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Ekko sees her - the catalyst - and his world stretches out by the tens of feet that lay between them, of concrete and grainy blood. He feels his universe expand to the edge of the bridge, careful fingers of curiosity that probe into the darkness. His entire cosmos tips on it’s axis, dizzying around him.
Amber eyes meet stormy blue, cracking with realisation as she sees him back. In the flesh. Alive. Breathing. If he looks close enough, Ekko could probably see the racing pound of her heartbeat in her neck, trembling like a rabbit in a snare.
She’s Powder, but also not.
There is a certain likeness about them - in the flushed excitement - rage? nervousness? frustration? - dusting across her cheeks in a dark pink.
She’s still got the same freckles, Ekko can still close his eyes and draw the dots between each of them like a geometric puzzle. That hasn’t left - enraged into her skin like marble. She grips her gun with the same familiar confidence, fool-hardy and self-assured, fingers moulded like metal around the handle.
The same haunting cheekbones, her sharp jaw - carved out by hunger in youth, the same shock of blue hair, the same furrow of her eyebrows as she connects the dots, brightening ever so slightly with recognition. She still has the slight favour of her left side, the same crown of blue hair.
But she’s different. In her mannerisms - the flick of her shady eyes, the hunched posture, the sharp lines of her pale collarbones that she would have never let show for fear of vulnerability.
Vi and that enforcer girl are heading away, and that’s when Powder - not Powder, because Powder has to be dead, Ekko doesn’t know what he’d do with himself if she’s still in there, because that means he’s left her this whole time - raises her gun towards him.
He suddenly feels twelve years old again - standing in the alleyway outside of the Last Drop, bare skin stinging in the cold, cheeks flushed red. He and Powder used to watch Vi fight - they tried to memorise her swings and kicks and blocks, and would act them out in loose sparring when none of the older kids were watching.
They were trying to burn the movements into their memories without any actual intention behind it. Nothing but slightly sweaty foreheads, smiles through panting breath and twiggy arms that ache with too much exertion. He had been desperate to prove himself as capable and responsible - and he had thought that violence was the way to go about it.
Ekko can say that he hasn’t changed over the years - but that doesn’t make it any more true.
Ekko lunges, the tick of his pocket watch acting as a steady hum that he can choreograph his spins and dives and strikes to.
He twists in the sky, bringing up his club behind him. The stars spin around him, a thousand at a time behind the blanket of black ink that covers the night sky in shadow. Constellations, galaxies, entire universes revolve around him.
They’re both on the ground before Ekko properly processes what’s happening. His fist comes down again and again. He can feel it colliding with the bone in her face, but he’s sort of consumed by this all-controlling fury that he can’t stop. Fury at Jinx. Fury at Vi. Fury at the entirety of the Undercity, and the quiet, controlling venom of Piltover itself.
The night air is cold. Too cold. Ekko can hardly swallow, all of the moisture in his throat seems to be frozen. It’s mid-autumn at the edge of Piltover, it shouldn’t be this cold and yet he’s shaking all the way down to his bones.
He looks down at his knuckles, red with aching abrasions and covered in slick, hot blood. Not his blood, he realises, with a mounting horror, as he looks down at the still body beneath him.
Jinx grins up at him, eyes hazy with pain.
Her face is smeared with blood, streaked from her broken nose, staining her teeth pink, but she doesn’t even fight anymore. Just looks up at him with these eyes, stormy and angry and impossibly sad - deep wishing wells of a blank sort of acceptance, bruising and dark.
They’re a thousand years from their childhood. Jinx’s eyes are that of a former dreamer, and Ekko’s are weighed down with his burdens.
Then his eyes snag on a movement to his left, right as Jinx pulls the trigger out of one of her grenades. His heart seizes. Ekko moves without thinking, grabbing the chattering little thing - shaped like some mammal with teeth, and he’s vaguely glad to know she hasn’t lost her sense of humour - and he throws it as far as he can down the bridge.
He takes cover over the top of Jinx, their bodies pressed close as he braces for the explosion, every muscle tensed like a coiled spring. He can feel her lithe, toned muscles underneath him, and even though she is an inventor, she has some strength sewn in. Her shallow breath tickles his neck, and a weak, cold hand comes to wrap around his wrist.
Ekko jerks on impulse, but she doesn’t seem to have any other underhanded tactics. In her hazy state, through those half-vacant, glassy eyes, she’s just holding onto him. His throat seizes shut, like fabric stitched closed with grief.
Clinging in a mockery of the way she used to wrap both of her arms around his like a limpet when an intimidating underworlder entered the Last Drop. Her grip is warm, grounding against his rough cotton shirt.
The explosion goes off, a hot gust of wind blasts through Ekko’s face and screams in his ears, but he hardly even notices even as a stray flung metal scrap shoots past him and nicks his cheek on the way. He just feels very still, and very, very young.
“Are you going to kill me?” Jinx’s voice is barely audible once the explosion cleared, an ancient soot layering across her skin, streaked with tears, scratchy like a record that jitters over the same part again and again. She’s still smiling, even as silent minnows chase down her cheeks.
Ekko’s nostrils’ flare subconsciously, and he finds his grip loosening from where he has her pinned, breathless, almost offended at the notion. He would have.
If you’d have asked Ekko yesterday if he was willing to kill Jinx, he would have replied affirmatively. But there’s just so much Powder left inside her, a spark at the back of her eyes. Something that begs Ekko to help.
The melodies of her face have been tinted with dissonance. The sweet hue of her cheeks placid and sallow, sweaty and pale, her skin clammy as though fever-ridden.
The cadence of her eyes has been diminished by pools of sadness; the harmonies of her nose and mouth and cheeks distorted by tainting anguish. Her eyes tell a story of suffering, the same ragged rawness deep inside them as Ekko’s own hazel eyes.
He waits a moment before replying, “No, no. I won’t.”
She huffs, seemingly amused, but there is a tension that lines her shoulders with the action. She still doesn’t make an effort to get up, despite where Ekko has pushed her into the ground with bruising force. She faux sighs, huffing a few stray strands of hair from her face. “Shame. Could have made things a load easier for me if you wanted to.”
Ekko clenches his jaw tight so hard he feels a muscle bulge and his teeth squeak under the pressure. A cold realisation floods him, and Ekko goes still. “That grenade,” he breathes, “Were you–”
Jinx barks out a laugh, grating and mocking. It sounds wet, like it’s ripping up her throat to do so. “Obviously.” She croaks through the tears. Her mask is cracking, now, though, and there is a certain despair deep rooted in her eyes. “Two birds with one stone, right?”
“That’s not–” Ekko shakes his head, mouth painfully dry. “You can’t just…”
“Why not?” Jinx laughs again, and he can feel the way her chest jolts and spasms underneath his arms. “There’s nothing left for me here.” When Ekko doesn’t say anything, she bares her teeth at him and continues, “Silco has abandoned me - Vi is gone and I have no one else. Everyone always leaves, so why bother?”
Ekko ignores the way her voice trembles and breaks on that last question. He instead loosens his grip, choosing merely to kick her gun away and get to his feet. His knees sting with the impact against the concrete, so he simply flexes his joints a couple of times and begins to walk back the way they came - marked with blood and scorched with explosions - back towards the Undercity.
“Where are you going?” She calls after him, cutting through the silence with a frightened ringing. “Ekko?”
“No point waiting to be stormed by enforcers,” Ekko calls over his shoulder, hating the slight shake to his voice, forcing it out harsher, and blatantly ignores her flinch at his tone. “I’m going home.”
Jinx makes a little noise of distress, and gets to her feet as well. He can hear the little jingle of the bells attached to her boots, and smothers the flicker of warmth at her goofiness. When Ekko is almost out of hearing distance, and ready to leave her behind, Jinx calls out, “Wait!”
Ekko pauses, comically slow, and turns. He half expects her to have her gun, or a grande, or some sort of plan, fuck, something, to show him that this is Jinx, not Powder. That the girl he fell in love with all those years ago is dead and gone.
Instead, though, he sees a woman standing in the fog of thickened ash, illuminated by the half-shattered lights that send long spiralling shadows along the bridge. She’s hunched over, unsure, eyes shining with tears. There’s a tremor in her hands as she runs a nervous grip through her scalp - a painfully obvious tell she’s had since childhood.
“Yes?” Ekko asks dubiously, even as his heart twinges in pain.
Powder looks up at him from where her eyes had been deep-set into the ground, shimmering with tears, and she laughs wetly. “Don’t you want this?” She asks thickly through the upset, and opens her palm to reveal that magical crystal - blue and shining, streaking her face in holy light.
Ekko whips his head around. He could have sworn that the enforcer girl had it - how had Powder managed to–
He catches the end of her mischievous smile, and the last of his guard crumbles away.
A beat passes, then he says, “I suppose you’ll have to come with me to bring it back. You know, for safe-guarding.”
She blinks owlishly at him, and Ekko rolls his eyes, something warm and sweet rushing through his chest, loosening up the tension that constantly resides there - like a parasite niggling away at his flesh, twinging every now and again to remind him of its presence.
“Come on, Powder. Let’s get going.” He gestures down the bridge.
“Really?” Her voice is a barely audible whisper. “You’re letting me come with you?”
Ekko’s throat is tight. “Yeah. You’re the only one who knows how to properly use that thing, right? Aside from those nerds up in Piltover.”
She eyes him up for a moment, then sniffs wetly, face covered in snot and blood and tears, and yet she is as beautiful as Ekko has ever found her. “Okay.” She confirms. Okay, just a small word, for something so ground-breaking. She takes a step forward, smothering the chasm that had jutted out between them, impossibly wide and deep, with her shoe.
Powder breaks into a smile - not a grin, he doesn’t know if either of them are capable of producing one of those anymore - and hurries towards him, braids bouncing to the rhythm of her jog. She hands him the marble - a lighting bolt shoots down his skin at their contact, the chill of the gem and the warmth of her hand.
Her hand brushes against his as they fall in step together, then slowly, she links her pinky finger around his.
He notices the way she holds her breath, as though waiting for Ekko to rip his hand away, but as much as he sort of wants to, he can’t bring himself to. He just gives her hand a little squeeze as they return to the undercity, her touch like an anchor.