Chapter Text
Jinx is falling in one moment, Vanders harsh metallic claws wrapped around her in a parody of his embrace and the next moment she’s stumbling up. Throwing the yellow knit blanket off of her and stumbling forward like a drunk, catching herself on a wooden table that’s scattered with papers full of notes and colorful doodles that seem to dance in front of her eyes.
Her stomach swoops like it’s just caught itself falling.
She pushes herself away, heaves. Nothing comes out. She braces herself against the wall feeling clammy and that’s when she sees it; her finger.
Okay she sounds crazy– I am crazy-yeesh Jinx ‘old girl you’re a mess– but it’s her middle fingers; She has both of them. They’re flesh, she can feel the brush of cold steel beneath them and it’s both all the more grounding and discombobulating.
“Powder?” She recognizes that voice, it’s soft, gentle. A bit more airy than she’s used to.
Powder? Powder’s dead. She fell down a well, and broke her little neck. Almost happened to Jinx too when dad got his claws in a crumble and tried to drag her down too.
She turns around.
Ekko. He seems a bit leaner, hair pulled back tight and neat, chalk white locs and wearing a cream colored casual shirt with a green tight knit sweater pulled over it. He looks domestic and tentatively confused. There’s something off. Multiple something's off.
“Was I in a coma for a year or something?” She asks, because the last time she saw Ekko she was painting on his skin, strangely close as they talked lowly to ease their nerves for their last battle. She had rested one hand on his side to hold him firm, felt the heat radiate from his skin and tried to keep her hand steady as she painted on skin. He had been nice to her, she had figured it was because he knew the chances of them both coming out alive were slim to none. Still, she’d appreciated it. In that sort of itchy scalding way that made her want to shrug off her own skin.
“Powder, what are you talking about?”
“Stop calling me that.” She snaps. Raps a knuckle against her temple in her haste to clutch at the tender skin there. And then softer this time. “Stop.”
He was kind, but everytime he said her name, he’d said it with a kind of force. It didn’t fit right in his mouth. Everyone just wanted Powder and everyone was disappointed to see the Jinx that was there instead.
“...What else am I supposed to call you?” He stepped closer, both his hands raised in surrender. He's looking a little flighty. She sees his ring finger twitch. She rolls her eyes, turns around on her heel with more balance than she thought she was capable of at the moment and leans forward a bit. She sees him step a half pace back.
“Are you tryna make some sort of statement or something?” She snips. She thinks maybe she would have been more mad… earlier, but she’s mostly tired nowadays. When she was a kid she used to not understand the Undercities Grandmas who pinched her cheeks and cooed over her and asked for help with every little thing.
Vander liked to send her and the dead fam Vi and co to do chores for them.
“They have old joints, you know? You get old down here and you deserve the celebration of that, we gotta take care of them, it’s a near miracle they’re here. You can’t blame ‘em for being tired after everything.”
And she might not be an old Grandma but she is tired.
Ekko looks confused. There’s a gentle crease between his brows and his eyes go a little distant before he blinks again, refocusing on her.
“Did I make you mad or something?” He questions. He’s lowered his hands and when she takes another sweeping step towards him he doesn’t move, he seems to be thinking hard. Sweet little smart boy, she wonders what’s got him in a tizzy.
“Are you trying to? Make me mad?” Maybe now that they’re both solidly alive Ekko has had time to remember all of the reasons why her name is in fact Jinx Ha! He always was a smart one! Ekkos face shutters.
“Powder… whatever’s wrong you can talk to me? Or Vander? Mylo and Claggor would probably lend an ear too if–”
“What.” She sounds like she’s been punched. Punctured like a hot air balloon going down. She chokes a little on that inhale voice cracking and after that moment of near blinding and surprising hurt- People always do this to you why are you surprised? Rage fills her, and it stings like the shimmer that likes to excite in her veins. She thinks she could actually throw up.
Yiiiikes Mylo hisses Looks like Little man finally saw the light. Claggor seems to linger in Ekko’s shadow. Bloody.
“Hey!” She doesn’t know when she looked away, when her eyes settled on the crawling shadows of Ekko and the building, when she’d focused single mindedly on the bloody prone form of Claggor as Mylo hissed words in her ear but there’s hands; solid present and warm on her shoulders. She looks up, snapped immediately from the hissing shadows, disoriented again, alarmed that there are hands on her.
She slaps them away from her, tumbling backwards and the voice follows her, calm.
“Hey, hey Powder–uh-whatever- breathe” she sees dark eyes, but somehow they’re so warm; Ekko. “Breathe with me you’re okay.” He makes an exaggerated whoosh of breath. He has such warm eyes, her whole family has had lighter eyes, cooler tones, she’s drawn in by that warmth.
“You have nice eyes.” She says. Croaks really. He smiles gently, he looks tired, he’s crouched in front of her, thankfully now giving her distance, she doesn’t know what he was thinking just grabbing her like that.
“You too.” He says sweetly. “Dark blue.”
“What?” Because she knows, whenever she gets in a tizzy her eyes will turn that violet, that shimmer noxious color that pierces through darkness and it’ll burn a bit, but it’s also sickeningly heady, she can see why it’s addictive, sometimes it just makes everything brighter, louder, stronger. She hates it.
She has just freaked out and nothing happened. She doesn’t feel the distant distinctly painful yet buzzingly energizing thrum of shimmer, it’s just… her heart pounding.
“They’re blue?” She sounds childish her voice cracks, Ekko’s mouth twists but gently he replies
“Yeah.” He shuffles forward a little, still on the ground with her. “A beautiful blue.” She reaches up, all of her flesh fingers rest below her eyes. Ekko watches her gently and familiarly and smaller than she remembers seeing him last…
“Oh…” She breaths. “This is the Other Universe.” That must make sense to Ekko because his eyes widen and although he doesn’t move back again she can see a layer of wariness ripple over him, now she can see how open he was being with her because it all shuts down neatly, and he’s not being unfriendly as much as she can see how much he trusted whatever Powder this was.
Her Ekko had told her about this. He’d draped his coat around her, she'd asked him about that machine he’d made and he’d looked at her long and hard before he’d replied, wetting his lips.
“You helped me make it.”
“What? No I didn’t, I’m not that crazy.” And then he’d told her about the other world; about Powder and Vander and Mylo and Claggor and even freaking Silico. He had sounded fond, and she could see why. The world sounded beautiful, it sounded peaceful, it sounded like Ekko’s version of a dream.
“Why did you leave?” She had asked and he’d smiled at her before looking down at his creation– a creation he made with her in another universe apparently. Something bitter curdled in the back of her throat.
“It wasn’t mine to have. And I wasn’t going to abandon everybody.”
She’d thought that was a little dramatic, but now she kind of understands. The Other Ekko, the Ekko of this universe was probably told by Powder. His Powder You aren’t even Powder. About Ekko’s little visit here. Or maybe he remembered? She wonders if she is possessing someone, Jinxing this perfectly happy world. She gets why Ekko left, she should hurry and find a way too, before she manages to burn this one to flames too.
“You’re the… the Evil Powder?” He questions. Is that what Ekko had called her here? She can’t really blame him but for some reason it still makes her feel itchy, hot.
“At your service.” She says, instead of any of the other things she could say instead. “Jinx. I might cause your universe to implode, who knows.” She laughs, high pitched and manic. Ekko’s eyes stay trained on her unerringly steady. He looks like he’s trying to parse out if she’s joking or not.
“You call yourself Jinx?” Is what he settles on, he sounds curious, in a flat way. He’s not wondrous or judgmental.
“Yep.” she pops the P.
“You prefer that to Powder?” An unwilling flare of irritation bursts into her chest but she clamps down on it, through grit teeth, she nods. “Why?” He questions and he’s open again now, not as much as he was of course, but he’s seen something in her and she doesn’t like it. Her Ekko had done this too, he had watched her with this annoying knowing-ness on his face. She’d thrown something at him.
“Jeez man, we just met. Do you always start this deep?”
“Well I know you…sort of, a version of you– I feel like that means it's not just met? You know?”
“You don’t know me.” She says. “I’m not Powder.”
“Powder told me…” He starts sitting back, crisscrossing across from her, a surprisingly childish move.
He looks comfortable, sweater and sat. He may be leaner but it’s not from a lack of food rather a lack of that desperate sort of muscle you get when you’re constantly fighting for your life, his face is still full and his cheeks aren’t hollow. “She told me that the Other Ekko, the one from your world… that he was different from me, but not not me. Does that make sense? She said it was hard to tell at first, just that things added up and she’s really smart you know, I’m sure you know, you are too.” He runs his hand over his neck a bit bashful. “I’m not discounting what you’re saying, I believe that you are probably very different from Powder but you’re still… You?”
“No.” She leans forward and rests her head on her hands, elbows planted on the ground, she enjoys having her middle finger back, it’s not so cold against her face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She wishes she had her guns, her eyes darting around the room for a moment to see if there are any.
There aren’t. The peace of it disturbs her, it leaves her feeling ready for something to clamor from the shadows at this perfect moment of unpreparedness.
“Okay.” He concedes. “Okay.” He sits there for a moment, watches her, she refuses to look away first so he does, pulls himself to his feet again and steps closer to her, holding a hand out. “Let’s get something to eat, you look tired.”
“I am.” She laughs again, it rings hollow.
“Okay.” He says. “Food and then we can take a nap.” She doesn’t have the heart to correct him, that it’s not that sort of tired. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t correct him.
She takes his hand, warm and just a bit larger than hers. This Ekko doesn’t have calluses from swinging around pipes, or bats or whatever he uses, but his nails are still filed down. He doesn’t let go of her hand and he leads her out.
– – –
He takes her to his apartment, he has an apartment. They walk through the streets and the first thing she notices is how bright it is.
The buildings aren’t falling apart and hastily repaired, there’s stained glass in some windows and trees clamor the buildings as honest to god sun shines down on them. She’d be tempted to compare it to Piltover but it’s still Zaun, she can tell because there’s that unique charm in the way that the buildings– although nicer and more stable– still don’t match. Eclectic and beautiful.
She stands there for a moment and Ekko lets her, she can feel his eyes on her, but she can’t stop gaping at the world around her. Ekko had told her it was nicer, that Piltover and Zaun were no longer at odds but part of her had thought he might have just been throwing stories her way, helpless idealism that he somehow had no matter how hard the world tried to stomp it out of him.
She took a deep rattling breath, the air was so clear, it smelled like food, and dirt and not like waste, pollution and whatever else the topside deemed should be thrown to them. It was almost overwhelming. She was overwhelmed.
Ekko squeezed her hand, and she turned to him, not even caring how she looked.
“It’s so… beautiful.”
“I suppose it is.” His voice is soft. “I still remember what it looked like before… I’m sorry if-if your world still resembles that.” She takes one last look around before she sends him a nod and he continues to walk her to his apartment.
“How grown up of you.” She had teased and he had shook his head.
“I can’t keep living with Benzo, he visits all the time anyways.” Benzo’s still alive, too… this world really is unreal. She’s almost uncomfortable with knowing how good everything is–it’s like a store owner presenting all of their rare glass artifacts in front of a raging bull whose rope is about to snap.
They walk the rest of the way in silence. When they arrive at Ekko’s apartment he pulls out his keys and pushes the door open, holding it for her, she sweeps in.
It’s small but nice. A big window with plants sprawling all around it, clamoring to the light. Oranges, greens and blues. There’s a picture of them on the wall, Powder leaning her head against Ekko throwing up a peace sign, while Ekkos smiling down at her. It’s a cute picture.
She steps towards it but Ekko leaps in front of her, pulling it down.
“Sorry.” He hastens. “I don’t want you to feel awkward.” Real cute, she thinks almost snarkily, as if that could make her feel awkward.
She doesn’t press though, she looks around the rest of the apartment, a couch with multiple blankets thrown over it, a coffee table covered in papers and scribbled writings. She sees the more colorful drawings as well, that she now realizes must be Powders. There’s two empty cups on the table as well and a plate with crumbs, a rug beneath it that’s blue and green.
Ekko lets her look around, walking to his kitchen where she hears him opening cupboards and grabbing things.
His living room is warm, she can imagine Powder and Ekko hanging out here often, the numerous plants are all vibrantly colorful and some of the pots are also doodled on, Powder's fingerprints are all over the apartment.
She walks to the door on her left and cracks it open. A bathroom, a plant is in there too, and little ones on a shelf with extra toilet paper. She stops, drifting closer to the mirror.
She looks like herself but also… not. Her eyes are blue, not even the slightest taint of shimmer, the circles under her eyes are absent and her skin is healthy and plump. She knows in her world she’s started to resemble a bit of a sickly ghost, she doesn’t like looking in mirrors but especially recently they’d showcased the strain her system was under, the strain she was under.
Her hair is down short but without her bangs and neatly cut, she wonders if Powder is one of those ponces that gets her hair done, and actually pays someone to cut it. She’s also wearing a necklace that strikes her as familiar but she can’t quite remember why. It’s simple and her brain tells her she’s seen it before. It doesn’t even necessarily match the rest of Powder's outfit but she’s very intentionally wearing it.
She shakes her head, steps out of the bathroom and looks at the other two doors. She opens the closest one.
It’s generic, nothing personal, no plants. It smells clean and there’s dust on the windowsill, it must be a guest bedroom. She can tell Ekko put some energy into decorating it because there’s a mural on the wall, swooping green leaves and rosy blushes. The bedspread is nice, neat and crisp, a yellow and green striped pattern, but otherwise it’s not all that interesting, the last room must be his bedroom.
She wonders if she should ask to look in.
She decides she doesn’t care, her curiosity wins out and Ekko had said ‘make yourself at home’ which is clearly blatant permission.
She opens his bedroom.
It’s dark, the sheets are crumpled, yellow and green. He likes those colors but his room is in disarray… There's a corner that’s covered in newspapers annotated with a red ink all harsh and hurried, his curtains are pulled over the window and there’s a stack of dirty plates on his dresser that are then piled with even more heaps of paper. He has a pile of books at the foot of his bed that sweep off into pencils and pens that litter the floor.
In the opposite corner she sees a table, it has a box over it creating an almost picture frame effect. A picture frame rests inside of this box, she can’t see it, it’s dark, but candles and dried flowers, little notes and incense rest in front of the photograph. A thick journal rests on the table just to the right of it.
She steps out of the room and closes it quietly behind her.
She walks over to the kitchen and plops herself down on a stool, watching him cook, he doesn’t notice her, his back is to her and he’s chopping vegetables, she sees a soup on a simmer, it smells good, it’s a caramel color, like trapped sunlight.
“You like plants huh.” He jumps a bit, breathes and turns around.
“Pow-Jinx.” He sighs. “You scared me.”
“First time someone made a meal for me in a while.” She says, gazing at the steam that rises from the bubbling soup. Ekko sweeps the vegetables into his hands and carries them to the broth, dropping them inside, he doesn’t flinch away from the heat, or when the broth leaps up. He has a frown on his face.
“This is something really simple, I’ll make you something better later.”
She scoffs. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.” She stays staring at the soup. “And yeah, I do like plants, I’m so thankful we have the light to have them now. I like being able to take care of things like that, and I think it’s a good reminder of what Zaun is now.”
“And what is Zaun?”
“Free.”
“How does that even happen?” He’s quiet so finally she looks up at him, he’s looking at her sadly and she feels sick again, this universe makes her feel sick.
She belongs in the toxic universe, where the air is poisonous and Ekko never looks at her like that, with care and sadness and where no one really gives a damn and where everyone is too dead for her to kill (again).
“Don’t tell me.” She remedies when she sees him, after that long pause, open his mouth.
“You deserve to know. You should know.” He turns, grabs two bowls from a cupboard, they’re blue, the same color as her hair.
“I told you; you don’t know anything about me or what I deserve.”
“No offense Jinx, but you’d have to be pretty damn evil to not deserve to know this okay?”
“I am.” She says. “I’m not your Powder, I know I look like her but I’m what's keeping her from you. Doesn’t that upset you?”
“We’ll find a way to get you home, Powder and your Ekko figured it out, this is like a visit. You aren’t keeping me away from her. I know you’re trying to make me upset but it won’t work.” She can see it though, something in his eyes, an agitation that he’s working hard to keep under wraps, and worst of all, at the forefront something cloyingly soft, and disgustingly useless; Pity.
“I’m just telling you the truth.” She huffs “I’m not trying to manipulate you.”
“Well, you are the ‘evil powder’ aren’t you.” He stirs his soup, puts the lid back. “And my Powder was always a bit conniving.” His voice is laden with fondness.
“You don’t know me.” She says again, because she doesn’t like how some of that fondness is directed at her. It shouldn't be.
“Tell me something about yourself then.” Ekko says easily. She stays quiet, looks at her fingers. She has all of them, she wonders if anyone will notice, or care that she’s missing in her world.
Maybe Vi, Vi was too willing to care for her own good.
But she’d get over it. Vi is strong, durable, she always was the one that would make it out of the two of them. She didn’t need to worry about Jinx anymore, she had meant that. Vi was always too attached to duty, like Vander. Jinx didn’t want to be anyone's burden anymore.
“I’ll start, we do have to get to know each other a bit I suppose.” Ekko says after her long silence. He thinks for a moment and she swings the chair around to look at him, he has his chin resting in his palm, eyes pensive and distant. “Powder and I have been together for a long time. We’ve had our difficulties, right now we’re both doing the best we’ve been… in awhile. She cared for me when I wasn’t doing so well, when I definitely didn’t deserve her.” He laughs, and Jinx wonders how trippy this alternate world is, because in what universe does Ekko not deserve her– er–Powder.
“I find that hard to believe.” She can’t help but say and he perks up a little.
“Believe it, I’d get so caught up in my work, and I’ve always cared for her, loved her really but… things happened and although I never loved her any less we both stopped fitting together as well.” He reaches his other hand over and taps her palm. “I can… get caught up in my head, and that happened when she needed the support, my support, the most. She doesn’t like to be alone and even if I was physically present sometimes I wasn’t… and so I left her alone.” He swallows. “When she needed me.”
“What, you’d just ignore her?” That does sound surprisingly rude. As If you have any room to judge.
“Basically… I mean that’s what ended up happening. Sometimes I would be there and sometimes- ahhh, I would just feel like I was out of my body and like it was so hard to get back in.” He gives her an apologetic smile. He lets out a soft laugh “I’m bad at explaining this, but the bottom line is- we had our problems but I know we're doing good now.” His smile turns more real, it softens his eyes, the lines that have been pulled tight under them relax. He looks young, they are young. But they feel old. “She spends a lot of time here and we actually spend most of it together. We both have bad days and good days… but the good ones outnumber the bad now.”
He’s seen something in her, something that ridiculously led him to thinking she needed some sort of pep talk. About what? His happy universe having a bit of a rough patch? She’s almost insulted but it’s Ekko so she can’t get that upset.
“I only ever have bad days.” She says blandly.
Isha was a rare moment, a brief brightness that for a moment, in the dark lonely frigid world made her hope– for one moment– that she could be something other than a curse to someone, that she could love someone and they could love her and they would be safe. Maybe she could start to be happy and have a family.
Days are meaningless again, truly meaningless.
She knows it's not great when she hears voices, and sees things but she had sort of hoped that– even in this twisted way she’d see Isha again. But Isha is too bright to be banished to the shadows of her delusion, and Jinx has never seen her and will never see her again.
Ekko nudges her soup towards her, it smells good, she looks up at him through the haze of steam. He has his bowl in front of him, spoons some in his mouth and hums quietly.
She looks down; the caramel color has darkened slightly, vegetables and noodles float within it, it smells like salt and spices. She takes a spoonful, it’s delicious. Something about it tastes warm and welcome. She wonders if her Ekko can cook, or if that’s another thing in this universe.
She starts to feel guilty, that she hasn’t told him anything, even though she never asked for his ridiculous pep talk, he’d offered a trade of information and she hadn’t given him anything.
“In my universe.” She starts “I’m missing this finger.” She says. And then she flips him off.
His laugh is abrupt and startled. She thinks this might have been the first, truly, good thing she’s done in awhile.