Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A stale, musty scent assaulted Jinx’s nostrils as she strode through the network of old pipes and dark shafts, Ekko at her side, guiding the way. The clinking and clanking of her box of scraps reverberated sharply off the walls of the tunnel, making their otherwise silent journey sound like a heated debate between old, rusty robots.

The quiet left Jinx alone with her thoughts—dangerous, as always. Vi had been all too eager to tag along, which left Jinx feeling a little guilty for shutting her down. She was grateful, of course. Grateful that Vi, after everything, still loved her enough to chase after her, to save her from herself.

But Vi’s princess was in another castle. She’d had her hero moment, and now it was time for her to get the girl. The battle looming on the horizon was inching closer every second, and Vi deserved to know the kind of love Caitlyn could give her before the world went to shit again.

It had taken some convincing, but Vi had finally caved when Jinx pinky promised they’d see each other again. No matter what. No matter where. No matter how.

Sevika departed, too. Said something about gathering allies, though Jinx wasn’t sure how much success she would find in that endeavor. The last time she’d assembled a crowd around her, it had ended in a free cable car ride to a maximum security prison for everyone involved. Odds were, people weren’t exactly itching for another.

Which just left her and Ekko, two peas in a pod, if peas could have a long history of reluctant violence and guilt-ridden sadness towards one another.

The silence between them was heavy, the kind that pressed down on her shoulders. Every footstep echoed too loudly in the cramped tunnels, filling the void they both seemed unwilling to breach. Jinx’s eyes flicked toward Ekko’s back as he led the way, his shoulders squared and steady, his grip firm on the glowing contraption slung across his shoulder. His silhouette was calm and composed, but she wasn’t buying it.

She could feel the unspoken tension in the air, sharp and unrelenting. It pressed against her chest, clogging her throat like smoke, but neither of them seemed to want to address it. What would they even say? She’d killed his friends. They’d tried to kill her. Maybe some things were too broken to be fixed.

And yet… here they were.

Her hands tightened around the box of scraps, her palms sweaty against the metal. She could almost hear the faint echo of their last battle—the ticking of his stopwatch, the crack of gunshots ringing out, the sound of his bat connecting with her cheekbone as she realized she’d underestimated him. 

And then that sickening, awful silence that stretched over them when they both remembered who they used to be.

Jinx stifled a curse as she stumbled over yet another jagged piece of metal sticking out of the floor. She caught herself before she hit the ground, her box of scraps rattling noisily in protest. “Stupid tunnels,” she muttered under her breath.

She really hoped Ekko knew where he was going, because without him, Jinx would be hopelessly lost. Some poor schmuck would find her years later, her unkempt hair grown even longer than she had it before, completely feral and living off of rat meat.

Damn those enforcers for taking her lighter. And of course, Ekko didn’t have a torch or anything on him on account of him having just returned from the realm of heebie-jeebies—which she still didn’t totally believe, by the way. It was more likely he ate some random mushrooms off a cave wall (who does that?) and had a pleasant trip in which his mind conjured up some impossible utopia. 

Still, there was one thing she couldn’t quite explain away: the device slung over his shoulder. Sure, he could’ve ripped off her signature monkey design and slapped it onto some gadget to sell his story about an alternate Powder, but that didn’t account for the orb.

It sat in the middle of the capsule, a pulsating prism suspended there as if by magic, a lone, twinkling star in an empty sky. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen, and at the moment, it was their only source of illumination as they navigated their cast iron labyrinth.

“What even is that thing?” Jinx asked, nodding toward the glowing device.

“A time machine,” Ekko tossed out casually.

Jinx snorted, propping the box up on her knee so she could readjust her grip. “Fine then. Keep your secrets.”

Ekko gave her one of his signature smarmy grins he always wore when he felt he had a leg up on her. “No, really. When I pull this cord, I go back in time four seconds.”

“Wow,” Jinx deadpanned. “A whole four seconds. Truly life changing.”

A shadow passed over Ekko’s face, his smirk quickly dropping away. He refocused his gaze on the tunnel ahead of him, the soft glow fading into the distance. “You have no idea,” he said quietly, his shoulder brushing hers as he moved closer.

The sudden sincerity in his tone made Jinx falter for a moment, raising a crooked brow at him. “You’re… serious? You actually think you made a time machine? And they say I’m crazy.”

“Uh, no. I know I made a time machine,” the boy said, rolling his eyes. Jinx opened her mouth for another quip, but Ekko cut her off, his expression shifting into something more thoughtful. “Think of any number between one and a million.”

Jinx stared at him, trying to decide if he was messing with her or not. After a moment, she shrugged and went along with it. Before she could even say she had a number ready, Ekko beat her to it.

“It’s six,” he said flatly. “Real creative choice, by the way.”

Her boots squeaked to a halt—or maybe that was the sound of her jaw hitting the floor. “How did you—”

“Because I asked you what your number was, and you told me,” he explained as casually as if he was talking about the weather. “Then I hit the rewind.”

Jinx narrowed her eyes. “You’re bullshitting me,” she accused, only to gasp as Ekko spoke the words right along with her.

“What the hell? Stop that! It’s creepy.”

Every word she spoke, Ekko mimicked in perfect unison. It was uncanny, like he was a step ahead of her every thought. Her fingers tightened around the edge of her box of scraps, her mind racing. Either Ekko was a mindreader—which she seriously hoped wasn’t the case—or he was telling the truth about time travel. Out of the two, she definitely preferred the latter.

No one was allowed in her head but her. Sure, that didn’t stop the dozen voices constantly scratching at the walls of her skull, but still…

“Time travel,” she murmured, still halfway in disbelief. “You really figured out time travel. That’s…”

Her voice trailed off as the implications began to hit her. How many times had she desperately longed to rewind the clock, to stop herself from ruining everything? How many nights had she pounded her fists against her head, begging to undo every miserable mistake she’d ever made? If what Ekko was saying was true, then maybe—just maybe—there was a way.

“—can’t take all the credit,” Ekko was saying. “You helped me. Well, the other you. And Heimerd—”

The box in Jinx’s hands hit the ground with a deafening clatter, the sound ricocheting through the tunnel like a gunshot. Ekko whirled, panic written on his face, and she grabbed the straps of his vest and squeezed like he was her lifeline.

“Bring Isha back,” she pleaded, her eyes wide as saucers as they searched his own.

“What?” Ekko froze, caught off guard. His hands instinctively rose to cover hers, steadying them, though he didn’t try to pry her away.

“And Vander,” Jinx continued, her words tumbling out in a frantic rush. “And Silco. Mylo. Claggor. Benzo.” Each name was a fresh wound, the syllables cutting through her like a blade. Her breath hitched, her throat tightening as tears threatened to spill down her cheeks. “Everyone. Please.”

The shock on Ekko’s face gave way, and his eyes softened in something like empathy, or worse, pity. Then he said those words that landed like a sledgehammer against her ribs.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“You can,” Jinx insisted, her voice rising as panic edged in. “You have to.”

Ekko shook his head slowly, his expression steady but pained. Jinx’s grip on his vest faltered, her fingers loosening. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said softly. “I can only go back four seconds. Any longer, and… well, it’s not pretty.”

“But… but you were sent to another dimension , you said so yourself!” Her voice cracked as she yanked him closer again, desperation surging back. “If that’s possible, then surely you can go back more than four measly seconds. We just need to give it more juice!”

Ekko’s brows pinched downwards. “Jinx, stop ,” he said firmly, pushing her back with just enough force to create some space between them. “It’s not possible—not without consequences. Deadly consequences. You have to trust me on that.”

No. No, he had to be wrong. There had to be a way. The device was new, untested—Ekko may have built it, but that didn’t mean he understood everything about it. Her hands shot up, nails digging into her scalp as she clawed through her hair. Her breaths came faster, spiraling, and the voices stirred again, scratching at the edges of her mind like uninvited passengers.

You could improve it. You could make it work. Just like Fishbones. He doesn’t know what he’s got.

Warm hands wrapped around hers, pulling them gently away from her head. Jinx’s wild gaze snapped to Ekko as his fingers brushed over the back of hers, tracing the dry, crusted blood around her cuticles. His touch was steady, grounding, as if silently willing her to stay present.

“Hey, hey. Listen, please,” Ekko said, his voice soothing. “I wish I could bring them all back. And believe me, if it were possible, I’d have done it already. But I just can’t.”

Jinx squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head as her breath came in sharp, uneven bursts. “What good is a time machine if you can’t fix anything with it?” she asked, her voice cracking.

Ekko didn’t respond right away. When she opened her eyes, his expression hadn’t changed. That same look of quiet pity and understanding still met her, unwavering. He gave her hands a gentle squeeze. “Sometimes, a few seconds is all it takes to save a life,” he said softly.

Her brow furrowed as his words sank in, and then her breath hitched as realization crashed over her. “You used it on me,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Back there. You—I… Oh god.”

Ekko’s gaze fell, like he couldn’t bear to meet her eyes, and that told her all she needed to know. And suddenly all she could think about was how she nearly failed Isha again. Nearly let Vi down again. Nearly killed Ekko again. Their frenzied voices chittered in her ear, angry, scolding, disappointed.

But despite her shortcomings, she was still here. Out of pure happenstance, she was still alive.

A sharp, involuntary laugh burst from her lungs, filling the empty, still air with deranged mania. Wasn’t it funny? Just so funny. Hilarious, even, how she just. Couldn’t. Die. 

Every time she tried, the universe found a new way to stop her, each more ridiculous than the last. A new variation of Shimmer. A kid she barely knew throwing herself between her and the business end of a railgun. And now? A fucking time machine.

She was either the luckiest person alive or the unluckiest. Probably both. Somehow.

Ekko stared at her like she’d just grown a second head, which wasn’t too far off from how she felt. A muscle under his eye twitched, and his brows began to crease as her laughter ricocheted down the tunnel. 

Finally, a frustrated growl ripped from his throat, cutting through her spiraling laughter like a knife. He stepped forward, fixing her with a furious glare.

“What the hell is so god damn funny?” he snapped.

Jinx couldn’t hold enough air in her lungs to answer, and even if she could, Ekko wouldn’t understand. So she just shook her head and turned to grab the box of supplies again. But Ekko wasn’t letting her off that easily.

A hand clamped down on her shoulder hard and pulled, spinning her back around. The boy advanced on her, backing her against the wall, his face halting inches from hers. 

“Do you know why I had to tackle you back there?” he demanded, his voice low and heated. “It’s because if I didn’t, you jumped. The second you saw Vi, you just… jumped.” He threw his hands up, his frustration boiling over as he searched her face for answers. “I just—how? How could you do that to her? To yourself? And how the fuck can you stand here and laugh about it?”

Jinx wasn’t laughing now. She returned Ekko’s glare with softened eyes.

“Tell me something, Ekko. In this other world you visited, where things were… normal. Was Vi happy?”

The question hung in the air between them, heavy and suffocating. Ekko didn’t answer, but the silence that followed spoke volumes. Jinx cast her eyes downward. Even in a whole other universe, they couldn’t be together. She and Vi were like two broken shards of glass—sharp, jagged edges that could only cut each other when they tried to fit together.

“I thought…” Her voice wavered, barely above a whisper. “I thought Vi would be better off without me. Happier. As much as I can’t believe I’m saying this, Caitlyn is good for her, and I didn’t think it would work out for them if I was in the picture. And when Vi showed up with Sevika instead of letting herself be with Caitlyn, well… that kinda cemented it for me.”

Ekko’s gaze softened. “You’re her sister. Of course she’d be there for you—”

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Jinx interrupted, bitterness creeping into her voice. “She’s got it in her head that because she was born first, she has to take care of me. Like it’s some unbreakable rule—‘big sister duties,’ or whatever. So I thought I’d just… make it easier for her.”

“Easier?” Ekko asked incredulously. She looked up to find him staring at her with a mournful look. “Jinx, she never would've gotten over that.”

Jinx opened her mouth to argue. Vi was strong, resilient. She always found a way to bounce back. But then her thoughts shifted, unbidden, to Isha—to that heart-stopping moment when time seemed to freeze. Isha, arms raised above her head as she pulled the trigger. The image was burned into Jinx’s mind, a scar she’d carry forever.

Her chest tightened as the truth settled over her like a shroud. Why wouldn’t it have been the same for Vi?

Tears welled in her eyes, threatening to spill. And just when she thought she was all cried out...

“Maybe you’re right,” she stuttered out, her voice breaking.

Tender arms wrapped around her, grounding her in the moment. The warmth sent her thoughts spiraling back to the tent in her hideout—Vi’s arms holding her tightly as she cried against the worn sofa where she and Isha used to dream together. The memory hit her like a wave, pulling her under for a moment.

After a beat, Ekko pulled back, placing his hands firmly on her shoulders. His eyes locked onto hers, searching for something she wasn’t sure she could give him.

“Tell me you don’t still feel that way,” he said, his voice insistent.

Jinx’s gaze dropped to the ground, unable to withstand the intensity of his stare. She felt like a child being scolded, her heart shrinking under the weight of his words. “I don’t know, Ekko,” she mumbled. “Vi said… she said I make her happy, but… she must be confused. I don’t think she even remembers what real happiness feels like.”

Ekko’s brow arched, a flicker of disbelief crossing his face. “And you do?”

The question hit her like a dart, sharp and unyielding. She lifted her head, meeting his gaze, and for a moment, all the noise in her head went quiet. She turned the question over in her mind, searching for an answer.

Jinx’s relationship with happiness was as fleeting as a cloud of breath on a cold, grey day. To her, it wasn’t something you kept—it was something that fell from the sky, landing in your lap when you least expected it. And just when you began to believe it was yours to hold, the sky yanked it away again, leaving behind a jagged hole in its place. One she knew, deep down, would never truly be filled.

But even she couldn’t deny it. For a time—no matter how brief it had been—she was happy. Truly happy.

Was that how Vi felt in the commune? Did she still feel that way, even with Vander gone and their family in shambles? The voices clawed at her, loud and unrelenting, insisting no. Vi’s words were nothing but false hope, a desperate attempt to rebuild something that had already shattered beyond repair. But somewhere, buried beneath the cacophony, a tiny, quiet whisper said yes.

For now, Jinx chose to believe that whisper. Even if she wasn’t totally convinced Vi believed herself.

She answered Ekko’s question the only way she knew how—by dodging it completely. She brushed past him and reached for her box again. “What is this, twenty questions?” she quipped, her voice lighter, though her hands shook slightly as she lifted the weight. “Daylight’s a wastin’! Guns to build, bombs to make. Let’s get a move on!”

Ekko stared after her, his expression a mix of exasperation and quiet concern. He sighed, shaking his head and letting the matter drop before turning on his heel and forging a path deeper into the darkness.

As the portal door slid open, Jinx felt like she’d just been slapped by one of her own flashbangs. She squinted against the sudden burst of light, momentarily disoriented. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting the Firelight hideout to look like, but green and sunny definitely weren’t on the list.

Her eyes struggled to adjust as the scene unfolded before her. Warm rays of golden light bathed the small community, making everything feel brighter and more alive than it had any right to be. The infrastructure wasn’t all that different from the rest of the Undercity slums—ramshackle, rusted buildings with their fair share of graffiti scrawled across the walls.

But what set the place apart was its centerpiece. A massive tree towered in the middle of the sanctuary, its gnarled boughs twisting upward like something out of a storybook. Thick, ancient roots sprawled across the ground, anchoring it firmly in place, while spiraling wooden platforms wound up the trunk, leading to cozy-looking huts nestled high in its branches.

The tree seemed to breathe life into the cavernous space, its canopy stretching wide to catch the golden light that filtered in through unseen cracks above. It was unlike anything Jinx had ever seen in the Undercity—a stark, impossible contrast to the world she knew.

For a moment, she just stood there, taking it all in, unsure whether to laugh, cry, or blow something up.

In the blinding light, a silhouette stood motionless at the threshold, but his massive, bat-like ears gave his identity away.

Ekko raised a hand to shield his eyes, squinting as a grin spread across his face. “Scar,” he greeted warmly.

The Chirean didn’t hesitate. He surged forward, his heavy footsteps echoing across the floor, and wrapped Ekko in a bone-crushing hug that lifted him clear off the ground.

“We thought you were dead,” Scar rumbled, his voice as coarse as gravel. Jinx realized, with some surprise, that she’d never heard him speak before. A man of few words, he was.

“I… uh… got lost?” Ekko offered sheepishly as Scar set him back down with a thud.

Scar tilted his head, studying him for a moment. Then his sharp gaze slid past Ekko to land squarely on Jinx. His eyes narrowed, steely and unflinching. “Seems you aren’t the only one. What’s she doing here?”

Jinx felt her brows crease. Honestly? Fair reaction. More than fair, really. She’d have probably said the same thing if their roles were reversed. But admitting that out loud? Not a chance.

“Oh, is this the thanks I get for busting your ass out of prison?”

The man snarled , his ears bending low as he bristled at her, his glowing green eyes narrowing into a menacing glare. Jinx just blinked at him. She’d bested him plenty of times before, and honestly? The whole intimidating tough-guy act didn’t do much for her anymore. One could only get their ass handed to them by a teenage girl so many times before they stopped feeling like a threat.

Jinx shifted the box in her arms. This thing was really starting to get heavy. Another thought struck her then—one that made her falter for just a moment. If this was the first time Scar had seen Ekko since his supposed “interdimensional vacation,” then that meant the very first thing Ekko did after coming back… was find her.

A strange, warm feeling blossomed in her chest as Ekko took a step between her and Scar.

“Sevika told me you and she were invited to Jayce Talis’s war room,” Ekko told him. He waited for Scar to nod before continuing. “Then you know about the threat this city faces. Jinx has agreed to help.”

Scar frowned, his ears twitching as he folded his arms across his broad chest. “Topside’s problems don’t concern us.”

“But they do,” Ekko countered, his voice firm. He looked like he was gearing up for some big speech, but after a moment, he sighed and shook his head. “We should talk about this with the others. For now, let Jinx in. You have my word—she won’t stir up trouble.”

Jinx smirked. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Boy Savior. She shifted the box in her arms and stood up on her tiptoes so Scar could see her better. Scrunching her face, she held her pinched fingers slightly apart, wordlessly signaling there might be just a little trouble.

Scar’s eyes narrowed as he let out a deep sigh, the sound more like a rhino snorting than a man breathing. “This won’t blow over well, but fine,” he grumbled, stepping aside. “But if anything happens, it’s on you.”

Chapter Text

The soles of her boots crunched against the dirt, and she swore she felt the entire place inhale—like the whole damn community was one living thing, sucking in an apprehensive breath. Even without looking, she could feel the weight of their stares, the narrowing brows, the protests forming on the lips of those who had suffered at her and her dad’s hands.

Whispers rippled through the community in scandalized tones, questioning what she was doing here, damning her to hell, wondering who’s blood she was going to spill next.

Or maybe that was just in her head.

She lifted her gaze, scanning the green sanctuary, and… well. Huh. That was disappointing . Most people hadn’t even noticed her yet.

One out of five stars for security. 

And the ones who had turned to look? Yeah. Their wide-eyed stares weren’t aimed at her at all. They were all pointed at Ekko.

Shit. Maybe Mylo was right about her ego.

She set down her scraps and hung back near the entrance as Ekko strode forward. Someone called out his name. Heads turned. People started crowding around. A few kids abandoned their soccer ball and ran up to Ekko, throwing their sweaty arms around his waist.

Jinx’s breath hitched. Isha used to do that whenever she came home, a happy noise bubbling out as she guided her towards whatever she’d been busy building or painting while Jinx was away.

Ekko knelt and hugged them back, and from then on it was all smiles and sighs of relief as the people took turns welcoming him home and firing off questions—where he’d been, what that weird device was, where Heimerdinger was ( ...Heimerdinger ? The Heimerdinger ?), why he’d brought her .

Jinx watched his face as he answered each one, promising explanations later. Her eyes traced the curve of his grin, the way his cheeks dipped with the weight of it. Something stirred inside her.

She was glad he was happy, but…

If that were her in his place, with that many people crowded around her? Hell no.

That’d be kind of a nightmare to her. She thought back to Stillwater. The way she'd frozen when the people she freed turned their eyes on her, offering silent thanks. Too many people. Too much weight in their gazes. It had scared her. It was new . And she usually dealt with new by shooting or running.

But a tiny, treacherous part of her had liked it.

Some of the faces in the crowd had passed her by in Stillwater, but here, as they gazed at Ekko, they looked different. It wasn’t grudging respect or quiet appreciation in their eyes. It was something more. Something deeper. Not earned by a single act of goodwill, but something forged by years of shared hardship and camaraderie.

Sheesh, just how many friends did Ekko have exactly? Jinx could probably count the number she’d had throughout her life on one hand. Any more than that sounded exhausting.

Eventually, the excited chatter died down, and the attention started to shift towards the blue-haired elephant in the room. Ekko beckoned her forward, but she hesitated. 

Historically speaking, the Firelights liked to stick to their non-lethal toys, but they made exceptions when it came to her, because they knew she wouldn’t extend the same courtesy. 

So stepping forward now felt a little like sticking her head in a lion’s mouth. Nobody looked armed, but neither was she. All her weapons were in pieces, scattered across workbenches or tucked inside her box of scraps.

Might as well be walking in naked.

She stopped next to Ekko, crossed her arms, and braced for the daggers being shot her way.

Ekko laid it out for them—the incoming fight, the Noxians, and the whole mind-bending cyborg situation. Nobody seemed all that surprised, not really. Scar had probably filled them in already.

What did get a reaction was what to do about it.

Scar loomed over the crowd, his gravelly voice cutting through the murmurs. “For years, Piltover’s wallets grew fat off the Hexgate, and not a cent of it ever made its way to the undercity. Things only got worse for us. So why should we sacrifice our lives to defend it? I say let the Noxian general have her metal army and be on her way. And if Piltover and the Hexgate are weakened in the process? Two birds, one stone.”

Grumbles of agreement rippled through the Firelights. Ekko shook his head, but before he could say anything, Jinx let out a sharp laugh.

“Yeah, that’d be real cute if it worked out that way.”

The crowd turned to her, most of them glaring, but she kept going.

“You think the Noxians are just gonna pack up and leave once they’re done with Piltover?” She cocked her head. “You think a warlord’s gonna build herself a shiny new army and not take it for a spin? And with Piltover defeated, who might she want to test it on, I wonder…”

She tapped a finger to her chin in mock consideration. “Oh right! Us. She’s been tearing up Zaun for months. You really think she’ll be less interested once she’s got a big, bad army of metal monsters?”

A few uneasy glances passed through the crowd. Scar’s ears flattened slightly.

“And that’s if she gets what she wants,” Jinx added, her voice dropping low. “Because lemme tell you, she isn’t the one that scares me. It’s who she teamed up with. You ever meet a guy who’s got no wants ? No anger, no joy, no nothing? Just some vision no one else but him can see?”

She ran a hand through her hair, exhaling. “That’s Viktor. At least with the Noxian, you know she just wants power. He has power, but we don’t know what he wants. And that’s much, much worse.”

She let that settle, then folded her arms. “But yeah. Let’s sit on our hands and hope for the best. I’m sure that’ll work out great.”

The crowd was silent as they absorbed her words, tension thick enough to choke on. But then, a voice cut through it.

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you.”

A Firelight stepped forward, a slender mask vaguely resembling a gorilla hanging at his side. His expression was twisted in anger.

“You’re the entire damn reason those Noxians are even here. The crackdown was completely your fault. You fired that rocket at the council, and then vanished for months, and we were the ones who got punished for it. And you wanna talk about sitting on our hands? You wanna stand here and act like you know what’s best for us?” He scoffed. “Fuck you.”

There were murmurs of agreement behind him. Jinx exhaled. She’d expected the pitchforks to come out way sooner, so this was already going better than anticipated.

She took a step closer to the Firelight who’d spoken up, and he immediately tensed. The mask was familiar—they’d definitely fought before. It came to her then. He’d been flat on his back. She would’ve ignored him if he hadn’t just sliced her leg. She’d had the barrels of her minigun aimed square at his face, ready to paint his blood all over the floor. And she might’ve pulled the trigger too, if Vi hadn’t been getting taken. A screen of smoke obscured her vision, and then he’d been gone.

He glared at her, but she could see the fear behind it. A couple others moved up behind him, ready to defend him if need be. A quick side glance told her even Ekko was poised to intervene. She sighed.

“Yeah. I hid,” she said simply, shrugging. “And let’s be real. We all know that was the least of my crimes against the undercity. Against you.”

Her eyes scanned the gathered Firelights. She wanted them to know she was speaking to all of them when she said this.

“I can’t change the things I’ve done. I can’t bring back the people I’ve killed. But I can help now. Whether you trust me or not, I’m not gonna sit back and let Zaun get destroyed. Not while there’s still something down here in this stupid crack in the earth worth protecting.”

She turned back to Ekko and immediately had to avert her gaze. She could take all the glares and stink eyes in the world, but the look he was giving her? Pride? Approval?

Yuck.

Ekko cleared his throat and spoke up to the crowd again. 

“The night I first brought Scar and Eve here, we made a decision—no matter who you were or what you’d done, the second you set foot here, the only thing that mattered was who you chose to be moving forward . That night, the Firelights were born. We’ve always been about second chances. That was something I’d forgotten, until recently.”

He paused for a moment, giving a chance for anyone to voice their objections. Some of them looked to Scar, who nodded along with what Ekko said. The gorilla mask guy just huffed and stepped back into the crowd, sending Jinx another wary glare.

She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out. Barely .

“So that’s it,” Ekko continued. “War is coming, and we need all the help we can get. And I think we can all agree on one thing about Jinx. She’s the best damn weaponsmith in the Lanes. So… she stays. For now. If you got a problem with that, or you don’t want to fight, Piltover’s set up an evacuation route open to Zaunites and topsiders alike. I suggest you take it.”

Silence.

The crowd began to disperse, and Jinx let out a deep breath. There were definitely some unhappy campers amongst them, but overall, things seemed to have gone okay. 

No tomatoes hurled at her. No daggers. No spears. Just a couple curses.

She’d underestimated Ekko. He really did have a way with words.

Ekko gave her a small, reassuring smile, then his eyes flicked toward the tree. His face fell.

She followed his gaze. Dozens of faces, familiar and unfamiliar, stared back at her, etched into the wall with careful strokes. Some were perfect portraits, others mere scribbles, but they all carried on someone's memory. The moment she saw them, the weight hit her like a collapsing building. That crushing wave of guilt, the one she knew too well, came rushing in. Voices hissed at her, just like always. Only now, they had faces.

Her gaze snagged on one in particular. One she used to see every day, and always hated it.

Powder.

Ekko had drawn her up there, right alongside Vander, Mylo, Claggor, and Vi. A wide-eyed little girl, captured in soft lines and bright paint. Innocence, frozen in time.

He wouldn’t have drawn her that way if he’d only known what she did to their family.

Ekko, likewise, had zeroed in on his own portrait, wedged next to Benzo’s at the top of the mural. A green firelight fluttered over his head like a crown.

Jinx turned to him, the real him, and saw the same look on his face that she’d become too accustomed to seeing in the mirror these past few years.

Guilt. Over what exactly, she wasn’t sure, but she could take a guess.

“They weren’t helpless without you, you know.”

“Huh?”

She gestured vaguely toward the sanctuary. “I know you’re probably beating yourself up about not being here. But look around. They’re still standing, right?”

Ekko sighed and shook his head. “I know. The Firelights are strong. Resilient. I’m proud of them. It’s just… I should’ve been here. Sevika caught me up to speed on everything that happened the last few months and I… I really did just disappear on everybody when they needed me most. And I didn’t even fix the problem with the tree, which is the whole reason I left.”

She hadn’t noticed it at first, but now that he mentioned it… Yeah. The tree looked sick . The outer branches were nearly bare, stripped of their leaves, and the ones still clinging on had turned brittle and discolored. Something was eating away at it. At this place.

Ekko chewed his lip. “I was an idiot to trust that enforcer,” he muttered.

It took her a second to realize who he meant.

“Caitlyn?”

He nodded. “She came here preaching about ending the cycle of violence, saying she wanted to help. Then the second I was gone, she sicked her Noxian dogs on Zaun. A full-blown military crackdown.” He shook his head. “She had my people thrown in Stillwater, and they’d probably still be there if not for you.”

Ekko tried to meet her eyes, but she looked away. “Don’t go thanking me, Boy Savior. I didn’t do it for your people, I did it for Isha. ‘Sides, I’m the whole reason they got put in the slammer in the first place. None of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t blown topside’s fancy council sky-high.”

“Still though. You did more for the Firelights over the past week than I have in months. So thank you.”

Ekko’s words barely had time to settle before irritation flared hot in her chest.

Thank her? For what, exactly?

They’d been at each other’s throats for years. She’d sided with the man who killed Benzo. Half the faces painted on his damn wall were up there because of her. And let’s not forget the part where she’d nearly killed Ekko more times than she could count.

And now, because she did one decent thing, he was looking at her like—like what? Like she could still be good? Like any of this could ever be balanced out?

A drop of right in a bucket of wrongs.

The look he was giving her made her skin crawl. She rolled her eyes, turning away before she did something stupid. “Just tell me where to put this crap,” she muttered, grabbing her box.

He led her to their workshop, a haphazard structure of rusted scrap patched together against the side of the sanctuary. Probably a good idea to keep the boom stuff far away from their precious tree.

The floor groaned under her boots as she stepped inside and dumped her scraps onto the nearest table. The place was cluttered with half-finished projects, loose wires, and dirty plates stacked in corners. Not too different from her own place, really.

Ekko muttered something about needing to yell at the Firelights about cleaning up after themselves and immediately started clearing space for her to work.

Jinx let her eyes wander, scanning the shelves for anything useful. A few hoverboards leaned against the wall, some looking like they’d taken one too many nosedives. Next to them sat a thing. A tangled mess of gears and tubing, like someone had started building a machine and then forgot what it was supposed to do halfway through.

“What’s this?” she asked, crouching beside it. Without waiting for an answer—because, really, where was the fun in that —she flicked the nearest switch.

The gears on its back whirred to life.

Ekko leaned over to see what she was messing with. “Uh, that’s—”

A stream of bubbles plorped out of an open pipe, nearly splashing her in the face.

Jinx blinked.

Bubbles. Soapy bubbles. They could’ve been making guns, or rocket launchers, or hoverboards with guns and rocket launchers mounted onto them. And instead, they’d built a bubble-blower.

She turned to Ekko with the flattest look she could muster. “No wonder your people needed my help.”

That earned a chuckle from him. “Heimerdinger actually made that for the kids.”

That sentence alone was odd enough to make her squint at him. Heimerdinger? As in, Professor Council Guy Heimerdinger? What the hell was he doing making bubble machines for sump snipes?

Ekko must’ve caught the look, because he rubbed his neck, searching for an explanation. “Yeah. Kind of a strange story. He lived here for a while after he retired from the council. Got sucked into the other universe with me. He, uh… didn’t make it back.”

Jinx stared.

At this point, reality was so damn weird she’d believe just about anything.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Ekko finished clearing the table, shoving the leftover junk into a box and kicking it aside. “I know it’s not exactly built for weapons development like your place, but you’re welcome to use whatever you find.”

Jinx eyed the mess, already scouting for anything fun. But then she noticed the way he was drifting toward the door.

“You’re not staying?”

Ugh. That sounded way too clingy.

Ekko didn’t seem to notice the way she cringed at herself. “I gotta catch up with the other Firelights. Sevika told me a lot, but I’m sure there’s stuff I missed. Shouldn’t be gone too long. You can come find me if you need help.”

Then, with a smirk, he added. “Try not to blow the place up in the meantime.”

“No promises.”

The door swung shut behind him, and silence settled in. Not the kind she was used to—this one was softer. The rustling of leaves, the hum of voices outside. It wasn’t like her hideout when her record player was off, all cavernous and empty, where silence was just a blank canvas for the screaming in her head.

No, this was better.

White noise. Just enough to keep the chatter in her skull at bay.

She went to work unpacking her box of fun.

Out came the broken pieces of Fishbones and Pow-Pow, followed by a handful of components for her lovely little bombs. Then an assortment of tools, a couple of stuffed animals to bounce ideas off of, some markers, and—most importantly—a thin black disc, fireworks painted across the center.

Her favorite record.

Too bad Ekko was boring and didn’t have a record player in here. Oh well.

Now, what to build? She tapped her chin. One problem she’d always had with her guns was portability. She couldn’t exactly charge into battle holding both Pow-Pow and Fishbones. Well, she could . But it’d be awkward and cumbersome and she’d still only be able to use one at a time.

Wouldn’t it be cool if she could use both simultaneously? Riddle someone with bullets, then delete the evidence with a well-placed explosion? Now she was onto something.

Raiding Ekko’s shelves, she snatched up a sheet of blueprint paper and a marker.

Hopping onto the table, she sprawled out on her stomach, feet kicking lazily in the air as she sketched.

This thing was gonna be big.

Once the design was done, she got to work building it, stripping parts from Heimerdinger’s bubble maker to fill in the gaps. She figured Ekko wouldn’t mind considering what was at stake. She hummed a high energy tune as she worked, her brain shutting out all of the troubles and horrors of the past few days as it went into autopilot.

The trickiest bit was the mechanism to switch firing modes. But after some trial, error, and a few frustrated grumbles, she nailed it.

Piece by piece, it started coming together. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been at it—time had a habit of slipping away when she was in the zone—but she was nearly done when Ekko returned.

“Woah. You work fast . ”

He leaned over the table, eyes scanning the weapon’s frame.

Jinx caught the flicker of discomfort in his expression. Understandable. He’d been on the wrong side of those spinning barrels one too many times.

“What are you calling it?”

Jinx bit on her lower lip, brows scrunching. “I haven’t thought about it yet. It’s a mix of Pow-Pow and Fishbones. Powfish? Powbones?”

Ekko grimaced, and shook his head.

“You’re right, those suck,” Jinx agreed.

She wasn’t finished with it yet, but she set her tools down and hefted the thing up, testing its weight. The barrels spun freely without scraping against the rocket launcher—good. But damn, was it heavy. And that was without bullets or rocket payloads loaded in. Without her adrenaline pumping Shimmer through her veins, holding it for longer than a few seconds would be a real pain.

“Sheesh! This thing’s as heavy as a rhino.”

She plopped it back onto the table with a grunt. Wait a minute. That was it.

“Rhino! I’ll call it Rhino. In honor of Sir Rhinocerous here,” she declared, giving her stuffed rhino a firm squeeze.

Ekko didn’t comment on the name. Instead, he was rubbing his chin, eyes flicking between the gun and the set of hoverboards leaning against the wall.

“I might have an idea on how to make it lighter.”

He grabbed one of the half-busted hoverboards from the wall and sat down beside her, close enough that their shoulders brushed. Jinx barely noticed at first, too focused on the gun in front of her, but then the warmth of him settled in, grounding her in a way she didn’t expect.

For a while, it was like they were kids again, huddled over some half-baked invention, bouncing ideas back and forth as they worked. Before everything went wrong .

She swallowed and forced a smirk. “If this thing starts floating away, I’m blaming you.”

Ekko chuckled, eyes flicking to her before focusing back on his work. “Then I guess I better make sure that doesn’t happen.”

An hour later, Rhino had its own built-in hover system. The mechanism would automatically adjust to weight changes, compensating as ammo was fired. It stayed level, stable, loyal .

Jinx tested it out, grinning as she let go and watched it hover effortlessly beside her.

“Now that’s more like it.”

Then, a wicked idea struck her.

A few adjustments, some quick welding, and bam —Rhino now had a saddle.

Cackling, she hopped on and took it for a test drive, zipping around the room like a lunatic. Blueprints and papers flew everywhere as she wooshed past. Oh, she couldn’t wait to take this baby into a real fight.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Ekko watching her.

“Whaddya think?” she asked, grinning ear to ear. “Is it not the most perfect gun you’ve ever seen?”

He huffed a laugh. “You look like a witch who just raided an armory.”

A cackle burst from her lips as she executed a barrel roll, clinging onto Rhino’s handles for dear life. Oh yeah, this was perfect.

“Well, now I can keep up with you and your buddies,” she teased, tilting her head at him. “So just remember to stay on my good side.”

She landed back on the table and dismounted before clapping her hands together. “Great! Now, what are we making for you?”

“I’ll just stick with what I’ve got, thanks.”

Jinx scoffed. The boy invented hoverboards, crystal bombs, and freaking time travel , and he still insisted on fighting with a stick ? And they said she was the crazy one.

By the time they stumbled out of the workshop, the day had already packed its bags and left. Thanks to the high walls, the sun set early in the Firelights’ sanctuary, but that just meant the firelight bugs got to steal the show. Hundreds of them blinked and fluttered like nature’s own string lights, casting a warm glow over the wooden walkways and ramshackle buildings.

Ekko led her toward the kitchen, where a line of hungry people had already formed. Inside, a couple of cooks were grilling up fish and oysters, their sizzling scent filling the air. Some of the residents took their food with them back to their homes, while others ate at a small picnic area outside. 

They found an empty table tucked into a shady nook near the outer wall. Jinx made sure to double check that her food hadn’t been spat in before chowing down. No one else joined their table, not even Scar, which seemed to bother Ekko, but it suited her just fine. It gave them a chance to awkwardly eat together in peace, picking at their food and pretending their situation was normal and not all weird.

The tinkering had been a welcome distraction for a few hours. But now that her mind was no longer occupied, she found herself being beckoned back into darker places. Try as she might, she couldn’t fight back the onslaught of flashbacks and images of the attack on the commune that had been battering at her mental walls all day.

Vander’s final howls of rage and agony echoed off the inner linings of her skull like a broken record. Isha’s tear-stained face as she pulled the trigger of her overloaded gun was seared into the back of her eyelids. And she could recall in perfect detail sitting up after the blast and finding blood coating her stomach, and the stone cold realization that it wasn’t hers, but Vi’s.

She remembered the cocktail of adrenaline and Shimmer coursing through her body, dulling the pain in her ribs as she and Caitlyn carried Vi all the way to Piltover—probably the only thing they’d ever work together on. 

Her mind had been on autopilot. It had to be, because if she’d allowed herself to think about what she’d just lost, she wouldn’t have been able to take even one more step, would’ve collapsed to the ground and curled up into a ball, and then Vi would’ve—

Ekko cleared his throat, yanking her out of the downward spiral, making her flinch. She glanced up from her food to find him giving her a concerned look, like he could tell where her thoughts were headed. She’d been picking at her nails again, and small rivulets of blood were beading along her fingertips.

“So…” He drummed his fingers on the table, clearly scrambling for something, anything, to pull her back from wherever she’d gone. “Uh, the Firelights filled me in on as much as they could, so I know a little about the Noxians. But Viktor’s a mystery to me. You said you met him, right?”

She forced her thoughts to rewind to a slightly more optimistic time before all the chaos. Back when Isha, Vi, Vander and she were broken but together . She remembered her first impression of Viktor. He was scrawny, gaunt. If his body hadn’t been made of metal, a breeze might’ve knocked him over.

She hadn’t trusted him. He’d meant well, she could tell. And he had made notable progress with Vander. But the way he read minds was creepy, and his followers had all been milling about as if in a sort of daze. The whole time she was there, she just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off about him, and that it was all too good to be true.

Regardless of how she felt, it was clear there was an immense hidden power within him. A power that now had allied itself with a fucking Noxian warlord. In Zaun, this sort of situation was known colloquially as “shit hitting the fan”.

Jinx relayed everything she knew of Viktor to Ekko, but talking about the commune was like letting her head fall back under the tide. The longer she thought about it, the harder it was to breathe. 

Sometimes, she envied Silco, lying motionless beneath the waves. No more fighting. No more pain. No mad alchemists twisting your body into something unrecognizable. No warlords stomping through your home with bloodstained boots. No tin men clawing through your mind, digging greedy fingers into your memories.

Just peace and quiet.

Her stomach twisted. Her half-eaten food had turned to lead, and her appetite had long since abandoned her. She shoved her plate aside and made to stand.

Ekko’s hand shot out, gripping hers against the table.

She froze.

“Hey,” he said, his voice low, steady. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge anything up. We can talk about something else.”

Jinx let out a sharp snort. “Not sure there’s much we can talk about without dredging something up.”

“What about Vi?” he suggested.

Jinx hesitated, unsure where he was going with that, but she found herself sitting back down on the bench.

“Um, what about her?”

He leaned in slightly, elbows resting on the table, like what he was about to say was top secret. “Call me crazy, but I think she might be into women.”

Jinx blinked. What.

“I mean the whole time she was here, she was ogling that enforcer lady, Caitlyn. And Caitlyn was just a little bit too concerned about Vi’s wellbeing too. I think there’s something going on between them.” 

He leaned back then, all smug, like he’d just dropped the biggest truth bomb of the century.

Jinx stared at him. Was Ekko fucking with her? Or was he really this slow?

The smile on Ekko’s face faded. “You already knew that, didn’t you?”

“Of course she’s into women, you dipshit. Did you not see the pinup posters above her bunk any one of the thousand times you came to The Last Drop?”

Ekko’s face twisted in real-time as the memories caught up with him. His eyes went distant, like he was replaying every moment in his head, putting the pieces together years too late. He groaned and covered his face with his hands.

Jinx snorted. Oh, this was good . A thought hit her, and she had to physically fight back a laugh.

“Oh no. You didn’t have a crush on her, did you?”

Ekko froze at that, and Jinx could see the denials already forming on his tongue.

“You did, didn’t you?” Jinx practically cackled. “Well, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but yeah, she swings for the other team.”

She could swear Ekko’s face was flushed. “I did not have a crush on her. She was, like, my freaking hero, but it wasn’t like that.”

Jinx leaned back, grinning like a shark. “Sure, Little Man, sure.”

The mention of his old nickname eked out a response from him. Jinx saw his eyes widen ever so slightly before he looked away, his gaze panning out to the middle of the sanctuary, resting on nothing in particular.

“I actually used to have a crush on you.”

“Har-har.”

She waited for the teasing grin, the inevitable gotcha , but it never came. His expression was… weird. Like he was suddenly very interested in anything that wasn’t her.

“Shit, you’re serious. But like, why?”

She didn’t mean any offense, not really, but she must’ve seriously over-estimated young Ekko’s taste, because what was there to like about Powder? She’d been a mess. All of her inventions failed, she cried too much, and nine times out of ten, when she tried to help, she absolutely did not . 

Ekko shrugged. “Why not? You were my best friend. We did so much dumb shit together. You always laughed at my jokes. And you were the only other kid in the whole undercity who cared about my projects. Well, Claggor sometimes did, I guess, but he wasn’t really my type.”

“Yeah, but I ruined most of those projects when you had me tinker with them.”

“Oh come on, it was only a couple of them. And you helped me fix them afterwards.”

Jinx stared down at her hands. She didn’t know if she was buying it. She had liked Ekko too, back when they were kids. Aside from Vi, he was really the only person she enjoyed spending time with. Mylo was… Mylo. She loved him, but she didn’t love the headaches he brought with him. Claggor was cool but Mylo was basically attached to him at the hip, so…

Yeah, Ekko was her best friend. But did that mean she had a crush on him? She wasn’t sure.

She found her gaze turning once again towards the center of the sanctuary, where the faces of the mural gazed out upon the community. Her own visage gazed back. As much as she despised the girl up there, she couldn’t help but admire his attention to detail. He even got the gap tooth right.

Sheesh, he painted all of that from memory? Was there anything this boy couldn’t do?

“Jinx.”

His hands were covering hers, and when she looked down, she saw she’d picked her cuticles raw yet again.

“I… I know you don’t think much of yourself. You never have. But you know what Heimerdinger told me once? The success rate for the students at his academy is only three percent. Even with all their resources, their education, their connections—most of them still fail.”

Jinx frowned. “Okay… and?”

"And it proves that what we do isn’t easy. Building things, fixing things—it takes more than just brains. It takes stubbornness, trial and error, and the willingness to keep going even when everything falls apart. I won’t lie, I hate what you used your inventions for. But I’ve never stopped admiring the way you refused to quit until you got them right. That tenacity of yours—it pushed me to work just as hard for the things I believed in."

His fingers curled around hers and squeezed.

"That’s why I’m not giving up on Zaun. And I’m not giving up on you, either. I can’t let you show me up," he said, a wry smile on his face.

Jinx swallowed, her throat tight. Damn it. She was not gonna cry over some big, corny speech, made by the Boy Savior of all people. And just hours ago, she’d thought Vi was the big sap. Ekko took it to a whole new level.

But still… she hadn’t thought about it like that before. That fixing things, really fixing them , took the same stubborn, all-nighter kind of effort she used to pour into her inventions. When something didn’t work, she’d break it down, tinker, rebuild, again and again until it finally did. Maybe… maybe that’s what she had to do now. With Zaun. With Ekko. With Vi. And with herself.

“Wow, and I thought Mylo could run his mouth,” she muttered, her chin resting in her hand.

Ekko snorted. “Yeah, well, fight fire with fire, right? You yap more than I do.”

“Yeah, right. You’ve been cavorting in too many alternate universes, Little Man. You’re losing your grasp of reality.”

Ekko rolled his eyes. “Says the girl who talks to dead people.”

He immediately sat ramrod straight, his eyes widening, like he’d said something he didn’t mean to. But Jinx couldn’t stop herself from bursting into laughter. It earned her a few side glances from the other tables, but she couldn’t care less at the moment.

“You got me there.”

She pulled her plate back in front of her. It was cold by now, and the firelight bugs had been helping themselves to some crumbs, but she didn’t care.

She had explosives to build, battles to fight, and wrongs to right. And she couldn’t very well do all of that on an empty stomach.

Chapter Text

Later that night, a scout returned to the sanctuary with an update, and Jinx had to fight to keep still as he spoke. The Noxians still hadn’t budged. They were holed up in the wreckage of Viktor’s commune. The tin man himself was nowhere to be seen, but the Noxians stood guard around some kind of giant egg-looking thing, and Jinx was able to hazard a guess as to who was inside. Next to the cocoon, curled up like a dog taking a nap, was a beast. Big. Breathing. Very much not dead.

Jinx’s breath hitched. The scout barely got the last word out before she pounced on him with a rapid-fire interrogation. Was the beast hurt? Did they have him chained up? Did he look pissed? So he really wasn’t dead? Are you sure he wasn’t dead? …Was there a lost little girl hiding anywhere nearby?

The answer to pretty much all of those had been ‘no’.

She’d been ready to grab Rhino and head back down there herself, determined to figure out what had happened to Vander, but Ekko was fervently opposed to her leaving, and something told her she’d only be making things worse.

The news had her on edge, a hot coil of energy burning under her skin. She needed to do something. Shoot something, maybe. Blow something up, preferably. Or at the very least, hit something really, really hard.

Scar must’ve noticed she was about to blow her gasket, because he steered Jinx toward a building she hadn’t seen yet—Scar’s own personal gym, by the looks of it. The small space was filled with handcrafted dumbbells, a weight bench, and best of all, a punching bag dressed up like an enforcer.

Exactly what she needed.

She only briefly wondered where they’d even gotten an enforcer outfit before she started swinging at it.

Fist met fabric. Then padding. Then whatever poor stuffing was inside. The impact shuddered through her bones, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

Ekko sat on the bench nearby, watching as she worked out her frustrations on the dummy.

“You asked a lot of questions about the beast,” he pointed out.

Jinx didn’t reply. Just kept wailing on the poor, defenseless police dummy.

“Sevika told me it was Vander.”

She froze mid-swing, fists still raised. Her knuckles burned from the repeated hits, but that wasn’t why her hands were shaking.

Ekko didn’t seem to notice. “I didn’t know whether to believe her or—”

“It was,” she snapped. “It was him.”

Ekko wisely stopped talking, but the damage was done. 

Her fists crashed into the dummy with renewed force. Harder. Faster. Her breath turned ragged, her muscles screaming for her to stop—but she didn’t. Couldn’t. Every punch sent shockwaves up her arms, but none of it even touched the boiling heat in her chest.

She saw Vander, red-hot tears leaking from his eyes as he lost himself. And then she saw herself, strapped to a table, feeling her veins burn as the doctor shoved a needle through her ear and injected her with liquid fire.

Jinx let out something between a growl and a scream and drove her fist into the dummy with everything she had.

The chains snapped.

The dummy flew off the hook and hit the wall with a dull thud.

She stared at it, panting, her heart jackhammering against her ribs. She could feel the Shimmer buzzing under her skin, crackling at the edges of her vision, like her blood was made of fucking static.

Ekko stood, cautious. “Jinx—”

“It was the alchemist.” Her voice came out hoarse. “Silco’s doctor. He’s the one who invented Shimmer. He turned Vander into a monster. Just like he did to me.”

She turned away from Ekko as tears burned in her eyes. She wiped at them, her fist coming away purple.

“The difference is, what he did to me only took hours.” Her eyes flicked to the fallen dummy, the chain lying across it, and she could still see her own ghost strapped to that table. “For Vander? It must’ve been years of torture. What did he do to deserve that? Why couldn’t he just be allowed to rest ?”

She didn’t realize Ekko had moved until she felt his arms wrap around her from behind, his hands locking over her own. The contact surprised her, and she stiffened at first, but gradually she relaxed into his embrace. The trembling of her hands slowed as the Shimmer surge bled out of her system, and she leaned her head back to rest against his own, letting his warmth envelop her.

“You’re not a monster,” he said. “And when this is all said and done, we’re going to find this doctor, and we’re gonna make him pay for everything he’s done to you and the undercity.”

She took a deep, steadying breath and let it go, nodding slowly.

Ekko led her out of the gym. Night blanketed the sanctuary, but that was when the place truly shined. She’d never seen so many firelight bugs gathered in one place before. They flitted around like hundreds of shooting stars in their own private planetarium. A few kids were playing nearby, trying to see who could catch the most.

One of the bugs landed on her cheek, and she resisted the urge to squash it. She wasn’t sure if they were, like, sacred to these people or something.

“I think this one likes you,” Ekko said, chuckling.

She snorted. “Or maybe it just likes how my tears taste.”

She could’ve sworn the thing flashed purple as it flitted away, gone in the blink of an eye. Her eye twitched.

Yep. Monster.

The Firelights had been over capacity ever since the chem barons started their turf wars, Ekko explained, so there weren’t really any extra beds for her, but he had a couch in his room she could crash on. She followed him up the stairs wrapping around the tree all the way to the top, still in awe of how much he’d built over the years.

Ekko’s bedroom was like someone sawed an art studio and a workshop in half and then nailed them together. One side was alive with color—easels, half-finished canvases, streaks of oil and charcoal smudged across the walls—while the other was littered with tools and half-assembled gadgets, wires curling over every surface like creeping ivy. The whole place had a neat, ordered chaos to it.

Jinx liked it. It was... cozy.

The couch wasn’t bad either. A little lumpy, sure, but she’d had worse. She hadn’t slept in a proper bed in years, so at least it was something familiar.

What wasn’t familiar was the absence of a certain smaller girl cuddled up against her, fingers twitching as she slept, lightly snoring the hours away. Trying to fall asleep without her was like sleeping next to a gaping pit. She’d start to nod off, and she’d snuggle in closer to Isha, and then she’d feel it—that drop. That half-second of weightlessness, of realizing there was nothing there, nothing to ground her when there should be.

She’d shoot up, briefly succumbing to panic, only to realize she wasn’t falling. There was no pit. Just an empty space where her little sump rat should’ve been.

Sleep should have come easy. Three days had passed since she’d last had a proper rest, and exhaustion weighed on her limbs like lead. Her body ached for it.

But nothing ever came easy for her.

She tossed. Turned. Flipped onto her side, then her back, then her stomach, then back again. But her mind wouldn’t shut up long enough to let sleep take hold. And what would even be the point? The moment she passed into dreamland, the monsters of her nightmares would come clawing for her.

So there she lay, staring up at the dark, wooden ceiling, her mind a restless, buzzing void thick with thoughts that wouldn’t settle.

Was Ekko asleep? Or if she peered over the back of the couch, would she find him with one eye open, every muscle coiled, ready to defend himself from the murderer he’d let into his home?

Maybe she should be grateful he let her in at all. Maybe she should make things easier for him and just go.

She shut her eyes again and exhaled through her nose.

No. He wouldn’t have let her stay if he didn’t want her here. He wasn’t stupid.

…Was he?

Curiosity got the better of her.

Jinx sat up and poked her head over the back of the couch, just enough to sneak a peek at Ekko. He was curled on his side, soundlessly asleep, one arm draped over the edge of the bed, fingers slack. The soft rise and fall of his breath was the only movement in the room.

Her gaze was caught by something at the foot of his bed. There, perched on a table cluttered with tools and half-finished projects, sat the Z-Drive. It pulsed with a soft, rhythmic glow, casting pale blue light across the wood. Like a nightlight.

Jinx bit her lip.

Ekko had told her it was dangerous.

But surely it would be okay if she just got a closer look?

Moving slow, careful, she slid off the couch and crept forward, her bare feet silent against the floor. When she reached the table, she stretched her fingers toward the device, hesitated—then snatched it up before she could second-guess herself.

She glanced back at Ekko. His face twitched, like he could sense someone had gotten their hands on his baby, but then he relaxed again.

Jinx weighed the device in her hands. It was about as heavy as it looked. Solid and sturdy. But the casing wasn’t what made it a marvel of engineering. Gazing through the thick glass, she got a better look at the kaleidoscopic orb floating in the center. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen, like it was from a different plane of existence. It didn’t belong in their world, and as she examined it, whatever doubts she had that Ekko had actually gone to a different dimension faded away.

Then her eyes were drawn to the ring of grinning little monkeys.

Her monkeys.

They looked like miniature versions of the one she’d fashioned into an alarm system when she was a kid. The one that she’d repurposed into a bomb. The one that changed her life forever.

Her fingers drifted down the side of the device until they came across a handle connected to the chain. She remembered then, just before Ekko had tackled her in her hideout, he’d had his hand on it, ready to pull.

So that’s how it’s activated.

She examined the dial next, a red splotch scribbled in at the four second mark. She frowned. Ekko had said that was the furthest he could go, like it was some universal constant or whatever.

Sparing another glance at Ekko, still asleep, she moved the notch up to the line and yanked the chain.

A jolt ripped through her, and the air pulsed outward. Crackling energy filled the room, reminding her of the experiments she’d performed on the hex gem. She could swear she could see runes floating in the air around her, magically rewriting themselves over and over.

A strange feeling enveloped her, like she’d been floating down a river and now the river had suddenly reversed directions, forcing her to wade against the current.

Then, a click sounded from the machine. The energy dissipated, and the runes dissolved into thin air. She glanced around her and—everything was just as it was before. The world hadn’t buckled on itself. She didn’t get zapped into some alternate version of reality. Ekko was still sound asleep, despite the magic that had thundered through the room a moment before.

The only thing that changed was the second hand on the clock perched on the table, which was now just striking the same second she’d started at.

So.

Four seconds.

It worked.

She clenched her jaw. In other circumstances, she might’ve just sat there for a while in awe of the fact that she literally just went back in time. But instead, her thoughts were racing in a different direction.

Four seconds wasn’t enough.

Not nearly enough. Isha had died days ago. Silco, months ago. Mylo, Claggor, Vander—the man, not the beast—years had passed since they were all together.

Now she had a time machine in her hands, and all she could do was go back four stinkin’ seconds? What kind of cosmic joke was that? Who came up with such a stupid, arbitrary rule?

That couldn’t be the end of it. Ekko and her other self had missed something. There was some secret to this. She just needed to tinker with it. Experiment a little. She could figure it out, given enough time. Probably.

Going back five seconds wouldn’t be the end of the world, right?

What difference could one measly second make?

Her fingers twitched over the dial.

Slowly, she turned it—just one more notch past the marker. That was all.

She turned to Ekko, biting her lip. Still conked out, oblivious.

Her hand tightened on the cord.

Then she pulled.

Arcane energy filled the room once more as everything slowed. Her eyes trained on the second hand of the table clock. It stuttered, then it ticked backward in slow motion. 

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Four.

Her breath caught.

Nothing exploded. No heat death of the universe. No cosmos-shattering paradox. Just a subtle hum in the air, and the tick of time ambling in reverse.

Then— 

Drip.

Jinx tilted her head, wondering if she’d actually just heard that or if it was in her mind.

Drip.

Hearing it again, she turned her head, feeling like she was moving through molasses.

Her eyes landed on Ekko and widened in horror.

Dark crimson stained the sheets, blooming outward like ink in water. It ran down his arm, carved streaks over his hand, dripped from his fingertips, and pooled on the floor below.

Jinx screamed, the Z-Drive slipping from her hands just before it reached the five second mark. The device clattered to the floor as she rushed to Ekko’s side, and its chain began to reel itself back in.

The vertigo of changing directions once more caused her stomach to do somersaults. Before her very eyes, Ekko’s blood began to rise off the ground to meet his hand. The bloodstains were sucked out of the sheets and re-joined his body like he was some kind of fucked up sponge.

The handle zipped back into place with a sharp snap. The runes wrote themselves away, the crackling energy faded, and she was left kneeling next to Ekko, the Z-Drive forgotten at her feet. 

Ekko shifted in his sleep, let out a quiet breath, and settled deeper into the blankets. Not a single mark on him. No blood. No pool on the floor. Nothing. The clock ticked forward like a metronome, steady and mundane.

The relief she felt was so acute that it physically hurt. Jinx shot to her feet, staggering backwards as her breath caught in her throat. She turned on her heel and stumbled out the door until her hands found the railing of the balcony. She gripped it hard as she leaned forward and hurled.

Air. She needed air. She tried to draw in breath as the world closed in around her. Suddenly she was surrounded by clamoring voices on all sides. They asked her how she could be so stupid, told her it was only a matter of time before she got Ekko killed, encouraged her to throw her legs over the railing and jump because it would just be better for everyone.

She sat down hard with her back to the door and pulled her knees in close.

What the hell just happened?

What was that?

What did she just see?

Her heart hammered in her chest. Blood roared in her ears. Her fingers trembled as they combed through her hair. Whatever she’d just done… whatever demon lived inside that device—it didn’t like to be troubled for more than four seconds.

And it made that crystal fucking clear.

She should’ve listened to Ekko. Why didn’t she ever fucking listen? He almost died because of her. Again. She hadn’t even been here a day and she already nearly jinxed him.

She sat with her back pressed against the door, knees pulled to her chest like they might be able to hold her together if she just hugged them hard enough.

The bark was rough against her skin, but it didn’t matter. Her brain was louder than the discomfort.

That was it, wasn’t it?

Her last shot. Her one-in-a-billion, cosmic miracle, never-again-in-her-lifetime chance to see Isha again.

Gone.

The last hope she had snuffed out in a blink. A bloody, silent blink of time.

And now there was no fixing it. No rewinding. No pulling a cord and hoping the pieces fell back into place.

Isha was really gone for good.

Jinx leaned her head back and stared up at the tangle of branches overhead, their silhouettes carved sharp against the starry sky. She felt hollow, like someone had scooped her out and left the shell behind, limbs heavy and numb.

But even if she couldn’t bring Isha back, maybe… maybe she could keep her here. Somehow.

The thought burrowed into her chest and took root.

She didn’t even remember getting up. 

Just found herself carrying a couple buckets of paint up a ladder and setting them down on some rickety scaffolding. 

She was face-to-face with her old self now. Powder. Up close, the paint looked chipped and faded. Ekko must’ve plastered it up here years ago. Jinx placed a hand on her cheek. She used to think she hated this girl, but now she understood she only pitied her. Always trying her best, only for it to never be enough. That crooked, innocent smile, frozen in time… she had no idea how much heartbreak she was in for.

Then, in the empty space above Powder, she set to work.

She was no Ekko. Didn’t have his precision, his eye for detail. But she had a paintbrush, she had paint, and she had pizazz, or the Jinx^TM brand of it, anyway. And Isha once told her that her graffiti was “punk as hell”, which coming from a nine-year-old was just about the highest form of praise imaginable.

So she painted her the only way she knew how.

Bright streaks. Sharp, jagged lines. Wild hair. A mischievous smile too big for her face.

Rebellion captured in pinks and blues.

Jinx took a step back, brush between her teeth. Almost done, but there was just one thing she hadn’t decided on yet.

Bunny ears… or the helmet?

Isha had found those ears at the bottom of Jinx’s old trunk of junk and wore them practically non-stop while lounging around her hideout. Jinx couldn’t remember the last time she herself had worn them—probably before Mom and Dad died. But on Isha? She was basically the cutest kid in all of Piltover and Zaun.

But the helmet… that was her “going out” headgear of choice. Jinx had asked her about it once, and learned she swiped it from some chem baron goon. Said it made her look like her favorite Bandle Scout, Teemo, an explorer her mom used to read to her about back before she lost her.

The ears were cute, but Jinx knew which one Isha thought was cooler. She dipped her brush and went for the helmet.

When she was done, she descended the ladder and stepped back, wiping paint off her brow and gazing up at her handiwork. It wasn’t perfect. Wasn’t the most clean, but it was Isha, and she looked like an absolute badass with her finger gun pointed at her.

She was still staring when Ekko’s voice broke the silence.

“...That Isha?”

She turned, startled. Ekko was standing at the bottom of the stairs, hands stuffed in the pockets of his overalls, gaze fixed on the wall. How she hadn’t heard him come down, she didn’t know. Sometimes he really was as quiet as the owl he liked to dress up as.

Jinx gave him a small smile. “She would’ve loved it here. It’s kinda quiet. Just like her.”

Ekko nodded, his eyes not leaving the newest addition to the mural for a second. “I wish I could’ve met her.”

A tightness squeezed at her chest, and she leaned into him, her shoulder tucking into his side. Together, they stood in silence for a while, surrounded by paint fumes and memories.

Jinx’s eyes wandered across the wall, flitting over a dozen different faces—Firelights, fighters, family—until they landed on one that made her stomach twist. A pink-haired girl, a hood casting a shadow over her eyes. Slightly younger than her, by the looks of it. She remembered the way the girl had run, terrified. 

And how she’d pulled the trigger, anyway.

Froze up and lost her shit, as Sevika so succinctly put it.

She swallowed a lump in her throat. “What was her name?”

Ekko followed her gaze. His face changed, just slightly. “Eve.”

Eve.

That was the second time she’d heard that name today. Ekko had said she was there with him and Scar when the Firelights were founded. She’d been with him since day one.

She wasn’t Vi. Wasn’t a ghost sent to haunt her. She was a real person, with a real name and a real purpose and a whole life ahead of her that Jinx had viciously robbed her of.

She blinked, and the mural began to grow blurry. She turned and slipped her arms around Ekko’s torso, burying her head into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said, hating how small the words felt. “I’m so sorry.”

She felt his fingers rest on her back and pull her closer.

“I know.”

It was quiet as they made their way back up to Ekko’s room. The Z-Drive was back on the desk, its dial reset to four seconds. He had to have figured out what she did, but if he was angry with her, he did a good job of hiding it.

They didn’t speak, but it was clear neither of them wanted to be alone. That night, Jinx fell asleep on the far side of the bed from Ekko, though somehow, the space between them didn’t feel quite so wide anymore.

Chapter Text

The steps creaked and groaned loudly under her boots as she made her way down the rickety staircase into her hideout, echoing against the cavernous walls. Some people might’ve called it poor maintenance. Others, a serious safety hazard. She preferred to think of it as a no-effort alarm system.

Home sweet home.

The cavernous vent system stretched before them, hollow and vast. In the stillness, the silence seemed to amplify everything. The blood rushing through her ears, the whisper of their breathing, the weight of absence that pressed against her chest. For one treacherous moment, she let herself imagine that Isha was still here somewhere, tucked away in a hidden corner, and that the whole shitshow in the sumps had been nothing more than a fever dream.

But she knew better.

With a sigh that dislodged none of the tightness in her chest, Jinx deactivated Rhino’s hover feature, its steady thrum dying as she settled it onto her workbench. Beside her, Ekko grunted softly and set his own supplies down next to it. His gaze wandered across the chaos of her workspace before snagging on the various arts and crafts she had posted around her mirror, particularly the crayon drawings of her and Isha. His eyes softened.

"Here,"Jinx said, her voice softer than usual as she rummaged through papers and dusty blueprints on her desk before she found what she was looking for.

She picked up a thin strip of film, already wearing soft at the edges from handling, and handed it to Ekko.

"Isha and I hit up a photo booth once."Her chipped pink fingernail tapped lightly on the reel. “That’s her.”

Staring back at them was a pair of sisters crammed together on a cushioned chair, cycling through a repertoire of silly faces and poses. 

In one frame, Isha sported her signature bunny-ear headband, its floppy ears askew, partially obscuring her rich chestnut hair. 

Another captured the crude heart they’d scratched into the booth’s scarred backdrop, the letters I + J proudly etched within like a secret code.

In the third, Jinx was planting a comically exaggerated smooch on Isha’s cheek while the kid tried (and failed) to hold in her giggles.

And in the last one, they each held a corner of a crumpled WANTED poster—Jinx's own face staring back with the cartoonish, hollow-eyed expression some lazy enforcer had sketched. They’d done their best to mimic the haunted expression, but could hardly keep the grins off their faces. 

A soft smile tugged at the corners of Ekko’s mouth as he studied the strip. “She’s… so young,” he said quietly.

“Yeah.” Jinx rubbed her arm, her voice distant. “She was like my little sister.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jinx was silent for a moment, lost in memories. bottling up all the swirling, messy emotions inside and shoving them away, just like Silco taught her to do. It usually worked, until the bottle became full, that is. Then things tended to get a bit… explosive.

With a deep sigh, she snatched the filmstrip back from Ekko and went to put it away. “Don’t be,” she said, her voice sharpening. “We’re gonna paint a big tribute to her. It’s gonna knock Piltover’s socks off when they see it coming to save their shiny uptown butts.”

She strode over the box Ekko put onto the table, fingers sifting through the supplies they’d bought on the way here. “But first, outfits!”

Scissors, a needle and thread, a stapler, and fabric of all colors of the rainbow. Everything they needed to make some kickass flight suits.

Jinx attacked the pile of fabric, snatching up a sheet of deep purple. Grabbing the scissors, she went to work trimming away at it, folding and pinning until it began to take the shape she wanted. A hood, loose and roomy. Then she began to stitch jagged, oversized teeth from scraps of white canvas onto its rim, a grotesque grin designed to frame her face like some kind of nightmare monster when pulled up.

Next, she turned her attention to her top. She undid the latch in the back, letting the fabric slip away and replacing it with wrapping tape wound tight across her torso, Vi-style. Jinx had thought it looked tight, even constricting, on her sister, but as she wrapped it in layers around her ribs, molding it to her wiry frame, she had to admit it was surprisingly comfortable. Go figure.

She retrieved her discarded top from the floor, sliced off everything but the collar, and stitched the new hood onto it. Functional fashion. Nightmare couture.

She didn’t want to admit it, but that one asshole enforcer’s comment about her pants had really gotten to her. She replaced her half-eaten circus tent pants with a pair of black trousers which, much to her annoyance, didn’t have pockets.

“Blasphemy,” she muttered, already scavenging through scraps of fabric to sew on custom pockets. Deep ones. Bomb-sized.

Ekko, with less chaotic energy but equal enthusiasm, traded his old white tank top for a new black one, trimming the hem so it stopped just above his abs. His ever-present red scarf remained around his neck, the one splash of striking color on his otherwise monochrome outfit.

An easy quiet filled the hideout, punctuated only by the snipping of scissors, the soft rasp of needle pulling thread, and the occasional sigh of concentration. It was a comfortable silence, settling over them like a blanket as they fell into a rhythm the way only two long lost best friends could, enjoying the familiar motions of making and mending.

Finally, with more belts, pouches, and straps cinched around their waists, thighs, and torsos than Jinx cared to count, they stood, admiring each other’s handiwork.

A grin spread across Jinx’s face as she stooped down and grabbed a pair of scissors, twirling them once before handing them to Ekko.

“Here,” Jinx said, moving to her workbench and plopping down in front of the mirror. “Do my hair.”

Ekko looked at her, his eyes bugging out. “Huh? What do you want me to do with it?”

Jinx shrugged. “I dunno. Just fuck my shit up. Maybe shave the side, like Vi’s. But,” she jabbed a finger for emphasis, “don’t touch my bangs.”

“You want me to shave the side of your head… with scissors,” he said uncertainly.

“Do your worst.”

He blinked, then a slow, almost imperceptible smile played on his lips. “Okay. You asked for it.”

He stared for a beat, then the corners of his mouth twitched. “Alright. You asked for it.”

Jinx sat as still as she could muster, which wasn’t very, as Ekko stepped behind her. His fingers threaded gently through her hair, tugging at strands, hesitant at first. Snip. A few locks fell to the floor. He got bolder with each pass, finding a rhythm. 

Jinx stared at her reflection in the fractured mirror, watching her blue hair cascade down like a waterfall. After a moment, she closed her eyes, a sigh escaping her lips as the rhythmic pull and snip, the tenderness in his touch, began to soothe the ever-present static in her head.

She always loved when people played with her hair. Except that big Noxian jackass. That hair pull was NOT cool and he deserved everything he got afterward for that.

She had to admit, her sudden change of hairstyle was… a bit of an adjustment. The sudden lightness, the absence of several pounds of blue hair perpetually swinging against her back, was almost disorienting. No more long, heavy ropes thwacking her ass with every step. Those braids had been a part of her for so long, it felt like she’d chopped off a pair of limbs.

But they had to go. People said hair held memories, and hers had become a scrapbook of the worst kind—tangles of trauma, every strand soaked in blood and guilt. She’d keep the good stuff in her bangs. Let the rest fall away, make room for something new.

After a few minutes, Ekko set the scissors down and brushed the loose hair off her shoulders.

“There,” he said. “What do you think?”

Jinx examined his handiwork in the mirror. One side of her head was now trimmed down completely unevenly, with strands and clumps of hair swirling every which way. Clearly, Ekko’s artistic talent didn’t extend to hairstyling, but that suited her just fine. “Looks like I lost a fight with our dear, departed Smeech,” she said, turning her head from side to side. “I love it.”

Snatching the shears back from the workbench, Jinx leapt to her feet, a mischievous glint dancing in her eyes. She flourished the scissors with a dramatic snip-snip in Ekko's direction."Your turn,"she chirped, her grin wide and a little predatory.

Ekko’s eyes widened, and he instinctively took a step back, hands raised like she was pointing a loaded gun at him. “Uh, no thanks. I like my hair the way it is. And, no offense, but I’m definitely not letting you near my head with a sharp object.”

Jinx tilted her head, considering. “Hmm,” she mused, tapping the closed scissors against her chin. “That’s probably fair.”

With a shrug, she tossed the scissors back into the overflowing supply bin. “Welp,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Time to paint our ride.”

Ekko’s gaze drifted upwards, following the lines of the massive, skeletal structure that dominated the center of the hideout. His eyes, accustomed to deconstructing and understanding mechanisms, roamed over its gears, pipes, and patched-together metal.

“So… this whole thing,” he gestured vaguely upwards, “is really a balloon?”

Jinx, already scrambling up the side of the structure like a chem-rat up a drainpipe, paused to look down at him, one eyebrow arched. “Uh, duh. What did you think it was? A ventilation fan?”

“I mean… yeah.”

She’d already reached a precarious-looking platform near the top, where she yanked at a rusted lever that groaned in protest. A hatch creaked open, and Jinx reached inside, straining to pull something bulky from its depths. After a few seconds of futile tugging, she let out a loud, theatrical grunt.

“You gonna help me with this, Boy Savior, or are you gonna let the lady do all the heavy lifting?”

Ekko scrambled up the metallic framework to join her. Together, grunting and cursing under their breath, they wrestled a thick, tightly folded canvas from its compartment. With one final heave, they tossed it over the edge, sending it plummeting to the workshop floor below. It landed with a resounding WHUMP that boomed through the cavernous hideout

They dropped down beside the sprawling mass of fabric and began the awkward process of unfolding it. The balloon’s skin was immense, far larger than the cramped confines of the main workspace comfortably allowed. They’d have to tackle it in sections. 

Jinx peeled off toward her supplies and came back with a roller in one hand, a fistful of brushes in the other, and arms full of pinks, purples, and whites.

“So,” Ekko asked, eyeing the vast, blank canvas with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation, “what’s the masterpiece gonna be?”

Jinx grinned, a flash of mischief in her eyes. “Bunny ears,” she declared, holding up a can of lurid pink. “Big, floppy ones.”

Ekko blinked. “Right. Because nothing strikes fear into the hearts of your enemies quite like giant bunny ears.”

“But imagine how utterly humiliated those jackbooted Noxian pricks will feel when they get their asses royally kicked by a war balloon sporting the cutest damn bunny ears Piltover’s ever seen.”

A slow smile spread across Ekko’s face. “You know what? That’s… actually a pretty good point.”

They set to work. Jinx, with bold, sweeping strokes, began to sketch the massive outline of the ears, while Ekko, more meticulous, followed, filling in the broader areas with purple. Section by section, the design began to take shape. The air filled with the faint, sharp scent of paint, and the only sounds were the rhythmic strokes of the rollers gliding across the heavy fabric and the occasional shared grunt as they shifted the canvas to a new, unpainted area.

Time seemed to melt away under the lazy strokes of their brushes. They worked efficiently, patching any holes in the canvas as they found them, and before long, Ekko was putting the final touch on their masterpiece.

Finally, Jinx stepped back and surveyed the results of their project, hands on her hips. 

“Perfection!” she declared, twirling her brush like a conductor’s baton, still dripping with white. “All that’s left is to hook the ears to the skirt, fire up the burners, and Bob’s your uncle! We’ve got ourselves one airborne middle finger to Noxus!”

As she punctuated the word boom, the brush flicked in a careless arc, flinging a glob of paint directly onto Ekko’s arm.

He flinched, scowling down at the splatter, then looked up at her with narrowed eyes. “Seriously?”

Jinx’s grin widened, a dangerous glint entering her eyes. “Oops,” she said, her voice dripping with mock innocence. Then, quick as a striking viperfish, she lunged forward. Before he could successfully dodge, she swiped the still-wet brush across his abdomen, leaving a bold white stripe. “Oops again.”

“You little gremlin,” Ekko muttered, already reaching for the nearest paint roller in retaliation. 

He was never one to back down from a challenge, especially from her. He dipped his own smaller brush into a nearby can of bright, pink paint and with a swift, surprisingly agile movement, swiped a streak right across her cheek. 

“There. We’ll call it even.”

Her mouth twisted into a devilish grin. “Even? Oh, no, no. Little Man, we’re just getting started!”

And so began their dance. Their giggling, chaotic dance. Jinx shrieked and cackled alongside Ekko as they swiped and dodged each other’s dripping brushes, and with each passing minute, they more and more began to resemble life-like examples of abstract art. 

But gradually, their movements slowed, laughter softening. The energy… changed.

Jinx no longer made any effort to dodge Ekko’s brush, and neither did Ekko her’s. Their strokes became more deliberate, more purposeful. The balloon lay forgotten for a while, as they turned their attention to each other, each stroke not just paint, but memory, trust, apology. Their playful war had turned into an invitation to talk to each other through their art, and they each became each other’s canvases.

Jinx stood there, panting, as Ekko dipped his brush into the pink paint and dabbed it beneath her other eye, completing a pair of makeshift war stripes.

In return, Jinx dipped her brush in a light blue paint and drew her signature monkey graffiti onto his thigh, and she could feel his intense gaze looking down at her as she worked.

He stepped closer. Close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, smell the faint tinge of sweat and paint on his clothes. She inhaled sharply as the cool bristles touched her bare shoulder. He didn’t rush. Just drew—slow, deliberate strokes—before stepping back.

An hourglass.

“For all the time we lost,” he said softly.

Jinx’s throat tightened. Unable to speak, her fingers gripped her brush a little tighter as she cleaned it off and dipped it into the pink. Then she stepped in close, and painted a big, bold'X'over the front of his new tank top. “Marks the treasure,” she said, her voice trying for levity but cracking slightly.

Ekko’s lips tugged upward, a smug smile on his face. “Treasure, huh?” A moment’s hesitation clouded his face, but it was gone as quickly as it came, replaced by a devilish smirk.

“Turn around,” he told her.

Confused, but intrigued, she did as he said. A startled gasp almost escaped her as she felt the drag of Ekko’s paintbrush glide right across the seat of her pants.

“Ekko!” she yelped, half scandalized, half laughing. She twisted, but he shushed her with a focused expression and kept going.

One line. Then another. And another.

Five neat tally marks.

“Five times I saved your ass right here with the Z-Drive,” he said, tapping the last line with exaggerated satisfaction.

Jinx snorted, a giggle escaping despite the undeniable heat rising to her face. She whirled around, attempting to fix him with a stern glare, but the smile tugging at her own lips completely undermined the effort. “Oh, sure. You just wanted an excuse to touch my butt.”

Ekko’s face scrunched in an exaggerated display of innocence. “What? Me? Pfft. No...”

She folded her arms, one eyebrow arching skeptically.

He gave a helpless shrug. “Okay, maybe a little,” he admitted, that smug grin returning full force.

“Ha! Busted, Buster!” Jinx crowed, giving him a playful poke in the ribs.

He laughed then, a bright, unguarded sound—the kind that crinkled his eyes and made her chest ache in ways she couldn’t explain. The small space between them hummed, charged with unspoken words and a confusing tangle of feelings that shouldn't exist, not between them, not after everything, but somehow stubbornly did. The playful air about them had vanished, replaced by something heavier, more pulling. 

In the cold, metallic vastness of her cavernous hideout, she found herself unconsciously leaning into him, her body craving his warmth, her eyes inexplicably drawn to the curve of his lips.

And then she looked up and saw that look on his face. 

The same one he’d worn when he’d found her here, shattered, a bomb clutched in her hands, dried tears tracking through the grime on her face. The same look he carried when he introduced her to his Firelights, and kept on his face pretty much the entire duration of her stay, too.

He was looking at her like she was someone else.

Someone good.

Someone deserving.

The admiration glinting in his eyes, the soft tenderness in his smile, the ardor written into every line of his face… It wasn’t meant for her. It could never be meant for her, the broken, ugly thing she was.

Something inside her snapped. She shoved away from him abruptly, spinning around, her back a rigid wall.

“Jinx?” Ekko’s voice was startled, laced with confusion at her sudden mood swing.

“I’m not her, Ekko,” she bit out.

“Huh?”

She shook her head. God, she was such an idiot. 

Ekko had just spent who knows how long gallivanting through a perfect little alternate universe with a perfect little alternate version of her—a Powder who probably never screwed up, never got anyone hurt. And now here he was, back in this grimy reality, clearly suffering from intense interdimensional whiplash, because why else would he be looking at her like this? 

He had her confused for the other Powder. That was it.

She was so stupid to think Ekko might not actually despise her.

But he would. Once his mind caught up, once the glow wore off, he’d remember. He’d remember everything she did—to him, to his friends, to the undercity. All of it. And then he’d stop being so damn nice to her.

So fine. Better to rip the bandage off now.

She whirled on him, advancing a step. “I’m. Not. Her.” Each word came out like a slap. “That perfect girl you met in La-La Land? The one who helped you build that damn thing?” She jabbed a finger at the Z-Drive. “The one you wish I was? That’s not me.”

“Jinx, that’s not—” Ekko started, taking a step towards her, his hand outstretched. “Powder, Jinx… you’re the same person. You’ve always been—”

“NO!” The word tore out of her throat, jagged and loud enough to bounce off the metal walls. Both of them froze. Jinx ground her teeth together. “We are not the same! Did she blow up her whole family? Did she gun down alter-Ekko’s friends? Did she screw up everything good she’d ever had? ‘Cause I don’t think so!”

Her voice cracked hard on the last word, her chest heaving.

Ekko opened his mouth, worked his jaw like he wanted to argue, but nothing came. For a long second, he just looked at her, eyes pained. Finally, he cleared his throat. “All I mean… What I meant to say is… if your places had been switched, and you’d gone through the same circumstances she did, you’d be right in her shoes, and she’d be in yours. There’s nothing different about—”

“But that’s the thing, Ekko,” she cut in, her voice low and bitter, “I can’t just step into her shoes. That’s not how it works. What happened to me happened. And it changed me. Broke me. Different lives, different people.” 

She took a step back. Her voice was quieter now, but no less forceful.

“And honestly?” Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “You should hate me. Half the faces on that mural of yours? They’re there because of me. I backed the guy who killed Benzo. If you really gave a shit about any of them…”

She exhaled sharply.

“You’d hate me.”

Ekko stared at her, his brows narrowing, his fingers curling into fists at his sides. She saw a muscle twitch in his jaw. Now it was his turn to get angry.

Jinx hoped he’d hit her. Tackle her to the ground and start beating her again. At least that would make some goddamn sense. But instead he just leaned in, his face inches from hers.

“Of course I fucking cared about them,” Ekko snapped, his voice straining and failing to keep itself level. “They were my family!”

She heard it then in his voice. The pain. The grief. And she saw it, too. The tears rising in his eyes, held back by sheer force of will. And it suddenly became all that much more real to her—the agony she’d caused him over the years. He’d always hidden it from her whenever they’d come face to face, masked behind a facade of bravado or barely concealed rage, but the full weight of it was crashing in now.

It was far too easy to forget about the heartbreak she’d caused him, the kind that struck late at night behind closed doors, when all the yelling and fighting was done and all that was left was the dark, hollow silence.

It had never really occurred to her how much she must’ve made him cry.

And that thought broke her in a way his fists never could.

He stared at her, shaking his head slowly in disbelief. “You think I didn’t hate you?” he asked, his voice cracking. “Well, I got news for you. Remember Progress Day? When you massacred us on that airship? My people wanted you dead.” He spat the word out like a curse, and then his voice fell dangerously low. “And you know what I told them? I said, ‘So do I.’

Jinx flinched.

“I promised them that from that point onward, there would be no more attempts to talk. No more second chances. You were kill-on-sight. And gods, I tried to keep that promise, I really did, but…”

He trailed off, his shoulders sagging, and Jinx knew what he was thinking about. She’d never forget that look in his eyes, that night on the bridge.

His eyes were rimmed red as he met her gaze.

“So yeah, Jinx. I fucking hated you. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

She didn’t respond, just lowered her gaze, unable to meet his eyes. He took a step back, no longer crowding her, and let out a long, quiet breath.

“But then,” he continued, his voice calmer now, “when I was thrust into that other place… I learned something. I saw how much better our world could be, how much happier everyone was, if we could all just find the simple decency to forgive each other. To let go of the hate, even when it feels like hate is the only thing that doesn’t just slip through our fingers.”

His gaze softened. “And you know who taught me that, of all people? Who showed me that even the worst of us could choose to let bygones be bygones?” He paused then, as if still in disbelief himself. “Silco.”

The word hit her like a slap, furrowing her brow.

Silco? The name, coming from Ekko’s lips, in that context, was a shockwave. Her mouth opened, then closed, no words coming out.

Ekko ran a hand through his hair, as if even he couldn’t believe it. “I didn’t want to believe it at first. But over there, things were different. Vander, Mylo, Claggor, Benzo—they were all alive. Vander and Silco had made peace. There was no Shimmer. And the air…” He huffed a half-laugh. “It was clean. So clean, Vander replaced the whole roof of the Last Drop with glass just to let the sunlight in.”

He had a faraway look in his eyes as he spoke, talking about this beautiful thing that only he could see. But then his face darkened.

“But if you think it was perfect, you’re wrong. Not by a long shot.” His eyes met hers, and he watched her carefully. “In this other world, Vi was dead.”

Jinx froze.

The words didn’t make sense. Couldn’t.

Vi? Dead?

Her mind rejected it outright. Vi was a force of nature, an unstoppable object, a fist that never stopped swinging; saying she was dead was like saying someone had managed to snuff out the sun. Even when Silco had fed her that falsehood years ago, some stubborn part of her, deep down, had never truly believed it. It just… didn’t compute, like dividing by zero.

“And Powder…” Ekko continued, his voice drawing her back. “In a lot of ways, she was just like that Zaun—brighter, happier, and healthier, but… missing something.”

He paused for a moment, like he was looking for a way to explain. “She had no ambition, Jinx. No drive. I mean, she was still a genius, just like you. Could whip up wonders. But she never acted on her own ideas. Never made any of her own inventions, not really. She was… content. Content to just work her shifts in the Last Drop, day in and day out, pouring drinks, wiping tables, maybe tinkering on someone else’s project when they came to her for help. But I think deep down, she was scared. Scared of change. Scared of what might happen if she really tried to reach for something.”

Jinx snorted. “Sounds like good instinct. Things only tend to get worse when I try to change them.”

“But it doesn’t have to be that way,” Ekko insisted, his voice regaining a spark of its earlier intensity, not anger this time, but a fierce conviction. “Look, I know you and Powder have had different lives, different experiences. I’m not stupid enough to suggest you could just step into her shoes and be her. But, you know, with the things I’ve seen and heard about you over the last few days—how you took care of Isha, how you freed the Firelights, how you patched things up with Vi… I’m pretty damn certain you can still be the best of both worlds.”

Ekko’s words hung heavy in the air, resounding off the walls of her mind and mingling with her self-doubts. She turned away from him, hugging her arms around herself, and her eyes lowered onto the drying balloon canvas, absentmindedly roaming over the curves of their artwork. She wished her thoughts could stay inside the lines as easily as Ekko’s steady hand did.

And then her mind began to rewind, bringing her back to every time Ekko had given her that look over the past couple days, recontextualizing. She thought he’d been confusing her for a ghost, a perfect Powder from a perfect world. But that wasn’t it at all, was it? He hadn’t been layering someone else’s life over hers. No.

The truth—the dizzying, groundbreaking truth—was that Ekko was seeing her. The Jinx of this moment. The one who’d stormed Stillwater with only a half-baked plan to rescue Isha. The one who put old grudges aside to mend things with Vi and rebuild their family. The one who, even now, was gearing up to save the very city she’d once sought to topple.

The “stranger” in his gaze wasn’t some souped-up version of her. It was just her. The parts of her that everyone else could see, but that she’d stubbornly refused to acknowledge. She was more than a jinx. She was the hero Isha believed in. She was the sister Vi was, in spite of everything, proud of. And in some twisted, messed-up way, she was an inspiration—a symbol of defiance, of survival—to the downtrodden of Zaun.

Ekko wasn’t mixing up realities. The problem was that Jinx had been living inside her own.

“Jinx… I’m done living in the past. I want to move forward. But I can’t do it alone.” His gaze held hers, unwavering. “I want to move forward with you. But that only works if you want it, too.”

She turned back to him. Ekko held out a hand, an open invitation, and she didn’t hesitate to take it. Their fingers laced together, and he gently pulled her in. His arms wrapped around her, strong and grounding, an anchor in a storm. She pressed her chin into the crook of his neck, breathing in the scent of oil and solder. Warmth built behind her eyelids, threatening to spill.

Gods, what did she do to deserve this boy?

“I’m with you,” she whispered against his skin. “I’m with you, Ekko.”

They pulled apart slightly, just enough to see each other’s faces, but they didn’t dare let go of each other. A huge, unguarded smile lit up his features, and Jinx thought this was the happiest she’d seen him in a long, long time. She lifted a hand, her calloused fingertips gentle as they traced the lines of his face, brushing over the curve of his cheekbone, the slight roughness of his jaw, lingering for a breath over his bottom lip, as if she could memorize this specific, radiant expression through touch alone.

And then, as if guided by some invisible current, some magnetic pull she was no longer fighting, she found herself leaning in. His eyes widened almost imperceptibly, then softened, and he met her halfway. Their lips grazed each other, barely touching at first, as if testing the water. But Jinx had never been one to merely dip a toe in when she could cannonball straight in, and she wasn’t about to start now.

Heart thudding in her chest, she pressed harder, deepening the kiss, throwing her arms around his neck and chasing a sensation she hadn’t realized she’d been starved for. Ekko responded with a deep sigh, wrapping his arms tightly around her back, pulling her flush against him. Hot, stinging tears welled in her eyes, unbidden. It was like an entire private fireworks display was going off inside of her head, each explosion another note in a symphony composed just for—

The stairs creaked loudly, amplified by the cavernous space. Someone cleared their throat.

Jinx flinched and yanked herself free, stumbling out of Ekko’s grip. Her face burned as she swiped at her eyes, then whipped around to glare murderously at the interruption.

Sevika stood at the top of the stairs, arms folded, expression unreadable—except for the faint, unmistakable ghost of a smirk curling at the edge of her lips.

Oh, she was so getting a paint bomb under her pillow. Just as soon as Jinx figured out where the hell the woman actually lived.

“The Noxians broke camp,” Sevika said, voice like gravel, “and they’re heading for their ships. Looks like they’re gearing up to mount their attack.” She locked eyes with Ekko. “I already warned the Firelights. Scar’s bringing them to Vander’s statue now.”

Her gaze shifted from Ekko to Jinx, then down to the massive canvas spread across the floor. Her brow furrowed.

“Wait a damn minute,” she muttered. “Is this thing a balloon?”

Ekko slowly turned to Jinx and arched a brow. Jinx just rolled her eyes. These people and their balloon ignorance!

“We’ll meet you there,” Jinx told her. “Just gotta rig this puppy up first.” A wide, manic grin spread across her face. “I’d say keep an eye out for our grand entrance, but really, you’d have to be blind and deaf to miss it.”

Sevika gave a curt nod, her gaze lingering on Jinx for a moment longer with that infuriatingly knowing look before she turned to leave.

“Maybe you two should try making out at the statue. A celebrity couple would be good for morale,” she said, cackling.

The stairs creaked under her heavy boots until she disappeared from sight.

Jinx tried to ignore the twitch under her eye as she turned back to Ekko. “Right then,” she declared, clapping her hands together. “Let’s take this party airborne!”

They got to work hauling the massive canvas up toward the balloon’s rigid frame, looping ropes, tying knots, latching sections into place. All the while, Jinx tried not to think about the lingering buzz still dancing on her lips.

Once the canvas was secured, they scrambled down. Jinx waltzed over to her workbench and grabbed Rhino.

“Miiiight wanna find some cover,” she sing-songed. Ekko had only had a moment to look confused before she was pointing it skywards.

He yelped and slid under the workbench as Jinx pulled the trigger. Rhino bellowed out a grinning rocket that screamed upward, belching out fire and sparks behind it, lighting up the sides of the cavern as it ascended. Jinx dived in next to Ekko as the cavern shook. Bats shrieked awake from their suspended sleep and scattered. Dust and debris showered down, clinking off metal supports and propeller blades like rain on a tin roof.

Then, silence, save for the rocks tumbling down below. They crawled out from the workbench and looked up to see rays of sunlight streaming through the newly punched hole in the ceiling, the first natural light Jinx’s hideout had seen in who knew how long.

Jinx began packing up knick-knacks, memorabilia, and any loose furniture she had, dragging it into the mine shaft just outside her hideout. Didn’t want to lose those when this birdie took to the sky.

She tied Mylo and Claggor’s dolls, as well as her bunny, up to the rig. They were coming with her. Non-negotiable.

Ekko watched as she scurried around in a whirlwind of manic precision, and Jinx smirked to herself. Good. Better to let him see what he was getting into now, not later.

She ripped open a panel on the side of the gondola, hotwiring the ancient machinery. The engine groaned, coughed, then roared to life. The burners flared up, pumping hot air into the balloon as Ekko wiped years of grime and cobwebs off the rust-pocked steering wheel.

“SHOWTIME!” Jinx whooped, arms flung wide. “Can’t let the Pilties hog all the fun!”

The balloon began to rise, slow and lumbering at first, their tribute to Isha hovering over their heads in the form of two monstrous bunny ears. As they ascended through the blasted hole in the ceiling and emerged into the sunlit sky, the Fissures stretched out beneath them, two cracks in the earth lying side by side, as if some planetary beast had raked its claws across the land.

Below them was where she lived her entire life, twin reminders of all she had lost, but also of what still remained. As rotten and wounded as it was, Jinx couldn’t think of any other place she’d rather call home.

As they lowered through the ever-present haze towards Vander’s statue, Jinx couldn’t help but hope that after all this was over, she and Ekko would get the chance to pick up where Sevika had so rudely interrupted them.

As they descended through the ever-present Zaunite haze toward Vander’s statue, Jinx’s gaze lingered on Ekko. And though she wouldn’t admit it out loud, she couldn’t help but hope that—once the dust settled, once the war was over—they’d get the chance to pick up where Sevika had so rudely left them.

The city awaited.

And so, perhaps, did something else.