Chapter Text
Lamb took a step, and the stars gave her a floor.
She did not know why she was here.
Lamb reached out, and a life gently floated into her hand.
She never knew why she ended up here.
A void stretched beneath her, above her, all around her. Its edges lay far beyond sight, yet well within reach. The ground did not exist, and yet Lamb did not float. And within the nothing, something. Billions of somethings, uncountably many someones. A trillion stars flickering with life. Lamb blinked. The stars' true colors filtered through, their progression to death apparent.
Brilliant white. A newborn child, deep within the hospitals of Demacia. His name would be Aralim. Lamb studied the orb within her hand, keeping the vision steady. And yet she felt no attachment to little Aralim. His life passed from her attention unmolested.
A deep jade. A gutter rat, wasting away in the alleys of Bilgewater. The man had been so drunk for so long he had forgotten his own name. The alcohol had destroyed his pain, and yet without his pain, he could not tell he was dying. The rot inside him would claim him, and this drink would be his last. And yet her bow did not materialize, and her interest did not peak. The bubble of life popped behind her, away from her, and his soul crossed the final barrier.
Bloody red. A Noxian fighter being patched up. Her wound would not take her yet, but its repercussions might. Blue, a serene old man. Neither close to death nor distressed by its presence. As many colors as their were lives, each within her reach and judgement, and yet none rose to those lofty heights.
Tryndamere. He fought, and yet she cared not for his life. Such mistakes occurred. Such mistakes were fixed. Such mistakes are repeated. And the Lamb endured. The Lamb was called to all, and to none. She was called to one.
The bubble of life pulsed. It had been pulsing, and flickering. Its colors bled with one another. One soul made of two. One mind inhabited by many. Insanity and crushing reality. Hands soaked so bloody their bones were stained red, yet never enough. Never the blood that would make it all stop. And then the thoughts were gone.
This life glowed with resolve. It flickered with hatred. Its core was saturated by darkness, and yet it dragged itself towards the light. What a fascinating creature. One who wanted to meet her, yet refused to take the paths that led to her. One who saw the bubble of her life, yet shot at those who cradled it. Always burning, and never ash. Always drowning, and never sunken.
Jinx.
The name was no more hidden to her than Aralim, Tryndamere, Jax. There was nothing beyond her vision here, and yet this soul refused her comprehension. It thrashed against her gentle hand and drooled over her arrows. So Lamb stood. She watched. She tried to comprehend. And she waited.
“Fluffy!”
She had registered the portal behind her, as she had the auburn girl rocketing towards her. The body of a small child landed across her back, grappling onto her like a little monkey. The squeal of joy echoed in Lamb's brain, and she knew it was supposed to incite her own emotions. But the feelings were given to Wolf long ago, and instead she pondered.
“Oooh, whozzat?” The girl now had her chin across Lamb’s shoulder, looking in wonder at the fragile life pulsing before their eyes. Lamb did not answer, for Zoe did not need answers. A small hand rewound the display as freely as Lamb herself might, then scrolled the photos too quick for comprehension. The kaleidoscope of colors made the Trickster giggly gayly once more, and then she glanced around frantically.
“Wait, where's the big fluffy?” Wolf chuffed in appreciation at his mention, voice echoing down her spine. “He is here.” They were never separate. “He is there.” A bubble splattered with crimson popped behind them. “He thinks less, and does more.”
“Aww, but I like big fluffy! Can you call him? I never get to see him!” A portal opened up even as Zoe pleaded, and yet Wolf did not come. He did not appreciate the galaxy of souls, only their fleeting mortality. “He will come if he pleases. You may go, if you desire. He shall not run.”
Zoe kicked her way up, spinning upside down. “But he’s not as interesting as you!” A falsehood baked with overt simplicity. “He is. We are.” The life within her hands flashed, calling to her weakly. Strongly. Never. The girl before her was pouting now. “Big fluffy is always the same, and you change! That’s not equally interesting!”
“Your mortality is showing, dearest child.” Lamb began to release the life at long last, watching it gently float away. “Too eager to validate change, too complex to appreciate simplicity, too hasty to gauge progress.” The Targonian constellation pulled at her senses, separating her once more from the hunt.
“And your age is showing yah grumpy goose!” Zoe batted the bubble back towards Lamb, held it in place before her eyes. “When’s the last time you tried to appreciate the changes? Found someone worth talking to?” Lamb looked past Zoe, past Jinx. To the galaxy of Targon, glimmering with power. She felt… something, and yet she only had eyes for the insignificant soul forced before her.
“Before even you were born, child.” Zoe cackled. Purple energy crackled all around her, then discharged into the bubble. Its shell expanded, dwarfing Lamb and then some. From a pocket watch to a proper mirror, from faint emotions to brutal transparency. Lamb blinked, and saw Jinx as a mortal might. Through a window, struggling with a life she had never dreamt of, wished for, or accepted.
“Let’s change that. You need a vacation, grandma!”
The small body of Zoe might as well have been a meteor. It crashed into the small of Lambs back and forced her flat against the window, and then Zoe pushed harder. Radiant energy, an endless pool of blind faith completely oblivious to its shortcoming obliterated Lamb. Then she reformed, as she always would, and yet not as she always should. For when the final shove came, Lamb did not pop the bubble, as she had so many times before. Lamb crossed the event horizon… and fell.
-V-
Do you know what the definition of insanity was?
Jinx knew the definition, sorely wanting as it was. She loved to pretend she was above it, but HERE SHE WAS! Watching the same song and dance play around her in its usual slow-as-fuck motion and she was so tired. She had run away! Not far enough to be free, not close enough to be talked to. Until someone got close enough. And then blah blah blah she killed some people or whatever the fuck, and she went back to being “different”. The second stage of insanity repeated. She could probably list that stage out too, but WHATEVER!
So what was the twist this time? Why was she pretending it would be different? Because Violence and the Gambling Bimbo had been making great strides at integration. Cooperation. Gentrification, you know what she didn’t really care about the word. She cared that Zaun was Zaun, and Zaun was… Zaun. She’d said that word too many times too quickly. What was the point? There was no fucking point, she was the gift of Christmas past at this point, she didn’t have a point! SHE’D NEVER, EVER HAD A POINT!
Things were going… good. Zaun was being handled better than she could have ever expected, Piltover hadn’t shot reconstruction efforts in the dick yet and it was all just… good. She could find the bad! She’d found the bad plenty of times, and somebody else had actually fixed it. Like, each time. Two cities were becoming equal all around her and all she had to show for it was a gun and some ghosts.
Jinx was tired. Her insanity had nothing to fight and her sanity had nothing to notice. She felt like a self-aware puppet, playing the part while seeing the strings, waiting for the play to change. She knew rumors of her existence were slowly percolating. She knew Vi would never give her up. She knew the next steps and she was letting herself fall down the stairs and FUCK IT!
She shot her strings to pieces.
Jinx didn’t have the first clue on things to take for a long journey. Sevika did . Sevika absolutely loathed the idea, and Jinx couldn't care less. Fending off the perfectly reasonable alternatives was exhausting and annoying and Jinx really, really hated thinking about the outbursts and expressions that got her desires through Sevika’s nationalistic opportunism. She really, really hated thinking about them. So she didn’t. She focused on the rucksack.
Little bit of food. Matches. Bedroll, cutlery, some money, some ammo, you know, just the essentials. Jinx added more weaponry, fully aware she would hate herself later with all that added weight. She already hated herself for going to Sevika! Why had she opened up any avenue for her sister to find her? Like hell…Those thoughts led to bad places, so she stopped having them. Instead, she picked up where she left off: actually leaving. North or south, red or… red. She liked red. The thought of going towards red was amusing, and nobody would expect it. Red. She could do red!
Up up up, through layers of pipes nobody had seen in generations. North, relentlessly north. Get turned around. Figure out which way was fucking north again. Climb, climb, forward. Squeeze and push and lose a goddamn coin into the sewer. She tied the bag more securely and resolutely avoided thinking about how terrible this idea was. Every other idea was just as terrible after all, this one at least led somewhere.
It took over a day. Dead ends, roundabouts, bouts of insanity and mania, the echoing screams of the dead. Jinx was wondering if this was the ignoble way she died, lost in the outskirts of her home. Certainly wouldn’t be the first to fail like that, there’s a reason nobody did this. She could have just cut over the top after all. But she wouldn’t mind getting lost forever.
Damnit, she’d found a sewer pipe. Away and away it went, until it breached the city itself. Double damnit. She saw the glimmer of light buried at the end of the tunnel growing and growing, and she actually slowed. She didn’t… like, she’d read stories. Piltover wasn’t Runeterra, Zaun wasn’t Hell. Neither were endless, and yet it felt like the end of the world, that light. And Gods dammit it was raining.
She, in her infinite wisdom, had not thought to get appropriate clothing for the fucking mountain in front of her. As she shivered at the entrance to the gutter, Jinx had no choice but to appreciate the cliff of Piltover looming above her. Layers and layers of houses and pipes no doubt, all hidden by one truly massive wall separating Piltover from the rest of the world. She could distantly see an airship far above her, lights vainly fighting the storm. Jinx looked ahead… and decided dying from a cold was gay. She’d rob a clothes store before escaping.
Yeah.
Which meant she had to climb the giant wall she’d deliberately gone under.
Said wall rebuffed her punch, and she cursed up a storm entirely inferior to the one pounding her head with rain. FUCK! Nothing to do but, figure out, seriously this was a terrible idea. Who the fuck approached Piltover from the ground? A lone ladder half a mile away was the first progress up the monstrosity of progression, and progress up wasn’t exactly smooth. There were people here! She hated people. She actually doubled back to leave her money at the base of the wall so she could zip more freely, and even then she wasn’t built for this. No amount of drugs could make this bearable. Dammit she should have stolen some Shimmer! Or alcohol! This is why she hadn’t run away yet, she was terrible at it!
By the time her mental breakdown finished, it was still night. Shocker. Fuck she was tired, but it was now or never. She climbed the last bit, up onto the floor of Piltover, and got to work. Unsurprisingly, there was a perfectly appropriate clothes shop barely a street over. She wanted to shoot herself. Eh, she always wanted to shoot herself.
Jinx was taking a grenade apart before she even thought to check the door.
It was locked.
Anyways, explosives! Rip a grenade down to component parts, extract its core, shield the gunpowder within from the pounding rain. Slowly, carefully, she packed the lock with said dry gunpowder, pulled a lighter from her ass, ripped a small piece of her shirt off to form a fuse, then stuck a piece of gum over the hole to seal the force in. What? Sevika knew her well. She had soo much gum. Took a few tries to light the… who was she kidding she’d resorted to holding an open flame next to the packed lock.
Bang!
The detonation crackled in the air like a juvenile lightning bolt, and a few lights flicked on behind her. Jinx and her newly burned hand were already in the store, of course, and nobody would think it strange the curtains were closed. She propped up a chair against the door to “lock” it just in case. Could never be too careful!
Her lighter came back into play to illuminate the merchandise, and she wondered if everybody was as daft as her when she got the scope of things. It was a good selection, from underwear to fur lined coats. Jinx set her lighter down carefully and stripped as she worked her way through. Nice underwear, heavy pants and socks, new boots, oh she was in heaven. Sides the thunder echoing behind her, of course. A bra? A… fuck did the tag… oh, outdoor. No shit, but double no shit a hiking bra? She didn’t need a normal bra, hell would she need a hiking bra for? She found some skin tight base layer thing (she refused to read another tag!) that only Piltover had the time to invent and damnit, she could see her nipples. Eh, that was kinda funny. She left it alone and went looking for an appropriate top layer-
Thump.
Her blood ran cold. Something wasn’t right, that wasn’t a noise she was supposed to be hearing. Oh, hey, she already had her gun drawn! Nice! Its barrel led the way back around the shelves she’d been behind, politely informing her the chair was still propped up an infinitesimal amount of time before she properly registered the body on the floor.
Cream fur so stark it was practically luminous, fading to stifling black as it traversed arms and legs. Tattoos pulsing with white energy on thighs, midriff and ears. They had to be ears, droopy ears attached to white hair currently obscuring the face of whatever entity had crashed into her life.
As Jinx scrambled to understand the demonic incursion so obviously before her, the body moved. An arm snapped into position, then shoved down. Jinx could see the sharp ivory claws at the end of the hand now, anchoring the being as it forced its way to its knees. A foot got under, and the obvious nudity of the humanoid was reflected by the next bolt of thunder. Black nipples, something Jinx would be aiming at if it weren’t for the face. The being was awake. Its eyes pulsed a sickly, solid green. No pupil, just endless jade. And even then, she could have found her voice.
But its mask.
Its mask drank the light, black against even the shadows behind it. Its mask drew her attention and her aim, a thin sliver of silver marking the center of it. Its mask dominated her vision, invaded her senses, dragged her down, down, down…
Lightning flickered.
Thunder crashed.
Jinx pulled the trigger.