the trap door above them slammed shut, Jinx stood to leave as well.

“Wait.”

Jinx sighed. “What? Whatever you have to say, just say it. Tell me about how I messed everything up. How I put her life in danger. I could have gotten her killed. I was too rash. I don’t think things through. I don’t care about how my actions affect others. Does that cover it? Can you think of more horrible things to say about me?”

“Are you done?”

She shrugged and flourished her arms as if to indicate that the floor was his.

“What happened today cannot be repeated.” He began, “The fighting and arguing and insults and anger, it ends. Here and now. We put ourselves at risk and more importantly we put Peri at risk because we couldn’t stop tearing into each other and for what? This has to stop.”

They stared at each other for a long while and Jinx couldn’t help the way her eyes softened at Ekko’s hard expression. He was angry but not at her. Angry at himself for what he’d said and for letting his temper get the best of him.

“Just let me go, Ekko.” She breathed, a sad, defeated crack in her voice. “You can tell the others whatever you want. I’ll leave, I’ll make something up. You’ll never have to see me again and we can forget all this. It was a bad idea to begin with…I just…I wanted things to be different. I don’t know why I thought they could be.”

Ekko shook his head. Stubborn to the end, she should have known. “No. I told you I’d help you and I’m not giving up on that promise. I’m sorry for what I said and for how I’ve treated you. For so long I wanted you to come here, to join the firelights, for us to start over. I was foolish and naive and thought that we could pick up right where we left off seven years ago. I didn’t want to accept that you had changed and that’s not fair. I wanted you to be someone you’re not and got angry when you weren’t. I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re a jinx or a monster or any other terrible thing you’ve called yourself. Can we call a truce?”

Jinx looked at his outstretched hand as though it were a wall of fire. She knew putting her hand through it would cross a line and there would be no going back afterwards. As long as Silco believed she was with them, the chem-barons would never stop. How long would it be before another child was kidnapped? Or until they found this place and burned it to the ground. Could she do that to these people? Could she justify putting their home and lives at risk for the sake of revenge?

“He knows.” Was all she said and Ekko nodded.

“It doesn’t change anything.” He assured her, hand still outstretched and waiting for her acceptance. “We’ll find a way to get him off our backs.”

Jinx reached out and slowly accepted his hand. She could practically feel a zap of electricity shoot through her like they were forging a pact between them. 

“I have an idea…” Jinx warned, “But you’re not going to like it.”

Ekko offered her a playful smile. “Let’s hear it.”

Chapter Text

“Go over it one more time.”

“Oh my god.”

They had been going in circles for three hours and Jinx had grown antsy in the stuffy, dimly-lit con room. Ekko still had yet to decide whether or not he liked or approved of Jinx's plan to divert Silco’s attention away from the firelights and Jinx was over it. The plan, in her entirely unbiased opinion, was simple.

“What part is not clicking?” She asked with her hands pressed together and pointing at him. He was so smart, how could he not put it together yet?

“Oh I don’t know, Jinx. Maybe the whole goddamn thing?” He didn’t even bother looking up from the notepad he was furiously scribbling in. Without breaking concentration on the scowl he'd been maintaining he ripped off the paper he was writing on and crumpled it into a ball. “Do you even think about your plans when you come up with them or do you just go for it the second you’ve thought of something?”

“First thought best thought.” 

“No!” Ekko tossed his notepad aside and stood up, pressing his hands to his temples in frustration. “Not first thought best thought! It's the second more developed thought, best thought.”

In Jinx’s defense she had thought about her plan numerous times but didn’t feel the need to tweak it. It was presumptively easy to execute and consisted of two main parts. One, Ekko and Scar would pose as patrolling enforcers and accost her- undisguised- in the market square. There they would loudly accuse her of a variety of crimes she definitely committed at one point or another and arrest her but after publicly deeming her deranged they would escort her to Zaun’s Asylum For The Irreparably Troubled instead of Stillwater. 

Inside the asylum after she was checked in and locked up she only needed to wait until one of the so-called ‘doctors’ arrived to medicate her when the second part of her plan came into play. She would incapacitate the doctor and swap their clothes. A little fresh hair dye on the unlucky bastard taking her place and the historically unreliable asylum orderlies would be none the wiser.

She could walk free under the safety of the psychosis-inducing pointy-nosed masks all the asylum doctors wore and if her body double claimed to be a doctor knocked out and locked up by a patient, who in their right mind would believe them?

“First of all, we don’t know what the inside of the asylum looks like. There’s no way of knowing you can find your way out” Ekko began, gently rubbing his eyes as he spoke. “Second of all, we can’t just leave some random person in there in your place; he’s going to want proof that it’s you.” 

“And who’s going to tell him it’s not?” Jinx countered, “The asylum has a strict no visitors policy. No one on the outside is getting in to check.” It’s been claimed they don’t allow visitors to ensure there’s no deviation in the rigorous ‘treatments’ the inmates undergo but all of Zaun knew it was to keep the public from knowing just how cruel it was inside the asylum’s thick stone walls. “As far as they know a patient with blue hair goes in, and a patient with blue hair remains. You think they care enough to actually identify the people in there?”

Zaun’s Asylum For The Irreparably Troubled was a dark stain on the undercity’s history. For a lot of people, the asylum is a horror story told around fires. Some claim to hear screaming coming from the asylum at night, others claim to have seen patients in the windows locked up in straight jackets begging for help- the only claim Jinx knew to be unfounded as the asylum’s windows were sealed from the inside- to stop people from jumping out of them of course. 

True or not, the asylum was considered a fate worse than death. Anybody who valued their life in any capacity would choose an eternity in Stillwater to the unknown perversions of the asylum. People sometimes had the opportunity to leave Stillwater. Maybe they were granted parole, maybe they received a shorter sentence than most, it didn't matter- no one ever left the asylum, unless it was in a body bag. 

“How would you even knock the doctor out?” Ekko asked, eyes closed deep in thought, in a tone that implied he assumed she didn’t have a plan for that. He had so little faith in her it might have hurt her feelings if she valued his opinion.

Jinx only waved him off. “Oh please, that's the easy part. Well. The sort of easy part. I can knock them upside the head- which is the fun option.”

“That’ll draw too much attention.” He objected with a shake of his head before she even had the chance to finish her sentence. “Why can’t we just have you jump off a bridge or something and fake your own death?”

“That’s a simpler plan to you?” She had to hand it to him, he might be crazier than she is. It took only the calmest and most collected of people to suggest pretending to kill yourself to get your dad off your back. 

“Well it isn’t more complicated and it doesn’t involve you potentially getting locked in the asylum with no way out.” 

She took a deep breath and tried to regain her thoughts. At the rate they were going at, Silco would die of old age before they came up with a reasonable solution for his persistence. “As much as I’m sure you’d love to see me jump off a bridge, hard pass. The other option involves a very potent paralytic made from stinging nettles. You may recall I used it once or twice on your friends.”

“Yeah I recall.” Ekko huffed with a scowl at the memory of his fellow firelights dropping to the ground like flies in a fight. They were supposed to be getting along with each other now that they called a truce but unfortunately for Ekko his buttons were incredibly easy and very fun for Jinx to push. “I don't suppose you have a stash of stinging nettles hidden somewhere?”

“Well I sort of burned down the apothecary I used to steal them from so…no.” Jinx cursed herself in the back of her mind for setting Harbinger ablaze several weeks ago to get the firelights' attention. She should have known it was yet another impulsive decision of hers that would come back and bite her in the ass. “So we can go find some, or I start swinging. You pick.”

Ekko pursed his lips as he weighed their options and Jinx could almost see his thought process. On the one hand Jinx could very easily fuck up, not knock the doctor out with her blow, and wind up in an even worse spot in the asylum than before. On the other hand, letting explosion happy Jinx handle volatile chemicals and solutions was far from ideal. In fact the entire plan was far from ideal to him.

“Come on, I know someone who might be able to help.” He motioned for her to follow him and lead her out of the con. 

Something had changed in the base the last few days that Jinx couldn’t quite put her finger on. Maybe it was her and Ekko’s newly accepted truce. Maybe it was her vehement daring rescue of one of their own, but things had finally begun to feel settled . The air wasn’t heavy with resentment and each day fewer and fewer firelights avoided her presence. The base was still light years away from what Jinx would consider home- or even a safe haven, but it was…nice.

For the first time in what felt like a very long time, Jinx could finally breathe. She didn’t feel like she was walking on eggshells in every conversation and even though she and Ekko still didn't see eye to eye on everything, it no longer took a war to get them to agree on something.

Ekko led her down through a winding maze of passages through the bases surrounding tunnel system until they reached what Jinx could only assume to be a makeshift lab. Several tables laid scattered with half completed- or half destroyed experiments and tubes of bubbling liquid spilled colorful, acrid puffs of smoke into the air, but Jinx was far more interested in the puff ball of fur standing on a stool in front of one of the tables welding blades to one of the firelights deactivated hoverboards. 

“Professor?” Ekko flipped a switch, illuminating the room in a dusty orange light. 

The little puff ball lifted his welding goggles over his head and beamed. “Ekko my boy! Your timing is never short of impeccable! I was just finishing up modifying a new wing configuration on these boards of yours. If my hypothesis is correct this new aerodynamic design will account for faster acceleration, smoother drifting, and above all an easier transition between the dense air of the fissures and the mild air of Piltover!”

“That’s nice, can’t wait to try it out.” He let out an amused chuckle, clearly unaware the little puff ball had been doing any sort of work on his own inventions. “Anyways, Professor, this is Jinx. She’s a…friend of mine. Jinx, this is Professor Heimerdinger from the Academy.”

Heimerdinger, Heimerdinger. Jinx had heard that name before but she couldn’t place where and she certainly didn’t know any rogue gerbils prone to engineering. He looked a bit like Smeech but far less deranged.

“Oh my!” Heimerdinger hopped off his stool and toddled over to her to get a better look. “How lovely it is to meet you Miss Jinx! Any friend of Ekko’s is a friend of mine. How may I be of assistance to the two of you?”

Jinx took a step back to really look at the puff ball in front of her. The way he spoke was aggressively reminiscent of topside’s elite and no one- other than topside- ever referred to it as anything but. “Hang on. Heimerdinger? Like Councilor Heimerdinger? Like head of the council, Councilor Heimerdinger?” How many other Heimerdinger’s were there anyhow?

The shimmer in her veins reacted before she could, bubbling to the surface with an anger that shocked even her. Why the everloving fuck would Ekko have one of topside’s richest bureaucratic highbrows in his safe house. Tinkering with his gadgets. Gadgets even she wasn’t allowed to touch. 

Was he a spy? There to investigate the firelights and take them down from the inside out after all she had done to convince topside all the problems Silco caused were the firelights doing. And here he was the head of the council in broad daylight posing as a simpering scientist dedicated to help the desolate as if he ever knew a thing about what it meant to be the dirt under someone’s shoes.

“It’s just Heimerdinger now, Professor if you are so inclined, but a Councilor I am no more.” Heimerdinger dragged his stool closer to Jinx and climbed up it to look over her face. “My my, I do say your eyes are the most unnatural shade of pink I’ve ever seen. Tell me, what caused this?”

“Shimmer.” She spat out then turned back to Ekko. “I’m sorry you’ve just had the immortal founder of Piltover hanging out in your basement configuring the aerodynamics of your skateboards this whole time and didn’t think that was information to share with the class? The class that the enforcers- who report to him- have hunted down, killed, and imprisoned on his authority?”

Heimerdinger looked between them awkwardly and painfully embarrassed, clearly wanting to say something but not wanting to speak for Ekko. Good. Whatever Professor what’s-his-face had to say, Jinx wasn’t interested and she was even less interested in how he, of all people, could possibly be of anything even remotely close to help with their situation.

Ekko pushed the hoverboard Heimerdinger had been tinkering with aside and sat on the edge of his workspace, arms folded over his chest and a staged scowl on his face. “First of all, who’s fault is it that the council thinks we’re to blame for the undercity’s violence?”

Jinx rolled her eyes. The firelights were far from innocent, she had witnessed just how ruthless they could be first hand. Sure she caused mass distraction in their name but it wasn’t like they never retaliated.

“Second of all,” He continued, “Heimerdinger was the one who helped me back into the undercity when someone blew me up and wrecked my leg leaving me trapped under a bridge for days on end.”

“I also died for the record.” Jinx crossed her arms and walked over to the professor's discarded experiment. “You weren’t the only one who got injured, you know.”

Ekko bit his lip and she couldn’t tell if he was suppressing a laugh or an insult. “Which leads me back to my first question of whose fault was that?”

Jinx ignored him this time, choosing instead to inspect the professor's impeccably smooth meld lines. It had been so long since she’d been able to create something that part of her was itching to dismantle the hoverboard in front of her just so she could put it back together.

Maybe the little puff ball really had given up his title in pursuit of whatever niche hobbies puff balls partook in, people often did strange things in their old age after all. Or perhaps he’s here to take you away . The insidious whispers in Jinx’s ears sent a shiver down her spine and she instinctively pawed at the sides of her face to get it to stop. If the puff ball wanted to arrest her, she’d love to see him try. 

Ekko turned back to Heimerdinger. “In any case, Professor, we were working with Raya on a few different salves and balms to add to our stores and Jinx had an idea for a numbing cream we could use for pain management but we’re having a hard time finding some of the ingredients. Any chance you know where we could find stinging nettles?”

The tension in Jinx’s shoulders relaxed a bit upon hearing Ekko’s request. If he trusted the professor so much, with his life as he had claimed, why lie about their true intentions with the stinging nettles?

She didn’t know why, but it annoyed Jinx every time Ekko neglected to tell her a part of his plans. She wanted to believe it was because he didn’t trust her but not telling her and having her react confused had the potential to ruin their plans even more. Either way a conversation on communication was well overdue. 

“Hmm..” Heimerdinger hummed softly to himself, tiny hands stroking his mustache as he thought. “There are very few plants native to the Undercity, the dense air and low sunlight makes it difficult for most plants to grow and the soil of Piltover is far too rich. The best stinging nettles most apothecaries house are imported from Noxus, the harsh climate makes for especially sharp thorns and its sweet oils are the main ingredient in Noxian spirits.”

Jinx rolled her eyes. “So where can we get them?” Was he always like this? Offering history lessons instead of answering the question that was actually asked?

“Like I said, most apothecaries do carry them!” He turned to Ekko and frowned. “But you do need a physician’s order to purchase them.” Looks like Jinx would be knocking doctors out the old fashioned way, she cracked her knuckles and looked at Ekko with a sly grin spreading across her face.

“There isn’t any other way?” Ekko asked, a dull almost unnoticeable plea in his voice. “We really could use it, our people are getting hurt more and more every day.”

Heimerdinger tapped the pads of his thumbs together then shot up with eager realization. “Now that I think about it, the botanical students at the university have a greenhouse filled to the brim with exotic plants. I have seen plenty of experimental cross pollination gone terribly wrong. As the head of the Academy, I’d be more than happy to grant you access to it. Anything to help!”

“Wait, hang on.” Jinx cut in abruptly, “We can’t just walk in the front doors of Piltover Academy.”

“We most certainly can, I own the place!” The professor assured her. “We’ll say you’re new students touring the facilities, not that I need to explain myself.”

Ekko placed what Jinx could only assume was intended to be a reassuring hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off with the distinct sense he was about to irritate her. “ You can’t walk through the front doors of the Academy. Stay here and get together what you can without the nettles, we’ll see what we can find.”

•••

Several hours and only three arguments later, Ekko was dressed in one of the Academy's stuffy but undeniably well made uniforms of emerald and cream. He absentmindedly fiddled with the gold plated buttons of his damask printed vest as he followed Heimerdinger up a looming set of never ending steps leading to two massive double doors artfully embellished with the Academy’s crest.

Jinx hadn’t wanted them to go without her- Ekko hadn’t cared- an argument ensued. She insisted she needed to be there to properly identify which species of nettles they needed- Heimerdinger assured her they could find the right ones- an argument ensued. It was all they did, all day long, every day. Fight and bicker and insult and argue and undermine and lie, the list went on and on.

Scar had been on Ekko’s case about it for weeks and the guilt had started to become unbearable. He tried so hard every day to be angry. To remember everything she’d done, the people she’d killed- his people. Some days he didn’t need to remind himself of all her transgressions for her to piss him off, she did that on her own free will. Frequently. 

The others saw this but didn’t understand. They didn’t understand why he put up with her bullshit. Why he bothered arguing back or why he even agreed to help her in the first place. But what could he tell them that would even make sense? How could he explain that even at his angriest each time he looked in her eyes he felt the same wave of childhood affection seize control and soften his demeanor?

How could he explain that even with all of her deception and misdeeds at the end of the day he would always love her in a way he didn’t fully understand. He couldn’t even explain it to himself, so he didn’t try to explain it to anyone else. The only one who seemed to get it was Fallon, and even Ekko didn’t know how.

“Alright!” Heimerdinger halted in front of the large Academy doors and handed Ekko a student handbook and binder. “Remember, if anyone asks you’re a new student here for a tour and I’m going back to my roots and dedicating more time with my students.”

Ekko bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a laugh. Heimerdinger was having far too much fun with the thought that they were breaking and entering into a building he himself owned. 

The professor continued talking as they walked through the front doors but Ekko was no longer listening. His eyes were focused instead on the ten feet tall vaulted ceilings adorned with golden modern chandeliers. Each of the many windows flooded the foyer with sunlight that glistened off the reflective glass of each chandelier and bathed the room in glittering warm afternoon light. 

The Academy was nothing like he had imagined when he was a kid, when he was still young and naive enough to think he would be able to attend one day- a belief instilled in him by his parents who worked themselves to death in the mines out of desperation for their son to have a better life than they did one day. He hoped that wherever they were now they were proud of what he had been able to accomplish.

Black and white checkered tile lined each hall they turned down and clicked softly beneath their feet. Ekko couldn’t take his eyes off the magnificent artwork framed in gold that lined the cream painted walls. Every inch of this place oozed elegance and excellence, it was everything he had ever dreamed of.

The muffled words of Heimerdinger finally began to sound in his ears as his awe dissipated slowly. Still, his eyes remained fixed on everything other than where he was going until they turned a corner and Ekko rammed face first into what he initially thought to be a wall. The papers he was holding fell to the ground and he looked up to find a burly man with dark hair staring at him and the professor in disbelief.

“Professor?” The man asked, in too much shock to acknowledge his own papers that fell to his feet when he and Ekko collided. “What are you doing here?”

“Student tours!” Heimerdinger announced loudly and far too quickly to be natural. “I’ve decided to spend my retirement going back to my roots and throwing myself into my teaching! Seeing my pupils grow and learn always was my favorite part about this place. What are you doing here? I would think you’d be at the Tribunal.”

Neither of them paid any mind to Ekko as he wordlessly bent down to collect what he dropped. The papers were a mess, strewn about in no decisive order and Ekko hadn’t actually bothered to open the folder Heimerdinger gave him, leaving what belonged to whom a mystery. He started shuffling anything that looked like it might be his back in the folder when something that definitely wasn’t caught his eye. 

Several crumpled wanted posters bearing a crude rendition of Jinx’s likeness stared back at him. Shit. He quickly stuck one inside his folder then stacked the rest on the pile presumably belonging to the other man Ekko still didn’t recognize. 

“Right. Of course I’m- I’m on my way actually.” He nodded in acknowledgement to Ekko as he stood up and handed his papers back to him. “Thank you. I’m Jayce- Councilor Talis.”

The Man of Progress . Ekko ground his teeth together as the recognition finally hit him. The man responsible for hextech and everything it took from the undercity. Jobs, houses, land, power, all taken for the sake of a greater good that only benefited the ones who already had it good.

“Ekko. Who is that?” He asked, nonchalantly nodding to Jinx’s wanted poster.

Jayce sighed and ran a hand through his ragged hair. “Her name is Jinx. One of Silco’s agents in the undercity. She’s wanted for a myriad of different crimes but primarily domestic terrorism and second degree murder of over a dozen enforcers.”

Ekko looked at Heimerdinger out of the corner of his eye but the professor's face remained impassive. “Damn. Where will she go when you guys catch her?”

“Stillwater maybe. Banishment is another possibility. The council hasn’t come to an agreement just yet.” He swallowed thickly, looking at Heimerdinger with a strange sense of guilt.

“An agreement?” Heimerdinger inquired. “My boy, what agreement is there to be made? The Ethos is clear on this matter.”

“It’s not that simple.” Jayce shot back, seeming to forget Ekko was there. “Normally yes we would abide by the Ethos but the council has unanimously decided to grant the undercity independence contingent on Jinx’s capture.”

“What?!” The word spilled from Ekko’s mouth before he could even think of it. Zaun’s independence, freedom from topside, its own trade regulations and economic development all for the price of Jinx’s life.

The councilor paused whatever he was about to say to address Ekko. “Please, I would appreciate your discretion. Nothing has been decided or finalized yet. The issue is, if we, the council, decide to incarcerate or banish Jinx then grant the undercity independence, as a citizen of the undercity and not Piltover their new leader could very well see fit to exonerate her. So the council and ‘ Zaun’s ’ new government must come to an agreement together.”

“And who is Zaun’s new leader?” Ekko asked as nausea began to settle into his stomach. He didn’t need to ask, he knew exactly who their new leader would be. 

“I’m sorry.” Jayce took a step back, getting ready to take off. “This is a matter for the council to discuss, I can’t say anything more.”

“Perhaps some outside perspective would do the council good.” Heimerdinger mused, a sad, dulcet hum in his voice. “I too was a councilor once.”

Jayce spared a lingering, apologetic glance at Heimerdinger. For a moment he shifted, as though he was going to speak, then exhaled sharply and left without another word. 

“Professor…” Ekko began as the shutting of a door sounded assuring them that Jayce was out of earshot. He wanted to explain why he hadn’t told him who exactly Jinx was but Heimerdinger held up a hand to stop him.

“There is no need to explain yourself to me, lad.” He told him. “I’ve seen the marvels you’ve created for your community and the good you could do for this world. You clearly know a great deal more about this young lady than the council does to allow her into your home and trust her the way that you do. As I said, any friend of yours is a friend of mine.” He clapped his hands together, setting his mind back on the mission. “Now! To the greenhouse!”

He needed to stop him, to tell him he was wrong. Ekko didn’t trust Jinx and if he was smart he would have told her to get lost a long time ago. He needed to tell him the whole reason they were raiding his students' greenhouse in the first place was to create a paralytic to trap someone in the insane asylum in Jinx’s place so that she could remain free and forgotten by topside. He needed to tell him that Jinx was everything the council assumed about her and probably more.

But Jinx was also loyal, fiercely so. She was incredibly intelligent and brave especially when she shouldn’t be. Jinx was often selfish but the times she chose to be selfless outweighed the rest. And it was unquestionable in his mind that Jinx deserved a better life than the one she got. So instead, Ekko said nothing and followed Heimerdinger to the student greenhouse. 

The greenhouse, despite being humid and sticky inside, was a grand spectacle much like the rest of the academy. Peach walls were nearly invisible under the massive multi paned windows that stretched from floor to ceiling all the way around. The air was sweet with honeysuckle and coumarin and Ekko very quickly decided he could stay there forever.

Several round pots filled with massive overflowing green plants he wasn’t able to identify stood in parallel lines throughout the room. Somewhere in the back of the greenhouse overhead sprinklers gently showered a section of vegetation in what appeared to be timed intervals. Once Ekko’s eyes had taken in every inch of soil and tile flooring he turned to Heimerdinger expectantly.

“So…where do we start?” He asked, fighting the urge to reach out and stroke a fuzzy looking sage green plant.

The professor followed his gaze and plucked a leaf from the plant. “Stachys Byzantina.” He said as he handed the fuzzy leaf to Ekko. “Commonly known as Lamb’s Ear. It’s pretty, and most people only regard it as such, but it can be quite useful if you’re in need of an antimicrobial bandage.”

Ekko ran his thumb up and down the soft little leaf with a gentle smile on his face. He’d never felt a lamb’s ear before but the silky surface was remarkably silky and similar to the fur of a well loved puppy. He slipped the leaf into his pocket and followed Heimerdinger through the rows of plants. 

“Right this way, lad.” He motioned for Ekko to follow as he weaved in and out of leaves and weeds. “We’ll need to be careful not to prick ourselves on the nettles, tricky little devils they can be.” He made his way to a large windowed cabinet and took a pair of shears as well as two sets of thick leather gloves and handed one set over to Ekko. 

“Now, tell me again about this salve you and Miss Jinx are concocting.” Heimerdinger’s voice trailed behind him as he took off once more in search of the nettles. “The oils of a nettle can be quite potent, you can’t have a heavy hand when mixing, too much and you’ll end up with a paralytic instead of a local anaesthetic.”

Ekko felt his face grow hot, maybe trusting a former councilor of Piltover was a bad idea after all. “I’m not sure. Jinx is the lead on this one, but I’ll be sure to warn her.”

“Oh!” The professor laughed at Ekko’s words. “Oh my! I certainly don’t suggest that. The human mind is complicated, if you tell her not to do something outright she’ll only want to do it more.” No kidding, Ekko thought. “Try gently proposing that you two, collectively, should use less to begin with. Then you can alway add more if needed and you haven’t undermined her scientific process.”

“That’s a great idea, Professor.” Ekko said flatly, knowing full well Jinx would be using the entire dose of nettle oil in one shot.

“Of course, my boy. Solidarity is the most important part of any partnership whether it be scientific or…other.” He glanced surreptitiously back then continued around a corner at the sight of the scowl adorning Ekko’s face. “In any case! We should-“

A high pitched startled gasp from Heimerdinger stopped Ekko in his tracks and he looked up at a tall, distressingly thin man hunched over a crutch before them.

“Professor.” He nodded over to them in acknowledgment, his accent thick and his voice tired. “I haven't seen you here in some time.”

“Viktor. You look unwell.” Ekko couldn’t help stop the look on his face from screaming at Heimerdinger’s harsh words. It took a specific kind of falling out to result in your greetings including a watered down version of you look like shit and Ekko quietly hoped this wouldn’t be his future when the professor learned of his and Jinx’s real experiment. “What are you doing here, you’re not a biology student? Gathering more subjects for your abomination? Disgracing Piltover’s scientific integrity some more?”

“No, Professor.” Viktor shook his head. If any of Heimerdinger’s blows landed, he showed no signs. “You were right. The Hexcore…it was never going to save anyone. We have agreed to destroy it, Jayce and I.”

Ekko could feel Heimerdinger shrink back, he wasn’t expecting Viktor’s words. This Viktor and Jayce were…partners of sorts. He made a mental note to ask more about them when they returned back to the firelights base later. 

“I do not relish in your demise, Viktor.” He admitted, his voice far softer and apologetic. “It takes a strong man to pursue his beliefs, and an even stronger one to admit to when they were wrong. This world did not nurture you the way it should have but I would hope the knowledge that you’re leaving it better than you found it would mean something.”

For a while no one said anything as Viktor continued to mindlessly stare at the colossal overgrown plant of stringy thick waxy leaves and deep indigo flowers. It was sort of pretty but mostly it just looked wrong- unnatural. 

“Dypsis dracaena aquatica.” Viktor’s eyes never left the plant as he spoke. “Genetically engineered by splicing three different species together, it single handedly produces air cleaner than all the plants in this room combined. This is what we should have been investing in. The undercity would never be the same with access to something like this.”

Ekko took a step back to truly marvel at the plant. It was large enough that it certainly wouldn’t miss a few cuttings, but it was most likely the only one of its species and heavily monitored by its creators. “What’s the likelihood of growing something like this in the undercity?” He asked, trying to keep his tone blasé and simply curious. “There isn’t a lot of fertile land but there’s always planter boxes.”

“It cannot be done.” Viktor coughed roughly into a handkerchief, splattering it with droplets of blood. “The undercity’s climate is too harsh for anything to grow.”

And as Viktor spoke, the dead, defeated look in his eyes led Ekko to believe he wasn’t talking about plants.

——

Jinx was easy enough to find once they got back to base, sulking in the base’s makeshift lab almost exactly where they had left her. Thin silver liquid simmered quietly inside two glass beakers over a small, barely lit bunsen burner, receiving an occasional agitation by the lengthy metal stick Jinx was stirring it with.

Ekko sat on a stool beside her and plucked the bundle of nettles out from his academy folder and placed it down in front of her by the strings it was tied with, being careful not to sting himself on its thorns. “A bundle of stinging nettles, per your request.”

She glanced sideways at him, her glistening pink eyes like daggers to his chest. “Took you long enough.” She muttered and picked up the bundle with a pair of forceps, quickly cutting away the string and dropping the nettles into a small stone mortar to be ground up.

“We need to talk.” Ekko could feel the roll of Jinx’s eyes even if he couldn’t see it but to be frank- Jinx’s annoyance was incredibly low on his priority list.

To his surprise she sat upright and turned to him, that familiar quiet rage in her eyes. “You’re right! We do need to talk. About how you keep neglecting to inform me about parts of your plans that end up making me look like an idiot and almost blowing our cover.”

“Actually we need to talk about this.” He ripped her wanted poster out of his folder and slammed it down on the table in front of her. Her face remained impassive and only slightly confused so he explained it to her. “Topside offered Silco the undercity’s independence in exchange for you . Your face is about to be plastered everywhere for every enforcer to see.”

The wheels began turning in Jinx’s head but Ekko couldn’t tell what they meant. Her eyes began their pulsing flash they did every time she got upset, an anomaly Ekko had a sneaking suspicion she didn’t know they did.

Her chest began to heave as her breaths quickened and became more and more shallow. “He wouldn’t do that.” She hissed and despite the hostile conviction that laced her words it was unclear who she was trying to convince of its sincerity. “He would never turn me in.”

“Jinx, I heard it from the head of the council myself. Word for word.” He tried softening his approach, careful not to speak to her too gently as though she were a wounded animal but yet remained firm on what he knew to be true.

“Well you’re wrong!” She stood in a quickly flurry, nearly upending her chair as she went. “He wouldn’t do that! He wouldn’t do that !”

Her voice grew louder and louder, nearly echoing in the empty spaces of the room. Ekko stood as well, holding a hand out for her- to hold or to hit, he would allow either one. Powder had always been a hot head but Ekko couldn’t help but wonder how badly Jinx was hurting the past few years to have become as explosive as she was. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it, unsure of what to say, or if she would even want to hear it.

Jinx seemed to snap out of whatever haze she’d been locked in and shot Ekko a terribly angry look then snatched her wanted poster from the desk and stormed out of the lab without another word.

•••

He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that!

Jinx had been trying to sleep for the better part of seven hours and she was almost sure she had managed to get at least a good forty minutes- not consecutively. Her mind just wouldn’t stop .

A blur of memories played on a loop as the night slowly ticked away. Memories of Silco praising her, assuring her of how smart she was and how proud he was of her. Memories of Silco angry with her, chastising her for her impulsive behavior and how badly they would suffer for her fuck ups.

Then she thought of Ekko. What he had told her earlier of Silco’s betrayal and all the times before then when he’d spoken freely about despicable he thought the man who raised her to be. A phantom stinging pricked the palm of her hand as she recalled that day in Silco’s office when she hit him and sent him away- solidifying her new role as Jinx. Her memory was spotty and remarkably unreliable but she would never forget the look on his face that day and how similar it was to the night he decided he couldn’t kill her on that bridge.

Jinx switched on a hazy green chem-lantern and squinted over at Fallon’s empty bed. She thought having her chatty roommate off on nighttime watch would give her better rest but clearly she was wrong. With a groan she pulled her pillow over her face and squeezed her eyes shut, desperate for sleep.

Sleep didn’t come, nor did any form of relaxation as her mind continued to race and ruminate. Ekko had just misunderstood what the councilor had said, that had to be it. Silco wouldn’t betray her, even if she had betrayed him. She wished she could talk to him- just for a few minutes. Long enough to tell him she was okay. Maybe she could even convince him to kill Singed himself and then she could go home and everything would be back the way that it was.

But Silco would talk her out of it, convince her to leave Singed be. He would take the fall for him, tell her that the doctor was only acting on his command and that if she wanted to be angry she could be angry with him. But Jinx didn’t want to be angry with him, so it was easier to just stay away.

Her door creaked open on its rusty hinges as Fallon returned from her night watch and Jinx groaned internally. She had officially been up all night.

“We need to come up with a different plan.”

Not Fallon. She threw the pillow covering her face aside and stared up at Ekko standing above her, dressed, ready for the day, and pissing her off before the sun was even up. 

“It’s too risky.” He continued as she only glared at him. “I just don’t like it.”

“Well I don’t like you being in my room in the middle of the night.” Jinx grabbed her blanket and pulled it over her head, a silent gesture for Ekko to leave her alone.

“Middle of the night?” Under her blanket she could hear him switching on the overhead light and opening the door that led to a tiny strip of a balcony. “It’s seven in the morning, you should be up already anyways.”

She tossed back her covers and crawled out of her warm bed with a huff. “I’m up. I’ve been up. All night in fact!” She rifled through the pile of her clothes she never bothered to hang up in search of something not destroyed to wear. “What’s the problem now?”

“It’s just not safe.” He repeated, crossing his arms and attempting to firmly put his foot down. It was cute in the way puppies try to assert dominance with their own reflection. “Knowing topside has it out for you makes this ten times more dangerous. We have no idea who’s going to be on the lookout. What’s going to happen if a different set of enforcers find you before we do and cart you off to Stillwater? How do we know the asylum won’t take extra precautions in securing you inside the gates on topside’s orders?”

He had put so many holes in her plan Jinx had a feeling she wasn’t the only one who endured a restless night. “If we get caught and I get sent to Stillwater I have the utmost faith in your ability to find a way to bust me out. Or you’ll leave me there and I’ll curse myself for twenty to life for ever trusting you to begin with. As for the asylum- you’re giving the undercity too much credit. Nobody in that nightmare of a facility is double checking or verifying anything and whatever weird sadistic doctor ends up taking my place is probably well overdue for a taste of their own medicine. It’s too bad Singed didn’t work there.”

Honestly he probably did. Jinx could very easily imagine him volunteering on the weekends to pluck the eyelashes from patients and claim he was cleansing their sight of ghouls. It’s probably where he got all those jars of questionable contents that furnish his lab.

“We’ll take more later.” Ekko warned with a disapproving shake of his head. “You’re going to be late for introspection.”

Jinx clenched her jaw so tightly it was a wonder her teeth didn’t shatter. First he wakes her up when she wasn’t even sleeping, makes her get out of bed, and now he wants her to go stretch and think about what she’s done. Honestly, the nerve. “How come you never come to introspection? I find it hard to believe you have nothing to reflect on.”

He shrugged. “I do something else for my morning routine.”

“Show me.” She dared, as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Take me through your morning routine, maybe all those worries of yours will finally get through to me.”

Ekko was quiet for a moment as he thought then let out a soft chuckle. “Alright. Get dressed.”

Jinx scoffed in amused disbelief, she hadn’t truly imagined he’d say yes. Her heart began to race as they stood there, eyes locked, neither one of them willing to break contact for what felt like an eternity until Jinx finally gestured to the door. “Well are you gonna watch me or something? Get out!”

“Right. Sorry.” 

The door clicked shut softly behind him and Jinx rushed to get dressed both delighted by the idea of missing introspection and anxious to see what terrors Ekko had planned to allow it.

Moments later they were silently traversing across the courtyard and through the same entrance that led to professor-what’s-his-face’s makeshift lab where Jinx’s stinging nettle solution lay abandoned and waiting for her to return. 

Instead of heading towards the lab, Ekko led her down the opposite end of the passage and into what appeared to be an empty, chained off drainage pit. Inside the pit was a spectacle; firelights donned big puffy gloves and sparred with each other, others repeatedly punched large anthropoidal sacks of sand, and some lifted heavy stacks of weights over and over again until they looked like they were going to pass out.

“Oh this is definitely much more my speed.” Jinx said, nodding in appreciation and already mentally preparing for how good it would feel to beat the shit out of one of those sand bags.

Ekko laughed, dubious and delighted. “Don’t get too excited. You’re doing my workout today, remember?”

She followed him into the center of the pit where he pulled a pack of bandages out of a duffle bag and began unraveling them. “These’ll protect your hands under the gloves.” He gently lifted one of her hands up and began wrapping it tightly with the bandages. His hands felt so calloused and rough under the soft smooth pads of her fingers. Jinx followed his gaze as he wrapped her other hand, always focused- never distracted on the task at hand. 

Ekko looked up at her when he was finished and caught off guard by her intent watchfulness allowed his hand to remain clasped in hers a second too long. He jerked his hand away as quickly as the realization hit him and reached for a second set of bandages to wrap his own hands.

“Alright.” He said as he finished up his wraps. “Warmup. Ten minutes of jump rope, twenty squats, twenty push ups, twenty alternating lunges, and forty sit ups.”

Jinx laughed and stared at him incredulously. “You’re joking.” 

“Thought you said I wasn’t funny?” He handed her a jump rope and motioned for her to get started with an annoyingly smug smirk plastered across his face.

“You’re not.” Was her only response.

The warmup was devious. Her heart was racing and her legs were burning a mere five minutes into the jump rope but the way her body ached was nothing compared to her intense desire to wipe that shit eating grin off of Ekko’s face as she heaved her way through lunges and wobbly push ups. 

Her legs felt like jelly as she sat on a bench desperately chugging water and struggling to catch her breath and relax her heart rate.

“Hope you’re not whipped already, the real workout is about to start.” He tossed her a pair of boxing gloves, still smirking.

“I could kill you, you know.” She huffed in between breaths. Jinx watched as Ekko lifted the edge of his shirt and wiped his face with it, revealing a glistening sheen of sweat coating his effortlessly toned abdomen and her heart began racing anew.

“You kind of suck at this.” He told her, vaguely gesturing around the boxing pit as a whole as he donned his puffy green gloves. “But if you’d rather come down here in the mornings than go to introspection I guess that’d be okay, but you have to pick one. If you want my opinion, which you always do, you could alternate and get a physical and spiritual work out.”

Jinx slipped on the pair of boxing gloves Ekko gave her and tightened the straps with her teeth. “Are you gonna talk or are we gonna fight?”

He laughed again, genuine and deep this time. “You’re gonna regret that.”

Regret it she did, but not for her clumsy footwork or the numerous blows Ekko had managed to land on her sides and hips but for the aggressive soreness that burned with every movement she made. She had foolishly assumed that since the shimmer in her veins gave her razor-sharp reflexes and speedy healing time  it would also have gifted her with some magic ability to withstand fatigue. She was very wrong.

Her muscles screamed all afternoon until she finally gave up on being active and retreated to the lab to finish her nettle serum. 

It was a nice gesture, she had realized, for Ekko to offer the boxing pit as an alternative to her morning routine. If she could truly have things her way she’d stay in bed until mid afternoon and only really start working in the evening. Still, having the choice of which sunrise torture she’d prefer was unexpectedly soothing.

As the sun set and most of the firelights went off to bed Jinx scaled the various rusting stairs to the top of the massive base tree to find Ekko in his personal workshop looming over a stack of papers.

“Hey.” She whispered as she knocked on the door frame and stepped inside.

“Oh hey.” Ekko jumped slightly, so deeply enthralled in whatever he was working on that he didn’t notice her presence at first. He hastily covered his papers in an entirely uncasual way. “What’s up?”

“My serum is ready.” She told him, holding up a thin vial of clear iridescent oil. “We need to test it out and get some enforcer uniforms for you and Scar. I figured we could kill two birds with one stone and see if we can pick off a couple blues on patrol in the lanes.”

He rubbed his eyes, clearly exhausted. “Yeah, let’s uh…let’s meet in the con in like twenty minutes I just want to finish a few things first.”

“What are you working on?” Jinx asked, trying to peer around him at his notes.

“Nothing.” He slapped a folder over top of his papers to obscure them even more. “The con. Twenty minutes.”

Jinx weighed her options then smiled sweetly and turned to leave, already formulating a plan to sneak into his workshop and snoop through his notes. 

The con was empty and dark when Jinx arrived and she spent a good bit of time lighting a couple lanterns and rifling through a trunk of weapons for something she could reasonably shoot from a distance. Her aim with her gun was impeccable but unfortunately for her, a gun was the last thing she needed for this.

She settled on a bulky brass blowgun and was just pocketing the extra darts when Ekko came in. “Alright, what’s the plan?”

“Preferably an abandoned building with some punched out windows, but I can make do with a rooftop.” She told him as she tugged a long sleeve black shirt over the halter crop top she was already wearing. “And we can’t wear those firelight masks.”

“Why not?” He asked, white owl mask already in his hands.

Jinx began looping and pinning up her braids into two thick buns that sat firmly at the nape of her neck. “The serum, theoretically, will paralyze them for a few minutes- half an hour tops, I don’t know how strong it is, but they won’t be knocked out, they'll still be conscious and able to see us.”

“So?”

“So…your masks are kind of like your guy’s whole thing? You’re the only ones in the undercity who wear them?” She couldn’t help the patronizing tone in her voice, this seemed so obvious to her. “They’re gonna report back that the firelights are the ones who attacked them and the enforcers will be hunting you down more than they already are.”

Ekko thought for a moment then dug two thin black hooded caplets out from a closet of various disguise garments. He put one on and tossed the other to Jinx. “Here. There’s a secondary mask on the inside, hook it over your ears it’ll cover everything but your eyes.”

She followed his lead and double checked that anything identifiable was covered in a nearby mirror. Her neon pink eyes stopped her in her tracks and what was intended to be a quick glance turned into a staring contest between her and the reflection that she didn’t recognize. Jinx wondered if they would always be like this now or if maybe overtime the shimmer in her veins would fade and the pink in her eyes along with it. Dissonant whispers sounded in her ears and she quickly turned away from the mirror.

“You okay?” Ekko asked as he slid his arms through a jacket.

These are not my eyes . She thought, but only nodded. “Let’s go.”

•••

In an abandoned and rotting apartment deep in the lanes Jinx sat on a splintering stool across from Ekko as they gazed out into the streets waiting for patrol to pass by. They should have been around already but it was Jinx’s luck that they’d take their sweet time the only time she ever actually wanted them to come around. 

Absent-mindedly, she tinkered with the blowgun in her hand- screwing and unscrewing the lower compartment filled with her nettle serum that would coat the darts on their way out.

“This is boring.” Jinx muttered under her breath.

Ekko stirred softly beside her. “It’s been fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes of nothing.”

“We could talk?” Ekko offered, but even he didn’t sound too enthusiastic about the idea.

Jinx would have laughed if her exhaustion wasn’t getting the better of her by now. “Why? So we can argue?”

“And here I thought we were getting along.” The playfulness had returned to his voice but she still wasn’t in the mood.

“You should think less. You’re bad at it.” She had been this way ever since she was a child. When she was tired enough- it was everyone else’s problem.

Ekko must have remembered this as he didn’t fight back. “I’ll let it slide because I know you didn’t sleep last night.”

“I haven’t slept in seven years.” Jinx regretted saying it as soon as it left her mouth but it was too late. She could feel Ekko tense beside her, wanting to say something- or ask something- but not being able to spit it out.

It was true, as annoying as it was, she hadn’t been able to truly sleep in what felt like a lifetime. She would get a couple hours before her dreams turned to nightmares and she awoke cold and drenched in sweat. She would stare at the ceiling or get up and fidget with something until her eyelids grew heavy and then the cycle would repeat itself over and over until she gave up.

 If she could choose which miracle drug to be injected with next she’d pick the one that would knock her out for a week or two. Knowing her, she’d still be exhausted when she woke up.

“Can I ask you about that night?” Ekko began quietly, not a trace of insincerity in his voice- he wanted to understand her. “At the cannery?”

“You can ask.” She told him, thinking about Kier’s words. People do not understand because you will not let them. “But I won’t tell you.”

“Can I ask why?”

Jinx closed her eyes and took a deep, exasperated breath. “Why do I not want to relive the worst night of my entire life for the thousandth time this week alone? Gee, that’s a head scratcher.”

It didn’t matter if she spoke about it or not anymore, the moment Ekko brought it up it started playing on a loop again. The meltdown she had when Vi had told her to stay behind caused phantom hot tears to streak down her face. The cold nervous shake in her arms as she wound up the key of her monkey bomb sent a prickle up and down her spine. The weightlessness of falling from the ledge as her bomb exploded in a blinding flash of blue- permanently changing everything- left butterflies to rot in her stomach.

“You know when I saw Benzo die…when I saw that kid kill him, that was the first time I realized there was no such thing as safety.” Ekko leaned back in his chair and stared quietly out the broken window as he spoke. “When my parents died I had Benzo. He always told me if anything ever happened to him I’d have Vander. Vander told me I’d always have Vi. I always felt like I’d have someone watching out for me no matter what. But when Benzo died…and they all followed suit. I don’t know. My point is, you’ve never been alone. I know I’ve told you that before but it felt worth mentioning again.”

Jinx said nothing. She didn’t know what to say or how to say it and maybe if anyone would understand it would be him- or Vi- but what difference would it make? If it didn’t stop the spirits that haunted her, or the taunting whispers that assaulted her ears day in and day out, what was the point? She would keep reliving the past over and over again until she couldn’t take it anymore.

They sat in silence once again, now uncomfortable in a way it wasn’t before. She wanted to tell Ekko she was sorry about Benzo, the only casualty that night that wasn’t her doing, a fact that had only recently been revealed to him. 

Jinx also wanted to tell him she was sorry for the way he found out, shouted at him in a fit of anger as a weapon to hurt him after he had hurt her. There were a lot of things she wanted to be sorry for, she just didn’t know how.

“Enforcers.” She nodded in the direction of two uniformed officers rounding a corner into the alleyway as she slid out of her chair and squatted in the shadows near the open window. 

Ekko stood in the opposite corner, keeping a lookout. The two enforcers leaned up against a crumbling brick wall and lit up two cigarettes, idly chatting between themselves. 

Slowly, Jinx pulled one of the darts from the pouch dangling off her belt and slipped it into her blowgun. She turned the corner just enough to see the two of them, lined it up and puffed a gush of air through it, sending the dart spiraling through the air and lodging itself in the exposed neck of one of the enforcers. 

“Agh !” She watched the enforcer paw at the dart sticking out of the soft pink skin of his neck. The other enforcer whipped around to search for the origin of whatever struck his partner and Jinx retreated into the shadows of the darkened window.

“Tommy? Tommy, what is it?!” A soft groaning mixed with the still standing enforcers panicked questions gave way to a dull thud on cobblestone. 

Across from Jinx leaning against a cracked and chipping plaster wall, Ekko watched the scene below unfold and raised a hand signaling her to wait. Only a moment later did he turn and nod, clearing her for her next shot.

Jinx re-emerged from the shadows and lined another dart into her blow gun. The second enforcer was crouched over his partner desperately trying to give him aid for an ailment he couldn’t figure out. She tried aiming for any bit of exposed skin but the man was curled in on himself, moving erratically in confusion. 

“What are you doing?” Ekko whispered and nodded his head towards the window. “ Shoot him !”

“I can’t !” She hissed back. “I don’t have a clear shot.”

No sooner did she speak did the second enforcer stand to investigate the area. She shot without hesitation, sending the serum coated dart careening for the man’s neck just as he spotted her in the window and shouted for her to freeze.

The moment his hand went to his neck to rid himself of the dart it was too late, and Jinx was moving. She looped the blowgun back into her side satchel and took off through the apartment with Ekko close on her heels.

They rushed down a flight of spiraling metal stairs as they readjusted their masks to cover up a recognizable majority of their faces. Jinx’s hands were steady, her heart rate at ease, this was nothing new for her. The thrill of it all was second nature, not the adrenaline pumping spectacle it once was. 

When they made it back down to the ground level the second enforcer had already collapsed to the ground next to his partner. Both enforcers looked at them with a rage in their eyes the rest of their face could not achieve. 

Neither of them spoke as they got to work, ridding the enforcers of their overcoats and hats, stashing them away in satchels slung precariously over their shoulders. 

Ekko tapped her on the shoulder and motioned for them to get going through the alley and back to base but Jinx held up a hand. Not yet . There was one more thing she wanted to do, to point enforcers in the wrong direction, and because she was still pissed about last week.

She pulled a small can of orange spray paint out of her satchel and began tagging the brick wall above the two unfortunate enforcers with the intricate brand of Chross’s company. In truth, they’d have little interest in anything to do with enforcers, most of the undercity did, but topside didn’t know that and that’s all that mattered.

•••

It felt like it’d been forever since Jinx walked freely through the winding stone streets of the Boundary market. She ran her fingers across smooth gemstone necklaces and leather bound books as she strolled along each stall, looking for nothing in particular but making sure everyone saw her.

Her twin blue braids trailed her every move, nearly long enough to drag across the stone behind her and the afternoon sun threatened to peek through the heavy dense smog of the factory district. Scar and Ekko had been following her for the past ten minutes, always a casual three stalls behind her but as she neared the end of the market she surreptitiously turned around and began walking up the other side of stalls, closer to market square.

She locked eyes with Ekko as she passed by and gave a slight nod, it was now or never. Ekko hated this plan, it was clear not only from his multiple protestations of it but also the sheer unease plastered across his face. The idea of Jinx potentially being permanently locked in the asylum caused him turmoil she didn’t understand. Why did he care so much about her well-being when they both wanted to kill each other hardly more than a month ago?

Jinx stopped to look at a beautiful roll of deep maroon velvety fabric when she felt their presence behind her, casting looming shadows on the table of cloths.

“‘Scuse me, miss?” Scar’s deep voice was twisted with a terribly grating accent and Jinx turned to face him.

“What?” She asked dryly as she would with any enforcer that approached her.

“You look a bit familiar.” He squinted his eyes as he looked her over then turned to Ekko. “Don’t she look familiar?”

Jinx couldn’t help the smile that pricked the corners of her mouth as Ekko knitted his eyebrows together and nodded. “Yeah, I suppose she does.” He said, mimicking Scar’s accent.

The lady running the stall hardly seemed interested in their conversation and if anything was annoyed at the fact that they were taking up so much space that other customers couldn’t approach. 

“Visit the rapture walk much?” She asked with a sickeningly saccharine smile. Suddenly, the woman was incredibly interested in their conversation. An impertinent trencher accusing enforcers of partaking in the undercity’s dubious prostitution ring? A show was surely about to begin.

“You think you’re funny do ya?” Scar raised an eyebrow and padded Ekko’s chest with the back of his hand. “Look here, we got a funny one.”

It took everything in Jinx not to laugh. Scar was having far too much fun, while Ekko looked as though he may spontaneously combust. He was far better at fighting than acting. Jinx attempted to push past them but they blocked her exit.

“What a tick, I know where I know you from.” He pulled a rolled up piece of paper Jinx knew to be her wanted poster out of his back pocket and held it up for Ekko to look over. “What do you think? That’s her innit?” He switched the paper around and held it taut for Jinx, the stall owner, and all surrounding customers to see.

“Oh please, that could be anyone.” Jinx snatched the paper from his hand and looked it over. They certainly took the liberty of making her look as deranged as possible. She held the poster up closer for the stall owner to see. “Does this look like me to you?!”

The woman’s face bunched up in an awkward cringe, it very much did look like her, and she very much didn’t want to say it. 

“Second degree murder, vandalism, arson, terrorism, assault, you got a sheet about as long as your hair don’t ya, Jinx ?” A crowd had begun forming around them and soft whispers echoed around it. The eyes of everyone seared into Jinx’s skin and she had a hard time telling the difference between their whispers and her own.

With one fluid motion she jabbed an elbow into Scar’s abdomen and took off running through the market. The crowd split and gasped as she ran, eliciting a few shouts of excitement from onlookers. It took an extreme amount of concentration to not let the shimmer bubbling in her veins take control and speed through the market. Jinx ran as slow as was believable, intentionally bumped into others and tripped over her own feet.

A hard tug on the ends of one of her braids yanked her backwards onto the ground and she thrashed and yelled as Ekko hovered above her, pinning her down. For a moment time stilled and her vision flashed back and forth between Ekko now in the stolen enforcers uniform and Ekko then- covered in his own blood, hesitating to take the final blow and be rid of her once and for all. 

He was hesitating even now, the hands pressing her arms to the ground were so light they were barely touching her. His hips, straddling her waist hardly made contact as he pressed all his weight into his knees, digging into the cobblestone. He watched her intently and she wondered if he too was reliving the same string of thoughts as she was.

Scar’s rough hands pulling her up off the ground brought her back to reality and she half heartedly tried to fight back as he slapped a pair of cuffs around her wrists. “She’s crazy, this one! And you see that round her eyes? That’s shimmer that is!” He shouted at Ekko and the surrounding crowd all watching with wide eyes and dropped jaws. 

Jinx twisted and pulled under Scar’s grasp and shouted as they began dragging her away. “Let me go! Let me go !” She jammed her foot into the ground and pushed back against the firelights rock solid form long enough for Ekko to catch up to her side.

Scar continued attempting to push her forward and Ekko stepped in front of her, raising a hand and striking her cheek. “Enough! Play nice and maybe we’ll get you a cell with a cute little window.”

Ekko’s slap shook her in a way she couldn’t explain, not anger or fear but something that left her out of breath with a racing heart and hot cheeks. She mustered up the brazen spirit that had been missing from her the last few weeks and yanked herself towards Ekko, spitting in his face.

Wordlessly he smeared her spit across his cheek and chuckled. “Oh…sweetheart.” He lowered his voice, keeping it steady and commanding, rousing her in the same way his slap had made her feel. “You’re going to the asylum for that one.”

A gasp rippled through the crowd then complete and utter silence overcame them. Jinx said nothing but allowed her eyes to widen and skin to pale. They all knew what awaited her at the asylum and she was beginning to pray that her plan would work out the way she intended. 

Chapter Text

The asylum was even darker and more formidable than its horror stories had led Jinx to believe. What once could have been beautiful stone work was covered in black grime and slippery sludge. No light shone through any of the decorative windows that were boarded up from the inside and existed purely for show. 

A single overhead light flickered above a rotting and damaged sign: ASYLUM FOR THE IRREPARABLY TROUBLED . 

“Jinx are you sure about this?” Ekko whispered as they made their way to the front entrance.

“No.” She finally admitted and felt him tense beside her. “But it’s too late now. Go to the tunnels and wait for me there, if I’m not back by nightfall…kill that bald bastard for me.”

They escorted her to the front double doors where a loud voice that sounded as though it was coming through a phonograph blared in the entryway. “State your business or be on your way. We do not accept visitors, solicitors or adjudicators.”

“We’re seeking placement for a felon too unstable for the prison.” Scar announced to the disembodied voice and the soft click of the front door unlocking invited them in.

The inside of the asylum was just as depraved as its exterior. Dim green chem-lamps flickered entirely useless lighting over cracked tile flooring and white peeling wallpaper and the building smelt terribly of mildew, cigarette smoke, and bleach. Jinx had never felt as uneasy as she did walking up to a withdrawn woman dressed in a sharp all white uniform.

“Names?” The woman asked. Her voice was hollow and empty, as though she very well could be one of the patients there and her face was covered with an eerie uncanny porcelain doll mask. 

“Enforcer Porter and Enforcer Regal.” Scar declared, reading off the name tags on his and Ekko’s respective stolen uniforms.

Jinx watched the woman slowly write something on a document. Her hands were mottled and nails brittle like she routinely bit them or chipped them on things. The white apron of her uniform covered up a long sleeve shirt extending up into a turtleneck and the only color on her other than the painted pink cheeks of her mask was a small golden pin displaying her name, Pauline.

“Name of the accused?” Pauline asked softly.

“Jinx.” She wasn’t sure which one of them said it, all she knew was for the first time in a very long time- she was scared.

“Proof of her crimes?” The nurse asked again so calmly like she had endless patience.

Ekko hesitated beside Jinx then slid her wanted poster across the desk and into Pauline’s cold twitching hands. 

“Oh my.” Pauline gasped as she read, then set it down and began whispering to herself. “It’s alright, we can make her better. We can fix her in no time.” She lifted a latch on her desk and pushed open the little dutch door to let herself out. “Follow me. We have a room ready for you. It’s nice and comfortable and you’ll have it all to yourself.”

When Scar and Ekko moved to follow Pauline, Jinx pulled back. She knew it was her plan. Her stupid, insane, psychotic plan, but suddenly there had to be a better way.

“Come along sweetness.” Pauline crooned. “You’re nervous now but the doctor will make you feel better. The doctor makes us all feel better.”

Her legs felt like jelly but she forcibly willed them to move and walked through the poorly lit, empty halls of the asylum escorted by two people she was putting an absurd amount of trust in. 

Whispers and pleas assaulted her ears but she was unsure of their origin and for once she hoped they were her own but the muffled banging and rattling did very little to soothe her fears. Her heart pounded faster and faster with every corner Pauline turned. The asylum was a labyrinth of the same peeling white walls and tile floors over and over again. 

After mere minutes that felt like an eternity, Pauline stopped outside a door and used one of what looked to be dozens of keys on a massive chain to open it up. “Right in here, sweetness.”

Scar and Ekko escorted her up to the open door and roughly shoved her in. Crossing the threshold may have taken only a second, but to Jinx it felt like forever. All sounds seemed to muffle once she found herself in her poorly maintained and cold looking respite cell. Her own heartbeat amplified in the dead space around her and she turned back to the heavy steel door closing behind her, desperate for one last glance at a friendly face in case it would be her last.

The door slammed shut and clicked as Pauline locked up behind her leaving Jinx alone with her thoughts and the memory of Ekko’s terrified wide eyes as Scar nudged him away, back through the asylum. 

Her room wasn’t awful. Considering she’d spent the better part of the last seven years sleeping on an abandoned mining drill, nothing really seemed to phase her. Her bedframe was made of rusting metal that had been bolted into the floor and her mattress looked more like a thick blanket than anything else and at the foot of the bed layed a paper thin set of pale blue hospital clothes.

There was a clock fixed high above the door frame- broken. Frozen in time, eternally ticking away at half past four. Jinx investigated the ‘window’ only to find it made out of painted bricks illuminated with a light to give the illusion of sunshine. 

She hummed softly to herself as she let her fingers gently graze the metal frame of her bed before sitting down on it. Despite the mold covered walls, fake windows, and shitty furniture the worst part about Jinx’s room was the deafening silence. 

In the dry, stagnant air that pressed in on her, she could practically hear the shimmer polluted blood rush through her veins. Each beat of her heart, each inhale of breath, even the soft flutter of her eyes blinking could be heard and recognized.

In and out. She wouldn’t be there long, she just needed to wait for the doctor. Jinx tapped at the thin glass vial pressed into her skin just under the tight base of her top- absentmindedly reassuring herself it was still there and intact. 

There were too many variants to her plan she didn’t dare admit infront of Ekko who already proved prone to catastrophizing, but her heart raced the longer she sat in her mildew stenched room and she only had one question that really mattered; if she failed in her escape, would anyone rescue her?

A soft knock on the door left Jinx’s limbs weak and her blood cold but her fears were unfounded when the soft click of the lock and the rusty hinges of the door revealed Pauline holding a cup of liquid in one hand and a small paper cup of medicine in the other. 

“Here you go, sweetness.” Her soft and hollow voice said as she extended the cups out for Jinx to take. She peered inside at what appeared to be water and a singular round blue pill. “To calm your nerves before the doctor comes.”

“I’m not nervous.” She kept her arms still at her sides, making no attempt to take the unknown medication. Briefly, but with no slight in intensity, Jinx wanted to reach out and rip the porcelain doll mask from Pauline’s face but could find no ties or clasps- as if the mask had fused to her skin and become part of her- a fate Jinx had no doubt the poor nurse had not wished for.

Pauline pushed the little paper cup forward again. “It’s alright, the doctor is going to do a few tests and you’ll be very sleepy after. This will help you get some rest.”

“I thought you said it was to calm my nerves?” Jinx asked, eyes narrowing on the little blue pill.

“That’s right, it will calm your nerves for the doctor.”

“Right…"

Whatever the pill truly was, it didn’t matter. Pauline would not be leaving until Jinx took it and even she had enough sympathy for the woman to not drag her into the mess she was in. Jinx accepted the paper cup and cautiously placed the little blue pill on her tongue. 

The water she was even more suspicious of considering the last time she was given ‘water’ by someone holding her captive she was knocked out for an unknown and considerable length of time. Jinx pressed the rim of the cup to her lips- careful not to let any fluid into her mouth- and used its cover to gently tuck the pill between her cheek and gums.

“You’re right.” Jinx said with a feigned drowsy smile, “I feel better already.”

“I knew you would.” Pauline took the empty paper cup back and crumpled it into a ball. “Go ahead and lie down, the doctor will be right in.”

The door swung shut behind her with a resounding bang and no sooner did it close did it open again giving Jinx no time to think, or to reach for the glass vial hiding in her top. The doctor towered over her like a looming shadow of despair- no less than six feet tall- bringing with them a surge of unnaturally cold air. 

“Have a seat.” Their voice rumbled, muffled and obscured by the eerie, pointed, bird-like mask they wore. 

Jinx knew the asylum had a reputation but seeing one of their so called doctors up close draped in pitch black fabric she had more than enough reason to believe no one in the asylum was even half as crazy as they claimed but rather scared shitless day in and day out by this spectacle of sharp edges and shadows. She did as she was told and backed up slowly until the back of her knees hit cold metal and she lowered herself down on the thin mattress.

“Wait there.” The doctor’s voice was brash and demanding, the complete opposite of Pauline’s sweet and soft requests. They turned momentarily back to the doorway to retrieve something and Jinx took the opportunity to spit her mysterious blue pill out of her mouth and stick it under a pillow. It left a disgusting, bitter taste on her tongue that she was unable to conceal from her face- especially when the doctor turned back into the room, bringing with them a rolling silver tray.

Dim green lights flashed before Jinx’s eyes and she sprang up from the bed with such force she stumbled into the peeling painted brick wall behind her. She stared- with an uncontrollable intensity- at the three syringes lined up on the silver tray, all fashioned with long hollow needles on the ends of them, one was empty, another filled with shimmering iridescent liquid, but the third was filled to the brim with a familiar glowing neon purple- the same color that drenched the undercity in shame, the same color that she had grown to despise, the same color as her eyes.

She could feel her limbs grow cold with fear then burn hot with rage. Over her dead body would someone be injecting her with shimmer against her will again. Over her dead body- or theirs, either would do for her. The doctor sighed, undoubtedly annoyed with at the realization that ‘treating’ her would not be as easy a task as they had hoped.

“There’s no need for that. I’m going to give you some medicine and then we’re going to talk. That’s all.” They warned and picked up the syringe of iridescent liquid. “Sit back down.”

“No.”

The doctor straightened up their back and Jinx could feel the anger in their eyes pierce her through their mask. “I will not ask again. Sit back down or I will make you sit down. Don’t make me do that, we’re getting along so well.”

Sit back down . She told herself, forcing herself back into a seating position on the bed. She needed the doctor close enough for only a second, then they’d find out exactly how well they were getting along. 

“Very good.” They mused, a sick patronizing tone in their voice. “You see this?” They asked, holding up the syringe of iridescent liquid. “This is a paralytic, it's going to keep you nice and still for me while I give you the rest of your medicine. Just a pinch, you won’t even feel it.”

Jinx’s eyes narrowed on the syringe, now recognizing it for what it was- a much larger and presumably much more potent dose of the same concoction currently digging into her skin under the protection of her tops tightly buckled waistband. Paralyze her and inject her with shimmer until she breaks- that's what they were doing to the patients here not treating them or healing them but drugging them and freezing them in time, forcing them to bear witness to whatever unimaginable horrors their brains fabricate under the duress of shimmer. Over and over again until they became nothing but an empty shell of who they once were or could have been.

The doctor took two steps towards Jinx and not one more. She moved on instinct, unable to control the sting of self preservation her shimmer laced blood afforded her. Candidly, it was certainly amusing to see the doctor whip around in confusion only to find their empty syringe being plunged deep into their shoulder. 

Loud shouts of pain and anger were muffled by the roaring in Jinx’s ears. The fervent shouting and arguing of her incessant ghosts raged on in her mind fueled almost entirely by fear. One wrong move, one sharp turn, and the iridescent syringe still dangling precariously in the doctor's hand could be the end of everything.

“Swing all you want!’ They hissed, “One drop of this and I’ll make sure you never move again!”

Jinx’s heart raced so fast she might have feared it would explode if she didn’t know any better. So quick the doctor was to drop the act. The two stood opposite of one another attempting to catch their breath and waiting for the other to make the first move. The doctor couldn't have known it, so Jinx wouldn't fault them for it, but shimmer was the last thing they should have brought into her room.

If she hesitated- if she had thought about it- she would have stopped herself, so she didn’t think and resolved to deal with the consequences later. Jinx reached across the silver tray before her and snatched the syringe of neon purple up as the doctor attempted to swipe at her with the needle of paralytic. 

When first approached with Jinx’s plan, Ekko rejected it, worried about the fate that would await whoever took Jinx’s place in her cell and while she had thought about it and almost briefly felt bad Jinx had only one thought as she injected the syringe of shimmer deep into her upper arm. This ‘doctor’, who had no idea who she was, where she came from, or what her life might mean to her was more than ready to take it all away in an instant without a second thought which only made Jinx grateful she hadn’t spared a second thought for what was about to happen to them.

Jinx ground her teeth together and seethed as the shimmer burned through her veins around the injection site. Time seemed to freeze, Jinx could see the doctor attempting to run towards her but it was as though they moved in slow motion. She took a step towards the doctor and reached out for the syringe in their hand, when she couldn’t pry it from their fingers, she bent their arm inward and unable to comprehend the speed at which Jinx was moving or even notice what had been done the doctor continued lunging forward, impaling themself just below their clavicle with their own needle. 

She watched as a bundle of dark cloaked fabric crumpled to the floor and peered up at the clock above her door still ticking away at half past four. The first thing Jinx decided to do was clean up the room. She returned the silver tray she had knocked over to an upright position, tossed the empty shimmer syringe in a tiny metal refuse bin along with the paralytic syringe she retrieved from the doctor’s chest, and ever so meticulously dragged the doctor up onto their new stiff bed.

It was quick work- stripping the doctor of their robes and mask and swapping them out for the pale blue hospital gown and pants that had been laid out for her, all the while she could feel their eyes fix on her- furious and condemning. 

“Here’s the thing,” Jinx explained as she pulled a small pouch of sapphire blue hair powder from her back pocket and began coating the doctor’s stringy peach hair with it. “I need an out and this was the quickest way to get one. I also think you’re kind of a shitty person and I don’t really feel bad for this. I do, however, feel bad for that nurse you have out there who’s probably been just as poisoned as all your other patients.”

She stuck the empty pouch back in her pocket and wiped her hands clean on her pants before donning the doctor’s heavy black robes. “So I’m going to go out there, and set that poor woman- the only other person in this asylum that actually knows what I look like- free. Then all our little secrets are going to stay secret because you, my friend, have built quite the reputation for yourself and no one will ever believe you.”

Jinx gave the doctor, eyes now wide in terror, one last devious smile before slipping on their mask and letting herself out of the room using their set of keys that locked the door firmly behind her. She rushed through the halls of the asylum trying her best to drown out the sounds of pleading and wailing coming from behind the walls that had seen too much yet concealed so little. 

She found Pauline back at the front desk absentmindedly staring into the distance, waiting for some form of instruction. 

“Doctor.” She murmured, elated and relieved to see Jinx’s cloaked figure. “Back so soon? How is our new friend? Is she feeling better?”

Jinx cleared her throat and attempted to adopt a similar deep angry growl the true owner of her mask had. “I’d like her file, please. I have some notes to add.”

“Of course.” Pauline flipped through a filing cabinet of brightly labeled folders, humming a song softly to herself. “Here you go.” She swayed softly side to side as she hummed, soothing herself from an unseen affliction. 

“No! Wrong!” Jinx angrily flipped through her file and pulled out various forms, “All wrong! I’ll need new forms, none of this is correct!”

“Certainly, doctor.” She took the incorrect forms from Jinx and placed them in a shredding box before giving her a new set of papers to fill out. 

Jinx scribbled new information better matching the description of the doctor left paralyzed in her room in barely legible handwriting then returned it to the vapid masked nurse who placed the file back where she retrieved it from. 

“How else can I assist you today, doctor?” 

She watched the nurse for a few seconds while she mulled over her options. There was no telling what was truly wrong with Pauline, whether she was under a spell, broken, or drugged into subservience- nor how she would react in withdrawal if it were the latter. She very well could see right through everything Jinx had done and haul off on her, if she even had any cognition left to regain. Still, part of Jinx hoped that if she did come through whatever plagued her she would celebrate her freedom- both physical and mental.

“Great news, Pauline.” Jinx told her, “We have cured all of our patients. They are all free of their afflictions.”

“Really?” She gasped, idyllic wonder lacing her words. “Oh, how wonderful. I knew we could do it. The doctor makes us all feel better.”

“Right.” Jinx said flatly then cleared her throat. “So now, we have to go. We have to leave so that we can…find new patients to help.”

Pauline tilted her head to the side in confusion. “Leave? Oh no. No, I can’t leave. I have to stay. I have to stay here, it's the only way so the doctors say.”

“Well, I’m a doctor and I say.” She perked up at that- at the promise of new orders being given. “You have to leave and come with me to find new patients, you’re the only one I can trust.”

Jinx’s words left a bitter taste in her mouth as she recalled those same ones being spoken to her by Silco not all that long ago, in an attempt to help her breakthrough the hextech formulas that had been assaulting her with visions and unwanted flashbacks from the past. 

“Oh, doctor, thank you.” Pauline gushed as she opened the side door of her desk and came around to meet Jinx. “Thank you, thank you. I won’t let you down, I promise.”

“Okay, great, let’s go.” She grabbed Pauline’s hand and offered neither of them any more time for questions or pleasantries. Together they stepped out of the asylum’s heavy double doors and she could almost feel the deep breath of fresh air Pauline breathed, well as fresh as the undercity's air could be. She escorted her down the front steps and onto the acid rain slicks streets of Zaun where they hit the ground running as soon as they were out of sight from the asylum. 

Jinx forced herself to run at a humanly pace instead of allowing her shimmer to zap her through the streets with such speed it might have sent Pauline into cardiac arrest. The nurse kept up as best she could, asking no questions as they fled through alleyways and into the undercity’s complex sewer system.

Somewhere along the way, Jinx ditched the doctor's creepy pointed mask and shucked the black robes off her hot, sweaty shoulders. Once inside the sewer’s tunnel system that would eventually lead to the firelights base, Jinx slowed down, taking the time to walk and catch her breath.

“Doctor?” Pauline asked, head once again tilted in confusion. “You look just like that girl we just brought in, how funny.”

“Yeah. World’s a crazy place.” Jinx huffed as the reality of what she’d done finally began to set in. 

She not only successfully broke into and out of Zaun’s ‘impenetrable’ asylum but also fought off one of their doctors and stole a nurse. Silco would be so proud. Jinx dug her nails into her scalp, trying to claw the thought away. Stop thinking about Silco .

Jinx grabbed Pauline’s hand again and began dragging her deeper through the tunnels. Ekko and Scar had agreed to wait for her in the tunnels but she foolishly did not specify where. Not that she would know where there was anyways, but as they rounded a corner two hooded figures jumped out in front of them.

“Jinx!” Ekko ripped his hood off and moved as though he were about to pull her into a hug when the sight of Pauline stopped him. “You brought her with you?!”

She only shrugged. “She needed to get out of that place, they were controlling her.”

He exchanged a quick glance with Scar who sized the asylum nurse up, like he wasn't a great behemoth of a man who could take her down with a loud enough sneeze. “Right…”

“So?” Ekko looked at her expectantly and waved an arm. “How’d it go?”

“Fine.”

His eyebrows scrunched together as he struggled to piece together everything that could have possibly happened inside the asylum that led to Jinx busting one of their orderlies out to take home with her like a souvenir. “Anything you want to share with the class?”

“Yeah, actually.” She straightened her back, softly cracking it as she stepped towards him and with one quick movement slapped him across the face.

Ekko stumbled back holding his cheek. “What the hell was that for?!”

“Why’d you slap me so hard?!”

“Why’d you spit on me?!”

Jinx could feel her cheeks flush as she recalled their fake, yet no less intense, altercation in the market square just hours beforehand. Then, without warning or any ability to stop it, she began laughing. Laughing at the absurdity of the situation, laughing at the way Ekko’s eyes widened when she had done it. She laughed because she knew if she didn’t she’d have to face the daunting possibility that she did it because she liked it.

“Stop that.” Ekko demanded as stubborn amusement seemed to find its way into his words as well. “It’s not funny, Jinx.” He tried to protest, but the smile that commanded his cheeks betrayed him. 

Eventually her laughter did come to a halt and she looked Ekko and Scar up and down, still dressed in their stolen enforcer uniforms. “You still look stupid as hell in that.”

•••

Days later Jinx watched Pauline from across the yard as she sat cross legged in the grass, slowly letting her fingers pass over each individual blade. Raya and Heimerdinger had managed to remove the porcelain doll mask from her face once they discovered how it had been surgically adhered to her skin like a grand string of piercings around her face. She put up no fight and agreed to anything they told her as long as she was told it was the doctor's orders. Her skin was ghastly pale from being trapped inside the asylum for who knew how long and her soft, gentle face was just as sullen and hollow as her voice sounded.

“Do you think she’s still in there?”

The sound of Ekko’s voice startled her out of her mindless staring- unaware that he was even sitting next to her. “Maybe.” She was quiet for a moment then turned to Ekko whose eyes were locked on their newest pleasantly confused member. “Do you think I did the right thing? Taking her out of there?”

“What’s the right thing?” He asked with a shrug, then backtracked when he realized the look on Jinx’s face told him that wasn’t the kind of answer she was looking for. “I think…you saw someone in trouble and you helped them without hesitation just like how you went after Peri without hesitation. I think you did a good thing- a selfless thing.”

“But was it the right thing?” She asked again, quieter this time.

“It wasn’t the wrong thing.”

Jinx curled her knees up to her chest and laid her head against them. Ekko had tried to press for more details about what happened in that asylum room but Jinx refused to tell him anything but the basics. The doctor came, they fought, she won. He didn’t need to know about the flashbacks that damn silver tray gave her and while he might have asked what happened to her arm, he certainly didn’t need to know that she willingly injected herself with more shimmer without fully knowing the extent of what could happen to her if she did.

 “So what now?” He asked as he leaned back on his outstretched hands.

She stretched her legs out and mimicked Ekko’s pose in an attempt to look indifferent to the situation. “Now, we make sure the story spreads.”

“How do we do that?”

Jinx smiled, impish and playful, knowing full well there was one place in all of Zaun where secrets were an acceptable form of currency. “What do you say to a hot night out?”

“Do we need our masks?” He asked her cautiously with a confused squint in his eyes.

She struggled to contain the giggle building in the back of her throat as her cheeks undoubtedly flushed. “Sure, you got a gimp mask?”

“A what?”

“Nothing.”

•••

“This is not what I had in mind.” Ekko hissed as he and Jinx stared up at a bright neon pink sign.

“You could waste your time and spend an entire month telling a hundred people a single story that could easily be repeated to twice that many in one night in a place like this.” Jinx told him, then nudged him forward. “If I can survive the asylum, you can survive a brothel.”

The look of sheer horror on Ekko’s face only egged her on and she dragged him by the arm through a back alleyway of the Rapture Walk- Margot’s pride and joy of the undercity.

On any given occasion and in any given district, Zaun was teeming with debauchery and hedonism, some places more illicit and depraved than others, but promiscuous all the same. The Rapture Walk happened to be home to half a dozen of Margot’s ‘finer’ establishments including her crown jewel, Vyxation. She and her courtesans, affectionately named the vyx, greatly favored the higher class clientele the Rapture Walk had to offer.

“What are we even going to do in here?” Ekko asked in a hushed whisper as Jinx picked open the lock to a closed off back door.

Jinx stopped her picking to shoot him an incredulous look at what she believed to be a ridiculous question. “It’s a brothel . Go nuts.”

“This is your worst plan yet.” He muttered under his breath, quickly looking up and down the alley on lookout.

The door clicked open and Jinx motioned for him to go in. “And yet here you are playing along.” She mumbled.

They stepped into a warm red lit locker room that smelled heavily of clove and bergamot oils. Jinx’s eyes roamed the room as she slowly walked further in, taking in the gorgeous mirror ceiling and plush cream fur area rugs that decorated a dressing suite. Several little tables covered in different makeup palettes, lotions, and incandescent light framed mirrors bathed the room in an even deeper layer of warmth that gave way to shiny flecks of glitter covering almost every surface.

“Do you think we could make the base look like this?” Jinx asked, only half-joking as her fingers gently stroked a feathered boa. Ekko ignored her request but she could see the mesmerization on his face out of the corner of her eye as she rifled through a trunk of costumes. “Here.” She held out a pile of velvety fabric adorned with a questionable amount of straps and buckles.

“I don’t want that?” He took the outfit from her and tossed it back in the trunk where she found it. “What are you doing?” 

“Blending in.” She told him as she pulled a silky pink curtain shut around her, arms full of black leather and fur.

Ekko groaned and looked quickly around the room as though anyone could walk in at any moment. “Jinx, quit messing around! Can we just do what we need to do and go?”

She mumbled something that sounded like nothing more than gibberish then ignored Ekko as she swapped her tank top for a cropped leather and mesh bustier and her tattered patched bottoms for a matching garter belt that cascaded and buckled around her thighs.

Jinx giggled quietly to herself while she dressed, having far more fun playing dress up than she anticipated, as she twisted her twin braids up into buns and pinned them to the back of her head to conceal them under an elegantly styled black wig. She zipped up a matching set of heeled boots then whipped the privacy curtain open.

“How do I look?” She posed for Ekko, who for the first time tonight had nothing to say. His jaw fell slack and his shoulders went rigid as Jinx walked by to get a better look at herself in one of the room's floor to ceiling mirrors.

With a sharp clear of his throat Ekko came back to consciousness. “Take that off!”

“No way!” Jinx turned from side to side admiring all angles of herself in the practically nonexistent outfit she had scrounged together. “I have never looked better. I’m taking this with me.”

“That’s great, what’s the plan here?” He asked, pointedly look anywhere but at her.

Reluctantly, Jinx pulled herself away from her reflection and started toward the door that would take them into the main hall of the brothel. 

“Alright, this brothel is Margot’s main haunt. It has the wealthiest clientele and the most favored of the vyx. They’re vain and cocky, they know they’re the best and they act like it. We,” she added, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and lowering her voice the closer to the door they got. “Are going to pose as a vyx and a client from a different hall and play a little game with them. If this is the ‘best of the best’ as they claim then surely they’ll have better dirt on the undercity than us. Whatever their clients tell them they tell Margot- we’ll get a first hand look at what the chembarons know about this deal with topside and let it slip that I’m locked up in the asylum.”

“What if they don’t know anything we don’t already know?” 

Jinx shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, the main point is that we are planting a story for them to spread.”

Ekko nodded, understanding and bracing himself for their act. Playing pretend was not his strong suit and he hoped no one of importance would notice.

The door to the main hall swung open and Jinx stepped through, pulling Ekko with her by the arm. The main hall was just as indulgent as the vyx’s changing room, dripping in golds, furs, and silks. 

A smokey haze Jinx knew to be diffused shimmer decorated the ceiling and drenched the room in a sickly sweet smell reminiscent of cough medicine. Apart from a few glances of curious interest from a few patrons, no one paid much attention to Jinx as she led Ekko through each hall in search of the lineup of vyx awaiting visitors for the night.

In a spacious lounge, draped across chaise lounges and each other's laps was no more than half a dozen vyx, dolled up, smoking skinny red cigarettes, and laughing softly with each other.

Jinx watched them for a moment behind the beaded curtain that separated them from the rest of the hall then turned to Ekko and nodded her head towards the open doorway, a silent request for confirmation that he was ready to go in.

He nodded and followed her into the tobacco and floral scented room only to be met with all eyes directly on them.

“Who are you?” A girl in a masquerade mask asked lazily as she draped her legs over the arm of her chair and laid her head into the lap of a pale vyx dressed head to toe in rubies and silk. She didn’t sound particularly annoyed by their presence but rather fascinated by the idea of a potential new playmate.

“My friends call me Sterling.” Jinx gave them the fake name Ekko had used for her when they bought their tickets to the ship Peri had been kidnapped to in a slow and sultry voice nothing like her own. “I’m from the sister house, Vyxedly, down the walk.”

“And who’s he?” The girl covered in rubies asked, eyeing Ekko up and down with nothing short of elation in her voice.

Jinx smiled and placed a hand flat on Ekko’s chest. “This is Claymore, he’s a very special friend of mine.” She leaned her head against his shoulder to hide the amusement her own shenanigans were bringing her.

For reasons unknown, Ekko’s heart hammered furiously in his chest under her outstretched fingers and Jinx pulled away, giving him space to breathe. He was into fighting not playing- a fact made apparent by his dodgy impression of a disgruntled enforcer when he arrested her two days ago. The only time he hadn’t seem like he was acting then was when she spit on him, but Jinx had a feeling that was because he actually was mad about that.

“So we were talking and we kinda wanted to play a game with you guys.” Jinx told them, doubling down on her dopey girly voice she had adopted. “Everyone knows you guys have the more financially inclined clients but we think we have the more…story inclined. I mean are you really the best if you’re just finding out about last week's buzz?”

A man in a pale blue and bronze mask that obscured only the left half his face chuckled as he took a long drag of his vanilla scented cigarette. “You know if you didn’t waste so much of your time talking to your clients you could probably make a lot more coin like us.”

“So what?” The girl in rubies began, holding up one hand bedecked in rings and bangles to silence her companion. “You wanna trade stories and see who has the deeper dirt?”

“Yeah! Something like that!” Even Jinx had to admit her bubbly upspeak was grating to hear but she carried on with a wide smile. “Let’s say if we have a better story then…we trade houses for a week! But if you guys have a better story…”

“We get Claymore for a week?” The first masked girl asked with a giggle, slowly reaching up to cup the cheek of the ruby covered one who had been staring intently at Ekko.

Jinx glanced sideways at Ekko whose eyes were silently pleading her to get them the hell out of there. “Yeah? Okay.” She agreed with a stifled laugh. He’d forgive her later.

The two girls nodded to a plush green velvet loveseat across from them and Ekko wasted no time sitting as deep into the cushions as he could get, most likely hoping if he tried hard enough he could disappear into them.

Jinx smiled awkwardly at the others in an attempt to downplay Ekko’s god awful composure. She turned to face him and flashed her eyes- a wordless signal to get it together- before plastering her fake simpering grin back on her face and refocusing her attention on the other vyx.

Despite the loveseat being of ample size, Jinx sat directly next to Ekko, a mere hair away from being in his lap and comfortably draped her legs over his knees. She could feel him tense under her and she moved to wrap an arm around his shoulder- letting the other lay against his chest along with her head. 

Jinx had hoped her embrace would relax him like it had when they were much younger and somehow in even more dangerous situations than this one, but he seemed intent on his discomfort. She made a mental note to never again bring him somewhere like this.

The man in the blue half mask smirked and started their competition. “I heard a rumour that one of Chross’s men got arrested for the explosion of that cargo ship two weeks ago. Apparently he was trying to smuggle a container of explosives into Ionia.” The girls nodded in confirmation that they had also heard this and looked to Jinx for her rebuttal.

“I heard topside is drafting an agreement to give Zaun its independence.” The sly grins of the Vyx’s faded as they looked at each other in momentary elated confusion, they had not heard this and Jinx wasn’t surprised, Silco had a knack for keeping things to himself. In fact getting information out of him was the real trick.

“And where did you hear that?” The girl in the masquerade mask asked.

Jinx flashed them a coy smile and glanced at Ekko whose concentration on her face couldn’t be broken for anything. “Someone who heard it from Councilor Talis himself.”

“Well.” The girl in rubies chirped, “I heard that the former head Councilor Heimerdinger went missing from the docks after he was forced to retire and that Councilor Talis sent someone to finish him off for good.”

For the first time that night, Ekko laughed, burying his head into the thick black strands of Jinx’s stolen wig.

“What?” The girl snapped as she began getting annoyed at the realization that they were not winning.

Jinx leaned into Ekko and laughed with him. “It’s just, Clay is one of Professor Heimerdinger’s students at the academy and he saw him there like…last week.”

She let out a defeated huff and crossed her arms. “Okay, well what else have you heard?”

“Well…” She trailed off, watching the vyx wait on the edges of their seats for what she had to say, “You guys know Jinx, right?”

The half masked man scoffed. “Silco’s pet anarchist? Yeah, we know her. Who doesn’t?”

“She costs us lots of money when she starts up with her bullshit.” said the girl in a masquerade mask. “Silco and Margot start fighting over her, topside clients get too scared to come down here lest they get bombed by the freak.”

“Okay! Right, she’s a menace. Anyway…” Jinx cleared her throat, having to re-string her thoughts after being interrupted and reminded of the undercity’s immense dislike of her. “I heard she got arrested in the Boudary market square, right in broad daylight.”

The three vyx gasped and sat up. “You’re lying!” “No way!” “Shut up!” They all said at once, looking back and forth between each other for confirmation.

“They way I heard it was she spit in an enforcer’s face and they dragged her off to the asylum.” She told them with a smirk. She enjoyed this, Jinx realized, sitting around with a group of what could be considered friends in the right circumstance and gossiping about the undercity’s entirely absent shortage of sordid. 

The rubied girl shook her head and waved her hand. “No! There’s no way. Silco would be losing his goddamn mind all over the Undercity if that were true. Jinx getting carted off to the asylum would be everyone’s problem.”

“Yeah, but think about it?” Jinx egged them on, providing them the exact same explanation she had given Ekko days ago when he proposed the same issue. “If the possible emancipation of the undercity is true, he’s not going to start a war with topside; it'll ruin any attempt at a peaceful separation. He’d just as well wait for them to grant amnesty then free her once the asylum is no longer topside’s jurisdiction. And when was the last time anyone had even heard from Jinx anyway?"

Jinx had thought heavily on it. Had mulled over every single possibility and potential complication. Part of her wanted to see the lengths Silco would go through to get her back from the asylum considering his actions against the firelights were hardly creative and lackluster at best. She was beginning to think he didn’t care that she was gone, just as well, one less thing for him to have to worry about. At least this way she wouldn’t be around to mess up his deal with Piltover.

She felt Ekko’s leg twitch under hers and she snapped out of her daze to look at him. His tortured discomfort had faded into concern for whatever realm Jinx’s mind had wandered off to. She gave a slight shake of her head as if to say not now then turned back to the vyx, triumphant.

“So!” Jinx clapped her hands together and stood up off of Ekko’s lap. “I guess you’ll be touring Vyxedly tomorrow then.”

They all laughed, having been so thoroughly amused by Jinx’s tales they couldn’t even be angry at the prospect of being demoted for a week. “Maybe after our stint down the walk we’ll have to reconvene and play again.”

Jinx pulled Ekko to his feet from the plush loveseat and blew the vyx a kiss goodbye as she dragged him out of the room. Back in the safety of the empty and spacious hallway, Ekko finally exhaled a breath he probably hadn’t realized he was holding.

“So what’s going to happen when they all show up at the other place tomorrow and they have no idea what they’re talking about?” He asked, suppressing a chuckle.

She only shrugged. “Blame it on the shimmer?”

“Let’s get out of here.” He huffed with an amused shake of his head.

Jinx grabbed his arm and pulled him back to her side. “Not so fast…I want to get into Margot’s office.”

Ekko blinked. Maybe he didn’t hear her correctly. Maybe he didn’t want to hear her because everything she said was insane. “What?! Why?”

“I just want to see what’s in there.” She took him by the arm and pulled him down the hallway where a set of heavily beaded paisley maroon drapes framed an ornately carved door so exquisite it could only be the door to Margot’s office. “I want to know what the other chembarons know about this deal with topside- if they know anything or if Silco’s keeping his trap shut about it.”

“No!” He hissed, yanking his arm back. “First of all she’s in there you’re not going to sneak past her and she’s obviously gonna know you don’t work for her. Second of all, we know what the treaty says; you in exchange for them.”

“I highly doubt that’s all it says.” Jinx scoffed, “What if they want you too? What if part of the treaty is promising to eradicate or exile the firelights? What if their proposed trade routes run right through your sanctuary?”

Ekko considered this for a moment then huffed and clenched his jaw, she was right and he hated to admit it. “How are you going to get her out of there?”

Jinx smiled awkwardly. “I was kinda hoping you would.”

“You’re done.” He scowled, pointing at her in accusation. “When we get out of here you are done . No more ideas, no more plans, you are cut off from deciding anything ever again for any reason.”

Before she could even ask if that meant he’d get Margot out of her office for her he was already making a long walk down the short passage to her office and knocking at her door. Her second suggestion was setting something on fire but she was kind of glad she hadn’t mentioned that one.

“I’m so jealous.” A slow voice drawled as the masquerade masked vyx slunk out of their waiting lounge and leaned against the silk and emerald paneled wall. “I wish I had a special friend who loved me like Clay loves you.”

Jinx offered her a sympathetic smile and shook her head. “Oh trust me, he does not love me.” Definitely not right now anyway. She thought as she looked back at Margot’s door for a sign of her leaving.

“Are you kidding me?” She asked, genuinely shocked at Jinx’s dismissal of her. “He couldn’t take his eyes off of you.”

She felt her cheeks and neck flush- hot and red, the whole situation had been so silly. “Of course he couldn't look at what I’m wearing.” Ekko might be impossibly tightly wound for some odd reason but he wasn’t blind and Jinx wasn’t either for that matter. She knew he had looked her over in her barely there leather outfit, hell if she could see herself she wouldn’t be able to look away either.

“Oh…no, honey.” The girl played with a loose strand of Jinx’s black wig and tucked it behind her ear. “He wasn’t looking at your body- he was looking at your face. That’s how you know he really loves you.”

That’s ridiculous. Jinx’s thought as the vyx walked away without another word- or the opportunity for Jinx to respond. Of course Ekko was looking at her face, he couldn’t handle the rest of her in his wildest dreams. 

Ekko did not love her, far from it, she wasn’t even sure Ekko liked her- present indiscretions aside. He tolerated her, to an extent. He put up with her antics for the sake of their mutual cause and that was as far as he’d be willing to go for her. They had too heavy of a history for Ekko to see her as anything other than an accomplice. Not like he used to.

Another few moments passed and Jinx had begun to grow anxious when finally Ekko emerged from Margot’s office- chembaron in tow. He let her lead him into a dimly lit suite that's only privacy came from a chunky- and not at all private- beaded curtain. 

She didn’t know how long she stood there, jaw open in disbelief at the thought of Ekko somehow managing to get Margot into one of the bawd dens of her own brothel, before she snapped back to life. That was a story he would be telling her later, whether he liked it or not. 

Nonetheless, Jinx didn’t have time to waste and had a feeling Ekko wasn’t keen on actually spending the evening with Margot. She hurried into Margot’s now vacant office and locked the door behind her- heart racing as she made her way to the solid mahogany desk that sat in the center of a lavish maroon and navy painted room. 

The room smelled much like the rest of the brothel, like cloves and citrus oils, mixed with the disgusting sour scent of diffused shimmer. 

She opened each drawer of Margot’s desk- carefully and meticulously rifling through them- not wanting to leave any document unturned but not wanting to make it obvious someone had been in there. There, of course, was nothing of importance in the drawers as Jinx had been foolish enough to believe Margot would keep anything she safeguarded in an unlocked drawer in her unlocked office.

Piles of finance reports and an almost impressive collection of different scented lotions and oils were of no value to Jinx and she was about to slam the last drawer shut when a faint purple glow caught her eye.

Nudged in the back of the drawer between half burned pink candles was a full sparkling vial of shimmer. Jinx pried it from its containment and twirled the vial around between her fingers. It was stupid really, Jinx had never cared about shimmer before. Even now the shimmer Margot was diffusing in the air had little effect on her, though she suspected that had more to do with the fact that she wasn’t entranced in a lover at the moment as that was the chembaron’s whole shtick.

Still Jinx couldn’t help but think of the way the shimmer she had taken in the asylum had made her feel. The shimmer in her veins turned her damn near superhuman. Her reflexes thought faster than she did, she could see farther, run longer, and she wasn’t yet deformed like some of Silco’s earlier experiments.

It was silly to want more power when she hadn’t even wanted what she currently had. But…how quickly could an encounter with Singed last if she was all amped up. If she was unstoppable against time itself like she had been when she fought off that asylum doctor. 

She knew she was walking a dangerous line but when had she ever shied away from danger before? Jinx quietly slid the drawer closed, a veritable knot in the back of her throat. She needed to find Ekko and get out of there.

•••

Jinx was insane. Ekko had already known that- but this was insane even for her. The palms of his hands began to sweat as one fist raised up to knock on Margot’s heavy wooden doors. All this just for her to probably not even find anything. He was so trapped in his own agitated and petrified thoughts he almost didn’t hear the chembaron grant him permission to enter.

Margot glanced up briefly from whatever spreadsheet she had been working over then did a double take and set the paper down completely. “Well Hello. What can I do for you?”

She was far friendlier than Ekko anticipated she would be but that was when he remembered Margot did not know who he was without his mask and to her he was no more than a nightly patron in her house.

Ego . He reminded himself. The chembaron’s were all about their ego. They prided themselves in the authority over the undercity they held- the authority Silco allowed them to hold. To dismantle it was their only weapon.

“I am…dissatisfied.” Ekko choked out, unsure and unconvincing. 

Margot leaned forward and looked up at him under her dark curled and painted lashes. “With?”

He really was going to kill Jinx for this.

“With. The. Girls. Here.” Each word struggled to be enunciated and Ekko wasn’t entirely sure he had blinked since he entered her office. “They’re boring. Uninteresting- all of them.”

She smiled sweetly, the expression almost misplaced on her heavily cosmeticized and intimidating face. “There’s always the men?” Margot offered simply.

“Them as well.” He nodded quickly and for far too long. “What kind of establishment is this? How can someone as- as bewitching as yourself stand for such lackluster standards?”

If there was a way to turn invisible, or to fall into the floor, or to simply stop existing, there was never going to be a better time for Ekko to discover it than right now. He clenched his jaw tightly shut to keep any more word vomit from coming out of it.

“I see…” Margot crooned as her dark eyes took in every inch of his appearance. “It’s highly unusual for an individual to not find something to their liking here, we cater to all sorts. Perhaps you’re in the market for something a little more…reckless.”

“Maybe I am.” Ekko agreed. He hadn’t usually gone out of his way in search of danger, it normally found him, but he had certainly become…comfortable with it.

“Maybe I can help you?” She offered, standing up from her desk and taking her time to saunter over to where he stood with his fists clenched at his side.

There were thousands of thoughts fighting to be heard in Ekko’s mind but not a single one could become coherent. Margot- in her all leather and silver outfit- was standing far too close for him to back out of whatever the everloving fuck he was doing with her and yet Jinx- also in an all leather and mesh outfit for reasons Ekko still hadn’t figured out- was waiting on the other side of that very door for him to get Margot out of there.

“I should hope so.” He said in barely a whisper, cursing himself but mostly Jinx.

Margot gestured to the heavy wooden door of her office. “After you.”

How, when or why Ekko wound up on another plush velvet sofa with yet another barely dressed girl more or less in his lap- he would never know. All he knew was Margot had lit a diffuser of the worst smelling incense he had ever smelled and had been gently toying with the ends of his pale white locs when he finally returned down to earth.

This was the worst- by far the worst idea Jinx had ever had and part of Ekko was wishing he could return to the days where her plans involved her sinking a cargo ship and getting herself arrested. Those were simpler times. Those were times in which a chembaron’s elegantly painted nails weren’t slowing grazing the thin skin of his neck.

Maybe she was going to use her sharp black nails to kill him. He’d like that.

“So what’s your name?” Margot whispered in his ear.

“Clay.” He told her flatly. “Short for Claymore. The third, actually. Technically even maybe the fourth. My father and uncle were both named Claymore because my grandparents weren’t sure if my uncle was going to survive childhood and they needed a backup Clay just in case but they both lived so now there's two of them but my dad goes by Cole- it’s a little anagram of the name Claymore which is what my uncle still goes by.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Margot’s face contort in confusion as she struggled to come up with a response other than, “Oh…?”

“...What’s your name?” Ekko asked, pretending to be unbothered and unaware of his social ineptitude. This was something he could work with. Seducing Margot? No. Distracting her by being as chatty and awkward as possible? Easy.

“Margot.” She answered, once again adopting the same sultry voice she was using previously.

“Is that short for any-”

“Nope! Just Margot.” 

She picked up one of Ekko’s hands and threaded then unthreaded their fingers together over and over again. “What do you like to do for fun, Clay?”

“Oh, I’m not allowed to have fun.” He told her, having to bite the inside of his lip to stop himself from laughing before continuing. “My grandma told me too much fun is what killed grandpa which is strange because Uncle Claymore told me it was whiskey so whenever I was bored I had to go outside and wash the bricks. They were real clean bricks.”

Margot covered her mouth with one hand and leaned her forehead against his shoulder, just as Jinx had done earlier each time she was trying to stifle a laugh. “And you couldn’t find anybody here to your liking?” She asked, having to clear her throat several times as she spoke.

“Not a single one.” He confirmed, matter of factly. “Just plain boring.”

She took a deep breath and Ekko could tell she was going to make one more attempt at placating him. “Did any of them try this?” Her hand on his knee was more bothersome than anything, like somebody else’s belongings spilling onto his seat on the bathysphere. Still, when he didn’t react, it found its way further and further up his leg.

Ekko rolled his eyes and peered between the beaded curtains out into the brothel’s foyer where he saw her. Leaning against the wall and watching the two of them with the most sadistic grin was Jinx. His limbs weakened at the sight of her and he became acutely aware of every single one of his joints all at once. Maybe not all of the girls here were boring. Just as Margot’s hands reached his waist, Ekko stood abruptly.

“Yep! Of Course!” He declared with a strained cough. “Just as I thought! Amateur! Lackluster! I will never be returning here!”

He stormed through the beaded curtain and hauled Jinx along with him before Margot could react. 

“I hope you found something good in there.” He hissed as he dragged her back to the shiny red door of the locker room they came in through.

Jinx hummed disappointedly. “No. Just a bunch of business junk.” She smirked. “Looked like you were having fun though.”

“That was not fun.”

“Alright, alright. Let’s go.” Jinx waved him off and started to make her way down the secondary hall of the brothel when she froze dead in her tracks. 

Not paying attention, he bumped into her, not even slightly moving her feet that had been glued to the ground. “What are you doing?”

Just as quickly as she had frozen, she was moving again, pushing herself flat against the dark maroon wall and pulling Ekko as close to her as possible until no space remained between them.

“ What are you doing ?!” He asked again, this time flushed and embarrassed to be so close to her.

“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.” Jinx pulled his head into the crooked of her neck, shielding her face. “It’s him. ”

Silco . There for his monthly delivery of shimmer for Margot’s clients. Ekko wrapped one arm around Jinx’s waist and snaked the other up her back until his hand cradled the back of her head, no longer put off by the prospects of their proximity but solely focused on keeping her hidden.

The sound of Jinx’s heaving breathing nearly drowned out the sound of approaching footsteps, each one louder than the last, blending into the sound of her fervent heartbeats. Ekko turned his head and studied Jinx’s face as best he could. Her eyes were wide and terrified, darting back and forth so quickly he had no idea the string of thoughts that could possibly be forming in her head. 

As the footsteps neared she let out a breathy, playful giggle and wrapped one leg around his. “My tattoos.” She whispered.

Ekko inclined his head in question.

“My tattoos!” She mouthed as the footsteps sounded just behind them. 

He looked down at the bright blue swirls that decorated the entire right side of her body and shifted his weight to cover her other side as the sweet scent of cherry tobacco drifted behind them. Each one of Silco’s footsteps felt like an eternity and for a while they were the only thing Ekko could hear other than the heavy beat of Jinx’s heart.

When the sound of Margot’s office door slammed shut in the distance, neither of them moved in fear of it being a distraction. Slowly, Ekko turned his head and carefully removed his hands from Jinx’s waist when it became apparent they were the only ones in the hall.

Ekko couldn’t spare a second thought before Jinx had a hold of his hand as was running for the locker room faster than he could keep up with.

•••

They did not speak again until they returned to base. Against Ekko’s many protestions, Jinx had in fact kept the outfit she had stolen from the vyx. It really wasn’t up for debate but it was fun for her to see Ekko try.

“Thank you.” She told him as they stood awkwardly together at the base of the tree, a long black cloak hanging loosely from her shoulders. “For you know…distracting Margot and…keeping me hidden.”

Ekko nodded, his jaw clenched tight. “Don’t mention it.”

“I’m surprised you really weren't all that into her.” Jinx admitted with a laugh but Ekko only shook his head, amused she would think he would be into her in the first place.

“She’s nice but she’s not exactly my type.” He told her as a faint smile painted his face.

“Yeah but the shimmer usually makes everybody everyone’s type, that’s why she uses it.” Jinx’s own shimmer pink eyes watched as a series of thoughts formulated in Ekko’s head.

“I didn’t take any shimmer?” 

Her brows furrowed and for a moment she looked at Ekko as though he had forgotten something important, then it occurred to her he very well might not even know. “She puts it in her diffusers in all the rooms? That revolting cough medicine smell all throughout that place- that’s shimmer.”

Ekko looked away as her words settled and he seemed to work through something- a part of the story he had yet to tell Jinx.

“I mean there's different variants of it.” She explained, “Pretty sure the one she uses isn’t really effective unless you’re…titillated so to speak.”

“Titillated?” 

“Yeah.” Jinx frowned, almost disappointed. “It’s supposed to be a lot more fun than the acid concentrated toxic waste I was injected with. It’s supposed to make you feel all tingly and loose like you can feel all your joints move at the same time.”

“Oh.” Ekko’s face fell slack and he cleared his throat. “Okay. Well. You should get some sleep. See you tomorrow.”

She watched him ascend the stairs of the tree to his workshop, unable to stop thinking about what the vyx had told her about him being unable to keep his eyes off of her. It was all that was on her mind as she made her way back to her own room she shared with Fallon.

Even when she had him pressed against her with his arms around her waist he still only looked at her face. Maybe it was because he disliked her so much he couldn’t stand to look anywhere else. That was much more plausible.

Jinx’s chatty roommate had left their room sometime before her return and Jinx dressed herself for bed in peace. Was it that horrible of a prospect? She wondered as she sat cross legged on her bed. She didn’t know much about men and what they liked or didn’t like- it had never been relevant- but for some reason the idea of Ekko being indifferent towards her bothered her.

She shook the thoughts from her head. It was silly and stupid and she knew she was being foolish for no reason. She didn’t even like Ekko. She certainly didn’t hate having him so close and she did like how quickly he moved to protect her without hesiation...

“Who cares?!” Jinx asked aloud to her empty room. She certainly did not. Errant thoughts of Ekko faded slowly from her mind as they drifted elsewhere- to the thin glass vial of glittering purple she twirled between her fingers.

Chapter Text

Kier was talking. About what? Jinx had no idea. They started the session by each member sharing one thing they were grateful for and it had been downhill ever since. 

Sleep as usual had eluded her all night despite her best efforts, a common occurrence that never failed to leave a bitter taste in her mouth come morning. It was probably better that way anyhow, there really was no telling which of her daily horrors her subconscious would plunge her into the moment she closed her eyes.

Being awake wasn’t exactly an improvement. All night her tossing and turning was fueled by one repeated thought; what the fuck was she going to do with that vial of shimmer?

Should she save it for a rainy day? Should she take it and see what it does and get more later if it proved useful? Should she smash it into the ground and curse herself for ever taking it in the first place?

All very plausible and reasonable scenarios, she thought. Then there was the secret fourth option, she could tell someone. An incredibly stupid thing to do for multiple reasons including but not limited to the fact that she currently lived in a shimmer free rehab sanctuary.

Who would she even tell anyway? Ekko? Like he didn't distrust her enough already. Like he wasn’t already mad at her for the half assed, ill-considered, plans she’d executed recently. In her defense he was the one letting her execute those plans so he was technically half to blame.

“Jinx?”

“Hm?” She snapped out of her daze to bear witness to the other shimmer support members watching her with anticipation.

Kier smiled, her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun that showed off the beginnings of smile induced wrinkles around her eyes. “Where do you see yourself in a year?”

“A year?” Jinx’s mouth hung open, not a day went by that she didn’t consistently believe she’d probably be dead within a year. “A year is so far away? I’m more of a week to week type of girl and next week I see myself here again because we meet every Sunday and Wednesday.”

“It’s important to set goals for yourself.” She explained with her unwavering patience. “It gives you something to look forward to as well as something to hold yourself accountable by. Humor me, where would you like to be in a year?”

Jinx rolled her eyes and sighed, support group was so lame. “In a year I want to be on a beach, laying on a chair in the sand, and drinking some ridiculously fancy drink with a little umbrella sticking out of it. How’s that?”

“As good as we’re going to get I’m assuming.” Kier's smile faded and she tapped her thumbs together as she thought. “You know, I have a sneaky suspicion that the day you realize we’re not out to get you is the day things will become a lot easier.”

“Mhm.” Jinx nodded in a sarcastic form of confirmation, eyebrows raised as though truly taking Kier’s words to heart. Singed will have a bullet in his head and she’ll be long gone before that happens.

She had hoped her flippant approach would bar her from any more participation but alas, Kier found a reason to call on her each and every session regardless of how unproductive or superficial her responses were.

The only mildly interesting update support group provided was the addition of Pauline who said very little, listened very well, and sat directly next to Kier copying down every note that was written in her notepad.

Jinx liked to think she was there because she believed they were the new patients she was aiming to treat, but the more reasonable explanation was that it was a chance for Pauline to receive some form of therapy without her realizing she herself was the patient.

“Okay.” Kier clapped her hands together and looked around the group. “Before we end for the day I wanted to touch on the discussion we had last week about forgiveness. Forgiveness is an integral part of the healing journey and I want you all to think on what it means to you, what form of forgiveness is most important to you? Do you want to forgive yourself for what you put yourself through? Do you want to reconcile with your loved ones you may have hurt?”

A young boy around Jinx’s age or a little older raised his hand. “I- I know not all of us are bad people, some of you guys just did stupid things but what about, you know, people who’ve done really bad things and like really hurt people around them so bad that they don’t forgive you? How are you supposed to forgive yourself if they don’t?”

“That’s an excellent dilemma, Reggie.” Kier nodded appreciatively at the question Jinx half believed was entirely orchestrated. “We can’t make someone forgive us, we can only try our hardest, but we have to truly try. Try to see things from their point of view and accept responsibility for your mistakes. And the most important thing that you can do is change your behavior. An apology without change is disingenuous, fortunately being here is a step in the right direction. Although sometimes, there is nothing we can say or do that will convince someone that you are truly sorry and have changed. At that point the only thing we can do is let it go and move on.”

Jinx wished she could stop the stream of thoughts that clouded her mind when she spent time with the support group. Wished she could stop comparing herself to them and doubting any of them had ever done something truly horrible like her. Wished she could stop wondering if any of them had ever killed someone before, if they had felt the cold shock and sick emptiness that followed after, a feeling she had long gotten used to and barely even noticed anymore. 

She knew it wasn’t a fair judgement. Each of them felt guilt and shame in whatever they had done before coming here and it was wrong to assume any of it was nothing but still she just couldn’t help it. Years of doing nothing but telling herself she was the pinnacle of tragedy had ruined her ability to feel empathy for others. If they weren’t as bad as her, how bad could they possibly be?

The remainder of support group fell on deaf ears as Jinx ruminated. Once they finished up for the day she decided not to return to her bunk but rather mindlessly climb the splintering paint chipped staircase that encircled the firelights massive tree all the way to the top. 

Try as she might she couldn’t stop thinking about what Margot’s vyx had said about Ekko being in love with her. It was a ridiculous notion and she really, honestly- genuinely- didn't care. If it was true then he was a fool and Jinx was too.

There were far more pressing matters to attend to anyways. They were no closer to closing in on Singed than they had been when she first showed up. They had made no plans, no progress, and had no idea what they were doing other than wasting time. The longer this charade of theirs lasted the harder it would be to return to Silco when the time came and Jinx wasn’t ready to face that.

She stood in the doorway of Ekko’s private workshop at the top of the tree for a few moments, watching him as he fervently wrote something down over and over again until he grumbled angrily at himself and scratched out his writing. 

“Hey.” She knocked gently on the doorframe and took a couple steps inside.

Ekko mumbled some semblance of a greeting to her but didn’t look up from his papers. There had to be dozens scattered all across his desk, most scribbled and scratched up leaving their previous contents a secret. 

Jinx took another step forward and tried to peer over his shoulder. “What are you working on?” 

“Nothing!” In an instant his pencil had been discarded and a folder placed flat on top of whatever he had been doing. “What are you even doing up here, aren’t you supposed to be in support group?”

“It ended for the day…” Her brows furrowed together as she looked him over. She’d seen him tense before but this was somehow different. He seemed anxious- scared almost, like a child caught doing something they knew they shouldn’t be. “I was wondering if maybe you’d want to go down to the pit with me?”

She had certainly taken Ekko up on his offer of going to the pit every morning in lieu of introspection. Hitting something hard and heavy in the morning felt great and Jinx was only a little ashamed to admit she sort of liked seeing Ekko worked up and out of breath. 

“Can’t. Babysitting.” He gestured to the ground next to him and for the first time Jinx noticed Scar’s chubby cheeked infant daughter sitting in a plastic crate chewing on the rubber handle of a pair of pliers. 

“Guess you don’t need a lab partner either then?” She teased as she sat down on the wooden floor in front of the crate and reached inside to scoop the little one up. 

Ekko only softly chuckled then went back to his notes. Jinx held the baby up and tried to balance her on her feet that weren’t yet strong enough to hold herself up on her own, and seeing as how she was much more interested in trying to chew Jinx’s fingers, back on the ground she went.

“What’s her name?” Jinx asked, trying to pry the pliers out of her abnormally strong baby hands.

“Pike.” 

Like spike, Jinx thought as she scrunched her nose playfully and poked at Pike’s razor sharp teeth. “Where’d Scar even get such a cute little baby?” Pike giggled and babbled in delight at the new game of trying to capture one of Jinx’s long fingers she was waving in front of her.

“You know this might sound crazy but I think Scar’s wife gave birth to her.” Ekko joked with a genuinely amused smile that slowly crept across his face as he continued to scribble whatever top secret project he was working on.

Jinx whipped her head back to look at him fast enough to strain a muscle in her neck. “Scar has a wife?!”

She’d never seen Scar with anyone, not that she really paid him that much attention, but now that she thought of it she had also never seen another chieran in the base other than Peri who was only half courtesy of Scar’s late brother.

“Yeah, Drea. They’ve been married for three years I think but they’ve been together since they were like twelve or something.” He explained, finally putting his pencil down and turning to pester Pike along with Jinx. “Real shit starter, you two would either be the best of friends or the worst of enemies.”

“Do I know her?” She asked. The firelight base was riddled with dozens of people she saw and even spoke to daily and yet despite this could only confidently name about five of them. Six now if she included Pike. 

Ekko turned to pick up a small plastic bottle and offered it to Pike who eagerly took it just to throw it to the ground by Jinx’s feet. “Nah, she’s been in Stillwater for aggravated assault of an enforcer since Pike was a few weeks old.”

Jinx ground her teeth together. Of course topside wouldn’t think twice about tearing a mother from her brand new baby and locking her up in a dark cold room for the rest of her life. Just once she’d like to see the enforcers who guarded Stillwater spend a single week there and see if their cruelty would be repaid to them in kind. Now that she thought about it, she had been wondering how that asylum doctor was enjoying her psychiatric treatment.

“What? Did she sneeze too close to one?” Jinx scoffed at the idea of Scar’s poor wife being hauled away after probably minding her own business. No wonder the guy was so uptight. “Did she round a corner without looking? Or- or trip and scuff the surface of one of their impeccably polished boots?”

Ekko suppressed a laugh as he once again tried to get Pike to drink from her bottle instead of throw it. “Oh, no. She beat the shit out of that guy. Like he’s blind now.”

“Oh!” She didn’t bother to hide her surprised laugh and gently toyed with the tips of Pike’s hair now a lot more impressed with her apparently cutthroat mother. “Why?”

“I mean if you ask me does there need to be a reason?” He gave up his task of getting the baby to eat and returned to his desk but only tapped his pencil against his papers, no longer entranced in his work. “It’s a story better told by Scar but the long and short of it is that enforcers had been harassing her sister in the jeweler’s shop she owned, accusing her of stealing the gems and metals she used, said she was selling fake jewelry at too high of a price, things like that. They told her unless she came up with proof to clear her name of random shit they just made up, they'd revoke her merchants permit. I don’t know why they were targeting her specifically but Drea had had enough of them upsetting her sister and she just so happened to be in the shop the next time enforcers came around. Pretty sure the carpet in the shop is still stained from that fight.”

Jinx’s heart skipped a beat and her eyes unfocused against her will. She just wanted to protect her sister. Wanted to be there for her, to stand up for her, to fight for her, and the price was a one way ticket to Stillwater.

She felt sick in a way she couldn’t describe. Her head buzzed, her stomach tightened and turned, why did it always have to be this way? Why couldn’t she ever react in a normal way? She just wanted it to stop. Stop stop stop.

“That’s awful.” She spit out through gritted teeth. Whether Ekko noticed her change in disposition, he made no comment. Jinx assumed he figured she was probably just angry about what had happened to Drea the same way he had been. 

Jinx stood up from the floor abruptly, letting the wrench she had pried from Pike’s hand clatter back to the ground for her poorly coordinated hands to grab again and left without another word.

•••

She had not been feeling any better that night as she donned her firelight-provided linen nightclothes and laid in bed, hopeful- or possibly delusional- that sleep would eventually come.

In the opposite corner of her room, Fallon stirred, closing up the green leather bound book she was reading and moving to snuff out an oil lantern that had been casting a hazy orange warmth over the room for the last few hours after the sun had set. 

Jinx couldn’t shake the thought of Drea from her mind. Locked away in Stillwater for a crime she technically did commit but did the punishment fit the crime? Did the enforcers harassing her sister ever get punished for their crimes? Why was it okay for the enforcers to do whatever they wanted but when someone retaliates it’s the true victims who get punished?

The waterlogged and wretched prison could be seen very distantly from the wharf docks and the constant red flash of light from its lighthouse burned the back of Jinx’s eyes the longer she kept them closed. 

What was it like in there? Was it just as cold and dark as Vi had claimed? Did Vi know Drea? Contrary to Ekko’s belief, they’d probably get along better with each other than either would with Jinx. Just two sisters who fought like hell for their family and paid the price for it.

“Fallon?”

“Hm?”

“Your dad is in Stillwater right?” Fallon was quiet for a minute and Jinx could hear her nervously picking at the skin of her nails in the dark.

“Yeah.” The words struggled in the back of her throat but she still managed to choke them out. “Five years now. He was arrested stealing medicine for my mom. They took him away and…she never got the medicine.”

Jinx couldn’t help thinking of her own parents, both killed in a failed rebellion against Piltover that forever split the sister cities in two and cemented the undercity into its fate as an industrial waste. She barely remembered them anymore.

“Do you miss him?” She asked, her throat going dry as she tried her best to not think of her own pseudo-father she had entirely abandoned.

“Can’t imagine the day that I don’t.” Was Fallon’s only reply.

She felt sick again and didn’t ask anything else of Fallon for the night. For so long Jinx felt like all she did was miss people. She missed her parents and the way their exhaustion would disappear every night when they came home from the mines and would play with her and Vi for hours before bed.

She missed Vander and the way his calming voice could soothe the strongest of fears. It was hard to truly miss her brothers and Vi when they never really left her. She missed the reality of them instead of the insidious shadows that haunted her in their likeness. How they went from annoying in life to malicious in death, unable to be their true selves and instead trapped in how Jinx believed they perceived her. Always the jinx and never the luck.

Silco had been there for her in ways she didn’t think anyone could fully understand. He gave her space when she needed it, pushed her when she doubted herself, calmed her when things became too much. He knew what it felt like to be betrayed by the one person he trusted more than anyone, and maybe Vi had tried to go back for her, maybe Vander tried to go back for him, but it didn’t change anything.

Maybe she could talk to him- just for a little bit. Or send a letter even to let him know that she’s okay and that she isn’t angry with him anymore…and that she’s sorry. She knew the death of the doctor would destroy everything Silco spent his entire life working for. He had to know the truth, he had to understand her one last time. It was the least he deserved.

•••

Her mornings had grown slow. No longer attending introspection meant Ekko wasn’t in her bunker at the crack of dawn, irritating her before she’d come to consciousness. Instead, she sought him out. Sometimes he’d be busy and she’d take a good heap of her anger out on a sand stuffed bag but other times when he was around she’d get to take a few good hits at him, that was the real satisfaction. 

Ekko was always up before her no matter how late he was up the night before, he probably got just as little sleep as she did most nights.

The pit, as always, was hot and humid. The firelight in question it would seem found a very practical use for their stolen enforcer uniforms that were currently draped over one of their hanging sandbags and being thoroughly beaten by Ekko’s wrapped and powerful hands. 

Sweat beaded on his forehead and slowly dropped down the side of his face and onto the floor as his chest glistened with a similar imposing glow. 

Jinx swallowed thickly in an attempt to placate the sudden dryness of her throat as she made her way deeper into the pit and up to him. 

“Hey.” She said with a slight crack in her voice that she tried to cover up with a cough. 

“Hey.” He flashed her a quick smile and moved to grab a pair of boxing gloves for her. “Suit up. I wanna see how hard you’ve been working when I’m not around.” 

Jinx caught the gloves he tossed her but put them aside. “Actually, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Okay…” There was a slight hesitation in his eyes that didn’t meet his words. He flexed his hands and busied himself unwrapping and rewrapping them. Fidgeting. Jinx didn’t know what, but there was something Ekko was afraid she would bring up.

“I want to bust Scar’s wife and Fallon’s dad out of Stillwater.”

The fidgeting stopped immediately and Ekko’s eyes darted back and forth as he looked up, searching his mind for confirmation that he had heard her correctly. He said nothing but instead stared at Jinx the way one stares when they can’t decide if they want to yell at them or hit them.

“Yeah okay so it’s a little dangerous but don’t act like we haven’t done dangerous before and imagine how nice of a surprise it would be for them? A little thank you for you know…I mean I don’t know but you probably do.” Still, Ekko didn’t speak which only resulted in more word vomit on Jinx’s behalf.

 “Look, we already have the uniforms,” she gestured to the ragged and worn clothes Ekko had been pummeling not five minutes before. “We show up, act as guards, during our ‘rounds’ meet up with them and get them to cause a scene with each other, then we can claim we’re taking them to more secure cells and get them the hell out of there. Easy.”

At last Ekko took a long, deep breath and spoke. “I don't know what fantasy land you live in in your mind but I really really need you to understand that these are people's lives you’re playing with.”

“I- I’m not? I-“ Jinx scoffed and took a step back, he had it all wrong. This was a good thing she was doing was it not? Isn’t this what he wanted from her? To be thinking about others and doing good things for other people. “They don’t deserve to be in there. How is it better for us to just let them rot?”

“How is it better for us to risk getting captured and imprisoned as well?” He asked her, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible. “How is it better to risk having Scar be imprisoned and leave Pike completely parentless? Tell me you’re not actually serious, Jinx.”

The more he said the hotter Jinx could feel her face and chest getting. “What? We could do it? We stowed away on a ship and broke into and out of the asylum. We’ve done crazy before, I thought you’d be all for it?”

“We’ve done crazy before because we were desperate and if you think I haven’t gotten shit from the others for agreeing to your plans you’re delusional.” Ekko stormed away from her and grabbed a towel from the nearby rack to wipe the glistening sweat from his face.

“Stop calling me crazy and delusional!” Even as she spoke, even as she demanded he take back what he said, the whispers in her mind assaulted her ears. He thinks you’re crazy. You are crazy, look at you. You think he likes you? Delusional. Delusional. Delusional.

He threw his sweat soaked towel to the ground without a second thought and turned back to her. “Look, just because Silco let you get away with whatever the hell you wanted all the time doesn’t mean you can be reckless here too. At some point enough has to be enough.”

“You could have just said no or that you didn’t think it was a good idea!” She spat with nothing short of anger and hurt in her voice. “Why are you scolding me like I’m a child? And why does everything always have to be about Silco with you? What, are you still mad that I chose him instead of you? Or are you just mad because you know he wasn’t as shitty a parent as you think he is?”

Ekko put his hands up in defense and Jinx had half a mind to hit him for it. “First of all, I didn’t say anything about how Silco raised you? Second of all, is that what you think being a good parent is? Encouraging you to build bombs and kill people at thirteen? Letting you do fuck all in the undercity regardless of what you destroyed or who you hurt with no consequences? He’s probably relieved he doesn’t have to worry about doing damage control with you right now while trying to emancipate Zaun.”

And that was that. Jinx’s chest was heaving with fury as the palm of her hand connected with the side of Ekko’s face. The all too familiar dizzy burn of shimmer made her arms and legs go wobbly the longer her temper went on. 

“Fuck you.” She hissed, then stormed off before he could react.

This was not how the morning was supposed to go. He was supposed to be all for the idea of rescuing his friend's families, that was his whole stupid thing! How the hell was she in the wrong for suggesting it?!

She stormed past several firelights trying to enjoy their morning on her way back to her bunker where she let the door slam shut and locked it behind her.

•••

Ekko knew he fucked up almost immediately after he had done it. Before Jinx had hit him, before the words had even finished coming out of his mouth he knew. 

It wasn’t right for him to blame his overreaction on others but the lecture he had received from Scar the night previous certainly didn’t help. 

It was the same shit different day. The firelights had come to terms with Jinx’s presence within the compound but what they didn’t really appreciate was her active participation within the guard council- and Scar didn’t either. He especially didn’t appreciate her and Ekko going off on vaguely worded and poorly planned missions on their own, something they had done only twice but it apparently had been twice too many. 

Their conversation- their argument- had completely taken over Ekko’s mind and the sheets of incomplete runes and equations he had accidentally stolen from Councilor Talis turned to blurry scribbles the longer he tried to focus on them. 

Three circular knotted runes followed by two oblong knotted runes encased what had once been five perpetual loops laced together in a row then erased and replaced with four of the same. 

It was nonsense. How any of these random doodles could combine to create something as powerful as hextech was something Ekko had to truly see to believe. But how anyone could actually read any of this shit was starting to feel like a folktale.

He was grateful for the knock that sounded on his workshop’s shabby door and undeniably disappointed when it was Scar who opened it and stepped inside. 

Not that he was expecting anyone else really, why would he? Jinx was mad at him- an understatement- and even if she wasn’t it’s not like he was just sitting around waiting for her to turn up so he could find an excuse to ditch his rune research. Or watch her face light up as she pieced together a puzzle inside her mind that no one else could see. Or yell at her about how much he hates her dad.

“So what was all that about this morning?” Scar asked, absentmindedly looking over the mess of notes scattered across Ekko’s workbench, none of it meaning much of anything to him.

His eyes fixated on a chip in the wood of his desk and zoned out as their fight replayed in his mind. “Said something stupid. Pissed her off. How much of it did you hear?”

Scar, who had been in the pit that morning as well chuckled. “Not much, figured you guys were getting ready to workout. Didn’t start paying attention until she slapped you.”

“She wants to break Drea and Marion out of Stillwater.” Ekko sighed and leaned back in his chair, waiting for Scar to blow up.

“And you told her she was crazy, right?” He asked cautiously.

Ekko hummed softly in agreement. “I believe my exact word was delusional, and also that Silco is probably grateful he doesn’t have to deal with her while trying to figure this whole independence shit out.”

They were silent for a moment and Ekko could tell Scar was biting the inside of his cheek to stifle a laugh. “I’m surprised you weren’t all for it.”

That was the part that had been gnawing at his insides ever since Jinx had stormed off. He was all for it. It was risky, it was foolish, but fuck it would be amazing to pull off. That brazen sort of adrenaline rush he got from getting away with dangerous shit was what kept him agreeing to Jinx’s plans, it was like a drug to him.

“I mean it would be nice to see them again.” He offered.

Scar’s replying sigh was nothing short of over exaggerated and highly irritated. “Here we go. So what? You feel bad that you pissed her off so you’re gonna bend over backwards and go through with her bullshit to placate her? Why?” He ran a quick hand through his hair to disguise an agonizing, distressed rub of his temples. “What happened to we ‘can’t trust her’, ‘she’s a liability’, ‘the sooner she’s gone the better’?”

Ekko said nothing, mostly because he didn’t know what to say, but also because if he didn’t say it out loud then it wouldn’t be true and the truth was, he liked spending time with her again. He looked forward to it. The schemes, the racing hearts and flushed cheeks. In the moments when they were so focused on the task at hand and Ekko could forget about who they were and all they’d done, it felt like old times. He hadn’t realized how badly he wanted to feel young and silly and playful again until she came back around.

“You tried too hard to hate her, didn’t you?” He asked, softer this time, but an answer was not needed because it was already known by both of them. 

“I thought it would be easy.” Ekko mumbled, inattentively scratching at the chipped wood of his desk. “And it kind of was it first, she really is a pain in the ass, but…I don’t know. I can’t forgive her but I can’t hate her.”

 Neither of them said anything as they tried to come up with a solution to the problem they couldn’t quite figure out. 

Eventually, Scar pushed up from the wall he had been leaning on and crossed his arms. “You know I always support whatever choices you make because more often than not they’re for the good of our people but this is not one of those things. Let her be mad and move on.”

It was a sick twisting feeling Ekko felt in his gut as his workshop door swung shut behind Scar. He had been at war with himself for what felt like so long. He wanted to do right by his people, for the undercity, but what did that look like? Does the weight of a deed diminish if achieved by iniquity?

It wasn’t about Jinx, he repeatedly told himself in an attempt to make himself feel better about his foolish choices. It was about making a stand. It was about sending a message. The same message that was sent when they sank a merchant ship to get Peri back; whatever they take from them, they’ll get back tenfold.

Silco? Topside? It didn’t matter. Two sides of the same ugly coin both disguising their lust for power behind falsehoods of unity. What Ekko wouldn’t give for just one more conversation with Vander and Benzo…how did they do it all those years? How did they keep the peace between factions and could the rift that formed after their deaths even be salvaged at this point?

A detailed drawing of Benzo’s likeness stared back at Ekko from its pinned position in the cork board above his workbench. If Benzo was alive and they had been separated, there wouldn’t be a single soul in either Piltover or Zaun that would stop Ekko from getting him back. 

Let her be mad and move on.

He wasn’t sorry for what he said, he meant every word of it. Well, almost every word of it. Silco was not a good parental figure by any means but he did, irrefutably, care for Jinx and was probably going mad with the lack of information on Jinx’s whereabouts, not relieved as Ekko had suggested. 

It was unimportant. There were more pressing matters at hand. Firelight scouts had been reporting less and less shimmer activity each day which either meant Silco was dialing down in favor of whatever deal he had struck with topside- or they were becoming a lot more clever at hiding their dealings. The former was a foolish fantasy, the latter a much more real and dangerous possibility. 

Still as Ekko tapped his pen against his desk blankly staring at Jayce’s notes, he couldn’t help but indulge in fantasy just a little bit. How incredible it would feel for everyone to finally be free. For the firelights to live a life not in hiding, far from the sewers. For the citizens of the undercity to be off the streets somewhere warm and comfortable. For Silco to just wake up one day in an alternate universe where he wasn’t some paragon of power and deceit and change himself for the better. Fantasy certainly was fun.

Ekko flipped the page he had been looking at and sighed in frustration when he realized he had reached the end, only a blank sheet of paper bearing Jayce’s signature and the Talis family sigil remained. 

For a moment he stared at the paper, that sick twisting feeling starting back up again, then he was writing, scribbling away in the most elegant scrawl he could muster. Then he was standing up and walking with no greater awareness of his actions than an innocent bystander. 

He found Scar again in the pit, a fortunate coincidence and not the reason he had gone down there. “I’ve just heard from our scouts, there’s movement in the lower west end of the fissures. Put a team together and head out as soon as you can.” 

“You’re not gonna come?” He asked, tossing down his gloves and wiping sweat from his forehead. 

“I want you to lead this one.” Ekko clasped his hand against Scar’s shoulder. “I think you’re right, I’ve been distracted lately. You’ve always been there for me and trusted me and for that I’m grateful. I need you to trust me again, this is the right decision.”

Scar narrowed his eyes, he did not believe Ekko’s words and his own response was choked through gritted teeth. “If it’s what you want.” 

He left without a second glance at Ekko, but it didn’t phase him. Scar understood him. Even if he hated it, even if he disagreed, he understood. Scar had been his brother when he didn’t have one, his most faithful companion, and Ekko trusted him implicitly. Even if it meant taking over the firelights in his absence. 

•••

Ekko found Jinx sitting on the floor of her bunker with Fallon, twin braids undone and her hair in loose strands around her as she angrily brushed through the ends of it. Considering the amount of hair she had she’d probably been at it since she had stormed off earlier that morning. 

“Get out.” Jinx snapped the second he crossed the doors threshold. 

He looked to Fallon who was watching them surreptitiously over the pages of her book and gave a quick turn of his head, a silent request for her to leave them. Reluctantly, she closed her book and locked herself out on their slim rickety balcony.

“I was talking to you.” She hissed as the balcony door slammed shut behind Fallon.

Ekko crossed the room and sat on the ground against Fallon’s bed. “I’m sorry.” Not a lie, he was sorry for a couple of things, just probably not the things Jinx wanted him to be sorry for.

“No you’re not.” Jinx refused to even look at him as she continued to brush her hair more aggressively the more she spoke. “You wouldn’t have said it if you weren’t thinking it and you wouldn’t be thinking it if you didn’t mean it.”

“I’m sorry I upset you.” He explained, calmly, hoping his voice sounded as sincere as he was trying to be. “I think…I think Silco is something we’re never going to see eye to eye on. I think we should avoid talking about him with each other.”

If looks could kill, Ekko would be dead ten times over. Jinx’s eyes glowed softly as her head finally snapped up to glare at him. “It’s not about Silco you fucking idiot! It’s what you said about me!”

“I didn’t-“

“You did!” The rounded end of her brush just barely grazed the ends of Ekko’s locs as he ducked to avoid it. “You said he’s probably glad I’m not around to ruin things! Because that’s what I do isn’t it? I ruin things, I destroy things, I make things worse, I’m a jinx! That is what you said! That is what you think of me, just like everyone else! Now get out and leave me alone!”

Jinx. Of course. He hadn’t even realized what his words had meant to her, he’d been so blinded in his belief that her anger stemmed from her long standing admiration for the man who had raised her these last several years. 

“I…I didn’t realize how that must have sounded.” Ekko stumbled over his words, unsure of how to explain himself. “I’ve never wanted to make you feel like a jinx before. I’ve been catching a lot of heat lately, I’m sorry I took it out on you. That wasn’t fair and what I said wasn’t true. I'm sure Silco is…losing his mind with your radio silence.”

“Get. Out.” The shimmer in Jinx’s eyes flashed again as her words ground through her teeth. She was angry and admittedly had every right to be.

He took a deep breath and nodded in acknowledgment. “Look, you can stay mad at me. I won't try to change your mind but,” he took a thin folded up piece of paper out of his pocket and held it out for her then set it down on the ground in front of her when she made no attempt to take it. “I’ll be in the con for the next hour.”

Jinx said nothing and continued to pointedly ignore the slip of paper in front of her as Ekko got to his feet and wordlessly slipped away to the con where he waited, true to his word, for the next hour. 

It wasn’t until Ekko had begun closing the room up that the cons heavy metal door swung open. 

“What made you change your mind?”

“Those are my people and this deal with topside is gonna go one of two ways.” He explained, “They're either going to flake and nothing will change or they’ll pull through and sign the undercity over to the person who destroyed it for the sake of saving it and they’re going to be here with us where they belong whenever the hammer decides which way it will fall. I’d rather be someone who gets caught than someone who never tries.”

Jinx made a face like she wanted to say something, or better yet turn around and leave. She clearly didn’t agree with Ekko’s sentiments about Silco, precisely why he proposed they didn’t speak about him with each other. Either way, Jinx stayed.

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you.” She told him pointedly, her arms crossed over her chest in front of her to keep her hands from lashing out at him.

“I won’t ask you to.” He handed her one of the beat up enforcer uniforms, the real reason he had gone into the pit earlier. 

She took it begrudgingly and stalked over to a far away corner to change into it and don the stringy black wig she had stolen from Margot’s brothel. Ekko watched her go from the corner of his eyes and listened intently to the sounds of her hasty and angry movements.

“Let’s go.” She ordered as she finished zipping up her boots and started towards the door.

“Wait.” Ekko’s voice halted Jinx’s steps seemingly against her will. She turned to face him with her arms crossed and an undisguised scowl on her face. “When we get out there, there is no room for error. We need to be completely parallel the entire time. However angry you are with me, from the second we step outside the base to the second we get back, it’s gone. You cannot have it out there. No fights, no comments, no snap decisions so whatever it is that you need to say to me, do it now.”

Jinx was quiet for a moment as she studied his face, searching for something Ekko couldn’t identify. The darkness of her wig washed her out considerably making her pale skin ghastlier and her bright pink eyes even more haunting. “One of Margot’s vyx said the dumbest thing the other night. She said you were in love with me.”

Ekko’s heart quickened in his chest and he held his breath to hide it. A ridiculous notion. Of course he cared about Jinx, yes he did have a small insignificant crush on her when they were kids but that was ages ago and a lot had changed since then. And since then any residual feelings he had about her had been watered down and washed away leaving him practically indifferent. 

She sided with Silco, she pushed him away, she killed his people, by rights he should hate her. He only liked spending time with her because of their history, that was all. Was she attractive? Yes. Was she undeniably clever and intelligent? Yes. Had Ekko been unable to stop thinking about her sitting with her legs across his lap, her hand on his chest, and her face pressed to the side of his cheek? Also yes. But to say that he was in love with her was a gross overstatement.

“I told her she was wrong, obviously, but she insisted. Something about the way you look at me I guess.” Jinx continued, eyes narrowing on Ekko’s tense face as she did. “I can’t decide what’s more embarrassing. Thinking there was a possibility that she was right, or realizing I had been right all along.”

“Jinx-“

“Let’s go.”

She stalked past him, purposely bumping into his shoulder as she went. No fights. She said what she wanted to and that was that until they came back.

•••

No fights, to Jinx who had nothing but bad things to say, meant no talking which was fine with her. She should have told Ekko to go to hell. She should have taken the release papers he had forged with Jayce’s signature, crumpled it into a ball, and thrown it in his face. It was her own damn insatiable hunger for chaos that forced her up off the floor and into the con.

It was fine. After all this time Ekko didn’t trust her, nor did he want her around. One final mission, she had decided. One last rescue and she could part with the firelights on somewhat decent terms then go back to her old life. This had been a colossal waste of time. Her anger toward Silco had faded and if there was such a thing as luck Singed would drop dead of old decompensating age in a few months. 

Then they could go back to pretending they don’t exist to each other and Ekko wouldn't have to worry about her destroying things for him anymore.

The sound of their footsteps echoing against stone had been their only accompaniment as they made the long trek from base to the gondola docks that would take them to Stillwater hold.  

“Jinx?” Ekko’s voice was soft and curious, as though he wasn’t even sure what he would say next. 

Jinx shook her head. “No fighting.”

“Do you remember that time you were mad at Mylo for complaining that you were too slow and saying he wished the enforcers chasing you guys had caught you when he was the one who antagonized them in the first place?” He asked, and Jinx felt a twitch behind her eyes at the memory. “So you ran away and I hid you in the attic of Benzo’s shop for a week where I kept all my boxes of scraps he’d let me keep and we lived off of stale bread and candle light until he caught on and let it slip to Vander.”

“You couldn’t lie to save your life.” She huffed as she rolled her eyes. “You caved the second Benzo asked if you’d seen me.”

From the corner of her eyes, Jinx swore she saw the corners of Ekko’s mouth curve into a smile. “I was always afraid they wouldn’t let me see you again if I caused you too much trouble.”

“Vi was so mad.” Jinx laughed this time as she recalled how red in the face her sister had gotten when she realized she was alive and well and hiding from her the entire time. “I think steam actually came out of her ears.”

Jinx felt her stomach lurch. God she missed him. How could she miss someone who was standing right next to her so much?

If she could be Powder again, just for a day, she’d make the most of it. She’d race Vi through the green light district even though she would definitely lose. She’d challenge Mylo to several rounds of the shooting gallery at the arcane. She’d sit with Claggor as he scoured an old academy textbook they’d recovered from the dump and piece together equations with him. She’d help Vander close down the last drop and listen to whatever dusty old timey record he wanted to. And at night, when most of the day’s dust had settled, she’d find Ekko and they’d climb up to the highest rooftop in the undercity that just scratched the surface and they’d look at the sky together, hopeful that a few stars would shine bright enough to break through the dense smog and light pollution. That would be the day.

“That was a lifetime ago.” She whispered, swallowing thickly to disguise how much the thought pained her. 

“Do you think those two kids are still out there somewhere?” He asked playfully hypothetical yet still expecting a response. “Still hiding out above Benzo’s shop and…daydreaming about what rules we’d make if we ruled our own cities?”

It was a nice thought, but he and Jinx knew the truth. There was no alternate reality where things were good and they were still happy together. This was it, this was all they had for better or for worse. But, silly as it was, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Maybe.” She whispered softly, mostly to herself. “…Can I ask you something?”

Beside her Ekko nodded and offered a small “mhm.” To give her the go ahead.

“I know- and you know so let’s not pretend- that you have no actual problem with murder as long as it’s the ‘right person’.” Jinx’s words had a bite to them, partly because she was still mad at him, but mostly because she didn’t like not understanding something. “And don’t start with your altruistic savior complex that’s really utilitarian because you don’t get to just dole out vigilante justice and decide who’s right and who’s wrong and what’s best for the undercity-“

“I thought you were going to ask me a question?”

Jinx shot him a look out of the corner of her eye, catching a quick glimpse of what seemed to be a genuinely shocked expression. 

“What’s the real reason behind your no kill order?” She asked finally, pretending not to notice Ekko stiffen briefly beside her.

 “I told you already.” He said, far too casually to be convincing. “Killing is how Silco deals with things and gets his way if we follow in his footsteps, what makes us any better? Not to mention, Silco has an entire network to cover up his tracks and misdeeds. He’s got lackeys to hide his bodies. He’s got runners to bride witnesses. Hell, he’s even got the Sheriff in his back pocket to make set ups look like accidents. If we go around killing his goons, it won’t go unnoticed and sooner or later he’ll use his Sheriff to get Topside involved.”

An elaborate story, certainly plausible in any case. If he was anyone else she might have believed him. Might have.

“You’re hiding something.”

Ekko shook his head and laughed which only caused Jinx to narrow her eyes on him. Only someone who was guilty would laugh. 

“I don't know what you want me to say.” He said with a shrug. “You asked, I told you.”

“You didn’t tell me everything.”

“There’s nothing more to tell.”

She didn’t ask him anything else but the weight of the silence that surrounded them lessened from then on until they reached the edge of Stillwater docks where a guarded gondola revolved to and from the island all day every day.

Ekko held a hand out for her to slow down as they approached the gondola’s unenthusiastic night shift guard. “I’ll do all the talking, just go along with it.”

Jinx nodded but to both their surprise, the hadn’t needed to worry about a backstory.

“Right.” The guard stretched in his chair and pulled a lever for the retrieval gondola. “Taking over?”

“Yeah.” Ekko shook his head disapprovingly in the same manner of resigned exhaustion that the guard carried. “Night shifts, am I right?”

The guard snorted and wished them a good night as the gondola came to a screeching halt and the door opened to welcome them inside.

“This is too easy…” Jinx murmured to Ekko as they slowly crept across the murky and polluted River Pilt.

“With a uniform and confidence you can get away with anything apparently.” He nervously tapped his fingers against his leg more and more the closer they got to Stillwater. The reality that there was an incredibly high chance that they’d never get back on this gondola was finally starting to sink in.

Stillwater Hold was a lot taller standing directly in front of it than spying it from across the bay. Tall, dark and misty, it was just as formidable as the asylum. 

Jinx looked to Ekko, catching his eye for just a moment, long enough for them to reach an understanding. Trusting each other was the only way they were making it out of this together, and they did implicitly.

The air inside Stillwater was somehow cold yet sweat inducing at the same time, every second they stayed within its confines more and more beads of slick perspiration pooled on top of Jinx’s head and spilled down the sides of her face and the back of her neck. Each step they took toward the massive front guard desk silenced roaring arguments in her mind until a dull ringing muffled any voices, inside her head or out.

“Enforcers.” The warden’s voice greeted them loudly and pleasantly, as though they had been friends for years despite never having met before. “What can I do you for?”

“We have orders from Councilor Talis.” Ekko cleared his throat as he slid what they were both hoping was entirely convincing forged documents across the warden's desk. “Two of your prisoners are believed to have information regarding a recent string of gang related activity. We’re to escort them to the hold below the Tribunal for further trial.”

The warden clicked his tongue as he looked over the paperwork Ekko provided, giving no clear indication whether or not he found it to be in order. His eyes darted back and forth between the papers and his computer screen, loudly clacking keys beneath his gigantic fingers.  “Right…and it’s just the two of you escorting them?” He eyed them suspiciously, Jinx especially. “According to our records, prisoners 2646 and 3718 have histories of violence. You may want to scrounge up some back up.”

“No need.” Ekko assured him. “I’m sure they’ll be more than amiable to the idea of getting out of here for a few days.”

“If you change your mind,” The warden began as he stamped an approval on Ekko’s papers and handed them back to him. “Enforcer’s barracks are on the south wing of the fifth floor, find a couple who look like they’re having too much fun and take them with you. 2646 and 3718 are both on the tenth floor; southeast and west, respectively.”

Jinx remained silent and passive by Ekko’s side as they climbed aboard a tall screeching elevator and began a terribly slow ascent to the tenth floor. 

“What’s going on?” Ekko asked under his breath as each floor they passed lit up under a glowing red light. “You’re never this quiet.”

“I-“ Her words caught in the back of her throat and for a moment she was torn. Was it worth it to tell Ekko her plans of leaving or should she just go? “…When we get back to base I-“ Jinx’s heart hammered in her chest. She wanted to leave. She meant nothing to Ekko, he had made that abundantly clear. So why was it so hard for her to tell him? “We’ll talk later.” She spit out finally, more annoyed with herself than anything.

She could tell her answer wasn’t good enough and that Ekko wanted an explanation right then and there but he held his tongue, instead choosing to swallow his words and face straight ahead as the elevator doors creaked open, leaving them face to face with half a dozen enforcers.

They nodded in greeting to the enforcers who merely nodded back while exchanging a few confused glances amongst each other.

 Painted on the far wall, a directory pointed which way the southeast and west wings were. Jinx stepped out of the elevator first and took a few steps into the hall before turning back to ensure Ekko was behind her. He’ll leave you here. Whispers overlapped in her ears, attempting to deceive her own eyes that saw Ekko staying by her side. 

Ekko assumed the lead and took a sharp left turn, heading for the west wing first. He looked behind them every so often, keeping a watchful eye to ensure the other enforcers weren’t following them. “We need to find Drea first.” He whispered as they walked, their heavy boots clicking loudly against tile. “She’ll probably be pissed at first to see me in an enforcers uniform but she’ll trust me enough to come with us. I’ve never met Marion, so hopefully having her with us will help.”

Each cell block had five separate guards, two in front of the main gate, two inside the main gate with access to all cell controls, and one that roamed the perimeter of the cell block, ensuring all inmates were behaving accordingly to an arbitrary set of rules they made up to suit their mood for the day. 

“Ah, hold.” An older female guard with annoyed eyes and pallid wrinkled skin held her hand up as they approached the cell block door. “We’re not due for change off til three, who are you?”

Ekko held up his forged paperwork stamped by the warden. “We’re here on the orders of Councilor Talis-“

“Ugh. Tribunal twits.” The woman cut him off and muttered to her partner as she elbowed the cell blocks release button and let the door slide open.

Jinx’s heart skipped in her chest, this was an angle they could play to their advantage. If the prison enforcers had little interest in what enforcers who worked directly for the council did, far less questions would be asked. 

The two guards on the inside of the cell block door paid absolutely no attention to them once they had been let in and Ekko wasted no time searching for Drea’s cell. She wasn’t far from where they entered, in a small, damp cell halfway down the black where she sat cross legged on the cement floor with her arms crossed over her chest.

“3718.” Ekko’s deep, commanding voice earned an intrigued tilt of Drea’s head. “It’s your lucky day.”

Drea huffed and looked Ekko up and down with bug-like watery green eyes, not even noticing Jinx at his side. “You better have a good fucking explanation for that monkey suit you’re wearing.”

“Why don’t you come out and I’ll tell you.” He pulled a lever to the right of her cell and the bars slowly creaked open leaving only air between them.

“I-I can’t.” Drea’s eyes darted back and forth down the cell block’s halls, terrified, in search of the other guards who might find her there with her cell door open.

Jinx could feel Ekko giving his all to suppress a sly grin as he held up his forged documents. “I got papers right here that say you can.”

Drea was on her feet in an instant, up off the cold floor, leaving her shadow behind to stand in her place. She eyed the document with disbelief and read its contents over and over. “Where did you get this?”

“Don’t look too excited, and play along.” He whispered to her in warning then straightened his back and nodded at Jinx. “Let’s go.”

Ekko led Drea from her cell and she nervously looked around at the other guards and inmates still stuck in their cells as Jinx brought up the rear. Her familiarity with Ekko was the only thing keeping her calm and Jinx could practically feel the tirade of questions brewing in her head and preparing to be rattled off the second they were out of earshot of anyone important. 

“Alright so what?” Drea hissed in a soft whisper as the three of them swiftly fled through the halls in search of the cell block where Fallon’s father was being kept. “Don’t tell me you sold your soul to the enforcer’s just to get me out. Favor or not I’ll have no choice but to kick your ass for it.”

“Maybe we should wait until we’re actually out of here for explanations.” Jinx answered in Ekko’s place and Drea whipped her head around to catch a better glance at her with her ghastly pale skin and pitch black wig that only made her look more sickly.

“And who is she?” Drea asked, turning back to Ekko who was intent on keeping his eyes forward and head straight.

“...A friend.”

Drea snorted, unconvinced. She kept close to Ekko, not at all thrilled by Jinx’s presence even unaware of who she really was. Thick ragged curls poked out of a long tangled braid that adorned Drea’s back scarcely covering sharp bonepoints poking out of her baggy prison jumpsuit that poorly covered her clearly underfed body. 

Despite having a prisoner with them, the guards standing outside of the southeast cell block didn’t wait to listen to Ekko’s explanation and opened the cell block doors the moment he held up his Tribunal papers. 

It was a giddy feeling, to be sure, to not only be sneaking around right under the enforcer’s noses but for the enforcers to be letting them, no questions asked. It was a giddy feeling, and one that did not last long.

“Eh, hold it?” The two enforcers inside the cell block stopped them the moment Jinx had walked into their line of sight. “Who in the world are you two and why are you walking about with a prisoner? She should be in her cell.”

Ekko cleared his throat and produced his papers, now well rehearsed in his speech. “We’re here collecting two prisoners for trial on behalf of Councillor Talis.”

The man exchanged looks with his partner who was continuing to look Jinx up and down, trying to place her in his memory. “No one said anything about prisoners being moved around, especially in the middle of the night. You say Talis ordered this? The magic boy? Since when is he a councillor?”

“Orders came through only this afternoon, I’m not surprised you haven’t been informed.” Jinx offered as an explanation. “The council, am I right?”

“Come off it, you two aren’t enforcers.” The other one finally spoke up. “I know you, you’re those two idiots that jumped off the edge of the cargo ship a few weeks back after I ordered you to stop.”

Jinx's heart skipped a beat and she exchanged a quick glance with Ekko then scoffed. “That’s absurd, if you’ll excuse us we have real work to do.”

She remembered an enforcer shouting at them to not jump from the railings but it would cost her her life to try and remember what he looked like, how on earth did he remember them in any clarity?

“You think I wouldn’t remember someone I thought I watched jump to death in front of my eyes?” He looked at his partner incredulously then shouted. “Helen, Stiger, get in here!”

A loud grunt was the only indication that something had happened. The man stumbled back into the wall and crumpled to the ground as Jinx’s elbow connected with his temple. It was instinctual, neither she nor anyone around them would have had the ability to stop her even if they had wanted to. 

“Jinx!” Ekko gasped in surprise as his eyes went wide.

Drea’s jaw dropped and cloudy green eyes locked onto neon pink ones. “Jinx?!” 

“Get Marion!” She commanded them as she wrestled herself out of the other enforcers grasp and yanked a wide release leaver with a grunt.

One by one every cell door swung open and for a moment time froze. The enforcer stopped fighting Jinx, Drea stopped staring at her, and the click of the cell block door behind them echoed through the air, then chaos erupted as each and every prisoner rushed from their cells and headed straight for them. 

Chapter Text

An unforeseen complication neither of them had bothered to consider. Drea might have trusted Ekko without hesitation but to the others he and Jinx were just two people in enforcers uniforms with no identifiable difference between them and the real deal- and there would be no inquiries or explanations on either part.

Avoiding a stampede was one thing. Avoiding a stampede of people intentionally trying to down you was another thing entirely. The shimmer that burned through Jinx’s blood bubbled to the surface with each side step, duck, and lunge she took to get through the crowd.

2646. 2646. Amidst the chaos, the sounds of shouting and fighting, the inmate number Fallon’s father had been reduced to repeated in Jinx’s mind. Most of the fleeing prisoners were moving too quickly for her eyes to catch up with their uniforms but fortunately none of them were old enough or bore enough resemblance to Fallon to be the man in question.

Jinx heard Ekko shouting for her faintly in the back of her mind but she continued to push her way through the crowd of raging inmates. Hands grabbed at her, nails clawed at, but none of them seemed all that interested in wanting to attack her so much as they wanted to get past her and she could only hope Ekko was experiencing the same.

She had almost run by him. Overlooked by her expectation that he would be amongst the fleeing crowd, a man no younger than fifty with dark grey dreaded hair and doleful wrinkled eyes stood still in his cell, merely watching everyone else run by, curiously.  

“Are you Marion?” Jinx asked as she looked up to find Ekko emerging through the crowd with Drea.

“Do I know you?” His voice was hoarse and soft as though he hadn’t spoken for a very long time.

Jinx waved Ekko over to her. “No, but come on we gotta go.” She turned to leave and meet up with the others until she noticed that Marion hadn’t moved. “Come on !” She tried ushering him out of his cell again. “We don’t have time for this, we gotta go!”

“Where are we going?” He asked, hesitant to follow her but not willing to deny an enforcer’s command.

Ekko appeared at Jinx’s side out of breath and with Drea in tow. “The chaos of the crowd is our best chance. We've gotta get out of here before backup arrives.”

Jinx glanced sideways at Marion still apprehensively stationary in his cell and groaned. “Marion right?” He nodded. “Yeah great, we have your daughter locked up in a hidden cell in the sewers so you gotta come with us if you want to save her.”

“What-?!”

“Jinx?!”

She grabbed his arm and began hauling him down the hallway, now much more motivated albeit entirely terrified. 

“You have my Fallon?” Marion asked in a shaky voice as he hobbled alongside Jinx as quickly as his atrophied legs would carry him. “Why? What’s she done? What’s her crime?”

Marion’s questions went unanswered if not entirely ignored as Drea spoke up with a pointed look at Jinx. “What I want to know is what she’s doing here. What’ve you done to Ekko to make him forget the years you spent destroying the undercity and killing our friends for kicks? Did you drug him? A new strain of shimmer from Daddy?”

“Drea, stop it.” Ekko warned with a stern hiss but this only seemed to agitate her further.

“Why?!” She demanded, nearly halting her movement altogether. “Why are you standing up for her? Have you forgotten what she’s done to us? To our people? To our friends, our family-“

“I will never forget.” His words formed a black hole in the back of Jinx’s throat that swallowed each and every retort she had been formulating. “But now isn’t the time.”

He would never forget. The words echoed throughout Jinx’s mind louder and louder with each repetition. He would never forget. He didn’t trust her. He was not her friend. How long was she going to delude herself into thinking otherwise?

Jinx swallowed her feelings. They were stupid and irrelevant and she certainly wasn’t going to show them in front of anyone, least of all two perfect strangers. Three strangers. “That big freak downstairs said the enforcers' barracks were on the fifth floor. Let’s get them some uniforms to blend in and get out through the crowd.”

For the first time since they had gotten together, the four of them were silent, only the sound of their footsteps followed them through the prison’s crumbling wet halls as they searched for a back stairwell far from the chaos of fleeing inmates and overwhelmed enforcers. 

Jinx wasn’t upset. Not really. She was disappointed, mostly in herself. She knew better than to get comfortable. She knew better than to grow attached and to hold onto old- irrelevant, sentimental feelings. Silco, as usual, had been right. No one would ever understand her or give her as much grace as he did. And she turned her back on him when he needed her the most.

Ekko led them downstairs, checking each stairwell for clearance before proceeding, when they reached the landing of the fifth floor he froze. 

“Enforcer’s running in and out, they look disoriented.” He whispered to them as he peered around the bend that led to the prison’s officers quarters. “They probably won’t question me and Jinx but they’ll definitely stop you two.”

Jinx rolled her eyes with a huff. “So let’s just go get a couple uniforms for them and they stay here.”

“No.” Ekko shook his head and turned back to them. “I don't want to leave Drea and Marion alone. If anyone else spots them this will all have been a waste. You stay here with them, I’ll go.”

“Oh absolutely fucking not.” Drea hissed with a look of pure disgust in Jinx’s direction.

“Drea-“

“Look, that thing I just did back there for you?” Jinx snapped, cutting Ekko off. “Breaking you out of prison? I got my ass chewed out for even suggesting it— by Ekko ! If I wanted to actually hurt you I would have said to hell with it and left you here. So it’s either you trust me or get locked back up. Pick.”

Drea stood up straighter and opened her mouth to respond but Ekko stopped her. “Look, I know this is a lot but I trust Jinx. So if you trust me, then whatever you have to say has to wait.”

She glared at Ekko, hesitant, like she wanted to tell him if this was the case then she no longer trusted him but she waved a dismissive hand at him. “Whatever. Be careful.”

He nodded, giving one last look to Jinx. Keep them safe . Jinx nodded back and Ekko took off down the hall, straight into the fray of disorganized enforcers all shouting different instructions to each other. 

The moment Ekko left, the air around them became heavy and tense with misgivings and shame. Drea scowled like she’d rather be back in her cell, her sharp teeth that looked just like Scar’s peeking out from right below her lip. 

Marion on the other hand was terrifyingly confused. He had no clue who Jinx was, why Drea hated her, or what was even going on in the first place. He cleared his throat softly and tilted his head to get a better look at Jinx. “I’m sorry, could you tell me what we’re doing? You’re…breaking us out? You’re not enforcers?”

“No.” Jinx breathed with a soft huff like that should have been obvious from the start.

“Her kill count is probably just as high.” Drea barely muttered under her breath. 

Jinx could feel her blood beginning to boil. She was used to people assuming the worst in her but for some reason the smug, know-it-all tone in Drea’s voice just pissed her off. “And how ironic is it that half the people I’ve killed just so happen to be enforcers! Believe me if there’s one thing we have in common it's how little we respect the law. Some of us are just better at doing something about it than others.”

“Right, no, yeah, blowing up safe houses of civilians and forcing kids to work in the mines and shimmer factories is really sticking it to the man. Gee I don’t know how the rest of us never thought of that.” Drea shook her head in disgust. “God you really have something over on Ekko don’t you? What did you save his life so he’d owe you for it? Do you have the rest of our people held hostage somewhere in the fissures?”

“Hey don’t blame me for the shit that the chembarons do! I don't have very much respect for them either.” Drea tried to cut her off but Jinx kept going. “And if you want to know why Ekko trusts me so much, why don’t you ask him what happened to Powder.”

“You probably killed her.” She hissed through clenched teeth. “She’s been dead for years.”

Half true. Jinx certainly had killed Powder, just not in the way Drea had assumed. The more the two argued, the angrier and angrier Drea got and the more uncomfortable Marion looked. Jinx couldn’t tell who Drea was more angry with, her for being there, or Ekko for letting her be.

A sickeningly pleasant smile crept across Jinx’s face as she cocked her head. “Has she?”

For a moment Drea paused, suddenly unsure of herself. Jinx watched as her watery green eyes looked her over. Her pale skin made even pastier by the sleek black fibers of the wig she sported, her fluorescent pink shimmer eyes and the exhausted dark circles and spider veins that circled them. She looked nothing like her memorial portrait back at the Firelights base.

Still, Jinx knew Drea could see a resemblance. Different as she was she still bore the same chubby cheeks and pouty lip, the same smattering of freckles dotted over her straight nose. Drea couldn’t be certain she wasn’t Powder and it was the uncertainty that made her pause.

As quickly as he left, Ekko returned with two clean pressed enforcer uniforms that he handed to Drea and Marion and instructed them to put them on, no questions asked, but the latter fell on deaf ears as Drea yanked the uniform over her prison coverall with such force it was as if she was trying to hurt the officer it had originally belonged to.

“What happened to Powder?”

“What?” Ekko’s eyes shot to Jinx with a combination of surprise and indignation. “What did you say tol her?”

Jinx made to answer but Drea held her hand up to Jinx’s face, a silent gesture that this was between her and Ekko. “Is she Powder?”

Ekko’s gaze never once left Jinx but his eyes softened considerably. She had seen that look before, not recently but plenty of times prior nonetheless. It was a quiet, gentle, look of ease and warmth. It was the kind of look he’d give her whenever he was thinking about how grateful he was to have someone like her in his life. Jinx wasn’t exactly proud of it, but she had a feeling he hadn’t made that face in a very long time.

Drea’s laughter snapped him out of his daze. “Oh my god! That’s why we were never allowed to kill her?”

“No- that- that’s not-.” Ekko stammered, his gaze finally breaking as he turned to meet Drea. “I will tell you everything you want to know when we get back, I swear. Let’s just get back first.”

When no one objected Ekko motioned for them to continue following him down the stairs. Drea stuck close behind him while Jinx stayed further behind with Marion, whose old age and waning muscles kept him considerably slower than the rest. 

Jinx had far too many thoughts jumbling her head than she wanted. How would Drea react when she got to base and found out her husband sort of trusted her just like Ekko? Would she try to incite a manhunt for her when they find out she’s left? Did Ekko still hate and mistrust her for everything she’s done? 

And why did she care about what Ekko thought anyways ? He made it abundantly clear how he felt about her. He called her crazy and delusional. She should have shot him for that alone. The only fool here was her and the boy she was a fool for held her in as high regard as he did for the man who raised her and gave her a home.

The chaos that had taken over the main entrance of Stillwater could be heard before the four of them even made it to the first floor landing. Enforcers from all angles yelled, hit, tackled, and collapsed around fleeing inmates that were just as determined to get off the island if it was the last thing they did.

“Alright.” Ekko surveyed the scene before them and nodded along with his thoughts. “Everyone, heads down and move quickly. No one will stop us if we look like we’re after something.

Jinx kept close behind Marion, making sure he, Drea, and Ekko would be out the doors first. It was…a funny feeling she had realized. Not too long ago she didn’t care about anyone or anything. She lived day to day not really worried if she would make it to the next, half the time she was expecting she wouldn’t.

But something had changed and she couldn’t figure out what. It absolutely was not all of the self improvement bullshit Ekko subjected her to day in and day out. And it certainly wasn’t whatever weird semblance of friendship they had been teetering on the last few weeks. A tentative friendship so weak it crumbled under the slightest hint of pressure without hesitation.

Maybe she just liked feeling useful. 

It was how she adapted so quickly to life with Silco. Her overwhelming grief, pain, and anger had been consistently staved off by an endless list of seemingly meaningless tasks that he always made a point of endlessly thanking and praising her for whenever she completed them. 

It was little things at first. Things that she thought he had her do just to keep her out of his hair. “The office is dark and dull.” He’d tell her. “Liven it up.”

He hadn’t given her any other real instructions and the deep breath he’d sucked in when he returned that evening to find the baseboards covered in pink and blue graffiti along with his ashtray and cigar case made her think his next words would be laced with venom.

Her shoulders were tense and she tried to hide her flinch as he put his hands around them. “How wonderful.” His voice was a song, soft and welcoming. 

Jinx had hugged him then, which still took him by surprise at the time but he always hugged her back, no matter what.

The more important things came later and always around the times she was feeling her lowest. He gave her a hit list and a stun gun on Vi’s birthday. On hers he cleared out a space in the rafters for her and told her to keep watch over his meetings for anything suspicious. When Chross had screamed at her until she cried after she accidentally spilled a shipment of shimmer inside one of his mining carts, corroding the tracks and halting his production for weeks, Silco began teaching her how to take inventory. And on the anniversary of the accident, he asked her to help him with his shimmer injections. 

She was useful and she was happy.

Still, her usefulness amongst the firelights was different somehow. She wasn’t doing things for them because she was ordered to, she was doing them because she wanted to. And she hated it. 

A tight grasp on Jinx’s hand snapped her out of her thoughts and she yanked her hand back to find a blood covered enforcer crawling at her feet. “They- they got out. Get to shore….” He rasped as he clutched his side from pain. “Send backup.”

Jinx nodded in confirmation, a silent acceptance of her order that would not be fulfilled. As she turned to stumble out of the front doors she slammed directly into Marion’s back sending him tumbling down. A quick glance upward revealed the reasoning behind her team's sudden halt in their movement. 

The front entrance to Stillwater Hold was a grim sight. Bodies, bruised and bleeding littered the ground, prisoners and enforcers alike, far more than had been contained in the cell block they released. Some of the bodies slowly, desperately tried to crawl anywhere they could. The ones left standing were either fighting off their captors or attempting to cliff dive into the waters that surrounded the prison to swim ashore. 

“The gondola's down!” Ekko shouted, pointing at the rusty metal cable car they had rode in on, its driver that had brought them there slumped over with the snapped off lever buried deep in his side. “Someone must have stopped him before he tried to leave and call for help.”

Jinx shook her head and pulled Marion along beside her. “No it’s not, come on!”

Ignoring the harsh burn of their calves they ran across the stone ground, covered in slippery puddles of rain and blood. Gunfire, horrified screams, and tearful cries for mercy rained around them in a cacophony so deafening that no one paid any mind to the crack of gunfire before Jinx shouted and stumbled to her knees, one hand pressed tightly against the side of her thigh to stop the steady trickle of blood dripping from it.

“Jinx!”

Ekko was by her side in an instant but she pushed him back up to his feet and used his extended arm to pull herself back up. “Go! Go! I’m fine!”

Searing pain pulsated through Jinx’s entire left side as she half ran half hopped to the busted open gondola. Sitting down on the cold corrugated metal floor she looked out into the crowd of chaos in search of who may have shot her but none made an impression. She didn’t look like herself. It could have been any number of pissed off inmates trying to hurt any enforcer they saw. She couldn’t blame them.

“Jinx this thing is fucked we can’t use this.” Ekko prodded at the broken lever and pushed various buttons with no results with increasing agitation. 

“The fail safe panel.” Jinx hissed, crawling on her knees to the side of the gondola that housed its controls switches and banged a thin sheet of protective metal out of its place with her elbow revealing a round, outdated hand crank. “It needs to be manually spun. Slow as hell but it’ll still work.”

The unmistakable sound of gunfire followed by a shower of shattered glass inside the gondola forced them all to the ground. 

“Shit!” Ekko unbuttoned the front of his stolen uniform and tugged its cravat out of place to wrap around Jinx’s bleeding leg. “Why are they shooting at us?”

“Because we look like enforcers, dumbass.” Jinx ground her teeth at the pain of Ekko’s touch. The wound itself might not have been so bad but the necrotic erosion of shimmer that flowed through her system trying to repair the damage couldn’t be ignored. “Someone start spinning that thing!”

Jinx’s ears began to ring, drowning out any and all outside sounds. Everything burned and ached, she wanted to vomit. She wanted to rid herself of whatever curse Singed had placed upon her. What the hell did he do to her to cause her blood to boil and transmutate into shimmer? 

What parts of her remained the same as before? Was her addled mind even still hers? Did he keep part of her in a jar and use it for his sick twisted experiments like he did with everything else in his lab?

“Allow me, Miss Jinx.” The soft voice of Marion spoke up behind her as he moved to kneel in front of the gondola’s manual crank.

“No, hey, don’t hurt yourself, Marion.”

Jinx tried waving him off and motioning for Ekko to do it but Marion only chuckled and rolled up his sleeves. “Thirty-five years I spent stoking smoke stacks in cargo ships. No disrespect but I don’t think any of you can close two dampers at a time in less than ten seconds.”

Marion cracked his knuckles then gripped the crank and began spinning, each muscle in his arm flexed with each turn. The gondola came to life, creaking and moaning as it began lurching forwards to the sound of more bullets clashing off the side of its thin metal hull.

Ekko and Drea ducked down and stayed below the control panels with Jinx whose crushing grip on her gunshot wound was making her head feel dizzy. A thin layer of sweat coated her brow and she had to keep swatting Ekko’s hands away each time he tried to help her or look at her injuries.

“Stop it!” She spat. “I’m already nauseous, I don't need you making it worse.”

“I’m trying to help!” 

Once the gondola had begun its return to the shore dock and the immediate threat of being stuck on Stillwater Hold’s island dissipated, Jinx was left with no more adrenaline to subside her anger for the things Ekko had said to her that morning.

It stung, she wouldn’t lie, the realization that it didn’t matter what she did or if or how much she changed, Ekko would only ever see her as crazy. She had dug that grave herself but was hurt to know he was willing to push her into it.

“I don’t want your help.” She told him in a huff. “Not anymore.”

He sat back on his heels and scoffed with a quick look to Drea, as if she would be able to explain Jinx’s sudden hostility. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means exactly what you think it means.” Jinx could feel her shimmer soiled blood raging under her skin. It seemed even death could not quell her hot-headedness. “I don’t. Want. Your. Help. Anymore.”

Ekko laughed, gesturing wildly to no one in particular in a state of disbelief he was trying to wrap his brain around. “You don’t want my help anymore?” He asked indignantly.

Though unspoken the rest could still be heard by everyone on the gondola. After everything we’ve been through? After everything we’ve done for each other? With everything still undefined and unspoken between them? Now she was done?

“I think she made it clear that she doesn’t want your help.” Drea chimed in but Ekko ignored her.

There was a tirade forming in the back of Ekko’s throat that only a few huffs and head shakes held back. “We’ll talk about this when we get back.”

There’s nothing to talk about, she thought, but remained silent instead. Neither of their passengers pretended to know what was going on between them and if it had been anyone else they would have shrugged it off as typical Jinx and Ekko bullshit but Marion and Drea shared knowing glances that told a story neither Jinx nor Ekko would understand if their lives depended on it.

The pain in Jinx’s leg slowly began to ebb the closer the gondola screeched to shore but the freezing numbness of her skin told her her brain was trying to block the feeling from coming through. She wished her brain would do that with other kinds of pain. She hated having to feel everything all the time. Just once she wished something could happen and she would feel totally indifferent about it.

Drea’s over-dramatic sigh broke the group’s tense silence. “So. Are we safe enough yet for you to tell me what’s going on between you two?”

“We made a deal.” Ekko bit the inside of his cheek as he explained, his eyes never leaving Jinx’s face. “If she joined us, we’d help her…kill someone.”

“Who?” Drea asked, not willing to give the full story up so easily.

“His name is Singed.” Jinx told her, looking anywhere but at Ekko. “Probably not his real name but it’s what I know him as. He’s a ‘doctor’ in the loosest of terms. I’m sure he probably was one once but now he’s a deranged bald freak who works for… Silco …and specializes in experimental alchemy.”

“And why do you want him dead?” She pressed on, not having had enough details yet.

Jinx rolled her eyes at this. She was asking too many questions. What did it matter why she wanted him dead? She did. And Ekko agreed. That should be the end of it. “Why does anybody want anyone dead?” She asked, then sighed and relented when the look in Drea’s eyes told her she expected every piece of information possible. “He brought me back to life, okay? And I didn’t ask him to and I didn’t want him to. And now everything is…wrong and different and weird and bad. And so I want him dead and believe me you want him dead too.”

Drea gestured for her to continue, one last crucial detail that she needed to hear. “And why’s that?”

Jinx smiled sweetly, as though the secret she knew should be common knowledge. “Singed is the one who created shimmer.”

Both Ekko and Drea’s faces lit up with a million questions just as the gondola came to a shrieking halt at the base of its shore dock. Marion stood up from his crouched position and stretched his hand and back. “It’s been a minute since I’ve done something like that.”

Jinx took a cautious look outside the permanently open door of the gondola. There was little to no one surrounding the dock, only a few fishermen setting up for an early morning catch. News of Stillwater’s prison break hadn’t reached the mainland yet. Perfect.

Wordlessly, she grabbed ahold of Ekko’s outstretched hand and pulled herself into a standing position with a groan. She accepted his help in stepping off the gondola, pretending not to notice when his hand lingered on hers after she’d already proved stable.

This is what she wanted her brain to protect her from. From the part of her mind that obsessed over Ekko. That thought of all of his lingering glances and touches until her skin crawled with a sick desire she had never felt before. He didn’t have thoughts like that about her, so why did she? 

“Heads down, no stopping. Follow me and stay close.” Ekko’s voice commanded them in such a way that Jinx felt compelled, like he had her under a spell. God, she hated him.

The cold night air was a welcome reprieve against Jinx’s sweat slick skin. The night’s shenanigans had finally caught up to her and an illusive chill rushed through her spin. What was wrong with her that she craved such mayhem? 

Footsteps clattered against wet stone as they weaved in and out of back alleyways in search of the abandoned waste ducts that would lead to the firelight’s base. The route was becoming more and more familiar to Jinx each time she travelled it. While there was no one way in particular, the system was not as complex as she had once believed it to be.

“So you’re the famous Powder then?” Drea asked, bemused and delighted. “Ekko’s best friend. The cleverest and kindest person he knew.”

Jinx was too busy wrenching her now blood soaked and filthy enforcers uniform off to pay her any attention. She took a deep satisfying breath once she got the top off and tied it around her waist leaving her in a thin, black, and far more breathable undershirt.

“Can we do this later?” Ekko mumbled, his voice and body thick with exhaustion. Drea held her hands up in surrender and Jinx half believed she was really just trying to stir up trouble. She respected that.

She would have to stir up trouble without her. As they walked, Jinx let her mind wander, making a mental checklist of everything she needed to do before she left. She probably wouldn’t be able to bring everything with her but she could definitely stuff a satchel with clothes and a few weapons.

Then there was the question of where she would go once she left. Should she go back to her hideout first to put her things back and come up with a relatively believable story to tell Silco?

God, what the hell was she going to tell him that didn’t make her sound like a traitor? She didn’t need to tell him everything just enough to content him. Half truths, half lies. Then he wouldn’t be able to pick her story apart enough to find the lies and he’d have to accept it as wholly true. 

She’d tell him when she woke up in Singed’s lab she was angry and hurt and felt betrayed, truth. Then she’ll tell him she wanted space so she kept to herself and explored the undercity to cool off, a lie- and not a very good one.

Then there was this whole…emancipation treaty. Would Silco be mad that she hasn’t been there by his side during this? What would be unforgivable in his eyes? Killing Singed definitely would be.

So lost in her own spiraling thoughts, Jinx hadn’t realized they arrived back at base until the massive storm drain door, rusted and hidden with vines, was being spun open. 

“You stupid son of a bitch!”

They couldn’t have been more than three feet in the door before Scar rounded on Ekko. “Movement in the green light district, I should have fucking known. We wasted our time dragging our asses down there for nothing. Do you have any idea the shit that’s about to go down when topside hears about a prison break?”

“Now I know damn good and well you’re not yelling at the boy that just risked his neck to bring me back to you.” Drea pushed Ekko aside and stood in front of her husband, one eyebrow raised and her razor sharp teeth bared. “The words you’re looking for are ‘thank you’. Seven months without me and you’ve lost all sense of decorum.”

Scar’s entire demeanor changed at the sight of Drea, her body thin from lack of nutrition, the stolen, ill-fitting, enforcer’s uniform that completely consumed her. He pressed a trembling hand to his heart as he stumbled forward for her, landing in a kneeling position at her feet where he pulled her down to the ground with him and held her tightly as though he were afraid she’d disappear if he let go.

“We’ll talk later.” Ekko clapped Scar on the back of his shoulder to no response other than soft barely concealed sobs from both of them.

“Daddy?” 

Fallon stepped out of a crowd of firelights that had gathered at the sound of commotion, her voice shaky and on the verge of tears.

“Hey sweet pea.” Was all Marion managed to get out before Fallon was running towards him and jumping into his arms. Jinx had seen Fallon fight, curse, drink, steal, but for that one moment she was just a little girl who missed her dad.

A lump swelled in Jinx’s throat and she looked away from the happy reunion. Silco would never greet her that way, not now. He had grown accustomed to her forms of affection over the years, holding onto his arm, leaning their heads together, draping her legs over his lap on the couch. But welcoming her home with a warm smile and open arms? Not likely.

Vander would have. He gave great hugs, as many as she needed. Vi would too. In fact she had tried, when Jinx lit that stupid flare and she found her after all those years thinking she was dead. Vi had hugged her. Then the enforcer and Ekko had to come and ruin it. She looked at Ekko standing a few feet away from her, biting his lip nervously as he looked around the base and decided she should hit him for it.

She made to walk towards him when Fallon stopped her. “Jinx, please please please, can my dad stay in our bunker tonight please please please?”

“We have rooms for him, Fallon?” Ekko reminded her but she shook her head.

“Pretty pretty please?” She begged once more.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Fallon’s arms were wrapped around Jinx before she could stop it and no amount of resistance could shrug the firelight off her until she had squeezed out all of her happiness.

Jinx dragged her feet across the ground absentmindedly digging a small groove in the dirt. She couldn’t pack a bag and leave if Fallon and her dad were hanging around. The morning then, she figured. When everyone was busy with their morning routines and chores she could slip out unnoticed.

“Hey.”

She started and turned to find Ekko beside her. “What?”

“I uh- I know you don’t want to hear it but, I’m sorry for what I said to you.” He watched her closely for any kind of reaction and when she didn’t provide one he continued. “I don’t know why I pretend I’m not just as stubborn and hot-headed and… crazy as you. Let me make it up to you. Come up to my workshop with me, I wanna show you something.”

There he goes again with that word. Jinx’s fingernails dug into her palm and she took a deep breath hoping to dull the growing buzz in her head. “I’m not crazy.” She said then let her eyes wander to Scar and his wife and Fallon and her dad. It’s not like she had anything better to do. “Let me change out of these sweaty bloody clothes first.”

“I don’t mean crazy as an insult, you know.” He told her, moving slightly to try and catch her eye. “Crazy like…wild?…Passionate?”

“I’ll meet you up there.” She walked away from him without another word and went up to her bunker. 

Jinx left her stolen and filthy uniform in a pile at the foot of her bed in favor of an undershirt and pair of baggy sleep pants. She didn’t know what Ekko wanted to show her and doubted it would even hold any value but she dragged herself up the never ending spiral staircase to his workshop anyways.

Ekko had changed as well, not into sleep clothes but a more at ease pair of pants and tank top he had covered with his working apron and tool belt. He stood up from a small wooden stool when she entered and gestured for her to sit down.

“Come, sit.” He started shuffling things around on his desk, drivers, papers, pens. “So I found something and I don’t really know what to make of it. I’ve been trying to figure it out for weeks but I’m missing something. I thought maybe you could take a look? Tell me what you think?”

He handed her a ragged peeling folder and she began flipping through it. She recognized the contents immediately, the papers Ekko had been obsessing over, writing and rewriting and scrapping, every time she caught him in here. The papers he wouldn’t let anyone so much as look at. Hextech runes . Her fingers traced the small intricate shapes he’d recreated and trialed in various sequences.

“Where did you find these?” She asked. Her own notes and theories on hextech had been stolen from her hideout by Silco or one of his goons after she disappeared but she could still remember a few combinations.

Ekko laughed awkwardly at the memory. “I accidentally bumped into Jayce Talis when Heimerdinger and I snuck into the university to get those stinging nettles for you.” He explained. “Didn’t know what papers were his and what were inside the student tour packet the professor gave me and he was too distracted by Heimerdinger to notice either.”

Jinx flipped through page after page. Ekko hadn’t made heads nor tails of anything. He had been rewriting combinations over and over with no results because he didn’t have magic . She put the folder down on his desk and tsked.

“What have you been trying to do with this?” She asked, not finding anything around the workshop that seemed even remotely magical or even powerful.

“I don’t know?” He admitted, looking more annoyed by the fact that he was embarrassed than by the fact that he didn’t know what he was doing. “I figured these had to be some variants of runes they use in hextech and I thought maybe if I found the right combination we could make something with it. But his notes make no sense, they’re all short- one word depictions and equations. What do you think?”

She thought for a moment, biting at her bottom lip as she racked her brain around how much she wanted to tell him she knew. “I think you’re missing one crucial detail here.” Her eyes moved from his face to his note then back to him and only continued when he said nothing. “You don’t have magic, genius. You can combine runes all you want but you don’t have the power to activate it.”

“Magic…” Ekko’s eyes lit up almost instantly and he flipped open his notes to start writing again. “That crystal I took from you, I gave it to Vi-“

“Save it.” Jinx cut him off and shook her head. “I took it back, it’s gone.”

“Where is it?”

“Where do you think?”

The light in his eyes died a little bit and he leaned against the desk. Jinx got up from the stool Ekko had offered her instead choosing to sit on top of his desk next to where he stood. She felt a little bad, he had seemed excited to show her the runes if not hopeful she would know what to do with them- which…she did.

“…What if we got another one?” He asked, and it felt more like a challenge than anything else. “You think we could figure this out?”

Jinx sighed and suddenly she remembered why she hadn’t sought Ekko out all those years, why she didn’t let him get close- she couldn’t say no to him. “I…might already know how to read and manipulate some of hextech’s runic patterns. Hypothetically.”

Ekko turned toward her slowly, his face agleam and playful. “Would you hypothetically want to do some experimenting with me?”

An involuntary giggle escaped her mouth and she clapped her hand over it. She’d never had a science partner before. The weapon she had been building could have been incredibly powerful if she had only had enough time to test and tweak it.

“One condition.” She warned, her smile gone now the picture of sincerity. 

“Let’s hear it.”

Jinx unclasped his tool belt from around his waist and wrapped it around her own. “I get to be in charge.”

“…We’ll see.” Ekko rolled his eyes and held his hand out for her to shake before remembering the wound that should have been causing her pain. “Oh, here, let me see your leg.”

“No.” She told him, far too quickly, and shrunk away from him.

He knew. She knew he knew, why else would he ask to see it? She wasn’t actively bleeding anymore or limping or hissing when she moved. She should have played it up, pretended. How in the world did she forget already?

“Why not?” He stalked across his workshop to grab a small linen cloth out of a crooked hanging drawer. “I’ve seen plenty of gunshot wounds, let me patch it up.”

She shook her head. “It’s fine. It’s patched. Did it myself.”

“I’ve seen your ‘patch ups’.” He snorted. “Just let me make sure it’s clean at least.”

“Huh uh.” Jinx laid her hand flat against the side of her thigh, sucking in a wince.

Ekko drew back, confused by her reluctance and it dawned on Jinx that he might not have known but her reaction just blew it. “Stop being weird. Let me see your damn leg!”

“Fine! Fine! There, okay!” She yanked up the bottoms on her pant leg until it bunched up at the very top of her thigh revealing her gunshot wound that had already begun forming a soft pink scar, clear of any blood, dirt, or debris. “There, it’s clean! Alright?! Leave it alone!”

She watched the chain of reactions on Ekko’s face in time as they came. First he was satisfied that she finally showed him her wound. Then he was confused as to why it didn’t look the way a fresh gunshot wound should. Finally, his eyes widened in the realization that the shimmer that plagued her system like a parasite had been working overtime to heal her from the moment that gun had been fired. 

He moved seemingly without thinking, one hand on the inside of her thigh holding it still and the other gently thumbing over the soft pink of her skin. Jinx could feel her cheeks burn red and despite the fact that she was already sweltering in the summer heat, Ekko’s cold hands somehow still managed to feel like fire against her.

Was he even aware of what he was doing? She wondered as his fingers splayed, softly rocking her leg back and forth to see the scar from all angles. Jinx clenched her jaw, there was something seriously wrong with her that a single touch had her this riled. She didn’t even like him! In fact she was mad at him!

Still…as mad as she was she would far from object to his hand moving further up her thigh. To have it settle on her hip, for him to pull her closer to the edge of the desk, closer to him.

“Ekko.” His name came from her lips strained and hushed.

“Hm?” It took him a great deal of effort to pull his eyes from the mark on her leg and up to her face. Jinx looked to him, down at his hands on her thigh then back up to him, a silent request to reorient himself to reality. He followed her gaze and wrenched his hands from her, balled them up into fists and held them against his chest. “Sorry I didn’t- that wasn’t-...how is this possible?”

“It’s the shimmer.” She sighed, her dizzy daydream of Ekko’s touch dissipating into night. “Cuts, scraps, bullet holes, they don’t seem to last long. I don’t even know if it would let me die.”

Ekko chuckled more in discomfort than amusement. “Let’s not test that theory.”

“I don’t know if it’s like this forever or maybe it will fade or go away eventually.” Jinx confessed, hoping he wouldn’t be able to tell just how much the thought scared her from just the sound of her voice. “I don’t…I don’t know what he did to me.”

Ekko was talking, something about her not needing to worry, that they were going to take care of him but his exact words fell on deaf ears as the ringing in Jinx’s mind drowned out anything else. 

The metal table she had been strapped to was so cold no matter how long her burning body laid against it. She had screamed so hard her throat, already irritated from the smoke and chemicals of her detonated bomb, began bleeding leaving a sickening metallic taste in her mouth.

All the while Singed had work on her, his body shifting back and forth between himself and that girl but his movements never faltered, never slowed. It was muscle memory, a routine he had experimented and performed a hundred times over.

“Maybe we don’t need a crystal.” She mumbled more to herself than anyone but Ekko perked up at the suggestion. “Hextech works by channeling the energy of the crystal into different runic patterns to output a specific function but what if we could generate an energy source without it?”

“We’d never be able to produce the amount of energy a gemstone can.” Ekko tapped his eraser chewed pencil anxiously against his desk. “We’d short circuit the entire undercity trying to.”

Jinx scoffed, it was astounding how quick Ekko was to assume the worst in things. “Okay, so it’s not gonna go nuclear but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. It’s worth a shot, that's the whole point of experimenting.”

They lapsed into silence as Ekko mulled it over in his head then slowly began nodding as he put the pieces together. It could work. It probably wouldn’t but the possibility was too tantalizing to refuse. 

Exhaustion was finally settling and Jinx yawned involuntarily before scooting off Ekko’s desk and bringing herself to her feet. It didn’t matter how tired she was the moment she laid down her mind would race and she wouldn’t be tired anymore, which pissed her off more than anything.

“Hey, if you want, you can stay in my room tonight since Marion’s staying with Fallon.” Ekko offered and Jinx’s breath caught.

“With you?”

She almost couldn’t believe the offer. Ekko’s bed was bigger than hers but it certainly wasn’t roomy, no doubt they would be right up against each other. Not that they hadn’t slept in the same bed before, but that was when they were kids. When things like that didn’t matter, when everyone in the undercity shared a bed because there wasn’t any room in the cramped apartments people occupied, when she didn’t have some weird stockholm-y fixation on him. Her heart raced, her throat felt dry. It wasn’t like that, it obviously wasn’t. It couldn’t be. 

“No.” He said with a breathy laugh that Jinx half heartedly matched in the most nonchalant manner she could muster. “I’m just gonna stay in here tonight, see if I can figure out any more rune functions.”

“Right.” Obviously. She could hear laughter in the back of her mind and it took everything in her not to shout at it. “Cause, that would be weird if we did sleep together. In the same bed, I mean.”

Ekko hummed, but not in agreement. “We’ve done it before.”

“Doesn’t matter because I am not tired.” It was clear she was unconvincing but he didn’t argue. “I um, I can take a look at your notes and see which ones I can remember the function for.”

He handed her a copy of his notes and she got to work. A few of the runes were straight forward once identified. Time, speed, force, stagnation, dozens of them all combined together in intricate patterns that served different purposes in perfect harmony. 

Jinx wasn’t a scientist or inventor or engineer by any means but she did love a good pattern, and one was already forming in her head that matched the same sequences she had already mapped out in her own stolen notes.

“Hey, what did you want to talk about earlier?” Ekko’s voice pulled her from her trance and she looked up.

“Huh?”

“Earlier tonight.” He clarified. “Before we got Drea and Marion you said there was something you wanted to talk about when we got back to base? Then again on the gondola.”

She was leaving . She was going to tell him she was leaving. She was going to tell him and hope that he didn’t try and stop her, that they could end on good terms. “Oh. You know, I uhm- I can’t remember. Must not have been important.”

God she felt pathetic. How many times had she decided she was going to be done with this charade only to change her mind at the last second. Was it going to be like this forever? Would it kill her to make a choice and stick to it for once?

Ekko accepted her answer without question so they continued working through the sunrise. Jinx couldn’t remember when they stopped. She couldn’t remember how they ended up on the floor together, their backs against the wall under Ekko’s desk, asleep with her head against his shoulder. They didn’t bring it up, it didn’t seem necessary. 

•• •

“I don’t know what you think Professor what’s his face is going to tell you that we don’t already know.” Jinx gripped as she picked at her nails in Heimerdinger’s underground lab he had established in the Firelight’s bunker. “It’s not like he’s going to hand over a crystal and tell us to go nuts.”

They had made an almost impressive lack of progress in supplying their runes with enough energy to activate them without a crystal and Jinx had grown bored.

Cranking a wheel by hand only made her arm hurt. Wiring into every spare battery they could locate just drained the battery. Fire, which had been one of the runes they were trying to activate, ironically did nothing.

Jinx suggested they tap into the base’s power grid but Ekko refused, not wanting to risk short circuiting it. So he called on his fuzzy friend Jinx had been meaning to visit yet never got around to.

“I told you we’re not telling him about the runes.” Ekko sighed. “We’re asking about alternative energy sources. Do not mention what we’re actually doing. In fact, don't say anything.”

The more time they spent failing the more downcast he’d become and every time Jinx found herself sympathizing with him or trying to reassure him she’d prick her fingers with a pin for it. The pads of each one bore tiny dots and purple shadows and every time she saw them all she could think about was the nauseating flutter she had felt in her stomach when Ekko’s hand was wrapped around her thigh.

It made her want to fight him. How dare he occupy such an annoying and impossible to ignore part of her brain. It was like a parasite leeching off her cache of common sense and decorum, the latter of which was already running thin. 

“Whatever.” She mumbled, digging her fingernails into her palm.

After what felt like an eternity in Jinx’s impatient mind, the heavy metal door of the lab swung open and the little puffball professor puttered in with an even smaller, and irrefutably cuter puffball, with him. 

“Ekko, my lad!” His cheery voice was like nails on a chalkboard to Jinx. “How marvelous it is to see you, and you’ve brought Miss Jinx, how nice. How can I be of assistance to the two of you?”

Under exactly no circumstances did Jinx trust the yordle for a multitude of reasons. He was a councilor for starters, former technically, but what difference did that make? He had hundreds of years to use his knowledge, power, and wealth to fix the undercity but instead chose to do nothing. 

“We’ve uh…had some problems with our power grid lately.” Ekko began with his prepared lie. “We’re wondering if you had some ideas on how we can give it some more juice.”

The professor hummed as he hoisted himself up on a stool and thought. “Power can be finicky especially down here, I’ve found. There are many sources of renewable energy but none seem very reliable in this case. The sun for instance is a wonderful resource and yet its rays only just scratch the surface of the fissures.”

“We’re looking for something a little more explosive.” Jinx offered, then after a side eye from Ekko added, “Metaphorically of course. Something that can give us a momentary burst if you will.”

“A momentary burst…” Heimerdinger began flipping through an old academy textbook, muttering to himself as he read.

Jinx had seen the power of the crystals in action, more times that she wanted to remember. The bright flash of blue they exuded when its commanding runes took over burned in the back of her eyes each time she closed them. Sometimes she wished hextech had never been invented. Maybe if it hadn’t her family would still be alive and she wouldn’t be…wrong.

“Well this is a puzzling subject. There are many quick charges of energy that can be manipulated and utilized, why one strike of lightning could power, dare I say, the entire undercity.” He chuckled to himself at the thought. “Were it not nearly impossible to mobilize, it could be just as powerful as hextech!”

Brown eyes locked onto pink as Ekko seemed to have the same thought as Jinx. Lightning . Impossible to harness, but maybe with the right combination of runes they could. 

Heimerdinger slammed his textbook shut and turned to them, determined and confident. “Leave it to me! I’ll pay a visit to some of my students back at the academy. The kids these days are always finding new theories to test out. I’d like to hear what they have to say.”

Ekko thanked him for his advice then quickly turned to leave, a determined gleam in his eyes. She knew she probably should have followed him or he at least was expecting her to but she had no desire to nauseate herself by subjecting herself to his presence any more than she had to. 

“So, what are you working on?” Jinx asked Heimerdinger as he turned on several Bunsen burners. “Something complex and top secret?”

Heimerdinger laughed at the thought. “Oh ho! Nothing of the sort! A tonic to soothe a sour stomach is all.”

Jinx couldn’t be sure why but she didn’t believe him. That was fine, that was fair. He didn’t trust her, she didn’t really trust him and quite frankly thought it was strange that Ekko did. 

The little professor glanced nervously at Jinx then took a deep breath and kept working. Her arms crossed over her chest almost instinctively as her eyes narrowed in on him. He clearly had something he wanted to say, and what kind of professor didn’t want to share with the class?

“You should know Miss Jinx,” he began, timidly tapping his fingers together in thought when he realized she actually wanted to hear him out. “In light of this proposed truce between the cities, I have no intentions of revealing your location to the council.” 

The bright blue flash returned to her eyes accompanied by muffled laughter as she remembered that the council wanted proof of her capture in exchange for Zaun’s freedom. Her capture, which allegedly had been promised by Silco.

They were mistaken, simply put. He wouldn’t do that. It didn’t matter if he was mad at her or resented her for leaving, he wouldn’t do that. The only problem was, the more she told herself that, the less she believed it. 

“You’re the only person I can trust with this.” His last words to her echoed inside her head over and over again until she felt dizzy. “I need you. Now more than ever.”

“What are you even doing down here?” She snapped, feeling the need to take her anger out on something rather than sit and dwell on it.

Heimerdinger turned off the burners and sat down next to Jinx on his stool. “I had such high hopes for this city, and for the longest time those hopes were not only met but amplified tenfold!” His smile waned as he nodded solemnly to himself. “But as Piltover soared, the undercity continued to sink. I am deeply regretful of my complicity in its sundering. I’ve proved my dedication and devotion to Piltover, it’s time to do the same down here.”

Jinx rolled her eyes. How was he planning to do that by tinkering around down here in the sewers? He had opportunity after opportunity to make things right when he was on the council. He had unlimited power to implement hextech into the undercity, to make their lives easier, to provide educational assistance to the kids down here. He did none of it. Did he ever even think about it? And now he’s waited until he’s no longer a councilor with any level of authority to try and change things. 

Regrets. What the hell did he know about it? “Yeah well we all have things we regret, not that it means anything.”

“Oh on the contrary!” Heimerdinger delighted and Jinx knew she was about to be annoyed. “Having regrets is part of living. You’ll never know what you want your future to hold until you know what you don’t want and you’ll never learn if you don’t live and regret. Our mistakes are only mistakes if we don’t learn from them.”

Sounded like a bunch of bullshit to Jinx. If she didn’t know any better she’d say the professor and that quack Keir were in cahoots to make her honor her emotions or whatever. She didn’t want to think about the things she wanted or didn’t want or regretted, it made her sick. And what was she to do when she regretted her entire life? How was she to know what she wanted if she wanted everything to be different. That kind of change just wasn’t realistic. Not for her at least. Not for someone who ruined everything.

“Yeah but, what if you don’t know what you want?” She asked in earnest. “You know like what if you never really had to think about what you wanted before because it didn’t matter but then when you do have the chance to think about it you don’t know what you want because you never thought things would change?”

He smiled sympathetically, as if he understood the silent part of what she was trying to say. “I don’t believe in the uncertainty. There is a distinct difference between what a person wants and what they’re afraid to admit they want. Humans are simple creatures in the most complex way, they’re the only species that consistently make it more difficult for themselves to exist. Your time on this planet is short, you needn't waste it struggling to decide what you want out of it. You have to make that decision before life makes it for you.”

Jinx mumbled a halfhearted thanks and excused herself. Life will decide for her. Heimerdinger was right, annoyingly so. If she did nothing, eventually, something would happen. The firelights would fight with Silco and probably lose and would she be okay with that after all this time? If she stayed and never went back to Silco would he forgive her for abandoning her? Would he even accept her choice or was he just biding his time waiting for this deal with topside to be sealed before sending all his forces after her?

• ••

She didn’t speak for two days, intently ignoring each and every attempt made by both Fallon and Ekko. It was then that she decided. She decided not only that she shouldn’t have to choose but also that she wasn’t going to. They were going to settle their differences if it was the last thing she did. If Ekko could make peace with her then he could do it with Silco and if he ever cared about her at all then he would agree. And if not then she knew where she stood, and life will have decided for her.

Her entire body felt heavy as she dragged herself across the bunker and up to Ekko’s workshop he had been manically sequestered in for the last two days. She was nervous, not to tell him she wanted peace between him and Silco, but because there was a very real possibility of him telling her there was no chance. At least Ekko telling her he had no interest in playing nice would kill her unwelcomed, unwanted, and unwarranted feelings for him. She hoped.

“We need to talk.” She demanded the moment she barged through his door then fell silent.

Jinx had never seen someone look so deranged before as Ekko did in that moment, crouched down on top of his desk with a wire coat hanger unbent and reshaped pointed towards the ceiling. He held his hand up to her, a silent ‘not now’ but she ignored him.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Shhh shhh shhh. Do you hear that?” She let her mouth hang open, was this what she looked like to others when she was having a moment? “Thunder. It’s about to storm, now's our chance.”

A low rumble in the distance confirmed his outwardly manic musings and he jumped down from his desk and rushed to the other side of his workshop where a makeshift switchboard connected to thirteen different, presumably dead, battery stores. “I hooked them up to the generator to make sure they could still hold a charge, we’re gonna unplug it, each connector is gonna get a different rune combination, we’ll hook up the lightning conduit and wait for it to strike. If one bolt of lightning can infuse these battery stores with runic power, there's no telling how much we could do with it.”

“Hang on, there’s something I want to talk to you about.” Jinx’s hands trembled as Ekko placed a graver into them, instructing her to etch the runes directly on the switchboard itself.

“Let’s have each one start with force, that’ll be the primary function of each store.”  He rambled off various combinations of runes for her to tack on to each outlet as he pried the generator’s heavy power cable from the bottom of the board. “Light and illusion, alchemy and combustion, try one that’s just force multiplied three times.”

Irritated at being ignored, Jinx didn’t bother hiding her scowl as she held the graver tightly in her fist and began loudly scraping it against the switch board’s delicate metal leaving each dictated rune in its place. “Listen.” She hissed as she worked. “Professor what’s his face gave me some advice if you will and it got me thinking.”

“Do you think it would be more efficient to write the runes directly on the cables that are connecting each store?” Ekko flipped through his notes, eyebrows furrowed together as he chewed on the eraser of his pencil. “I wonder what the difference in translation would be. Try putting some of the runes on the cables themselves.”

“Ekko, I’m trying to talk to you!” 

A bright flash of blue followed by booming rumbles interrupted her and Ekko abandoned his notes as the lights of his switchboard softly glowed in response. “It’s working, quick hook up the lightning conduit before the next strike!”

He was joking. He had to be. He should stop doing that, he wasn’t very funny. She could be unfunny too, if that’s what he wanted. Deliberately, she walked as slow as possible over to the long copper cable that dangled from the ceiling and snaked through an open window. Without taking her eyes off Ekko she secured it around a loose bolt atop the switchboard and hand screwed it tightly into place. He seemed content with this albeit annoyed at her lack of urgency, that was until she bent down and picked up the generator’s discarded power cable. 

“What are you doing? Don’t plug the generator in you’ll-”

“You’re not listening to me!”

“You’re gonna short circuit the entire grid!”

His frustration was ironic and delightful. He didn’t want to listen, neither did she. Jinx forcefully jammed the power cable into its slot it had been removed from just minutes before and the room went cold. 

A glistening flash of blue engulfed them, far brighter than before. Jinx felt nothing other than numb. Ekko might have been shouting, his mouth was open but she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t her own scream she was hearing over the deafening crack of thunder and her body being thrown into the wall behind her.