Chapter Text
Many years later
Somewhere in the clouds above Demacia
Not long after this story ends, Jinx left Zaun.
Jinx, sometimes known as Powder or PowPow, punk, sister, monkey, pilot of the Crysalis, or even Pilot Penner when she was craving alliteration...had been away for some time when the alarms began blaring.
“Bullshit,” Jinx carried on cursing through her teeth as she leaped to her feet at the sudden scream of alarms. It was her fault really that they rang so loudly, so annoyingly. She’d worried anything less obnoxious could do little to rouse her crew, and what else was she meant to do with two heavy sleepers? Her aquamarine bangs (a new color, deeply out of fashion, and one that reminded her of home without making her want to vomit into her own reflection) slid over her eyes as she scanned each dial and checked each knob with a fuschia fingernail.
“Scoot!” She pushed lean Yasuo, her captain and currently her main target for pestering, out of his rightful place at the helm and practically pressed her nose against the equipment as she assessed each one.
“The fuck is going–”
“Fixing it-fixing it,” she waved a hand towards the Ionian captain.
“Uh yeah,” the heavy footsteps of their only other crew member and quality head smasher echoed through the chaos "are we getting shot at or something?” There was not a speck of worry in the brute’s tone, but Malphite was very literally made of stone so she supposed it took more than a crashing ship to crack his concern. She groaned with the ship as it tipped sideways, flinging their little crew against the left side of the cockpit. They'd be bruised up (chipped up in Malphite's case) pretty badly if they somehow made it out alive.
“Ship’s busted Jinx,” dared the captain. “Best if we abandon.”
“ No ,” she whipped around, and her captain ducked to avoid the hurl of her braids. “Not Crysalis,” she protested sharply and lay two protective arms over the knobs. “Not after all the brain cells you sacrificed to steal her?”
“There are others, grab your shit and we’ll find one.” The captain only shrugged in his oversized coat. Maybe he liked the brain cells he’d been left with.
Jinx eyed their speedometer, their steam levels, then the altitude–what was left of it anyways. The voices that had long plagued her had quieted over the years, but one slipped out just long enough to whisper a simple get outta there PowPow before sinking back behind the heavy curtain of her mostly-healed mind. A small shriek burst from Jinx as the consol suddenly discharged from the cockpit like a loose spring and hurled into the ceiling. Bits of metal and wiring scattered around them like death confetti, perfuming the room with the stench of burning electricity and just a pinch of ozone. Ah yes, the smell of chaos and tech. She wished she could bottle it up and dab it across her wrists each day.
“Welp,” she noted with the smallest quirk of a brow and tossed up hands. This problem, with it’s blaring warning sirens and smoking tech and declining altitude, had quickly reached jump-so-we-don’t-explode-while-plummeting-to-the-ground-in-five-minutes territory. At least the defeat would be an exciting one. “Jumpin time fellas!”
The measly crew scrambled to gather what they could, knick-knacks and weapons and little keepsakes they’d rather not lose (and had likely stolen). Malphite tossed his collection of crystals, which he was sure helped recharge luck or some shit like that, into his pockets. Yasuo piled pirated coins into every nook and cranny of himself and filled up his boots so high they jingled when he stepped toward the parachute packs.
Jinx had only one thing so precious in her procession and she scooped it up quickly from its place beneath her pilot's chair. The book was worn along the edges and cracked upon the spine, but still shone as slick emerald and glittery gold as the day it was officially gifted to her. As the other’s plumped their pockets with valuables, Jinx went to inspect the precious items she’d tucked into the pages. She knew each one as if tattooed to her heart, but she still took those last valuable seconds to run her fingers over each one to be absolutely certain they were still real and safely stuffed in the pages.
First was the unopened letter from Vi, with ink long dried and growing sage with the passing months. The sisters’ barriers had ebbed and flowed as an unpredictable tide for some time, with letters arriving with waning frequency. In time, Jinx decided she preferred looking at the unopened envelopes, knowing that at some point Vi had thought of her while sealing it shut. She liked that a hell of a lot more than seeing what lay inside. She liked to hold it sometimes, inspecting the butter yellow paper like a butterfly in amber and evoke the memories of her older sister through the warm hue of nostalgia. It was a pretty thing to look at, from a distance.
She tucked it safely back into the pages of the second chapter, and carried on.
The next was a ticket so crumbled and wrinkly it barely held together. It threatened to fly away as the Crysalis groaned and tumbled to the side through the clouds, but Jinx quickly tucked it back into the page crease. There was a time, moons and moons ago, when the ticket stub for a silly flight over Piltover would have lifted her into the sky with joy. In another not-so-distant time, it would have filled her up to the brim with dread. But it had been a gift, from a scientist, from a friend and mentor making what he thought might be one of his final wishes.
She smiled through an older, familiar pain, and carried on to the next.
This one was a ribbon, once a vibrant mustard yellow of spring pollen, now muted to the color of snot. The last remaining pieces of a stuffed bunny of questionable origin. A little frayed, a little chewed upon and clawed at by a particularly gangly feline who’d met with his last life many years before. Still, it was a cherished little thing.
Jinx slid a finger over the silky old ribbon, placed it against page 135 like a bookmark, and turned to the very last item, her most treasured.
The photograph was a new one and a gift left in one of the recent slues of letters of which she’d memorized each word. A little family stared at her through the captured moment and she drank in each of the faces with a pang of homesickness.
At nearly eight, little Pallas (who insisted on being called Las even as young as four) was a gale wind against the world. Aside from the curl of her black hair and smattering of freckles, she was the very reflection of her father. Jinx saw him in the aqua of her eyes, the bridge of her nose, and–most strikingly– the way she slipped cleverly through every step she took. Before Jinx left home behind, Las always hugged her with a grip so tight and so fleeting there could be no doubt her next step would bring trouble. By the slight blur of her image and lopsided smile, it was clear the photograph was no small challenge for the wiggliest of their family.
There was no such blur or impatience across the image of Lyra. Even in the dim amber light of the photograph, her short braids shone ginger as fox fur. Her eyes sparkled with that same aqua as her younger sister’s, a small inheritance from their father. Lyra was softer than her sisters in all ways; features, heart, and mind. She’d entered the world tiny, gangling, with a croaked kind of cry that could break the heart of even the hollowest criminal. Jinx still found herself gripped with the contradictory need to keep her little sister close for protection and a desire to maintain her distance so she might not pollute her sweetness. She'd been promised that would improve with time, she hoped they were right.
Jinx lingered on the frozen image of the couple standing behind the two young girls. The woman held a gentle hand on each of her little daughter’s shoulders and tucked her face between them to press her cheeks against theirs. Her hair was pined as a crown of braids in a blend of tangerine and white, resembling the orange cream candies Jinx gobbled up in the Noxian confectionaries. The years had etched tiny lines at the sides of her eyes, which she insisted were her earned laugh lines . It was a little lie but a fitting one, for the college chancellor did laugh with abandon now and often.
The last figure in the photo was that of a silver-haired man who still carried the air of danger along his sharp edges that made her feel safe. His hand held the waist of his wife and his asymmetric eyes held softly on the women before him with the pride of a king. She spied the slick glimmer of gold thread against his waist jacket and his tie's masterfully cut emerald pin. The years had been less merciful than they had been to his wife, darkening the slices of scar tissue along his poisoned eye that glowed like magma. There was a promise of a smile across his lips and Jinx could imagine the curve of it, the mischief of it, in an instant.
The homesickness settled into a softer, kinder bloom of warmth in her chest to remember the words written on the back of it. Missing and loving you, our Jinx. Jinx pressed her thumb over the photo of her family, sucked in a deep breath at the thought of them, and placed it back at the end of the book as an epilogue.
Satisfied, Jinx chomped on her lip as she closed the book and allowed her crew member to shove her parachute upon her back. She gave the ship a final pat on the metal in a farewell before tucking her book of precious things against her chest.
Jinx let out an unencumbered ferocious laugh of delight and lept into the sky.